Latest / The Chris and Mike Show / #139 - William Chandler - Rocker to Author

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#139 - William Chandler - Rocker to Author · The Chris and Mike Show

• 0:56
  Yeah, Hey, what's up, boys and girls?
• 0:59
  I'm Chris. He's Mike.
• 0:59
  This is William Chandler. This is the Chris and Mike show.
• 1:03
  And Michael William, we're streaming live on Twitch in the
• 1:05
  YouTube. Michael, I'm sure you're going
• 1:07
  to be here shortly. Hello.
• 1:10
  Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us,
• 1:13
  William. Do you feel do you for William
• 1:16
  Will, Mr. Chandler? Hey, dude, what's up?
• 1:18
  You know, I I preferred William exclusively for so long, and
• 1:24
  then people just started calling me Will and I couldn't do
• 1:27
  anything to stop it. So either one of those two will
• 1:31
  work. What about?
• 1:33
  I've never been a Bill guy, though.
• 1:35
  What about Dave? What if we called you Dave?
• 1:39
  I don't know yet. I mean, we can always, always
• 1:42
  see what happens. That's always his go to guy for.
• 1:45
  Everybody that does. Yeah.
• 1:48
  Yeah. Dave from Teaching Chung.
• 1:52
  Remember that bit? Are you that old to remember
• 1:54
  that bit? Oh, I loved Teaching Chung.
• 1:56
  OK, OK, yeah. Remember the bit we're talking
• 1:59
  about. Hey, man, open up.
• 2:00
  It's Dave. It was always this set tape.
• 2:03
  It's Dave, man, open the door. Is that from the big Bamboo
• 2:06
  album they did? I don't know.
• 2:09
  I don't know. I just remember being great on.
• 2:11
  The album now you're going to put me on?
• 2:12
  I'm not sure what cassette it was on.
• 2:14
  Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was the
• 2:16
  greatest hits thing, but that was that was by far though.
• 2:18
  And I actually found, you know how people can sponsor Rhodes,
• 2:21
  William. Yeah, right.
• 2:23
  OK, so I sell houses for a living.
• 2:25
  So I was driving to do a final walkthrough and sure enough on
• 2:27
  the side of the road one of those adopted Hwy. signs was
• 2:30
  adopted by Dave. That's all it's said man,
• 2:34
  nothing else, just Dave. Hey, it was listen to Mike.
• 2:38
  I'm like dude, I found it man. That was I think there has to be
• 2:41
  some tie to the Cheech and Chong bit there has.
• 2:44
  To Be It says it's off their first recorded comedy riff back
• 2:48
  in the days of vinyl, so I don't even know if it had a name.
• 2:51
  It just said it's off their first album.
• 2:54
  Well, one of their best albums, and I think it won a Grammy, was
• 2:58
  a big bamboo. Oh, my dad.
• 3:02
  Is that the one that came with rolling paper in the middle of
• 3:04
  the Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
• 3:06
  And I would I'd break it out and listen to it in the den and just
• 3:10
  crack up right on. Let's see if this let's see what
• 3:14
  happens here because we've been having some fun with YouTube
• 3:17
  sharing our screens and YouTube shutting us down.
• 3:21
  They hate. US.
• 3:23
  Here it is, man. Here it is, Dave.
• 3:27
  Come on, Dave, let's go. Wow, it took forever.
• 3:33
  Where's it? Can you hear it?
• 3:36
  Yeah. Yep.
• 3:42
  I can't hear it at all. Where's it?
• 3:46
  There it is. That's weird, man.
• 3:48
  Hey, man. Open up I think.
• 3:52
  Come in here.
• 4:16
  Yeah, Dave. Dave, right.
• 4:19
  Man, Dave, now will you open up the door?
• 4:24
  Dave's not here. That's, I love those guys.
• 4:32
  Absolutely. That's yeah, that's awesome.
• 4:36
  I was on my first and now on that same little cassette tape I
• 4:39
  have was like Basketball Jones, Sarge Sudanko, like all the
• 4:44
  funny, stupid bits, man, that, you know, it's just, you know,
• 4:49
  there's never going to be anybody like them ever again,
• 4:51
  man. They, they, they found a niche
• 4:54
  and they filled that niche and made millions of dollars.
• 4:57
  Yeah. And I, I don't know if like all
• 5:00
  the material stands up, you know, but the, I mean the, and
• 5:07
  it's almost like you had to be there for some of it.
• 5:10
  But the, the classic stuff is just.
• 5:13
  No questions. I agree with you.
• 5:15
  There's certain parts of it. You kind of had to be there.
• 5:17
  If you're not our age, it probably doesn't make.
• 5:19
  Sense, yeah, but. They do like that bit right
• 5:23
  there. That's just classic comedy, you
• 5:26
  know? Yeah, and there's, there's so
• 5:28
  much subtlety and intelligence to what they did that people do
• 5:32
  don't even, you know, realize. Well, think about what he just
• 5:36
  played that just the timing, right?
• 5:38
  If that timing hadn't worked out where he waited just long enough
• 5:41
  to go. What, Dave.
• 5:43
  No, man. Dave, you know, he waited long
• 5:44
  enough to go. Dave's not here.
• 5:46
  Right. And it was.
• 5:47
  Yeah, I. Want to say that right after it
• 5:48
  would be funny. Right.
• 5:50
  Yeah, The timing with them is great.
• 5:52
  I think the timing with the best, all the best comedians is
• 5:55
  such a secret weapon. And we agreed we know how to do
• 5:59
  it and do it right. Then that works out.
• 6:04
  Yep. Absolutely, man.
• 6:06
  Hi, Michael. We said hi to you earlier, dude.
• 6:07
  You weren't here yet, so you're late.
• 6:08
  You're punished. You're you're So William, let's
• 6:12
  talk about you because that's why you're here.
• 6:13
  You send us some, some stuff. I dig the I dig some of the
• 6:16
  stuff you sent for sure. I didn't listen to all the Full
• 6:18
  disclosure, but I did listen to some of it.
• 6:21
  I like to kind of keep everything organic when we do
• 6:24
  this. I don't, I don't really like
• 6:26
  diving into the person we're talking to because then it's
• 6:28
  just an interview, you know, and it's kind of boring.
• 6:30
  So yeah, I got you. I went through all three of your
• 6:33
  songs. I thought they were all
• 6:35
  outstanding. Well, thank you very much.
• 6:38
  The one that you sent us on the phone, I really appreciated the
• 6:43
  tones. I'm I'm really, we were talking
• 6:46
  about it right before Chris got on here.
• 6:47
  The sound of things, you know, that is as important as the
• 6:50
  composition. And the riff was outstanding and
• 6:53
  the drums are cool, but I like when people pick the right
• 6:57
  sound. For it to like that aggressive
• 7:00
  guitar part was just perfect as far as the sound goes.
• 7:04
  And I agree with Chris. I went back and listened to the
• 7:06
  lyrics, and the lyrics are outstanding, man.
• 7:09
  Yeah. Thank.
• 7:10
  Thanks a lot. So, you know, those songs now,
• 7:13
  those are what I call the new house divided songs.
• 7:16
  And they're like, you know, 15 years old at least.
• 7:21
  And it's, they were kind of written as the band was kind of
• 7:25
  petering out and and going our separate ways and having real
• 7:29
  life and real family and marriage kind of get in the way.
• 7:33
  Yeah, but the the one you're talking about Mike, that was
• 7:38
  done with Mike Gibson, Les Paul through a Marshall and an Orange
• 7:44
  Cab. So like the the difference
• 7:48
  between that own and the one? Uniqueness and the sound for
• 7:52
  sure. Yeah, those other two were done
• 7:55
  with one of my Ibanez guitars where the pickups are just about
• 8:00
  shot and those pickups were on their last legs but didn't
• 8:05
  really have the budget to replace them or replace the
• 8:08
  guitar. And they were good for just
• 8:11
  going in and recording 2 songs in a day.
• 8:13
  But no, that the sound quality between those those first two
• 8:17
  songs and that one I sent you over the phone is night and day,
• 8:21
  even though it was done in exactly the same studio with
• 8:24
  exactly the same engineer. He just he was able to capture
• 8:29
  that Gibson with the Marshall. And it's like I the the way I
• 8:35
  like to put it is like, I don't know what God sounds like or if
• 8:39
  there is one that was the Eddie Van Halen.
• 8:41
  No, no, no, This is something I keep.
• 8:44
  It's like I don't, I don't know if I I would ever hear God, but
• 8:47
  I know what he sounds. I got you.
• 8:49
  I got. You sound like.
• 8:50
  A Gibson through a Marshall. OK, so I'll tell you a quick,
• 8:55
  I'll tell you a quick story. That's you just squirrel moment
• 8:59
  right into that. So I'm working at Guitar Center
• 9:01
  in Phoenix somewhere around, I don't know, 2003 four maybe, and
• 9:06
  this guy comes in and he wanted what he called a special guitar,
• 9:11
  right? He's looking at all the custom
• 9:13
  shops and I was like, well, you know, that's a special as they
• 9:17
  get everything that you can't reach, right.
• 9:20
  He said, no, you you don't understand.
• 9:21
  He said, I'm looking for a special guitar.
• 9:25
  That's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
• 9:27
  I gotta go talk to my manager or somebody.
• 9:30
  So Long story short, they're like, he's looking for like a
• 9:34
  backroom kind of thing. And Hollywood at Guitar Center,
• 9:38
  they have like the private backroom where Slash can go in
• 9:41
  and people have to be invited in to see these guitars.
• 9:44
  So we find him a Murphy Lab, Tom Murphy, Les Paul, that was in
• 9:50
  Scottsdale. He waits for it to be driven
• 9:52
  over. He takes two of those custom
• 9:55
  shops and that Murphy lab, and we go in a private room where
• 9:59
  it's quiet. We plug it into a Marshall combo
• 10:03
  tube amp. And what you're saying is
• 10:05
  exactly what I experienced. This guy turned out to be one of
• 10:09
  the top 25 most influential guitar players of all time, as
• 10:13
  voted by Rolling Stone. His name was Ted Turner, the
• 10:16
  same as the guy that owned the movie or the TV stations, but
• 10:20
  this guy played in a band called Wishbone Ash back in the late
• 10:24
  60s early 70s I. Know the.
• 10:28
  He's credited with being one of the two guitar players who
• 10:32
  developed like that twin guitar attack that we know today, like
• 10:36
  Def Leppard. Then Lizzie.
• 10:40
  Yeah, then Lizzie, another great example.
• 10:42
  These two guys, him and another guy, are credited with
• 10:45
  developing that sound where instead of playing just the same
• 10:48
  chords all the time, you're playing harmonies and.
• 10:52
  So. He plays through the 2 custom
• 10:54
  shops with Sound Great, which William and I could buy right,
• 10:58
  just right off the shelf and they're great guitars.
• 11:01
  They cost around three, $4000. This Murphy lab started at I
• 11:07
  think he ended up paying about 10, five.
• 11:09
  I think they wanted 12. Wow.
• 11:12
  But the difference in the sound of that guitar versus what you
• 11:17
  and I would consider the best guitars available to us, What
• 11:21
  you just said, we don't know what God sounds or we don't know
• 11:24
  what God is, but we know what he sounds like.
• 11:27
  Eddie Van Halen, I thought we talked about that.
• 11:30
  No question. I'm not.
• 11:32
  I'm not. I'm not arguing your comment at
• 11:34
  all, Chris. He did have one of the best
• 11:37
  tones on the planet ever. Yeah, I mean to, to get a really
• 11:42
  great guitar with a great tone is it's such a just a almost
• 11:47
  like a privilege because when you when you hear the difference
• 11:51
  between a good guitar and a great one, it there's there
• 11:57
  aren't many better feelings than to be able to create with that
• 12:01
  and and hear it played back to you.
• 12:03
  And since I'm talking to a fellow musician, it was the
• 12:06
  difference in the mid to high, you know, instead of instead of
• 12:14
  being muddy in the mid range and not cutting through.
• 12:17
  So, you know, to people that aren't musicians, it would be
• 12:20
  like you're not hearing all the notes in the chord.
• 12:25
  So you're playing five strings and it all just sounds like one
• 12:27
  string. That's a bad piece of wood,
• 12:30
  right? This piece of wood was so
• 12:32
  special that you could literally hear every note he was picking
• 12:36
  even though he was playing an entire chord.
• 12:40
  Oh wow. And then of course.
• 12:42
  The. What's the other thing we're
• 12:43
  looking for is guitar players sustain that the sound rings out
• 12:48
  and doesn't die. Yeah, and, and that I think that
• 12:52
  is what the Les Paul has over so many other guitars.
• 12:55
  The sustain on it is just unbelievable.
• 12:59
  And you know, now that I've got the one, I can't wait to
• 13:03
  eventually get a second one, and the third one and a fourth one.
• 13:08
  At that same store, I was gifted one.
• 13:10
  One of my clients actually gave me one.
• 13:13
  Oh, I was just. I didn't even know what I I'm
• 13:16
  not sure I said anything. I'm still speechless.
• 13:18
  Like I. Yeah, the the one I got was
• 13:22
  actually it was the gift from my wife and a bunch of other people
• 13:25
  that chipped in for my 40th birthday.
• 13:28
  That's all right on. Oh, so you talking about an
• 13:32
  emotional moment? Yeah.
• 13:35
  But yeah, that was a that was a good time.
• 13:37
  I thought I'd be making a lot more music with that guitar, but
• 13:43
  eventually, eventually it'll all come out.
• 13:45
  I'm finally starting to learn, you know, home recording and and
• 13:48
  whatnot, and I've got, I've got everything I need for it.
• 13:50
  I just have to sit down and actually learn to be the the
• 13:54
  studio guy instead of just the musician.
• 13:57
  I've been the studio guy before, but about the time Chris and I
• 14:00
  started doing this podcast, my job that makes this possible at
• 14:04
  the moment, decided I needed to work more.
• 14:07
  And then we ended up working more and more.
• 14:10
  So you got to kind of choose what you're going to do in your
• 14:12
  24 hours, right? Exactly, there's a there's a lot
• 14:16
  to do and, and our kids are very busy and that takes up that
• 14:21
  takes up a lot of time, but it's time that I'm happy to to
• 14:24
  sacrifice to make sure that they're that they're, you know,
• 14:28
  high school and middle school years are, are fortuitous and,
• 14:32
  and, and very happy. So damn kids.
• 14:35
  Right. Sons of bitches.
• 14:40
  So take us, take us back to when you started.
• 14:44
  Like what made you want you know, I know what made me want
• 14:48
  to play guitar. I was kind of introverted and.
• 14:51
  Yeah. You know, music spoke to me.
• 14:54
  It was something I could do by myself.
• 14:55
  So what made you want to play guitar and where did you take it
• 14:59
  before you became dad and husband and.
• 15:03
  So I fell in love with music about three years old.
• 15:09
  You beat me. And so, you know, you know, fell
• 15:13
  in love with the bands that my dad loved by Osmosis, you know,
• 15:16
  the Doors, 'cause he stills now it's The Beatles.
• 15:23
  And, and this is where me and Chris are going to actually
• 15:25
  diverge because then I discovered Kiss, OK, and I love
• 15:32
  KISS. I know you don't like Kiss.
• 15:35
  I love kiss Williams they. Are not only the most important
• 15:39
  band in my life, like they're one of the most important forces
• 15:41
  in my life. Like oh, gotcha.
• 15:44
  And they are for a lot of guitar players for sure.
• 15:46
  You know, kept me going. And, you know, I think that two
• 15:51
  to four members of probably the most respected and most popular
• 15:55
  bands of the last 30 years can all point to KISS as an
• 15:58
  influence. Absolutely.
• 15:59
  And so I was one of those when I was 9, I got my first guitar.
• 16:05
  It was actually a court Les Paul copy sounded, sounded horrible,
• 16:13
  but it was left-handed. And so this is.
• 16:17
  You're a lefty. I'm nine, I'm nine years old in
• 16:19
  Lubbock, TX, so to actually even have a left-handed guitar and
• 16:23
  Lubbock was amazing. Yeah.
• 16:26
  People don't realize they didn't make a lot of left-handed
• 16:29
  guitars when we were growing up. How old are you, by the way?
• 16:32
  I'm 48. OK, so we're all in the same.
• 16:36
  Yeah, kind of this thing bracket there and it's it's not it
• 16:40
  doesn't even seem like they make that mini now because I can walk
• 16:43
  in the Guitar Center almost anywhere and find, you know, in
• 16:47
  the Metroplex with, you know, 8 locations like I might find one
• 16:50
  or two lefties at all and but back in.
• 16:54
  Your day, you wouldn't find any. Exactly.
• 16:57
  So in, in 86 when they got me this, it was, you know, it was
• 17:03
  just a godsend that it was there.
• 17:04
  So they surprised me after telling me that they just
• 17:07
  weren't going to be able to afford it.
• 17:09
  They got it for me for Christmas.
• 17:11
  I fell in love with it. And then I put it under my bed
• 17:13
  and it sat there for about 5 years.
• 17:15
  Really. Yeah.
• 17:17
  I, I just wasn't studious enough.
• 17:19
  I wasn't ready. It was like even the kid who
• 17:21
  says that they'll take care of the dog if you just get them the
• 17:24
  dog and then they become parents dog.
• 17:27
  So the guitar, the guitar became the the bed's guitar until May
• 17:35
  of 1992. OK.
• 17:37
  I would listen into my dad's cassette of Ted Nugent's 1974
• 17:43
  solo debut. Yeah.
• 17:45
  Well, MM used to play a cat scratch fever as a as a break in
• 17:49
  our shows for me. He would do, he would do cat
• 17:52
  scratch for you. So we'd be like, you know, 6
• 17:54
  songs in the set and Mike Michaels these and gentlemen.
• 17:56
  Wow, I'm. Pretty confident that's the only
• 18:00
  song I've ever like sang in front of people.
• 18:02
  Yeah, he and he clears it up, man.
• 18:04
  Yeah, he does a good job. That's cool.
• 18:06
  And so it was something about that album, like just grabbed me
• 18:14
  and was like, you know, this is what I should be doing.
• 18:17
  This is what I want to do. That album had everything from
• 18:20
  like almost metal songs to bluesy songs, slower song.
• 18:25
  It was kind of a combination of stuff that kind of could be, you
• 18:29
  know, you could kind of predict would be what the 90s was, where
• 18:34
  a band could make more than just one kind of style or one genre
• 18:39
  of song and, and, and put it all on one album.
• 18:42
  That's a good way of saying what happened in the 90s.
• 18:44
  It's almost like we threw, and Chris and I talk about this a
• 18:47
  lot. It's almost like we threw every
• 18:49
  style that was available into a pot and stirred it up, and
• 18:52
  whatever came out is what came out.
• 18:55
  That's why that music's so good. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:58
  I mean it, it, it encompassed everything.
• 19:00
  And I'm so I feel nowadays so grateful to have been a teenager
• 19:06
  in the 90s. I say so.
• 19:08
  We were in our 20s, but I say that so much to have been there
• 19:11
  and to have been a part of it. Him and I were a part of it.
• 19:14
  Exactly. Think about what we all grew up
• 19:16
  with. We all grew up with the 80s and
• 19:18
  the 90s, right, right. Those are those are typically
• 19:21
  our teen years and then you hit the the 2000s, but the 80s and
• 19:25
  90s by far, I think we're from a music revolution standpoint, two
• 19:29
  of the best decades ever. I mean, just it, it reshaped and
• 19:33
  changed. I mean, aside from what Sabbath
• 19:35
  did in the 70s, right? What Metallica did right.
• 19:39
  And they were they were what, late 70s, early 80s Metallica
• 19:42
  early. No, they their first, their
• 19:44
  first album was 8383. OK, Yeah.
• 19:46
  So they were probably, you know, none.
• 19:48
  No one heard of them back in the 70s.
• 19:50
  But yeah, so, but think about that.
• 19:53
  Aside from those two bands back, Sabbath, Metallica, nothing
• 19:55
  really changed the music industry until Seattle came out,
• 19:59
  until Nirvana dropped. And then all of a sudden,
• 20:01
  correct. And then all of a sudden it's,
• 20:03
  oh, we're going grunge now, right?
• 20:04
  And that that. But that afforded us, meaning
• 20:07
  Mike and I, we were playing in Nemesis, the ability to open for
• 20:10
  huge headlining bands in the 80s.
• 20:12
  They were now opening or or headlining a show in in Phoenix
• 20:15
  at the Mason Jar. Yeah, like L.A.
• 20:17
  Guns came through there. Enough so I.
• 20:19
  Saw them in an arena. We, yeah, we opened up for them.
• 20:22
  Then we opened up for enough's enough.
• 20:24
  I saw them in an arena. I was like, holy.
• 20:26
  Crap, you're playing. For the same 200 people we are,
• 20:29
  you know. Right.
• 20:29
  But that's the that was what it did though, right?
• 20:32
  Because then all the 80s hair bands and shit, it's like all of
• 20:35
  a sudden they're playing clubs again.
• 20:36
  It was the weirdest dynamic in the music.
• 20:38
  But we also got some amazing opportunities, like he says,
• 20:41
  that a lot of fans would have never had.
• 20:44
  True. We opened up for the Marshall
• 20:45
  Tucker Band, man, we were a heavy rock band.
• 20:48
  We weren't heavy metal. He wasn't a screaming vocalist.
• 20:51
  His vocals that. Song that we yeah, this, the
• 20:53
  song we start the show with is our song Freeman that we wrote
• 20:56
  probably 30 years ago. Yeah, That's cool.
• 20:59
  You know, so I mean, that kind of kind of just tells you that
• 21:02
  we were. I always tell people we were
• 21:03
  Creed before Creed because when you when you try to define a
• 21:06
  sound, it's hard. And we were there because we
• 21:08
  were pre. ITunes and pre, all the
• 21:10
  Spotify's and yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
• 21:15
  So when people, when people ask me and I'm kind of jumping, I'm
• 21:20
  fast forwarding a little bit in my story when they asked me
• 21:23
  what, what House Divided sound like.
• 21:25
  Like, you know what, what is your band?
• 21:27
  What kind of band are you? I was like, well, if Nirvana and
• 21:31
  Soundgarden were driving in a blue Chevelle and Metallica and
• 21:38
  Pantera were in the A-Team van go in the opposite direction and
• 21:43
  they actually had a head on collision.
• 21:46
  And the doctors that tried to heal them and fix them and put
• 21:50
  them back together were Jane's addiction and Led Zeppelin.
• 21:54
  The resulting mangled, beautiful atrocity would be house divided.
• 22:01
  I love. That and yeah, I don't even know
• 22:04
  that. I don't even know if there's a
• 22:07
  simpler way to put it or a more accurate way to put it, except
• 22:12
  to add it maybe one or two more bands even to that description.
• 22:17
  And so when you know that Nugent album for some reason grabbed a
• 22:21
  hold of me, I'd rededicated myself to playing the guitar,
• 22:25
  but my left-handed chord was now just wood.
• 22:30
  It wasn't even the electronics were shot.
• 22:32
  So I started playing my dad's Fender, his right-handed Fender,
• 22:36
  upside down. And that's where I first started
• 22:40
  writing songs, was playing that Fender completely upside down.
• 22:45
  And then a year later. I Jimi Hendrix style, like you,
• 22:49
  strung it upside down. No, no completely upside down.
• 22:53
  I didn't restring it at all. Nice.
• 22:56
  So he would he would take a righty and restring it to play
• 22:58
  it left-handed. I was playing completely upside
• 23:01
  down. Oh my God, that scrambles my
• 23:03
  brain. And I even came up with like
• 23:06
  chord I would, I would write them down and name them this and
• 23:11
  that or the other. And you know, I'm sure that
• 23:14
  those chords had already been invented standard right side up
• 23:17
  style. But to me they were completely
• 23:19
  different chords. And about a year after that, I
• 23:23
  was able to get my first proper lefty and that was this Ibanez,
• 23:27
  this black Ibanez RG550 and had been looking for bandmates that
• 23:33
  entire time. That was my sophomore year in
• 23:35
  high school. Eventually found a whole band in
• 23:40
  the high school and me and the drummer Nikki Simic, we have
• 23:45
  been, you know, bandmates and close friends to this point.
• 23:50
  We're brothers now ever since. And that was our first jam
• 23:55
  session was February of 93 plane, you know, smells like
• 24:01
  teen spirit and Symphony of destruction for about 30 seconds
• 24:04
  before it all falls apart and. Those are the.
• 24:08
  Wonderful moments. Yeah, it was just in his parents
• 24:11
  garage. And one day he was like, you
• 24:13
  know, I want to kind of jam on Will's songs.
• 24:16
  And we started doing that and then all of a sudden the other
• 24:20
  guys that came to jam, they started not coming over.
• 24:24
  And it was me and Nikki playing my originals.
• 24:27
  And then he was like, you know, I'm a drummer, but I can play
• 24:30
  guitar too. And he would write songs and we
• 24:34
  would just go out and sit with acoustics and play and
• 24:37
  eventually formed House Divided. And I mean, it's what I thought
• 24:42
  I was going to do. I thought I was going to be a
• 24:43
  rock star, you know. Yeah.
• 24:45
  Yeah, exactly. And, and we got to the point
• 24:49
  where there was some interest from Island Records, those
• 24:54
  interest from Grand Royal, the Beastie Boys label, and one or
• 25:01
  two guys from Sony was supposed to come out and actually see us
• 25:05
  play. But I don't think they ever,
• 25:07
  ever even made it out. And I can look back now and tell
• 25:12
  you, like the three main mistakes that probably kept us
• 25:15
  from being rock stars and a big one was that we should have been
• 25:20
  a quartet. We were a trio and I insisted on
• 25:24
  staying that way because I was like, they're my lyrics, I want
• 25:27
  to sing them to my guitar, I want to play it, but I can't
• 25:32
  give 100%. Couldn't give 100% to both.
• 25:35
  It's funny you say that about number one.
• 25:37
  I'm not to interrupt you, but we were the opposite when Chris
• 25:42
  left. We tried to be a trio and it
• 25:44
  didn't work. So just to put it into
• 25:46
  perspective for you, I think unless you're Rush or ZZ Top,
• 25:49
  that's not going to work. Yeah, I mean it works for a few
• 25:53
  100. Band man succeeded.
• 25:56
  I'm just being funny. I know, I know, I know, I know.
• 26:00
  But but yeah, so and so if we. Got 2 and 3.
• 26:04
  If we got an actual manager so that I wasn't trying to do all
• 26:10
  of that and write all the songs and have that creative control
• 26:14
  and, and, and if we could just, if I had just listened more the,
• 26:23
  the entire other side of that is maybe the other guys weren't as
• 26:28
  dedicated as I was. So like I could have said, hey,
• 26:33
  why don't I just go find other guys?
• 26:36
  But I think that we were loyal to each other as friends and I
• 26:41
  actually didn't want to lose the friendship.
• 26:44
  And I figured if I lost them as bandmates, then I would be
• 26:47
  losing them as friends. So.
• 26:51
  I have a similar story but we luckily I'm going to try and say
• 26:56
  this in the nicest way possible because I love this guy like a
• 26:59
  brother. It's OK to RIP it off like a
• 27:01
  band. Aid No, it's not you, it's
• 27:02
  Scott, and he's no longer with us.
• 27:04
  So I really want to say this. Scott had an edge to him, right?
• 27:08
  Here's a drummer. It takes a certain kind of
• 27:10
  personality to want to beat the shit out of something for hours
• 27:12
  on it, right? True.
• 27:14
  So our first guitar or bass player slash Singer was the same
• 27:18
  as you. He was a singer and a bass
• 27:20
  player. So we were a trio at the time,
• 27:22
  but he had horrible stage fright.
• 27:24
  So we had to do what you're talking about.
• 27:29
  We had to basically say this, even though we love this guy, it
• 27:33
  isn't going to work. So then, you know, him and I had
• 27:36
  a conversation about how we're going to become attached to
• 27:40
  these people, but this is a business.
• 27:43
  This is what we want to do with our life.
• 27:44
  So those people have to have the same dedication that we do.
• 27:48
  And that's when we found Chris and our own William, who is our
• 27:52
  bass player. It's hard not to call him Rick.
• 27:55
  I know, why should I say it was? Killing me because he was Rick
• 27:59
  to us forever, but he wants to be called William now and I
• 28:01
  respect that. So yeah, OK.
• 28:03
  Anyway, we had to do the same thing you're talking about.
• 28:05
  We had to just say, OK, we want to make money at this and we
• 28:09
  need people who are going to have the same outlook that we
• 28:12
  do. They're not going to make
• 28:13
  excuses why they can't be at practice and blah, blah, blah.
• 28:17
  We practiced every day or we had a gig that was just it.
• 28:20
  It wasn't in. There were no days off.
• 28:24
  Exactly. And we, I mean, we managed to in
• 28:27
  a pretty short time, got to the point where I was doing, you
• 28:30
  know, begging clubs to let us play to within about four
• 28:35
  months, like we were, I was getting calls from the biggest
• 28:38
  clubs in Dallas to headline shows.
• 28:41
  That's such a great feeling. It is a great feeling.
• 28:45
  And what what we did with that was drop the ball basically
• 28:50
  because the guys had been telling me, you know, like, hey,
• 28:53
  people like the songs, but we need to get like a real singer.
• 28:59
  And I wasn't. I didn't realize that I had to
• 29:02
  actually practice my voice just like I did the guitar.
• 29:06
  Oh yeah. Like that it was an instrument
• 29:08
  because when I'm writing the songs, I was hearing these this
• 29:12
  voice on how I wanted it to be sung, but I didn't realize that
• 29:17
  I was actually biting off more than I could chew, Especially
• 29:22
  with the fact that I wasn't writing like just the simplest 3
• 29:26
  chord songs, right. And to try to be, you know,
• 29:29
  complex and, and write these aggressive riffs with a guitar
• 29:33
  and sing over that in a more abstract way.
• 29:38
  I could have just been, you know, better educated because I
• 29:41
  don't have any music education. I just taught myself to play for
• 29:44
  the most part. And if we had had someone who
• 29:48
  could just dedicate 100% to being a singer, it would have
• 29:52
  improved us. And then those guys probably
• 29:55
  would have been, you know, way more dedicated and loyal knowing
• 29:59
  that we're actually on the same page.
• 30:03
  And I don't think we were able to, or at least I wasn't able to
• 30:06
  understand that until it was probably too late.
• 30:08
  Well, something you just said that's super important for
• 30:11
  people to understand is just because a guy standing up there
• 30:13
  gal or whatever without something, you know, an
• 30:17
  instrument doesn't mean they're not a musician.
• 30:19
  Right. Exactly.
• 30:19
  Chris writes melodies, right? Yeah.
• 30:22
  So he's saying a lot of times there's no music to what he's
• 30:25
  singing. We we do it both ways.
• 30:26
  So I'll write a piece of music and he'll say I got lyrics for
• 30:30
  that. Or he'll send me something blank
• 30:32
  and he'll have an idea what his melody is and he'll hum it out
• 30:35
  or he'll sing it out if he's got the lyrics and I'll place the
• 30:39
  music to his melody. It it's not always.
• 30:43
  I think a lot of times he beats himself up about not being a
• 30:46
  musician. A singer is every bit of
• 30:47
  musician as anybody else. Just watch a YouTube video of
• 30:52
  people explaining what singers are doing. him and I have a lot
• 30:56
  of the same similarities in that I know enough theory to get me
• 30:59
  in trouble. He's not a trained musician
• 31:02
  either. I think that's what he's saying
• 31:03
  when he's saying he isn't a musician.
• 31:05
  We have an innate ability of knowing what people want to
• 31:08
  hear. Without knowing how we're doing
• 31:10
  that right, it's almost like you're flying blind.
• 31:14
  Yeah, I I think that Anthony Keita, so the Red Hot Chili
• 31:17
  Peppers is a big example because when he talks, when he talks
• 31:22
  about the band, he talks about how they're musicians.
• 31:25
  And then he almost just basically kind of looked into
• 31:28
  being in the band. Yes, but but he's the guy
• 31:30
  writing all the lyrics and all the melodies and his vocal style
• 31:34
  and his vocal ability has just grown exponentially over the
• 31:39
  years. But from when they were just
• 31:41
  kind of a joke to now being to me just a great band and and
• 31:46
  another important. And here's my comeback.
• 31:49
  When someone would give somebody like him shit, I would say, OK,
• 31:54
  so imagine the Red Hot Chili Peppers released all that music
• 31:57
  without Anthony Kiedis as the front man and the singer.
• 32:00
  It's just instrumental music, right?
• 32:01
  How popular would they have been?
• 32:03
  Yeah. People are listening to him.
• 32:05
  I was hyper aware that when we were putting this band together
• 32:09
  another 30 years ago, that was important to me, that I wasn't
• 32:13
  the showcase of the band or the drummer wasn't.
• 32:16
  We're a band. People are looking at the person
• 32:19
  who's talking to the crowd and singing.
• 32:21
  That's just a fact. You know, with with the passing
• 32:27
  of Ozzy, I think that there's a lot of analysis done about him
• 32:32
  and you know, he wasn't the guy writing his songs when he had a
• 32:36
  solo career and he wasn't the guy writing his songs in
• 32:39
  Sabbath. But Can you imagine like someone
• 32:43
  else with those first seven Sabbath albums?
• 32:46
  Like his voice, his character, his just his personality
• 32:52
  basically carried heavy metal in two different forms, right?
• 32:56
  For like 4 decades and that's more a testament to him than I
• 33:02
  think anything else can be because it's not you know it's
• 33:05
  not the Randy Rhodes band or the Zack Wylde band, it's Ozzy
• 33:08
  Osbourne, right And you need that personality and that that
• 33:12
  base that example to just kind of lead you and.
• 33:15
  And lead metal basically for as long as he did and his his his
• 33:19
  impact on the world was just not musically because.
• 33:22
  And that was prevalent when when the funeral procession happened
• 33:26
  and when Jack finally released a statement after the fact, like
• 33:28
  they were blown away. They were absolutely blown away
• 33:31
  at not only the procession and the amount of people that
• 33:35
  gathered for that, but they he alluded to reading every single
• 33:38
  note, every single e-mail, every single comment on all our social
• 33:41
  media from from everybody, you know, across the world and how
• 33:46
  much Ozzy had touched them. Whether it was like some people
• 33:50
  didn't know Ozzy Osbourne, who Ozzy Osbourne was until the
• 33:52
  Osbournes on MTVI mean it was as crazy as that sounds, right?
• 33:57
  But so you have this. You have and I mean, one of the
• 34:00
  funniest things I ever thought from that show was when him and
• 34:03
  Sharon were in the in the arena and she was talking about
• 34:06
  Bubbles coming off the stage. You remember that?
• 34:07
  And he's like, fucking Bubbles. I'm the Prince of darkness.
• 34:13
  But that was that was genuine. Like you couldn't write like
• 34:16
  most reality shows, you have to script and write otherwise you
• 34:19
  have no plots and no relevance and doesn't.
• 34:22
  But Ozzy was so raw and genuine and he had such a strong
• 34:27
  presence, even though half time he couldn't understand what you
• 34:29
  said and what he said, but you still hung on the seat because
• 34:31
  you're trying to pick up what he said.
• 34:33
  Because, you know, I mean, the fact that they let that shit fly
• 34:38
  at a time where censorship was so high.
• 34:40
  I mean, it was, you know, there were episodes where every other,
• 34:43
  every 3rd words were bleeped out.
• 34:44
  But that showed the world. I think here's a real human
• 34:47
  being. Yes, he's a rock star.
• 34:49
  Yes, he's, he's one of the, the, the icons that's credited with,
• 34:52
  with founding heavy metal. But he's got, he's got 5 fucking
• 34:56
  little dogs and, and five kids and an annoying wife.
• 34:59
  And they're going around this house and it's, it's you know,
• 35:02
  and then it's, it was a cool show because it, it took him to
• 35:05
  a whole nother level, which is the brilliance of Sharon because
• 35:07
  she obviously was behind that. Right.
• 35:09
  Yeah, for sure. And then, and then he did this
• 35:10
  stuff with Jack, Jack and Ozzie's Road Rd. tour, whatever
• 35:15
  it was. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:16
  Which was great because there's a whole a whole other dynamic of
• 35:19
  a father and son, you know, enjoying time to get an
• 35:23
  exploring shit. So.
• 35:24
  And he throw the music in it and then you look at the music
• 35:26
  catalog, I saw something after his death.
• 35:28
  It would take, I think it was 23 consecutive hours of listening
• 35:33
  to music to actually touch every single song Ozzy sang on from
• 35:38
  the Sabbath to solo. So the impact of that, Right.
• 35:42
  Yeah. So that's the thing.
• 35:43
  And when you talk about impact of something, you don't realize
• 35:46
  their impact until they're gone. And it's like, holy shit, you
• 35:49
  know, it's just mind boggling. And, and the fact that the
• 35:53
  people that passed before him that were huge, like Van Halen,
• 35:57
  Eddie Van Halen was huge, right? But the, there was nothing like
• 36:02
  what Ozzy had as a funeral service.
• 36:04
  I don't remember what, what Van Halen's family did for him, but
• 36:07
  it just, you know, it's, it's one of those things that it's
• 36:10
  very rare that you see that amount of of people come out for
• 36:15
  basically an entertainer that, you know, but you got to put him
• 36:17
  up with the Elvis level, right? Because yeah, you just have to,
• 36:22
  he's a, he's basically a singular phenomenon and he's,
• 36:28
  he's a singular force. And you know, the, the music by
• 36:32
  itself, the music could speak for itself and it's influence
• 36:35
  all the Hard Rock and heavy metal that came after it.
• 36:39
  But like you said, with the Osbournes, like pop culture,
• 36:43
  what he, what he he basically, you know, outgrew himself and
• 36:48
  outgrew the music to become like a a symbol.
• 36:52
  And even that's. What I was just going to say.
• 36:54
  Even the funny old guy people that don't speak right.
• 36:58
  People that don't even know who Ozzy or don't even know his
• 37:01
  music knew who he was, right? Exactly.
• 37:05
  And I think that's, you know, that's as simple A testimony to
• 37:09
  someone's influence and greatness as as there can be.
• 37:13
  No question. Yeah, and the personality and
• 37:15
  the personality, right, right. I would be surprised.
• 37:19
  Like there's, there's rumors that there's 20,000 Venice songs
• 37:22
  in Eddie Van Halen's vault that, you know, who knows how that'll
• 37:25
  ever come out because the way he kept notes and shit or
• 37:29
  catalogued it. But I, I, I, you got to think
• 37:31
  Ozzy has, has a deep rooted vault just like Prince has a
• 37:35
  deep rooted vault, right. But everybody that's that's
• 37:37
  somebody in in that, that that's that reached that level, you got
• 37:42
  to think that Jesus, if they weren't out recording or weren't
• 37:45
  out playing, they were home recording and writing and shit.
• 37:47
  Because you just when you get to the level, I don't think you
• 37:49
  could turn it off. I don't think you want to turn
• 37:51
  it off. No.
• 37:52
  Right. And I think with Prince,
• 37:56
  because, you know, he, he tried to write a song every day.
• 37:59
  And so if he's writing a song every day, he would recording a
• 38:01
  song every day, right. And I, I think with him, like,
• 38:05
  he probably released about 10 albums in a row that we don't
• 38:09
  really think are even that good because he had to compete with
• 38:13
  himself, right. And which, you know, I, I think
• 38:18
  Purple Rain might even be like the best album ever start to
• 38:22
  finish. It's one of those albums.
• 38:24
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:24
  It's one of those just basically perfect albums.
• 38:28
  And so it makes me wonder, like, what is in that vault?
• 38:32
  Yeah. Because, you know, 10 years
• 38:34
  before he died, people would talk about the vault and how
• 38:36
  much music we haven't even heard.
• 38:39
  Yeah. And because he didn't have a
• 38:40
  producer that sat there and told him, you know, maybe you don't
• 38:43
  put this song in an album. How many of those songs a
• 38:46
  producer would have said, don't you understand, would be, like,
• 38:50
  the Best Song of the year? And he was like, no, I'm not.
• 38:53
  Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, that is a great point.
• 38:56
  Nice job, William. Thank you.
• 38:58
  I never thought of it. I never thought of it that way.
• 38:59
  I never thought of it that way. And that's the so that's can be
• 39:02
  said the same thing with Ozzy and, yeah, with Ozzy and Eddie
• 39:06
  Van Halen, like, you know, but it's not the same now that
• 39:10
  they're gone. You know, the world got quiet
• 39:11
  when Ozzy died. I was my first thing.
• 39:14
  Like, the world just got quieter.
• 39:17
  Yeah. And because he was able to have
• 39:19
  a full life and it wasn't some shock that happened, you know,
• 39:23
  just out of the blue, right? You would expect it to be less
• 39:27
  tragic or, you know, less of a let down, but man it.
• 39:32
  Sucked. Like we all know we, but we all
• 39:35
  knew it was coming. I mean, it's, it's the, the way
• 39:37
  he he lived. He epitomized the rock'n'roll
• 39:39
  lifestyle, right? But I think you just said it.
• 39:42
  We didn't expect it. We were going to understand at
• 39:45
  that moment, everybody who was that close to Ozzy that the
• 39:49
  world would get that. You know, you're not going to
• 39:51
  hear that voice anymore. What you just said is very
• 39:53
  profound. It got quieter.
• 39:56
  Yeah. You're not going to have that
• 39:57
  push back. And he did it in such an
• 40:00
  intelligent way, whether he knew it or not.
• 40:03
  He didn't push back so hard that he wasn't taken seriously.
• 40:08
  Right. Right.
• 40:09
  Yeah. Somehow we looked at him like we
• 40:12
  looked at him as somewhat of a fool and the most intelligent
• 40:16
  person we have ever known at the same time.
• 40:18
  Right, right. So I think he had the world by
• 40:20
  the balls. He got to have fun and teach us
• 40:24
  something at the same time. Yeah, and and not be some kind
• 40:29
  of rock star tragedy, but I think it's amazing when you
• 40:32
  think about how, you know, he didn't die young.
• 40:36
  None of the guys in Motley died young.
• 40:39
  That they're all still here is just unbelievable.
• 40:43
  It makes you wonder if it's the lifestyle that actually can keep
• 40:46
  you alive like that or if they're just, if they were just
• 40:50
  meant to be these superhuman Viking, you know, Raiders that
• 40:55
  went from town to town basically destroying themselves along with
• 40:59
  with, you know, 20,000 people one night.
• 41:01
  Well, and it's catching, it's catching up to him.
• 41:03
  To me, Mick Mars is, I mean, his health has degenerated for
• 41:05
  years. And now you got to all the all
• 41:07
  those stories about Vince Neil having 4 strokes, not just one
• 41:09
  but 4. But I mean, I mean that dudes
• 41:12
  the epitome of unhealth, man. You look at us like dude, like,
• 41:15
  come on, man. Just I mean, you were, I don't
• 41:17
  like the lover boys lead singer Michael, you know, you see him
• 41:19
  and it's like, holy shit, what happened to you dude?
• 41:21
  Like you, you're these icons. How can you let yourself go so
• 41:26
  far that way when you're this, this, I mean, and you always
• 41:30
  will be an icon. Like, like it's just you're
• 41:32
  always having something attached to because of what you did as a
• 41:35
  live for your living for your entire life, right.
• 41:39
  It's it's sad to see people like Vince Neil that are, I mean,
• 41:41
  because to me, from a singing standpoint, I'm am I, I equate,
• 41:45
  OK, you're out of shape, so far out of shape.
• 41:48
  That's affecting how you sound. It's affecting how you sing.
• 41:50
  It's affecting how you breathe. Just listen to some of those
• 41:53
  live performances. They're horrible.
• 41:54
  It's. Right.
• 41:55
  And it's horrible, right. And the breathing and the and
• 41:59
  the the, the strength of your chord stuff is so important for
• 42:03
  a singer. It's just like, OK, you know,
• 42:05
  Vince like and he doesn't, you can't understand him.
• 42:07
  He's like an audible. It's just, yeah, it's pathetic.
• 42:11
  It's like, dude, hang it up, go away, don't come back because
• 42:13
  you're destroying your legacy. I mean, David Lee Roth is
• 42:15
  destroying his legacy as the greatest front man.
• 42:18
  Whoever graced the stage. You look up front man in the
• 42:20
  dictionary, David Lee Roth. As far as Rock'n'roll goes,
• 42:23
  right? Absolutely.
• 42:24
  Right. And then what?
• 42:25
  And then you take the last 10 years, like dude, just, I mean,
• 42:28
  and Mike and I've talked about this toward Blue in the face
• 42:30
  and, you know, apparently he's a superhuman nice guy, very humble
• 42:34
  and shit. But it's like, dude, just give
• 42:37
  it up now. Just.
• 42:38
  Just I can't argue with that because if you listen to it,
• 42:41
  it's horrible. Just stop.
• 42:43
  It's it's, he's not selling out his shows.
• 42:45
  It's people are just railing him after the show.
• 42:48
  It's like, dude, just go off in the sunset, man.
• 42:50
  Write your memoirs or something. Do a little, you know, release
• 42:53
  stuff you've never released before.
• 42:54
  But stop fucking touring, man. It's yeah, it doesn't it doesn't
• 42:59
  it's it's painful. It's like a car crash.
• 43:01
  Same with the scorpions class man.
• 43:02
  You Can't Sing anymore, man fucking call it a day then still
• 43:05
  call it a day from ACDC right. I it's it's bad and and I feel
• 43:11
  bad because I actually never got this.
• 43:12
  The ACDC live. Oh, they're amazing.
• 43:16
  And now when I see the videos of this last tour, Oh my God, like
• 43:21
  that's because he's all that's because he's all throat man.
• 43:23
  It's like, actually, you can't, you can't sustain.
• 43:25
  Like when Shinedown first came out, I, I made a comment to Mike
• 43:28
  like this too. It's not going to last, but he
• 43:30
  learned how to sing with his throat and his diaphragm in the
• 43:34
  full voice and he's sustained the test of time.
• 43:37
  Axel didn't do that. David Roth doesn't do that.
• 43:40
  Brian Johnson doesn't do that. Cobain could would not be able
• 43:43
  to sing like he sung and the debut album today if he was
• 43:46
  still around. You just can't.
• 43:48
  You can't sustain that rasp because I had part of that was
• 43:51
  part of my my structure of a singer.
• 43:54
  I had that raspy, you know, that fucking gutter roll.
• 43:58
  I can, I can do that shit now, man.
• 43:59
  I'll try to hold that shit. I'll start coughing because you
• 44:02
  just, you just it, you can't, you can't sustain it for 30
• 44:06
  years and still sound the same. When Steven Tyler did the thing
• 44:10
  with with Youngblood and stuff that medley, Mike and I are
• 44:13
  watching that together at the same time and it's like waiting
• 44:16
  for him to hit that note. Waiting, waiting.
• 44:17
  And then he hit it. It's like sweet.
• 44:19
  But that's because he probably doesn't sing in like 6 months,
• 44:21
  right? You know, he cancelled, they
• 44:23
  cancelled the Aerosmith tour because of his voice.
• 44:26
  Because exactly. You're, you're proving your own
• 44:28
  point because he couldn't do that night after night after
• 44:31
  night after night anymore. He can do it one time and maybe
• 44:35
  a month, or one time every two. Months or yeah, And the entire
• 44:39
  catalog is him. Is him going up that ladder man,
• 44:42
  you just you know the guys that were able to push their voices
• 44:47
  to these just ungodly levels are the ones that suffered later and
• 44:54
  and us and fans were like you know well how come you can't
• 44:57
  just sing the way you used to because.
• 45:00
  Because you're not 25 years old. Anymore, like I, I hadn't
• 45:04
  realized it, but Chris Cornell, who I think is one of the best
• 45:07
  singers ever of any genre, I've gone back in and watched some
• 45:13
  video of the last two where they did.
• 45:15
  Yeah. And I was like, yeah, right.
• 45:17
  Maybe. Maybe it actually wasn't as good
• 45:21
  as I thought it was when I was actually in the in the crowd.
• 45:24
  Right. But, and one thing I'll say in
• 45:27
  his defense is his ex was saying that she was 100% confident that
• 45:33
  they were way over prescribing like his benzodiazepine shit
• 45:37
  that he was taking. And so he might have been so out
• 45:40
  of his fucking mind that he didn't know how to sing the way
• 45:45
  that he used to anymore too. Because I went down that road
• 45:48
  for a while. I never abused him, but I used
• 45:51
  them to get my life back on track for a while.
• 45:54
  And the one thing that I'll say about those is they make you
• 45:57
  kind of feel nothing for a while.
• 45:59
  You know, you just don't want to do anything.
• 46:00
  You're not sad anymore, but you're not wanting to really be
• 46:05
  productive and creative either. So about the time you saw him,
• 46:09
  he might have been, yeah. He might have been going through
• 46:11
  a period where he was just numb. And the fact that he either took
• 46:15
  too many accidentally or did it on purpose proves that he was in
• 46:20
  a place in his head where he just wasn't happy, you know?
• 46:23
  Right, Come on, he's, he's the same example of him too, right?
• 46:28
  What he did when they first came out.
• 46:29
  And you gotta remember, too, the Seattle Sound.
• 46:31
  That was around what, 55510? I heard the sound start.
• 46:35
  Breaking. This is going to be fascinating
• 46:37
  to people. I actually heard Soundgarden.
• 46:39
  I basically live in the middle of a cornfield here.
• 46:41
  There's 12,000 people in my town in 1987.
• 46:46
  Yeah, my buddy Mike Wagner had a cassette and we popped it in his
• 46:50
  stereo in his bedroom and he cranked it up and Loud Love came
• 46:54
  on and I was like, holy fuck. He.
• 46:56
  Changed the world, man that. Reference.
• 47:00
  Captured me. Right.
• 47:01
  And that took and that took how long?
• 47:03
  Wouldn't they hit 90? It was really Darden.
• 47:05
  Basically didn't get popular until 93. 92 So there you go.
• 47:10
  There you go. OK, so there you go.
• 47:12
  There's ten years, right? There's or five, five years,
• 47:14
  five years, that's what I'm saying.
• 47:16
  So, but so all the, all the singing you did as a, as a
• 47:20
  young, you know, I don't know, young person, let's call it
• 47:24
  right. And then he died.
• 47:27
  How old? When he was 504550?
• 47:30
  Somewhere around there, yeah. Mid 40s?
• 47:32
  Maybe so. You know, so you're going to so
• 47:35
  OK, so figure 35 plus years of singing and he was, he was, he
• 47:39
  was a lot of throat singer. You know, he still had the the
• 47:43
  other part elements to it, but a lot of the the the power, like
• 47:47
  Axel 77 octave range, fantastic. But he can't do anymore.
• 47:51
  And then you see those things on Facebook, Instagram, all before
• 47:53
  auto tune. All he's doing is screaming.
• 47:54
  It's all he's doing is screaming.
• 47:55
  Man, You don't need to auto tune a scream like shut up.
• 47:58
  Find a fucking song where you're singing OK, before auto tune,
• 48:03
  like patience that showed the dynamic of his voice.
• 48:06
  But just but you know, they do the the welcome to the jungle
• 48:08
  scream. Like really, who's going to auto
• 48:11
  tune a scream anyway, you idiots?
• 48:14
  And yeah, and now watching him do that is it's painful.
• 48:19
  It's very painful. It's painful.
• 48:21
  But at the time he had to hit that note in key.
• 48:24
  Sure, sure. Right.
• 48:25
  Yeah. And, and there weren't many
• 48:27
  people that could do it like. That.
• 48:29
  No, absolutely not. No, when he when the Appetite
• 48:32
  came out doing that, when you saw that video on MTV, it's
• 48:34
  like, holy shit. Changed the world like like.
• 48:36
  What? Yeah, I just read that.
• 48:39
  I didn't know this. That's the best selling debut
• 48:42
  album of all time. They surpassed Boston.
• 48:44
  It's kind of surprising at all. 16,000,000 to 18,000,000 So
• 48:47
  Appetite sold 18,000,000, two million more copies than
• 48:51
  Boston's debut album, which was The King Forever.
• 48:54
  Just in the US, yes, it's not even including worldwide sales.
• 48:59
  So, yeah, I mean, no, that's a that was a phenomenon that that
• 49:02
  needed to happen kind of like. That have.
• 49:06
  Before gruns hit, I think is Guns and Roses, yeah.
• 49:11
  You know, the other important album, at least in my mind, is
• 49:14
  the Black Crows first album, because Appetite and the first
• 49:18
  Black Crows album came out in the middle of all the 80s bands
• 49:24
  starting to sound exactly the same.
• 49:27
  Right, and and look the same. Yes.
• 49:29
  Even Ozzy wore sequence, Yes. He did. 86 The Ultimate saying
• 49:35
  The ultimate said well, I love that album.
• 49:38
  He hates it. He absolutely.
• 49:39
  I hated it. I love that album.
• 49:41
  Me too, I love. It's got a lot of hooks on it,
• 49:43
  man. It's got a lot of.
• 49:44
  I remember begging my parents to buy me a ticket to that concert.
• 49:48
  It was at 86 in Lubbock and that was a no go.
• 49:53
  Iron Maiden that same year was a no go.
• 49:55
  Oh. It it, it took moving to Dallas,
• 49:58
  Fort Worth and and, you know, getting a little bit older to to
• 50:02
  finally get tickets to shows. And then I think after 92, I
• 50:06
  just didn't stop going to shows. I was.
• 50:09
  Yeah. Concerts are are are such an
• 50:11
  amazing thing. So you're old.
• 50:14
  You're old enough to remember. Yeah.
• 50:16
  So you're old enough to remember the paper tickets, right.
• 50:18
  Like, like when I got rushed, when I, when I got rushed
• 50:21
  tickets, right. They would be Glitter.
• 50:23
  The name would be in Glitter. Yeah, right.
• 50:26
  Fucking glitter. Imagine the ticket people at
• 50:29
  Dillard's because got it from Dillard's box office.
• 50:31
  Fucking glue glitter, fuck. And just sit there doing it for
• 50:34
  hours because how somebody had to do it, right?
• 50:37
  And here's your ticket to rush. It was like $5 in this glitter.
• 50:40
  And then they ripped it that that when you walked in the
• 50:42
  doors like, oh, I wanted to save that.
• 50:44
  And every ticket on top of another one is kind of just
• 50:47
  shaving it off little by little. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:50
  Glitter everywhere that rush went.
• 50:52
  Yeah, I remember that shit, man. We still did paper tickets.
• 50:56
  We did. We were.
• 50:58
  Selling them somewhere. Yeah, I do too.
• 51:00
  Yeah. Oh, wow, that's awesome.
• 51:03
  Yeah, just dated ourselves, man. Oh, so this actually, this is
• 51:07
  very cool that we're doing this on this day.
• 51:11
  Yeah. Because Friday, September 26th
• 51:15
  is the 28th anniversary to the day of our very first show is
• 51:21
  House Divided. Oh, right on.
• 51:23
  That's awesome. The tattoo bar in Fort Worth,
• 51:26
  which at one point was owned by Dimebag, Daryl and and a guy
• 51:31
  named Randy. So Dimebag bought it for his
• 51:34
  girlfriend Rita Cool and she she Co owned it with Randy and he
• 51:39
  had actually written on the back of an autograph that he gave me
• 51:44
  the number of the bar to ask for Rita.
• 51:47
  And by the time I'd gotten up the nerve to actually take our
• 51:50
  demo tape to her, she had sold her half to Randy.
• 51:55
  And he owned it outright. But Diane had told them that
• 52:00
  he'd heard our demo, and he thought it was awesome.
• 52:02
  He gave it a listen and called me on a Tuesday and was like,
• 52:06
  hey, can you play? And I was like, yeah, we can
• 52:09
  play, you know what month? And he was like Friday, this is
• 52:15
  on a Tuesday. OK.
• 52:17
  Right on. You know, the band gathered our
• 52:19
  rehearsal room in Dallas and knocked out the set list, then
• 52:22
  probably played it twice a day for those three days until we
• 52:27
  debuted a 28 years ago today. That's.
• 52:31
  Awesome man, that is awesome. That was a great deal the the
• 52:35
  first show I and you know what's funny is that eventually we
• 52:41
  stopped being a band for all intents and purposes.
• 52:44
  I still write music. I still, I still have the plan
• 52:47
  to record it and I'm going to record it.
• 52:49
  But I, you know, after I've been unemployed for however many
• 52:55
  months, 11 months, one of the first things I did when I got
• 52:58
  some of my 4 O 1K money was buy the stuff I need to record at
• 53:03
  home. As it seems like everyone else
• 53:05
  in the world is doing it. I need to actually catch up and
• 53:09
  start doing it. And so I did that and wrote a
• 53:12
  book instead. OK, so let's talk about the
• 53:15
  book. What's the title of the book?
• 53:17
  So the title of the book is House of the Black Moon.
• 53:21
  OK. The origin of the book actually
• 53:24
  comes from a song I wrote. Me and my wife have been
• 53:27
  watching a bunch of True Blood and some vampire movies.
• 53:32
  Yeah. And I wrote this song that I, I
• 53:34
  could, I didn't know it at first, but like the character in
• 53:37
  the song, I was like, I think I'm writing about a vampire, OK.
• 53:40
  And something told me about this simple, simple 4 minute song.
• 53:45
  I was like, this guy's story has a bigger story.
• 53:50
  And so I just started piercing it together in my head over the
• 53:53
  course of like 2 years. And then when I got laid off, I
• 53:57
  was like, you know what, I have the time to write the book now.
• 54:00
  There you go. I don't know how to set up my
• 54:04
  prologic and my Steven Slate drums software, but I know how
• 54:09
  to write on a piece of paper or type on my laptop.
• 54:14
  So I started writing this book. I think I typed the first word
• 54:17
  in November of 2024. I typed the last word in April
• 54:23
  and published it on May 24th. And in that time and I've, I've
• 54:28
  been told that that's like really fast for writing your
• 54:31
  first book or writing any book. And I, I only know what I know.
• 54:36
  So I think that that seems to be the plan going forward because
• 54:40
  now I'm writing the sequel to that book and I can't stop
• 54:45
  writing. And I would, I never would have
• 54:48
  been able to tell you like in a million years that my guitar
• 54:52
  would collect dust while I was writing.
• 54:56
  Yeah. But now when I get a creative
• 54:57
  urge, when I get, you know, that mindset, Yeah, I'm not writing
• 55:01
  to the guitar anymore. I'm running into my laptop and
• 55:06
  I'm writing like a a bona fide author.
• 55:09
  And I don't or none. I never knew that would happen.
• 55:12
  Yeah, I think. And writing, I've written three
• 55:15
  books. So it's a cool, it's a it's a
• 55:16
  cool approach. And everyone's, everyone's
• 55:18
  different. You know, my first one was
• 55:20
  poetry, and that that was written probably, you know, over
• 55:24
  a course of three or four years just because we went through my
• 55:27
  collection of poems and, you know, then just figure what
• 55:30
  would work. And then I wrote some more for
• 55:32
  the book and then there was edits and stuff.
• 55:33
  So I don't know how long that one actually took.
• 55:36
  The second one I wrote was a psychological thriller that I
• 55:38
  actually wrote on a typewriter, like straight up where you have,
• 55:42
  yeah, button for a race, you know, and back it up.
• 55:45
  Yeah. That was, that was, I don't
• 55:47
  know, 3-4 hundred pages, but they're kind of the same
• 55:50
  concept. It's like you had the idea.
• 55:52
  So every night when it came home from work, I was and I you know,
• 55:55
  it's always look at clocks 3 in the morning, right?
• 55:58
  Gave it to and all my friends were in it some way shape or
• 56:00
  form or character. So I had given it, I loaned her
• 56:02
  to a friend to read and then apparently he and his wife got
• 56:05
  in this big pissing match and she fucking threw it in the
• 56:07
  charcoal grill. And I'm like, that was that that
• 56:09
  was that. So it was never and it was a
• 56:10
  great No, I mean, the the premise of it was basically
• 56:14
  this, this it was in the Catskills in New York, because I
• 56:16
  had a friend I worked with who lived, who was from New York.
• 56:18
  So I was getting all this descriptive, descriptive area,
• 56:22
  you know, from people I that lived in, you know what I mean,
• 56:24
  this, you know, if you guys are my friends at the time, you
• 56:26
  would have been tied to this book somehow.
• 56:29
  So it was a a serial killer, but he was, and this was before all
• 56:34
  the Dexter's and shit. OK, so he's a serial killer.
• 56:37
  That was trust fund baby lived in the, in the Catskills Hills
• 56:40
  of New York and, and he was an artist.
• 56:42
  That was how he made his money, trust fund baby.
• 56:44
  But he just, he sustained himself by art and he would do
• 56:47
  figures like, you know, sculptures of people and stuff
• 56:50
  and they're always women and, and really bizarre, you know,
• 56:54
  stances and whatnot. And, and what it was the end of
• 56:57
  the day was he was killing these women.
• 56:58
  He was allowing them to come in and back to his house, serial
• 57:01
  killer killing those women all the same way and bombing their
• 57:04
  bodies and basically posing them.
• 57:06
  And then he would sculpture around them and then he would
• 57:09
  name them the the name of the woman was the name of the
• 57:12
  sculpture. So as the book went on, the cops
• 57:16
  started figuring shit out. Wait, wait a minute.
• 57:18
  You know, this chick named this sculpture name Anna reflects
• 57:21
  this, this woman who disappeared.
• 57:22
  And so eventually the way he ended up getting caught is is
• 57:26
  somebody had bought one of his statues at A at an exhibit and
• 57:29
  they were moving into the house. As they moved into the house,
• 57:31
  the elbow hit the corner of of a wall and then the the statue of
• 57:37
  material just faded away. And there was the rotting elbow
• 57:40
  and then that, so that that turned the whole thing into this
• 57:43
  mass of police, you know, and then it took you down that path.
• 57:46
  And but, you know, it's, it's a great fucking book, man.
• 57:50
  And it just, that's terrible. You know, the fight, the fight
• 57:55
  they had, it wasn't about the book.
• 57:59
  The book was just a victim of, of the, of the, the aftermath of
• 58:04
  the fight. I there was just no, you know,
• 58:06
  because he was just he his character in the book was was
• 58:08
  carried just some some little, you know.
• 58:10
  He's talking about the girl that burned your book up.
• 58:12
  Yeah, I don't know. I was him and Ernie were
• 58:14
  fighting. And then when I asked him a
• 58:15
  couple, you know, weeks later on my tune, I need my book back,
• 58:18
  man, because he had the only copy.
• 58:19
  I hadn't, I hadn't gone to work yet and photocopied it.
• 58:21
  And he's like, oh man, you know, my girlfriend and I got in this
• 58:24
  big fight and, you know, and she just fucking was throwing shit
• 58:28
  and yearbook landed in the fire and she was killing me.
• 58:33
  And, you know, there it was. That was it, you know, so I
• 58:36
  mean, it's still on the head, but all the nuances of it all
• 58:39
  the because again, like my buddy Chris Pasomas, he was the night
• 58:42
  he worked at the group home I ran, he worked a night shift and
• 58:44
  he was from New York. So when I was when I was writing
• 58:47
  and I'd come up to tell me about, you know, this part of
• 58:49
  New York. And so I was making sure my
• 58:51
  descriptions were tying with what I was talking about.
• 58:54
  So when I wrote the third one, which is the legend of Charles
• 58:57
  Ling, I actually wrote that during COVID hit.
• 59:00
  And I kind of have the same thing like I need to write this
• 59:02
  book because I had the idea forever.
• 59:04
  So it probably took me a couple months or so, but and I, Nikki
• 59:07
  and I would go somewhere and I, and I would be on my iPad on my
• 59:10
  notes section. And while she was driving, you
• 59:12
  know, and we would, I would write it that way and we would
• 59:14
  just have conversations. She's in it.
• 59:15
  So she kind of helped formulate the ideas and the concepts
• 59:18
  behind it. So it just depends when the muse
• 59:21
  strikes you, man, it could, you could like I could write a song
• 59:24
  right now if the muse hit me just because that's how it is
• 59:26
  with the creative side of our brains, right?
• 59:28
  So right. However you write is however you
• 59:30
  write, whether it takes you a month or whether it takes you a
• 59:32
  year, the end product is what is what matters the most.
• 59:35
  So whether you're fast or slow or somewhere in between, it
• 59:38
  doesn't really matter. It's just you're going at your
• 59:39
  pace and what you're feeling. And I one thing that I don't
• 59:43
  know if you're like this, but I never forced myself to write.
• 59:46
  Like I didn't sit down every day.
• 59:47
  I have to write a chapter now. I used to journal every day, but
• 59:51
  that was just kind of like, you know, dear diary, here's my day.
• 59:54
  Right. Well, that's why I always love
• 59:55
  when people are like, how come you haven't released anything?
• 59:58
  Where's your music? It doesn't work.
• 1:00:00
  It's not like going to a nine to five job, right?
• 1:00:03
  No, you don't just get up and write.
• 1:00:06
  I mean, some to Chris's point, some people do.
• 1:00:09
  And fuck those people because they have a gift, right?
• 1:00:13
  There's studios in Nashville filled with people like that who
• 1:00:16
  can just come up with shit on a moment's notice.
• 1:00:19
  So there are people out there like that, but that's not how I
• 1:00:23
  think. Chris just said it best.
• 1:00:24
  The muse has to strike you, right?
• 1:00:26
  But I think those people that do that on a day in and day out
• 1:00:29
  basis, they're so in tune with that part of their brain that
• 1:00:34
  like when I was in Nashville recording the second-half of the
• 1:00:36
  last band I was in the the sound engineer and the and the, I
• 1:00:39
  forget what her name, what what the chick did.
• 1:00:42
  They love my lyrics. So I actually wrote 3 or 4 songs
• 1:00:45
  for them in those three days and they went, recorded, came out
• 1:00:49
  with melodies and then started to shop them around and sell
• 1:00:51
  them to country artists. Because I, I, I just, I have the
• 1:00:54
  ability to just do that. But it was in that moment in
• 1:00:56
  time, right? So I think if you're, if you're
• 1:00:59
  in that moment in time and you, you are somebody, like all you
• 1:01:03
  do for a living is write music and perform, you're always going
• 1:01:05
  to have something going on in your brain.
• 1:01:07
  You just always, because you never shut it off, right yeah.
• 1:01:10
  You know, I, I think once you're a musician, you never stop being
• 1:01:13
  a musician yeah. And I think that's true with
• 1:01:15
  everything. Once you're an actor, music,
• 1:01:17
  anything that requires you to be a performer on some level, you
• 1:01:21
  never shut that off. You just, you just don't because
• 1:01:23
  you always got to be in those ideas flow those.
• 1:01:26
  I mean, cuz any given time, man, you can write the greatest song
• 1:01:30
  that everybody's ever heard. If you don't have something
• 1:01:32
  right down with it and you forget it and you're all right.
• 1:01:35
  You know, like falling asleep. This has happened.
• 1:01:38
  You will even falling asleep Twilight.
• 1:01:39
  All of a sudden you get ideas in your head.
• 1:01:40
  It's like, motherfucker, I'm going to go to sleep.
• 1:01:43
  Oh yeah, for me, I don't. Want it happens?
• 1:01:46
  Right. Well, I would get riffs like in
• 1:01:49
  my head, like in the middle of a work day, and I'd be like, oh
• 1:01:53
  man, this riff is so awesome. I was like, I'm never going to
• 1:01:56
  forget this, right? And an hour later I'm like shit,
• 1:02:01
  damn it. Sometimes as soon as you say
• 1:02:03
  you're never going to forget it, it's gone.
• 1:02:04
  It's gone. That's the jinx.
• 1:02:06
  I would I think I got to the point where I was like at after
• 1:02:09
  writing 300 songs, I was like, all of a sudden your your brain
• 1:02:13
  doesn't have room for all of them for you to just remember
• 1:02:17
  all of them, you know, without help, without, you know, some
• 1:02:22
  kind of sound to kick it back into your memory.
• 1:02:25
  So, but then I wrote 300 more. And so after 600 songs, I can't
• 1:02:31
  even remember a riff that I think is the greatest riff I've
• 1:02:33
  ever written. It doesn't mean the riff
• 1:02:35
  actually wasn't good, right? It just, it just, there's no
• 1:02:40
  space for it anymore. It's almost like if the brain
• 1:02:42
  was a computer and, you know, it only holds so much.
• 1:02:45
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it and it only holds so much
• 1:02:48
  data. So I wrote, hell, I said I
• 1:02:51
  picked up the guitar and wrote something yesterday and I, I
• 1:02:55
  like to, you know, kind of compartmentalized songs, like
• 1:02:59
  into four different projects I have.
• 1:03:01
  And I know when I'm actually writing a house divided song
• 1:03:06
  because maybe it's the riff, maybe it's just kind of the, the
• 1:03:09
  mood or the atmosphere or the the emotion that brought it.
• 1:03:12
  I was like, this will be a house divided song and I can't wait to
• 1:03:15
  show it to the guys because maybe that'll be some kind of
• 1:03:19
  vehicle for kicking back up the old band or whatever.
• 1:03:23
  And I was like, and it's so good.
• 1:03:25
  I'm not going to forget it an hour later.
• 1:03:30
  And and I could just use this phone and recording on notes and
• 1:03:36
  it's but that's not part of that's not my instinct.
• 1:03:38
  It's not second nature to me yet.
• 1:03:40
  Nope. So you got to get, you got to
• 1:03:42
  get the habit of doing that. I probably have 500 ideas on my
• 1:03:45
  phone now. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:48
  So here's what you do before you start.
• 1:03:50
  Get in this habit. Because everything is everything
• 1:03:54
  in life is habits, right? So instead of picking up your
• 1:03:57
  guitar and plugging it in and making that the first thing you
• 1:04:00
  do, start your voice memos before you start doing anything.
• 1:04:05
  Right, that's smart and it's simple and I just need to do it.
• 1:04:10
  So I I had the wrong approach. I used to wait till something it
• 1:04:15
  inspired me and then hit my voice memos.
• 1:04:17
  That totally kills your vibe #1 and #2 you don't catch what led
• 1:04:26
  up into that moment. Because a lot of times there's
• 1:04:29
  things leading to that moment that you love so much that are
• 1:04:33
  equally as valuable, and you don't want to lose those.
• 1:04:35
  Chris likes to call them golden moments.
• 1:04:39
  For me, because I'm playing so much less than I used to, I know
• 1:04:44
  that if I go a week or two without picking up the guitar,
• 1:04:47
  that when I do pick it up, I'm going to have ideas just
• 1:04:51
  flowing, just coming out. And I need to actually do the
• 1:04:55
  voice memo thing when that happens, because if I know
• 1:04:59
  they're coming then I should capture them right away.
• 1:05:02
  Yeah, so just start that and then plug your guitar in and
• 1:05:05
  start playing and Yep, go to town.
• 1:05:09
  So that I was telling you that the book was actually inspired
• 1:05:11
  by a song. Yeah.
• 1:05:13
  In turn, the book actually inspired about four other songs.
• 1:05:18
  Right on. So that I'm hoping before
• 1:05:21
  Christmas to actually record and release an EP of like, House of
• 1:05:28
  the Black Moon EP songs inspired by the book.
• 1:05:31
  And it'll be, yeah, like a, a 1-2 punch, like a William
• 1:05:36
  Chandler version of Operation Mind Crime.
• 1:05:38
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:05:41
  Not nice. What's funny is that song that I
• 1:05:43
  had sent you guys, the the engineer who's a really
• 1:05:47
  respected guy here in Fort Worth, he was like the vocals.
• 1:05:51
  He's like, I'm hearing kind of like a Geoff Tate vocal.
• 1:05:55
  And I could have died and, like, been perfectly happy and never,
• 1:06:02
  ever to be compared to him. And this is the same guy that,
• 1:06:07
  you know, like 10 years earlier had told me you should probably
• 1:06:11
  get someone else to sing your songs because I, I don't think
• 1:06:14
  you got it. And then to have him compare me
• 1:06:17
  to Jeff Pate. It was like a heavenly comment.
• 1:06:21
  And I actually don't hear it in the song, but, you know, I'll.
• 1:06:24
  I'll take it. Absolutely.
• 1:06:26
  Yeah, that's cool. I didn't.
• 1:06:27
  But see, I never heard. I never heard that I had a
• 1:06:29
  Southern drawl when I sang. But people, so many people told
• 1:06:32
  me you sound like a Southern rocker.
• 1:06:34
  That's like, OK. And I don't, I don't hear it.
• 1:06:36
  But everybody, everybody hears it, which is which is why it
• 1:06:40
  fits so well with what what we created in Nemesis, because it
• 1:06:44
  was an authentic sound for that type of rock band, you know.
• 1:06:49
  OK, so I'd heard the the name Nemesis, but I'd never listened
• 1:06:55
  to you guys. So if I was asking you what was
• 1:06:58
  your mains down? What did you sound like?
• 1:07:00
  We sounded like Creed. That's that's that whole
• 1:07:02
  concept. We sounded like we were better
• 1:07:04
  than Creed. I have a better range than Scott
• 1:07:05
  Stapp. But at the time, how I wrote was
• 1:07:09
  how Stapp writes. It's about life and religion and
• 1:07:12
  it's not about partying, getting drunk, getting laid.
• 1:07:14
  Right, Right. It was very descriptive in, in,
• 1:07:19
  in how I would write my songs. They would, they would
• 1:07:22
  storytelling in, in a rock'n'roll type thing, like the
• 1:07:25
  song you heard of Freeman. You know, I don't, I don't like
• 1:07:28
  to explain to people what it is because I want them to have
• 1:07:30
  their own interpretation of it. But it's, it's, it's, it's
• 1:07:35
  basically, it was me at a point in my life where I was just
• 1:07:40
  tired of being told what to do and how to do it.
• 1:07:42
  And I'm just fucking, I'm going to be a free man.
• 1:07:44
  I'm going to, I'm going to do what I want.
• 1:07:45
  I just, you know, it's just, I've Mickey, my wife has always
• 1:07:51
  said this thing about me. You either love or hate me.
• 1:07:53
  There's no in between. There's, there's no, there's no
• 1:07:55
  Gray. And part of those that that hate
• 1:07:57
  me is because I just, I don't have a filter and I don't know
• 1:07:59
  how to control my filter. I've learned over the years to
• 1:08:03
  silence myself. I did something last week where
• 1:08:06
  I was like, Oh, I didn't say that, you know, but it's just,
• 1:08:10
  but it's just a thing. I'm going to be a free man.
• 1:08:12
  I'm going to, you know, I'm going to just, I want to be
• 1:08:15
  free. I want to be free of all these
• 1:08:16
  rules and these restrictions and, and how you're telling me
• 1:08:18
  to live just just, you know, so they're a piece.
• 1:08:24
  They were a piece of my soul. And then there's so when I gave
• 1:08:26
  him the mic and then he realized as he read them and, and, and
• 1:08:29
  heard me sing them. That's why number 1, he said it
• 1:08:31
  never got tired because I approached every show like this
• 1:08:35
  is it this is the last time we're going to play live.
• 1:08:36
  So I sung those songs and that's why I was never really big in
• 1:08:39
  the covers because I couldn't I couldn't immerse myself into a
• 1:08:43
  cover like I could immerse myself into something I wrote
• 1:08:46
  because I live that. So that's so from from a music
• 1:08:50
  standpoint, it's hard to say because Mike create his own
• 1:08:52
  sound because he's he's doesn't play anybody else's music.
• 1:08:55
  He created his own thing and people tell him he created his
• 1:08:57
  own thing and we were around when when the Tempe music's name
• 1:09:01
  was exploding with the gym blossoms and and refreshments
• 1:09:03
  and dead how it works. So we weren't that Tempe Jingle
• 1:09:05
  Jingle sound. We were straight up, just in
• 1:09:07
  your face rock, which is why we could play with bands like
• 1:09:09
  Sacred Rike all the way to enough's Enough to Marshall
• 1:09:12
  Tucker Band, Tony McAlpine, everybody in between because we
• 1:09:15
  just we we weren't locked in a category.
• 1:09:18
  So we definitely weren't scared to step on a stage.
• 1:09:21
  Wouldn't we? No, no.
• 1:09:22
  So that was that thing that the only really way to explain it is
• 1:09:26
  we were Creed before Creed was Creed.
• 1:09:27
  But I think our product was, and it's going to sound bold as
• 1:09:32
  fuck, but I think our if our first album, if we ever released
• 1:09:35
  it, I think would have would have went toe to toe with my own
• 1:09:38
  prison just because every song that we played was so well
• 1:09:41
  received over and over and over again with people that never saw
• 1:09:46
  us would and you know what I mean?
• 1:09:47
  And then just you, you go from playing with two people and then
• 1:09:50
  playing in front of 1000 and even more in a short amount of
• 1:09:54
  time that happened. Within six months of right.
• 1:09:56
  So it shows you the man, the, the music is what bringing
• 1:09:59
  people in is, is it's, it's not my antics.
• 1:10:02
  It's not, you know, Scott's drumming or, or Mike's solos and
• 1:10:06
  shit. It's the whole element and the
• 1:10:08
  fact that we had this polished product that we put on
• 1:10:10
  regardless every night, regardless of how we were
• 1:10:13
  feeling, whether we are had a shit day or whether I had a cold
• 1:10:15
  mic, it didn't matter. It's like once, once it was our
• 1:10:18
  time. Those 40 minutes, hour, whatever
• 1:10:21
  it was, it was like non-stop. The first 3 songs out the gate,
• 1:10:24
  no words to the crowd. It's just boom, boom, boom,
• 1:10:26
  boom. Didn't I'm like how you doing?
• 1:10:27
  And they're just like, you know, remember that, that Maxwell
• 1:10:31
  commercials or Memorex. Is it live or Memorex with the
• 1:10:33
  guys in the chair and the hairs? Yeah, that's what we did.
• 1:10:37
  That's what we did. And but that alone, I think
• 1:10:40
  helped build us a following so. And those parts were planned.
• 1:10:44
  I mean we, we thought this shit out.
• 1:10:46
  We're we all agreed as a group, let's go out there and just kick
• 1:10:50
  their ass for like 11 straight minutes of our set.
• 1:10:53
  Even if our sets only 20 minutes long, we still kick their ass
• 1:10:56
  for the 1st 11 minutes. Nice.
• 1:10:59
  And so that's like, yeah, having been in bands, you're going to
• 1:11:05
  find this fascinating. But there was never any.
• 1:11:08
  Nobody ran that band. Scott and I formed that band
• 1:11:11
  only because we were there first.
• 1:11:13
  We didn't neither one of us were like, we have 50% of the vote
• 1:11:19
  and then you 2 have 25. It wasn't like everybody had an
• 1:11:23
  equal 25% vote if you if three people didn't like it and one
• 1:11:28
  person liked it, that one person either had to live with it or
• 1:11:32
  explain their side of it again to get the other three to buy
• 1:11:36
  into it. Right, right.
• 1:11:38
  And it was. Always what was best for the
• 1:11:40
  song, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:11:42
  And, and I think that's probably another direction I went wrong
• 1:11:47
  was that, and even if it, I don't think it was the reality,
• 1:11:50
  but the perception was that I wouldn't listen to someone
• 1:11:53
  else's opinion or that I wouldn't take them seriously.
• 1:11:56
  And I think the other guys probably just stopped.
• 1:11:58
  Yeah, giving their input after a while because they figured I was
• 1:12:02
  going to try to shoot it down or or put my own stamp on it and
• 1:12:07
  kind of to make it mine. And, you know, growing up and
• 1:12:10
  maturing and seeing things from other people perspectives.
• 1:12:14
  Let me know. Like, you know, maybe I
• 1:12:17
  definitely should have listened at this point, should have
• 1:12:19
  listened at this point and, and not tried to to take over too
• 1:12:23
  much. But at the time, I felt that I
• 1:12:25
  was the only one who actually was trying to make this work and
• 1:12:29
  and make it an actual thing and. See, I didn't have.
• 1:12:32
  A Jobs. I didn't have that problem,
• 1:12:34
  William, but I'll tell you where I would have never had that
• 1:12:38
  problem because my gift was whether it was true or not, I
• 1:12:44
  never thought I was good enough to be that person, right?
• 1:12:46
  I always felt blessed that these three guys were standing in
• 1:12:49
  front of me because in my eyes they were all better musicians
• 1:12:53
  than me, everyone. But see, but see, that's, that
• 1:12:55
  was the mindset of us when none of us had an ego.
• 1:12:58
  I did not have LSD, right? I did not have lead singer's
• 1:13:01
  disease, right? I, I knew what I did, nobody
• 1:13:04
  else could do. But it was from a vantage point
• 1:13:07
  of because that's, that's because I own what I do.
• 1:13:09
  It's I'm not the greatest singer in the world.
• 1:13:11
  I'm the greatest lyricist, the one that come with the best
• 1:13:13
  melodies in the world. But I knew my role and I enjoyed
• 1:13:17
  what I did. I just wanted to jam.
• 1:13:18
  And I mean, that was whenever there was any type of like
• 1:13:21
  little scuffle, I'm like, fuck it, let's just go jam, man.
• 1:13:24
  Let's shut up. Let's go.
• 1:13:25
  He did have that gift. Because I just, I just liked
• 1:13:28
  being on stage. I just liked performing in front
• 1:13:30
  of people. And at the end of the day,
• 1:13:31
  that's all I cared about was just jamming.
• 1:13:33
  So we didn't have, we were blessed enough not to have those
• 1:13:37
  egos in. And you know, the the
• 1:13:39
  infighting, the Yoko Ona moments, because none of us had
• 1:13:43
  an ego. None of us approached like like
• 1:13:45
  my last band, I was in it derailed because of the guitar
• 1:13:48
  players thought he was Eddie Van Halen.
• 1:13:50
  And he has had one fits the door and he had temper tantrums.
• 1:13:53
  So finally I was just like, fuck you, dude.
• 1:13:55
  We lost, we almost lost two members when we were in Sturgis.
• 1:13:58
  And then we lost one. We came back and then that was
• 1:14:00
  replaced. And then it's just, it just,
• 1:14:04
  it's just, you know, it's just your ego destroys everything.
• 1:14:08
  Well, here's a great example of what Chris just brought up, a
• 1:14:12
  great example for young musicians out there, old
• 1:14:14
  musicians, whatever. If you're if you think that
• 1:14:19
  you're so important to the band that without you they can't go
• 1:14:23
  on, you're going to fail. Yeah, right.
• 1:14:27
  And on the flip side of that, as the band give, if like Chris
• 1:14:33
  doesn't play an instrument, he was our front man, right?
• 1:14:35
  He's our singer. He's the guy that makes sure
• 1:14:37
  that the show goes off without a hitch.
• 1:14:40
  Give that person the power to do that.
• 1:14:43
  When we stepped on the stage, I expected him to be larger than
• 1:14:47
  life. I expected him to act not
• 1:14:50
  egotistical, but I expected him to be larger than life, right.
• 1:14:55
  I wasn't from absolutely. So in the audiences eyes they
• 1:14:59
  were like, oh wow, that's his band.
• 1:15:01
  You know, that's how I wanted it to look.
• 1:15:03
  Was this is Chris Dunham's band we were fronting?
• 1:15:08
  No, but that's how. The right, right, right.
• 1:15:11
  And and yeah, you. Know, and we made it look that
• 1:15:13
  way, but when we stepped off stage and Chris started talking
• 1:15:16
  to people, they were always fascinated that he wasn't like,
• 1:15:19
  oh, you know, don't talk to me kind of guy, right?
• 1:15:21
  He'd be like, hey, what's up? You want to go.
• 1:15:23
  Have a beer like yeah, nice to meet you.
• 1:15:25
  You know, I, I think one, one another thing that helped derail
• 1:15:29
  us, at least in the when it came to playing live was so, you
• 1:15:33
  know, my two biggest, my 2 most important influences as music
• 1:15:39
  came word Kiss and Pantera. And I love both of those bands
• 1:15:44
  like to go out and not only destroy the audience, but
• 1:15:48
  destroy the other bands that were playing with them.
• 1:15:51
  Right. Almost became like a like a
• 1:15:54
  competitive and the healthy competition is fine, sure, But
• 1:15:59
  when when that's kind of what you're that when that's your
• 1:16:02
  mindset going into a show. We actually didn't become part
• 1:16:06
  of the scene and have all these other bands that we were friends
• 1:16:10
  with, which we could have very easily had if we just reached
• 1:16:16
  out to them or you know, like. That's how we kept getting
• 1:16:19
  better and better shows as well. The rhythm guitar player for
• 1:16:24
  Sacred Sacred Reich was actually our sound man at the Mason Jar
• 1:16:28
  so. Oh wow, so you loved us?
• 1:16:31
  Except when he told us so. Except when he told us.
• 1:16:33
  Hey guys, get one more song, OK? I got the song. 12 minutes later
• 1:16:37
  it's like dude, don't ever play that song again, OK?
• 1:16:40
  That's one of the best stories that we got, man.
• 1:16:43
  He's like, you got one more song.
• 1:16:45
  And Mike, yeah, Mike and I looked each other in the Vine.
• 1:16:48
  I'm. I'm gonna lay this story out.
• 1:16:50
  So you're opening up for the most popular band in Phoenix of
• 1:16:54
  that style at the time. Sacred Writing was it.
• 1:16:56
  They were formed there. Flotsam and Jetsam was formed
• 1:16:59
  there, but they ended. Up.
• 1:17:00
  Yeah, yeah. They didn't get quite as big
• 1:17:03
  Sacred Reich in that music genre.
• 1:17:05
  They were it. Yeah.
• 1:17:07
  And like Chris said, the rhythm guitar player loved us.
• 1:17:11
  So they're on right after us. He's like, hey, you guys got one
• 1:17:15
  more song. And I looked at each other.
• 1:17:17
  We had just written this song, and we loved it.
• 1:17:19
  We never got to play it in front of people yet, so we started
• 1:17:22
  playing it. And the son of a bitch was 12
• 1:17:23
  minutes long. And it was awesome.
• 1:17:26
  That was a great song. He could have burned a hole
• 1:17:28
  through US about halfway through that song.
• 1:17:31
  He kept and I didn't really pay attention to him.
• 1:17:33
  And then I saw him like, Oh yeah, Oh yeah.
• 1:17:35
  But yeah, I was yeah. Have you guys seen the video of
• 1:17:40
  Nirvana playing trees in Dallas and Kurt Cobain getting into the
• 1:17:45
  fight with the with the event stuff guy?
• 1:17:48
  I don't think so, no. I have to look that up.
• 1:17:51
  So. Yeah, this was just a few weeks
• 1:17:54
  after Never Mind had come out. So they're not huge yet.
• 1:17:57
  And they're playing a 500, you know, person place in Dallas.
• 1:18:02
  And the, the employee, the staff of Trees apparently had a
• 1:18:08
  problem with Nirvana and Kurt Cobain had a problem with their
• 1:18:12
  sound board. So he actually hacked it with
• 1:18:15
  his guitar, which really pissed them off.
• 1:18:18
  Yeah. And he does a stage dive into
• 1:18:22
  the crowd during a song. And as he's coming back on stage
• 1:18:26
  and the events get the event stuff guy who's helping him,
• 1:18:28
  he's like kind of open palm striking him to the face.
• 1:18:33
  So Kurt Cobain takes his guitar and he smashes the guy's face
• 1:18:37
  with it. Oh, shit, The guy took his head
• 1:18:40
  and there's blood pouring out of his head.
• 1:18:42
  So he punches Kurt Cobain. Shaw wins.
• 1:18:46
  Like, Dave Grohl jumps over his drums so fast, like, and he's in
• 1:18:52
  between them. And eventually, like, cooler
• 1:18:55
  heads prevail, They all come down.
• 1:18:57
  Nirvana actually finishes their set.
• 1:18:59
  But when the show's over, they run out, and that guy and his
• 1:19:02
  friends are all waiting to kill them.
• 1:19:04
  Oh, so they managed to escape into a taxi cab.
• 1:19:08
  And there's video of this. You can see it on YouTube.
• 1:19:10
  OK, OK. Well, we had lined that very
• 1:19:15
  same club and we there was an opening band, a middle band and
• 1:19:21
  us. Well, we do our sound check and
• 1:19:25
  we go eat. When we come back, we find out
• 1:19:27
  the middle band has pulled out. Oh, so instead of going on at
• 1:19:31
  midnight, now we're going on at 11.
• 1:19:34
  Got you. That's great.
• 1:19:35
  Except that all our friends and fans whatnot, they're all
• 1:19:40
  midnight, right? So at about 11:45, our fans
• 1:19:45
  start trickling in and that's right when the sound guy says
• 1:19:49
  you've got two more songs and we're like, OK, so we play the
• 1:19:56
  first one and then he says that's it, you're done.
• 1:19:59
  And we're like, what about the last song?
• 1:20:03
  He's like, Nah, you're done. So we start playing it anyway,
• 1:20:07
  and then all of it, but in there's no sound.
• 1:20:10
  He cut it. Off.
• 1:20:11
  There's no guitar. He just cut us off.
• 1:20:15
  We get pissed off the crowds confused, they don't know what
• 1:20:18
  the Hell's happening. They're pissed off our friends
• 1:20:20
  who just sat down with beers. They don't know what's going on
• 1:20:23
  when all of a sudden someone yells something to us, which
• 1:20:27
  pisses off our friends and the event staff of trees.
• 1:20:32
  And our friends are now facing off in the parking lot of the
• 1:20:36
  club and I try every me and and my dad who was there.
• 1:20:42
  We managed to get them not to have a fistfight.
• 1:20:45
  And then another one of our friends who's in the front of
• 1:20:49
  the club, he pisses on the Q1O2 van who had just announced that
• 1:20:58
  House Divided was playing Trees. And come down here and see him,
• 1:21:01
  him not knowing that the show is already over and that there's
• 1:21:04
  about to be a bar room brawl. So that was our infamous Nirvana
• 1:21:10
  like story of headlining Trees, and it was the one and only time
• 1:21:15
  that we got to play that show. Right on.
• 1:21:19
  That's it. Yeah.
• 1:21:20
  That's a fun story. So let's wrap this up.
• 1:21:22
  Tell people where they where they can find your book.
• 1:21:24
  William. Yes.
• 1:21:25
  So once again, the name of the book is House of the Black Moon.
• 1:21:29
  It is a dramatic suspense story that's full of action, revenge,
• 1:21:35
  horror and a doomed love story. I'll show you the book right
• 1:21:40
  here. There you go and you can get it.
• 1:21:44
  You can get it on Amazon and Kindle if you like to read your
• 1:21:48
  books on a tablet or a laptop. And it's my it's the favorite
• 1:21:54
  thing I'm doing. I never thought I'd be an author
• 1:21:55
  and here I am. And I can't wait to keep writing
• 1:21:57
  the sequel and the trilogy that's.
• 1:22:00
  Awesome. Thank you guys.
• 1:22:00
  Congratulations for having me on because this was a blast.
• 1:22:04
  When you get the sequel written, we'll have to have you come back
• 1:22:06
  on. We can talk more about music and
• 1:22:07
  books because, you know, obviously, obviously we love
• 1:22:09
  talking music because we've done that basically for almost 90
• 1:22:12
  minutes now. Yeah, we're good.
• 1:22:15
  I look for it. Yeah, we're.
• 1:22:18
  Hey, so we wrap a very show like this.
• 1:22:19
  If you're feeling sad, depressed, suicidal, don't do
• 1:22:22
  it. Go outside, go for a run, go
• 1:22:23
  scream in a pillow. Go journal.
• 1:22:25
  Go. Go find somebody to talk to you.
• 1:22:27
  Call your neighbor, call your, call your parents, call your, I
• 1:22:29
  don't know, call somebody. If you can't find somebody, text
• 1:22:31
  988. Somebody's there waiting to
• 1:22:33
  respond to you to help talk you out of your doom and gloom.
• 1:22:36
  Tomorrow's always a better day, especially when you wake up in
• 1:22:39
  it. Don't leave a hole in somebody's
• 1:22:40
  heart because somebody does love you.
• 1:22:41
  So they will miss you. Hell, we'll miss you because you
• 1:22:44
  know, that's what we're about is everybody coming together and
• 1:22:46
  and tomorrow's always a better day.
• 1:22:48
  So with that being said, I'm I'm Chris.
• 1:22:50
  He's Mike. This is William Chandler.
• 1:22:51
  You can find him on Amazon and Kendall for his book, name of
• 1:22:55
  the book again, House of the black moon, House of the Black
• 1:22:58
  Moon. Until next time, everybody see
• 1:22:59
  you. Thanks for coming on, William.
• 1:23:02
  Thank you very much. Don't don't leave yet.
• 1:23:04
  I won't man. Let's.