Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Fee Waybill

Transcript

Fee Waybill · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Seth Podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is feed Way Bill of two Fee.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Good to have you here, Bob, thank you for having me.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. That's great. Okay, let's start right from
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the beginning. In your everyday life, are you Fee or
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: are you John? Well, it depends on who you're talking to.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I guess my wife calls me Fee, Elizabeth, and everybody
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: in my family calls me Fee, but then uh. I
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: at the tennis club they tell me Fee. But at
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the polo club, I played polo and uh. When I
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: first started playing polo, I tried to disguise the fact
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: that I was some rock guy, and I told him
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: my name was John, so they all call me John. Okay.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Polo is known as the sport of kings. How does
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: a row star end up playing polo? Well? I was
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: raised on a horse. My brother and I have been
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: horsemen our whole lives. My dad was a riding instructor
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: and a horse show judge. So we grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and we're on a horse from the time I was
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: about five years old until I bailed out at eighteen
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I was on a horse, and uh, and my brother.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I moved to California and obviously got into music, and
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: my brother stayed and he still lives in Scottsdale, Arizona,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and he would always and he has horses, and he
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: was the one that I mean, he's done everything. He's
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: done roping and herding and every kind of discipline on
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: a horse. And he would always ask people, well, how
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: come you don't get a horse, And I said, you know, well,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I live in San Francisco. Okay, there's not a lot
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: of horses around here. And and then he he uh.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: He got into polo in Scottsdale, and he was, Okay,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: now I found something that really is fun and really great.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And and by that time I had moved to l
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: A and there's you know, he says, you gotta try this.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: You gotta get back on the horse and try this.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: You're gonna love it. And so I said, okay, I did.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: And I went to the California Polo Club and they said, uh,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I said, I want to learn. It's an arena club.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: It's arena is like arena football. It's a smaller version
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: of outdoor polo. And they said, okay. First lessons free
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and uh and I said okay, and I just immediately
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I loved it. I loved to be back on a
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: horse again. And so I've been playing for twenty years. Okay,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: So how extensive is the polo scene in southern California. Well,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: it's not. I mean, there's there's the Santa Barbara Polo Club,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: which is pretty high end, and we have an arena
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: club here in in in l A. And there's also
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the Will Rogers Polo Club in l A. And then
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: in California, there's one in San Diego, there's one in uh,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Orange County, there's one on San Louis Obispo. There's one
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: in Temecula. Yeah, there's a bunch of them. There's a
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: bunch of clubs all around this and they and in
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: the winter in out in the desert in Indio. That's
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: big time polo. They have people come from all over
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the USA to play polo out there. How good a
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: polo player are you and how often do you play?
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I play usually? Well, right now, my horses are out
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: at pasture. You have to let them rest. And actually
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: next Monday I'm going up to get them and bring
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: them back to the club and then I'll play through
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: the spring and summer. I'm a one or a two.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: They they handicap you from minus to to ten being best.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And so I started as a minus two and I
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: got better and they raised me to minus one and
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: then zero and then one and then too. And so i'm,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm just a recreational player. I'm you know,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I ah. I really try to protect myself and protect
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: my horses and never never get to, you know, to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: ultra competitive, you know, where I'm going to hurt myself
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: or or or injuring one of my horses. So how
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: often do you play? I play? Uh, usually I play
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Saturday and Sunday morning, and then sometimes I play Thursday
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: night under the lights, So two to three times a week.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: And how many people in arena polo as opposed to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: regular polo. Regular polo is four on the four, four
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: on four. Arena polo is three on three. And how
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: dangerous is it? Really? Has certainly seen a number of
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: polo matches and it looks dangerous for those who are
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: not horse savvic. Yeah, it's dangerous. And you know, my
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: wife keeps My wife is really you know, if she
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: really worries about me, and I mean people die. You know,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: if you're riding down the field full blast on a
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: horse and it stumbles and you hit the deck, you
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: could break your neck really easily and die. But in
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: arena polo you don't ever really it's only a hundred
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: yards by fifty yards, so you don't really get to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: full speed in that shorter distance and it's not as dangerous.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: But people fall off and they you know, they break
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: their leg and break their elbow and break their wrist.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: And I've I've had a couple of injuries, but nothing serious,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: you know, just I like cracked a rib once, but
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: you know, nothing, nothing too serious. And we play with girls, right,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: and so it's a co ed sport and nobody wants
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: to slam the girls into the wall. It's our club
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: is very recreational. Nobody is trying to you know, win
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: money or trophies or anything like that. It's just fun.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: We just have fun. What's the key to being a
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: great polo player? Number One? You can't think about writing.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: You have to be a good writer. You can't think
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: about following off the horse and you have to uh,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: you know, it's just hand to eye, you know, I
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: played baseball my whole life, and and a ball a
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: polo balls about the size of the softball. It's about
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: that big around arena ball, and you know, you have
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: a mallet and you hit the ball, and you know
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of rules and you just have to
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: you have to. You have to be aware, be aware
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: of the horse and the arena and all the other people,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: and it's just and then be able to hit the ball.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: You know, I never had a problem hitting the ball,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: so and once I learned to ride again, you know,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: it's it's easy, it's fun. So you're saying, an arena
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: ball as opposed to four or four is a different
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: size ball. The arena ball is about the size of
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the softball. It's like a soccer ball inflated leather and
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: in an outdoor ball is about the size of the baseball.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: And it's solid plastic, really hard, solid plastic. So yeah,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: at the ArenaBall, you can use the wall to bounce
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: it off the wall. It's it's more it's it's it bounces.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: You know. Historically polo is seen as expensive. Is it expensive? Well,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: it depends on what level of polo you play. If
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: you're if you're going to India or for your going.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, polo is a big time in Florida. And
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: if you travel to Florida and if you have you know,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: if you have really expensive horses, it can be really expensive.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: But but then again it can be recently inexpensive. You know,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: my horses. I think the most expensive horse I I had,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I bought ever bought, was like five thousand dollars. And
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: but people pay a hundred thousand dollars for a polo horse.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: It's just all depends on how high a level you
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: want to play and how much does it cost to
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: keep a horse for a year for a well, the
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: board at my club is seven and fifty dollars a
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: month per horse, and that includes feed and lodging, and
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: that also includes a groom to tack up your horse
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and to wash your horse and basically exercise your horse.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: They exercise six days a week to stay you know,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: they they're athletic and so it's not that expensive. Our club,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: we have a great club, California Polo Club is a
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: great club and it's not that expensive to play. People
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: can start and you know, you can take a lesson
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: for like hundred bucks. You can take a lesson and
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: and learn to play. And then of course then you
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: have to get a horse, and you have to get
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: a saddle, and you have to get a bridle, and
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: you have to pay the board, and you have you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: it adds up. So since you know this so so
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: much about horses, what is going on with all the
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: horses dying and horse racing, especially in southern California. I know,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I know it's terrible. Well, no one really knows. I've
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: read a lot about it. Uh, and some people say
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: it's a bad track. Uh you know, Uh sometimes they
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: use artificial uh instead of just a dirt track. It's
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: it's some kind of artificial composite. And people say that's bad.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: But uh, the ones in Santa Anita where the horses,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: so many horses died, Uh, they don't know. I mean,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: horse racing is a bad sport. You know. People spend
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars on race horses and then when they
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: don't win, they tell their trainer, you know, I spent
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: a million dollars on this horse. It needs to win.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Do whatever the hell you have to do to get
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: it to win. So what do they do? They give
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: them drugs, they give them. It's that simple. It's they
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: they load these horses up with ugs and sometimes and
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes they bleed.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they push them too hard. The other thing I
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: don't like about horse racing is they start them when
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: they're two years old. That's too young for a horse
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: to start racing full speed. They're not grown yet, their
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: bones are not fully formed. Uh. In polo, you know
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: in Argentina, which is polo is the national sport in Argentina,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: they don't even start training a horse untill they're five
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: or six years old. So two years old or three
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: years old is just too young to force a horse
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: to run as fast as it could go. And that's
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: what happens. You know, they all kinds of things happen,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: and you know they it's it's about money. That's what
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: it's about, Bob. It's about money. And they don't want
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: to say that, Oh no, it's it's you know, because
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: it's money and it's all about money. And they don't
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: want to close down Santa Anita because they're making a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: ton of money. And you know, the people who are
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the people want to race and they want to win money,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: and that's you know, it's that's what it's about. So
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: you also said you play tennis. Are you a good
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: athlete in general and doing a million things or these
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: are just your two sports? No, I I I've always
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: been athletic, and of course being the lead singer of
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the Tubes was all always pretty athletic. When I'm doing
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: ten or fifteen costume changes in the show, you know. Uh,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: but uh, I played. My dad started little league in Scottsdale, Arizona,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: back in gosh, she was nineteen fifty six, And uh,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: I started playing baseball from the time I was eight
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: years old and played baseball all, you know, all the
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: way through school through high school and then and then
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: even even continued playing fast pitch softball until you know,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: until about two thousand three or two thousand four, and
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: then fat men's fast pitch softball kind of disappeared and
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: it became a women's sport, and that's when I switched
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: to polo. But I've always been athletic. I've always had
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: some kind of sport. And my wife is a unbelievable
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: tennis player. She's played her whole life through high school
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: and college and and uh, she is a great player,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and she's she convinced me to start taking polo lessons,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: you know, at seventy years old. And uh, because basically
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: she would love me to stop playing polo and start
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: playing tennis instead. Okay, so she convinced you to play
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: take tennis lesson, Yes, yes she did. Okay, because you said,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I want to make clearify, let's go back to the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: very beginning. I always thought your name was completely made up.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Way Bill is your real last name? Yeah, oh yeah,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: that's my real last name. And he give us any
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: history of that because I always think of shipping in
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: way bill. Do you know where it comes from? Yeah? Yeah,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: A way bill is the list of stuff they've they're
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: hauling in the back of the truck. Yeah. And uh,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: well it's my father's father. His name was Jail. Came
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: from England and uh. Names that end in two l's
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: are usually an English name. And uh, that was their
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: name back in England that they it wasn't changed. That
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: was you know, before they had the term way bill.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: There was way bills. There was the history of the
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: family of way Bills. They were from, uh, Brighton, bright
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Bristol or Brighton. I think Brighton, England is where my
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: family came from okay, and why fee for the uh
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: lesson knowledgeable? Ah, that's um well was shortened from Fiji
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: and one. Back in the old days when we were
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: all living in San Francisco, living together in a two
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: bedroom condemned house on Noriega Street. The the the bass player,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: UH thought that I looked like the King of Fiji,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: which I could never understand. The King of Fiji was
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a black band with an Afro about that day, and
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: they started calling me Fiji and I. You know, you
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: can't pick your own nicknames, that's for sure. Back in
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: our area, they had nicknames them. So I was Fiji
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: and I was Fiji up until the time. Uh. The
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: our our bass player Rick Anderson, still calls me feed
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: because we feed fee j fej uh. And when we
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: made our first record in ninet for n M Records, UH,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: they wanted us to put They said, okay, well, what's
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: your name and and and I thought feed. I didn't
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: want to say. I shortened it then from Fieg. I
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: took the j off from feedg to fee and I
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: thought the fee for the way bill, Oh yeah, it's
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: kind of like terry cloth or you know, probably very good. Okay,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: you mentioned your wife. How long you've been married. I
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: have been married, well, on and off for thirty years.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Thirty years to the same woman, to the same woman.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: What's the on and off part. Well, we got married
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and then and we got We met in nine at
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a Mayan temple in Guatemala on a solar eclipse January
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: July eleven, we met and we were on separate vacations.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: She was on a occation with some English school teacher
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: from Santa Monica and I was on a vacation with
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: my best friend. And we we were Mayan iss we
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: were we went there to look at Mayan temples and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: we were put both into Mayan history. And we met
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: at the Mayan ruin of Tikal on July eleven, and uh,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the guy that she was with recognized me, and you know,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: came walking out of the jungle and said, hey, you're
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: fee Waybill from the tubes. And I just went and
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: then I immediately fell in love with his girlfriend, and
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: and so we spent the day together and then they
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, we're going back to
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Belize where we were staying, and they're going back to
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Santa Monica. And I said, you know, I didn't know.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I was desperate to try to reach this person, and
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: you know, so it's funny, I asked. The guy said
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: he had a video camera, one of those giant video
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: cameras that the whole day was taken video. And so
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I said, Randy, you know,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: could I get a copy of the video? Which was
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: a ruse, and he goes, oh, sure it called me
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: when we get back to Santa Monica and I said okay,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and so I did, and then I said, yeah, I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: need a copy of the video. Yeah. I said, oh,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: what a what about Liz? What about that girl you
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: were with? Liz? He goes, oh, nothing, Na, nothing, would
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: give me, no information at all. And so I went
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: and got the video and I said, we asked again.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: He goes, na, Na, She's no, it's not happening, and
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: uh so I kind of gave up on that. And
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: then eight that was July. Eight months later, in February
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: of two, I'm working out at the Santa Monica Athletic
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Club and she walks in the door of the club
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and she was she wasn't even a member, she was
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the guest of a member. And I saw her and
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: she saw me and I just kind of went, oh
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: my god, I can't believe it. And then we started
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: dating and live and then we got married in We
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: got married in ninety seven, got divorced in two thousand one,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: went separate ways uh and and then we got back
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: together in two thousand eight, like six seven years later,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: we got back together. And then we got married a
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: second time on the anniversary of the day we met,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: which was July eleven, uh nineteen. What set en we
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: got married a second time? Okay? A couple of questions.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Have you been married before? No? Okay? Have any children? No? Okay?
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: What happened in those seven odd years when we're separated?
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Why did you get divorced? And why did you get
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: back together? And when you divorced just on paper see
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: each other or were you really separate in those eras? No,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: we didn't. We you know, I was living in a
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: little house in Sherman Oaks. You know, we just you
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: warn n to the truth. I was back then when
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: marijuana was not legal. I was growing pot in the
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: backyard and with smoke pottle day long. And finally she says, God,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: I can't handle it. You're just smoke poddle day long.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And then we got divorced, and then you know, I
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: went out, no, and we didn't see each other for
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: seven six seven years. I you know, the tubes reformed.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I went back on the road. She uh uh went
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: to work and and became a commercial real estate agent
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: and then invested in commercial property and and took over
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: her dad's business. Of so she went to work and
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I went to work, and and then, uh, it's funny,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: you know my dad, uh, my dad, besides being a
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: writing instructor, my dad was a chief engineer of one
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: of the very first resort hotels in Scottsdale, called the
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Valley ho And so he knew how he knew everything.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: My dad knew plumbing and electrical and carpentry, and he
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: could do anything. And he taught my brother and I
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: to do that. He he taught us everything. He taught
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: us plumbing, he taught us electrical, he taught us carpentry.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: So I can fix anything pretty much. And Elizabeth was
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: was reading this business and getting screwed by various vendors,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: by the plumber, by the electrician. But she didn't know,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: you know, if they were in a good or she
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: didn't know if they were charging her too much. She
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: just you know, that wasn't something that she really understood.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: And so one day she called, she goes, you know,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know if this is a good plumber or not,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: you know all about plumbing. Can you help me with this?
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Can you can you check this guy out and find
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: out if he's just you know, overcharging me or you know,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And I said, okay, And so, uh so I did it.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: So I helped her out, and I you know, I
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: got her a new plumber, and I got her a
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: new new electrician and a new eric. You know, I
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: pretty much fired everybody she had and got somebody better.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: And you know, we started working together and on commercial property,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and uh and then that kind of rekindled the romance.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: And uh, but I had never you know, I wrote
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: a I used to I used to live in a
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: little house in Venice, and I would like I would
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: sit up all night and I get hammered and smoke
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: pot or or drink and write poetry for her to
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: her and and then I send a texture poetry and
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: I finally put a book together, a poetry book, and
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: but it was all too and it worked. It kind
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: of she kind of went, God, you still Anyway, we
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: got back together because of the poetry book, and uh,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: and then you know, we started living together and and
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: uh we got married again. So and we still were together.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting in She's an artist. She loves art, and
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: she's very besides being a great tennis player, she's a
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: wonderful artist. And so we turned our garage into an
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: arts studio. So we've got this. You know, the cars
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: are parked on the street, but we have this. That's
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: where I'm sitting now. We have this gorgeous studio downstairs
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: that used to be the garage and now we have
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: a little kitchen and a little bathroom. And she comes
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: down here and just is in heaven and has a
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: great big wall. I'm looking at this gigantic wall where
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: she's working on a piece that's got she's it's got
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: to be ten ft by eight by ten or something giant.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: And so you know, so I'm just happy as a
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: clam and so lucky, you know. And so you're about
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to play some live dates. What's the thinking about playing
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: those live dates? Why with the tombs she's been her
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: with my solo I was about to play. In fact,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: it was the first gig was supposed to be tomorrow.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I did the solo album My fee Way Bill Rides
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Again and which I said to you, by the way,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and and I put together with my best friend Richard Marks.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I put Richard. Richard wrote the songs and produced it
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: with me. And he's the guy's beyond brilliant and has
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: been my best friend for gosh since we met in
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: in the studio with David Foster back in and we've
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: written songs all these years. And so we made this
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: record and uh, and I've never done a solo show ever.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: And he said, why let's do a solo show is
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: that you can use my band. I'll help you. We
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: can put it together and you can use my band
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and do let's do some gigs. We've never done it.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: And so we were supposed to have done gigs this weekend,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: a gig in Phoenix in the Troubadour in l A
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: and then a gig in Orange County at the Coach House,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: and uh, but that you know, we had it all
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: set up and then O Macron happened and then the
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: whole thing, you know, collapsed, and people are afraid to
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: go out still, and you know, so so we've postponed it,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: We've post spooned the gigs till the end of the summer.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: But then we've got tubes gigs we've got We're playing
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: in March, uh in Chicago and Minneapolis and Omaha, and
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: then we've got gigs coming up throughout the year. And uh,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: you know why am I doing it? Why? Because that's
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: what I do and I live for the stage. And
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I mean it's I mean, you saw me. You you
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: went to that David Bowie gig right in at Water Village. Yeah,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I I absolutely did. I've seen you and I saw
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: in the Rosy and seventy five. I totally get it.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: But let's let's go a couple of different angles. Hey,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Usually the life of a rock star who is not
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: commercially mega successful is very challenging financially, How have you
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: made it through all these decades? I guess I've just
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: watched my money, watched my life. I've invested. I've invested
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: in our commercial properties, you know, thanks to Elizabeth uh
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: helping me, and so I've invested in that. And uh,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not extravagant. I don't drive a Lamborghini
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: SUV and you know I just uh. Uh, I just
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: created life for myself that that I could I could
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: deal with, that I could afford, you know, And and
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: uh it's been challenging. It has been challenging, you know,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: but uh, uptil the point of the pandemic, you know,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: we were we the Tube signed with the management company.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Just like in the beginning of for for years and
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: years we had no manager and I was the manager
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: and I did everything, and but we signed with Jonathan Wolfson. Uh.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And Jonathan also manages Hall of Notes and Lover Boy
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: and the Tubes and and well once again, a friend
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: of Elizabeth's thanks to her, got us an introduction with him,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and he came to see us out at the Canyon
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Club in Agora Hills and he took us on and
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: it's kind of changed everything. We we worked a ton
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: in two thou nine. We made a lot of money,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and uh, Jonathan has really really helped us and really
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: kind of changed everything for us. And uh and then
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: of course the pandemic hits, so it's been challenging to
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: deal with that and you know, make it through that.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: But uh, you know, uh, it's it's amazing and I
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: never thought this would happen, but people, people just our
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: songs have endured and people come and people come back
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: to see us again and again and again, and it's
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: it's uh, like I said, I never would have thought that,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: but uh and I think also that you know, we're
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: very visual, unlike most bands, and we constantly change our show,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: and like right now we're doing this complete we're doing
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the completion Backward Principle album and we're kind of visually
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: recreating it with the business suits and the whole kind
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: of sarcasm and corporate uh parody that created the record.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: And and then you know, next year we'll change it
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: completely and we'll do a completely different show and there'll
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: be different costume changes and well, you know, and it's
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: just every time you come to see the tubes, it's different.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: And we're doing a visual uh visual you know, portrayal
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: of of what a record or a song or whatever.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: And uh, I don't know, it's just we've we were
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: so lucky to have endured this many years and to
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: be this healthy and you know, everybody in the band
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: is really healthy and that everybody really wants to play,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: and so it's just been it's just been wonderful. You know,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: A couple of decades back. Bill Spooner, who was one
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: of the creative forces in the band, separates from the band.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: What happened there. I don't know how to couch this,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: but drugs, drugs happened. That's pretty definitive explanation. Let's also
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: talk about the era in terms of the Tubes and
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: also your songwriting with Richard Marks and with Toto. Do
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: you have a royalty stream or is that stuff pretty
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: much in the weird view mirror if there ever was no, no,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I do. I still that I do, and that also helps.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: I never sold my publishing or my writer's royalties, so
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: I do have a publishing stream. And also, the strangest
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: it may seem, after forty years, we actually recouped with
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Universal because you know, Universal owns everything. They bought a
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: a M and they bought Capital where all of our
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: product originated. And so we get royalty checks hard as
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: it maybe to believe from Universal twice a year. So yeah,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: we do have a royalty stream. I mean, it's not massive.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: It's not like Richard Marx's royalty stream, where you know
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: he sold forty million records and and owns it all.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: You know, every record was a license so, uh, it's
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: not like that, but uh, it's really it really helps,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: you know. And and I'm the you know, I've I do.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I pretty much do everything. I'm the publisher, administrator, I'm
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: the you know, I'm I kind of. I do the merch.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I booked the tour, I booked the hotels, I booked
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: the cars, I booked the air. Uh. And lately Elizabeth,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth has taken over some of the uh, some of
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: the work with me. And she helps with the merch
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: and helps with the v I P beaten greet and
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: she's kind of become my my mentor and road manager,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: personal assistant, and and nurse. She's the she's the sexy
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: nurse in the show. Now, So that's all a plus, okay,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And do you charge the other guys for doing all
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: that work? No? Okay, let's go back to the beginning. So, yeah,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: you grew up in the fifties and early sixties, short haircuts, raw, rod, cetera.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: The Beatles come along. Were you into music where you transformed?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Did you want to be into what happened then? And
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: I've done I've done this interview. The Beatles. Just Beatles
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: changed my life. The Beatles made me want to be
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: a rock and roll singer. And it changed everything when
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: the Beatles came out. Uh uh I was. I was
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: a freshman in high school and uh when the Beatles
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: came out, that's all I could think about. And I
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: actually I you know, I wanted to be a baseball player,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: and you know, and it all, it all became. I
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: went to this high school, Scottsdale High and back then
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: we had an unbelievable theatrical department. We had a whole
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: building that was dedicated to theater arts, and we had
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: a shop, and we had a giant auditorium. We had
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: a three thousand seat auditorium where we could do plays.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: I did, like from the time way just to be clear,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: you mean three thousand seats right, yeah? I thought you
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: said no, no, no, three thousand seed auditorium. And we
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: would do plays, you know, I did. I did plays
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: all the way through high school. I did Sound of
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Music and the Music Man and Little I played Little
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Abner as a ninety pound weekly and we did dramatic.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: We did Syranodo Bergerac and we did student We did
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: I just did plays and we and I was in this.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: We had a vocal group what's called the Scotts Still Singers,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And it was a group of about forty people, you know, uh, soprano,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: alto tenor bass, about ten of each. And we would
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: perform I mean we would go to like state competitions
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: of choral competitions and we would perform like Baroque to
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Bach and handles Messiah and all these really complicated pieces,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: uh and uh. And so I spent all that time
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: singing these classical type stuff, wanting to be a rock singer,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and listening to the Beatles all day long and letting
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: my hair grow. We used to have a rule if
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: your hair touched the collar of your shirt, you got expelled.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: And I mean back then, you know you had you
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: couldn't wear jeans. Believe me, I remember you had to
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: wear a colored shirt. You know you couldn't. And you know,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, I was gonna say my I
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: think I I got it. And and you know today
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: I still I still have the voice I had when
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: I was a kid. I can sing all these songs still,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and I love it. And but I think, uh, my
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: mother was a singer before my mother. I was born
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: in Omaha, Nebraska, and my mother lived in Omaha and
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: my mother's family. My mother's mother immigrated from Sicily. She
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: couldn't speak English. I'm half Sicilian and half English and
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: uh and my mother and back then, you know, if
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: you were Italian, it was kind of second class citizen.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: You know. It's like you know, uh if it's funny.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: I just read the uh, the Caaplan book on Sinatra. Uh,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the two books he wrote, The Voice and the Chairman,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: and when he was young. That's the way they treated Italians.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: They were they were second class citizens. If you were
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: an Italian, you were either a mob guy or you know,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: you were so anyway, she but she was a singer
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: and before she got married, she used to sing with
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: big bands that came through town and they would they
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: would she was like the one they hired to sing,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: you know, begin the beginning and the standards that the
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: big bands would play. Tommy Dorsey, She's played with Tommy
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Dorsey and uh, so I think I kind of got
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: that gene. And we my house was when I was
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: a kid, we sang all the time before the Beatles.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: We all you know, she my mom loved Broadway musicals
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: and we would always get uh Broadway soundtrack albums, And
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: we had a great big record player, one of those
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: giant SEV cabinet record player things, and we would sing
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: all day long. And we're always singing. She was singing,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I was singing. My brother really wasn't much of a singer,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: but I really just you know, dove in and uh,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: West Side Story. When West Side Story came out, I
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: flipped out and I learned all of the songs on
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: West Side Story. And actually, I have have you seen
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: the movie, the new movie lately? I have not seen
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the new movie. I have not seen it either. I
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: don't know how Stephen Sondheim is gonna work. You know
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: that some of the lyrics in When You're a Jet
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: are not exactly politically correct anymore. Yeah. Uh, And the
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Scuttal singers were famous. We used to win the state
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: competitions for choral groups and so every you know, everybody
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: knew about the singers and they had like special jackets
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: with with with you know, of emblems, and you know,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: it was it was a big deal in scotch Dale.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: It was a small town. And uh, I mean there
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: was when I moved to scutt Deal, there was still
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: hitching posts in front of the grocery store and you
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: could ride your horse to town and hitch it up
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: in front of the grocery store and get your groceries
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: for your family, put him in your saddle bag, ride
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: back home. Uh. But anyway, so when I was before
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: my freshman year of high school, uh, they held auditions
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: for you know, there was the Scots Chiel Singer was
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: like a varsity group. It was mostly all juniors and seniors,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: but there was a freshman version of it that you know,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: you could get in the freshman version and then after
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: a couple of years move up to the to the singers.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And so I wanted, you know, you had to audition
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: for for the for the the two directors, the freshman
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: director was his name was Deb's Valentine. And the the
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: senior director was Joe Esley. His name was Joe Estley.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: And they got Joe sli changed my life too. And uh,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: so I auditioned and I signed up and I sang
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Maria from West Side Story Acapella and they were and
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: so Joe Esley was so impressed that he said, look,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Deb's this, I want this guy. So I was the
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: first guy ever to be put straight into the senior
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: to the varsity Scottsdale Singers and didn't have to go
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: through the freshman route and in the freshman group, so
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: I went straight to the singers as a freshman. And
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: you know, after a year or two, he started giving
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: me the solos, the arias in and handles Messiah and
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: various things, and he would just it's funny. He would
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: just you know, he would constantly go to, you know, no,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: do this, do this, do this. He was always you know,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: trying to help or and you know, I was an idiot.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: I was a fucking idiot. So I you know, I
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: would say, you're you know, you're on my case and
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: I would oh. I used to always think he's on
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: he's why is he on me? On me? On me
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: all the time. And so one day I went into
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: his office and I said, you know, Mr Esley, why
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: why are you it's always me? Why are you always
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: on me? And he goes, you know, and he sat
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: me down in his desk and he goes, you have
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: got something special. You know, you've you've got a great voice,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: and you've got something special. And he was also the
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: director of all the plays too, and he says, you
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna let you just slough it off.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let you ignore it. You've got it.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: You've got to to develop, you've got to do You've
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: got to do this. You can't. I just let it slide.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: And so I kind of went, oh wow, really? And so,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, he was the one that cast me as
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Little Abner as a ninety powder weekly, and I'm like,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Mr Asley, am I you know, Little Abner is a
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: big stud. You know, he's a big muscle bound guy.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I said, do I wear a big muscle suit or
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: You're gonna make me a big muscle suit to wear?
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: And he said, no, you just have to think big,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: I said. He says, when Peppi Yokum jumps off the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: roof into your arms, you better be thinking big. Okay, Okay,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: So you graduate from high school, you go to college,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: and you drop out. Why do you drop out? Oh? God?
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: I started being an anthropology major. I still love anthropology.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: I love I love the whole genre. And then I
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: switched to oceanography, right, I mean in Arizona, and I'm
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: obsessed with the ocean and I want to go to
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Script's Institute. I want to transfer this. Well, you know
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: that's not gonna happen. And you know, we Arizona. Uh
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: we did. My family didn't have a lot of money.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: My both my mom and dad worked and I was
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: a latch key kid. Me and my brother, and uh
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: we went to Arizona. I went to Arizona State because
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: if you were a resident, you know, the tuition was minimal.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: And uh and uh so and also I decided, well,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be a serious actor. Now, no more
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: of this musical comedy stuff. I'm gonna do Ibocident and
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: check Off and Macbeth. And so I went straight to
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: the drama department and and I started doing those kinds
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: of plays. And then finally I went I I finished
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: my freshman year, and then kind of halfway through my
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: sophomore year, I flipped out and I just went, this
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: is boring. Oh my god, you know, god, I don't
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: want to do this. And uh and you know, I
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: had a group of friends that we used and we
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: were all into music and we used to go one
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: of the one of the guys in the group had
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: this trailer He lived in a trailer way outside of
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: town on Baseline Road, and so we would all go
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: out there, you know, five or six of us would
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: go out to his trailer. His name was Terry, Terry molloy,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: and and we would play music and and smoke pot Okay,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: we play music and smoke pot all all night long.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: And uh you know, and I had moved This is
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: when I was. I had moved out of out of
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I moved out of my parents house the
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: day I turned eighteen. And I had a job, and
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: I got an apartment in Tempee near the college. And
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: I had a job. And I worked at this pottery store,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: which is kind of ironic because my my wife is
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: now totally into pottery and we have a we have
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: a wheel, and we have a kiln and she's making
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: stuff all day long. So but I worked in this
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: pottery store and I used to pack cactus, little baby
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: cactuses in boxes to send to like Minnesota, where it
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: would instantly die because there's you know, it's too cold
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: for cactus. That's why they're not growing in Minnesota, is it.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: And uh so, so Terry found out, you know, and
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: and we were all kind of of the same, you know,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: tune in, turn on, drop out, it was kind of
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: and we took a LSD. You know, it was the
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: world of kind of Timothy Leary world, Ah, and he
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: found out about this town in northern Arizona. There's a
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: town called Jerome on the very it's it's on the
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: side of a mountain called Mingus Mountain, and it's in
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: the Verde Valley. It's about midway in the middle of
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the state of Arizona. And there used to be a
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: gigantic copper mine there run by a company called Felps
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Dodge Mining. And they they they dug all. I mean,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: the whole town was full of tunnels and caves where
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: copper mines where they would mind the copper. And so
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: they eventually they sucked out all the copper in the
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: mountain and they said, okay, well that's were done. And
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: they left and they left, and they had a whole
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: lot of people working for them, these miners and the
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: minders all had little shacks on the side in the
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: town of Jerome. And Jerome was pretty much a ghost town.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: It was abandoned. There was nobody there left. And once
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: the mind left and all the minders left, it was
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: a major ghost town. There was nothing. There was like
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: one bar, there was no gas station, there was one
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: there wasn't a hotel, there was nothing. There was just
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: a few people really, you know, seniors, seniors that had
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: lived there the whole life, and they didn't leave. So
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Terry says, you know, we can, we can move to
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: this ghost town. And there's all these miners shacks and
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: nobody gives us, they don't care. So you could just
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: have one. You can just squat in one. You can
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: just homestead one. We used to stay homestead and we went,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: oh really okay, So like eight of us moved to Jerome.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: We just we said that's it and I quit school.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: My parents freaked out, I mean completely freaked out, and
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: we moved to this little town and I had my
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: own minors shock. Everybody got their own minors shack. And
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: there's no this was you know, there's no indoor plumbing. Okay,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: so we had an outhouse. There was h The electricity
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: had all been turned off, so there was no electricity either.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: So you had like like hurricane lamps for for light.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: And we all just we had we had nothing. I
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: had no money. I remember I had eight cents in
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: my jeans and I had eight cents in there for
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: a long long time. And we used to go from
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: various people would have would have dinners, you know. They
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: would they would say, okay, well dinners at my house tonight,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: and we'd all go there. And my dad used to
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: bring me a twenty five pound bag of brown rice
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: from Phoenix, and so I when I got a bag
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: of brown rice, I'd have dinners. Okay, well we have
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: a big dinner of brown rice. And I I mean, gosh,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: I lived there for probably this was January of n
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: and I lived there for about four or five months,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: maybe with absolutely nothing, no money, no nothing, and just
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: you know, we're a bunch of hippies were surviving and
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: we loved We had a great time. You know. People
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: would come up from the city and they would bring drugs,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: you know. Okay, so how do you make it from
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: the booties to being a roadie for what it becomes
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the tubes. Well, I'm gonna tell you. I finally got
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: sick of having no money. So, uh, I heard about
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: this rancher who was looking for cowboys. He's looking to
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: hire a couple of cowboys. He needed help. His name
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: was Dave Perkins, and so I went to Dave Perkins
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: and he was, Uh, there's a town in Arizona called Perkinsville, Uh.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: His father was this patriarch of Perkinsville. And his father
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: drove a herd of hundred longhorn cows from Texas all
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: the way to Arizona. You know, when he was a kid.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: And he had five sons, and he owned all this property.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: He was the big deal. And each of the five
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: sons had a ranch. He gave each of them their
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: own cattle ranch. So Dave was the youngest son and
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: he had his own cattle ranch. And the other guys
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: were pretty much rednecked cowboys, you know they were. They were,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: shall we say, a conservative group and except for Dave.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: And Dave was a little forward thinking. And you know,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: he had some kids, and he divorced his wife, and
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: then he had a lady living with him and helping
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: him run his ranch. And so I came up to him,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: and I had long hair, and you know, not Fiji hair,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: but uh, I said, Dave, you know I grew up
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: on a horse. I can ride. I can help you,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: because he needs somebody to go out. He had two
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand acres of forest service least land. Okay,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: he did known it. He leased it from the Forest Service.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: And on this and the Forest Service based on how
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: much feed there was, and there was no feed because
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: of the desert. They would tell you how many cows
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: as you could run on this land, and so the
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: number was one hundred and fifty. He could have a
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty mother cows on this two hundred and
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand acres, And twice a year you had to
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: go out and round up these hundred fifty cows and
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: bring him back and breed them to the bulls so
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: that they would make babies to make you know, Hamburger
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: out of And so that was the way it worked.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: And so every twice a year you got to go
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: out and round up the cows and bring in the
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: bringing the babies and bringing brand. And I was a cowboy.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: I was a cowboy, just like in the movies. And
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: I always wanted to be a cowboy. You know, when
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: I was a kid, all I did was watch westerns.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: And you know, I watched all those westerns and all
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: those big stars started as you know, Steve McQueen wanted
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: dead or alive or they all cowboys, John Wayne and
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: every Clint and now I mean they all. I wanted
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: to be a cowboy, and so I got to be
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: a cowboy, and so I would ride out on my horse.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: He gave me a horse, and I'd ride out. And
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: it wasn't as hard as it sounds to find cows
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: because there was no water, so the cows would always
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: be near the water. And so you'd go to wherever
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: the river was and you'd round up cows because they
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: would be there drinking water, So round them up and
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: bring them back to the ranch. And then you'd separate
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: out the boys from the girls. And then the boys were,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: you know, castrated. This is fascinating, But how do we
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: get from here to rock and roll? Oh? Sorry? Well,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid, before I left, I used
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: to go watch bands in Phoenix. I mean, you know Alice.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Alice started in Phoenix Cooper and he had a band
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: called the Ear Wings and I used to go watch them,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: and Roger Steen and Prairie Prince and a guy David
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: had a trio in Phoenix called the Red, White and
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Blues Band and they used to play at a little
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: club called the v I P in downtown Phoenix. And
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I used to go to this club all the time
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: to listen to music, live music, and they were great.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: They were a great band, and they you know, they
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: did all this original material. And Roger used to play
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Hendricks songs because he loved Hendricks. And so I
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: would go see them, and I became friends with them,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: and I was, you know, kind of just a hanger
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: on her, and I, you know, I was looking for
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: some way, you know, to get into music somehow. And so, uh,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: when I moved to the mountains, when I moved to
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: the Verde Valley, uh, uh, you know, I everyone, you know,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: I go back to town to get whatever, get asked
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: my parents for money or something, and I would say,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: you know, this is so great up here. And and
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: they every once in a while they would drive their
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: truck up there. Uh. They had a big they had
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: a milk truck that was converted into their equipment truck,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: and they would they had a generator and they would
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: drive up to the mountains and set their gear up
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: out in the desert and just play to the cactus right.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: And uh. The guy that I worked with, his name
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: was Michael Walker. He met a girl and they wanted
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: to get married, and they wanted a band for the
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: wedding at the at the Perkins Place. And I asked Roger,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: I said, you want to You know, these guys have
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: like a two hundred bucks or something and they need
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: a band to play for the wedding and and so
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: you want to come up and do it? And they
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: said yes. So they came up and they played at
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Michael Walker's wedding. Okay, and when they did they what
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: happened us When Prairie Prince graduated from high school, he
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: was an artist. He's still an artist. He's he's the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: one that does all of our album covers and everything. Uh.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: Prairie got a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: to begin school in the fall of nineteen and Uh.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Up until that point, they had no roadie that the band,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: they didn't have anybody. And so when they came up
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: to play for the wedding, they said, hey, do you
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: want to do you want to be? Actually, actually the
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: bass player asked me if I wanted to be in
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: the band and play logs African logs, and I said logs.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: He goes, yeah, you know, we'll get these big logs
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: that are like hollow down and you can play him
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: it's kind of a I went, but also, we need
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: you to drive the truck to San Francisco. Uh went, oh,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: I see, okay. And I by that time, by that time,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: after being on the ranch for about a year and
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: a half being a cowboy, I made fifty dollars a
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: month plus room and board to be the cowboy. And
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: I said, I kind of got I kind of said, well,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I kind of done this whole cowboy thing, okay,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: And so I said, okay, So I drove the truck
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: in the in the summer of sixty nine, I drove
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: the truck to San Francisco and uh. And that's how
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: it all started. That's how I became a roady to
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: the band. And you know, we got a little house
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: and in the Sunset District and we would do little
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: gigs here and there, and I was the road he
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: and I. I had no idea at all about any
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: kind of electronic knowledge. I had no knowledge. I knew
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: too put the O N switch in the O N position.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: And that was the extent of my knowledge. And so
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: how do you end up in the band? Well, I'll
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: tell you. They had a manager. Okay. We had a
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: guy named John Spear who was the manager. And he
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: was also there like high school friend. He had no idea,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: but he was a hustler and he was you know
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: he uh uh. He got us a gig to play
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: at this nine seventy Expo seventy in Osaka, Japan. Okay.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: It was an ex exposition World Exposition in Osaka. And
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: he got us a gig to play at the San
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: Francisco Pavilion. Okay, like five sets of a day and
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: the and the wet. It's funny because at the time
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: we had changed the name Rogers band was called the
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: White Blues Band, right the trio, and they had they
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: for some reason, I don't know why. Actually they had
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: changed the name to Arizona, okay. And John got them
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: to hire us at the San Francisco Pavilion. But the
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: guy goes, you know, you really can't. It's not gonna
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: work for a band to be called Arizona representing San Francisco.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: And so he goes, how about They went, well, how
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: about if you just take the A off the end,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: you could be Arizon Okay, great, okay, So we went
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: wheat and and he also got us the transportation there
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: back and back then there was a shipping company called
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: the American President Lines. It was a it was a
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like a princess cruisers or celebrity cruises. It
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: was a company that actually just it was a a
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: ship that transported you to Japan. It was a big
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: passenger liner, right, And he got us a gig to
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: play on the ship for our passage. You could go
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: for free. All you have to do is play to
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: two concerts on the ship and then and so that
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: was actually the first time I actually performed in front
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: of an audience. I became the opening act for the
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: for Arizon, and I had my because I used to
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: play guitar and I used to sit out there in
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: the desert and play Roy Orbison songs to the cactus
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: and just sing like Bob Dylan songs and folk songs.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: And so I knew a couple of songs, and they said,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: will you be the opening act? You can play your
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: folks songs, And so I would play Roy Orbison song
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: or a Bob Dylan song and play a couple of
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: songs and I'd be the opening act. Well, what happened
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: on the trip on the way over there, we got
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: caught smoking pot in our in our state room, and
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: they kicked us off the ship. In Hawaii, and so
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: then we had to wait for the next one to come.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: There was they had about five or six. They had
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: the President Wilson and the President Roosevelt, and they got
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: all these ships named after presidents. And so we got
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: on the second one and we made it to Japan
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: and then uh we did that. We played for six
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: weeks at this at Explo seventy at the San Francisco Pavilion,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: and you know, we we you know, it was great. God,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: I never it was wonderful and uh, you know, we
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: met Japanese girls and we had such a great time.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: And on the way back, same thing. We got caught
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: smoking pot in the ship and so they didn't kick
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: us off the ship, but they stuck us in the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: steerage compartment where there was all these bunk beds, you know,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: with Filipinos smoking cigars, which was pretty hurting. And but
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: then David the bass player, he there's there's like a
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: preacher on board. This is I mean, you couldn't you
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: have to write a book coming this is ridiculous. He
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: gets caught having sex with the preacher's daughter. Okay, I
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: know this is I mean, I'm being honest, this is true,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: and so they kicked us off the boat again in Hawaii,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: and so uh and we met some hippies in Hawaii
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: and we went and stayed at their place and you know,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: smoke pot all day long. And so then we got
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: the next boat back to the next President line back
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: to San Francisco. So when we got back, they were
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: so mad at this guy David, that they kicked him
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: out of the band. Okay, they kicked him out of
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: the band. And so then there's just Roger and Prairie
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: and and I used to sing his he was the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: lead singer of the band, David, And so they still
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: we still practice in our garage in the house on
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: Oreega and I would go down and sing his parts,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: and you know, we just screw around playing singing. And
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: they tried to find another bass player, and we put
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: an ad in they hate Ashbury Free Press bass player
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: wanted and we they auditioned all these guys and and
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: they didn't like it. They were none of them were
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: good enough to be in the band. And so another band,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Bill Spooner's band, based on our recommendation, they had a
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: band called the Beans okay, and the and Bill moved
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: his band from Arizona to San Francisco also, and they
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: they were a four piece band, the Beans. They had
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: a drummer, keyboard, bass, guitar and uh and the and
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: they had a manager named Lauren, and Lauren and John
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: were good friends. And after a while they kind of
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: gave up trying to find the bass player, and John
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: talked Lauren into letting Roger and Prairie joined Bill's band,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: so there would be two drummers, two guitar players, and
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: and and I talked my I actually talked myself into
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: being the background singer. And Roger said, yeah, you know,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: he's a pretty good singer. He's been singing in the
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: garage with us, and and you know, nobody was getting paid,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: so it really didn't mean anything. And uh, there was
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: not like another mouth to pay. So I became the
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: background singer for the Bill's band, the Beans, and we
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: were the Beans, and I didn't we didn't have many gigs,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: but you know, we we got a few gigs here
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: and there. And I was the background singer and I'd
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: sing background vocals and uh, I sang too loud. That's
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: what they kept saying, Dude, you're the background singer. Okay,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: you sing too loud. You're just supposed to blend in.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: You're not blending your tooth. And then finally, instead of
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: kicking me out of the band, they said, well, why
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: don't you sing the lead? Why don't you sing this?
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: And then you know, we used to we we did
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: a few cover songs and and I said, you know,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: I used to. I used to do this. Uh, when
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: I was in in elementary school at Loloma, at Scot's
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: the Loloma Elementary School, they would have an assembly where
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: you would do, uh, you would do you'd perform, you know,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: you could do some kind of act and if you
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: you know, it was a competition. It was like, you know,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: the Battle of the Bands, only only there weren't any bands.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: And I I one time, uh, I my bit was uh.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: I would dress up like a soldier and I would
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: sing this song. I actually lip sing this song called
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: please Mr Custer. Remember that song? Actually I don't please
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Mr Custer. I don't want to go and and in
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: the song, the guy gets shot by the Indians and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: he goes and the arrow would come sorry and he
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: would die. And I would take up a baggie, a
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: ziplock baggie and put stage blood in it. And when
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: the art in the song came for the guy to
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: get killed and the arrow, the arrow sound was on
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: the record, I would slap the baggie and blood would come.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: I wear a white shirt and the blood was squirt
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: out and I would fall and I would die. And
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: so I said, you know, I have this I could
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: I could do this cowboy. I have this funny cowboy
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: bit I could do. And that's kind of kind of
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: we kind of started with the theatrics with that kind
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: of thing. And I said, and so I would dress
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: up like a cowboy and I where I'd made these
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: furrey those hop along Cassidy furrey shaps I made out
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: of carpet, and I would put wear a white cowboy
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: shirt and put the baggy underneath my shirt with blood
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: in it. And we used to do this song by
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: Marty Robbins called El Paso. Remember He'll Passo out in
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: the West Texas town of the l Passo and anyway,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: in the same in the song, the guy gets shot
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: and he would get shot and then I slapped the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: bud and the blood would go all over and I
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: would die, and oh my god. They thought that was
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: just the greatest thing, and so that's how it started.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: And then we started doing, okay, well let's do this
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: kind of bit, and let's do it. I used to
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: do Carmen Miranda and we would sing Brazil and I would,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: you know, Carmen Miranda had a big head dress of fruit,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: and so I would make all the heros with a
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: fake and I would wear platforms and I would put
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: real fruit on my head and then I would like
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: eat the grapes as I was singing, and we sang Brazil,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: Brazil and in Portuguese. I would sing it in Portuguese,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: all Brazil, Brazilio and uh and do carben rent And
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: so we started developing these characters and and uh and
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: then Quelude and then you know, it's just and then
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: what the rest is history? I guess. So, how do
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: you get a record deal with A and M? We did.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: We started with the traditional method of sending cassettes out,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: you know, sending a little cassette out to everybody. We
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: sent cassettes out there all the couple nothing. We got nothing.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: And uh. At that point, we we had met this
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: guy named Kenny Ortega, and Kenny Ortega was uh. At
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: that point, he was just a he was a dancer
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: and he he had just come back from a regional
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, and he was like a
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: dancer and he wanted to become a choreographer. And he
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: saw us playing in a little club in San Francisco
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: and and trying to do this theatrical stuff, and he
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: came to us and he said, you know, uh, I
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: can I can refine this. I can I can do this.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: I can do this. I can help you guys. So
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: he said okay, and so we brought him on and
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: I think it was Kenney's idea. Actually, he said, let's
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: do a Let's do a video of of the of
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: of you doing your theatrics and doing k lude and
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: doing all these and send the video out. So that's
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: how we got signed. We sent A and M a
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: video tape of us performing live and doing lude. And
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: this guy at A and M. His name was Kip Cohen.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: He was A and our guy, and he thought it
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: was great. He went, oh my god, these guys are
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: so fucking weird and you know, and and they're good,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: they can play, and they've got this other whole theatrical
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: thing going. So they signed us, and uh, and and
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: was so great. And back when they it was at
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: the Charlie Chaplin Studios on Libreya and uh, and it's
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: in Herb and Jerry, I mean Herb used just I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: mean yeah, Herb used to sit around and it was
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: kind of like a little enclave. It was like the
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: parking lot was in the middle and all the buildings
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: around the outside. It was like at a big square
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: and uh and Jerry's office and they had the on
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: one side was the recording studio. They had a recording
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: studio and we'd go there and and Herb was just
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: Herb had his own office and he just sat there
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: and played his horn all day long. So it's just
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: her played his horn. And we were you know, if
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: we went to do like do an interview or do
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: or record in their studio or paint we painted flying
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: records on the side of the wall and you know,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: just to get get a little extra money. And it
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: was great, it was and it was so great. So
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: how does the name get changed from the Beans to
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: the Tubes? Good story there? Another band from New Jersey
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: came out with the record on I can't remember what
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: label was on, but they were called Beans, just Beans, no,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: the uh just beads. Uh, and they came out with
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: an album, and I mean I remember calling the record
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: we had the album, went oh my god, there's somebody
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: and another band called the Beans. What you know? And
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: I even called the record company. I said, dude, we're
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: the Beans. We're in San Francisco, We're the Beans. You
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: can't beat the Beans anyway. Yeah, well, tough ship. We
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: published you know that. You're dad. Sorry. So we had
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: to pick a new name, and uh we we we went,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: we sat down and went, look, we got to change
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: the name. Okay, So every every your assignment is to
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: uh come up with ten names and we're gonna put
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: them all in a hat and then we're gonna pick
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: out a name and that's going to be it. And
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: everybody and everybody put in came up the gas Men.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: The another was another Larry and Mary. I mean, there
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: was all kinds of weird names. And uh, Mike Cotton
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: the since actually he wasn't even in the band at
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: the time. He wasn't. He was a synthesizer player and
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: uh he had this gear, but he really didn't know
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: how to use it at that point, and uh, but
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: he was a friend and he was from Arizona and
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: he was living with us and helping, and so he
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: put in, uh, tubes, rods and bulbs, tubes, rods and bulbs,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: and which which are different kinds of cells of the eyeball. Okay,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: and he thought, this is perfectly. We're a visual so
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: why not, you know, have a name that refers to
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: some kind of visual reference. And but what happened was
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: we we decided to let our dog pick the name.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: We had a prairie had a dog named Sandwich. It
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: was like a ridge back mixed. It's a great dog.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: Sandwich was a great dog. And they put mayonnaise on
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: the slip of paper that said tubes, rods and bulbs,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: and Sandwich went right for the mayonnaise and picked out tubes,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: rods and balls, and we went, okay, tubes, rods and bulbs. Boy,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: but it's it's a kind of a tongue twister, you know, tubes,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: rods and bulbs, and they're gonna end up shortening it
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: to like TRB or something. So he said, let's just
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: make it the tubes. You know, the tubes, and it's
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: you know, the boob tube and you know cathode ray tube,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: laser tubes, fallopian tubes. We tried. We were at one
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: point we're going to, well, let's make it the like
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: a real reference, a TV reference because we're visual, and
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: we'll make it the boob tubes, and nah, boobs. That's
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: not gonna work. You can't just say boobs in your band.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: So we just shortened the tubes. Okay, how do you
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: end up working with Al Cooper on the first album?
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: It was a record company's choice. Al was just, you know,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: l was you know, I really didn't understand, you know why,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: but they thought we were kind of bluesy and he
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: was a blues guy and I don't I don't know,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: but you know, he was. He was. He was a
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: piece of work. I'll tell you. Al was great. And
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: uh uh uh he actually and we had and we
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: we went through all the songs and we finally picked
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: the songs that we were going to be on the record.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: Al wanted to, you know, when we had this one song,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: white Books on Dope, and Al said, you know, there's
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: a long there was a long instrumental part. And we
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: also had this other song called Mala Gania salar Rosa,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: which is a you know, a Mexican song and we
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: kind of actually we there was a band at in
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: Japan at the Mexican Pavilion, and they were incredible mariachi
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: band and they played we got that song, but we
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: recorded them playing Mala Gania salar Rosa and we made
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: our own version of it. And actually that came from Japan.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: But Alt wanted to stick that in the middle of
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: White Punks. He said, as we fade down and before
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: we come back up, we'll go right to malan and
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: stick it in the no al. No, we can't, so
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: we didn't. Anyway, we didn't do that. And but we
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: were at the we were at Sunset Sound back when
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: it was on Third Street, and and when we were
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: doing White Punks on Dope, we wanted, you know, we
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: wanted a big uh. We wanted a big group to
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: sing the big chorus White Punks on Dope. And so
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: we went down there was another band UH playing down
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: the hall and and we didn't know who they were,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: and we just said, can you guys come and help us,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: and can you all sing this big chorus with us
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: and white so Dope? Yeah, sure? Coming out. What turns
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: out it was the Eagles, and but they wouldn't let
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: us put their name on the record, and they said, oh,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: we can't do that because that's you know, that's okay.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: So the album comes out or is the band happy
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: with the album? I wasn't happy. I mean I I
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: loved you know, I was so thrilled to be to
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: make it, actually make our first record. I mean, I
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: was overjoyed. I was so thrilled and as was everyone
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: we you know, it was really a lot of fun
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: and uh, but we had created this song what do
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: you Want from Life? And they the record company said,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: well this, I think this is the first single, what
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: do you Want from Life? And uh, uh, you know,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: and it has the the kind of the the end
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: part when you know, if you're an American citizen, you're
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: entitled to He didn't get in his shape goal of
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: microwave eleven, don't watch the cood diet to jam, I'll
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: personally illustrate in the privacy, on on and on and
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: on and on. How about a new car? You know,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: Winnibego heard of winnebegos word giving him away and that
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: was from cal Worthington, And uh, cal Worthington used to
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: be in Arizona. Before California, and we had all these
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: references to well they cut the first what the first
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: thing they did was cut all that out and edited
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: the song without that. They went, oh, well if we
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: I said, but that's the that's what makes it so
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: hilarious and unique. And you know they want, yeah, but
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: you're gonna you'll be you'll be earmarked as a novelty
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: band if you leave this in soh So they cut
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: it out and it's you know, it didn't really do
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: anything as a as a first single. Okay, so you
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: make the record without, which I believe is your best
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: work and certainly classic some of VAL's best work. The
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: next record has don't Touch Me there, but it's done
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: with Ken Scott. But what what was the band's view
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: on the final product there? Kin Scott probably didn't say
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: ten words the whole time we made that record, you know,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: and we made it at at Studio A on the
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: lot at A and M, and uh, you know, we
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: we'd go out and and play and we'd come back
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: in and okay, how was it Kennon. Ken would just
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: sit there and to kind of go wasn't perfect and
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: that's it and nothing else, and you know he was
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: I guess a brilliant engineer, you know, and you know, Okay,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: well let's go back out and do it again. And
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: but Don't Touch Me There actually charted. That was our
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: first our first charted single, uh and uh, which actually
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: was not written by us. It was written by Jane
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: Jane Dornacker, who was one of the two bets, and
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: a guy named Ron Nagel. And uh, you know, we
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: were thrilled. I mean, we gotta we were. We made
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: the top forty, you know, so uh and that was
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: that song was a great visually, really great. We we
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: used to uh, we'd go into a town and we uh,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: we'd get somebody to loan us there Harley Davidson, Harley
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: Davidson motorcycle because we we used to do this. It
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: was like a you know, the bad boy Marlon Brando
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: from the Wild One and the Girl and we do
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: the song on a motorcycle and I would ride the
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: thing onto the stage, you know, and rev it up
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: and get smoked, you know, really loud, and and then
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: we would sing don't touch Me there and uh and uh.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: And the funny thing was with I mean, the bit
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: with the song was the there was her knee, you know,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: and I would be trying to touch her knee and no, no, no,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: no to as a preparoity. And so you know we
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: used to every time we you know, and for a while,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: I mean for a while, we uh uh we had
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: a we had Well, eventually they wouldn't let us bring
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: a combustible Indian engine machine into the gig, into the venue.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: You couldn't bring a motorcycle on stage, you know, to
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: fire hazard. So we would we kind of built this
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: fake motorcycle out of a frame and tin cans and
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: ship and we would have Mike on his our synthesizer
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: fake the noise of a of a of an engine
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: and uh so that was you know, okay, And how
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: did re Styles end up in the band doing that
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: duet with you? Well, really was a prairieous girlfriend, okay.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: And she was gorgeous, and you know she was not shy, okay,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: she was willing to you know, show her breasts and
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: and just she kind of started as a you know, uh,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: she started as just one of the dancers. You know,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: we had five dancers. We had Leland and the Snakes.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: We had Leland, this this this troop of of uh
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: of four girls that we found in a little club
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: on Polk Street in San Francisco, and we would they
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: were the dancers, and so Kenny would choreograph them and
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: they would and then we would do kind of special stuff.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: She would do bondage with me and she would do
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: she would play various parts like the other girls did,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: and and then we kind of realized, you know, she's
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: a pretty good singer, and so we started having she
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: kind of worked her way into being a featured vocalist
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: with us. So how does Mingo Lewis end up in
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: the band Mingo Lewis, Well, he was a drummer friend
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: of Prairies, you know in San Francisco, and uh, you know,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: he started, you know, he said, oh just let me,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: you know, let me sit in with you guys, and
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: and he would bring his congas and he was just incredible.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure he still is. Uh. And he
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: would play his congas and said, oh god dude, and
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: uh oh. We always loved the idea of two drummers
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: when we first when we first joined Bill's band, we
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: had two drummers. There was Bill had a drummer named
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: Bob McIntosh and and Prairie and Bob would play together,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: and Bob was like the really solid, you know, really
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: solid guy, and Prairie was the flourish, you know, ad
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: lib kind of guy. And they really were great together.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: And Bob unfortunately died of cancer in before we ever
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: got a deal, in I think seventy two. He got
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: limph node cancer and it just killed him and it
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: was really sad. And so we always kind of liked
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: the idea of two drummers. And then so when Mingo started,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: you know, we said, Okay, that's great, let's go back
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: to two drummers. And then we did a couple of
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: tours with him, and uh, he wrote that song god
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: Bird Change on the third album, and and we you know,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: we carried two drummers, and he was I was incredible.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: He's a great, great player. But you made him a
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: full member of the band. Okay, the next album, you
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: end up doing a cover of Captain beef Hearts, My
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: Head is My Only House and Less It Rains from
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: Clear Spot, his most commercial work at that point, most successible.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: How did you end up doing that? How did you
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: end up meeting beef Heart? We were huge beef Heart fans,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: I mean that he was in it. I mean, we
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: loved beef Heart. We you know, we had seen him
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: quite a number of times in San Francisco his band play,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: and you know Zappa too. We were big Zappa fans.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: We loved Frank Zappa and saw Mothers of inventioned quite
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: a few times. And uh, you know, we were just
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: we We found out that beef Art lived out in Lancaster,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: and we ahold of him. You know, we had seen
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: him a number of times, and we got ahold of
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: him and we asked he also played his his horn
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: on Cathy's Clone on that album, and uh, and we
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: told him, yeah, we're gonna do We're gonna do one
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: of your songs. My head is my only house and
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: h and we got him into the studio and uh
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: and let him just I mean, we just said, here's
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: the song. Just go just freak out, you know. And uh,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: he was such a cool guy. I mean, and how strange,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: how strange was he in real life? He wasn't that strange.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't, you know, he wasn't that strange.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: He was a pretty normal guy. I mean, he wasn't
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: into drugs or anything like that, or alcohol and We
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: had a fine recording session with him. It was not
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: a problem. And he was great on his soprano sas
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: you know on that song Gosh, I think he did
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: it and just one or two takes, you know, he
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: was so good. And at that point, uh, I don't
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: know if he was still performing with his band at
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: that point, but we used to see remember the drummer
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: drumbo or would would would do a solo with just
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: his hands. He'd break, he'd throw his sticks down and
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: just start playing this kid with his hands. And and
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: then and Zorn Rollo would you know, had a a
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: toaster he had turned into a hat. And oh god,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: they I mean they were theatrical. I mean we loved that.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: We loved the theater. Anybody theatrical. I mean Alice. I
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: mean we've played with Alice many many times and I
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: were you know, I've I've I've done his charity's he's
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: he's a good guy, Alice Is. He has a great
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: charity foundation in Arizona, the Solid Rock Foundation. And we've
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: done his Christmas show, and we've in his golf tournament
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: in April, and we've toured with him. And I think
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: eighteen that we went to the UK with him and
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: opened for him in big in Wembley. We played Wembley
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: Arena and all these big thirty thousand theaters with him
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: and have played a lot of gigs with him over
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: the years. You know, Shef is Sheep is a good guy.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: His manager, Chef Gordon, is a good guy. And uh so,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: I mean we were always kind of drawn to those
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: kinds of people, those kind of theat you know, the
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Genesis in the early days that would do a visual
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: type of performance or the plasmatics. Remember Wendy O Williams.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: I saw him at the Whiskey, right. Really, I knew
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: Wendy and I always used to kid her because she
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: she I said, Wendy, you stole my chainsaw bit, right,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: you know, I was my bit. And I gotta ask
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: you because I remember, you know, seeing you at the
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: Rocks before the album came out. Yeah, and you had
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: a printed list of the songs and one of them
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: was rock and Roll Hospital. I believe it was the
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: name of the song. You ran through the audience with
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: this chainsaw and then said, oh, we're to have to operate.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: Whatever happened to that song, well, it never got recorded,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: It never got recorded. Rock and Roll Hospital never got
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: recorded where I would come out as the doctor and
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: and you know the with the chainsaw stabbing through a
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: table with the and it was a guitar. It was
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: a pregnant guitar, and then I would pull out the
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: little baby guitar and ah, I and I and I
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. We we every was in
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: a while. We think about, well, I mean, we've brought
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: it back two or three times over the years and
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: done it just you know, as a as a show piece.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: But it never never got recorded. It never got recorded.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: So how did you end up working with Todd? Like
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: you knows as you probably it was Prairie, Prairie New Todd,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: and Prairie still plays with Todd. He just went out
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: with him last year. We have to we have to
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: book way ahead of time in order to get to
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: book Prairie so that Todd doesn't scoop him up. Uh uh,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: But Todd, we I don't know how. I guess I'm
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: sure I guess it was through Prairie that we met him. Uh.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: But that out with the first album we did with him,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: Remote Control, was I think, I mean it was, you know,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: I always I don't. Uh. You know the phrase can't
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: beat the demo right where you make this great demo
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: and you take it into the studio and then you
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: can't you know, you try this, and you try that,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: and you try and you try fifteen different ways of
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: of making it better and then and then none of
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: them work, and then you end up going back to
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: the demo again. And I've always thought that. Uh. The
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: thing I love about Remote Control is uh, uh we
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: had no time to second guess ourselves. You know, we
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: had a we you know, every year we used to
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: uh we used to make a record in December January
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: February because the tour would always like started April or
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: March or April, and we would tour all year long
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: in the United States or go to Europe or go wherever.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: But we tour constantly from like April to the end
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: of the year. Uh So we had a short window
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: of time two create a new record. And we did
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: this like over and over and you know whatever, twelve times,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: and so we had a we had only a month
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: I think the month of January in that year that
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: that we did Remote Control, which was I think seventy nine,
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: and uh, we didn't have any you know, and you know,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: after the first two or three albums, you kind of
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: run out of songs, you know that you've created all
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: those years before you got the record deal, right, So
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: we didn't have any songs, really, and I had I had, uh, Uh,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: I'd read this book. I'm a veracious, voracious reader, and
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: I had read this book by Jersey Kosinski. And I
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: read all of his books. The Painted Bird was a
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: great book. And uh one of his books was called
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: Being There, Okay, And so I had read this book
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: all Being There about the about the rich kid who
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: was put in a you know, a boarding school or
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: or daycare and never got to do anything. It was
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: all he did was watch TV and he had no
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: real experience of life. It was all virtual experience. And
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: so I had this idea, and I approached Todd with
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: I said, you know this. We grew up in Arizona,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: the band, and we watched TV all day long because
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it was a hundred and fifty in this summer,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: it was a hundred twenty degrees outside, so you were
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: you know a lot of time was spent watching TV.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: And that's why I you know, watching all those Westerns
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: Cereals series on TV. And it's kind of where I
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: kind of got the idea that I wanted to be
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: a cowboy so bad. And I said, let's let's you.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: I figured this book is obscure. Nobody has ever heard
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: of this book. And I'm gonna I'm gonna take this
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: idea and turn it into remote control with Todd. And
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: you know about the idea of the kid who just
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: has no real experience. It's all virtual experience. He doesn't
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: know anything. He doesn't know about love, he doesn't know
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: about feeling, he doesn't know about anything. It's all TV.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: And so, uh we had we had some musical material
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: and uh so Todd said, he goes, Okay, this is
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. We're gonna we're gonna show up
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: the studio every day and then in the morning, we're
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: gonna write the lyrics to a song, and then we're
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: gonna take a lunch break, and then we're gonna come
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: back and then we're gonna figure out the music and
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: record the song in the afternoon, and then we're gonna
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: put on the vocals at night, and by the end
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: of the day we'll have a whole song. And so
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: that's what we did. We would go in and we'd
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: all sit down together, all of us, seven of us
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: with Todd, and say, okay, what's the what do you
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: what's the first thing you do? Well, turn me on?
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: Turn it you turn it on? Right, Okay, first song
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: is going to be called turned me On. And so
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: we'd sit there and we'd all brainstorm turned me on,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: turned me onto. And then in the afternoon we go
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: do the music and then we put the vocals on.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: Then the next day we command and tell you now
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: what okay, uh, TV is King, We love TV. Okay,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: TV is Kate. That's the next song. So and we
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: did that for the whole record. And but like I said,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: we didn't have any time to go back and second
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: guess ourselves and go, oh no, well this could be
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: a little bit better. And though if we do a
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: little you know, echo on this or delay on this
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: or that, are just no. Just go with your gut,
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: go with your instinct, go with your first impression and
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: do it. And then you can't change it because you
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: don't have the time or the money because the tour
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: is coming up and the record's got to be released.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: So that it all works That's why I kind of
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: love that album. And uh, you know you're going in
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: the wrong direction commercially with A and M. Right then
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: you get dropped, right, ultimately picked up by Capital. You
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: know what was going through the heads of the band
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: when you're having you know, less and less commercial success
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: and then you're dropped And how do you get a
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: deal with Capital? You know? Give us the background on that. Okay,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: our live performance just I mean it was always art
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: for art's sake. I mean, you know we're gonna go
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: out and do a show that it's going to blow
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: your mind. We're gonna spend money. We don't care if
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: we're in debt. We don't care. It's all about the show.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: It's about the art. And we really were worried about
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: you know, every every time we did a record for
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: A and M, they would give us an advance. You know,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: back then it was peanut money. It was like a
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: hundred grand or something, and we never recouped. We never
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: made enough sold enough records to pay off the advance
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: to make it. But we didn't care because we had
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: a show that blew people's minds. I mean, we created
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: a leg a visually, a visual performance legacy that's pretty
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: much unmatched by anyone, I think. But so you know,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: we would go out on the road and we would
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: I mean one whole one time for the completion backward principle.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, we built a set that was all around.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: So you can't pack round stuff in a truck very efficiently,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: you know, so you have to get an another chart.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: Oh we don't care. Fuck it, we don't care. It's
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: so what So, I mean a couple of times, you know,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: we ran out of money out on the road and
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: the manager had to call up A and M and go, hey,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: look they're out of you know, they're promoting your record.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: They're on the road, they're out of money. We need
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: to send us some money. So they would send the
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: money and add it to the tab, you know. And
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: so finally that got to be, you know, as you say,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: that got to be. You know, we ended up leaving
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: ANM just massively in the red. And we you know,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: we gave him publishing, we gave him everything. We could
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: just keep doing the show. It was about the show.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: And uh so when we went to I mean and
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: then and then so they dropped us, and so then
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: we uh looked every high and low for another company.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: And we met this guy at uh Capitol who who
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: uh was? His name was Bobby Columbi. He was an
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: A and R guy, okay, but he was a drummer.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: He used to be in Blood, Sweat and Tears, right
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: and still owns the name right. Bobby loved Prairie Prince.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: He just thought, oh my god, this guy is so so.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: Bobby Columbia as an an our guy at at Capitol,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: convinced them to give us a deal. He gave. They
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: gave us a three record deal, but each record was
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: based on the performance of the record before it. They said,
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: if the first record does nothing, you're not going to
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: get another record the second ring, you know. So anyway,
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: and and Bobby had this guy David Foster, okay, and
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: David Foster, and he thought, oh god, you know well,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, the only thing we knew about David Foster
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: was he just did Boogie Wonderland. Okay, that was the
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: record before us Earth Wind and Fire, Boogie Wonderland. He
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: had a number one song after the Love Has Gone Okay,
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: And we were very skeptical. Okay, we went on and
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: Bobby was saying, when you guys gotta get on the radio.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: You gotta sell records. You've got it. In order to
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: get a second record here, you've got to make a name.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: You've got to do something commercially. Oh god, we're just
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: going on, man. And then so David Foster came up
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: to San Francisco and uh to meet with us and
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: you know, to kind of check out our songs and stuff.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: And and I mean, I mean, the guys, guys unbelievable. Okay.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: He is a brilliant posician, a brilliant arranger. I mean,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: he came up and we said, okay. He goes, okay,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: we'll play me some songs. I said, okay, well okay,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: So we played him this song Amnesia, and he goes, well, okay,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: and then he sat down on the piano and he
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: kind of, you know that, he goes, what if you
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: kind of did a modulation here and kind of a
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: big kind of put in this kind of oo part
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: and kind of and we were just oh, you know he,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, he just floored us. He floored us with
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: his brilliance and we just went, wow, man, this guy,
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: this guy, this is amazing, you know. And and like
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: like he said, what about ballads? You know, you have
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: any ballads. He went, well, you know, we did a
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: ballot on the last record, and you know, it wasn't
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: a single. And because you know, the company's looking for
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: a ballad, they're looking for a ballad to be the
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: first single, because ballads are happening, you know, it's everybody
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: has got a big rock ballad coming out. Journey R
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: e O. I mean, all these bands were having huge
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: success with ballots, and we just kind of went, well,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: you know, but Vince, our keyboard player, Vince well Nick,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: uh he said, well, you know, I have this kind
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: of progression I've been working on, and so he started playing, Uh,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: I don't want to wait anymore for David, and David
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: went wow. And then you know, David sits down and
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: go again and then and then you put a modulation
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: and then the big finish and then the chorus out
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: and the you know, payoff, and and he said, man,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: this is it, this will this will work. And I
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: had written the lyrics to it. Uh, he goes, let
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: me hear the lyrics. I wrote game the lyrics because man,
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: this is this is what they're looking for, this is
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: what Capital is looking for a ballad like this. And
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: so we just kind of went this, Okay, you know,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: this guy is incredible. Okay, let's we're good with this. Okay,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: let's do it. We're good with this. And uh at
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: the time, we had a manager. His name was Ricky Farr,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: and Ricky Farr was a Welshman who had a big
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: Sounded Lights company. Uh and he used to do the
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: the the Sounding Lights touring for big you know, Rod
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: Stewart and Stevie Wonder and just you know, he was
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: a big time company and he had never managed the
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: band before. And he was the one that first took
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: us to England. He goes, you guys, with your kind
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: of sarcasm and your parody, they're gonna love you in
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: the UK. So he took us right away. That the
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: first thing he did was take us to England and
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: uh and that was a really smart move. I mean,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: we are huge in England and are in the UK,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: and so uh, you know, we just we we we
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: we went for it right away. We went for David
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: Foster and uh and we did that. We did, you know,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: I actually uh uh we we you know, we got
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: towards the end of the recording of the record and
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: when we still had weird songs. We still had, you know,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: Mr Hate and Attack of the fifty foot Woman. And
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: you know it wasn't like you know, it wasn't like
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: it was all so commercial, and so you know, we
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: wanted to maintain our weirdness and uh and we got
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: to the end of the project and he goes, well,
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: you know, we we I know they want to release
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: a ballad, but uh uh they all they want that.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: We need a rock song. We need an A O
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: R kind of rock song. And we played you know,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: he goes, I don't hear it. I don't. I don't
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: you haven't played it. You don't have that. And so
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: he was the one that said, you know, I have
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: a friend, this this studio musician guy who's in a
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: band called Toto. His name is Steve Luca Fur. And
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: he goes, how about if we meet you and I
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: and Steve meet and we try to come up with
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: a rock song. And so we did, and we met
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: early one morning out in the valley here and and
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: Steve came up with talked to you later in about
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: ten seconds, and I mean, the guy is brilliant, and
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: and so you know, we we we recorded talked to
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: you later and uh, and he's it's okay. I mean
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: that's what we got it, you know. And I think
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: you know that I told you before we were doing
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: Completion Backward Principle. I think Completion Backward Principle was our
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: greatest record. Uh. I mean I love the first album,
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: but we've been doing Completion Backward live, uh, the whole album,
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: like top to bottom, starting well, talk to you later,
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: and right on through the whole album, and it's really
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: gotten a great response. And I love those songs. I
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: love Amnesia and I love Mr Hayde. I completely go mental.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: I mean I I could be a X murderer if
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: with the straight I love it. I love that. I mean,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: I love the I love you know, I do these
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: characters and I lose myself, you know, I just completely
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: lose myself in the character and in the and I
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: sometimes I get a little out of control. But uh,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: you know it's so great to be able to do that,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: to have the venue, to be able to do that.
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: You know. So you make that record, you have a
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: certain amount of success, then you team up together and
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: you even have more success. So tell me about outside inside.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: You know, we had we had great success, as you say,
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: and we get ready to do the next record, and
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: and Faz says, you know, let's let's try it again
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: with you and Luke and I, let's try it again.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: And so we got together and we wrote She's Beauty
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: in about ten minutes, and I mean, once again, Luke's
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: just you know, crazy, crazy good and uh uh we
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: had a great time recording that record, and and and
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: you know we would it would have been even a
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: bigger selling record if it hadn't been for this guy
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: named Val Garay who was the manager of Martha Davis.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: And I had known Martha for a long time, and
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: we wanted to do we wanted to do a duet
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: on the record, and and so we we picked this
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: song mony Monkey Time, Curtis Mayfield song, and Martha came
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: in and we did a duet on Monkey Time, and
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: uh it was I mean, Fause just said, Okay, this
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: is great. This is gonna be the second single after
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: She's a Beauty. And but then when we get ready,
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: you know, She's a Beauty is a big hit, goes
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: to number two. H h yeah, that's you know, I mean,
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: I so wanted to number one record, but I mean
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: it was so good for us and so great and
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: and uh and you know it's still people go crazy
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: when we played that song, and so we're ready to
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: follow it up with the second song, second single, Monkey Time.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: And her manager, the manager of the Motels, this guy says, no,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: you can't release this. Uh, this is We've got a
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: Motel's record coming out in about six months, and this
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: is gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt that it's gonna hurt
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: the sales of this record. And everybody flipped out. Okay,
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: I mean at this time, at this point we had uh.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: We were with the management company Fitzgerald Hartley and they
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: also managed Total and Mark and Larry. You know, we
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: went to the record company. No, no, no, this is
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: only going to help you. This is gonna help your
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: Motels record. No now and Motels were also on Capitol uh,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: and he and jumped at it. He went to the
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: record company and said, you can't put this out. I
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: refused to let you. I'm gonna jumped it. I'm gonna
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: sue you, I'm gonna uh and I everyone was just flabbergasted.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: We couldn't understand it. And and he did it, and
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: we couldn't release it. We had to go. You know.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: We fought it for you know, I don't know a
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: long time, and finally we realized, now they're not going
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: to do it. You've gotta if you want to do it,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: you have to rerecorded. You have to peel out her
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: vocal and re recorded. And so we went back in
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: the studio and we replaced her vocal with h one
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: of our one of our dances at the time, Michelle
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: Gray her name is who ends who is now Todd's wife,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: and and she did a wonderful job. It sounded great.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: But it was six months later. The whole month everything
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: was gone, momentum gone, you know, and so it never happened.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: It never it never charted, and you know, the momentum
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: of the record. That was it. The record was done. Okay,
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: So after all that success with Foster, how do you
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: decide to then work with Todd Agan, which ultimately kills
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: the band. I was hoping you wouldn't ask that, But
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to see this, but I think
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: it was for the best. As I look back in retrospect,
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: I think it was time for me to move on.
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: But of course I didn't know that then, did I? Uh,
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: And everybody flipped out. What happened was David came. You know,
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: David was booked to the third album, and uh, David
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: came and sat down with the band and he goes, Okay, look,
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: we had great success with talk to You Later, even
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: more success with She's a Beauty. So what I want
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: to do is I want to right four songs with
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: Fee and Luke and I like we did on talk
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: to You Later and She's a beauty. And so that
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: way I've got I've got a first, second, and third
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: and fourth single and you know, one of you know,
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: a couple of them bound to work, and it's gonna
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: be you know, it's gonna be huge. It's gonna be
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: a big, massive record. And uh. And on the B side,
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: you guys can do whatever you want. You can produce it,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: you can write it, you can do any songs you want.
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: You can. I don't care. You can do whatever you want,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: and I will let you do whatever you want. And
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: all I want is side. That was what he proposed
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: to the band, and everyone everyone said and so and
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: the band said, you know, I don't we don't want
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: to do that. No, we're a band. You can't tell
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: us what to do. We're a band. And I was
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: the only one going, man, guys, you gotta just you know,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: don't don't, don't let your pride fault, you know, kill
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: us here. It's it's okay, you know, it'll be okay.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: And now they wouldn't do it. I don't know. In retrospect,
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: I understand, you know, it's they their pride was hurt.
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: They felt, you know, we're a band, you can't tell
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: us what to do. Uh And and also they were,
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: you know, they were I think a little miffed that
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: the two hits that we had we had were written
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: by me and Steve and David and uh. So they said, no,
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: we're not going to do it. And the management said,
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: don't do this. The record company said don't do this.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: I said, don't do this, the agency said don't do
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: everyone said don't do this. And they went, no, we're
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: doing that's what we're doing. And so they got Todd
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: back on the phone and they said, you know, and
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: they made and I I I was devastated. I have
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: to say. I went to l A and I said,
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I made
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: a record. I made I made my first solo record,
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: uh with David Foster, because he was there sitting there available,
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: and I talked the record company into letting me use
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: him for a solo album, and they said okay, and
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: then the band went ahead without me in San Francisco
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: and made a record with Todd and and I came
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: back and you know, I got my record done, and
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: I came back to San Francisco and they went, well,
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: you know, our records almost done, and you know, you
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: can We've got a couple of songs that you can
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: sing if you want. And you know, up until that point,
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: I had pretty much sung every record, every song on
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: the record, and so I was pretty much crushed. And
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: I sang a couple of you know, I brought them
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: one song, uh that I didn't use on my solo record,
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: piece by piece, and we recorded that and then I
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: sang I did another song that I wrote about Marlo
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: Brando Stella I've written. I loved Marlon Brando, He's the
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: best I've I've written a whole bunch of songs over
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: the years about Marlin and Brando. I could have been
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: somebody about the you know, on the waterfront, and I
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: wrote Stella from street Car named Desire, and uh so, anyway,
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: I ended up doing just three songs on the record,
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: and it didn't do well. As you know, it didn't
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: do well. And I at and we without and did
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: the tour, and the tour didn't do well, and everything
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: kind of crumbled around us. The management said, well, you know,
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have to release you guys, because this is
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: a huge mistake. And then you know, the record company
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: pretty much released us the day the tour began. So
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: you know, the tour starts at April one, and on
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: on March one, they release us. And so we go
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: out and we have all this national tour book. We've
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: got no record company support, no A and R guys,
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: no promotion, no record play, no radio play, I mean nothing,
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: we got nothing. So it didn't go well. And so
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: I got back. We got back and uh I just went,
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: you know, we we the management had left us. I mean,
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: I was so discouraged and so uh and I thought,
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: you know, well, I guess this is this is this
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: is this could be great. I've gotta I've gotta, I've
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: got to start my own life. You know, I had
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: been you know, we had been a seven man band
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: for at that point, we had been a seven man
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: band for about fifteen years, and we did everything together.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: We split everything evenly. We were a bunch of hippies. Okay,
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: we're a bunch of hippies. And whatever it was, everybody
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: decided together. We did it all together. It was all together.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: And I just thought, you know, it's time to grow up.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: It's time to be a man and grow up and
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: and take responsibility for yourself. And so I said, okay, guys,
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna leave the band. I'm gonna, I'm gonna,
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna leave town. Pretty much. I had
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: to leave town, and so I did. So I just
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: packed up and I got my car and I drove
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: to l A. And I had a girl. I had
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: a girlfriend at a time at the time that I
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: was living that was living in l A. And her
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: her parents owned some apartment buildings in l A. So
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: they gave me an apartment, you know, really cheap, because
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: I didn't have any money, and you know, we spend
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: everything on the show, and I didn't have much money,
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: and so they gave me a cheap apartment. And I
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: moved here, and and I, you know, I I just
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: I just you know that. And you know what happened
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: was I started writing songs with Richard Marks, and I thought,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and I just had blind faith. I just said, well,
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: you know, I gotta I've gotta make my own life.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: You know, I've been I've been a part of a
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: group for so long, and I've got a stand up
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: for myself and I've got to you know, I've got
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: to get my ship together. And I and you know,
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: I had known Richard and and I think at the
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: time we had maybe written a couple of songs together.
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: I think we wrote had written that Vixen hit. You know,
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: I've been living on the edge of a Broken Heart,
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: and we had a big hit with that. And so
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: I said, I said, let's write. He said, I want
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: to be. This was before he had a record deal,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: before he had just at the at that point, he
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: was just a songwriter and had written songs for a
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: lot of other people, Kidney Rogers and and uh a
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: lot of people, and so he said, I want to
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: be I want to be an artist. I want to perform.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: So he got a deal at Manhattan subsidiary of Capital,
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: and he said, let's write some songs from my record,
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: and I said, okay, great, so we did so I
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: think we wrote. I wrote four songs for him on
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: his first record, and you know, he's he is a
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: big hit for record sold three million elbows, I think,
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: and uh and uh, and then we you know, the
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: next record, and I wrote more songs with him on
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: the next record and the next record and the next record,
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: and and I just, you know, I thought to myself,
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: you know, this is this is this is the right
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: thing to do, you know, I I I you know
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: that the way things happened wasn't great, but it was
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: good for me because I stood up and and you know,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: I was a man. I stood up and said, Okay,
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna lead my own path,
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: you know, lead my own way. So how did you
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: meet Roger Richard Marks? I met him. He wrote a
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: song for in in eighty three. He wrote a song
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: for Lionel Ritchie and he came to l A to
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: see him recorded. He got at eighteen years old. He
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: placed the song when Lionel the Guy's brilliant Okay. His
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: dad was a jingle writer in Chicago. He wrote the
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: double Mint Gum jing Built. He wrote my dog's better
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: than your dog, my kennel ration. He wrote all these singles,
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: so Richard, and he was the keyboard He was a
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: jazz keyboard player. Dick his name was Dick Marks. He
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: was an incredible guy, really great, and he taught Richard,
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: you know, music theory and keyboards and writing stuff. I mean. Anyway,
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: Richard came UH to l A and he wanted to
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: meet David Foster, and he knew about him, and he
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: asked Lionel, and David's goes, yeah, he's doing the tubes
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: down the street at Lion's Share uh and and Lionel
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: set it up where he could Richard could come to
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: the studio and just watch and and he did. He
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: showed him one day when we were in the studio recording,
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: and you know, he's just sitting back there. And at
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: the end of the session he goes, he had no
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: he knew of me, and he said, Hi, I'm Richard Marks.
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: He introduced himself and he said, you know, I think
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: your lyrics are really interesting. Would you write a song
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: with me? I said, I don't know who. He goes,
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: I'm just a kid from Chicago, and I said, well, okay, okay,
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: no problem, Let's write a song. And so I did.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: We wrote a song. We wrote a song called who
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: Loves Your Baby, which was the tagline from ko Jack
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: and which is I put on my first solo record,
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: who Loves Your Baby. And you know, we just kind
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: of clicked. We just we couldn't be more different. Okay,
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: we couldn't be are different people. Uh you know, he
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: but it's just something. I'm the godfather to his sons.
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: He has got three beautiful sons who are very very
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: talented musicians, and uh, you know, I've just like I said,
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: for like thirty thirty eight forty years, we've been best friends.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: And we still right together all the time. And I
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: know his son's very well. And uh he lives out here.
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: He lived in Chicago for years and years and then
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: he divorced his wife and moved recently moved to l
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: A And uh so we see each other a lot,
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: and you know, and over the years we've been we've
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: been working on this record on the my my solo
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: record of the fee Wave, the Rights Again record. We
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: started making this record gosh in two thousand thirteen, for
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: like seven years ago, we started making it. The main
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: the first song I used to go every summer when
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: he lived in Chicago. I used to go to Chicago
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: every summer. And his parents had a cabin in Manaqua, Wisconsin,
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: way up in northern Wisconsin. And we would go with
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: the boys on a boys trip to Wisconsin. And we
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: drive up there and spend a week at the cabin
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: and go fishing, and we go first BacT riding, and
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: we go go kart you know, just have a great time.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: And so that summer the boys were getting older, and
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: the summer of two thousand thirteen, I went up there
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: and I said, well, look and we've done another boys trips.
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: We went whitewater rafting and with in Wyoming and we
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: do all some all some kind of a boy's trip
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: and we went. I went up to the summer and
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: the boy said, you know, we'd want ago. We want
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: to hang like hang out with our girlfriends and go
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: to the movies. We don't want to do a boys trip.
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: I came all the way from Okay, and so Richard said,
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: and he had a studio at his house, and he said, well,
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: let's go write a song and let's do and then
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: he said, let's do a solo record for you yes,
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: about time he had he hadn't done one since and
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: which he helped me with also, And so we went
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: to the studio and we wrote, Uh, we wrote four
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: songs Fake the four songs on the record, Faker we wrote.
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: Faker was the first song we wrote. And and uh,
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: and then you know, I got busy, He got busy.
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: I went on the road. He went on the road,
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: and you know, it just years and years kept going by,
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: and we we never got, you know, back around to
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: it until until the summer of two thousand nineteen. He
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: just he had he was here in California and he goes,
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: let's do it. It's been too long. It's been five
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: years since we started. Let's go back and finish it.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: So we did. So we went back to the studio
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: and we finished the record. And I'm really proud of it.
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: And uh, like I said, at the beginning, we were,
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: you know, he goes, let's do some gigs. Okay, I'll, I'll,
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: I'll give you my band, okay, and we'll do gigs.
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: And we had it all planned for the for May
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: of because I you know, I've got the whole month off,
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not touring, and well, and we'll do some gigs,
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: and of course COVID killed it in and then and
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: then as we thought the whole pandemic was was fading away,
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: we planned, we booked more dates for January of this year,
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: and and then the whole thing got killed again. So
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: how did you get back together with the Tubes? I
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 1: left the band in like eighty seven something like that
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: and moved to l A and pretty much had no
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: contact with them. They went on for a while. It's funny.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: They they called up the guy the bass player they
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: had fired, you know, years ago, and and said, you know,
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: we lost our lead singer. You want to come back
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: in the band. So he came back, and they went
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: out for a while as the Tubes without me, and
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: had this guy as the lead singer. But he he
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: had been in Hawaii smoking pot for twenty five years
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: and he had no voice. He couldn't sing it. He
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: couldn't sing, he couldn't hit the high notes, he couldn't
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: sing She's a beauty. And so they did not go well,
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: and you know, and finally they gave up and they said, Okay,
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: that's it, We're done. And then they hadn't worked for
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: a while, and uh, and then I told you we were.
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: We were popular in Europe. Uh. We had done some
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: big during the heyday in like in like Uh we
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: went there first time in seven and then we went
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: back in se you know we we So anyway, a
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: promoter from Germany, his name was Henning Turgel contacted the
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: band and said, ah, you guys haven't been here for
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: a while. You know, we hadn't been there since three
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: This was He said, I am going to offer you
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: a six show tour of Western Europe and the UK. Uh,
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: but only if fees in the band. That's the deal.
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: M And so they called me up and they said,
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: we have this offer, you know. And and I, you know,
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: I was very skeptical and uh, I said, well you
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: know what what what is? You know, what's happening with
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: the band? He went, well, you know, Uh, Bill was
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: not in the band anymore because, like I said, drugs
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: and Mike the synthesizer. He he left the band when
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: I left. He moved to New York City and he's
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: done very well as a graphic designer. And UH and
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: the keyboard player Vince audition for The Grateful Dead in
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: UH when there other keyboard player died and he got
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: the gig. So Vince is in The Grateful Dead, Mike's
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: gone bills battling addiction, and they've got another keyboard player.
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: So there are a four man band with a different
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: keyboard player. And they said, this is the story, and
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: nobody's nobody's everyone's grown up. You know, we're not doing
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: drugs anymore. You know, I thought them for years, I
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: was the only guy that didn't do drugs. I was
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: the only guy. And it was really difficult, you know,
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: to go into a city and and all they thought
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: about who's the coke dealer, you know, and and they said, no,
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: we're all we've all grown up. We're not doing it.
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: We're all straight. I said, really, yeah, And okay, I said, okay,
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: So we did it. So I I went back to
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: the band and we did this sixty show tour in
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: in in the spring of and and I had so
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: much fun that I just I said, okay, well, let's
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: keep doing this. And so here we are, gosh, thirty
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: years later, almost in almost fifty years from the beginning.
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: So Fee, thanks so much for doing us. You know,
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: I loved hearing about the polo, and certainly I'm a
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: huge tubes fan, some of the bottom lines, some of
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: the rocksy even when one time, Hollywood Bolivard when the
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: first album came out, I was working in a sporting
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: goods store and you did an in store it Peaches
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: Records and came dressed up totally is kulud. Oh God,
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: I remember that I stopped there in my lunch break.
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: So it's a great honor to do this with you,
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: so thanks so much for doing that. Thank you for
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: having me. You know, I read your letter and I just,
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: you know, I think so. I think you're so great
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: and it's really a privilege and an honor. A few
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: year podcast. Thank you so much for having Until next time,
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sense