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Peter Wolf · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Search Podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Peter Woolf, who's got a new
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: book reading on the movie. Peter, why now, why finally
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: run in memoir?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Well, Bob, first of all, thank you for having me on.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: And I've you know, followed you heard about your newsletter
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: for years, all the UH controversies that you've started and
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: UH people have followed. So I am glad to be
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: sharing some time with you and meeting you. But the
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: reason for your question why now? What would happen was
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I would always be backstage or invited to a dinner
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: or something, and you know, you'd have a glass or
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: two and start telling worries and people would always say, Peter,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: you should write a book. And I was about to
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: release the new CD. It was about eighty percent done.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Now I thought, you know, if I released this now
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: in about two weeks, it will be in the ether.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: And what could I do that might have some resonance
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: and bring some exposure to maybe broaden my awareness of
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: the solo work I've done. And the idea came, this
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: might be the right time where things are at right
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: now to actually write the book. And so in designing
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: that I decided, you know, there's a lot every musician
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: seems to be writing a book, and you know a
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: lot of them, not all of them, but a lot
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: of them are that cookie cutter type where I was,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: you know, when I was born and blah blah blah blah,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: I start got my first guitar, and then when I
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: saw either Elvis or depending on the age, the Beatles
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: on Ed Sullivan, blah blah blah blah, and I joined
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: my first band, and then it just goes on like that,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: which is okay if you're interested in that person. But
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: there are a few musicians books that are musicians wrote
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: that I found that were special, and I tried for
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: myself to create a special style of book, and by
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: that is I have each chapter that I wrote is
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: like a short story. It has the beginning, middle, and
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: an end each chapter. So I think there's about thirty
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: something chapters in the book, and you can go from
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: the first chapter or you can read the fourteenth chapter
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: or the twenty seventh chapter. And they don't necessarily they
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: connect time wise, because the early chapters start in a
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: time span, but each one is individual, so they're more
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: like short stories. And so I guess that's the reason
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: why I decided to spend two years. I called up
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: my great independent agent, Frank Riley, and said, Frank, I'm
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: going to take a step back to hopefully take two
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: steps forward. And he understood. And I was privileged to
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: meet a book agent whose name was Andrew Wiley. And
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Andrew Wiley in the book world is quite a notable figure.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: And as a book agent he handled people like Salomon
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Rushdie and Martin Amos. And he handles the Philip Ross
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: estate and Saul Bellow's estate and Robert Lowell estate. So
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: he was well known, came from Boston, and so it
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: all seemed to align up together.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, have you achieved your goal? Are you happy with
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the results in terms of impact?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Well, yes and no. Yes, I finished the book and
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: that you know, it's sort of like one. Well, the
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: people that I admire work on a recording or work
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: on a project, and the first thing they want to
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: do is artistically satisfy themselves, you know, and if they
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: feel they achieve something that they're excited about, that's the
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: first step. So yes, I feel I I did that.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: And again, I spent many years avoiding doing a book,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: and so that I achieved. And what happened, Bob, and
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: you might understand this more than most, is that I
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: signed to Little Brown because they published some of the
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: books that I really love, Peter Gerlnick who's written some
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: of the great music books, the great Elvis Presley books,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Last Trained to Memphis, and Caroless Love and Nick Tosh,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: who was a great writer critic. He wrote his books
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: for Little Brown, and Keith Richards and et cetera. Besides,
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: you know, they were a Boston based publishing company and
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: they had a lot of their stable had a lot
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: of great writers in it. So I wanted to be
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: with Lil Brown, just like in the early days when
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: I was starting with the Guiles Band, my dream was
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: to be on Atlantic Records. And so once I got
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: to Little Brown, they were very excited and I started writing,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: you know, the chapters and writing the outlines, and there
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: were people there that had been there for you know,
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: twenty five thirty years. And then what happened hashet which
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: is the corporation kind of what happened in the music
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: industry when universals started gobbling up all the different companies,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: all the people that I signed on to to be
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: with Little Brown were all fired, and so all of
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: a sudden I went through I think four editors, and
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: it was quite difficult because the people that were passionate
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: about your project were no longer there. And so the
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: book came out, and there's this thing that I was
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: unaware of called a Kirkus review, and that's for publishers
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: and bookstores and if you get a Circus review, but
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: if you get a Kirkus review and a star, that's
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: apparently a real good achievement. So we got that and
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: then reviews started coming in, and in a very quick
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: time the book ended up number five on the New
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: York Times bestseller List, which to me was, you know,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: a great accomplishment. But then what happened is the company
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: ran out of books, and in book world, I think
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: books are like printed now in the Far East or something,
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: and so it took a good long almost a month
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: to maybe less, to get you know, books back in
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: the big boxes and independent bookstores. So I was working
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: very hard on promoting. And so when you get people
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: coming into the bookstore, and I would go into bookstores,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: there were no books or maybe one copy. And then
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: there's always Amazon that has books but Amazon doesn't report
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: to people like the New York Times or the Boston
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Globe or the Washington Post. So there was a great
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: lag period. And not unlike a record when you're you
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: know on you say, like getting on a Stephen Colbert
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: or fallon or you know, doing beyond Howard Stern or
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: your podcast, and you create a certain excitement. In the
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: old days, people go in the record store if they
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: didn't have the record, uh, you know they you know,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: you kind of lose that moment and then there are
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: new records coming along. So I did achieve what I
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: wanted to achieve, but now it's been very hard to
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: kind of keep the book, the momentum of the book continuing.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, are there books in the stores now? Is the
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: window passed or can you regain momentum.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: That's something that I'm still trying to figure out, Bob.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: There are books now in the stores. But what happens
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: is that in the independent bookstores so many new books
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: come out. There's different not unlike in the record period.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: You have you know, your September release, early September release,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: then it's followed by end of September, and then comes
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: your October release. So there's only a certain amount of
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: premium space. Like in the old record stores, if you'd
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: walk into say like Tower or Sam Goodie and you'd
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: see the cutouts and the you know, the the advertisements
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: for the recording, they last only for a certain time
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: until something new comes along. So I think losing momentum
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: in the book world is far harder to regain than
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: in the music world.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, in the music world, as you referenced earlier about
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: putting a new album out and being in the ether
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: very quickly, it's totally different now. It used to be
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: some famous musician Elvis died, there was a limited amount
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: of product in the stories immediately sold out and you
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: couldn't we fulfill it for a couple of months, I
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: mean a couple of weeks ultimately, whereas now everything is
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: streaming an instant access. We have kindle in e books.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: In the book world, print publishers have done their best
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: to sort of kill that, but without making that any issue.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: How do you feel about the digital world in music
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: and the changes in the music world of distribution.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a very complicated question because the uh, there's
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: a lot of segments to it. They're not to sound
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: generic or avoiding the question. But in reality, for me,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: there's many positives and there's many negatives. And the positives
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: is that it's available, it's there now someone like myself,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: who I wouldn't say I'm an audio file, but I
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: really enjoy hearing music at a certain quality, and the
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: compressed music does disturb me. That happens a lot in digital.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: I have lots and lots of my records. I'm not
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: a record collector, but I have thousands of LPs because
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: you know, all through my life, I've never let my
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: records dwindle. I have the first you know, Frankie Lyman
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: and the Teenagers album. I have the first Elevis album.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: I have the first Chuck Berry album, first Buddy Holly
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: album you know that I bought when I was eleven
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: years old. So I do listen to an awful lot
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: of analog. But I also have, you know, hundreds and
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: hundreds of CDs which I also enjoyed. So I'd say
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: they answer the question, there's the negative.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, just going to one element at the point, the
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  Speaker 1: book has got a lot of interactions with legendary blues
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: musicians and in the sixties, discovering these people was a
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: scene unto itself, somewhere in the phone books. Some were
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: working street jobs, et cetera, et cetera. Today literally everything
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: is available like it used to be a record collector,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: you go and for years you look for record. Now
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I you go online. It's either available or not. These
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: blues musicians in their music because now it is available
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: to anybody who wants to hear it. Can the blues
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: in these people come back?
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know what you mean by comeback, Bob.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, let me be more specific. The roots of rock
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and roll are blues. In the present moment, a snapshot
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: of the landscape of music is hip hop, pop in
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: country rock and roll were the Gules band those roots,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: they're not primary in the market today. However, there have
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: been bands that have been rediscovered the doors decades ago,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: led Zeppelin. Can we see a blues based revival the
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: influence of this music or is it, like jazz more,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: a thing of the past.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: No. I don't think it's a thing of the past.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: And I think you know, Bob, there's many many bands
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: that still searching out and learning about blues. I know
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: in the book when I write about Muddy Waters and
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: how I got to know money, and he would, you know,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: stay at my apartment, and we became, you know, quite
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: good friends. They're young people come up to me and say, man,
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: you know you brought Muddy Waters to life for me,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: and they're they're in bands that are just starting out now.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: It's true where I am based in Boston. Boston has
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: a great folk heritage and also has a great roots heritage.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I've never, uh, the term Americana seemed to have come out.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: I don't quite understand it, but I mean, I do
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: understand it, but I don't understand how one gets defined
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: in it. But Boston is, you know, because of the
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Club forty seven. It was the starting place for Joan
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Baez and many of the bluegrass bands. And it also
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: had an amazing place a showcase for the great jazz artists.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: So Coltrane, Miles Davis would always love to come to Boston,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: and even people like Artie Sure would come to Boston.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: And you had Berkeley School of Music, you had several conservatories,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Conservatory of Music more for classical but different you know,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: uh horn players, classical horn players that all became jazz men.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: And so uh, I got to see in small clubs
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: uh in Boston, Felonious Monk, Miles Davis, you know, Ama Jamal,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: you know some of the some of the greats. And
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: in these same clubs later on it was Van Morrison
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: and uh John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Otis Rush.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: So Uh, Boston was a rich place. Uh. And I
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: think that if one is interested in a certain type
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: of music, uh, they will discover it. And the digital
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: world makes it a lot easier to discover it. You know,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: there's that famous story of you know, uh, Keith Richards
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: and Mick Jagger knew each other as kids, but then
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: one day either Mick or Keith I forget, we're carrying
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: a record and they were on the train and one
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: spotted the best of Muddy Waters under one's arm and
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: then goes, wow, man, you like that, and boom that
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: rekindled their friendship because they were both blues fanatics. But
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: you and I both know that there was a time
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: when rock and roll in itself became outdated. And by
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: that I mean a rock band like the Jay Giles band,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: a rock band even like you know, so many rock
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: bands were considered antiquated or dinosaurs, and then came this
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: music called disco, and disco took over the entire Billboard
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Top forty basically, and there was no rock and roll
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: on Billboard, So one could have said back then, is
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: rock and roll dead? Is anyone interested in blues? Is
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: anyone interested in country blues? Is anyone interested in you know,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Carl Perkins, for instance, I was a late night DJ.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I helped start a radio station, WBCNU, and it was
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: a classical music station and an easy listening music station
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: before it was bought out and turned into a rock
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: and roll station. And it was one of the first
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: important FM AO R ALBAM oriented radio stations and had
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: a big, big following. There was one in San Francisco,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: down in New York an he w, but we kind
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: of really hit the mark early on. And I remember
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: coming in one day because I did the I had
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: the wolf of Goop of Mama Tooth the show making
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: a niece Freezer bladlat Vithenian's got to come out, because
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: that's a rock and roll is all about Yamagama Guma
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: and I would do that from twelve o'clock at night
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: to six in the morning. And I remember coming in
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: one day for a meeting and they were carrying out
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: all the great Sinatra records. They're all the great, even
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Roy Orbison's, and they were just dumping them. And I said,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: what are you doing with these? He goes, well, we're
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: getting rid of them. I said, why. I said, we
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: got to build, you know, room in the library for
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Country Joe and the Fish and this and that, and
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: you know, so there were to them. Uh, Carl Perkins
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: was antiquated, you know, Roy Orbison was considered old time music.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: And the Beach Boys even you know, had a kind
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: of some did, some didn't. So the point I'm making
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: is that there has been so many transformations in music,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: and disco was dominant. It was the biggest seller. You know,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: labels were hunting after disco artists and acts, and you
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: know Atlantic with Chic and all of that, and Nile
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: and you know, the the Phillies, Gamble and Huff and
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: you know Columbia and it's just didn't it was, you know,
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: even motown. And then Slide came along and was one
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: of the few black artists on ao R radio, and uh,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: you know, slowly disco faded and rock and roll came back.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Bob Seger came back, Joan Jet came back, Ario speed
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Wagon came back, and you know, the Guiles band came back.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: We didn't go away, but on the charts we found
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: a new placement because uh disco finally had its uh
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: you know time, and rock and roll prevailed again. So
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: with blues artists, they're there.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: To me.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: I think of them as the classics, like Dickens or
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: like even Faulkner, you know, the artists. You know, if
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: you're interested in books, if you're interested in reading, you'd
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: go to the classics. And if you're interested in new
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: in a serious way, not, you know. And I have
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: nothing against pop music, it's coming from a different place.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: But for the musicians that I tend to admire, and
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: the musicians that tend to go the distance, they study
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: the art. And even as a painter, one went back
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: as far as the Renaissance painters, and then you went
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: into Breugel and you you know da Vinci, and you
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: went all the way up to Jiado Delacroix, and walk
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: your way up into the Impressionist post Impressionists, then into
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Matisse and Picasso, Cubis, and you know, futurists, and it
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: just you studied all that just as if you were
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: a filmmaker. You don't just start making films. You have
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: to study the history of the art. So I think
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: it's a complicated question, and I'm probably don't stop me talking,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: as Sunny Boy Williamson said, don't stop me talking, Bob,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you everything I know.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: You've been living in Boston for decades. However, you grew
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: up in New York and are quite New York savvy.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Boston is a college town scene as somewhat provincial. Okay,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: why do you stay in Boston? And tell me the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: difference from your eyes of Boston and New York.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: The difference between Boston and New York. Well, first of all,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I grew up in New York and I went I
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: think what saved my life was I lived in the
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Bronx and the Bronx if anyone knows about well, Dion
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: came from the Bronx, and Bobby Darren came from the Bronx.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Stanley Kuber came from the Bronx. The Bronx is a
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: special kind of place and to itself, and when I
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: grew up it was kind of rough and tough. I
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: grew up in a half Jewish, half Italian neighborhood. There
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: was you know, territorial aspects to it. If you were
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: in the wrong neighborhood, you got into trouble. And but
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: it was very rich in characters. And my sister, who
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: was older than me, danced frequently on a TV show
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: called Alan Freed's Big Beat. And Alan Freed started these
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: rock and roll shows called rock and Roll Calvalcade, and
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: he had him at the Brooklyn Fox, of the Brooklyn Paramount,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: then at the in Manhattan, and also in the Bronx.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: It came up to the Bronx Paradise and so I
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: would go and as a ten year old in a
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: matter of several months, and in one concert I had
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: as a ten year old who loved music and you know,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: had to buy certain records. In one concert, I saw
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard Screaming, Jay Hawkins,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Chantelle's,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: the Charell's, Ed Townsend and joe Ane Campbell the Blonde Bombshell,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: and I know I'm forgetting one or two others, but
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: it was just amazing and to see, you know, Chuck Berry,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: whose records. I had all of a sudden, they're live
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: on stage doing the duck walk and Jerry Lee Lewis
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: jumping on top of the piano, and you know, the
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Chantelle's singing maybe and you know, coming out of the
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: coffin was screaming Jay. I mean, as a ten year
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: old kid, I was baptized into rock and roll. I
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: became a fanatic. And you know, seeing these characters were
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: just amazing, and the talent and just young Frankie Lyman
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: who was a young twelve year old but must have
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: had the body of a young kid but was an
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: aged The things he did musically, how he could have
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: learned them at such an early age was astonishing. I
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: mean people talk about Michael Jackson, who was a phenomenal talent,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: but Frankie, you know, as as great and maybe even
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: greater as a young voice than even Michael's. But there's
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: no sense to compare them. They were just both great.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: So having that experience and then you know, getting to
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: see jazz artists at Birdland at the original Birdland early on,
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: and even as important as that, and maybe even more
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: important was growing up in New York when they had
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: some of the most incredible DJs. You had Alan Freed,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: followed by Jock O Henderson who infected me with you know,
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: things like hop pop ba doo, how do you do?
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: This is the jock and his record Machene Man Hey,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Dadda d how boo, and he would just go on
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: like that and do all these rhymes and patter and
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: played great music. And followed by him was the magnificent
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Montague and he would talk real low for lovers, and
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: he'd play things like Sam Cook and just all these
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: beautiful romantic soul ballads. And he was followed by Symphony
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Sid and Baba Do Babe, Babe Babe Bobba Doo doo,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: and Symphony Sid live from Birdland and Syphany Sid would
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: play and interview some of the greatest jazz artists in
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: the world. So as a ten year old eleven year old,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: I was absorbing, you know. At night, I you know,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: had right by my bed this big telefunk and radio
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: I had really low. I was just you know bond
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: I must have you know, fell asleep every night listening
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: to it. And I would even on Thursdays and certain
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: nights because of the difference between the AM radio band
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: and the f M radio band AM would bounce and trowl.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: So on Thursday nights I would get things like w
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: w V a wheeling West Virginia. And I always love
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: to tell the story. Being a huge Evely Brothers fan,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: I was listening one night to these gals, you know,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: imitating the sounded like they were imitating the Eavely Brother's harmony,
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: and you know, I wanted to know who, you know,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: these girls were that sounded like the Everly Brothers. And
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: when the DJ, who was coffee drinking, DJ Lee Moore,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: he said, those were thus Stanley Brothers. I said, brothers.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: I said, that sounded like girls. And that was my
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: first introduction to bluegrass, and so New York culturally was
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: quite amazing. And then my high school was located in Harlem.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I went to the High School of Music and Art
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: because I was, you know, really since all I don't know,
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: since three four, I was always interested in art and
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: painting and drawing, and I went to the High School
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: of Music and Art was located on one hundred and
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: thirty fifth Street in Manhattan, and the Great Apollo Theater
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: was on one hundred and twenty fifth Street. So every
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Wednesday I made a journey a Mecca down to the Apollo,
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: where I saw a movie, a travelogue, the Amateur Show,
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: and then the entire Apollo Show, where I saw people
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: like Jackie Wilson, Billy Stewart, Eda, James Muddy Waters, BB King,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: you did just you know, the Moonglows, I mean just
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: I can't even wreak James Brown, Wreatha Franklin or it
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: just the list is. And so being a young kid
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: seeing these amazing performers interact with an audience that was
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: alive and connected with the artists like being in church.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, because I would say ninety nine percent of
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: the artists that appeared at the Apollo all came out
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: of the church background. So the artists were like the preachers,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: and the audience was the congregation, and so their job
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: was to, you know, get that congregation worked up. And man,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: you know when you see the Olympics jumping around on stage,
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: or Jackie Wilson, you know, doing his splits, and just
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: the you know, talents, it it was unforgettable and stayed
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: with me throughout my life. And so New York and
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: then also in New York, there was this amazing place
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: at the time Greenwich Village, which was like the Left
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Bank in Paris. There was no commercial neon signs. It
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: was a gathering place for many musicians, folk musicians, jazz musicians.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: There was great folk clubs, great jazz clubs. People would
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: play out in Washington Square Park on the weekends and
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: from all over the city would bring their guitars. There
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: was a place called the Folklore Center where people hung out.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: There was the gas Light, and there was you know,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: the Cafe of Go Go, and there was places like
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: where bands I'm trying to think Leslie West's first band.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: I can't remember the night out where they appeared and
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: where the rascals and all these different people. So New
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: York was an incredibly cultural place. But Boston, being a
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: guy that didn't finish high school, I spent a good
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: year hitchhiking around the country seeing my friends at college,
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: pretending I was a college an art student, because in
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: those days, if you look like a student, you walked
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: around at university. There was no ideas there, you know,
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: there's just you know, they just assumed you were a student.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: So I spent a good deal of time traveling from
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: college to college. But Boston had so many colleges, so
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: I ended up attending. I was a student at BU,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: I was a student at Harvard, and then I was
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: a student at Brand. I was just pretending so I
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: could use their art supplies and you know, sleep in
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: the student dorm or outside. And then eventually I was
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: accepted to an art school in Boston. I got a
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: scholarship to the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, which
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: was quite an incredible, very conservative school where it was
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: six days a week. We started at eight thirty in
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: the morning and sometimes went to five o'clock at night.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: And they had the same program that they the same
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: technique and program that artists were taught in the late,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: you know, at the end of the nineteenth century. So
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: we had to study perspective, anatomy, sculpting, how to make
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: our own paints, how to just saw our own canvases,
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: all the traditional aspects of painting. And once I was
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: there and became engulfed in that world, I also somehow
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: on one night, the art students were performing at this
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: art loft, and that's how I got into becoming a
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: performer from that one night and so from that pointing on,
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Boston remained home because of school and then the bands
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: that I became involved with, and Boston was I think
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: artistically a healthier place because there were so many colleges
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: and so many clubs and so many opportunities for a musician,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: and as an artist, you didn't have the severe competition
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: that New York had, So Boston seemed to be a
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: more comfortable place to live, cheaper place to live. You know,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: I was living in Harvard Square for next to nothing,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: and so it just at that time was a healthier
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: environment for me to survive and artistically.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, In the book, you talk about signing to Atlantic
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Records without an URN and putting out all these records
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: and not making any money. A few things there. You
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: do have a hit single and seventy three Give it
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: to Me. You say that Atlantic takes half of the publishing.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: You say that you hire d he Anthony as your manager,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: so d never renegotiated. You really never made any money
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: from Atlantic, and Atlantic says they've wiped the books clean
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and they're starting to pay from dollar one. Give me
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: your assessment here.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Well, Uh, I was sort of representing the band. You
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: could say I was managing the Jay Giles band. Uh
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: and uh a funny story if I nate, because someone
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: who I think deserves the place on your podcast is
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: a fellow by the name of Mario Medeas known in
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: the music industry as the Big M. May I tell
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: a little funny story about the Big m we have.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: The Big Am was he worked, was in the Air Force.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: He was came from Mississippi. Uh. He moved to Chicago
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: with his father. Big Am was you know, this young
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: black you know, lover of music. His father loved blues,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: became very close with Muddy Waters. And his father, as
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: the Big Am would say, was a gambler, and he
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: would have played craps and start card games and all
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: the great blues artists would be part of his card games.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: And so at an early age, the Big Am got
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: to hear and see Muddy Waters, Hallan Wolfs Sonny Boy Williamson,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Little Walter and became emphatic. And then when he was
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: in the Air Force, he got so into Miles Davis
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: and especially John Coltrane. And he was a photographer for
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: the Air Force too, and he started taking pictures for
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: an English magazine that was the equivalent I can't think
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: of the name right now, but the English equivalent of Downbeat,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: and when he got out of the Air Force, he
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: would hang out at the clubs and especially go every
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: night went to see Miles Davis. And there was this
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: very attractive Swedish woman that Mario became friends with because
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: they both loved the music. And Mario was working as
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: a bookkeeper in a meatpacking place and she said to Mario,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: you know, I work at this company, Atlantic Records. Atlantic Records,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: that's where drawn Coltrane's on. Are you kidding me? He said, yeah,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: I can get you a job there, Mario, he said,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: he said, I don't care how much they pay. If
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: I can get three records, I'm in. And so Mario
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: becomes the bookkeeper in the bookkeeping department at Atlantic Records. Now,
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Mario is this, you know, black fellow that's working in Atlantic.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: And at that point, Jerry Wexler had all these great
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: you know, Wilson Picket, Joe text, Reefa Franklin, Don Kove,
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: you know, all these incredible blues artists, and Mario was
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: signing all the checks, even amite checks, Jerry Wexler's checks,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: all the checks uh for the entire Atlantic company and
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: their artists. But when the artists would come in Mario
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: would say to somebody like Salomon Burke with the picket,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: you know, man, these guys are not really paying you
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: as much as they should be because blah blah blah blah,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: and they're charging you for breakage and blah blah blah blah.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: And then your European sales abouz is not showing up here,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: so you know, actually they owe you X thousands of
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: more dollars than blah blah blah. Well, Wilson Picket would
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: hear this and he'd go down, Jarrett, I gotta tell
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: you, you know, man, you guys are cheating me out of
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: my you know, European royalties, that this and that that
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: you're charging me breakage. Your albums don't break they're not
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: seventy eighth blah blah blah blah blah blah. Well, then
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: would come Salomon Burke, and then would come this artist
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: and that artist, Joe Tech, and finally, you know, what's
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: where the hell are these guys getting this information from.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: So he has a meeting with Ahmed and they uh
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: find out that it's this guy up and bookkeeping on
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: the upper floor. This Mario Medeaz is telling his artist
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: that he admires. You know what they're faird is. So
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: everybody loved Mario and they didn't want to fire Mario
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: because people would be upset. So they brought Mario down
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: into Ahmed's office with Jerry and they said, you know,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Amici didn't maybe you know, uh we love it, but
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: see you know we got to take you out of accounting.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Uh so you know where else in the company. Uh
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: do you think he could be of you know, valuable?
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: And Mario said, hey, man, let me be a promotion man.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Let me go out with the band. Let me go
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: out with the young rock band and they don't know
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: shit from Shaniola. Let me take them all around the comming.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: I'll walk to the radio station with him. Man, I'll
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: get him played. Man. And this was you know, music
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: to Amit's and Jerry's ears and plus a lot of
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: the bands that he was talking about were bands like
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Rolling Stones, led Zeppelin, who were blues lovers that really
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: never came into contact with many of the black blues artists.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: And so here was Mario that was, you know, friendly
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: with Muddy, friendly with Hell and Wolf Freddie and friendly
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: with Otis reading. You know, we'd write checks out with
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: Otis tells a great story of how Otis wanted something
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: like twenty five thousand dollars in cash so he can
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: go up to the Apollo and flash all this money
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: around and pay his band and cash to show all
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: the other bands that he's rolling in the dough. But
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: the bank wouldn't cash check. Mario had to go down
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: to certify that yes, this this you know, young guy
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: is Otis reading, it's his money, et cetera. So Mario
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: becomes beloved, and he's uh taking artists all around the country.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: And there's this new artist called Doctor John who's coming
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: out with this album called Greegree, and he's taking Doctor
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: John up to Boston to w b C and the
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: radio station where I was working, and he was taking
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: him to the Boston tea party, which was the equivalent
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: of the Filmore in New York. It was Boston's Fillmore
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: equivalent or you know, uh the Agora or you know
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Philly Larry Maggott had And so he heard these blues,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: this blue stuff, and uh, Mary said, man, who are
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: these brothers? And I came into the dress room. He
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: asked me, who are those guys out there playing the blues?
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: I said that was us, you guys. He said, Holy
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: damn man. He said, what label you guys on? So
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: we're not on any label. You gotta be shitting me.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Hold on, and he calls up Jerry. Wesley said, Jerry,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: I got these guys here. Man, they're going to be hot.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: They're hot on the pistol. Man. They places this Chicago
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: blue shit.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Man.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: I heard him. I thought it was like a blues
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: band from Chicago. You got to sign these guys. So
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Jerry calls up a fellow that was big writer and
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: Rolling Stone and also producing Livingston Taylor and some albums
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: for Atlantic, and his name was John Landau. And he
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: calls up John and says, John, you know about this band,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: that Jay Giles band. And John said yeah, Peter Wolf's
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: a really good friend of mine. And three days later,
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: John Landau and I are sitting in the office of
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Jerry Wexler, no lawyer, and you know, Jerry's talking to us.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Never heard us, but you know, bound the word of
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Landau and uh, I guess made so some calls around Boston.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: He said, I'd like to sign you to Atgo Records.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: I said at Go, I said, man, Jerry, we got
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: to be on Atlantic, and so I don't know if
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: I could do that. So we called in a lawyer
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: and the lawyer said, Jerry, you know, this was all
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: a big bluff. I don't think we can put him
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: on Atlantic. You know we we can't, you know, And
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Jerry said, please see what you can do.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Please.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Anyway, they handed us a contract that was very, to
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: be polite, very antiquated, and you know, we were a
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: band of five six guys and it had limited you know,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: they were doing, you know, charging us for breakage. You
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: know that came from the days of seventy eights, you know,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: when you know there was a certain amount of shipping
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: seventy eights that would break and so, uh you the
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: record company it was it was very antiquated, and the
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: band was simon Atlantic, and we started touring. And in
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: those years it was touring, and I'm talking about nineteen seventy.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy, rock and roll touring was not unlike vaudeville,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: where you had an opening act, a middle act, and
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: then the headliner. And like in vaudeville, you'd had you know,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: five or six acts or seven or eight acts, and
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: then you'd have the headliner closing the show and it
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: would travel from city city and so we were the
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: opening act for almost two years, and I was able
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: to get the band signed to I went down and
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: had a meeting with a gentleman by the name of
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Frank Barcelona, who was the who started Premier Talent. And
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: I can go on for an hour about the importance
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: of Premier Talent, but it was the most important rock
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: agency at the time and had probably the most definitive
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: rock artists signed to its roster. And Frank started with
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: Brian Epstein and then signed Jimmy Hendrix, and he had
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: the Who and led Zeppelin and Springsteen and U two
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: and you know, uh, just you know, everybody in all
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: the eras, and uh, after our second record, we kind
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: of felt that we're still staying in the first slot.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: And we were traveling all around the country opening up
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: for bands like Black Sabbath, and you know, just Black
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: Sabbath and Jay Giles had nothing in common, but there
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: we were. And I remember talking with Frank and Frank
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: suggested we need to get a manager and maybe that
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: would help, a real formal manager. And Frank at that
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: time was close with a gentleman by the name of
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: De Anthony, and d Anthony was managing humble Pie that
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: was doing very well, Spooky Tooth. He had just managed
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Joe Cocker with the Holy On Russell Mad Dogs and Englishman,
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: and D came out of the you know, the world
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: of Tony Bennett in the Copa Cabana and loved the
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: music world, and he became our manager. And in a
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: long winded answer to this day, your question about why
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: he never renegotiated the Atlantic contract is beyond me. Nor
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: did we ever say, hey, D, you know, can you
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: renegotiate the contract? Because that's usually the first thing a
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: manager does. It sits down with the company and says, listen,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: I'm on board. Now you know I got this band,
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: that band, that band. I'm tight with Frank Barcelona. There's
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: no bullshitting around here. This band needs to get paid
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: aid fairly. Never happened.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: This late date. A, do you own the publishing for
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: those songs? And B do you ever get a check
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: for the recordings of Atlantic.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: In this late They Noah, do not own the songs. Uh,
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: this late they you know the checks that you know
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: do come in. Uh, but let me put it this way,
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: they're not checks that you're going to take a pleasurable
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: trip on it's you know, the monies are We did not.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: We were in debt. The guys band was in debt
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: from most of our time and we get out of
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: it and we would work with you know, trucking companies
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: and you know beg them to hold off sending us
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: the bills for three or four months. I remember the
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Claire Brothers Sound Company when they first started. You know,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: they didn't charge us for a long period of time,
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: and you know we repaid them. We did not actually
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: start being you know comfortable we're being able to pay
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: you know, guys would have to take loans and stuff.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: We were not comfortable until we actually were signed with
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: a new label and that was EMI America. And then
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: the book I explained how that occurrence happened and it
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: was quite a you know story of chance how that
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: all came to be. So it wasn't until really EMI
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: and we had three albums, Sanctuary, Love Stinks and then
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Freeze Frame when we really started to be, you know,
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: have the opportunity in front of us to really be
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: able to you know pack away some you know monies
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: for those rainy days.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: So what are you living on today?
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Peanut butter jelly, some cantuna fish and no, I've you know,
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: through the EMI stuff. There's you know in there. We
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: kept out publishing and so one uh, you know lives okay,
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: but not you know, people always think, oh man, you
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: know they know the Jay Giles band, and you mentioned
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: the song give It to Me, Well, give It to
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Me was on its way to becoming a hit. And
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: then I forget the f C C And then I
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: believe it was It wasn't Al Gore's wife, but it
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: was the very conservative woman that was lobbying Congress that
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: lyrics and rock were becoming very lewde And there was
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: a McCartney song, my Girl, she does It? What was
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: helped me out?
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: My girl does a good Yeah, yeah.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: It does it good. Well, you know that became a
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: huge controversy. But you couldn't mess so much with Paul McCartney,
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: but you could mess with the Jay Giles band. And
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: then you know, we were getting up there, getting up there,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: and then boom there was a band on AM radio.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: And I think I don't know if Abrams or whoever
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: was in charge of you know, who was a big
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: you know name and you had all the guys like
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: this Scipio, and you know, all the different helped me
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: out here well.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Tip sheets, consultants, Indie promo.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: All the all the consultants. Everybody put a freeze, no
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: puns intended on give it to me, and it just
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: stopped in its tracks, but it was on its way.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: It was like next to Paul Simon or Montego Bay.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: It was one of the few reggae songs at that time.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: You know, most people didn't know what reggae was or
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: heard it. Paul Simon had Mother's Child, Mother and Child
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Reunion that had a reggae feel to it. But other
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: than that, reggae was pretty unknown to most people. And
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: this was before the Heart that they come came out
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: and things like that.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, d Anthony, you tell some interesting stories about a
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: rock festival in Pennsylvania. At this late date, the reputation
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: of d Anthony is connected about the money first making
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Joe Cocker go on the road with mad dogs and
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: english men and a cruk.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: What was your experience, Well, the big m Mario was
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: riding in a car once and me indeed, and you know,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: d s it to me. You know, Mario let me
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: tell you about management. The first job. There's three jobs
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: that a manager has to do. Maaris was that he
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: goes one, get the money. Norrisaid, what's number two? He said,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: get the money? He said, so I can think I
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: got number three. He said, you gotta your smart Mario,
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: get the money. And that was the's philosophy. D was
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: from the Bronx. Uh, I'm from the Bronx. D was,
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: you know, an Italian grew up right near the neighborhood
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: I grew up. We uh knew similar places. Uh uh
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: similar restaurants. Uh. And when I met D, uh we
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: just talked Bronx to Bronx and I negotiated a handshake
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: deal with D. And we never had a contract. We
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: had a handshake deal. And I said to D and
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: somehow I bought. I said, look, let's get started, and
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: I'm representing the band. I don't know. You know, you
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: can come and have meetings and you know, we're kind
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: of like democratic band. And but look, if it's not
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: going to work out for you, and if we become problematic,
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: why would you want us? And if it's not going
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: to work out for us, why would we want you?
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: So let's just you know, have a handshake and get rolling.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: And when for some reason he accepted that and for
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: our tire relationship there was never any you know contract.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: And d did do some very positive things for the band.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: First of all, he had this ability of gathering everybody.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: He loved live acts. He saw the Gules Band, he
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: loved the Gules Band, the energy, he loved Humble Pie,
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: he loved Steve Marriott. Uh. You know, he tutored Peter
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: Frampton when Peter was going solo, and Peter would stay
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: at his house and he uh, and so Dee was
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: quite a character. You know, he would gather everybody in
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: a huddle and have a whistle. Why don't you guys
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: to go out there? And you know, just and so
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: his first big decision was, I want you guys to
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: make a live album and just record the songs. You've
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: already said, d we can't go out there. We're just
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: playing the songs that are on our first and second
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Atlantic record. You know, if we do a live album
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: of just those songs, people are gonna think we run
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: out of creativity. And back in those years, a live
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: album was kind of a way of buying time. It
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: wasn't accepted as authentic. It wasn't considered an authentic piece
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: of work. I gues. Of course there's James brown Line,
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: but for a rock and roll band, you know, the
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: Allman Brothers live at the film or you know, was
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: an anomaly. Uh uh. But so we recorded a live
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: album and because d felt that our stage show was
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: far more exciting and energetic than the recordings, and so
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: we recorded our third album, Full House live in Detroit.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: That's I guess being re released by Rhino as a real,
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: definitive aspect of the Guiles band, and it happens to
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: be one of my favorite albums. And Dee was responsible
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: for the making of that record because there was no
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: way that we would have ever for our third album
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: ever think of recording a live record. We were in
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: the midst of making another studio record.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: Well that is what you know. There were the first
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: couple of records and that did gain you notice previous
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: to that, you worked with Bill Simsick before he was
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: a household name, worked with Joe Walsh, eventually works with
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: the Eagles. How'd you get hooked up with Bill Simsick?
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: Our first ja Jay Gill's band, our first album I
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: think was done in about eighteen days, mixed and everything,
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: you know. And we were working with these two R
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: and B producers that Brad Shapiro that ended up doing
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: a lot of work with James Brown and Dave Crawford
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: who did who was a writer and did a lot
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: of great R and B stuff for Atlantic. And I
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: think that they were Jerry Wexler's idea of being a
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: new Gamble and Huff as a team. And so Brad
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: was white, Dave Crawford was black. They both had R
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: and B roots, and they thought, well, because of our
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: blues and R and B, they might be good producers
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: for us. And I remember we rolled in to the
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: studio and we started playing and Dave and Brad said, well,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: start playing some stuff. We set up like we were
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: on stage, and we started playing, and little did I
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: know that they were actually recording us. That's how we
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: basically recorded. The first record was basically those takes. And
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: at one point Dave Crawford called me in the studios
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: a Pete, can you come in the control room? I
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: said sure. He said, what the hell is this thing
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: with the harp? I said, what do you mean? He said,
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: I mean who plays harmonica? I mean my grandmother listens
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: to harmonica. And they had no idea of Paul Butterfield.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: They had no idea of the resurgence of Chicago, you know,
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: bands like the Guyles Band, you know, bands like Bloomfield
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: and Butterfield and Al Cooper and Barry Goldberg and the
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: whole resurgence of you know, you know, Blues Project with
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Al Cooper. They had no idea of that world. And
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: so we were, you know, coming to make our second record,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: and I'm not sure the James Gang. I was a
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: big fan of the James Gang, Joe Walsh, and we're
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: still friends to this day. An amazing character, amazing musician,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: amazing guy. And Bill's name came up in the mix
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: and we were out in Detroit at the gold Key
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Restaurant where this was in maybe seventy three or something,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: and I remember the Dells, the R and B group,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: the Dells that sang the great hit Oh what a night,
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Oh what a night?
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Do that you do?
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: It's early morning, so pardon me, So, I mean it
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: was amazing. There's the Dell's. I mean, I love the
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: Dells and Bill Sims, a guy. We all had to
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: talk and Bill said, you know, listen. You know, I
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: see you guys live. I said, you know, I wouldn't
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: do much. I wouldn't change this sound. I would just
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: you know, try to enhance it in the studio and
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: we're all talking and we the TV on. We're all
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: in this hotel room and Bill came in and we
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: were just kind of amazed because he had on a
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: T shirt and just you know, playing and it was
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: just like one of us. And we for this meeting.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: We had bought a bunch of popcorn and we had
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: some hamburgers we bought, and we had this big, you
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: know watermelon. It we sliced up, and we were all
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: sitting around and just big kegs you know, beer and
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: drinking beer. And I'm trying to think it was the
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: singer that Elvis Presley. Every time Elvis Presley saw him
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: on the TV, he would take out a magnum and
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: shoot it Guley. Robert Ulay and Elvis is good for
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: some reason, you know. So the Elvis Maffi would always
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: if they knew Robert Ulay was going to be on
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: a television show, to make sure Elvis wouldn't want it,
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: because if he was at the Hilton Hotel he'd take
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: out the gun and bam, you know, shoot a TV. Well,
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: Robert Ulay was on the Mic Douglas Show. We're in
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: the middle of this meeting and Bill looks up, takes
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: out half a watermelon and goes wam right into the
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: TV set and man, we all just got up and
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: cheered and said, yeah, we found our producer because he
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: just you know, first of all, he produced bb King's
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: big hit, The Thrill Is Gone. He knew all these
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: great jazz artists, but he wasn't. He was one of us.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: And we just had an instantaneous connection with him spiritually, artistically,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: and he was an amazing guy. And Bill, I remember
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: we'd come we were doing our first session with Bill
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: at the Record Plant West, and then we moved to
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: do some overdubs at the Record Plant East, and this
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: young guy would come, friend of Bill's, with a little
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: at Taysha case and he'd say to me, listen, you
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: guys are great. I should manage it. And I said, well,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: we got a manager, and he goes, no, no, no,
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: that's not a manager. I'm a manager. You should let
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: me manage it. And he opened up is that test
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: shake case? And you had me all this stuff and
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: he would, you know, appear quite frequently, and I took
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: to him. He was a really you know, very smart
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: and you know guy. But the idea of you know,
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: breaking away from you know, the choice of Frank Barcelona
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: on our handshake deal, you know, and just you know,
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: we were rolling along. But that young guy with that
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: test shake case was this young fella starting in management
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: and his name was Irving asof and that began a
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: very long friendship to this day that I have with Irving.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: He's kind of like one of my guardians. One of
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: my rabbi is somebody I will call and you know,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: if I email Irving. You know, there are certain people
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: in the music industry. Irving was one. Geffen was another
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: John Winner when he was at Rolling Stone that you
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: could connect with and within ten minutes they would either
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: answer you or the secretary would you know, tell you
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: why you weren't getting an answer? But they always you know,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: responded Irving still to this day, Happy Thanksgiving, Irving. Two
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: seconds later, gobble gobble, you know. And so I'm in
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: touch with Irving. And it's quite interesting because the other night,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: just last night, no, the night before last, I was
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: backstage going to Vince Gill show, and Vince is now
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: an Eagle and he's great talent. And I loved Vince
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: for you know, decades, and I knew him when he
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: first got involved with Amy Grant. And how I also
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: met Irving was the Eagles opened up for the j
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: Giles Band a good many times, and that's how I
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: became very friendly with Don and Glenn and the band,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: but especially Glenn and Down. And when I travel out
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: to Los Angeles to do any kind of business and
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: stuff for the band, I would always connect with Irving
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: and I'd always either go to his house or Don's house,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: and Don and I remain very close throughout the years,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: and every time the Gules Band was doing an important date,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: Don always sent a telegram to me, you know, break
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: a leg, you know, good luck at Madison Square Garden.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: And so it's funny how relationships like that remain. For instance,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: you two opened up for the Jay Giles band and
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: we to this day. I always go to see him,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: pay respects, and the friendship remains. Tom Petty opened up
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: for the Giles Band, and when Tom's last tour came,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: you know, as a soloist, he said Pete I'd love
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: I'd be honor, you know, I'd love you to do
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: some dates. So I did about eight and nine dates
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: with my solo band for Tom and so they opened
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: up for us, and I opened up for Tom, and
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: unfortunately it became his last tour. But you know, the
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: circle goes around, and uh uh, I guess I live on,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: you know, just enthusiasm, energy and the will to keep going.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: But uh, you know, unlike d I don't think of money,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: money money. I think of the artistic challenge, the artistic
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: challenge and the artistic challenge. Though a lot of people
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: just know me as Peter Wolf lead singer, or the
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: Jay Giles band or the Jay Giles. Oh yeah, that's
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Jay Giles. And it's so funny because you know, once
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: you establish a brand name in rock and roll, it's
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: very hard to break away from it, and very few
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: have succeeded in it. You know, Phil Collins was one,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: Peter Gabriel is another. I mean, of course there're you know,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: you could make a list, but the amount that tried
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: that couldn't is far far bigger than those that were
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: able to. And I'll give you for instance, if Sting
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: was to play Boston he would be able to play
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: the Wang Theater. I would think definitely one night. I
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: don't know about two. I'm just I don't know, but
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: I'm just making a thing. Now, here's Sting, who came
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: out of a three piece band. He's the player of
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: the bass player in his band, the Police. He's the
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: sole songwriter of the band, the Police, and he's the
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: singer of all the songs of the Police. And the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: Police is a three piece band. If Sting was to
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: go out, he'd play the Wang Theater. If the Police
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: went out, he'd play Fen White Park. And here it is.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: It's the same singer, same player, and just by the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: name the Police, Sting could put together a far more
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: interesting musical group than the Police, you know, by adding
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: some of the greatest players and you know, but it's
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: the brand name, and people don't care that it's still Sting.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: They hear Police, and Police is far more valuable to
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: a promoter than the name Sting. And go figure that
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: one out.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, you end up having a relationship in being married
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: to Fade done Away. At the time, rock was much
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: bigger than movies, but movies had a glamor that was different.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: So you're in this situation where you're in her world.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: At times when you're in her world, did you feel
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: like you would also ran like you were out of place?
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: Well, Bob, it's interesting, you know, I don't know if
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: rock was a bigger world. I mean, movies were making
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: far more money than a rock and roll did, but
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: they both were making quite a lot of money. But
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: the thing was in the era when I first the
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: time that I met Fae, all actors wanted to be
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: rock and rollers, and all rock and rollers ended actors,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: but there were very few. I don't know if there
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: were any major rockers that were married to actors or
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: actresses at that time. You know, a lot in the story,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: as I was saying with Hitchcock and different people that
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: I mentioned, and how I ran into Bob Dylan, it
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: was all by chance, serpentdipity, and I did not want
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: this book to be oh I met this famous person
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: or I met that famous person. What I found in
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: a lot of the musical books that I were reading
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: was they would mention a character, but they didn't really
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: tell you what the character was like. So I tried
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: to be There was a quote that I used in
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: the book from Christopher Issuwood. I am a camera with
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: the lens always open. So I tried to be the
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: camera taking pictures of like Muddy and Dylan and Van
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: Morrison and people that I got to know, but tried to,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: you know, without being kiss and tell, but just tried
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: to show what their personalities were like, what it was
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: like spending time with them, What was it like hanging
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: out with Van, what was it like, you know, meeting
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: Alfred Hitchcock in his house. And so the book is
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: those kind of adventures, I would say. And so one
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: day we were playing the Fillmore West in California, and
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: you know, there was that great Tony Bennett's song I
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: Left my Heart in San Francisco, and I was saying
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: to this woman that worked for Rolling Stone magazine, you know, Bryn,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: San Francisco is one of my favorite towns. It's such
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: a known to be a romantic town. I don't know anybody,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: And so she said, I'll bring a girlfriend to come
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: to the show tomorrow. We were playing in Winterland, and
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: she did, and I could see her a side of
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: the stage. She showed up and she had this gal
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: with a hat pulled down, and long story short, that's
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: how I first met Faye Dunaway, and I didn't really
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: even know she was at first, and we became friends.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: I joined there during Christmas. We spent time together in
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: New York and slowly, you know, she became so involved
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: and loved music so much and enjoyed being on the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: road and visiting the band. And I was such a
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: film buff. I enjoyed being in her world. And we
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: both were so dedicated to our work and we both
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: helped each other in our work that that became the
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: bond of which turned into a marriage, and it remained
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: for the years that it was good. It remained that way.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: You know. We never had a problem about, you know,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: who was a bigger star, who was more important, tough,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: who money or anything. We were just really committed to
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: helping each other in all of our projects. And at
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: that time, I think the only other after we got married,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: I think Sharon Greg Alman got married for about I
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: don't know, five minutes or whatever it was. I remember
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: being at a function and you know, I knew Greg
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: because the Allman Brothers and the Guiles Band played must
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: have played forty fifty shows together, you know, in the
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: early days and when Dwayne was still with us and
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: Dwayne and Jay Goals, you know, just you know, get
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: to the venue three four hours earlier, and they would
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: just do riffs, you know, on and on. I remember
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: doing one, you know, you know, Greg just kind of
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: you know, passed right out at this function and h So, yeah,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: it was it was interesting for me to meet some
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: of the key players, Robert Evans, some of the big
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: agents in Hollywood, and some of the great directors, you know,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: people like George Kueker and King Vidar and of course
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: Alfred Hitchcock and my time spent with Roman Polanski. And
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: so this to me was an adventure of meeting other
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: really talented artists and being a film buff when I
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: was a kid, I would you know, by the time
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: I got to Boston, I almost had seen every important
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: foreign film ever released, all the Bergman movies, all the
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Fellini movies, all the you know, true fol movies, you know,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: and everything that came out in that era, you know,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: which was a golden era for French films and the
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: Swedish films. You know. I saw Alexander Nievsky, I mean,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: I just seen them all. So being on a movie
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: set was very intriguing and also Fay and I had
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: such an amazing relationship where, you know, I would take
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: her out to have a sushi dinner with Wilson Pickett
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: and Don Kove. Remember Pickett said, you know, so like
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: what the hell is this fish? I mean, nobody couldn't
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: It was just I mean, it was it was hilarious.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: And then you know, going to have dinner with Alan
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: mcgraar and Steve McQueen or Barbaris Dreyisan's house. You know,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: so we were both able to share each other's worlds.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: And that's what I tried to write in the book,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of a Valentine to the Arow and
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: our you know, marriage was really very fruitful.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: But you weren't a lot of situations that were not
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: your world as were significant other and at times husband
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: and a lot of times you you know, people didn't
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: respect you. Did you ever feel like me? And you know,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just here. Don't why you're down on me. It's like,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm involved in a relationship with you know,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: treat me as an equal. You're treating other people's significant
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: others as equals.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure what you mean, but.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, See movie business traditionally looks down on the music business.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: Well not then.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you felt totally comfortable whenever you were with
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Faye in movie situations.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: Well, no, I hear what you're saying. No, because you know,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: there was so much money. Every five minutes, you know,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: would be a recording budget, you know, because if the
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: light went this, the pressure was intense. Uh. And you know, people,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: you know, back then, nobody knew the Jay Giles Band
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: were you know, basically it wasn't uh, and many people
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: weren't into rock that were involved in the music industry
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: at that point. Younger actors and actresses certainly were, but
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: you know, uh, you know, we weren't the Rolling Stones,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: and we weren't led Zeppelin, and so we weren't you know,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: so uh, many people just thought of me as this
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: you know, rock guy, you know with Fay. But those
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: who you know, I remember going out to dinner with
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: the fellow that you know was producing The Poseidon Adventure
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: and Towering Inferno, and uh, you know, once we got together,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: or having a dinner with Siddeley La met uh, whose
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: wife was oh h the great singer buck A bug
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: A bug a book great, Oh, it'll come to me
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: you know, we would have you know, a great interaction
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: because people I would realize I wasn't just this you know,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: drugged out crazy rocker because I didn't do drugs. I wasn't,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: you know, in my opinion, that crazy. So I was
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: accepted by those people who got to Monomi, which is
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: one of the reasons I wrote this book, because you know,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: to let people know some of the adventures that I
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: was able and privileged and the people I was privileged
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: to meet. Uh, that was beyond just rock and roll.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: Uh not. You know, I love rock and roll, but
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: there are more. There was more to my life than
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: just you know, getting on a bus, getting on stage,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: doing a sound check, you know, going in the studio,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: making an album, promoting the album, getting back on the
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: you know, et cetera, et cetera. So, uh, that's what
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: the meaning of the Waiting on the Moon was about.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, ahmit amit is portrayed as this dapper guy. They
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: did a story about him and the New Yorker, but
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: Amic could talk shit and had sharp elbows. The people
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: who knew him were aware of what was your experience
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: with ahmit.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: I was quite intrigued with Ahmat as a character. I mean,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: Ahmitt was, you know, a character out of a novel.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: Uh he he, he would be like I. I didn't
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: see all of the ray movie, but I did see
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: the clip with Ahmen and there was nothing like amen.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: You know, they they didn't even come close. You know.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: Ahmitt was a very very bright him and his brother,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: and that's why we were bright. They went to incredible schools.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: They were the sons of the Turkish ambassador uh the
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: United States. They lived in Washington, d C. They had
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: parties in there at the embassy with people like Duke
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: Allington and Cab Callaway and you know, they were just
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: jazz and finadoes. They were very cultured. And Ahmed spoke
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: many languages, and he was a charismatic character and an
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: amazing businessman. And his passion for music was and his
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: uh knowledge of music was so enormous, uh and his
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: ability of I have a chapter of a night on
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: the Town with Ahmit, and you would go from you know,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: being at this very plush dinner party where you would
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: have people like the Mayor of New York, Henry Kishinger, uh,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: you know, and then we'd end up at the Carlisle
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: Hotel to see short then go to Buddy's Place to
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: see Joe Williams, then go to fifty second Street to
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: see Little Jazz, you know, Roy Eldridge, and then go
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: downtown to see Reno Sweeney's to see Manhattan Transfer, then
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: go to this other club to see a new rock
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: band he was recorded, and then go downtown to you know,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: see Larry Rivers, the painter, and hang out, you know,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: in his loft, and then go back out and the
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: sun's coming up. And you know, that was one night
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: with Amet, and the next day he'd be in the office,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: you know, taking care of business at Atlantic. And so
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Amet was this incredibly charismanic figure and incredibly brilliant figure
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: obviously in business. And when Ross bought and form w EA,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: he had the Kinney parking lots. The ingenious thing he
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: did was when he put uh Warner Brothers, Atlantic, Lecture
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: and Uh, you know together to form WEA Uh. He
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: kept the people that founded these labels in place. So
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: you had Mo Austin still running his label, you had
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: Amit running his label, and Geffen and all of the above,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: and so uh it was a very lucrative time for
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: the record industry. And so being a friend of omit. Socially,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: I got to meet all the players. I remember with
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: Jerry Wexler, we'd go to a dinner party at Mo
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: Austin's and everybody had their wine cellars and we're trying
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: to out to each other who had the greatest wine cellars.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: And it was just a very heady time in the
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: music industry. So one night being with all the great players,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: Jerry Moss and from A and M, and you know,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: being at a dinner party with those people one night,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: and then being at a dinner party at Chasin's with
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: the entire Hollywood brass. You know, it was you know,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: when I think back at it. At the time, I
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: just accepted it as my life. But when I think
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: back at it, it was pretty remarkable.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. In the book you talk about the breakup of
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: the you being excised from the Jay Gills band. Let's
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: cut to the chase. Were they jealous that you were
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: the front person? Was it a personality thing or was
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: it the money? And are all three? Because as a
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: writer you get more money and then you say you
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: regretted reunion shows. So tell me what was going on there?
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: Well, first thing, it had nothing to do with money.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: That was not the problem. And as I explained in
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: the book, it's a chapter all practice size. You know,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: it's funny, Bob. When I first started the book, the
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: two things I made it a point of there were
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: two things I was not going to write about. I
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: was not going to write about my marriage, and I
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: was not going to write about the Jay Giles Band.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: I just thought I would make a book of short
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: stories of Ahmet and Don Covey or Muddy John Lee Hooker,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: Alfred Hitchcock. And it was just going to be a
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: collection of these short vignettes and like New Yorker profiles.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: But as I got on, people at the publishing company thought,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: you know, Peter, we're all interested in your marriage, or we're
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: interested in Jay Giles. So you got to say something,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: You got to do something. So I decided to write
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: a chapter about the Giles Band. And the Giles Band,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: as I explained, like many bands at that era, be
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: it the Rolling Stones, you had what they called I
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: call key players. The Eagles, Glenn Fry and Don Henley
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: were the key players. And Zeppelin you had Jimmy Page,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: Robert Plant and you know the Stones you had Jagger
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: Richard's and the Beatles, McCartney Lennon, and when that when
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: those two key players, which are very close, it's like
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: a marriage and the rest of the band is like
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: a family. When there's a fracture between those two key players,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: that's usually unless a really talented manager or somebody intervenes
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: and is able to, you know, act as a marriage
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: counselor to get over whatever is causing the problems. Usually
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: it's the sign the beginning of the end for the group.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: And that's what happened with the Gules. The reasoning being,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: you know what, I didn't write in the book, and
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know why I didn't. I thought about later
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: back in nineteen seventy, No, back in nineteen sixty eight.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: Once we got signed to Atlantic, Atlantic forgot about us
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: for about a year and we were just touring around.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: The band had a meeting and decided they were going
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: to have a meeting after a show. I remember Jay
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: came up to me and said, Pete, there's going to
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: be a band meeting, but we really rather you not
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: come to it. I said really, and he said yeah,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: And this is nineteen sixty eight. And they came out
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: and they said, we feel that, you know, you're holding
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: back the band. You're not a real singer. You know,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: you don't have the chops needed, and we just you know,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: not wanting you to stay in the band anymore. We voted,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: we voted you out, and I was devastated. I mean
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: I was, you know, totally devastated. And I remember about
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: two three weeks later, I get a phone call from
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: Jay and saying could they come over to my apartment?
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: And they did, and they said, listen, we apologize. You know,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: we made a really big mistake, and we really wonder
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: if you appreciate coming back, and let's just continue as
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: if nothing happened. And I loved the band so much.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: I did, and maybe at that point, if I was
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: wise enough, I might have said, you know, Jay Giles
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: band featuring Peter Woolf or something, because throughout the good
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: part of the band, most people saw it I was
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: Jay Giles because I was the front guy. And I
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: remember when we first played the More East Bill, Graham
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: put us on without seeing us and came running into
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: the dressing room after the show. We got about four
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: encores and he threw his arms around me and said, Jay,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: you were amazing. He lifted me up to the ground.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: I said, Bill, I'm not Jay. He said what He goes,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: I'm Pete Wilop. He goes, who the hell is J
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: I said, the guitar player. And Bill always wanted to
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: manage the band, also wanted to manage me. And I said, well, Bill,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: if you were going to manage the band, what would
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: you do? He is. The first thing I'd do is
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: change the name that Jay Giles is confusing everything. Confused me.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: He's confusing everything. You know, think of another name or
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: you know whatever. I said, Bill, that's not going to fly.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: And so going back to after we're signed now with
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: EMI Records, and Freeze Frame comes out and centerfold, which
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: nobody in the band thought was should be the single.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: My other key member thought it should be a ballad
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: called Angel and Blue, and I thought it should be
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: Freeze Frame, you know, because I had a rock and
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: thing for the first single, and I knew that the
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: album was going to sell lots of records because disco
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: was dying and you had bands like, you know, Bob
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: Seger back on the charts, Joan Jet was back on
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: the charts, all these bands that have been touring for years.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: You know, we're coming back and rock and roll was
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: really having it stay in the sun again, and I
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: knew the Giles band with the impact of Our Lives Show,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: it was our time. And EMI Jim Maza was the
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: president at the time. He really believed this was the
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: time for Giles. And so we're in the making of
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: the video. My key number went out and of this
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: ballad called Angel and Blue, a good song. And this
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: fellow who was very close to me and really helped
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: the band a lot. His name was Dick Williams. He
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: was a promotion man for EMI America, and he went
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: to Detroit, which was our one big market, and you
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: would know this woman. You remember Rosalie, Uh yeah, yeah,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: the DJ. Yes, she was well, she was no a DJ,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: she was program director and she was considered to have
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: the Golden ears. And so everybody took their records to
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: Rosalie and if Rosalie certified it a hit, be it
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: you know, uh you know, Muskrat Love or Captain and
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: to Neil, whatever it was, it became a hit. She
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: was so powerful, her taste was so powerful. She listened
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: to the record and she said centerfold and so they
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: Dick called up Jim Maza, president of em I called
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: us we were making the video. Right in the middle
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: of making the video for the song, he said, we're
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: changing the single go what Go, Centophold, centophol Come on.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: That's kind of a fun song. But you know, and
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: the rest, as they say, is history.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Just staying on songs on the previous album. My favorite
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: song is Comeback. Can you tell me the story of
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: writing and recording Comeback?
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: Well, come Back? Both we were big fans of the
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: Ohio playoffs and the Ohio Players had songs like Fire
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: and roller Coaster Ecstasy and things like that, and it
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: Comeback was our attempt to try to capture the energy
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: that the Ohio players had. And we would go see
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: the Ohio Players all the time I did, and they
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: were just you know, the show was amazing, There were
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: coins amazing, They had this energy. So Comeback was an
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: attempt to try to you know, without it going disco,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: you know, quote unquote where you know people might say, uh,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: mishoot by the Stones or you know Rod Stewart's you
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: know attempt you know, people try to keep that that
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: beat going. But uh, that's what really Comeback was all about,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: was trying to emulate the Ohio players.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: What's the best live show you ever did.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's really tough, you know.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying this to downgrade the Guiles band. Uh,
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: but there are some solo shows that means so much
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: to me. But I would think, you know, closing night
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: at the film or when we played with Albert King
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: and uh, the Allman Brothers Fillmore East was a really
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: really special evening. Uh. And I remember all my brothers
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: went till five six in the morning, Uh, playing I
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: think five or six nights straight. The Pine Knob in
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: Detroit was just you know, incredible. Selling out the Boston
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: Garden for the first time, uh for the band, uh
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: was incredible. And uh, of course Boston Garden, the old
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: Boston Garden had no air conditioning, the small seats, you know.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: Being number one in your hometown was like the Celtics,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: you know, or you know the Bruins or the Red Sox,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: you know, winning the series, you know, the crowd, just
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: the energy from the crowd was just so unbelievable an
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: undeniable and the power of the bond between us and
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: the band. So I can't pick one, but those those
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: situations which is so important to my life. And you
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: know to this day people come up and you said, oh, Peter,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: you know I saw you back in you know, the garden,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah. And there was one time I
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: thought about would be great on Christmas Day to visit
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: Belle Ricca and play a concert at the Bill Ricker Youth. Uh.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: It was like a you know, a jail or for
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: young men who kind of lost their way and were
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: trouble or robberies or you know, got caught up in
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: drugs and stuff. And we did several Christmas concerts and
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: those were really really very pertinent, very important. I remember
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: after the show, we walked down the cells, all the
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: guys and the cells now, oh, put out the hands.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah it's Gyles, Gyles, you know, thank you for coming.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: And those were, you know, very spiritually meaningful dates. But Hometown,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: Boston Garden, Cobo Hall, Detroit, Cobo Hall, Pineknob, those were
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: the shows that were just incredible. And we did a
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: show in Germany Rock Pals and we came over and
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: we used our marching bands. We stayed up all night,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: we played I think that's available on YouTube and just
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: the crowd being in Germany to this uh, you know,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: large you know, in this large arena and just having
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: being in front of these people that obviously didn't know
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: all the lyrics, you know, but the interaction was just
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: you know, overwhelming. So for me it was, you know,
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: that thing that brought me back to the Apollo. You're
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: seeing artists being able to rave up an audience and
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: being ten years old witnessing the first generation of rockers
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: and remembering as a kid, you know, jumping up and
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: down on my seat like a bouncing Mexican jumping bean,
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: you know, and having a you know, a Matron come over,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: sit down, you know, putting flash lights, jumping in the
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: aisles and dancing. I mean, those Guyle shows just to me,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: you know, where something that will never replace it could
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: never you know, for me, they will always be memorable
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: parts of my life.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: How about a couple of shows or a few shows
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: of other racks that you just can't get out of
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: your head, blew your mind?
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: Oh well, you know, sitting about four or five feet
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: away from Bob Dylan when I one of the first
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: times a few times that maybe he performed the song
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: that nobody heard called hard Ring on a Fall, was
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: pretty incredible. Seeing the rolling thunder review, you know with
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: Bob many times. Seeing about five or six of those
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: was incredible. Seeing Jimmy Hendrix jump on stage with the
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart at Steve Paul seen
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: was pretty incredible. There was there's so many Bob I
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: would you know be you know, they're just I go
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: to shows all the time, and you know, seeing Van
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: Morrison at the Music Hall in Boston or when we
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: played with him in Symphony Hall where he'd bring it
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: down a ballot so low where you could hear a
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: pin drop and just you could feel goosebumps going that
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: he could transcend. You know, here's this little guy, you
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: know and just all of a sudden, you know, have
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: the entire audience in the palm of his hand doing
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: with every great artist you know did, which was you know,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: kind of have a transcending moment. And that's what I call,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: you know, the concerts that give me goose bumps that
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: you know, I remember seeing Art Blakey the Jazz Messages
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: with Lee Morgan on trumpet and Art Blakey calling up
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: you know, let's call up the Queen and this woman,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: you know, a fur coat and this big blonde wig
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: would get up on stage, she sang the dirtiest words
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: I ever heard, and uh turned out to be you know,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: Dinah Washington. And you know, I didn't really know the
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: importance of the people I was seeing, but the impact
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: on me was just I would never forget it. And then,
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 2: you know, seeing Jackie Wilson at the Apollo and then
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: having the honor to induct him into the Hall of
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: Fame was a really great honor for me. And to
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: also you know, induct Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and to
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: induct Jesse Stone, the great songwriter, you know. Uh uh.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: So there are a lot of great times, a lot
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: of great shows. You know, if you asked me to
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: two hours from now, I'll think of thirty others. But
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: I would say with the Guiles Band, you know, being hometown, Boston,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: finally Boston Garden, Madison Square Garden, but of course Detroit,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: Cobo Hall and Pineknob. They were very, very very special events.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: So what did you leave out of the book? What
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: are some of the great stories left out?
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, there's a whole lot left out because I did
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: not want this to be a kiss and tell book.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: And you know, I left it out because I just
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: wanted this to be my Valentine to the people I
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: got to meet into a music industry that I think
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: what you were trying to bring up earlier, that has
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: been battered and shattered and lost so much of what
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: made it, you know, intriguing and interesting. And you know
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: when you mentioned about the digital world, I mean there
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: was the aspect of garage band and being able to
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: you know, have a single and maybe get that single
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: played on your AM radio station and you know, it
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: become a hit overnight. You know, those kinds of things,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: you know, just aren't there anymore. But then somebody might say, well,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: there's a playing field that everybody has an opportunity to
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: post the music. But the ocean is so big, it's
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: like almost the universal galaxy, and so how to find
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: that little teeny planet makes it harder, But there are opportunities.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: So it's totally changed. But I come, I've always and
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: I still do to this day. What's meaningful to me
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: is the face to face into relationships with other musicians,
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: with business and the record companies, sitting down in an
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: office and talking about, you know, what you want to achieve.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: And in book world, unfortunately, there was a change when
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: I signed with the Little Brown there was a change
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: and a lot of the people that I want to
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: work with so that, you know, changed the dynamics there.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: You know, it's still you know, an important publishing company.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: But I tend to really like the one on ones
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: and the characters, like I mentioned the Big m and
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: Ahmed and Wexler and Irving Azof and Bill Graham and
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: you know uh and the artists themselves, you know, Reather
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: and you know just you know, Sparky and all these
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: crazy you know managers and Peter Grant and just it.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: It was so rich for me and as someone who
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: was trying to catch these in literary form, there was
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: so much to choose from because these characters were really
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: great characters.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: So where does this leave you now? No one's gonna
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: live forever. We ever gonna see you on the road again.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: You're gonna record more music? What's your state of mind?
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: And what's the play on? Well?
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: I was hoping the book would bring attention that a
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: CD wouldn't in areas where a CD wouldn't go, or
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: recording that I say CD, you know, streaming as you
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: say and stuff. But I do have a great solo band.
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: But just before I released the book, I did a tour.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: It was called an Acoustic Evening of Story and Song,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: and I had two great guitarists with me and we
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: did a you know, a sort of an evening where
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: I would play saying and then tell some of the
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: stories that are in the book and not unlike what
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: Ray Davies did with the first Storytellers and then what
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: Bruce later did with his book. And I recently saw
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: Roger mcgwinn here in Boston and he did one man
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: show playing and telling stories. I thought it quite interesting,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: so I might do that plus go out and tour.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: So music's still with me. But I was hoping that
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: the book, you know, reaches and I really appreciate you for,
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: you know, giving me an opportunity to talk about the book.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: But I'm curious. I first heard about you many years
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: ago with your letter and your forum and this controversial
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: guy that was, you know, talking about ticket pricing and
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: ticketmaster and his managers and you know, all that kind
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: of stuff. How did you get started.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: Trying to make it very brief like you, although I'm
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: a little younger than you are, music was everything. If
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: you wanted to know what was going on, you wanted
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: to listen to the radio. People have no idea that
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: working at a record car. You couldn't even get a
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: job in a record shop because everybody wanted that job.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: And so I ended up going to law school because
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: it's in a bad spot. I'd been sick. My father
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: would pay for it. My father was a real estate appraiser.
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: I had nobody in the business, so I said, at
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: the time, the business was run by attorneys in the seventies.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: Growing up whereabout.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: I grew up in Connecticut, fifty miles from New York City, Infield, Connecticut, Fairfield, Okay,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: Fearfield between Bridgeport and Westport. So it's all New York media.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: You know, all the FM stations wr WNW. I mean
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: that's sixty seven sixty eight. It was unbelievably fertile, and
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: of course the shows you would go to the Pillmore East,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it was always
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: a dream to move to California, which I ultimately did.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: And you know, I could complain about LA all day long,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: but it's really pretty great. And I was the only
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: person working in the movie business who wanted to be
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: in the music business. You say it's reverse, but I
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: worked for these big English managers who still manage Iron Maiden.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: I lost my job. I started this newsletter and what
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: happened was that I had a free subscription to AOL
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: through Warner Brothers Records, and I was an attorney such
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: when the Napster hit, I was an expert. And there's
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of stories there. But you know your point
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: about d Anthony is well take and I could tell
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: you a million stories like that where the money is primary.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: It's like for me. I remember when Tom Petty was
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: playing the film More and he was not at the
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: peak of his career, and I said, well, what does
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: this mean going forward? And an agent said, I'll take
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: that Billy any day of the week. You know, I'm
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: like you, it's how does the record hit you? What
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: is the emotion? Trying to articulate that the only thing
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: better than a great record is sex, and we're all
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: in search of those great records. And the great thing
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: about records You put a five year old in front
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: of a TV and they could say, oh, plot wasn't believable.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: About the most you can say about a great record
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: has had a good beat. And I could dance to it.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: And the people who we analyze it beyond that are
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: analyzing a level beyond the people who made it. So
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: there's a passion for the music, and you know it's
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: grown since then, and you know, you talk about all
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: these came the listen. I was with Frank Riley on
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: Saturday talking about you irving. You know, yeah, does my
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: deals too. These are all it's a different business and
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: music is forever. People don't understand that we're not at
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: a peak. Yeah, people are consuming MUSI, but what it
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: was and what it represented in the sixties and at
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: other times they have no idea.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: But but you know, you're writing this newsletter. But how
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: did it get started?
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: Well, to be very literal about it, I was working
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: for a management company, and you if you had a
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: successful act, the big thing was to hire an independent publicist.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: And they used to write these bios that were just terrible.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: I had to rewrite them. I'm leaving out a chapter.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: I was in college. First semester in college. This is
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: Middlebury College.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: In pan and we played it. I know it will is.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: The only time I ever did this. First semester, I
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: called up the teacher day before paper Ducic, Can I
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: do something creative? Said sure. I got an a. All
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: the prep school kids said, oh, you're gonna flunk. And
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: I called my mother on the payphone. I'm going to
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: be a writer, okay. I took the writing class. When
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: I would read, it was like springtime for Hitler. You know,
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: it's like, you know the people who listen this I wrote?
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: You know. Then I finally wrote about going to an
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: Alice Cooper concert at the musical on the Killer Tour
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: in seventy two, and the teacher said it was good,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: but it needed a twist. I said, you were It's
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. Did you ever hear of the new
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: journalism twists? Forget that? I never wrote another thing. So
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: then I was down and out. I went to see
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: this job counselor. She gave me this work book that
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: was attached to a legendary book called What Color Is
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: Your Parachute? You had to write six essays and she's
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: brag about yourself. This is just for yourself. This is
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: now nineteen, you know, eighty four, So this is, you know,
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: an excess of a decade since I wrote in college.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: And I wrote those things and I got back in
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: touch with the fact that I like to write. I said, oh,
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: I'll write stuff and send it to magazines. I did that,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: and I said, this is just like the music business.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: You got to know these people. And I was eating
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: a hamburger one night reading billboard. Billboard's been up and down,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: but it was in a bad space. Then I said,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: this is terrible. I could do a better job than this.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: And all of a sudden something clicked in my brain said, wait,
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: aren't there computers and all this other stuff. So I
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: bought all that gear on credit. And there was a
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: direct we call the Yellow Pages of Rock, and I
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: sent out the newsletter in eighty six, primarily with the
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: intention of getting another job. But the most interesting thing
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: was only the most successful people subscribed the heads of
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: all the labels they could hear a contrary opinion. So,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: you know, there's fifteen years there and then the Internet
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: hits and I'm in the right place at the right time.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: And the Internet boosted my career, you know, because now
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: I started to give it away for free instead of charge,
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: and you can reach all these people. Listen, this is
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: exactly what you do. You know, you're doing it all
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: day long. You're never gonna write something or make something terrible.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: But you can only create an eleven every once in
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: a while, and it's usually because a thought came to
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: you in the shower or you're inspired and you lay
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: it down. You're always in search of that, as opposed
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: to the hacks. People say I don't know what a
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: hit is. Believe me. It's like Al Cooper telling me
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: they recorded Sweet Home Alabama a year before it came out, said, now,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: did you know it was a hit? He goes, it
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: was sweet Home Alabama. So the key is to try
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: to get that, and when you get that, the people resonate.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: The only difference is there used to be a pyramid.
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: Pyramid's been blown to bits. Everybody is in their own business.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: If you walk down the street, ask people name to
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swiss songs, they can even name them. Whereas you
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: know in nineteen sixty five, I can sing every lick
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: of Hello Dolly because I was waiting for the Beatles
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: songs on the radio, so and somedd you know it all,
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: the same thing remains. There's a lot of great streaming television,
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: especially for me. You're waiting for something that touches you
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: in a certain way. And if you can articulate that,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: that's what people resonate with, and people are hungry for
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: that resonance. They want something they can connect with. And
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: that's what I'm trying to do.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: And where are you based now?
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: I'm in Los Angeles, okay?
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: And how did you connect with Irving? How is that?
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'll tell the real story I connected Irving.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: This is nineteen eighty seven. I wrote about Dan Folberg's
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: same Old Lang Syne you know song. Met my old
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: lover in the grocery store and I immediately heard from
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: Irving and he says, you gotta come in. I gotta
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: tell you the real story of that record. He was
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: running MCA at that time.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I was signed to MCA at that time, okay.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: And I went in and there's a lot of hilarious stuff.
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: Tom Petty was recording a solo album and sales were low.
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: He said, the deal is so rich, I'm not sure
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: he wanted the record to come out at all. There's
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: a lot to pay him. And he remember the fine
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: young Cannibals. She drives me crazy. He knew that was
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: going to be hit, but he says, I'm going to
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: hire you to help Jimmy Buffett have a hit record.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna fly you down to the Key West. Fly
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: down to Key West. Make a long story very short.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: Jimmy had already cut the record. Jimmy, you know, you're
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: a rocket roller. Jimmy had so much money he didn't
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: need the advance from the label to cut a record.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: And then I felt really embarrassed about the whole thing.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: You know, this is typical Irving before cell phones. So
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: I call his office in LA. He calls me from
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: the airport in New York and I'm stowing it on. Oh,
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: you know, Jimmy's a big guy. Cut all the recorded. Now,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: Irving goes, how big a guy can he be if
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: he only sells three hundred thousand records? And you know
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: that was nineteen eighty nine. But you know, there's been
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of chapters up and down with the Irving.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: You know, you know, Irving Irving's you know, changed to
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: Irving's much mellower than he used to be.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: I know, I mean I wrote him as a Irving.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 2: You know, I want to send you a copy of
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: a book, and he said, don't, I'll buy it. I
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: don't know if he did. You know. I hope he did,
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: because I think Irving would find you know, some of
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: the chapters, you know, interesting because you know, it's an
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: homage to the period that you know, he was so
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: involved in. So if you speak to him, please, you.
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: Know, well I definitely so I'll text him after we're here.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: And but you know, the this is a crazy business.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: People hate people they have never met. Okay, what they
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: don't know about Irving is how charming he can be
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: and how funny he can be, and that he is
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: really supportive. People just hate him because he's the big guy.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: The other thing about Irving is they do not come
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: any smarter. I remember being at his house after it
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: ended with Live Nation, listening to him what he was
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: going to do next, he was creating. He is always
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: one step ahead, you know. You know some of these
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: other players. Listen, the guy's gotten into it with me.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: But Geffrin, you know, it's a completely different agenda. Geff
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: then needs you to kiss the ring and it's a
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: power thing. It's not that way with the Irving.
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: No, you know, as I told you, you know, I
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: knew Irving, you know, when he was you know, starting
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: out and had the vision and did you ever read
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: Fred Goodman's book Mansion on the Hill, of course, yeah,
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: that was a good one, absolutely, yeah at the time,
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: you know, because in the premise of it was that
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: the cart the horse was the artist and the cart
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: was following the horse. And then by the end of
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: the book, the artists become the cart and the business
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: people become the horse where the artists are chasing after
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: you know, the business people.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: You lived through the change somewhere in the late sixties.
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: First you didn't have to record in CBS's studios anymore.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: The deals were such that you just delivered the record
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: and they had to put it out. They couldn't say, oh,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: what the single was, etcetera, etcetera. Warner Brothers, you delivered
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: the record that came out. The change was the early
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: nineties when Tommy Mattola's they started wearing suits. This is
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: not a business, you know the cliche that I love
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: is and I worked in this business movie business. You
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: have a percentage deal and your own money. You walk
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: in everybody's wearing a three piece suit. They have the
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: accountant and he explains very slowly, while you're not entitled
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: to money in the record business, you walk in the
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: guy's got a gold chain around his neck, no collar shirt.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: You ask about the money, opens his drawer, pulls out
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: a gun and says what money, and result is the same.
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: The down and dirty style of the music business, you know,
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: was eclipsed by these people who thought they were bigger
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: than the acts.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: I know one person I didn't write about, Mars Levy,
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: you know, who I had some interaction with, who is
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: quite a character, you know. And I don't know, did
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: you ever see that film that Richard Perry made, was
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: called Slice Steak? It was Richard made the film. He
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: was married to Goldener's daughter, I believe, And it was
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: when Mars was being inducted but for the United Jewish
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: Appeal as the Man in the Year, and it was
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: a dinner and Mars had pres parado I believe. It
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: was maybe not play and a lot of the Latin
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: ax and stuff and it it but it's the movie,
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: you know, see. And Joe Smith acted as MC, who
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: you know could be Yeah, he was, he was. He
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: was just so a kind, ethical and a brilliantly funny man,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: you know. Yeah. And I always enjoyed seeing Joe and
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 2: his wife. We'd go out many times and That's the thing,
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: uh Bob is as like you you know, you know,
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: the streaming and the availability and all that. I think
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: it's great because on one hand, but then there's that
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: build and that search and that going from town to town.
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: And I'll end, I'll end with this. You know. I
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: was talking to a guitarist who's in my band, and
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: he's a brilliant guitarist, and he also teaches sometimes at Berkeley,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: and he was saying to me, Oh my god, these
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: kids today, all they want to learn is these power chords.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: You know, they just want to play, you know, either
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: just Stairway to Heaven or you know, Black Sabbath songs.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just they don't understand anything about music.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: I said, listen, I said, do you imagine you're seventeen
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: years old, you're growing up in someplace like Indiana, and
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: you're learning saxophone and you're taking lessons and then you
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: learn about theory and composition and sight reading, and you
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: play and a band comes through town maybe already sure,
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 2: and he hears you playing and he says, come on,
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: and you're on this band tour and for years you're
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: on this bus with other guys, great players, and you're
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: playing with people on the bills, with Duke Ellington or
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 2: the Count Basie Band or Tommy Darcy band, and everyone
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: is this incredible musician with this vast knowledge and singers
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: that know, you know, how to harmonize and breath control
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: and the whole thing. And all of a sudden, one
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: day here don and boom the world like a hydrogen
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: bomb explodes. And all those years seemed, you know, like
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: when they were carrying out all the great big band
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: records at BCN, I couldn't believe it because I didn't
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: think they realized culturally, you know, what they were dismantling
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: in this quote, what they would call the American Revolution.
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: I understood it, and I think you would understand it
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: because where they were at at that time. But you know,
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 2: the greatness that was, you know, the mastering, the Doug Sacks,
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: you know, the recording studios, Capital studios, the microphone, everything that,
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: you know, the arrangers, everything that took place in the
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 2: making of these great works of art, which is totally
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: dismissed for Country Joe, you know. And so you know,
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: there's a great movie, very hard movie to watch because
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: technically it's so bad, but it's an Arson Wells movie
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: called The Chimes at Midnight, and it's based on the
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: Henry the Fourth, Part one and part four, where the
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: main character is Falstaff, who is one of Shakespeare's you know,
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: sort of buffoons, clowns, very wise, and he's teaching the
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: young Prince, you know, how to drink, and he's introducing
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: him to prostitutes. And but the movie starts off with
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: these two old men walking through the rugged terrain and
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: one says to the other, Uh, it's cold, it's so cold,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: and the other one says, yes, but we both heard
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: the Chimes of midnight ring. And I think you and
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: I have both witnessed the Chimes of Midnight, and I
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 2: think what they meant was these great glory days when
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: things seemed far more innocent, seem far more promising. And
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: you know, not to get into it, but you know,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: we know that there are dark clouds gathering. You know,
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: if you study history, like in nineteen thirty seven, thirty eight,
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 2: you know, I had relatives that fought in the you know,
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: Spanish Civil War, which was a you know, precursor to
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: what you know, the horrible you know things that came later. So, Bob,
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: you know, it's great talking to you. Please connect with Irving.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: Tell him I send my best, because you know, he's
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: you know, been in and out of my life throughout
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: the years, and I'm not sure if he ever forgive
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: forgave me for not, you know, dismissing the anthony and
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: going with him. You know, time proved he was quite right,
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: he was the manager. But then again, you know that
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: life teaches us in strange ways.
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's funny, you're not the only act
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: who said no with another one who's come back to
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: me all these years later and said, you know, God,
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: if I only knew. But just to stay on this
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: one point when people don't understand. This guy a friend
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: of mine who's the chairman of Guitar Center, and he
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: was walking me through the musical instrument in history, and
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: he says, it's a mature business. In the early sixties
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: it was all independent labels. Then there were majors. It
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: was all branch distribution except for CBS. The business became
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: more and more consolidated. There will always be music, but
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: we live through this one time. However, it is always
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: an entrepreneurial business. It is always somebody at home with
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: an idea. So no matter how much direct there might be,
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: whether it be Bobby Rydell and Fabian in the late
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: fifties early sixties, today it's not easy to make it
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: from A to Z and no one is helping you.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: But if you do something unique, people are looking for that,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: and it's always some new irving as off. It's not
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: like going to work for Procter and Gamble. So we
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: know sixty years later we never got a new Beatles,
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: never gonna happen. Are we ever going to reach that
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: peak again? Maybe not in our lifetimes, But the Doldrums
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: were in artistically. Listen, you're a middle class guy as
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: I am. Jeff an Airplane build Graham Management, and they
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: say whenever they made money, they just want to stay
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: home and smoke dope. They spoke truth to power. Life
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: is so difficult today financially that the middle class people,
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: no one ever wanted their kid to be an artist.
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: But today the people say, man, life is so hard.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: I got to get a job. I got to work
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: in finance. So only the lower classes who are on
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: a lark, who will do whatever people tell them to do,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: are the ones involved. Listen a record speaking truth to
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: power has more power than any politician, any individual. You
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: need a culture to grow that. But the paradigm always exists.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: Somebody captures lightning in a bottle. There's a truth in
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: a record that is nowhere else. On that note, you're
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: driving in the north Shore. Where are you going?
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm going to know as you're well, I might
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: up to newbury Port or Gloucester somewhere up there.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: Well, you said you're going today.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm going up to north Reading to record. There's
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: a barn that I use. I made my last records there.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: I have an album that's about We would have been
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: finished by now, but I stopped it for the book.
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: But it's about I need to do harmonies, a couple
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: of overdubs, and the mix is they're it's almost all
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: mixed the way it's recorded, so it's almost ready to go.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: But a lot of my solo records, Bob, have become
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: you know, well kept secrets. And you know I've done
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: duets with you know, Shelby Lynn, Merle, Haggard, Steve Earle
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: on these records. I've done with a great duet with
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: Mick Jagger. You know, we nothing but the wheel. You know,
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 2: there's some really if you don't have them. I some
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: of them are not on Spotify or streaming because they've
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: got returned to me and not being the brightest bowl
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: by haven't placed them. But I'm going to in the
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: next couple of weeks get that all settled up. And
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: because the book was so consuming, I didn't realize how
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 2: much energy it really would take. And then the audiobook
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: you know, took about you know, about twenty hours of
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 2: actual reading, and you know, they've become very very popular
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: for people. That's a whole new business, that's very lucrative
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 2: for book companies.
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: Now, I just want to say, before I let you go,
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: you're in the eye of the hurricane and you can't
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: see what's going on. Writing is a lonely pursuit. And
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: I'll write something, I'll think one of then I'll go somewhere.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: And they said, oh, yeah, everybody's talking about what you wrote.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: But BOS said, I didn't know. Okay, not that I
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: don't get feedback. Your point about there not being books
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: in the store, the book business so antiquated is just terrible. However,
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: having said that, you obviously have no idea of the
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: impact of your book. Let me be very clear I'm
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: not talking about the people who read it. I'm talking
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: about the press and the word of mouth. You have
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: a higher profile than you've had since the eighties. You
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: may not feel it because you're at the center of
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: the high hurricane. But I'm reading all day long. I
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: get email from people, Hey, you got to do a
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: podcast with Peter Wolf. Okay, I get more about your book.
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not blowing smoke up your eyes than anybody else
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: this year. Something is going on.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, Bubby, I'm going to interrupt you say I
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 2: do I really be taking your point. I don't feel
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: it because it was, you know, this this thing that
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: you know, the New York Times didn't even review it,
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: you know, like it or bad, and so you know
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: that moves a lot of books. I did this little
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 2: thing with the New Yorker where I wanted to take
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 2: you know, the reporter up to the you know, beause
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: everybody talks about Brooklyn and show them where I live,
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: where Dion live, the changes of the Bronx, you know,
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 2: where the gangs were, all this stuff. And you know,
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: we ended up at mcsorley's and drinking. And that would
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 2: have been fine for the Guiles Band. You know, during
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 2: a give it to Me times. But I was trying to,
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: you know, represent Look, I'm a literary guy too, as
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: much as I love rock and roll, and I can
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 2: sit down and listen to you know, Carl Perkins or
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: A Stone's or you two. I mean there, I can
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 2: also read, and so I was trying to reinvent a
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 2: different dimension. And so I don't feel it because, you know,
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 2: when the book company tells me it's kind of weighing
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 2: because new books are coming out. Like in the record industry,
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 2: you have that moment where there's the release and you
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: go out and you do the tour and you get
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: on you know, blah blah blah blah bomb, and then
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden you find less and less requests.
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 2: And because there's a new bunch of albums coming out,
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 2: the company is releasing some more albums than all of
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: a sudden, if that album didn't gain a certain stature,
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 2: you're yesterday's newspaper.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, the press always gets it wrong. I read that
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: mcsor at Lea's piece. Okay, I understand your play. The
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: great thing about the modern career is you are in
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: control of your career. It's much harder to catch fire,
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: so your profile is higher than it's been for years.
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: In addition, there's only one Peter Wolf. There's only one
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: Peter Wolf who had muddy waters come to his house,
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. Unfortunately, the stories are eclipsing new music.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: Your point about you put out a record, you'll get
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: some reviews. It's over in a day. That's for every
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: but even the Stones their new record doesn't really get
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: that much exposure. But you have this unique thing, like
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: you're telling me, oh yeah, you did these shows. You know,
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: these acoustic shows. We told the stories. Now in the
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: wake of the book, you can build a business. That's
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: what the New York Times will review. Okay, let's be
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: very clear, this is not easy. You have to work.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: You want to put some stories up on social media,
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: but you have headway. I can't tell you how many
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: people I know from your era who are dead in
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: the water. Some can't even play clubs because they can't
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: get advances. Okay, it's just yeah, oh yeah, I remember
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: that guy. Something is going on with you at this
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: particular point in time. You have a beachhead. I am
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: a pessimistic lass half empty guy. Me too, but you
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: should be more optimistic at this point in time. The
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: other thing you have to realize is nothing reaches everybody.
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: It's sad to New York Times and review your book
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: the New York Times. If I write about something in
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: the music because I reach more people than the New
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: York Times. I'm not saying that to boast, but that
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: audience is reading me, not the New York Times. So
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: the book audience, yeah, retailers, etc. They're reading the New
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: York Times. That's not where your audience is. And it
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: is not easy to reach your audience, but you are
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: in control of that. Okay. You know, I don't understand
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: why you're not on social media with little bits telling
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: these three. You have an endless supply. You could do
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: twenty on muddy waters coming to your house once. Okay,
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: this gets people somewhat excited, and then you capitalize it.
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: Most people are not willing to work that hard. But
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: most people, as I say, are dead in the water.
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: And you're not well.
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Bob. And this truly was a treat for me.
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 2: And I have to tell you I was very nervous,
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 2: uh doing this, really really nervous. There's a gentleman Steve
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 2: Leeds and you gotta do Bob you got. And there's
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 2: a fellow David Bieber, who used to do the art,
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 2: the creative stuff for the Phoenix magazine and the alternative
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 2: rock station up in the Salem forget the call letters.
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 2: And David from day one read your music, you know,
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 2: your your letters, and he just was would send you know,
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: he would bring to me, he would send me. He
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 2: just thought that they were the bee's knees. And David
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 2: is one of my closest friends and one of my
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 2: brightest friends. And he just took to you, still takes
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 2: to you, you know. And he said, if you don't
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: do Bob Show, you're just like insane. I said, well,
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 2: it's it's industry. I don't really want to talk, Peter.
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: Just do Bob Show, you know. And I was really nervous. Bob,
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 2: and I really thank you because you know, you talked
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 2: about the things or you asked me about the things
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do, and plus just the ease that
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 2: you have made it. Maybe I you know, don't stop
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 2: me talking. I'll tell you everything. I know. Maybe I
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 2: yact too much, but your last words to me, I
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: got to tell you I am in a very bad funk,
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 2: because you know, I work so hard to try to
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: get this thing, and people like Frank Riley. I don't
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 2: know what your relationship is with him. You know, he's
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 2: one of the last of the you know, greatue believers. Yeah,
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 2: true believers, and you know, like Don Law who you know,
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: live Nation. Frank Riley's my favorite agent because he fucking
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: cares about his acts, you know, and you know I
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: drive him crazy, but he puts up with it only
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 2: because you know in particular about what I want to do.
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: And I think you appreciate that. And I thank you
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: for giving me this forum. And please let's stay in
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: touch or I'd value that. And if you can see
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 2: if Irving got the book. If not, I will go.
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: About a text him when we're off. But I'm gonna
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: tell you one more thing and then I'm gonna go. Okay,
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: like on that record, I'm talking to you trying to
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: figure out who you are. Okay, you're a guy from
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: the Bronx. You wonder sell it, but you went to
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: the High School of Music and Art. You're obviously a
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: sharp guy. Okay, you had this left field for a
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: rocker relationship with Faye Dunaway. You have these hit records,
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: You're living in Boston, and then you tell all these
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: stories about these people come into your house. Listen, I've
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: been around rock stars enough to know everybody has a
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: different style, and now I realize what it is. No
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: one ever asked me about me sit there and ask her.
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: I talked really fast. You were curious and interested. That
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: is obviously the magic. It's not because you know you
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: can do the the WBCM late night rap, but if
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 1: to hang with somebody. Obviously these people wanted to hang
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: with you, especially as musicians.
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 2: You know, I didn't go on usually I researched, you know,
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 2: uh and but I but I knew your name for
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 2: so long and the people that are respected, But I
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 2: wanted to hear from you. But I guess it's like
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 2: the book. You would be a character in the book.
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 2: Had we if I was out in la you know,
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 2: doing the La Time Book Festival, I mean we would
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 2: have you know, hooked up and had a dinner. You know,
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 2: maybe would have dragged, you know, irving to Dan Tannis,
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 2: where I used to out, you know, you know, with
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 2: Henley and No. But I'm curious, you know, just as
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 2: an artist, you know, you've created this you know platform
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 2: in a time where so many people have tried, and
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: you went from just like a recording artist, from vinyl
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 2: into digital, you know, from vinyl into CD and now
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: you're on the computer and everybody's talking about it. And I,
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: I am telling you, I was very nervous, I mean,
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 2: and then oh god, one thirty am I going to
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 2: be in shape? I'm gonna be because you know, so
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 2: many people I respect have great respect for you and
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: I it was a mystery to me of how I
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 2: knew the newsletter, but how did it start? I didn't know.
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, so I'm just curious. And that's I guess
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 2: the motivation of the book. How did Muddy you know,
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 2: become a musician or you know talking toreth about you
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 2: know stuff. When you ask what I left out? You know,
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: I left out more of what you told me about
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 2: Sam Cook and other things and you know, stones behind
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 2: closed doors because I didn't want it to be kiss
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 2: and tell my and I admire you because somehow I
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 2: am probably in one of the most depressed states I've
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 2: been in because feeling that this book is not achieving
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 2: it And you may have picked it up, but just
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 2: your words were so encouraging it. As you say with Irving,
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: there's a kind of bond that happens. It's a mystical thing.
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 2: It's like it's like I remember hearing Elvis Presley coming
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 2: from a window in the Bronx and I ran to
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 2: the record store to buy that song about being in
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 2: a hotel, and you know, and it was heartbreak Hotel.
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: I had to have it.
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm first hearing Bob Dylan behind the curtain.
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 2: I had to have more of that voice. It was mystical.
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I appreciate this afternoon, and I
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 2: appreciate your words. I hope you're right.
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, as I say, there's hard working for it.
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave it with one or review story and
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: then we can go. So before COVID, they had these
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: big concerts at Dodger Stadium and they had three acts
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: on one day and three acts on the other day.
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: The headline on the first day was the Eagles. Headliner
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: on the second day was Fleet with mac This was
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: the first show with Vince Gill And I'm talking to
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: Irving the next day and I said, what did Henley think?
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: And he started talking about the monitors William during this song,
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: the monitor mix was little off whatever, and I said,
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: I heard it, but I guarantee you the average person
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: didn't hear it, and Irving looks at me goes, it's
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: the little things like that make the difference between great
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: and everything else. You're talking about being particular, that is
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: what makes you unique an individual. Someone says, I don't
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: want to be an asshole, but it's got to.
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 2: Be like this because I know, well, I want you
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 2: to be my promotion man and go in or my manager,
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 2: to go into the book company and tell him that's
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 2: why he's driving you all crazy, because you know, we
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 2: want it done that way. And I think that's the
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 2: thing about Irving where Don and Glenn they were, you know,
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 2: they were so obsessive, I mean, punching in vowels, you know,
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 2: with the simsic And I remember being with Don when
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 2: Axel Rose was doing a duet, you know, and how
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 2: you know particular Don was and you know, yeah, it's
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 2: it's that wonderful world that we're we're in and there
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 2: ain't nothing that's going to drag us out, Bob. So
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 2: may this be to quote a movie that I'm sure
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 2: is a favorite of both of ours. May this be
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 2: the beginning of a long, long friendship.
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: And I'll leave you with Norman Lee or what he
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: used to say whenever you were with him at a
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: party you always said when he left, to be continued.
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 2: Ah, I'm with you, Thank you, Bob.
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: It Okay, that's been the great Peter Wolf. Till next time.
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: This is Bob left, said
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: Sh