Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Billy Joel Drummer Liberty DeVitto ("LIBERTY: Life, Billy, and the Pursuit of Happiness) [Episode 149]

Transcript

Billy Joel Drummer Liberty DeVitto ("LIBERTY: Life, Billy, and the Pursuit of Happiness) [Episode 149] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  We're totally booked. Rollo, I think I'll leave you do you're reading Little
• 0:06
  Hands? Is It's time to run and roll? Rollo? We are totally
• 0:10
  booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about to
• 0:19
  read and rock online. At Booked on rock dot com, Exclusive videos,
• 0:24
  blogs, links to all of the social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter,
• 0:28
  Instagram, and TikTok. Find every episode of Booked on Rock there,
• 0:33
  along with links to your favorite listening platforms. Legendary Billy Joel drummer Liberty de
• 0:38
  Vito is this episode's guest. In twenty twenty, he wrote his memoir titled
• 0:43
  Liberty, Life, Billy and the Pursuit of Happiness. Get into Liberty's thirty
• 0:48
  year career with Billy Joel and the stories behind the endless stream of hits from
• 0:52
  Billy. Liberty's grooves are heard on thirteen platinum Billy Joel albums that have sold
• 0:57
  over one hundred and fifty million copies. He wrote and performed the drum parts
• 1:02
  on twenty two of Billy's twenty three top forty hits in all six Grammy Award
• 1:07
  winning recordings. In two thousand and six, after thirty years as Billy's drummer,
• 1:11
  who was let go from the band's tour, ending the longest running tenure
• 1:15
  in Billy's band, beginning with the nineteen seventy six album Turnstiles. There was
• 1:21
  an eventual lawsuit over royalty payments, eventually settled out of court and have since
• 1:26
  reconciled and reclaimed their friendship. Billy would write the forward to Liberty's book.
• 1:32
  Liberty talks about that how he pulled himself out of the depression that followed,
• 1:36
  and what he's up to now. I want to thank Lisa tore On,
• 1:38
  the author of Billy Joel Every album, every song, who helped to make
• 1:42
  this interview happen. Liberty gave Lisa countless stories to use for her book,
• 1:47
  and he's got some for you in this episode. You're gonna love it.
• 1:49
  Make sure you head to this episode show notes page to hear a playlist of
• 1:53
  Billy Joel's songs featuring Liberty. DeVito Liberty, Welcome to the podcast. This
• 2:01
  is so great to meet you and have you on the show. Well,
• 2:04
  this is great too, Yeah, I see you van Halen flagging the background
• 2:07
  there. Yeah, I got the van Halen memorabilia here. A fan of
• 2:10
  van Halen and a fan of your work. So let's talk about that,
• 2:15
  and let's talk about your book too. Came out in twenty twenty. It's
• 2:17
  called Liberty, Life, Billy and the Pursuit of Happiness. What led you
• 2:22
  to writing this book? Well, it actually started out as a family history
• 2:25
  from my kids. That's what I wanted to do. You know, I
• 2:28
  have four daughters and I wanted them to know where my grandparents came from.
• 2:32
  How you know, we came from Italy and like what my father and his
• 2:38
  brothers did, the life that my mother had, which was, you know,
• 2:43
  not very nice. But you know, it's very important to know where
• 2:46
  you come from because that's how you find out who you really are. You
• 2:51
  know you come from. So I started the book with that. I was
• 2:53
  lucky enough to have my dad to he was ninety one, and my moncles
• 2:57
  she was eighty nine, so I was able to interview them. You take
• 3:00
  the voice and it would tell stories. My aunt Millie, she was alive
• 3:05
  out of all the brothers and sisters of my father, and when I would
• 3:07
  ask her, I would say, and Millie, what was my dad really
• 3:10
  like? And she would say, oh, he was bad. He was
• 3:14
  so bad. You know, so I got to really to talk to them
• 3:19
  and feel like I was there with him at the time. Was to describe
• 3:22
  things like to tea talk about your early days in New York City. Your
• 3:24
  dad was a police officer right in the city. Yes he was. He
• 3:29
  was actually a police officer in the neighborhood that I live in now. And
• 3:34
  you know, he didn't want us to grow up in Brooklyn because that's where
• 3:37
  he grew up. And my dad was a toughie when he was a kid,
• 3:42
  you know, like teenager and stuff like that. He used to run
• 3:45
  with a real dangerous crowd. You know, my mom actually made him take
• 3:51
  the police test to become a policeman. He moved us out of New York
• 3:54
  City because he didn't want us to be in the semi environment that he grew
• 3:58
  up in. The funny thing is when I moved back here, I would
• 4:00
  say, Dad, I'm back in New York City, you know, I'm
• 4:03
  back in Brooklyn and he would say where are you? And I would name
• 4:06
  the streets that live on and he would say, Oh, you gotta get
• 4:10
  out of there. It's bad. It's terrible, it's really bad. Well,
• 4:15
  it's changed, it's so different. Now you did say that you had
• 4:17
  to you had to be tough in your neighborhood's growing up out on Long Island
• 4:21
  when we were growing up, you had to be tough because you know,
• 4:25
  there was all we didn't grow up in an Italian neighborhood. We grew up.
• 4:30
  Let's see the block. One house was Irish, the next house there
• 4:35
  was two Italians in a row. Then there was a German, then there
• 4:39
  was another Irish, then it was Jewish, and then there was you know,
• 4:42
  so it was all different. And back then, you know, you
• 4:46
  know, there was now they considered nasty things to call people like you used
• 4:51
  to call them, you know, and it would start fights, and you
• 4:56
  know, but you were always friends after the fight. But you learned how
• 4:59
  to do that. My mom wants watched this bigger kid have a fight with
• 5:03
  me out in front of our house, and she said, I was fighting
• 5:09
  back so hard, but I was getting beat But she said because she grew
• 5:14
  up in East New York, which is the worst part of Brooklyn right now,
• 5:16
  and she said, I just had to watch you because you had to
• 5:20
  learn how to defend yourself and not give up though matter. Wow, yeah,
• 5:25
  okay, well, this this is This is interesting because I was going
• 5:28
  to ask you about some of the difficult times you went through in recent years
• 5:30
  and how he got through it. And I think that answers the question is
• 5:32
  that you know your your mom and your dad too. I'm sure just said,
• 5:35
  Hey, he's got to go out there, he's got to fight for
• 5:38
  himself. He's got to learn how to do it. I can't ask for
• 5:41
  help. My dad was such a tough guy. He used to tell me,
• 5:44
  like, I had to cut my nails. He used to look on
• 5:46
  my fingernails, but your nails are too long. How a you gonna make
• 5:47
  a fist if your nails are that long? You know, It's like,
• 5:49
  Dad, I don't want me now. Did you have that? Like did
• 5:54
  you go out here long? And he was like, what the hell are
• 5:55
  you doing? In the sixties, I grew my headlong and he hated it
• 6:00
  because I looked like the people he was arresting. Yeah, you know,
• 6:04
  and he couldn't stand that. You know, well, I like so many
• 6:09
  musicians from that classic rock era that you're from. It was the Beatles on
• 6:13
  Ed Sullivan in February of sixty four. Yeah, that Litchure fire. He
• 6:17
  never took lessons, which is amazing you learned by just listening to records.
• 6:23
  Yeah, I joined the sixth grade school band when I was in elementary school
• 6:28
  and they put me on the snare drum and I couldn't do the buzz roll
• 6:31
  in the Star span Obama, you know that when it goes all the way
• 6:33
  through and the drummer, I mean, the teacher said, put the sticks
• 6:40
  down to Vieto. You'll never do anything with the drums. And you put
• 6:43
  me on the bass drum and it was like that's boring, you know.
• 6:46
  So I left that and I didn't know. I didn't do anything. I'm
• 6:50
  not in the sports. I never wasn't the sports. I don't like you
• 6:54
  know, mal on mail contact. I don't like that kind of stuff,
• 6:58
  you know. So I didn't know what to do. When I was in
• 7:01
  a high school not junior high school now, and the girls were walking in
• 7:05
  the hall, they liked the guys that played sports. But it wasn't until
• 7:10
  the d Sullivan Show when the Beatles were on the Had Sulvan Show, It's
• 7:13
  like, okay, all these girls are screaming for these guys. I can
• 7:16
  do this. I don't want to do the buzz role. I want to
• 7:19
  do what that guy's doing on the drums there. Now, when do you
• 7:23
  realize you have a sense of rhythm? Like when do you know you could
• 7:26
  keep time? Because that's not something everybody can do. No, I knew
• 7:30
  I could. My mother was a great dancer. She used to cut school
• 7:34
  to go see Frank Stond artist. She loved music, you know, and
• 7:38
  she used to dance. She Horror and her sister want a dance contest.
• 7:43
  They danced it in the mood the Glenmiller is in the movie and they want
• 7:47
  they wanted the dance contest to that, And so I get got my rhythm
• 7:51
  from her. She used to say my dad was a square, you know
• 7:55
  all the time, but she loved music. She love played music all the
• 7:59
  time in the house. I mean, my dad, in his way encouraged
• 8:01
  me because every time he heard me playing the drums when he came home,
• 8:05
  he would leave and go to the movies. There's a my tadell. So
• 8:07
  it would allow me to practice, but I would be downstairs and I would
• 8:13
  want to learn this new thing that I heard on a Vanilla Fudge record or
• 8:16
  something like that, where the bass film would go boom boo, boom boom
• 8:22
  god, and I couldn't go boo boom boom, you know. And I
• 8:24
  would come upstairs and I'd go to my mom. I can't do that,
• 8:28
  I can't do it. She grabbed me by the shoulders and turn me around
• 8:31
  and tell me to go downstairs. And she said, start slow, do
• 8:35
  it slow, and then start getting fast. A lot of these kids today
• 8:39
  they try to learn the drums, and they watch these videos and these guys
• 8:43
  on the internet, and they try to do what they're doing, and it's
• 8:48
  like you're never going to do it, like at the speed right away.
• 8:52
  You have to do things slow. And then your first band is the Rogues
• 8:56
  that's while you're in high school, and then Crystal Circus, and then in
• 9:00
  nineteen sixty seven you join a band called the New Rock Workshop, which is
• 9:03
  when you first meet Billy Joel. Six seven years later you're in his band.
• 9:07
  How did that all come together? How did you end up in Billy's
• 9:11
  band? Yeah, it's funny because back then he was called Billy Joe,
• 9:13
  I mean, even though that's his last name, Joel. But yeah,
• 9:18
  he was in the Hassles and I was in the New York Workshop. It
• 9:22
  was an underage club when it just served soldier and stuff like that, and
• 9:24
  we were the two house bands, and sometimes we would play together and I
• 9:28
  would just see him passing in the darker of the club, you know,
• 9:31
  and just say hi. It was wasn't until I was in this to this
• 9:35
  band called Traffic, which Steve Winwood was in, and I love the song
• 9:41
  Colored Rain. And one night I was watching the Hassles and Billy sang Colored
• 9:46
  Rain, and I thought, Okay, this guy's good. You know,
• 9:50
  he's doing the material and I really like, you know. And the funny
• 9:54
  thing is is that later on in our careers where we got together, we
• 9:58
  were able to relate his songs like that because we both grew up listening to
• 10:01
  the same music, you know. The difference is what made the band great
• 10:07
  was that he went that music, and then classical. I went that music
• 10:15
  and kind of oldies and R and B so joined together and it became with
• 10:20
  the sound that you hear on the records. I grew up in Seaford,
• 10:24
  Long Island, and then and then he grew up in Hicksville, And in
• 10:28
  between Stephen and Hicksville was this one town called North Massapequa. So we were
• 10:33
  so close to each other. We're both like considered south Shore people with Jones
• 10:39
  Beach and the ocean and all that kind of stuff like that, and we
• 10:43
  kind of hung out at the same kind of places, you know, the
• 10:45
  burger stands that they had at the time, and so we could relate to
• 10:50
  everything. Anything I said, He could relate to anything he said. I
• 10:54
  could relate to you know that. That was a great bond. You could
• 10:56
  finish each other's thoughts. Yeah, And that's what we did with the songs.
• 11:03
  He would say something. I would go, hey, why don't you
• 11:05
  do that? So you're not on the first two albums or three albums?
• 11:09
  Well, if you kept Cole spring hard, yeah, three. So when
• 11:13
  did you You started touring with him prior to recording with him on Turnstyles No
• 11:20
  First Thing, Turn Okay So Hot when he was in La, he Doug
• 11:28
  Stagmo was the one that got the gig to tour of the Street Life Serenata
• 11:31
  tour that album. On that tour, Billy said, I want to move
• 11:37
  back to New York because he was living in LA at the time, using
• 11:39
  studio musicians in the studio and a different band to play with him live.
• 11:43
  So he said, I want to move back to New York. I want
• 11:46
  the same band to record with me and then go on the road with me.
• 11:50
  And I want a New York style drummer, and Dog just looking at
• 11:54
  him and said, well, you know the guy already. And we had
• 11:56
  the band Topper, myself, Doug st My, Russell Jobbers and a fellow
• 12:01
  named Howard Emerson who played guitar, and how he's on that Turnstyle's album too,
• 12:07
  and he went on the first couple of tours with us too. Topper
• 12:11
  became Billy's band. And so with the inclusion of Richard Kannada on the saxophone,
• 12:15
  who me and and Doug Stegman went to see playing the club and said
• 12:20
  to Billy, okay, let's get this guy. You know that became the
• 12:24
  Billy Joel band. We'd like to think that that Topper got a singer that
• 12:26
  wrote songs and played piano exactly Topper featuring Billy Joel say Goodbye to Hollywood,
• 12:33
  I believe is the first single release while you're in the band? Am I
• 12:37
  right? Yes? Yeah, yeah, yes, So what's the inspiration behind
• 12:41
  that song? If you're write in the book about something Billy says while the
• 12:45
  song is fading out too. That's the other funny well, that the inspiration
• 12:48
  behind the song while he wrote it was because he was leaving Hollywood. Johnny
• 12:52
  was a gentleman. I can't remember his last name right now, but he
• 12:56
  he was his manager at the time, you know, and and he was
• 13:00
  like protecting him and watching over himhimself. But it was time to say goodbye,
• 13:05
  you know. And he knew he was going to lose friends because he's
• 13:07
  moving on to something else. So he's in New York and we recorded the
• 13:11
  album and he's doing overdubs, doing a vocal overdubs. At the end,
• 13:16
  I'm watching him and I'm going to control him. He's sitting beyond the piano
• 13:20
  when he's singing thing about all I say about my baby man. And then
• 13:24
  at the fade out, I get up and I'm gonna go to the bathroom.
• 13:28
  And he goes, hey, DeVito, where are you going? You
• 13:31
  know? And he thought, that's so New York. I'm leaving this.
• 13:37
  There's a thing that I thought they would take out in the song called Zanzibart.
• 13:41
  It's on the fifty second Shot album, right before it goes into the
• 13:45
  jazz pot and I play brushes the whole sun. I'm playing sticks right,
• 13:50
  and I'm playing on the on the symbol, and then when it goes then
• 14:01
  you can hear me put the sticks down and pick up the brushes. You
• 14:03
  hit them a little rumbling on the fourth time. Yeah, that's awesome.
• 14:07
  It left it in. I thought, oh, that's so jazz it is.
• 14:11
  Yeah, you know, and and Zeppelin a lot of that too.
• 14:15
  You can hear the squeaking of of John Bonham's Yeah, and what was the
• 14:22
  one of the songs where Robert Plant You even hear him there's an airplane going
• 14:26
  overhead and he's like, no, leave it in. I can't remember which
• 14:28
  song it is, but another Billy classic from Turnstiles New York State of Mind.
• 14:33
  And you say in the book that it's the only song Billy ever wrote
• 14:35
  the words and music for at the same time, Yes, it's in Hollow
• 14:43
  Falls, which the song some of Holler Falls comes from. And he sat
• 14:48
  down to write this great song and wrote the words and the probably took him
• 14:54
  like ten minutes to write it. Man Angry Young Man is another favorite of
• 14:58
  mine, but my personal pick from this album Miami twenty seventeen. What is
• 15:03
  it about? And do you have any memories you can share about recording that
• 15:07
  song. Oh yeah, we uh it was about when one time Ford,
• 15:13
  New York City was broke and the mayor ex president Ford for a bellout to
• 15:20
  help and and Ford said to tell New York to drop dead. You know,
• 15:24
  they're on their own. The song is all about like somebody in the
• 15:28
  future, you know, in twenty seventeen, which has already fast. It's
• 15:33
  really funny. Scared, yeah, really looking back and telling his children and
• 15:39
  grandchildren this is what it was like. They burned the churches up in Halem.
• 15:43
  They did this, they sunk they picked the Yankees up afraid, they
• 15:46
  sunk Carrier out and you know, all that stuff happened and they destroyed New
• 15:52
  York. You know, it's kind of a downer song. But uh,
• 15:56
  you know. So the cool part about that was me and Doug and Billy
• 16:02
  just recorded it because it was just the three of us going in and doing
• 16:03
  the basic track. That's the one when Billy said, I think I need
• 16:07
  guitars on this, and that's when we got Russell and Howard to come in.
• 16:11
  We said, we're gonna a good top players. When why don't we
• 16:12
  get these two guys in Turnstiles reached number one twenty two on Billboard, sells
• 16:17
  fifty thousand copies in the US thirty six thousand in Australia, enough to give
• 16:21
  Billy a shot at another album, and that would be seventy seven's The Stranger,
• 16:25
  the first of five albums produced by Phil ramone six weeks at number two.
• 16:30
  Four singles all top forty. Just the Way You Are, Moving Out
• 16:33
  Anthony's song only the Good Guy Young and She's Always a Woman and it wins
• 16:37
  a Grammy for Record of the Year. Just the Way You Are wins for
• 16:41
  Song of the Year Moving Out Anthony song. There's a great story you tell
• 16:45
  in the book. Can you talk about how this song came about? And
• 16:49
  it turns out you're driving the corvette we here in the end. Yeah,
• 16:53
  well, Doug is actually driving the corvette. At the end. I had
• 16:59
  a little panaty a cassette recorder, and I taped the microphone with a wire
• 17:03
  on it, and I taped the wire and the microphone to the vendor of
• 17:07
  the corvette and we drove all around the North but skidding and going crazy and
• 17:14
  all that kind of stuff. The song was written because on the Turnstiles tour.
• 17:19
  We used to like stay at holiday inns, you know, and those
• 17:22
  hotels. We drive up to where the room is. You don't go in
• 17:26
  the front desk and you don't walk down the hallway to get to your room,
• 17:29
  and drive up to it. And we would after we drove like five
• 17:33
  hundred miles to get whatever we were, we would estead at this hotel and
• 17:37
  we'd all meet by the by the pool or something like that, and me
• 17:41
  and Richie Kannada would be talking to Billy and we'd go and we'd make believe
• 17:47
  that we were at Billy's house and were standing by Billy's pool, and we
• 17:53
  can't believe what he's done, what he's been able to accomplish. And we'd
• 17:59
  say, this is lovely. This is so beautiful man, it's amazing the
• 18:03
  property you have here, all the stuff you've got here, your house is
• 18:07
  beautiful, and would say that this pool is unbelievable. And Richie would talk
• 18:12
  to this this tissue in his in his sweater and he take it out and
• 18:17
  be put you know, putting it on his face, like, oh,
• 18:21
  it's so nice. And Billy would say, like, where do I take
• 18:25
  you inside? You see the basement, it's nice and finished to have a
• 18:27
  bar down there and you know, stuff like that. And then he would
• 18:33
  say like, you know, you've got to get out of the city,
• 18:34
  man, you gotta come out, move out of this city. You're breaking
• 18:37
  your backs in the city. And then it became that song moving out just
• 18:41
  the Way you Are. Phil Ramon knew it was a hit, but it
• 18:45
  had to get away from the groove that it was in. This is where
• 18:48
  you come in. What is it that you did to change things up for
• 18:52
  just the way you are? Well, we were playing it on the Turnstulls
• 18:56
  tour and we were playing that. I think we were playing the BRender and
• 19:00
  any part of seeing sort of time restaurant. Just though you are was more
• 19:04
  like a Stevie Wonders song like you are the sunshine of my life. You
• 19:07
  know. It's that kind of thing. Don't go changing, Ryan, please
• 19:15
  me, you know. And then I got in there and Phil was like,
• 19:21
  yeah, it's not gonna have, not gonna fly. So I started
• 19:23
  to fool around with the with the thing that I did on James on the
• 19:27
  Turnstiles album, which is just the sixties on on the snare drum and the
• 19:33
  bass drum and the and the snare coming down at the same time, like,
• 19:38
  so it started to set up this thing like don't go changing. And
• 19:45
  I could see Phil through the glass, you know, in the control room
• 19:49
  doing that that thing, doing this thing like with his arms like that,
• 19:55
  and that was the trap them. So we built that into what you hear
• 20:03
  on the record. Now, the brush came out. Brush came out because
• 20:07
  the guitars, they were acoustic guitars, and the brush blend so well with
• 20:12
  the acoustic guitars. So that's how I got in the song was with the
• 20:17
  brush. Another group change is on Only the Good Guy Young Billy first one.
• 20:22
  Yeah, Billy First wrote it with a reggae feel. Yeah, it
• 20:26
  was terrible. What's it terrible? I remember we were in Knoxville, Tennessee.
• 20:32
  The Circus was in town and they were playing at the place where we
• 20:34
  were going to play. We were off for like two days or something like
• 20:37
  that, and me and Brian Ruggles, the sound engineer, ran off to
• 20:41
  the circus and we stayed with them, you know, we were on the
• 20:45
  train and hanging out with them, you know, the little people and the
• 20:49
  people that swing on the trapeze and all that kind of stuff. It was
• 20:52
  nuts. It was nuts. We come back and I'm walking down the hall
• 20:59
  outside of Cross Again. We're after one of these hotels and Richie comes running
• 21:03
  up to me and it was like, you gotta hit the song that Billy
• 21:07
  wrote. You gotta hit the song. So Billy brings an acoustic guitar into
• 21:11
  the room. I'm in right, and he starts playing gone, let me
• 21:17
  wait. So it's like I was first. The first thing that got me
• 21:22
  is because I was raised Catholic. It was like the lyric. I was
• 21:26
  like, ah, I don't know, Billy, you know the Catholic thing.
• 21:30
  The Catholics are going to get really mad at you. And and you
• 21:33
  know this Jewish kid is talking about Catholics. You know they do everything wrong.
• 21:37
  And I mean like that. So anyway, it goes into the studio
• 21:41
  and we're playing it reggae. There's a version somewhere of it. I was
• 21:45
  going to ask you if it's out there somewhere it is I'm one of the
• 21:49
  box sets. I think there's a there's a the reggae version of it.
• 21:55
  So I'm like playing it with him and I get set up and he remembers
• 22:00
  me throwing drumsticks at him. I don't know if I do that, but
• 22:03
  I remember saying to him, this is this is like not right. I
• 22:07
  mean, the closest you've ever come to Jamaica was like, there's the train
• 22:11
  station on one Island, Jamaica train station. That's the closest you've ever come
• 22:17
  to Jamaica. You know nothing about reggae, you know. I remember Paul
• 22:22
  Simon coming in the studio and I was looking through the glass. I couldn't
• 22:26
  hear anything he was saying to fill, but I hear him holding a guitar
• 22:30
  up like this, you know, I'm going like this. And his thought
• 22:33
  was like, if you play a rhythm that is so powerful and people having
• 22:38
  so much fun, they the lyric will go right over their head, right
• 22:45
  over the heads, kind of like YMCA and Baby Please Go all the Way.
• 22:48
  You know that those kind of songs, the lyrics go all right over
• 22:52
  your head because the music or so go. So I thought about the shuffle
• 22:57
  that we do it in because I used to love this song by Jimmie Hendrix
• 23:02
  called Up from the Skies. It's on the Access Bowlders Love album and it
• 23:07
  has the same beginning it is only the good Day on and then it does
• 23:11
  the swinging jing jing jing jing, like that kind of thing. So I
• 23:15
  just said, Billy, how about this? And he was like, yeah,
• 23:19
  that's great. Phil loved it, you know, and I put brushes
• 23:22
  on that. But I couldn't do it live but brushes. The brushes wouldn't
• 23:26
  be loud enough. You know, how did you like life on the road
• 23:29
  because you spend a lot of time on the road. Well, personally,
• 23:33
  I love it. Leave the room in the morning, like ten o'clock,
• 23:38
  get up, go downstairs, or to breakfast, sign it to the room,
• 23:45
  go back upstairs. Oh, do whatever you want to do. Go
• 23:48
  back into your room. The beds made, the towels are picked up every
• 23:52
  day, stice and clean. You don't have to do anything, you know.
• 23:56
  Living being with Billy Joel was was being in a after we became really
• 24:02
  big. It was like you were in a bubble. You could do no
• 24:04
  harm. You never really got in trouble, you know, it was just
• 24:11
  a bubble. And when that bubble finally burst, it was back to reality
• 24:18
  again. That's that's what the hard part was. That's that's when the book
• 24:22
  really clicked in, Like, Okay, we got the family thing. Now,
• 24:27
  how I was raised and stuff like that. The real thing that made
• 24:30
  me write it the way it is is that these shows like American Idol and
• 24:37
  The Voice and all things like that. You see these these these kids that
• 24:41
  got talent. Some of them sound like they're singing at their cousin's wedding and
• 24:45
  stuff like that. But to have four people judging them, it's almost like
• 24:52
  a gone show sometimes, you know, yeah, it's almost humiliating. You
• 24:56
  know, I'm not a fan. Yeah, I never got into that,
• 24:59
  never got into that show. Those shows. Yeah, And so the ones
• 25:03
  that win, first of all, the show itself owns everything that they do.
• 25:10
  You know, if they write a song while they're on the show,
• 25:12
  it's the show song. They own it. The publishing and everything like that.
• 25:17
  So I wanted to write a book about like you have to pay your
• 25:21
  dues to make it, because you hear a lot of these guys that win,
• 25:23
  or these girls that win, they go out on the road and they
• 25:27
  can't last for a half hour to do a show. You know, you
• 25:32
  were doing shows two hours and ten minutes full more, no breaks, no
• 25:36
  nothing. These people can't do that because they never paid their dues. So
• 25:41
  that's why I wrote about the bands I was in from the beginning and the
• 25:47
  clubs and what happened in those certain bands, how I grew or how I
• 25:53
  fell or you know, what was like the challenge of being in a band.
• 26:00
  That's what worries me about the future of rock and roll. There's that
• 26:03
  phrase nowadays rock and roll is dead. I don't think it's dead. They're
• 26:07
  out there. There are kids out there are playing rock and roll music.
• 26:11
  But I don't know. I worry about, you know, where's rock and
• 26:15
  roll going. I did did this thing called the Sessions. It's a panel
• 26:19
  that goes to different colleges. It doesn't only have musicians on the panel,
• 26:26
  but it also has music lawyers and roads and you know, people like that
• 26:32
  that work in the industry. You know, because we feel that you don't
• 26:37
  necessarily have to be a musician to be in the music business. There's other
• 26:41
  things to do. And we talk about that all the time, like what's
• 26:45
  going to happen to music? And I remember sitting next to this woman who
• 26:49
  wrote this kiss by so, you know, she wrote the song, and
• 26:56
  it was like, so I asked her on the sly, I said,
• 27:00
  do you think they'll ever be a time when there's four guys in suits that
• 27:06
  are singing that are going to be as big and be a crazy again.
• 27:10
  And she looked at me as she said, if the songs are good,
• 27:12
  it could happen. The songs are like weak now, you know, they're
• 27:18
  not saying anything. The only ones that are saying things that the rappers the
• 27:22
  same things, or the young guys that are talking about suicide and things like
• 27:27
  that. You know some of the girl groups now we're talking about what it's
• 27:30
  like being gay or you know, and stuff like that. Somebody told me
• 27:36
  that if you aren't writing about what is happening in the world these days,
• 27:41
  then forget it. You're not going to do it. We need people to
• 27:45
  write like that. I had X Billy when COVID hit and the way the
• 27:51
  country was going and everything, and I said, Billy, you should be
• 27:55
  writing man, talking about what it's like. You know, You've got this
• 27:57
  great way of saying things. And Billy said to me, he said,
• 28:03
  it's time for the young people to speak. It's time for them to speak.
• 28:07
  If they're a young kid would write about how he feels about what's going
• 28:10
  on in government, in you know, in the change everything. We have
• 28:15
  to know all the changes we're going through in life. This young kids got
• 28:19
  to write about that, not an old guy like me. You're like,
• 28:22
  Oh, I see you crying, and I don't know what that was going
• 28:25
  on with you. You know, somebody's got to do that. They're just
• 28:30
  distracted by these instantaneous like I can play a bar of drums and I can
• 28:37
  loop the whole thing, and I got my whole drum track. You know,
• 28:40
  did this recording two albums with this guy, Jimmy Lee Hook comes out
• 28:45
  of Cleveland, and he insisted on the band being in the room with him.
• 28:49
  They had to build this whole cover. He plays piano and they had
• 28:52
  to build this whole cover over the piano because the drums were leaking. We
• 28:56
  did it at Richard Knato's studio Cove City, out of Long Island, and
• 29:02
  it came out great because there's no click track it the tempo moves with the
• 29:07
  feel of the song. You know. It's just something that you think about,
• 29:14
  like what if what if they quantized the Beatles songs, you know,
• 29:18
  or fixed every mistake that was in a Beatles song? Oh yeah, exactly.
• 29:23
  Going back to the billy catalog. Fifty second Street released Fall of seventy
• 29:29
  eight, that's the first of four number one albums, two Grammys, three
• 29:30
  songs in the top forty My Life, Big Shot in Honesty, And you
• 29:34
  write that you forced Billy into writting the lyrics to honesty. Yeah, I
• 29:41
  like to play the lyrics. That's what I do. I don't I can't
• 29:44
  read, can't write music. So I played the lyric because it the emotion
• 29:49
  of the lyric will kind of thick. Take what I'm going to play like,
• 29:52
  you're maybe right, it's a smasher, you know, you just beat
• 29:56
  it. But honestly, it was a ballad and we were just playing and
• 30:00
  he didn't have lyrics yet, so I started to sing fun of me,
• 30:06
  It's such a lonely world, and then he said, oh my god,
• 30:11
  I gotta write lyrics before I lose this. One of his biggest hits ever
• 30:18
  could have been called sodomy whatever Phil Ramone got pitched at you during the recording
• 30:23
  of My Life, Yes, because you know, the only thing that that
• 30:29
  left the Stranger out of first, out of number one was this is this?
• 30:33
  Now this ages me when I think about this is like, we didn't
• 30:37
  make it to number one and held on to number two because Saturday and Night
• 30:41
  Fever was the number one. Oh god, that kept everybody off the top.
• 30:45
  Yes, so disco we were just kind of coming out of the disco
• 30:49
  thing maybe you know at the time. And Phil wanted me to play the
• 30:55
  straight base from on My Life Do, And I said, I'm not playing
• 31:03
  that disco stuff. I'm not doing it. And he threw something on the
• 31:06
  control board and he goes, look, you've been in this business, what
• 31:08
  twenty minutes now, and you're gonna tell me what you're not gonna play.
• 31:12
  Get out there and play. And every time that gold down's on the wall,
• 31:18
  I walk past it and that gold singles up there, It's like,
• 31:21
  okay, yeah, right, wasn't that the song Buzz and Buddies had for
• 31:26
  their theme song? But it's a different person that sings it. What's What's
• 31:29
  that you know about publishing? Two kinds of publishing is the mechanical and is
• 31:33
  the writer's guy. The mechanical is like, whoever owns the song, the
• 31:41
  publish copy that owns the song can sell it, you know, they could,
• 31:45
  They could rent it for a certain amount of time and stuff like that.
• 31:48
  But if somebody else records it and it's not by the artist, Billy
• 31:53
  Joel. They don't have to pay that royalty the master. They don't have
• 31:57
  to pay the master which Sony owned. The book done rock podcasts. We'll
• 32:02
  be back after this. Liberty devitos our guests his twenty twenty book, Liberty
• 32:08
  Life, Billy and the Pursuit of Happiness, available in hardcover kindle which is
• 32:14
  what I have, and audible audiobook formats. Do you do? The audio
• 32:19
  is that you did? Okay, I did it and Billy had read the
• 32:22
  forward forward. That's right. So the next number one album is nineteen eighties
• 32:27
  Glass Houses, the cover shot taken at Billy's house in Long Island, and
• 32:31
  your first number one is It's still rock and roll to me? You say,
• 32:36
  the drums tuned down and muffled like the drums on John Lennon's Instant Karma.
• 32:42
  Now this song actually comes from something that was in Rolling Stone magazine,
• 32:46
  a critic that he was tired of people pigeon holding him. You know,
• 32:54
  you know, it really didn't matter what it is. It's if you went
• 33:00
  what we were doing at the time to punk rock, to you know,
• 33:04
  all that other stuff, it wouldn't be called rock and roll. It's still
• 33:06
  in rock and roll. You know, even the stuff today it's still rock
• 33:10
  and roll. I mean there's the diehards that say Chuck Berry and Elvis President
• 33:15
  that's rock and roll, you know. But then there's Ren Helen, I
• 33:17
  mean rock and roll. You know, ac DC come on rock and roll
• 33:22
  so much. There's some different kinds of rock and roll. Yeah, that's
• 33:27
  interesting too because I think Billy was so young. You guys are all so
• 33:29
  young, and yet you're trying to keep up with the times. Because every
• 33:32
  time there's a new decade that rolls around, that's that happens. It's like,
• 33:36
  are is it the labels that are looking for the next big thing?
• 33:39
  I just think the generations they get tired of the old songs and they want
• 33:45
  to do their own thing, you know. I also think that equipment changes
• 33:51
  music a lot. When the synthesizer came out, you had all those h
• 33:55
  those bands coming from England, and with some of the name of those bands,
• 34:00
  you know that they can the new wave bands you're talking from. THEE
• 34:07
  was another thing to change a lot of stuff. But you were able to
• 34:10
  make that transition like the Stones with Miss You during the disco erab you were
• 34:15
  able to somehow because that's not that cannot be easy to maintain your sound yet
• 34:22
  still push forward and be part of the new the sound of the of the
• 34:28
  day. You don't want to abandon your sound altogether. No, you don't
• 34:31
  want to abandon your sound, but you want to stay kind of current.
• 34:36
  You know. I remember going to see the police and Paris. I want
• 34:39
  to see the police the first time, and they weren't as big here yet,
• 34:45
  and I told Bill, I said to suspend the policeman got him that
• 34:50
  unbelievable, it's un great. And I can remember him the look on his
• 34:53
  face of like, okay, turn sound stranger. Fifty seconds and now does
• 35:00
  this man called the police three piece man guitar based on drums and that rocking
• 35:07
  like crazy, and they got this infused reggae thing going on too. All
• 35:13
  right, what am I gonna do next? So so then you get you
• 35:17
  know, all fulna and sleeping with the television on and stuff like that,
• 35:22
  which was his kind of punk thing. You know, let's just listen to
• 35:28
  that before we started recording. Yeah, how about Stewart Copelan. To me,
• 35:31
  Stewart Copelan is like another dear friend of mine. Danny Surphine from Chicago
• 35:37
  Danny took took jazz and rock and refused them together and came up with the
• 35:43
  sound that he has. Stewart took rock and reggae and put them together and
• 35:50
  came up with that's that's unique sound. That's what I feel that drummers need
• 35:53
  to have to do. It's not all the chops that you know and everything
• 35:58
  like that. It's like what makes you stand out amongst everyone else. Sometimes,
• 36:05
  like myself, it's the fact that you have no idea what you're doing,
• 36:08
  you know, just I'm gonna play it like this. Mick Fleetwood talked
• 36:13
  about it. He's he said, I'm kind of like a dyslexic drummer,
• 36:16
  you know when they asked me, you know, like Lindsey Buckingham would come
• 36:20
  to me and asked me to play something and I can't play it the way
• 36:22
  he wants to. But then Lindsey would like say that I like that though.
• 36:27
  That's you right right? Yeah. Well, I told Mick, I
• 36:30
  said, you know, you are a reference in the studio. When somebody
• 36:35
  wants to hit the symbol in the snare at the same time on the one
• 36:39
  and not at the end of four, they call it do the Mick Fleetwood.
• 36:45
  You know, yeah, yes, yes, boom, you know yeah,
• 36:52
  absolutely yeah. Sometimes it's just a little bit of a fill. But
• 36:54
  also you have to know when to to not like step on on Billy and
• 37:00
  the rest of the band. You don't want to go too crazy, so
• 37:02
  you gotta know you also got to let the song breathe a little bit too.
• 37:06
  Depends on the song. I suppose that's why I played to his lyric
• 37:09
  rather. Yes, they said that about Keith Moon too, Like I remember
• 37:14
  Roger Daltrey breaking down like he was in the studio and he was isolating just
• 37:17
  his vocals and Keith Moone he goes listen to how he's playing to my vocals
• 37:22
  listening Yeah, and Dalty was just so fascinating, you know, he just
• 37:24
  he and he played with the guy, but he was like a fan listening
• 37:28
  to it. Nylon Curtain nineteen eighty two, that has pressure, Allentown,
• 37:31
  good Night Saigon. Those three I would put in my top ten Billy joelist.
• 37:37
  Allentown, Please tell the story about you jumping up and down with two
• 37:42
  percussion cases. First of all, Billy had had the song, but it
• 37:46
  wasn't called Allentown. Yeah it was. It was called Levatown because walk down,
• 37:51
  you know, and he was always try to write it. Every album
• 37:53
  he tried to write it, well, we're living here in leve Town and
• 37:59
  that, but nothing ever happened in Lovertown, so he had nothing to write
• 38:02
  about. But he never threw that out. So when Allentown was going under,
• 38:07
  you know, the steel mills were closing and everything was closing down,
• 38:12
  this was something to write about. To make this steel mill sound that you
• 38:15
  hear on the record. It's a sample of a steel milk. But there's
• 38:22
  also me with two percussion cases, big ones from sir, like two cases,
• 38:29
  and I'm jumping up and down for the cases to go. And the
• 38:37
  hard part was to jump in the air and come down on the beat.
• 38:42
  You had a time it where you jumped before the bead happened, which is
• 38:45
  funny thing to do, but I did it, and I had to do
• 38:50
  it so many times that when I opened up the case at the end,
• 38:52
  it was just like sawdust, nothing left. Oh but it was worth it.
• 38:58
  It was worse, it was worth it. It was worth I love
• 39:00
  that song. An Innocent Man comes out in nineteen eighty three, and this
• 39:02
  is early MTV days. I still remember watching the video for Uptown Girl as
• 39:07
  a kid, and this also was tell her about it the title track the
• 39:10
  Longest Time, Leave a Tender Moment Alone and Keeping the Faith. I mean,
• 39:15
  it's like a it's like a greatest Hits album. You say in the
• 39:17
  book that of all Billy's albums, this was the most fun to make.
• 39:22
  Why was that? It was so much fun because I had a lot of
• 39:25
  stack of forty fives that I used to bring with me on the road.
• 39:29
  I have a little record player. We could play them, you know,
• 39:31
  or make tapes of all those songs, and we used to listen to them
• 39:35
  all the time. We love that stuff. That's the stuff that that when
• 39:37
  we were growing up, The Four Tops, the Supremes, all that stacks
• 39:43
  music and stuff like that. So it's funny Billy wanted to do a tribute
• 39:47
  to those the music that we grew up doing. We would come in the
• 39:53
  studio and actually listen to under the Boardwalk and then record Innocent Man, listen
• 40:00
  to the Four Seasons, and then record Uptown Girl. So we nailed it
• 40:06
  most of the time. I mean, I loved leaving to in a moment
• 40:08
  alone because I feel like I'm playing on a burpt back of rock record,
• 40:13
  you know, like just the drum pot. It's so simple, but it's
• 40:20
  it to me that one fits perfect, you know. And to have that
• 40:22
  much fun and also have the album be so huge must have been rewarding too.
• 40:29
  Oh we thought it was gonna be a bomb because it was really fun.
• 40:31
  Yeah, it's too much fun. It's gonna be a bomb. Yeah
• 40:35
  yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, and it connects with the younger
• 40:37
  audience, and it introduces the younger audience like myself to music that came before
• 40:43
  me. So that that's the other thing that's so cool about it. I
• 40:45
  noticed that with rock and roll, you could there's a line you could trace.
• 40:49
  It goes all the way back to even like classical. Oh yeah,
• 40:52
  Like it just keeps progressing or maybe take a left or a right or just
• 40:55
  things come together. And it's so cool. I love when he wrote this
• 41:00
  night and he put the middle part this night, gent mind, it's path
• 41:06
  a tea, it's a it's a Beethoman song that happened in the fifties and
• 41:12
  early sixties with a song called Love is Concerto by the Toys I believe did
• 41:19
  it and it went how gentle Liz the rain that falls only on the map,
• 41:24
  the classical piece that didit for lyrics, do right, so Billy,
• 41:28
  you know, remember that and put this night together. The opening drum fills
• 41:32
  uptown girl. It has as many notes as there are syllables in your name?
• 41:37
  Is that intention? Because Liberty DeVito that I didn't do that on purpose?
• 41:45
  So you didn't somebody somebody said to me to go, you know that
• 41:49
  that's your name when you that you play in the beginning of that song,
• 41:52
  man, that's yeah, you could aligned said, yes, I did that
• 41:55
  on purpose, you know. Yeah, like A Dark of the Moon is
• 42:00
  about the Wizard of Oz and there's something interesting you write about. The drums
• 42:05
  on Keeping the Faith their processed through a Simmons electronic drum brain and there are
• 42:09
  also ghost notes. Can you explain what that means? Yeah, ghost notes
• 42:14
  on the album it's me playing the drums. The ghost note is you hit
• 42:20
  the two and four one two three fuck, but sometimes you move your hand
• 42:24
  as you're playing it, like boom bo boppo. Well, when they remixed
• 42:32
  it for the single, they put it through this process and they put a
• 42:38
  gate on the snare drum, so you only heard a bat bap and even
• 42:44
  some of the films that actually go babo, you only hear boo, you
• 42:50
  know sometimes because they cut it out, and it just bothered me. What's
• 42:53
  your favorite effect on your drums? Whatever they used on the storm for an
• 42:59
  album? Okay, eventually get to that has a great big drum sound,
• 43:05
  big, but that was the time. That was the time a big drum
• 43:07
  sound. Right nowadays it's almost back to the you know, three microphones on
• 43:13
  on on a four piece set of drums, that's what's going back to it.
• 43:15
  Yeah, but all those recordings, it feels like you're in the room
• 43:19
  with you and Billy and the rest of the band. I mean, that's
• 43:22
  the thing that nowadays, that's the other thing I'm I'm sorting of sound old
• 43:25
  but a lot of these newer songs it just sounds like all one big block
• 43:29
  of sound. Whereas those old recordings, it's like you're right in the room.
• 43:34
  You can hear every single instrument. And that's analog though is that?
• 43:37
  Why is it? Because everything's on like pro tools and all that stuff.
• 43:40
  Now everything on pro tools. Yeah, well you can edit, you can
• 43:45
  you know what happens when I go in the studio and I'm playing you can't
• 43:51
  hear that the bass drum didn't exactly hit on this one note. You can't
• 43:59
  hear it, but they can see it, so they move it so it's
• 44:05
  absolutely perfect. Yeah, that's and that's a problem though you'd rather keep it.
• 44:10
  That makes it very sterile. Yeah, exactly in a laboratory or something.
• 44:16
  You know. I'll tell you there's so many. I have just some
• 44:20
  great stories that just connect me to your music. One was, I remember
• 44:23
  when when I was a sportswriter in high school and one of my first articles
• 44:27
  I wrote it was the local soccer team was supposed to go all the way
• 44:30
  and they and they lost, and I said, you know, Billy Joel
• 44:34
  once said, only the good die young. I remember I snuck that into
• 44:36
  one of my articles. But another one I think about is the summer of
• 44:38
  eighty nine and I was at I had this job at the local school and
• 44:44
  it was the worst job ever. It was just cleaning, you know,
• 44:45
  scraping the gum off the desk and wax in the floor. It was like
• 44:51
  one hundred and twenty. You got damn degrees inside of that building. And
• 44:54
  greatest hits one and two, Billy Joel, I played that every single and
• 45:00
  that got me through it. That just sticks with you forever. Then you
• 45:02
  just connect and I know you've got that with certain songs or bands grow up
• 45:07
  that you're just like man, I remember playing that forty five or that album.
• 45:12
  Yeah, yeah, I put on the first Middle album and I'm in
• 45:16
  Roseannel Angel's Spacemen exactly. So yeah, I just I thank you for that
• 45:22
  for getting me through the summer of eighty nine. And I love those two
• 45:24
  new tracks, You're Only Human Second Win and The Night Is Still Young.
• 45:29
  I love both of those. The Bridge then comes out after that nineteen eighty
• 45:34
  six matter of Trust, This is the Time Modern Woman and Baby grand a
• 45:37
  matter of Trust influenced by Robert Palmer with a bit of the Police, Yes
• 45:44
  Robert Palmer when he did The Lots Are Owned. Addicted to Love. Yeah
• 45:50
  right, yes, it's got that same cool and the big guitar. So
• 45:59
  that that's what Billy was looking for. You know, you always reference in
• 46:04
  the studio. You know it's like, Okay, I want it like this,
• 46:07
  I want it like you know, Robert Palmas addicted to love. Okay,
• 46:13
  that means I'm not gonna play boom boom boom boom boom Boo bo You
• 46:17
  know, I'm just gonna play stuff like that. Guitar is going to be
• 46:21
  like man, you know things like that, like you may be right,
• 46:27
  Rolling Stones too, you know, that's still like a Rolling Stones song.
• 46:30
  And Billy always used to come in we do an album like the Nylon Curtain.
• 46:37
  When we did the Nylon Curtain, and Billy came in and said,
• 46:38
  I don't want you to even try to think about how we're going to duplicate
• 46:44
  this live. We're just gonna do what we feel fits on these songs.
• 46:50
  Just no matter what it is, we're gonna do it. We'll think about
• 46:52
  how to reproduce it live later on. We Are glass Houses was like we
• 47:00
  recorded the first three songs you may be Right, sometimes a Fantasy, and
• 47:02
  one other one, and we went on the road on the Second Street tour
• 47:07
  and started to play those songs on the road. They were like road dogs.
• 47:13
  That album. Glass Houses is the band all by itself. Nobody else
• 47:17
  came in to do anything, you know, like sometimes you add an extra
• 47:22
  guitar player or suial guy or sacks or you know something like that. We
• 47:25
  did everything on Glass Houses. It was just us guys. So that was
• 47:30
  the band. And so that's why Nylan Curtin we came so different. It's
• 47:36
  like all the stuff that we did in the studio. Once we started to
• 47:40
  form the tour for Nylan Curtain, it was like, Okay, how are
• 47:44
  we gonna replicate this Scandinamian Skies, Russell and David Brown played snare drum on
• 47:51
  that you know in the part that I played four times over dubbed the same
• 47:59
  thing for a time the book Down Rock Podcast, We'll be back after this.
• 48:05
  Storm Front is that's senior year of high school for me. Storm Front
• 48:08
  in nineteen eighty nine. We Didn't Start the Fire. I remember that was
• 48:13
  on the radio, MTV all the time. Third album to hit number one,
• 48:16
  We didn't start to Fire, Lenning Grad I go to extremes. You
• 48:20
  gotta love that one, right Your drumming on that, that's boom that I
• 48:29
  can just listen to just to hear you play drums down Easter Alexa and that's
• 48:32
  not our style and so it goes shameless. Also, singles we Didn't Start
• 48:37
  the Fire was one of the last songs recorded for the album, which is
• 48:40
  interesting. Sony Records they heard second and third singles, but they didn't hear
• 48:45
  that first single, so they say, Billy, we need another one.
• 48:49
  And now he uses a book called Chronicles to come up with Yeah, it's
• 48:54
  a history like in a row, Like what happened in a row? It
• 48:59
  wasn't wasn't John Lennon's son. Did he run into John Lynn's son? Oh,
• 49:02
  Sean with the first studio, Him and a friend of his who became
• 49:07
  a very famous DJ. They came into studio and Sean and he sits down
• 49:15
  and he picks up one of the guitars and but I started playing the drums
• 49:17
  and they were like, oh my god, that's so great. The sound.
• 49:22
  They couldn't believe the sound the dead bones. And then they made a
• 49:25
  comment about to Billy, like, boy, man, things were a lot
• 49:29
  easier when you grew up. Man, it's not easy these days. And
• 49:31
  Billy's like, are you kidding me? Oh yeah, well that's this have
• 49:37
  you heard of? Yeah? JFK have your That's kind of what inspired him
• 49:39
  to write the lyrics. Billy, Yeah, that's exactly what inspired him,
• 49:44
  and young kids saying like, ah, you guys got up man, you
• 49:45
  had a made it back then. Did you expect the song to be as
• 49:49
  big as it was. No. I knew it was good, but I
• 49:52
  thought it was pretty monotonous, you know, like like Billy says, it's
• 49:54
  probably one of the worst melodies he's ever written. D D D. He
• 50:02
  never updated the lyrics and in some years. No, right, there was
• 50:06
  a reason I think he did. He have a reason behind that. Why
• 50:09
  would he? Why bother? Yeah, it's long enough. Oh my god,
• 50:15
  that's right. You'd have to add another another three verses. Yeah,
• 50:21
  you say that. Billy never threw anything away. He had bits and pieces
• 50:24
  he filed away and then that would come in handy for Lenning Grad. Right.
• 50:30
  Yes, I can remember him playing this piece at home. But it
• 50:35
  was fast, was d D D D D D ding. So we get
• 50:44
  to the end of the Lenning Grad until we came to Lenning Grass and he
• 50:50
  just stopped. He didn't know how that, we didn't know how to end
• 50:52
  it. I said, Billy, you're know a thing you play all the
• 50:55
  time really fast. Let's play it slow, right, yeah, boon bound
• 51:02
  power, Yeah, cheer up. Listen to that one. Well the other
• 51:07
  ones. You know. It was so great because I went to Soviet Union
• 51:12
  with him, and I'm sitting next to him as he's writing these words like
• 51:16
  nailing it like this is exactly what it was like. And we got that.
• 51:20
  We thought, you know, I got I went there thinking I was
• 51:22
  gonna see these dragons with three heads that breathe fire, you know, and
• 51:28
  my name is Liberty. What my nuts going to? But it was so
• 51:34
  great. Good Night Saigon is the other one, man. I mean,
• 51:37
  that song just still hits you. All guys all got together for the for
• 51:42
  the vocals, and we will all go down together. Yeah, yeah,
• 51:45
  yeah. You can hear me yell, you're all right side. And you
• 51:49
  can really hear Phil's voice when he goes R deep boys. Yeah yeah,
• 51:53
  I mean you hear a song like that to this day when you hear you
• 51:57
  get emotional. Listen to some of those songs. Yes, a song like
• 52:00
  that, man. You know when we had them falling out, me and
• 52:04
  Billy, it was like fifteen years of not talking to each other. And
• 52:07
  I went to Sicily and visited my family, my mother's side of family over
• 52:13
  there, and on the way back, I said to myself, I'm going
• 52:15
  to listen to every song we've ever done on the airplane. It was like,
• 52:20
  oh my god, we I guess we were really good. Hell yeah,
• 52:25
  you know, hell, yes, was it hard? Thought? Was
• 52:29
  it difficult? Bitter sweet gives at that point were with him anymore? It
• 52:35
  was kind of bitter sweet because you know, I always hated tribute bands,
• 52:42
  like what are you doing? You know, Billy staw Alive? Why are
• 52:44
  you guys doing us all this stuff? But when we got and ducked in
• 52:47
  into the Loyal and Music Hall of Fame, me, Richie and Russell along
• 52:52
  with tug Stack, I had to learn relearn the songs again. So I
• 52:57
  was listening to the tunes and like going, Okay, that's pretty good.
• 53:00
  And now so I'm listening to the tunes and anytime I hear a song on
• 53:04
  the radio, I go to the studio. I'm in the studio again.
• 53:07
  So now I'm I'm I've got the songs that we're going to play for the
• 53:13
  Lords of fifty secretary, because we're putting the band together again, and I'm
• 53:15
  with three of the guys. You know, there's three of us that are
• 53:19
  together that we're together fifty years ago, you know, still joking, still
• 53:22
  laughing backstage, still doing all the things we did back then. The only
• 53:28
  one that was missing was the guy that I looked at for thirty years,
• 53:31
  you know, in the studio and live and joked with and here was my
• 53:36
  friend. We used to have thanksgetting dinners together, you know, all this
• 53:38
  kind of stuff. That's why at the end, when I was laying there,
• 53:44
  I had my knee done. I had a knee replacement of my right
• 53:47
  I'm all right, leg I thought to myself, this has gone on too
• 53:52
  long where two old people around us are dying. You know. We were
• 54:00
  so close. We were closer than brothers, you know, and we created
• 54:04
  something that the world embraced. I remember telling my friends after me and Billy
• 54:12
  got together again, somebody told me, because we're so thankful that you guys
• 54:17
  got together again, because it would have been such a waste to think that
• 54:22
  the music that of our childhood ended with two guys hating each other, I
• 54:27
  mean, which happened so many times with shuns, you know. But yeah,
• 54:32
  and when I when we got together, he sat on one side of
• 54:37
  the table. I said, at the other side of table, we have
• 54:37
  breakfast together. And we didn't really talk about any of the bad things.
• 54:43
  We just talked about the great things. We talked about guys who were with
• 54:46
  us that are no longer with us, who was sick. Who is you
• 54:50
  know this? We talked about our kids, because we have young children and
• 54:53
  we also have older children. We talked about all that, and like I
• 54:58
  said in the book, was like standing on the bridge and all the water
• 55:01
  of the past was going underneath this bridge, and it was just these two
• 55:06
  friends standing on the bridge. So happy to read that, So happy because
• 55:09
  there was a quite a while. Was what, oh six, when you're
• 55:14
  no longer his drummer, And how many years before you were able to reconcile
• 55:19
  with him? When did that? Yeah, it was thirty years as his
• 55:21
  drummer, then fifteen years of not fifteen years of talking to him, you
• 55:25
  know this seeing each other in interviews, right right right? But you know
• 55:30
  you know what it was like. It was like I don't know, if
• 55:31
  you're about a girlfriend or something like that, and you broke up and you're
• 55:36
  really upset about it, and every time he said something mean about her or
• 55:40
  a friend that you say something neat about them, But in your heart you're
• 55:45
  like going, like, what did I say that? You know, I
• 55:45
  say, oh, yes, oh yes, But I give you credit because
• 55:50
  I know reporters have tried to people try to find out what exactly happened.
• 55:52
  You're like, I'm not going to talk about it? And is that difficult?
• 55:55
  I mean, I'm sure you can ask like a million times, well
• 55:58
  what happened all the time, all the time, and I've read the Rolling
• 56:00
  Stone article. They're like, so do you want to talk about it?
• 56:04
  You're like, no, you know that's not easy, and you've out of
• 56:07
  respect for each other. It's like, we're not going there. Yeah,
• 56:12
  And you know this question now is it's like what you guys have would get
• 56:15
  together? Of course. And my favorite line that I've ever seen in a
• 56:22
  video clip of John Lennon when he's living in New York now and he's walking
• 56:25
  through the streets and somebody else out, hey, John, the Beatles gonna
• 56:29
  get back together? When are the Beatles getting back together? And John's just
• 56:31
  listening goes Tomorrow and just kids walking, I know. And people in New
• 56:37
  York were like that too, Like when he was you know, he'd be
• 56:40
  walking through the park and everything. I'm sure all the you know New Yorkers
• 56:44
  like, come on, man, when are you getting back together? Yeah?
• 56:46
  He loved New York. Though he loved New York, he loved that
• 56:50
  realness of New Yorkers just they say say it like it is. There's something
• 56:54
  about the energy of New York. You know, we used to talk about
• 56:59
  being in a studio and hey, let's record the next album down in Monserrot.
• 57:02
  You know, I'm like, you can't play New York, say of
• 57:06
  mind and then go sit on the beach, you know, you gotta go
• 57:10
  outside and like run into a hooker or some guy things around. Yes,
• 57:16
  exactly. Did you know when River of Dreams was being made nineteen ninety three
• 57:23
  that that was gonna be it for Billy? Did he? Did he give
• 57:28
  any indications to you like this is it. I'm done? Because he hasn't
• 57:31
  recorded any music since other than he he's done classical. I recorded with him
• 57:38
  probably eight or nine of the songs that worked to be on River of Dreams.
• 57:45
  But then he because he was he was writing the songs, playing the
• 57:49
  piano, singing the songs, and he was producing the album himself. Then
• 57:54
  he got Danny Crochya to come in and produce. Danny wanted to use his
• 57:59
  guy. So that's why on River of Dreams, I only play on Shades
• 58:04
  of Gray because that's from the they were called the Boathouse sessions Billy built a
• 58:08
  studio in the boathouse on Shelter Island, and we used to go out there
• 58:14
  every day and record songs. We did, you know, River of Dreams,
• 58:16
  we did Blonde of a Blue, all those students and so only Shades
• 58:24
  of Gray made it on because he didn't like what Danny did to Shades of
• 58:30
  Gray. So Billy said, I want to put this one on on there.
• 58:36
  Yeah, that wasn't the funnest experience for you, that album, right,
• 58:38
  that didn't seem like no no, Because I got a phone call from
• 58:43
  Skyla Deal, who was playing based at the time, telling me that he
• 58:45
  just heard that Billy was in the studio with a whole bunch of new guys,
• 58:49
  And so I called Billy, I said what's going on? And he
• 58:52
  goes, what do you mean? He says, I heard you in the
• 58:53
  studio with a whole bunch of people. He said, yeah, I have
• 58:58
  to try something different. But you see, that's another thing about the book
• 59:01
  that I wrote. I could have dissed everybody in the band, you know,
• 59:06
  I know, I know where the bodies are very and all that kind
• 59:08
  of stuff that but I'm not that kind of guy. I don't want to
• 59:10
  do that. You know. So what I did was I'm gonna put myself
• 59:15
  in Billy's shoes. The man has had a career for fifty years. Sometimes
• 59:21
  you have to change things, Like every album changed, you know, Turnstiles
• 59:25
  was this one style of thing, and the Stranger was different. Still Ramon
• 59:29
  in there, and then fifty second Street leaned going towards jazz, and then
• 59:32
  glass Houses was just a rock album with just a band. Then Nolan Curtain
• 59:37
  was this other one. Nothing's the sad. It's not like you can play
• 59:39
  a Van Halen album, the first album, and then play the last vand
• 59:43
  Hell album and understand it sounds the same, you know what I mean,
• 59:45
  It's the same guitar and that holds because that was their style. So it
• 59:49
  went through. Billy was a chameleon. He could change all the time,
• 59:52
  but sometimes those changes meant personnel too, So to stay alive he had to
• 1:00:00
  do that, not meaning to hurt people. He seems like the guy obviously
• 1:00:05
  you know him, you know him well. That that must have killed him
• 1:00:08
  to have to do that, right, he must he loved you guys,
• 1:00:12
  so it could not have been I mean, I would think he had a
• 1:00:15
  few sleepless nights thinking about that. Oh, I'm sure he did. Yeah,
• 1:00:20
  there's a song he wrote. It's about Doug when when Doug Stagmaya,
• 1:00:23
  when he when he lost the gig. The money I love. It's called
• 1:00:28
  It's fun and how Tech money I love? What when are you doing it?
• 1:00:32
  Though? He wrote that after having a meeting with Doug and Dog needed
• 1:00:37
  money. It's like, were you doing this? Were you doing it for
• 1:00:40
  money? Or you do it because he loved to play music? You know?
• 1:00:44
  He talks about who knew that it was going to get this bag?
• 1:00:46
  Nobody knew when we were driving him rent the cause, you know, But
• 1:00:50
  did you get the feeling that that was it for Billy? Like we're surprised
• 1:00:54
  he's never After River, After River Dreams came out, the first thing we
• 1:01:00
  did was played the let Himan Show because let Himan had just switched to a
• 1:01:05
  TV station. And I remember being in a dust room and I walked in
• 1:01:09
  on him and I said, I heard, You're not going to write songs
• 1:01:13
  anymore. He said, no, I'm done. I'm done. I don't
• 1:01:17
  want to expose myself anymore because all the songs were written, you know about
• 1:01:22
  I want to ask him. I said, how do you write these songs,
• 1:01:24
  he said, I write about life as it is or how I wish
• 1:01:30
  it would be. That's how I write the songs. And then he said,
• 1:01:35
  I'm tired of exposing myself, you know, letting myself out there.
• 1:01:38
  And he was very discouraged with the business. You know, so many people
• 1:01:43
  ribbing him off and it's a terrible business. Yeah, that's that's the thing
• 1:01:49
  is it's it's the most beautiful thing about the business is the music itself and
• 1:01:53
  creating the music. But it's all that other bullshit, you know, the
• 1:01:57
  business side of it. Yeah, and you got to be tough, you
• 1:02:00
  got you went through all those battles just like that you're talking about, like
• 1:02:04
  the royalties and publishing all that stuff. It's like stuff that a lot of
• 1:02:07
  musicians are like, I don't want to deal with that shit. I just
• 1:02:08
  want to make the music. But if you get too much like that,
• 1:02:12
  you can get burned. Well, some of them don't have the time to
• 1:02:15
  do that right right, you know, it's like they're making the music.
• 1:02:17
  You gotta run an album. I mean back in the day, in the
• 1:02:20
  Beatle days, they would put out two albums in a year. Oh it's
• 1:02:23
  I know, it's insane. They put in nineteen sixty eight, sixty seven,
• 1:02:29
  sixty eight, they put out Soldery Pepper, Strawberry I mean, Magical
• 1:02:34
  Mystery Tour and the single Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane in one year. Now
• 1:02:40
  that's the label pushing them too, right. Yeah, product gotta have product.
• 1:02:45
  Yeah, and then you gotta you gotta top what you just did.
• 1:02:50
  You have a million seller and you gotta do it again, pressure even top
• 1:02:52
  it. I remember when Michael Jackson had Thriller. It was huge, huge,
• 1:02:59
  Then the next album didn't quite sell as much, and they were saying
• 1:03:01
  it was bob and he said an interest, I know, And he said
• 1:03:06
  in interviews from that point on, after Thriller, he was determined to match
• 1:03:09
  the success or beat it. It's like, you can't beat it. No
• 1:03:13
  pun intended, but you can't. You can't do that. It's impossible.
• 1:03:15
  And there's only one time you can get a thriller. You can't just Yeah,
• 1:03:21
  it's crazy to think that. Yeah, like the Bad was the one
• 1:03:23
  that followed. It's it's considered a disappointment because it only sold ten million copies
• 1:03:29
  as opposed to twenty or whatever. Yeah, that's that's the thing. Did
• 1:03:32
  you. Were you ever able to like step back and and just you reap
• 1:03:36
  the rewards or say, man, this is we're kicking ass here, or
• 1:03:39
  was it just kind of you're always on that. I wheel I was always
• 1:03:45
  satisfied with my life as it was. I didn't think that Woll should be
• 1:03:52
  making a whole up more money, you know. I mean people would sometimes
• 1:03:54
  say that that I knew from my childhood, like friends, parents would say
• 1:03:59
  like, no, wow, you guys are doing great. Well, I
• 1:04:02
  hope you getting a piece of that Billy Joel, you know, like,
• 1:04:04
  oh getting in your ear? Yeah yeah, yeah, no, no,
• 1:04:08
  we just get paid a salary. You know. But the salary, I
• 1:04:12
  can't complaining about it. It was good. I mean, I had a
• 1:04:14
  great house, you know, my kids did great you know, so it's
• 1:04:19
  it's it would have been nice, but my ex wives would have all the
• 1:04:24
  money. You know. Well, I want to wrap it up with basically
• 1:04:30
  the message of the book, at least from what I get out of it,
• 1:04:32
  is it's kind of like what you're the story you're telling about your mom's
• 1:04:34
  just get out there. And as much as you wanted to go out there
• 1:04:38
  and help you, you got to be tough, and you went through some
• 1:04:41
  serious stuff man like depression, big time depression at you know it, battles
• 1:04:45
  with alcohol, you you know, divorce and the thing with Billy you know
• 1:04:49
  six. So what do you do? You credit all that to your upbringing,
• 1:04:55
  to like what got you through those things? You know, that inner
• 1:04:58
  strength to pull yourself out of the But I think, I think the passion
• 1:05:02
  for the music that I love. I love performing, I love being in
• 1:05:09
  the studio with other great musicians and creating. Because you're creating something that doesn't
• 1:05:15
  exist yet, you know, all of a sudden, it's there. You
• 1:05:19
  know. They say it's a gift music, that you can play music,
• 1:05:24
  it's a gift. Now it's hard work. Your rhythm might have a gift
• 1:05:29
  that you can walk down the street chew gum at the same time. But
• 1:05:30
  to play the drums and be in a band, that's the biggest thing in
• 1:05:34
  the world. That's work. And it's your passion that makes you want that.
• 1:05:42
  The passion and having a really solid support group, you know, my
• 1:05:48
  parents, then my children, the wife I have now and because because she
• 1:05:56
  was with me, we weren't married yet, but she was with me when
• 1:05:59
  all the billy stuff came down exactly. She fell in love with the guy
• 1:06:01
  who wasn't Billy Joel's drummer, And that is huge. That was a big
• 1:06:06
  opening to me. You know, yea many many times it was you know,
• 1:06:11
  they they didn't know the person Liberty DeVito. They just knew this guy
• 1:06:15
  that played drums with Billy Joel. You know, like nobody every says,
• 1:06:18
  oh, I know Billy Joel. Now you know, you don't know Billy
• 1:06:20
  Joel. You know the guy that wrote the songs, but and the guy
• 1:06:25
  you see on stage, but you don't know Billy Joel. It's a big
• 1:06:29
  difference. But you also were you had the courage to get help too,
• 1:06:32
  because you talk in the book about talking to was a therapist or yeah,
• 1:06:38
  life coach. Yeah yeah, I still to this day talk to somebody,
• 1:06:42
  you know, every couple of weeks, once a month, whatever, just
• 1:06:45
  to talk to somebody. And and they and there was a funny point in
• 1:06:48
  the book where they said something, what do you hate You're like people magazine
• 1:06:51
  or what was that? Oh? Yeah, the magazine magazine. I hate
• 1:06:59
  another show it was on TV. Oh it was the show. But anyway,
• 1:07:03
  the point is, yeah, I mean, hey, you get help
• 1:07:05
  there's always somebody out there that's willing to help. But also you gotta pull
• 1:07:10
  yourself out of it too. You gotta be tough. Life is yeah,
• 1:07:14
  oh, life can be tough, man, and having that gift of being
• 1:07:18
  Liberty de Vito and being able to play the drums the way I play the
• 1:07:23
  drums. Ex. Wives can take the money. The government can come after
• 1:07:27
  you if they if you didn't pay a tax or something like that, they
• 1:07:30
  could take it away, but they can't take away that they playing the drums.
• 1:07:34
  They can't do that. Nobody can take that away. Let's cross the
• 1:07:36
  mafia breaks your ruma or something like that. But with them, Yeah,
• 1:07:44
  yeah, here's uh is this the quote? Oh, here we go.
• 1:07:45
  The first thing the psychologist asked was for me to tell her about myself.
• 1:07:50
  Said, I'm an Italian from New York and I play the drums. My
• 1:07:55
  wife thinks I'm angry and that I talk too loud, and I hate everything
• 1:07:58
  and I complain too much. And then the shrink says, it all goes
• 1:08:00
  with the territory. Those would be the traits of New York Italian who plays
• 1:08:03
  drums. And then she says, what makes you angry and what do you
• 1:08:06
  hate People Magazine, the TV shows Sex in the City, and Ally mcbeel,
• 1:08:14
  the fact that Billy Joel thinks he's done with music and with the terrorists
• 1:08:16
  did on nine to eleven, which, yeah, that's that's heavy stuff.
• 1:08:20
  And now she says, you hate People Magazine because it overdramatizes and it's full
• 1:08:25
  of the dirt in your business. You hate the TV shows because they're empty
• 1:08:29
  with no real social value. You're mad at Billy because you want to go
• 1:08:31
  on with what you love the most, and you hate the fact that he's
• 1:08:34
  in control of your destiny. As for nine to eleven, everybody hates what
• 1:08:40
  happened. Then, yeah, great read. So the book's been out since
• 1:08:44
  twenty twenty, so people can get Livery Life Billy in the Pursuit of Happiness
• 1:08:46
  from Hudson Music Books and it's a hardcover Kindle Audible. You know, I
• 1:08:51
  did write another one. It did your children's book. It's called Love Sanekloves
• 1:08:57
  Oh okay, yeah, yeah, that up on Amazon when I had when
• 1:09:01
  I went to you page. That was last year around Christmas time. Unfortunately,
• 1:09:08
  the boat that was carrying the printed books didn't make it in time for
• 1:09:13
  Christmas, so next Christmas. It should be big, but it's on Amazon.
• 1:09:16
  Cool. Yeah, I see it here. Loves Santa Claus, a
• 1:09:18
  humble hearted Christmas story. Yeah. Is this something you want to do more
• 1:09:23
  of? Yeah? I like doing that. You know, I have the
• 1:09:26
  six year old and I watch her and what her friends like and stuff like
• 1:09:30
  that. It's about how Santa got his job is gig and you know,
• 1:09:35
  whether you believe it or not, the story of Christmas and stuff like that.
• 1:09:40
  If somebody was interviewing Liberty Divideo like you are, you have to mention
• 1:09:45
  Billy Joel because Billy Joel is a part of and how I why I'm talking
• 1:09:50
  to you because of Billy Joel. So when you're interviewing Santa Claus or talking
• 1:09:56
  about Santa Claus, you have to mention the whole Jesus part because that's why
• 1:10:01
  they're Santa Claus. You know what I mean, whether they believe or not,
• 1:10:05
  you know, because I know a lot of people that don't believe,
• 1:10:08
  and you know I have my doubts too, but he has to be mentioned
• 1:10:13
  because this is why Santa has his job and he's very thankful for that.
• 1:10:18
  And Lords of fifty second Street. So what's going on playing around, you
• 1:10:26
  know, playing we just played last night, you would play last night?
• 1:10:28
  You would played last night? Did some good crowds? You know, thousand
• 1:10:33
  five thousand people. You know, there is a website people can go to
• 1:10:36
  to get the gigs. I've been there, Yes, Lords forty second Street.
• 1:10:40
  It's on Facebook and there's a website. And then there's the slim Kings.
• 1:10:46
  We write our own songs, we get placements on TV shows and stuff
• 1:10:49
  like that. That's a lot of fun because it's with these young guys that
• 1:10:54
  are really like you know, they think different, but the the old old
• 1:10:59
  schooled me and the new guys meld because they'll come up to me with a
• 1:11:03
  with a hip hop song or a R and B song and I'll go,
• 1:11:06
  why don't we do a song with a beat like this? And I'll listen
• 1:11:10
  to the song and I'll say, they sampled motown. That's a motown,
• 1:11:14
  you know. So it's all school and you know they're putting their news swing
• 1:11:18
  into it. And that's studio work only. Or do you do some live?
• 1:11:21
  Yeah? No, we go to play out live sometimes. So is
• 1:11:25
  there is there a website for that too? Yeah? Because I could put
• 1:11:29
  a link to slim Kings. I'll put a link to that side as well,
• 1:11:31
  and then you're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all that. TikTok
• 1:11:38
  no, TikTok, TikTok. Yeah, the short of the video though better.
• 1:11:43
  I'm like, I don't know, man, I don't know if I
• 1:11:44
  want to see a five second video looping over and over again. But that's
• 1:11:46
  where we're at. That's what they do. Yeah, Liberty, thanks man.
• 1:11:49
  This was so great. Okay, a lot of fun. That's it.
• 1:12:00
  It's in the box.