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This Isn’t Old Man Music: Kenny G · I Am All In with Scott Patterson

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I am all in.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Let's you.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: This isn't old man music with Scott Patterson everything You've
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: ever wanted to know about the music of Gilmore Girls.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am al and Podcast one
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: to eleven productions. Iheartradiomedia, iHeart Podcast. This is an old
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: man music with the one and only. You know him,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: you love him. Kenny G. Let me tell you something
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit about Kenny G. Kenny G is a
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: jazz saxophonist, composer, and record producer. Nineteen eighty six album
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: duo Tones bottom commercial success. Kenny G is one of
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the best selling artists Ready for This of all time,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: with global sales totally more than seventy five million records,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: making him also the best selling instrumentalist in history. So
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: season three, episode nineteen, Gilmore Girls teg Max Paris shows
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: up at the boosters club meeting, tells all the moms
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: how moronic it is to host grad night on a yacht.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: This is when we first hear your music in the show.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Also season seven, episode five, The Great Stink We Hear Songbird,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Great Lorelized car. You began at a very young age
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: and you played in Barry White's Orchestra, Barry White's Orchestra.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: At seventeen, you're a prodigy. Yeah, how did you first
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: find it in saxophone? And when did you personally decide
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: you sounded good?
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Oh? Well, you know, I just like every you know,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: other student in US the school system. At fourth grade,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: it's like that's your year to get an instrument. And
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: at least it was in the seventies when I went
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: to school. I'm not sure if it's exactly that way today.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: I think it is. And I was always attracted to
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: the sacks. I don't know why exactly. I just saw
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: someone on TV playing it on the Ed Sullivan Show.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: You know that. I didn't even have any idea what
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: was going on. I just saw this guy stand up
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: to you a sax solo, and I thought, well, that's cool.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: I'd like to I play that instrument. So after one
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I picked and I started and I just loved it.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I loved it in the fourth grade. And you know
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: how many fifties, sixty years later or whatever how many
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: years that is, I still love it. I practiced this
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: morning like they do every morning. I put my three
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: hours in. I'm excited to wake up tomorrow and do
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: the same thing. I've been feeling the same way since
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I was a kid. So when did I thought I
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: sounded good? God man, I'm seriously you know today, Like
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you, out of the seventy shows that I
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: play a year, I might say two or three I
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: thought I sounded really good, and the rest I'm just
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: struggling to try to get better. You know.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: It's the same way.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: So your album Duotones marked a major breakthrough with the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: track Songbird featuring Seed seven.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: How did your music career and your personal life change
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: after that?
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: After the success of that big time, Yeah.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Everything changed. Everything changed. Well, the successive Songbird happened in
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: a great way for me personally because I went against
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: all of the wishes of my record company, who was
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: headed by Clive Davis, who was adamant that there was
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: going to be this other song that was going to
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: be the song that was going to be promoted. When
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: I got the chance to do the Tonight Show, which
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: was basically my manager at the time strong arming the
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: people of Tonight's Show to make them have a sax
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: player on the show because they had no interest in
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: having me on the show. But he just he leveraged
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: George Benson to get me to be on the on
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: the Tonight Show.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Is this Johnny Carson is Johnny Carson?
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: So hey, you want George Benson? You got to let
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: the sax kid have a shot. We don't. We could
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: care less about it, I know, but so he made
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: it happen. Now going on the show, Clyde Davis, everybody
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: at Arista Records, oh my man, hey, well you're going
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: to play the single. The single was a vocal song
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: because in nineteen whatever year it was eighty five, there
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: were no stations that would play the kind of music
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: that you know that I play. There was no stations
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: that would play that. So what they would play would
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: be a vocal which we had an R and B
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: sound song with the black singer and I'm playing the
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: sax solo. And the philosophy was that's going to be
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: a hit. They will find out that you're the sax
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: player and not the singer. And I kept trying to think,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: how are they going to find that? When you say
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: here's a song from Kenny g and there's a singer,
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: think that's me. But when you go on the Tonight
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Show and you got to play the single, and the
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Tonight show people said, we're only booking you to play
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: the single. And when the curtain went up in nineteen
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: eighty five, it's a live show, so this is before
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: we tape things and edited, and I just looked at
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: the guys in my group. I said, hit play and
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: play songbird.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Wow, right that last time, that's like risking it all
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: right there.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: It was all, yeah, oh.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Myke, you're pissing off.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Five days everybody was oh. The guys at the show,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: or they screamed at me when I was done. Johnny Carson,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: of course, he was over in this corner. He gave me,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: you know, one of these hey, good job. He didn't
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: know anything that was going on. But I got back
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: in the dress room and the guy that booked me
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: just came and he yelled at me like I'm some
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: kid that just like broke his favorite dish or something,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: and he's just yelling like I've ruined his life and
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: he's super mad. But the thing that everybody forgot was
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: that actually the whole country saw this. Forget about why
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: I was on the show or what you thought I
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: should do. The country saw it, and everybody loved it.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: They loved this song, and that's why I became a hit.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: So when that happened, I went from playing from for
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: three four or five hundred people to like five thousand
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: and six thousand. Well, and the success of it was
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: because I did what I wanted to do, which was
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: super great. So that really was a great moment.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: There's nothing like a talk show to launch you man,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I tell you and.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Johnny Carson, and by the way, the guy that told
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: me I'll never work in this town again, they'll never
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: have me on Johnny Carson again six months later called
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: me requesting that I played Songbird and I got to
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: sit on the couch next to Johnny Carson.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Man, when you know you know right? Yeah.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, I wasn't scared about it because
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: all the gigs that I was playing at that time,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: I would be playing my songs at the little clubs
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: that I was playing. But when I played Songbird, my
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: little songbird that I did wrote and played all the instruments.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: When I played that, everybody just seemed to really love it.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: So I wasn't afraid that people wouldn't like it. But
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: it was risky to go against everybody's wishes. Knowing. By
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the way, that was the first time I was ever
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: on television. I've never even been on a TV show before,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: so I took I just went, you know, whatever happens happens.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Oh that's such a great story. Yeah, well you got
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: to have a pair if you want to make it, and.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Got to you.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I mean really, I mean it's like be bold and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: mighty forces will come to your age, you know.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: And the same thing happened when I put my first
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Christmas record out. You know, you talked about all these
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: record sales that I've had. One of the big ones
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: was my Christmas record. That is literally the most most
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: successful Christmas record of any Christmas record that's been released ever,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: more than maybe Elvis. They say Elvis would have sold
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: more than me, but it wasn't accounted for like sound
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: scam does today.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: So it's non official. Sorry, Elvis is not official. Not official.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: And Clive Davis and I thought over that record. I said,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: it has to be all instrumental. He goes, Nope, it
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: has to have vocals. You are ruining your career if
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: you don't listen to me. Your career is in jeopardy.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: But you decide, he says, I said, Okay, Clive, I'm
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: good at decide all instrumental. He goes, you're making a
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: big mistake. And then he goes on to be the
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: best selling record Christmas record. Yeah, so there you go.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing a guy like Clive Davis who has
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: such a great year, right yeah? And he you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: his particular talent was was matching songs with artists, right,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: like great songs. Like he'd have this library of songs
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: that he'd have in his office or whatever, and he'd
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: think of artists to match them with. I guess he
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: was just he just liked singers. He just wanted to
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: hear singing, right. He was great though he was no
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: genius guy, right yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Now, No, to his credit, like even when I tell
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: him that I was right and he was drown he says, no, no,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: it would have more me. It did good, but it don't.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: And to his credit, also on some of my records,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: he would he would get like a Tony Braxton and
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: he would have a song from Diane Warren and they
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: would put that on my record and it would it
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: really boosted my record sales. So I have to say
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: to him a lot of a lot of accolades, but
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: he didn't always know what the right thing to do
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: with me was. And he was the first to admit
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: that sombird. He didn't see it at first, but then
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: he got right on board and really put that whole
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Arister Records machine behind me, and we did think that
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: nobody's ever done before as an instrumentalist.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Beautiful. You knew you wanted to carve out your own lane,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: and you did it.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Good for you, Lucky.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: When you sit down to compose, what usually, because I'm
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: a songwriter as well, I've been writing songs my whole life,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: but what usually comes first A melody, a feeling, a story.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: How do you do it? You just sit down and
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: start playing.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don start playing. I play my sacks, and
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: you know, because I'll practice every day. So during my
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: little three hour session, as I'm playing, I might play
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: something that go I go, hey, I like the way
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: those notes. Maybe that's the start of a melody. And
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: then I might fool around with something and that could
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: lead to something. Every now and then I'm sitting at
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: a piano or not that I'm a good piano player,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: and it might noodle on something and then I go,
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: that's going to be the basis of something really cool.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: I'll just remember that, and that's kind of how it works.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I don't it's hard for me to go I'm going
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: to write a song today. But you know, sometimes I try,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: and I get together with a keyboard player or something
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: and I go, you know, let's try to write something,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: and sometimes it works and sometimes not.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: It's really hard to write really good songs. I could,
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: by the way, I could write an album of instrumental
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: music's in the next twenty five minutes, but it would
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: just be okay, right, okay, you know, you go way
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: that those are nice. But I don't want to do
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: something that sounds nice. I want to do something that
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: means something to me that I feel like I could
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: go to bat for and go against the whole world
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: and say, hey, this is what This is good whether
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: somebody believes it or not. You know, so I have
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: to take my time.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: So right, there's different levels. There's there's okay, there's good,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: there's really good, and then there's like, this is a hit.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Right do you have to be when you have when
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: you present something like that to the record company, do
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: you know what's going to be a hit. Have you
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: been surprised shocked that, Oh, this one I thought was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: really gonna be big, but the record company didn't think
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: it was so great. We're not going to record it,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: or it's going to be, like, you know, not a
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: major song. Have you been surprised?
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: No, I'm always I'm always right. I'm not surprised when
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: it comes to when it comes to my saxophone, I
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: don't know what's it.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Don't mess with me and my saxophone.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Man, this sing though, I go, no, it's going to
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: be the song. No, we don't think so it's going
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: to be the song and I'm not gonna that's it.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: And discussion is it because you know it because when
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: you play it, you feel it more than other songs,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: and you just know that this melody, this tune. I
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: seen what it does to an audience. And this is
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: why I'm sticking to my guns. It's just a got right.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not always that because a lot of times
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: some of the songs I record I've never played for
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: an audience, So I don't okay, it's really almost once
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: I record it, when I hit play, that's when I
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: know it's right, right. I have to hear it and
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: I listened to it. Honestly, I think I'm pretty objective,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Like I pretend I didn't even play it, Like, well, well,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: how good is this thing? Well this is really good,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: or someone's missing and then I just have to figure
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: well with what that is?
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Right right?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: A ten minutes. It could take a month to figure
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: out what's missing in a song.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: You any did songbird come immediately? Did it download to media? Okay?
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Just it was just like suddenly you were fishing in
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the lake and you caught the big one.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just noodled around on the keyboard. Okay, what happened?
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: This is nineteen eighty five, eighty six, So the world
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: had just invented the first synthesizer. Okay, no sympathizer. So
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: now a hack piano player can sit down and I
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: can play a little melody hit replay and it just
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: keeps playing it and I can fix the notes. So
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden you have this perfect, sequential, beautiful
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: little music bed that I think is beautiful. But you
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: can never have had that before because no person could
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: ever play it like that. Yeah, so this machine was
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: playing this whoa, let me see if I put my
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: saxophone on top of that, what would that sound like?
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: And then I just played this melody. I'm like, wow,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I really love it. I love the way this sounds.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: And in an hour I was done with Songbird. I
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: just played all the instruments of myself, a little drum machine,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: a little bass part on the keyboard, string parts on
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: the synthesizer. It's like, whoa this is? And I recorded
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: it on my eight track recording machine. And that was
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: and that was the state in.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: The art, right, yeah, right. And then once you have
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: something recorded, you send it off to the record company.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: You send it off to your A and R guy, and.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: And they could not care less. They couldn't care less
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: about this instrumentals. They go, yeah, no, we need a
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: vocal song that the kids in the ghetto can groove to.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: They told me, they told me, and so I said, okay,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: I'm in and I said, hey, I want to talk
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: to you. So I got on a plane and flew
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: to New York and talked to the A and R guy,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: and I said, you told me yesterday that what you
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: think for me is songs that the fifteen year old
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: kids in the ghetto can grove to. From a Jewish
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: sex player that's what you think I can do. I
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: can't do that. I said, you know what, let's do.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Let's let's just end our relationship now, it'll be better.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Just unsign me, let me take my instrumentals, and I'll
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: just have a I'll just do whatever I'm going to
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: do with it. And they said no, no, let's let's
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: try to figure it out. And so we worked it out.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: But I literally went there and and like, I'm not
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: an actor like you, but I acted like I'm done.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I quit, right.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: What's the sense of banging your head against the wall
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: of these people if they don't get it right? It's like,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I know, it gets absurd. How do you know when
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: a song is finished?
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Oh? Good question, really good question. Yeah, And that's tough.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: That's tough for me because I okay, nowadays we don't
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: have eight tracks with tape. We've got pro tools with
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: endless disk space, and I can if I don't like
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: the vibrato at the end of one note, I can
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: fix that and it will sound. So when does it fixed?
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: I mean when is it finished? It's like I go
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: through it with a meticulous comb and it's finished when
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: I listened to it, and I don't I don't hate
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: myself at the end of the song. Then it's finished,
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: it's like, okay, you know what, I didn't really cringe
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: that time. We can move on and that's what happens, right. Yeah,
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: So not easy for me to let something go because
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I already know I could play that note more in tune,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: or I could play that vibrato better, or I could
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: make that maybe I should make that note come from
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: above rather than below. So I try a million of
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: them and then it's like I can't, I can't do
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: it anymore. I gotta let it go. So it's kind
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: of like that. It's kind of like I gotta let
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: it go.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: But that's your that's your pattern. Every morning you wake up,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: you play your sacks three hours. And this has been
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: going on every day for year after year after year,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: decades and decades decades, and yeah, it's it's yeah, that's
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: what you do. That's what you have to do if
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you want, you know.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: I I heard Steve Martin. I don't know Steve Martin.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: I've met Steve Martin because he's ANANGOI player. It's got
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: a lot better. I remember when he first picked up
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: that bangel I thought bro, come on, just you know,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: you're so funny and you're so good. Why am I
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: trying to be? You? Am I trying to be a
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: comedic actor? Can you just? That's what I thought. But
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: he's gotten very, very good. He's an excellent, excellent band. Yes,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: not that I know, but I've seen some things that
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: he's But he said something that I just think is
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: one of the things that I don't know a lot
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: of people don't say this, like, how do you how
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: do you make it? How do you make it? He said,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: you know, this is what nobody really wants to hear.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Gets so good that no one can say no.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: To you, right, they can't deny you.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: So if you practice something three hours a day for
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: fifty year, sixty years, you know you're going to be
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: pretty great, and you're going to be you might be
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: so great that people can't go you know, he's not
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: good enough. No, the door's open. So just get great. Yeah, yeah,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: but he thinks, but it takes a long time, takes
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: a lifetime.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: It does, it does? All right, let's talk about your
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: global reach, your your global dominance. In a song going Home,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and that became an unofficial closing song in China for malls,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: train stations, et cetera. Were you aware of that phenomenon
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: at the time, And when was that?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: By the way, Okay, that was God. That was in
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: the early eighties. Okay you no, let's say wait ant no,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: I went. I went to China for the first time
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: in the early eighties, but that song came out I
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: think in like eighty nine, so I just bec I didn't.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't know and until I went to China back
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: in the nineties. Then and then I just heard it everywhere.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: I heard it in the stores, I heard it in
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: the loudspeakers, in the middle of tenement square. I heard
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: my song. I was in a bathroom in the middle
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: of some little town in middle of China, in the going,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: playing around the golf, and I just went into the
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: ends room, like in the between the first front nine
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: and the bat then I heard my song like this,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: but that song, yeah, seriously, Now, I make a joke
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: that the first time I played in China, I played
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: that song in the middle of my set and I
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: looked up and the audience was gone. But that's just
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: a joke. It's not true. We saved that for the
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: end because literally people just their their natural instinct when
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: they hear that song is like they need to whatever
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: they're doing, they pack up and they go home. So
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: I gotta I gotta time that song properly. It's amazing.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: It's like five hundred million people hear that song every
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: single day.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I unbelievable.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: No royalties on that song, unfortunately.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: For what I know, And you gotta get a lawyer
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: on that.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: I have tried. I've told anybody and everybody, look, get
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: the royalties, will split it. We'll split it. You know
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: how much royalties you can get for like like I've
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: literally sold one hundred fifty million records in China, So
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: I said, you know, I get some royalties on that
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: and let's split it. Broke them on it's just fa.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Wait wait wait, how is it possible that? I mean,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: you were selling physical copies right in China when they
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: had real records. So I don't understand how they could
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: be available on a wholesale basis and then sold retail. How.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know where are they getting the albums from?
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: And why aren't their royalties They're just making them. Oh
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: they're just printing them over there.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: They was making them. Yeah, they get they get one
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: album and they just copy it and print it and.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: It sounds, oh my god, as per usual.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: And that's you know what. And when you go to
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: China enough times I probably I've been there like maybe
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: twenty times, twenty trips to China in my trip in
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: my career, you just realize, you know what, to them,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: that is entrepreneurial. And I go, you know what, Okay,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: I get it. I don't like it, but that's it.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: To them, they're not They're not doing anything. That's do
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: they think that's smart. I think he's pretty smart too.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Actually, all right, but but did you ever send a
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: cease and desist to the Communist party? To your Communist party,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: stop playing my record? Sign Kenny. And then they have
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: meetings they go, look, we got a letter from Kennedy.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: We better stop playing this song.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: We're going to change our whole policy. Because he was no,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: here's what happens. Here's so in China because I'm so
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: popular there. So here's what happens. I go. I was
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: asked to go in two thousand and eight to China
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: to celebrate one hundred days before the two thousand eight Olympics,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: and they were so proud they invited all of the
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: top Chinese actors, producers, models, musicians, and one Western artist
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: to be part of the semi meet. So I get there,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: fight all the way to Beijing. As I'm walking up
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: the ramp to the stage, they stop me and they go,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, the government has decided only Chinese artists can
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: what can do any think? But you can walk on
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: stage and wave and then walk right off. I said,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: you got it, Happy to do it all the way
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: to Beijing. So as I'm walking up the alley walking
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: walking up this ramp on the right side. On the
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: left side is the down ramp, Jackie Chan's walking down
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: and I look over it to him. He looks over
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: it and he goes, oh, He goes, you are so famous.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: This is jack Man. And I said, I said, and
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: you're Jackie Chan. He goes, meet me at my cigar
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: club at the Ritz Carlton. Later, I okay, it's going
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: to remember what he said. So I go do my wave.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Thirty seconds later, I'm walking down the ramp and I say,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: does anybody know that where Jackie Chan's cigar club is
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: at the Ritz Carton Hotel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: take me there. So I go there and I walk
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: in and it's a little bar and Jackie Chan is
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: on stage with a microphone and his backup band of
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: these beautiful Chinese girls. Like the was Robert Plant that
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: did that? That that video with the girls behind him?
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Robert Palmer, Yeah, Robert Palmer, Robert Palmer, yeah, the same look.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: And Jackie Chan is up there singing and I walk
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: in and he looks at me and he stops and
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: he goes, oh, can you can you come up and play?
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: I said, what do you want me to play? Can
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: you play your song? Going Home from Me? Does it?
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: I said? Does your band know what these? Of course
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: they know it. So he puts a chair on this
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: little stage and he sits down and I'm sitting there
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: playing going Home to Jackie Chan and he starts to cry.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Tears are rolling down the stage like it's like, what
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: the heck is going on here? And I mean this,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: this is the power of this. I didn't get royalties,
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: but man, this this is like and ever since then
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: we're like super good friends.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Like that's great, that's awesome, you know, Oh that's so funny,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: that's really funny.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: So that's China. That's China.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: All right, Well that's all the time. But we are
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: having so much fun with Kenny G. We're gonna make
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: this a two parter, So tune into the next episode
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot more to unpacked with Kenny G. Everybody,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and don't forget follow us on Instagram at i Am
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: dot com.