Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Davey Johnstone

Transcript

Davey Johnstone · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Davy Johnstone. Davy, we were talking
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: before we began about the pronunciation of your last name
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Johnstone or Johnston. You said, there was a story. Tell me, okay, now,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: when I was growing up in Scotland, it was Davy Johnson.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Because in Scotland they're very offhand, not worrying about the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: T or the E or whatever. Davy Johnson. Just like that.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: When I moved over to the States, people would see
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the spelling and go, oh, Davy Johnstone. And when I
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: heard that, I must admit I liked it. I liked
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: it the sound of it Americans saying that. However, one
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: day when I was on the road with Alice Cooper,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I'm an airport somewhere and this guy came up to
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: me and he said, you're used to play with, right,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: And I said that's right, yeah, And he said you're
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: what's your name again, You're Davy And I said, yeah,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Davy Johnston and he said, no, you're Davy Johnstone. I
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: immediately when I like that, Yes, I am, thank you busted.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: You know, so, I've always I've used that pronunciation. Now
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: for myself. I like it because I'm also I'm an
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: American citizen as well as a British one, so I'm
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: very tied into this country all the way. Now, So
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Johnstone is okay, let's go back to Davy, because yeah,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: you're a child of the fifties as am I and
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: we all were you know, Bobby Davy whatever, and then
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: as we aged people tended to change to Bob Robert Dave.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Tell me about being Davy. Well, I was always we
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Davy growing up because my dad was Big Dave. My
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: dad also but his name wasn't David. It was actually Davidson,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: which is a really interesting Scottish name. Davidson Wallace Johnston
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: was his name, and so he was Big Dave and
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I was we Davy, and it just seemed to stuck
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: all the way through my childhood, through my soccer days,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and then when I started playing music, it just seemed
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: to be a catchier name. And I suck in the
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: e because it was totally accidental. Somebody was taking a
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: photograph of me and an Irish singer called Noel Murphy
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: who had formed a little folk duo together, and the
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: photographer wrote underneath my picture Davy with a E D
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: A V E y. So that was purely accidental. But
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: now so many fans and people know me as Davy.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: My kids call me Davy. My wife calls me Davy
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: when he's been in a good mood. And yeah, so
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I don't mind being called Davy. I'm not the one
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: of my sisters in Scotland still calls me David. I
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: will not call you Davy. You're David, you know. So
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: it's fine. Okay, you've talked about becoming a citizen. How
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: do you decide to do that? Well, I've lived here
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: for many years. I've lived out near in California for
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: thirty over thirty years now, especially in this area of
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: where I am now, which I love out in the country,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: just around Calabasas area. And we decided, my wife and
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I together because my wife is Danish. We both decided
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: about three years ago, four years ago, perhaps when things
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: were getting really really strange here politically. We had a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: long conversation about it and I said, Okay, I am
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: not a citizen, so therefore I can't vote. I can
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: do everything else. I can pay tax obviously, I've always
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: paid my taxes. I do all the other stuff, but
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I can't vote unless I'm a citizen. So I feel
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: it's horton now that I get my citizenship and that
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: you get years too, so that both of us can
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: vote in the upcoming election in twenty twenty. So that's
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: the main reason we did it. And when I got
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: back from Australia, we've been doing the usual applications and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the petitions, all the stuff you have to fill in
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: and the background stuff. And when I got back from Australia,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: right right as COVID was coming in, my immigration attorney
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: who's in New York called me up and said, what
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: are you doing tomorrow? And I said, well, I'm getting
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: over my jet lag as usual. He said, can you
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: go to Chatsworth because I have a date for you
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: in a time they're going to swear you in privately.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: So it was really beautiful the fact that I got
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: to go, you know, locally and just with a few
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: people in the actual office, and I got sworn in.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: My wife was there, our kids were there, and it
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: was really a magical thing. And I'm really proud to
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: be a born again American. Okay, you say your wife
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: is Danish, how did you meet your wife? That's another
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: good one. My wife's Danish. I've always had this connection
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: with Danish people. Our record producer Chris Thomas was seeing
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: this Danish girl, a very beautiful Danish girl called Tina. Now,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: unbeknown to me, I'd met Tina a couple of times,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: but unbeknown to me, her best friend was my wife
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: to be Kay. And at that period time, for example,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Chris Thomas's girl was Tina, Rick Astley's girlfriend was Lena,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: another Dane. All right, it gets really interesting. And so
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: on Tina's birthday one year in nineteen eighty nine, Alton
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: through a party for Tina because she was about to
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: get married to Chris Thomas, and it was a birthday party.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: So I was sitting next to this beautiful Danish girl
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: called k and the party was in Paris, so it
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: was a very romantic place and it was a very
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: romantic evening. And that was it. We were submitting with
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: each other and we were together for a couple of years,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: and then we got married in nineteen ninety two after
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: we had our first child, and it's been wonderful. Were
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: over thirty years now and really happy. Is this the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: only time he had been married? No, twice before. First
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: time was when I was nineteen years old. At that time,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I got Diana Partridge pregnant when I was living in London,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: and we had a little boy called Tam. Tam is
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: now an engineer and a writer, songwriter, filmmaker, musician, and
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: he lives in Cornwall in Southwest England, which is a
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: beautiful part of the world. My second marriage was to Rosa,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: a Mexican girl from from Los Angeles with a wonderful family,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and our marriage spawned two children, Jesse and Daniel, and
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: they both still live in California and Kay. As I've
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: told you, it was Danish and I brought her over
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: here to live with me in California. And this has
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: been the one that's um, that's lasted obviously, and there's
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: no end in sight. Thank God. I'm tired of all
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: that running around and it's over. So how many kids
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: do you have with your present wife? Four with this
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: this wife? And unfortunately, back in two thousand and one,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: we had a tragedy and we lost our firstborn, Oliver,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: in a drowning accident in our pool. It happened when
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I was on the road with the Alton John Billy
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Joel Tour and we were in Chicago playing a show
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: that night in fact, and we had two nannies taking
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: care of the kids. At that point. Oliver was nine
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: years old, Juliet, my favorite and only daughter, was four,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: and Charlie they was two. So they were well shepherded
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: and well taken care of while we were in Chicago
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: doing this celebration for my birthday, and tragically, our little
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: boy got away from the nannies, found his way into
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the pool and took up a tenth type of thing
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: in there, which she had always been told you can't
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: take that, you can't take anything into the pool, and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: he did and he got tangled up in it. The
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: nanny didn't get to him in time, and he drowned.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I got this news when I was on we just
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: played the set of the show in Chicago, and I'm
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: backstage and I'm signing next to Elton and with Kay
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: and I get this call and the road manager said, Davy,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: there's a call for you. And I said, I'm not
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: taking a phone call right now, and you know we're
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: doing a show, and he said, no, you've got to
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: take this call. I took the call, and this this
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: poor doctor had the job of telling me this unbearable
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: news that that our son had died in a drowning accident.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: The shock was so immediate. I was obviously very angry
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: and denial. It was like, what do you mean? Who
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: is this kind of thing? But finally I realized, okay,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: this is the worst news that for any parent, and
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I went and got my wife, I held her, I
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: told her what had happened. She immediately fell down, and
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you know, Elton and grabbed her at the other side
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and was holding her up to just the most unimaginable
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: feeling and changed our lives, obviously in every possible way.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: He was a wonderful little boy. And what I've tried
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: to do when I finally stopped drinking and drugging and
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: doing all the other stuff because I felt that I
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: felt that I had a license to drink, to drug
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: allisas to kill myself because I was so miserable and
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: so upset because what had happened. And then I realized that,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'll be honoring him much better if
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I stopped drinking, stopped drinking being an idiot, and and
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: act like a human being and face up to these
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: things and that's what I did. And so that's how
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: we honor our child. Now. Every year we celebrate his
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: birthday and we celebrate his his death date. And it's
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: the only way we could we could get through this
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: thing was by facing up to it properly and by
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: staying together through it, you know, helping each other. So, yeah,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: that was a total tragedy. And all also my children,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: my other children helped me so much during this period
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: of time. Alton was a massive help, and my bandmates.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: But I could never have gotten through it without my
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: wife and my kids and are close friends. Wow. So
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: it's type of thing you never get over, really right,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: you never get over it, but we've learned to, you
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: might say, deal with it because over the years, what
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: happens this kind of situation, what happened in my case
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and in my wife's case. Anyway, it starts off being
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: like this giant boulder in your heart, and then as
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the years go by, it gets a little softer, less
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: jagged edges, and it becomes more of like a small
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: manageable that still breaks you up when you think about
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: this wonderful little boy that we lost, But you know,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: you get to a point where you can actually go ahead,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: go on and deal with it and possibly help other
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: people who are going through similar situations, which we have done.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I've given help to a couple of friends who've had
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: similar types of tragedy because I've realized that people just
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: need to talk about it. You can't just hide away
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: and not talk about it. This is something that has
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to be faced and dealt with, and you know, and
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: you make it part of your life, you know, not
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: something that defines you, but something that's part of your
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: life that you treasure. And so I'm very grateful. Okay,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: talking about your kids, are they off the payroll? No,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that ever happens. Bob, my youngest
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: is definitely not off the payroll. Elliott's um just turned
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: eighteen last November, and he's a wonderful singer, a beautiful
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: looking kid, and he can't wait to get the hell
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: out of school, and he's also an artist and various things.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: The next and Lion Charlie, is a sound engineer, also
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: a songwriter, and another musician, brilliant piano player. He went
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: to USC here in California for piano and for music production,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: so they're kind of in the family business. My favorite daughter, Juliet,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: who's actually on her way to New York City today.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: She devised a wonderful business. Her name is Juliet Johnstone
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and that's her website and everything. And she decided to
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: start painting on clothes about just when COVID was kicking in,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: and it turned out to be a wonderful idea because
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: many pop stars, models, various personalities, celebs, whatever started wearing
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: her clothes. So it's wonderful that she's doing this and
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: she's got this ridiculous business. And recently she painted a
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: guitar for me for my seventieth birthday. I'm coming up
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: for seventy two now, but I she painted. She finished
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: it in time for me playing Dodgers Stadium with Elton
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: in November, which was awesome. So I got to take
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: that guitar on stage and use it. And you know,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: a Bob, I'm blessed. I have some amazing children and
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: I'm a very lucky man because it's always kept me
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: a little bit grounded in my life, because you know,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: we take our kids everywhere when we travel as much
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: as we can whenever it's possible, and so they've seen
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: the world many times in different places, and I think
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: they've really enjoyed that aspect of it. And they love
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: their own Uncle Elton, you know, or Auntie Elton, you know, whatever,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: however he prefers to be called. And you know, they've
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: got some great friends because of the life we lead
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and their own talents. And they've really helped me because
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I mean I listened to their their music. I listened
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: to what they're listening to and it stuns me occasionally. Okay,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you talked about your daughter painting a guitar for you.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: In the room we're in right now, I can already
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: see like twelve guitars on the wall. How many guitars
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: do you own? You know? I have no idea. It
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: sounds gross to say, but I really don't know. I'll
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: find out more accurately when this Farewell Tours over, because
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: we have three totally separate rigs outrun the road, which
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: one of them, for example, is just leaving Australian Zealand
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: where we just finished. Another set is in the New
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: York area, and another set is in Europe waiting for
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: us to start the next leg of the Farewell Tour
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: in the end of March. So each rake contains about
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: twenty five guitars, I would say maybe thirty, so that's
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: ninety there roughly. I've got another a few dozen at home,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: along with various satars and various other things that I
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: don't take on the road with me anymore because they're
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: just too delicate. So yeah, it's a lot of stuff.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: But in my retirement, I intend to play each and
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: every one of them. I intend to get back and
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: give each one the love that they really deserve. Because
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: I'm very blessed I have so many instruments, so it's
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: wonderful I do, and we get to them whenever we can.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: But sometimes I feel that they're being ignored and they're
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: not being giving the TLC they deserve. So I'm looking
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: forward to retirement when I can line them all up
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and honor them for their part in my life. Now.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: A lot of guitarists have favorite instruments, whether it be
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: brand in model, or you know, those of us who
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: played guitar. I don't want to say that. I mean,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: we all played guitar after the Beatles. Know that if
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: we went shopping with guitars, every guitar sounds a little
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: bit different. And there are people who take that guitar
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: on the road. There are people who only use it
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: in the studio. Do you have a couple of favorite instruments?
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: I do. I definitely have a couple of go to instruments.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Right from the beginning day when I first joined album,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: for example, I wasn't playing much electric guitar, but I
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: had an electric guitar. But Alton tells a wonderful story
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: about me plugging in at the Chateau when we went
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: to make the first album, and it's a great story.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: It's not entirely true because I did own an electric guitar,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: so that was a Fender Stratocaster. But as I started
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: playing with him and I was able to buy a
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: couple of other instruments, I realized that my real favorite
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: was going to be a Gibson Les Paul, and then
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: later a Gibson Flying V. Because I began I began
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: to like the solid guitars because the sustain was more
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: evident and more clean, So I really loved that aspect
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: of Les Paul's. So yeah, my favorite really has been
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: a Gibson Les Paul. Second has probably been a Flying
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: V or a reverse Flying V, and then would probably
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: become the strat, you know, the Fender stratum. But the
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: other thing, Bob, is I I have so many guitars.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I mean I have a double neck made by a
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: company called Fernandez, which is completely jaw dropping brilliant. Um.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I use it for a lot of slide guitar and
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: regular one. I want to switch from neck to neck,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: and it has the most pure gorgeous sound. So I
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: mean I I have so many of them, and so
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: many mandolins, electric mandolins, so many acoustic guitars, electric acoustic guitars,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: so that I can use them live also, So yeah,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: plenty of instruments. We have them coming out of the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Yang Yang. When you know, whenever we go to make
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: an album, there's so many dough Bros and Mandolins and
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Mando cellos and stuff, dulcimers, you know, you name it. Okay,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: you have twenty five guitars approximately in three different rigs.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Someone who's not sophisticated would say, why do you need
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: twenty five guitars? So why do you need all those guitars? Well,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: one good reason is a backup for each guitar. There's
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: a prominent For example, I need to have my number
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: one less Paul. I need to have a backup for
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: that less Paul. I need to have my favorite flying
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: v or reverse fee and a backup for that one.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I need to have my favorite strat vender strat and
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: a backup for that one. I need to have my
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: favorite acoustic guitar that I'll be using in that particular
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: rig and a backup for that one. I need to
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: have an acoustic guitar open tuned because for songs like Rocketman,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I use a particular open tuning which is pretty amazing,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: pretty special, So I need to have a guitar tuned
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: in that tuning as a backup. Also, because you know,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the main thing I don't want to do is hold
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: up a show when you have a problem like a
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: string popping and it's in a bad part of this
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: song where you can't just get through it with the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: rest of the strings. So I have backups for each
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: and every instrument. And then for example, I'll have another
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: couple of guitars for songs like the Bitch Is Back
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: for example, bitches back when I recorded that I did that,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: and an open g tuning very similar to the tuning
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: that Keith Richards uses. He uses five strings on his tuning,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I use all six, so there's a slight difference there.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I learned to play g tuning from John Martin, famed
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: British guitar player who tragically died way too young. So yeah,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: there's there's various tunings and I'd like to have a
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: backup for that one as well. So it might sound
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: a little over the top for some people, but really
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: there's a good excuse for them. And then also, if
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Alton decides on a tour he wants to do Mona
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Lisas and mad hatters, I have to have a mandolin
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: ready and a backup for that mandolin. If he wants
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: to do a honky cat, I have to have a
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: banjo and a backup for that banjo. So luckily I
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: have all these wonderful instruments so that I'm never sure
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of one, and I've got a wonderful guitar tech. I mean,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Rick Salazar is an absolute genius looking after all these
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: different guitars, looking after the various tunings, keeping each and
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: every one of these instruments in tip top shape. It's
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: just I couldn't do what I do without him. He's
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: just amazing. Okay, you mentioned Dodgers Stadium this year, and
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: of course you played with Elton in nineteen seventy five
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Dodger Stadium. It's the same building. But what was different
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: about those two gigs. Well, let's see, the first one
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: was earlier in the year. I think this last one
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: was November seventeen, eight seventeen, nineteenth and twentieth, I want
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: to say, and end of November, so it was much
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: colder and darker. For one thing, the gigs in seventy five,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly when they were, but they were
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: either September or early October, and so it was the
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: majority of the shows were in daylight and I could
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: see people. I could see this sea of people. It
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: was just such an awesome feeling. And we'd never that
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: stadium hadn't been used since the Beatles played there, so
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of these things going on where
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: we were doing. There was firsts were happening that many
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: people hadn't done since, for example, the Beatles. So that
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: was a very magic gig. And it was special in
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: another way too, because we were having to do excuse me,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: we're having to do this particular show with a new band,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: basically because Dan Nigel had been let go at the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: end of nineteen seventy four, so I was tasked with
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: putting the new band together once we decided on who
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the members were going to be, so in nineteen seventy five,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: so it was all these different guys and it was wonderful.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, we had a great band. It was rocking,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: It was totally rocking. But this time, for me, the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: difference was after doing it for fifty years, after playing
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: some of these songs for fifty years and writing stuff,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't know. It just had a really
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: emotional feel about it, thinking, Wow, we're never going to
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: play these songs in America again, and that really is
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: what it is. We're never going to play them live again.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: So it was wonderful to see really close friends. They're
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: really good musician friends, people you know, like Date, the
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: wonderful David Page and James Newton Howard and just all
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: these brilliant musicians. Alice in Chains showed up to see
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: us so much. Just good friends, Eddie Vedder all these
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: cats came to see the show because they're big fans,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: you know, and it was wonderful to see them backstage.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I must say one point about seventy five that blew
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: me away though completely. We were backstage in the trailers
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: waiting to go on, and there was people before the show,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the interval and after the show.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: This is on the seventy five show. So one of
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: the wives, I believe it was Caleb Quay's wife, Pat.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: She had a really Cockney accent, fantastic London accent, and
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: she suddenly says, in a very English accent, Yeah, that's
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Gary Cooper out there. And I think to myself, Gary
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Cooper is fucking dead. I'm pretty sure. So I go
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: over to the window, pull the curtain back and it's
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Carrie Grant. So I go, oh my god. I love
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Carrie Grant had to be like my favorite actor growing
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: up as a kid in Scotland. His movies were all
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: over the place and anyway, I just loved the suaveness
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: about him. So I went out and had a chat
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: with him, and he was knowledgeable about what we were doing.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: He was saying, oh, yes, I'm really enjoying the interplay
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: between you and the other guitar player and you and Elton,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: and the way you guys or look at each other
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: and smile and laugh, and I was just like going,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: this is unbelievable. I'm talking to Carrie Grant, somebody who
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: you know. When I was eight years old we first
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: got a television in Scotland and I'm seeing like one
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: of his movies, like The Bishop's Wife or something, and
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: there he is backstage it does you say to him? So, yeah,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: that was a There were more stars in those days
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: that were maybe I'm a bit more jaded now, Okay,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: you know you mentioned your retirement. This is and people
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: can't see my air quote a farewell tour. There are
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who are going through the motions
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: for the money. I've seen the Farewell toured twice. Elton
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: is really digging it. So I just don't see Elton retiring.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, George Street was the first one to do
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: is I'm retiring from touring, but he ended up playing
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: single dates. You're closer certainly than I am. What do
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: you think is really going to happen? Well? I really
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: feel that when we finish off, I believe the last
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: concerts in Stockholm, I want to say July eighth. I
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: think that's right. I must say that, as far as
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I'm concerned, touring wise, we're done. This is going to
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: be it. We're done from touring. There's a part of
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: me that obviously thinks, knowing out in the way I do,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: it would not surprise me if sometime in the future
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: he decides to do maybe a Vegas, a small residency,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: a short type of thing, because he started to enjoy
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: some of those shows too when we got into that.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: From between two thousand and five and two thousand and
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: fifteen or so, we had a couple of shows that
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: were very There were a lot of fun to do.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: They were a little tedious at times. That whole that
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: idea of doing something that we weren't used to. But
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if he went if he knows
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: what it is now, so I wouldn't be surprised if
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: sometime in the future he maybe does something different, maybe
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: with a small orchestra, or maybe something entirely different. I
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: have no idea, but that's just my take on it.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I promise you. We haven't discussed anything. We haven't talked
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: about any of it. You know. He calls me about
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff, and we're not going there just yet. Okay.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So I didn't see the Vegas shows. The red piano
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: and the other one. What was different about playing in
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Vegas as opposed to a usual tour. Well, I was
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: at first, I didn't like the idea at all. I
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: just thought it was I was terrified. I thought, you know,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: going to Vegas, that's like a musician's graveyard. I did
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: not like the idea at all. But then when the
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: fun of it, the fun aspect kicked in, we realized, okay,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: this is a good giggle, and we we trimmed it
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: so that we were never there for longer than three
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and a half weeks. There was no I can't I
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: can't understand people or artists who are able to stay
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: there for a residency for a whole year or whatever
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: they do. Impossible. I'd go completely nuts. So we would
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: go there three times a year for round about a month.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: The one thing that was good about it was I
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: was closer to home. I could literally come off stage
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: because the shows in Vegas end early there because they
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: want people back, you know, in the casino, they want
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: people at the tables and the machines again, So the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: shows would end about ten pm. I would literally have
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: my car ready to go backstage. I'd jump in it
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: and I'd be on the road before people were out
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: of the theater and home in three and a half hours,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you know, quick drive. I'd just drive myself home, So
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: that was a good aspect of it. And obviously being
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: able to see my my wife and kids more regularly
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: because they could come out to Vegas. Also, the Million
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Dollar Piano Show was a great It was slightly more
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: I was, well, a lot more sophisticated. There was various
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: people who helped put it on. Mark Fisher, a wonderful
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: designer who did a lot of the Stones things, and
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Sam Pattinson in England, and they were assisted by Tony
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: King and and Elton's manager slash husband, David Furnish. So
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it was a little more of a of
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: a I want to say, smooth, sophisticated and classy show.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: You know, we were wearing like Gucci suits and then
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Burberry suits, and then finally for the Million Dollar Piano Show,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: sorry for the Farewell tour, where we're wearing Gucci, which
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: is fine. I mean it's very sharp looking, it's very
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: sharp rock and roll. I like it because it remains
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the Beatles. I'm a massive, huge Beatles fan. Nobody bigger
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: than me. They'll we all say that, right, But yeah,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: I like that aspect of it. I do think at
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: some point for me personally, I'm getting over the suits because,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: you know what, I got into this business because I'm
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: a typical musician. I'm revolutionary. I don't want to wear
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the same as thing as everybody else. You know, I
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: was wearing afghan coats and floury shirts and beads and
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: bell bottoms as you probably were back in the earliest
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: the late sixties, already seventies, so the idea of having
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: a uniform still rubs a little bit, robsby the wrong way.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: So I'll be glad to get out of the good
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: cheer or whatever suit is I'm in and back to
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: some interesting clothes. It's the same songs in the same
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: order every night on this tour, right it is. It's changed.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I would say four or five times. We've changed song selections,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: We've very rarely changed the order of things. We've tried things,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: but each time we seemed to go back to the same,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the original thing. It's worked well. The only song that
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: we took out that I really miss is All the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Young Girls Love Alice, which I thought really kicked ass
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: and I thought a lot of the fans loved the
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: fact that there was a really deep cut that was
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: in there, but we kind of substituted that with have
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Mercy on the Criminal, which is another another deep cut,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and that seems to go down great. People love that too.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: So Mona Lisa's was in there for a couple of
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: tours way back when we started, and and a couple
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: of songs have come and gone and don't Go Breaking
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: My Heart comes in when like for the Dodger Stadium,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Kikid came out and did her party piece on that song,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: and then dual Leapa did her her thing with Elton.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Instead of it being just backtrack, they still used the backtrack,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: but they were able to use Doua's voice life which
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: was great and Elton live, so that was awesome. Okay,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: during the show, is there anything prerecorded? No, we are
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: We are totally one million percent live. I mean, we
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: have a couple of vocal samples that we've recorded ourselves
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: several years ago, which we still use on a couple
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: of numbers, which we bolster our own live vocals with
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: um similar to the way that bands like The Eels,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: do you know they most bands who have fairly prominent.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Background vocals tend to use a couple of samples here
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and there. I don't think there's anything unfair about us
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: using them here and there. And we still love doing
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the background parts because they're they're really meaningful parts that
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: when we wrote them, so it's fun to do them
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: live too. Okay, you're the music director, What exactly does
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: that mean? Really, I'm like a glorified bandleader. Really, I
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: mean it's not really. Music director is something that people
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: started calling me many years ago. And you know, I
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: don't really give a shit if they call me that
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: or not right frankly, but Alton's announcing me on stage. Yeah,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: he always says, this is Davy, my band leader. And
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: I love that. That works perfectly for me because the
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: whole thing about music director started the second time that
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: d and Nagel were let go and I was asked
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: to stay when I was again tasked with the job
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of or somebody's going to have to run the band
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: through their paces tish them the songs. Because as far
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: back as especially the second band I'm talking about in
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: the early in the mid eighties, when after the end
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty four, when when Dan Najeel let go
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: of that time. I had to come up with a band,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and it took quite a while for me to be
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: comfortable with the musicians that we had, and by the
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: time and we got to the end of the eighties,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: I was very happy with it. We had people like
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Charlie Morgan on drums, Bob Birch came in on bass,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Guy Babylon on keyboards. Eventually we got Nigel back, which
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: was great. He was out of the band for something
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: like seventeen years. So when I think of the various
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: combinations of bands I worked my way through. We had
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: some wonderful players. Don't get me wrong. We used to
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: you know Jonathan Moffatt sugar Foot, you know from Jack
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Michael Jackson Stuff and his band. You know Romeo Williams,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: all these different players. Jeff backs to play with us
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: for a while. James Newton heard. Obviously, Ray Cooper has
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: been in and out of the band, and he was
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: more of Ray was always more of a floating member,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: but when he comes back, he's always my permanent member.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Ray and I go out to dinner all the time
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: on the road. Were the food freaks of this tour.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: So we tend to dine out as much as possible. Okay,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: have you been to Noma in Denmark? I wish i'd had,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: but I believe it's closing the end of this year.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Ray and I have got our sightset for going there
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: when we're there in early July, so we're hoping we
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: can we can get in. Okay, So what's the best
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: meal you've had on the road. Well, for me, you
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: can't go wrong with no Bo. We love Japanese food.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: No restaurants are in very many of the major cities,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you know that. Although in Atlanta we found Umi,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: which is a ridiculously great Japanese restaurant in the Buckhead
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: area of Atlanta, which we love. That area. There's some
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: wonderful restaurants and a couple of friends of mine own
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: the restaurants and they started this place and it's just unimaginable.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: It's so great. So it's definitely on a par with
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Nobu and maybe slightly better in some areas. So I'm
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: big on Japanese food. But obviously when we want to
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: take some of the guys like I take Rick, my
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: tech occasionally he likes Japanese food, but he's really big
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: on steak, so we'll go to one of the many
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: wonderful steakhouses, of which, as you know, there are several.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: We just love great food, so it's one of it.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: To me, it's one of the biggest, big joys of life.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: So I make sure that I eat well on the road.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Do you work out on the road. I have a
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: set of stretchers that I do every morning, and I
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: swim whenever I can because I like to swim at home.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Right now, I'm I'm undergoing a bit of shoulder problem,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: so I'm doing physical therapy for that. I've got wonderful
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: therapists here in my area that are helping me out.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: So yeah, as we get older, you know, fifty years
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: of guitar sling and Bobby, you know that's like you
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: play guitar, you know, imagine doing it every other night
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: on stage for three hours. You know, suddenly your neck
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: and your shoulder starts to give way. So I have
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: guitar players neck and shoulder right now. Okay, Elton has
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: a huge catalog. If I were to call out a song,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: would you be able to play it right like that?
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Or what would it take to recall it? Well? Put
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: it this way, if it was one of the ones
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: I played on, absolutely, I mean, because there are quite
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: a few that I didn't play on leading up to
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: you know the band. Oh, let's face it. If you
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: see his greatest hits, I'm on every track. So yes,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: if you caught a few mentioned a track or a
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: deep cut that I played on, I'm pretty sure I
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: could play it for you. And doeselt never call out?
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, you've been with him all these years forget
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: to farewell tour? Is he ever just playing and say
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: let's play you know, Harmony, or let's play Teacher, I
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: need you or whatever. Well, he'll suggest, you know, we'll
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: be talking about sets. We do that, him and I
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: do that before each tour anyway, and so we'll come
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: up with things like you said, Harmony, you know, high
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Flying Bird or whatever to be. The thing is, he
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: has no fucking idea how to play these socks. So
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: this is why they call me musical director Bob, because
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: when it started happening, I realized he didn't know the songs,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: he'd forgotten them, he didn't know how to play him.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: So what I decided to do. I've got a very
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: good friend called Adam Chester, who's a wonderful piano player, singer, songwriter.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Adams a dear friend. He loves our music. He loves
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Elton's music, all his sides. One day I called him
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: up and I said, Adam, I need you. I'm tired
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: of showing up for a TV rehearsal, for camera rehearsal.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Elton's not there because he want rehearse. I'm tired of
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: doing a band rehearsal without piano. I'm just sick of it.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: So would you like to be my Elton? And he
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: went yeah, So, so I bring him in with the
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: whole band. He's not perfect, he sings the songs really well.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: We do a change of key depending on where Elton's
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: voice maybe at the current time or whatever. And so
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: that by the time Elton's ready to come into rehearsal,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: we're really good to go. We have the arrangements down,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: everything's totally good to go. All he's got to do
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: is remember his part. So and he does that so quick,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Elton so fast. There's a good reason. I mean, he
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: hates the rehearse and I don't blame him. It's can
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: be a thankless task. I do enjoy it when it's
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: fun because these songs are so playable, there's so much
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: fun to play. They're not fun to play if somebody's
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: not enjoying it. So I don't I don't even think
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: about putting Alton through that that phase of it. I
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: wait till we're not perfect, and he's pretty much ready
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: to just go, Okay, what was that chord? What's this chord?
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: And then we work it out and he plays it.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: And usually for a tour, he won't need more than
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: about I don't know, an hour to two hours rehearsal,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: and that's for a major tour because we're all good
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: to go. He comes in for you know, an afternoon,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: we do a few songs, we have a tea break,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: we do another few songs, we have a tea break,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: and then he goes, I think that'll do. Let's just
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: go and do it. So really, we rehearse when we
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: were on stage, and we've always done that. So many
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: of the of the jams and the various moves, the
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: maneuvers that we get into doing on stage are all
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: done purely live. We just work him out as we're playing.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: And he's always loved to do that, and I love that,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: and you know, as soon as he might play a
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: little thing and rocket Man and I'll jump on it
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and we'll use that for a while. And you know,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: it's all about you know, ebbs and flows, and we
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: know each other so well that we do that, and
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: the band follows us, and that's the way it works. Okay,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. Edinburgh. What'd your parents
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: do for a living? My mom was a wonderful old
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Scottish housewife. I have two sisters, so there was my
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: My two sisters are one is ten years older, the
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: other one is twelve years older. So I was the baby.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I was the afterthought. And my dad worked in the
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: Department of Agriculture. He was a civil servant and he
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: was also very worldly person. He very well read. Taught
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: me a lot about stuff and about manners, about respect.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: He was a really good man. And he also helped
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: me so much with my soccer career because football is
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: like a religion in Scotland. I mean not American football,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: I mean the real football, so that kids in America
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: in Britain, they grew up with football. So I was
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: fitball crazy when I was a kid. That's what they
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: call it fitball crazy because I loved it. And every
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: waking minute I was in the park or I was
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: in playing in teams, I was playing for my city,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: I was eventually playing for Scottish schoolboys. So I loved it.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: So Dad was great. He was very supportive and all
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: that stuff. He had a very serious injury. He had
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: rheumatari arthritis. It really crippled him from quite an early age.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: But he'd still show up at every soccer game that
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: I played as a kid. I mean I'm talking in
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: the rain and the snow, you know, typical British weather,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: and he'd show up. And when I started playing guitar,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: he was the one who said gave me the most encouragement.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: You know, other people were saying what are you doing?
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: You know, like my teachers at school would say, well,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: that's a waste of time. Only one teacher ever said
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: to me, you're doing the right thing. Carry on, my
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: art teacher when I he asked me what I was
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: going to be, when he was asking the whole class,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: what are you going to do when you grow up?
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do when you leave school?
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: And my answer was I'm going to be a professional musician, sir,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: And he basically was ready to hit me over the
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: head with a book and said that's stupid. There's no
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: way give that idea up. So um my dad was
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: the one who said, don't listen to those guys. You know,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: believe in yourself, go for it. And so by the
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: age of fourteen, I was playing in pubs, which is
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: where most folk music is played, because I I kind
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: of graduated from being a massive Beatles fan. I am
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: again a massive Beatles fan again, but in those days,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: learning every George Harrison like by listening to the radio
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Radio Luxembourg or Radio Caroline, one of those pirate ships
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: or are rolling stones to it, I'd learn all the
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: parts right there sitting by the radio. I graduated from
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: that to listening to folk guitar players who, in my mind,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: were way better than anybody I was listening to on
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: the pop scene. I was listening to people like the
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Incredible string band John Martin, Bert Jansch, Pentangle, Joni Mitchell.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Suddenly I was hearing I'm going to like, what the
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: hell these people are the real stars, you know, And
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: then I started to hear bluegrass people in America, and
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: I'm going like, Okay, this is way advanced. This is
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: the stuff I want to play. So that's the reason
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: that I started playing more acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: and then eventually star a folk singing guy called Archie
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Fisher played the saitar and he invited me to his
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: home to hear it one day, and I heard it
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: and that I've got to get one. And of course
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: i'd heard Jarles Harrison playing on Norwegian wood and thought, okay,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I'm in. I'm sold. You know, I'm a sucker for
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: a great siding instrument. Anything strained, and I got one,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: which I still have to this day. I got it
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: when I was eighteen. I still have it to this day,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: the same one. Okay, so you're growing up, are you
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: the kind of kid who's a loner? Remember the group?
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: You're a good student, bad student. I was a good student.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I was good, but I was lazy because I was
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: more interested in music. I did just what I needed
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: to get by, and I was very upset with my
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: dad said you got to go to extra math tuition
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: because you're failing and you are not allowed to fail
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: this class. So I hated him for it at the time,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: but I did end up getting my result all levels.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Over there, they have all levels and A levels. All
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: level is like high school. A level is more like
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: what you do to get into college. So I got
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: six A levels, which stunned me. I was surprised as hell,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: but it meant I was ready to go to Art
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: college because that was my major. And I decided, just
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: before I was going to go, I'm not going to
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: go to Art college. I'm going to go to London.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: So I had about well, my mom gave me what
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: she had in her purse. It was eleven pounds, which
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: was about twenty bucks. So I got on a train
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: with my banjo, my guitar, my mandolin, and I went
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: to London and I looked up a guy, Noel Murphy,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: this wonderful Irish folks who just passed away a few
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: months ago. Unfortunately, Noel had said to me once when
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: he heard my playing in a pub in Scotland. He said,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: listen man, you're crazy good. He said, if you're ever
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: in London, looked me up. Well. When I heard that,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I thought, okay. I went to London and I went
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: to his apartment and I knocked on the door, and
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: of course he answered it and said, um, what the
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: fuck are you doing here? That was literally it. I mean,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: I went, you know, we started playing. He said, okay,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: you might as well play, So we we. We began
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: this very successful folk duo partnership, and we were a
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: massive draw on the on the folk scene between like
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know, sixty seven and sixty nine, and then
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: I graduated to something a little more I don't know
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: what you would call it, um folk pop or something
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: magna carta, a band like that. And see, there was
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: all this folk rock stuff going on at that period
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: of time, and very many folk physicians like myself, we're
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: getting snapped up by bands. Um, Dave Swarbrick got snapped
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: up by Fairport Convention. Rick Wakeman got snapped up by
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: the firstly by the Strobs and then by yes um
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: people like Ralph mct hell were coming on the scene.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: I was playing with him also Kat Stevens, and then
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I got you know, I was starting to do session work.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: So when I did that a little bit slower, a
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: little bit slower, how'd you get session work? Okay? Well
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: I got session work because basically from from my studio, sorry,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: from my playing in pubs and playing in folk clubs. Basically,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: people would just call me up. They would hear me,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: and they would say, look, I think you'd be great
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: on this record. Will you do it? And I was
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: like absolutely, I mean I never turned a gig down.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: You don't do you don't turn a gig down. And
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: so I started playing with those kind of people, you know,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: obscure kind of folk artists, but who had record deals.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Colin Scott, Ralph mctel was a bit of bit better
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: known Kat Stevens obviously, and Gus Dudgeon, Elton's producer at
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: that time. Wait, before you get to Gus, you knock
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: on Murphy's door, you have twenty dollars in your pocket.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Do you end up sleeping in his apartment? What is
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: your lifestyle like before you work with Elton? And did
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: you ever contemplate giving up? Okay, this is a good
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: run up to that, Bob, So I'll tell you what happened.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: So I'm fifteen years old. I'm working with a partner
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: who's a wonderful singer called Titch. So we go by
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: the really original name of Titch and Davy, and we
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: get really interesting people digging our stuff. Again. Folk clubs,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: all folk music took place in pubs in those days.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: That's just what happened. I think it went to coffeehouses
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: later on, but pubs were where it was very rosy
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: folk clubs, and again I was playing banjo at this
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: By this point, people were going shit crazy. Whenever I
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: play one of the Dubliners reels or something Irish tunes,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: they'd be going nuts. Per serk. So I was already
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: a bit of an item. When I was fifteen as
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: a banjo player, we suddenly started getting gigs supporting people
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: like the Incredible String Band, and there was one band
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: called the humble Bums. I don't know if you're aware
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: of Jerry Rafferty, yes, and Billy Connolly right, was still
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: my friend to this date. Billy Connolly couldn't believe again
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: my playing and what was going on with us. So
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: we became firm friends. And this is again, is all happening.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: When I'm fifteen and sixteen years old. I continue to
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: be close to Billy and these other guys who are
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: hearing me play, and they're all going, Jesus christ Man,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: you know you can do this or you can do that.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: So me and my friend Titch hitchhike to Liverpool and
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: we we just got there. We don't know anybody. We
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: end up staying at my aunties house and Soot, which
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: is about half an hour on the train from Liverpool.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: And we go to Liverpool because the Beatles are from Liverpool.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: So we go there thinking maybe somebody will discover us.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: So we go to this area of very dodgy area
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: near the Bluecoat Museum where some of those guys studied,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: and found this very very dodgy club called the Green Moose.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: And we went in there and there was all these
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: hippies and folk singers, and there was one guy called
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Willie Russell who's a friend of mine to this day.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: He was a poet, writer and wonderful, wonderful singer. He
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: we got on immediately. Willy Russell turned out to be
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest playwrights and he is one of
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: the greatest living playwrights in British history. He wrote. He
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: went on to write Educating Rita and Blood Brothers Shirley Valentine,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: and he's you know, living. He still lives in Liverpool
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: and has a place in Portugal. Anyway, I digress. Willy
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: and I became firm friends. So suddenly you had me,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Willy Russell, Billy Connolly, Noel Murphy, this kind of kind
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: of gangster folk people, and we could drink more and
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: smoke more harsh than anybody else, So we were rapidly
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: getting a name. So I kind of had I was
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: ready to go to London. People weren't that surprised when
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: I showed it up there because they kind of knew
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: who I was. So yes, Noel Murphy, apart from saying
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: you know, what the fuck are you doing here, said okay,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: well you better come in. Maybe we should think about
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: talk about this, So you know, we rolled a few splits,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: talked about what we could possibly do together, and obviously
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: him being an Irish singer and me being an exponent
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: of the tenor banjo and mandolin acoustic guitar, we could
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: do this folk duo. So we were first called Murph
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: and Shagas. That's another one of my names. Shagas was
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: a name that he came up with. You probably know
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: what a haggas is, Bob, or maybe you don't, yeah,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: but anyway, he thought, well, Davey resembles a shaggy Haggas,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: so I'm going to call him Shagas. So that was
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: my name for a couple of years too, and then
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: eventually we decided to give ourselves more of a band name,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: and we called ourselves Draft Porridge and in the in
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: the latent days of the folks in there, Draft Porridge
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: became quite a thing. So all this kind of thing
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: was happening. People are starting to talk about us. We
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: were getting this massive following, and eventually I get starting
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: to ask to do sessions. So that's where the gust
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: thing comes in. Okay, so Gus calls you, do you
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: know who Elton is? At that point? He's an empty Sky,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: which wasn't that successful the first self titled album, Tumbleweed Connection,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: never mind the live album and the Friends soundtrack. You're
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: called by Gus? Is this just another gig? Or do
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: you say? Wow? Well? I had heard about Elton from
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Gus because Gus and I took a meeting. We had
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: metturing sessions for this group, Magna Carta that I was
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: with for about a year, and before I was a
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: bona fide member of that group with a three piece
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: folk group. Gus was producing them, so I was actually
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: a session man on that thing too. So that's where
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: we first met and we took a meeting sometime after
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: because I was so bold away by what he was
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: doing and the way he made my instrument sound. He
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: was obviously a schooled engineer as well as a great producer,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: so we took a meeting one day and he told me,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: he said, I worked with this guy called Regge and
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: his real name, he's calling himself Elton John and he
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: said he's just had a big successful show in la
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: and you probably be hearing about him, and I went okay,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: and that's the first time I'd heard of him. And
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: I remember going back to Scotland a few weeks later
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: for a visit with my folks, and my dad and
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: I were watching a show called Top of the Pops
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: which I think is probably still on in the UK,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and Elton was on doing border song and I remember thinking, well,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: this guy's got a killer voice. I love his piano playing,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: and look at that head of hair. My dad and
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: me both said, look at this guy's here. He's got
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: this thickest, coolest looking head of hair we'd ever seen, right,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: And that was the first thing that kind of I
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: noticed about him. So anyway, I went back down to
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: London and I've done a couple of months later or something,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Gus calls me and said, look, I'm doing a poetry
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: album with Bernie Taupin. The idea is for to do
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: acoustic album whereby yourself, if you're into it, Caleb Quay,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Sean Phillips, the American musician, and a couple of other
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: people here and there are going to be in the studio.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Bernie is going to recite his poetry and you guys
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: will play whatever you want in the background. You bring
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: your guitar, your sitar, your mandolin, and Bernie's just going
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: to read poetry. You're going to smoke a lot of dope,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: and then you're going to play whatever comes into your head.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: So that's what happened. I showed up at the studio.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: I met Bernie, who was a great guy. Straightaway, got
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: un fantastic with him, and that's what we did. We
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: sat around and got to know each other. Gus was producing,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: Clive Franks was engineering. Clive went on to be our
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: front of house guy. So this album was so much
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: fun to record because Caleb and I were just We
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: got to know each other on that record, and it
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: was obvious that at some point we would do some
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: other stuff together. It was just one of those things.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: So after Bernie's recordings, I guess Bernie must have said
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: to Elton, you've got to check this guy out. And
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: I got the call to do the mad Mare across
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: the Water thing, and I showed up with more stuff
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: than they asked me for. I was booked to play
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: banjo on a song called holiday En, so I brought
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: my banjo. I also brought my mandolin, and for some
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: reason I brought my sitar and walked into the studio.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: In those days, he was he was reg so Gus
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: introduced me, and he was very very shy. Elton was
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: sitting his piano, didn't he wasn't really into eye contact.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: He was just looking at the piano and it seemed
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: quite shy and nervous. And I said, okay, well can
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: you play me the song we're going to do? And
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: he played the song and I straight away said, well,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's banjo on that. I think mandolin
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: is going to be better. And he said okay, let's
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: try that, and then to go one more. After we
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: ran the song down a couple of times. He didn't
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: have an intro for it, and Gosus said well, how
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: are you going to start it? And Elton said, well,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: I'm not really sure. And I said, well, why don't
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: you just start it? It's just me, like a nineteen
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: year old kid from Scotland, and I said, why don't
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: you just started straight in? I said, it sounds like
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: you've just come in with that bust, and I last
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: that just come in you me and I'm coming with
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: the mandolin and the piano, and that's what we'll do.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: And he went, okay, let's try that soap full of
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: shit young scotsman, you know. So we do that, and
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: every he goes, that's great. So here I am surrounded
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: by people like Herbie Flowers, Barry Morgan, I mean, brilliant musicians,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Chris Spedding, Ray Cooper, all these great wonderful session players,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: and I'm sitting there and going, okay, this is really
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: getting interesting. I'm working with these guys and straight away
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: you could tell, okay, these guys are they're the cream.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I've done a bunch of sessions, but this is another
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: another world, you know. So then the next song he
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: asked me to play. I believe it was the song
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: that they had originally wanted me to try, which was
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: the title track of that record, mad Man Across the Water,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: and I found out later they tried it with a
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: couple of other guys. They tried it with Mick Ronson,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: who was also a dear friend of mine, and Michael Chapman,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: another friend of mine, who was a wonderful folk guitar player.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: They'd done versions and for whatever reason, it hadn't been
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: what they needed, and so they said, this is the
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: riff for the piano, like for this song I have.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: So he played the riff for Madman and I was
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: sitting there next to him with my guitar, and I said, well,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: what about this? And I'm very much a first I'm
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: I'm an ideas guy, and my first ideas are usually
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the ones that are best, just the way it works
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: with me. And I played what I thought, and they
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: all said, you know, Elton Gus and Steve Brown was
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: the manager at that point, that's it, eureka. So we
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: cut it and yeah, and I went on to play
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: on a few other tracks on that album. See on
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: those in those days you probably know this, Boblem. I'm
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: sure you do. And those days when artists were doing
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: an album, they had to do, you know, a three
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: hour session, you know, you had to get at least
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: one track done, usually more. If you could do more,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: you would, you know, so for a day's work, say
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: if you were doing two full sessions, you'd hope to
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: get three finished tracks. And we did, you know one
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: of the next afternoon as we got a tiny d
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: answer leave on and I think we did some more. Yeah,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: that's what I did the overdubs on holiday and I
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: did suitar and and extra stuff on that and yeah,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: so the work rate impressed me. The songs really impressed me.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: Elton's voice, the piano playing, I mean, I was hooked.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: I thought, this this guy is great. I mean, it's
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: the best thing I've heard in a long time. So
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: I went back to my little cottage in Oxford Shore
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: where I was living with my first wife and our
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: little baby. And a few days later I got the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: call um from Steve Brown who who said, um, he
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: would like you to join his trio. He wants to
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: be a quartet with you on guitar. And I was like, wow, okay,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: I said, well that's really I'm flattered. I said, but
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: can I think about it? And he said of course,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: you know, um, and I said you know what, I
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: don't need to think about it. I'm in I'd love
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: to do it. So that was it. And believe it
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: or not, between that conversation, I saw Elton a couple
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: of times shopping in the King's Road and he was
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: so he was a different character. He was friendly, exuberant
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: and buoyant, and maybe because he realized that I wasn't
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: just a bullshitter or something, and we became We were
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: good mates at that point. But I still hadn't met
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: d Murray the bass player. I'd met Nigel, but I'd
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: never played with him because they didn't play on the
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: albums in those days. So here I am, this upstart
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: guitar player just turning twenty, and I'm arriving in the
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: chateau nor rehearsal because, as I told you at the
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: beginning of this whole thing, Alton makes to rehearse. I said,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: aren't we got to at least have a run through
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: with Dea, Nigel and you, and now it's gonna be fine.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: So we get there and we literally start playing together
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: in the chateau, and that's how it all started. Okay,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: a couple of questions. Yes, the sounds are very different
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: from your perspective. What's the difference with Gus Dudgeon as
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: a producer Chris Thomas. Wow, Well, I find that all
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: producers are really different because they all put their own
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: mark on things. Gus being an engineer at Decca Records
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: before he even became a producer. I mean, he was
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: one of those engineers with a white coat and the
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: whole thing, like in Abby Road they had in the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: early days, and so he really learned about how to
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: make up instruments properly and the the whole thing. And we
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: began to have a wonderful relationship because thinking about you know,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Alton was the only other melodic guy in the band.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: He played piano and occasionally he would do an overdub
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: on Melotron or far Fisa Oregon if something that was
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: lying around. But really I was the guy doing the
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: other instruments and guitar overdubs obviously, and bought other textures
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: who wanted and we'd employ them in every album. It
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: was a very very very close knit now and that
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: happened for all these classic records now in the eighties
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: when Alton when we reformed because Alton famously or whatever
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: got the original band back together. At the end of
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one called me saying, I want to get
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Dea nageling you together again with me, just the four
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: of us, and we go back into the studio. This
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: time I want to go in with Chris Thomas because
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: I've been working with him and I'd like to try that,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: And I said great, So we all went to We
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: did a whole year of touring before we did an album,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: which was kind of cool. Who went straight into touring
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: and obviously it was like we'd never stopped playing together.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: And so after the year of touring, we went to Montserrat,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: George Martin's air studio out there with Chris producing. And
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: we've always enjoyed that way of working, by the way,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: that residential area where you're kind of prisoners together. You're
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: all in one area, you know, where you get to
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: live and work together and have breakfast and maybe come
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: up with an idea of dinner together and go to
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: bed and wake up start again. So we've always enjoyed
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: that way of work. So Montserrat was a natural follow
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: on to our work at the Chateau and also at
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: Carriboo Ranch. So we get to Montserrat. I had met
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Chris previously. I met him up at Paul McCartney's studio
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: in the malof Kintire when he was doing one of
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: Paul's albums, and we got on very well, and what
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: a great guy, you know. And I loved his work
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: on Beatle's White album. I loved his work on Tender Stuff,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: which I was starting to hear. Chris and I became
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: very close because of what we were started doing straight
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: away because he also, like me, likes to work very quickly,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: and also like Gus, Gus was always a very quick worker.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: So we're very fortunate that all those guys liked to
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: work the way that Elton liked to work, which is,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: hang onto your hat. You better be stayed with us
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: because this is going to be fast, and we don't
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: fuck around the studios like Howard Ground to us, so
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: that once we've run a song twice, we're ready to
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: take it. I mean I'm talking about from when it's written,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: run down, played and recorded. That's what we do, you know.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: So it's like hang on to your hat because we
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: ain't stopping for anybody. So Chris was quite used to
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: work in that way and loved it and loved what
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: we were doing, and I loved what he was doing
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: because it was a different way of approaching guitars as well,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: because he brought that more chiangly sound of the of
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: the eighties guitar wise in but he loved again what
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: I'd do Les Paul Wise. In fact, we began to
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: call my Les Paul work BF cheese. And the reason
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: for that became was who we came to an overdub
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: and he'd say, you know what, I can really hear
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: some big fact Gibson's on this, and I would say, yeah,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: that's a great idea. So big fact Gibson's became, you know,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: this term for really loud, overdriven Les Paul sound, you know.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: And so yeah, Chris and I get gotten great for
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: all these records. And but in the eighties Elton did
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: change around quite a bit. You know. He went a
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: couple or three albums with Chris, then back to Gus
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: again for a couple of records and then a live album,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: and he kept having hits, which was fucking awesome. So yeah,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: it was as far as the difference between them, I
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: must admit I equally loved working with Gus and Chris Thomas.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Both brilliant in their own way. Okay, so you're asked
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: to join the band, you're at the chateau. Everyone had
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: a fantasy of what the chateau was until the Beg's
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: documentary showed it and looked like kind of a dump.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: So what was the chateau like? Well, it was pretty
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: run down. I mean it really was, definitely, but let's
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: face it, it was a French chateau. I mean, from
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: the outside it looked incredible. It was like two buildings,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: both chateau esque and their design wonderful old buildings, beautiful
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: old buildings. And one building was the residential part. The
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: other side was where the studio was in. And when
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: I say run down, you know, they had sweeping staircases
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, but there were It wasn't much a
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: dormant There wasn't like old fashioned, beautiful framed guilt photograph.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: There was nothing like that. I mean, any pictures in
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: the rooms, which were kind of shabby too, were just
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: kind of something stuck up there and pinned up there.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: It was definitely not somewhere suave. This was somewhere where
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: you'd probably go to make a porno movie, right, And
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: I believe later on sometime in the late eighties. That's
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: exactly what started going on there, which is tragic, but
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: it was the idea of being in France, being about
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: twenty miles from Paris and the middle of nowhere, all
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: living together, you know, waking up, going down for breakfast,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: having a bit of baguet and some cheese and some coffee,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: and then starting to play. That's what it would be like. Literally,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: I would come down in the morning and Elton that
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: would already be there sitting at an electric offender rose piano,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: playing away and obviously writing something, and I'd grab a
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: baguette and a coffee and I wander over to where
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: he was sit down, and I vividly remember him starting
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: to write things like Honky Cat there and thinking, oh
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: banjo straight away and late, you know, later in the day,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: would be working on something and he'd go, oh, this
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: song called Salvation another wonderful deep Cup, which ended up
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: being the first track that we actually recorded for those sessions.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: I remember the way he started Rocketman and we were
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: looking at each other at this point, the four of us,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: and going, okay, this is really really special because during Rocketman,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: when we were mucking around with the basic idea for it.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: We'd start doing backgrounds. D and Nigellavy, we start owing
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: and I and we've never sung before together, but straight
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: away it sounded like, oh, okay, this is going to
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: be fun, this is going to be really great. And again,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: because we were so self contained, Alton keyboards, Me on
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: guitars and other strain instruments, Nigel and drums, and D
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: on bass, and all of us on backgrounds, we didn't
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: need anybody else. Because he didn't want to have a
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: live I didn't want to have a livish orchestral sounding record.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: He wanted this one to be a band, to sound
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: like a band, you know, And I think we achieved that. Okay,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: that's successful, and you're on the road. Meanwhile, now you're
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: a member of the band. To what dig we are
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: you saying I'm getting a steady paycheck, but maybe I'm
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: missing out on other opportunities with other people? You mean? Yeah, Well,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: you know, Bob, here's the here's the kicker for the
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: whole thing. Because as soon as we started doing this
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: um honky Chateau, this first album, I mean, Madman Across
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: the Water was already doing very well. It was starting
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: to do stuff in the chart, so that was exciting
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: knowing that there was something happening for when we went
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: to the States. But Honky Chateau, we finished it in
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: two weeks. It was all. It was done in two weeks,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: so straight away it was quite obvious, Okay, we're going
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: to get back to London. We're going to do a
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: concert at the Raw Festival Hall with our orchestra, so
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: we're going to promote madmu Across the Water. We'll do
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: it with you know, all the guys who played on
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the record, and then the second half will be the
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: band set, no other way around. Band will do the
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: first half set and we'll promote the new album. We'll
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: play the new album live and the second half will
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: be the orchestral set with the whole of Madness Across
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: the Water and a few things from like your song,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Border Song, Burned Down the Mission, you know all that
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. So already there was this plan. We
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: were on this train and nobody was getting off. It
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: was like, this is what it's going to be. So
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: we did the festival whole show, which was televised as well.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: I believe there's some kind of anniversary thing coming out
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: around about now, about that we did. That show went
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: off great, and a couple of weeks later, we're going
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: off to America and I'm going there for my first time.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: Twenty year old kid going Okay, this is crazy. And
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: I must admit at that point after the Festival Hall show,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: I was a little bit. I was a little bit unsure.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: In fact, I told Elton. I called Elton about for
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: the gig and I said to him, look, you know what,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: I think you need a tried, intrude, you know, rock
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: guitar player, because I don't know if I'm really into
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: all this. Posing See, the band never told me. The
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: other guy has never told me what is what their
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: live show was like, so I had no parameters. I'd
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: know nothing. I'd know, you know, no idea what to
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: expect when we got on stage that first time. And
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: not that it was that outrageous, but it was different.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: And I was coming into a scene that I was
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: wholly unfamiliar with. You know, I was a little folk musician.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Granted I'd played some good shit on the album and
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: I was often running, but I had an awful lot
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: to learn. So I was unsure. So I said to Welton,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if i'm your he said,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: you're the guy. He said, I know it. I knew
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: it as soon as I met you, as soon as
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: I heard you playing. I've you've done the first album.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: It sounds great. Let's just go with it. It's going
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: to be cool, You're going to be fine, and so
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: we went for it. Yeah, okay, Well let me ask
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: you this. Famously, Bernie writes the lyrics, gives him to Elton.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: He comes up with the melody the song to what
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: we were others involved, yourself included obviously. Do you mean
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: during that writing Yeah, okay, during the writing process, we'd
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: all be I mean, occasionally he'd be on his own
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: and maybe he'd finished something and rushed through and say, guys,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: listen to this. But much of the time, in fact,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: most of the time, we'd be all sitting together, either
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: in the breakfast room, where we had a little semi
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: sarkle of instruments and so we could all play whenever
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: we wanted, or in the studio, where he'd well, maybe
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: we'd we'd go from the breakfast room over to the
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: studio to record a track that we were happy with.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: Let's lay that down. And after we'd laid that down.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: He would say, Bernie got a Bernie wouldn't even be there.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: Most of the time, we just look at another lyric
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: and go and put it up there on the piano.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: And he started fucking around. And we were just on
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: the basic track for the for the first song, and
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: he's already writing the second song. So I would be
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: sitting next to him with an acoustic guitar, and I
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: have a pad of paper with me, and I start,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: you know, sketching down a couple of chords. When I
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: see where he's going with it. D would be plunking
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: away in the background. We'd all would all be listening,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: so that by the time the song was actually written,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: we all felt invested in it because we were we
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: were all there, and you know, occasionally there would be
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: the odd thing of oh what about that instead of
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: that or something, you know, but it was just like
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: this machine that wouldn't stop. And Elton was on such
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: a role which carried him on. Really. He went on
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: this role for so many years where he was actually
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: the song write up, no question about it. It wasn't
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: until later on in the seventies when I started writing
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: a few things with him and other people did and
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: again in the eighties that he started. He was on
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: such a role in such a thing for what he
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: was doing. It's kind of like I think Leononan McCartney
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: must have felt that way when they were writing their
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: their you know, classic songs that that five or six
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: year period. I often liken that. I mean not saying
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: that we're the Beatles or anything. I'm just saying I
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: liken it to that time when the creative creativity is
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: so off the charts that you really have to hang
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: in and pay attention to keep up. But on the
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: good side of it, because you feel a part of it,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: you're totally invested all the way, you know, And that's
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: what it was like. We were a band. Let me
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: just put it that way, Bob, you were a band. Okay,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: fifty years later things are different. Did you ever say, hey,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: maybe I deserve credit the publishing. No um, because there
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: have been a few songs where I have gotten publishing
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: because I did care write several songs with him. I
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: don't know, I reckon, I've written about a dozen with him,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: you know, proper compositions. Maybe maybe he's many as twenty.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: I've encountered them, to be honest, I often did toy
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: with the fact that some of the bigger guitar driven hits,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I would think, m that's me all over there.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: There's not much else going on at that point, you know,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: and I would I would toy with the idea. But
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I've got to tell you and all honestly,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: I've never my relationship without and there's never been about that.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: I would never go to him and say, yeah, what
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: about my my guitar parts there, I've got to tell you,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: Bob and all honestly, I have seen so many bands
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: break up because of that fact. Right there, people squabbling
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: over well, that's my bit, so I should get a
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: part of that or and that's my part. We were
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: a band and didn't think. We didn't presume to jump
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: on the train that most other many other bands have done.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: And you know, we stayed together for that reason, and
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: I think that's very important. Okay, there is money involved.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: Who did you negotiate with from then to now over compensation?
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: There's not been much negotiation allowed, to be totally honest
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: with you, Back in the day, it was John Reid,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: and John's was a brilliant manager, absolutely brilliant and really
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: made the whole thing happen. His exuberance and his understanding
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: of rock and roll, his already his experience from working
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: with Motown, and just his old knowledge and his gunghole attitude.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: That was the train that we were all on. And
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: John was very fair. There was very There was a
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: great deal of difficulty coming negotiation wise from Elton's proper
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: manager of the whole thing, who was Dick James. It
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: was quite some years before they could, you know, move
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: out of that situation. So Dick had Elton locked up
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: into a pretty tight situation. So that was the first
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: thing that caused breakdowns if you like, or where we
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: could never get certain things sorted out. When I started
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: writing with Elton, when it became okay, Davy wrote this
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: with Elton, there was never any issue. That's what it was,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: you know, Davy, Elton and Bernie, And as I said
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: a little while ago, there's many many songs like that.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: So I'm certainly not going to pick bones about a
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: couple of songs that have done me very well in
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: my career that a lot of fans and guitar players
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: have held me in great esteem for quite frankly, it's
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: been worth it. To me to have the position that
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: I still have after all these years, and that I
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: still enjoy because quite frankly, Bob, I know too many
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: bands that have broken up for bad attitudes, and you know,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: I'm fine put it that way, Okay, irrelevant of the songs,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: like you're on this final tour, how do they decide
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: what you make? Well, that's become more of an issue
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: of it's a band. It's Elton John is now a brand,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: not a band. It's now a brand. You must have
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: seen that coming for several years. It's not a bunch
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: of musicians anymore. It's a brand you have. You can
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: now have Elton John Walmart glasses, you can have this.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: You can have Elton with a leaper, you can have
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: Elton with um you know, various other artists. He doesn't
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: always consider that his band is on a par with
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: what he does, or at least his management don't. I'm
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: pretty sure Elton feels the same way. When we are
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: doing the Farewell tour, we're all on stage. It's just
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: a band the same way as it ever was. You know.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: It's me and Nigel and Ray and Elton up there
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: with the other guys doing our best you know. As
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: far as the money aspect of it, we are. All
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: I can tell you, Bob is that we're paid very
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: well as musicians. Okay, let's go back. Conkey Chateau is
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: a huge success. The next album is Don't Shoot Me.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: I'm only the piano player. You know, back when there
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: was so much less information about musicians and music, I
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: fame it and I read it all. I family remember
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: Elton saying, oh, that album is a throwaway. When I
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: love that album, tell me about making that album. I
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: love Don't Shoot Me as well, because I stepped up.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: I gained more confidence as a rock guitar player by
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: that point, and we had done a couple of tours.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: One of the things about the early days was recording
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: tour album, tour, separate single, tour album. To you know,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: it was always we were working very rare. We were
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: not working for that first five or six years, seriously.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: But Don't Shoot Me was especially fun for me. Also
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: because I had bought a few guitars in America. I'd
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: bought the less Ball. Actually, Elton gave me a Les
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: Paul that I picked out for him on a tour.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: I picked out a Les Paul and the old Man's
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: guitar shop that you might remember, of course, said he yeah,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: and he wanted a Les Paul and I said, well,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: see that one up on the pedestal up there, that's
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: the one you should have. And he said okay. So
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: I played it and he took it. And when I
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: had some guitars on about a month later, he said
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: take my Les bowl. So I was like, okay. So
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: I was happy. I still have that guitar too, of course,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: but one second, tell me about the guitars getting stolen.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: Uh my god, Bob, what a nightmare? What a what
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: a fucking nightmare. We were doing a tour of England
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: and this was right before we recorded Don't Shoot Me
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: and No Sorry. This was after Don't Shoot Me. This
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: was after we recorded Don't Shoot Me. Sorry. I'm I'm
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: getting a missing album. So do you want to tell
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: the Shall I tell this story first? About this? No,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: I'll just keep going. I can follow you my audience. Yeah.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: So we've done a tour in Sheffield, so this would
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: be late nineteen seventy two, winter of nineteen seventy two,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: after Don't Shoot Me and I band I have picked
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: up a couple of guitars. In the States. I picked
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: up also the third mandolin ever made by Fender, and
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: it's an electric mandolin, and the serial number is zero
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: zero zero zero three. And I treasure this little thing
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: and it sounds killer on stage. I've never had electric
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: mandolin before. It sounds amazing that one. I had another
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: guitar that I bought in Nashville, which was a sixty sorry,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: a fifty eight les Paul gold Top with soapbar pickups.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: I adored this thing and it sounded incredible. D had
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: two bases. I had also my my strat. I had
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: another offender. I had a less special, one of those
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: wonderful one pickup ones at Leslie West used to play.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: So Yeah. The truck driver without equipment decided he was
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: tired one night, and after the show he pulled into
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: like this part car park by this pub and locked
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: the truck up and went to sleep. Came down in
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: the morning and the whole truck had been stolen. They
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: took the whole fucking truck and all these instruments were taken,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: and it was just horrible. My first experience of that,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: it didn't go well with me. It happened again in
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: the future, but this time that it happened was like, Okay,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to be too much of a collector.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna pick up really really wonderful ancient instruments
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: because I'm scared of traveling with them and having them stolen.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: And I have great instruments still to this day. But
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: that was a real setback, one that you learned to
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: live back, to live with, you know, But okay, I
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: didn't like it. Frampton famously got his guitar back decades later,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: although there was a plane crash involved, etc. Now with
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: the internet, have you ever found the stuff that was
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: stolen resurface? Wouldn't that be great? Because I promise I'll
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: look at because along with that hall that they took,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: they also got an acoustic Gibson mandolin from you know,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: like early nineteen hundreds, like nineteen eight or something that
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: was in the hall and it had my name on
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: the flight case. Now ten years later, I'm doing a
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: session in LA for Eddie what's his name? Who's Eddie? Who? Oh?
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: How am I forgetting his name? Who produced Hendrix Nye
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: Kremer and Hendrix Eddie Kramer? For god, I'm so sorry, Eddie.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: You're probably gonna hit me the next time I see you.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: And he said to me, oh, I'm working with this
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: Polish band and they have one of your mandolins. And
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: I'm what, what do you mean? He said, yeah, this
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: Polish rock band. They've got you one of your mandolins.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: I saw your name on this flight case in get
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: ask and I'm going no, so immediately I get people
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: on it. And of course this is the early eighties,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: you know, cell phones are still not happening there and
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: there's nothing like that. No, I can't run over there
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: and nail it down all the rest of it. So
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: I never did get it back, Bob. But I'm I'm
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: looking at I have my sources, people who troll around
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: looking for things, because I'm sure I'm going to see
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: those a couple of those instruments again. As you say,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: with the internet, Spanish show up sometime. Okay, let's go
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: back to Don't Shoot Me Right. What a great collection
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: of songs on that record. Daniel was almost too easy
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: to record because we were literally sitting around the piano.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: He wrote the song. The whole song start to finish
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: in about twenty minutes, and let's cut it, okay, Gusta
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: let's do it now. Okay, we did. We sat down,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: played it down once, fixed out a couple of things
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: in the arrangement, played it again, and a third take
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: we got it. We got the master. That was it.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: It was just beautiful, relaxed, laid back feel, and we
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: just cut it live obviously electric piano, Elton singing live, vocal,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: drums and bass, and my acoustic guitar, and it just
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: sounded so great when we heard it, and immediately everybody
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: was going, single, that's got to be a single. It's
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: just so singable and so cute and so beautiful. And
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: then one of the things that I loved about this
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: about Daniel when I think back to that track and
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: the way we cut it, were the overdubs that we
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: put on it because we kept it very, very sparse.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: But straight away we'd fallen in love with the melotron.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: I've always loved melotron flute sounds thanks to the Beatles.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: You know that wonderful Strawberry Fields sound at the beginning
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: of that. I've always loved that sound. So I said, hey, Alton,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: you know what, we need a solo on this. Why
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: don't you play a solo on melotron with that wonderful
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: fluty sound. He did the solo and and the beginning
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: of the track. He just threw in a little thing
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of the track, and the first time
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: we ran it through, he played it and that was it.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: It was done, and it was like, okay, well that
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: was easy. So then I said, well, you know, the
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: solo sounds so cool. It's got a great little melody
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: that you composed on the spot. And I said, why
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: don't we have a little bit of banjo playing mandolin
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: style but way back in echo And Gus said, that
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: sounds like a good idea. Let's do it. So we
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: fucked with the marks and did our usual playing around
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: and we have this wonderful banjo that people often wonder,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: what is that during the soul of Daniel? But yeah,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: it didn't even much. And one of the cool things
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: about it was to get the vocal that Gus thought
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: should be on that record. He walked out up one morning,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: because usually what we do is we do all the
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: vocals at the end. We changed that, you know, as
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: we as we progressed, and it probably was with Daniel.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: So Gus woke Elton up at seven thirty one morning
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: and said, Elton, I want you to come and do
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: that vocal and he was like, what, I've come fast asleep.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: He said, well, I just wanted you to do the
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: vocal when you've kind of got a sleepy voice. He
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: said that would be fucking easy because I'm half asleep.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: So Elton arrives the studio and Gus says, okay, let's
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: just do a vocal on it. So's he's wrapped up
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: in his fur coat and his shades, you know, and
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: his headphones obviously, and to run the track and it
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: sounds exactly like it should do. He's got that slightly
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: husky sound about it, and that was the vocal we use. Okay,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: My two favorite tracks on that album are Teacher I
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: Need You and Elderberry Wine. Any stories you can tell
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: me about those two, Yeah, because actually another wonderful overdubbed
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: story on Teacher I Need You, which I love too,
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: by the way, and again it just showed the way
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: that we were a band. I mean, it's just a
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: band playing on that track and all the vocal the
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: background vocals, which were a lot of fun to do.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: But on one of the overdubs there's that there's that
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: wonderful teacher A teacher, Oh yeah, teacher. Well guests who
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: played the buddom That was Elton Wow, because he had
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: the idea for doing that overdub and said, well, why
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: don't you fucking play it? You know what it is,
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: do you just do it? He said, I'm not a drummer.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: I said, it doesn't matter. Anybody could do that. So
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: we take one of Nigel's Tom's out to the studio
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: and Elton did it. And I tell you something, Bob,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: I bet Alton doesn't even remember that. He'll probably hear
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: this and he'll go, did I Because there's a lot
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: of things that I do remember details, and that was
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: one that I thought was so cool that he did
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: that because it was such a fun song and very
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: much inspired the whole record in fact, was very much
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: inspired by Mark Boland because we were kind of in
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: glam rock phase that then. You know, we were wearing
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: Granny Takes the Trip clothes and you know, lyrics suits
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: and platform shoes, the whole thing. We were all the
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: way into that whole thing, very much in competition with
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: the Bowie thing. Dave Barry was another friend, but also
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: it was all new competition. All these records were coming
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: out at the same time. You know, you'd get a
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: t Rex song and one of ours and one of
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: David's and it was just a wonderful time. And the
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: other one you mentioned. The other song you mentioned was
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: Elderberry Wine, which I love because it's so loose, and
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: again very early take of the track, we decided it
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: sun It's so cool for two reasons. I really loved
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: that track. Two main reasons. One that we discovered what
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: could happen with double track and the piano and then
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: using the very speed turn it down so you got
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: that wonderful you know, pub effect, pub pub piano effect,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: you know, which we went on obviously to use that
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: on many other songs in the future. But it was
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: Ken Scott who showed us that trick, and it did
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: require to play the song. It wasn't like he just
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: could take that track and somehow magically have it album.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: Had to play the part again. And so when we
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: heard the sound, we all went, oh my god, because
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: nobody'd ever heard that sound before on anything. It was
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: the first time I'd ever been used. Like shit, we
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: are actually innovators. Now we're doing a beatleshit. Here, you know.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: And the other thing was when the guitar parts came
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: around for that song, because suddenly, when I double tracked
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: the rhythm part and the little lines in there, they're
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: all on one track, the same kind of shit started happening.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: We're going like, oh, that sounds a bit like George
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: and I love what we're doing here. And and then
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: it repeated itself on Midnight Creeper and again on the
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: arpeggio things on Have Mercy on the Criminal. We started
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: to use these double trackings in a way that I
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: think the Beatles were using them kind of, and you'd
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: get a slight out of tuneness that would that would
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: just bring that sound that would made people just go, oh, fuck,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: I love this, And we did. We loved every thing
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: we were doing. We're so excited about the process of
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: the recording that we were just lost in that world.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: That was the joy of it. Since we're this deep
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: into the album Crocodile Rock, what fun that was to do, Bob,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, what great fun and what a great little track.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: And you know, ballocks to all the people who said, oh,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: he's just doing this this thing, and you know, that's
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: a really cool little track. If people think the time
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: to listen to it. It's a brilliant track, great work
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: by Gus because the idea was we wanted to do
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a rock and roll tribute but
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: also a bit of a send up, hence my kind
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: of ventures shadows type and Dwayne Eddie takes on that.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: There's about eight tracks of guitar and now all doing
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: different things because we wanted that to give, you know,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: to show our love of rock and roll. And obviously
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: the la la la la la la rich Alton did
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: and you know what a cool little song. And I
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: think who was it tried to sue us. I think
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: it was Pat Boone or somebody tried to sue us
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: on the track said it was Speedy Gonzalez or something.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: It's like, oh, please get a life, you know, but um,
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: great fun. We weren't doing anything. At least people were
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: talking about us, and I think that's something we had
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: to realize. You know what, we're going to get this.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: This is going to happen now because people are buying
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: our records and a lot of people are are listening.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: So that's a good thing. Okay, Next comes Goodbye Yellow
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: Brick Road. When does it become a double album, Okay,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: I believe. Actually it was quite early on. I want
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: to say the idea was already in the back of
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: their minds because of the success of Punky Chateau and
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: Don't Shoot Me Massive, and then again of course, now
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: the Black Catalog is started to sell. The live album
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: is suddenly a hit, so is the Elton John album,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: and it's all starting to sell. So they're obviously thinking,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: all right, we've done this. We've done a live album,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: we've done this, we've done orchestra done it. We'll have
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: to do a double album. So I know there was
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: talk of doing it, and I even remember a working
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: title of silent film talking Pictures. Wow, that was the
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: working idea for the thing. Anyway, we're in the Chateau
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: and we have, as usual, we have so many songs
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: as a lot of songs. By the way, Elton usually
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: refers to yellow Rick Rhode is what's Davy going to
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: play on this one? Because it's just it's just so
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: guitar heavy, which I love because we we we employed
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: so many different sounds, ideas and whatever, and it was
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: just so much fun for me and for everybody because
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: we were all getting off on it, but there was many,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: many songs and the idea of doing an opening track
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: that was going to be something majestic and had an
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: instrumental We knew that's what we wanted to do. So
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: Elton wrote the first part the piece, and I don't
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: mean I don't mean the synthesize of piece. That was
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: all done after by David Henschel when we decided we
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: need something at the very beginning before the band comes
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: in with the slow movement, and so Elton and I
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: Indian agel we knew what it was. We'd already Elton
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: had already written love Lives fitting I had worked out
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: my guitar parts what I thought they should be on
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: that song. And we did the whole thing from the
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: beginning of the quiet part of Funeral for a Friend
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: all the way to the end the basic track, so
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: there wasn't any gaps in it. And that's a long time.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: That's got to be I don't know, nine minutes, something
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: like that, eight or nine minutes. I'm not sure how
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: long it is. But it was so exciting because you know,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: we've always liked the red light in the studio. When
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: the red light goes on that's like religion. You're in
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: the studio, shut the fuck up. But of course we're
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: just about to start funeral for a friend, the most quiet, delicate, haunting,
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: beautiful thing, and Ellen's by the plan of and I
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: can hear Alton going one, two, three and instead of four,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: and we just all completely fall about and there was
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: this wonderful far and obviously the tension was so but
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: as soon as he let that go and it's we
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: have a tape of it somewhere, it broke the tension
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: and we all kind of relaxed a bit and we
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: stopped laughing, and then we started again and did the
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: whole thing through. And then as is my one, I
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: started the over dubbing guitars and went pretty crazy on
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: on that whole thing too. And you know, it was
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: great because you have a song that lyrically, musically is
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: already done. You know what's coming up. So we were
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: already having ideas about where we would do background vocals,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: where we would do this, what we might add at
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: specific points and the song, and nobody really was was
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: telling us do this or do that, because it was
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: only gossip was obviously there and not being a musician
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: that wonderful ideas person and greater interpreting your ideas. But
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: nobody was telling us anything. So it was us doing
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: exactly what we thought would be right when when we
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: were doing it, okay, you know this was about it. Really.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: A couple of years later it became standard de camp
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: vocals and a punch in. Well, you guys conscious of that,
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: or you say leave the mistakes in or what was
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: the philosophy? Um there was in the days that we started.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: It was more a question of punch ins. Because Alton's
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: vocals were always so good. There was never a question
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: of having to do well. You know, we didn't think
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: about it because it wasn't the way that we worked.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: As you mentioned, it happened a little bit later on.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: I don't say Elton's vocals was so great. I remember
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: him saying to me one time round about the Yellow
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: Brick Road period. Oh my god, he said, I hate
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: my vocals on on mad Man across the Water. They
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: drive me fucking crazy. And I'm going what I said,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: They're so amazing because they're so young, they're so you
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: they're just unbelievable. They're vulnerable, but they have that sound.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: That's why people like you man, So so we carry
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: on with all that, and really the comping thing didn't
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: really start to happen until the early eighties when we
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: did the Chris Thomas records, because he had already started
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: working that way with Chrissy Hyend and Pete Townsend on
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: his solo album and stuff like that. So Chris was
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: versed in that and Alton wasn't. He thought that was
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: a great idea. Why not? And he still did a
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: couple of vocals where most of it he had and
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: they just do a quick comp to get certain things
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: here and there. But um, I've most of the things
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: that I've been experienced when I've experienced Alton doing a
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: vocal bar one when need to don the Sun go
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: down to me? That was an interesting one. Well that
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: was nineteen seventy three. But he threw the wobbler of
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: all time during that vocal m He literally was so
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: frustrated and kept thinking that it sounded like shit that
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: he it was like, fuck, bas I don't want to
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: do this anymore. Said it to Anger Hunk, and if
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: j doesn't like it, said it to Lulu and we
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: were cracking up, obviously because it was funny what he
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: was saying, I mean, he's very funny guys, you know,
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: And he wasn't laughing. He was deadly serious. He said,
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: I hate this. I don't want if this vocal goes
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: on the album, I'm gonna fire everybody. I mean. It
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: was one of they say, you know. And of course
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: when he heard it the next day, it was like, oh,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: that sounds pretty good. And you know, but for the
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: most part, doing vocals with Elton or a pleasure because
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: he is so good, I mean live, I never hear
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: him sing outitude an ever period. Okay, let's stay with
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: the album. You mentioned earlier All the Young Girls Love Alice.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: That happens to be my favorite song on the album,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: which people tend out to talk about but you were
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: doing for a while, but fare Well tour, tell me
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: about that track. Well, that was just a riot to do.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: Again in our in our beatlesque way of working that
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: we developed, we were just into furthering all these different
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: sounds and having fun doing what we wanted to do
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: and making up different sounds. When Elton had written Alice,
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: we loved the song straight away and I had this
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: idea around the riff that actually the riff was his
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: piano riff. I didn't invent the riff, the actual damped
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: vamp little dirt. It's actually a piano lick, God bless him.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: And I learned to on guitar and double it and
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: it was sounding great. And then I thought, oh, what
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: about if I used my Uni vibe on this, which
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: is a really cool pedal in those days where if
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: you floored the pedal it had this wonderful super wobble
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: effect like a fast Leslie cabinet or something wonderful hairy sound.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: And I just added a bunch of crunch to it
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: through my own amplifier and used my volume pedal then
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: to bring the whole thing in out of nowhere, so
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: you don't hear anything until you hear this good invitation. Well,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: I've been doing it for fifty years. But it was
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: such a blast to do because as soon as people
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: heard that, it was like, oh fuck, we love this.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: And of course I double tracked it just to be
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: a show off. And yeah, it was just a riot, Bob,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: because to have that much fun, it's almost not fair.
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: It shouldn't be allowed. You know. We were having so
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: much fun, you know, and it was serious work. We
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: knew that and we knew it had to be great
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: whatever it is what we do. But we were going
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: through this phase of it seemed like almost everything he
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: wrote and that we recorded together and the way that
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: we orchestrated things, we had this magic thing that was
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: going on that people loved. And I've heard so many
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: people talk about all the young Girls Love Alice and
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: like you, many people think that that is just such
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: a classic album, which whit is. But getting back to
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: what you said earlier, because of the amount of good
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: songs that were coming up, there were no songs that
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: we were recording that were sounding like B sides. For example,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: usually when you're recording something, you have a few extra
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: tracks and Okay, that'll be a B side or whatever.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: Nothing sounded like a B side on good By Yellowick Road.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: So suddenly we had like fifteen sixteen tracks and we're going, well, Gus,
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: we're going it's got to be a double album then,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: because now the first track on the album is going
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: to be half of the first side, so it's going
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: to have to be a double album. So that's when
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: it all became that's the target, and that's when the
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: running order became important. And Gus is actually a wizard
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: at that. He's great at doing sequencing a record, and
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: we knew what the beginning was going to be, but
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: we let him go with the rest of the sequence
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: sing pretty much and what about Saturday Nights all right? Well,
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: we knew that was going to probably, you know, annihilate
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: some people because of its aggression and the whole thing.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: And wow, what fun that was for me to do
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: because on the basic track of that one, again it
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: was we had tried it to record that previously. The
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: song had been around for quite a while. He wrote
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: it back in when we tried to do an album
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: in Jamaica, and for one reason or another it didn't
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: pay off. I mean, the main reason was the studio
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: was just not possible. It just didn't have the ship
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: we needed to do a record down there. It was
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: just what it was. So we went back to the chateau.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: So we knew the song in our head and I
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: already had an idea of about some intro parts and
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: how I would do, how would approach it. And Alton
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: was really Adam meant that there would be no piano
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: on it. He just loved what I was doing so much.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: He said, I just want you to keep going. I
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: had another guitar at, another one out, another one. So
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: being a guitar player, as you probably saw, apart from
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: the bassic guitar, all the way through, suddenly there was like,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: I think eight guitars on the intro, but by the
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: time we got to the solo section, there's like ten guitars,
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: and on the second half of the guitar solo there's
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: twelve guitars totally rocking out, all maxed out, you know.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: In fact, one of the biggest sounds I got guitar
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: wise came from a little Fender Champ amplifier that many
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: people use as a practice amp. Well. I found that
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: by turning everything up to hell obviously and turning your
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: guitar up to hell, and then you got the sound
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: from Monster sound. I found out later that that's the
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: sound that John used John Lennon used on Revolution. I
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: found out when we were chatting one day about guitars,
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: and I was like, really, is it does I can
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: get it now because it's such an in your face
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: sound and it's so distorted it makes sense, you know.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I had the best time with doing it,
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: and after i'd kind of done with all my guitar parts,
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: and then the slight part at the end of the solo.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: I said, you gotta play piano on this. You got
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: you gotta do. Jerey Lewis, you gotta do Little Richard,
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: you know, do you somewhere on the track. So when
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: the pack piano first comes in at the beginning of
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: the chorus, it's not in for the first two verses. Obviously,
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: the first part of the song. It comes in that lisando.
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: As it comes in, it's like, all right, it's a
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: Nott John song. And then it really makes sense. But
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: it was such fun to record. And he always talks
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: about him dancing around the studio when we were cutting
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: the track, and it's true he did. He had a long,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: long micro phone chord because nothing was wireless in those days,
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: and he was right, you know, jumping over instruments and
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: amplifiers and cabinets and come on, you fuckers. He was
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: shutting recording this track. But it all worked. You know,
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: the aggression certainly paid off on that track. It comes
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: out you know what that is as soon as it starts,
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: and again, you know, we played the shit out of
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: that and thanks to Gus and the engineers and the
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: way that we were working at that point. We were
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: just doing whatever, and everything was on hell. You know,
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: all the settings were on hell. So the next album
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: is Cariboo. Cut it the Ranch and niter Land, Colorado
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: with a high altitude. How did you end up cutting there?
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: And what was it like with the altitude, etc. Bob,
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: you know what, you asked the best questions. I knew
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: this would be a long chat we have today. Caribou.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: The plan to go there was because simply we'd run
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: out of residential places and the chateau was getting old.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: As we mentioned, it was starting to get a bit
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: rough around the edges. We just wanted somewhere a bit different.
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: We tried Jamaica. It was a kind of a letdown.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: We'd heard about Carbo Ranch because of Joe Walsh's album Barnstorm,
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: and I'm a huge Joe Waltz fan and a buddy
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: of Joe, and I adore him. He's just a great,
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: great player and a great man. And we heard that
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: album and me and especially me and Elton were just like,
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: oh my god, listen to these silence, listen to the
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: guitar sounds, you know. So we decided to go to
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: Carbo because it was a great sounding studio. What came
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: out of there sounding great. So we made the trip
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: in January, that's our usual time to go and make
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: a new album. That became our time, and off we
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: went January, not knowing how fucking cold it was going
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: to be there and snowbound. It was amazing beautiful, and
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: we each had a log cabin to stay in, wonderful
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: beautiful log cabins, beautifully, you know, with um brass beds
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: and wonderful quilts and weighing nicer than the chateau. Luckily,
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: lots of snow gear, and there was snow plows up there.
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: In fact, the first day I arrived, I went looking
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: and walking around the property and ran into this guy
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: working on a snow plow, and it was Terry Cath
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: from Chicago, and we right and we became great friends
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: there and then, and it was just it took a
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: couple of days to get used to the studio there
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: because it was so different. There was no windows in it,
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: even though and it was a very large. The thing
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: about the chateau that was so special was that had
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: these floors ceiling windows and because you know, obviously giant
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: double thick windows because in the country, no, we didn't
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: have sound to really worry about. There was no other
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: outdoor sound. But Cariboo had no windows, so we were
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: back to that kind of a little bit claustrophobic studio vibe.
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: But it was a big room so that was okay.
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: The altitude really fucked with us straight away. We all
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: got kind of headaches and stuff and found that we
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: had to take aspir in the morning or something like that.
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: Nigel got hooked on oxygen. We all kind of did, actually,
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: but Nigel still has it on stage these days. That's
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: from Cariboo Ranch, believe it or not. And we found,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: to our surprise that Elton was singing about another ton
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: and a half higher than he usually does, so that
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: when you listen to the songs of Caribou and Captain Fantastic,
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: which we recorded there also and the following album, he's
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: singing so high. It was very difficult for us to
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: reproduce that, you know, after the mid eighties, because he
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: couldn't sing that high anymore. He was done after his
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: throat issues. He couldn't get up there, so we had
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: to eventually scale everything down. So going back to that,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: his vocals were wonderful, but incredibly high. You know, everything
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: was pitched really high. You might notice that the next
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: time you hear a track from that album. We loved
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: working there because we suddenly we made our own. The
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: only difference is we didn't have like a little breakfast
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: practice room. Everything was in the studio, So we just
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: have our breakfast in the lodge, all hang out there,
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: do our thing, go for a snowmobile, have a ride
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: and a horse, you know, do whatever you know, and
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: then go to the studio and start writing recording. There's
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: a track on there called on the first Caribou album
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: called I've Seen the Saucers, which is a very very
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: interesting song. I've always thought it was a it's a
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: great deep cut, but the one that not a lot
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: of another fans have really paid much attention to. I
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: don't think, but I really think it's quirky and a
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: lot a lot of fun. For that track, Ray Cooper
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: had the idea of using a water gong on it. Now,
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: Ray when he does things, he didn't never do anything
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: by halves. So Ray's gone was I don't know, ten
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: feet in diameter, and we had we've had that in
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: the studio It was hard enough getting in the studio.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: Then we had to find a tank big enough to
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: drop the water going into because that's the idea. You
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: hold the gong suspended above the water and then you
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: slowly drop it in. So it goes from this gone
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: right the support studio. We almost drowned the studio. We
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: almost ruined it with and mold and shit. So but
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: the sound was great. The sound was great on that track.
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: So the next time you hear it, listen for the
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: water Gone okay and the Bitch's Back. Bitch's Back was special,
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: um because we wanted to do it was obviously going
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: to be a rock track, and Elton wrote it very
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: quickly and he said, I want, you know, I want
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: a really different intro, something really machine gun doing something different,
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: you know, And I went, okay, well that, so I
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: did the g tuning idea and came up with, um
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: what it was, which is essentially doing a bark or
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: they're going to did a little bit, a little bit,
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: a little bit bad about and do the inversions with
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: your first and third finger and sorry, your second and
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: third finger for all your guitar nuts out there. And
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: it's a great sound and the way I got that
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: sound was by plugging directly into the console, not through
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: an amplifier, so that sound has got a really high
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: end kind of fipip sound to it. It's that direct
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: sound to it. So we did two guitars like that,
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: and then I added a couple of heavier guitars later on.
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: We were always great for varying the textures of whatever
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: guitars we put on. We would make sure that there
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: was one was a bit different from the other, and
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: then if a lead guitar track, it was obviously from
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: the other four. So I'm the Bitch's back. Had the
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: two direct inject guitars doing the riff, then a couple
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: of overdriven guitars doing that, and then like a solo
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: sign guitar doing other pickup links. But again, a really
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: fun track to record, and we had Tar of Power
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: come up there for a few days to do some horns,
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: and so we had a built in sec solo with
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: Lenny and those guys up there. So it was awesome. Okay,
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: going to the next job, which you referenced earlier, Captain Fantastic,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: which is also cut in Caribou Ranch. There's a lot
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: to dig in there, so maybe leave that for another time.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: But I'm only going to ask you because your memory
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: is so damn good. My favorite track on that is
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: tell Me when the whistle Blows. Remember anything on that? Oh? Absolutely,
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: What a great song and what a different song. Because
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: it's such a unique song. We all thought right from
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: the off, it's got to be a really different treatment,
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: different from the way that we'd play anything else. We
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: were going for a real, a real soul blues type
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: of thing, and the idea was to cut it with
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: electric piano, so none of that melodic pianos, regular acoustic
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: piano stuff, really nice dark electric piano sound. D's bass
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: and Nigel Strump's really cut it like that, leave it sparse,
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: and then later I would overdub some guitar lines. And
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: that's exactly the way we did it. The idea from
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: my guitar sound. I kind of stole a couple of
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: tricks from a couple of other guitar players. I stole
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: an idea from Steven Stills about using the bass pick
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: pick up on your guitar and taking all the travel
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: off that pickup so that it's really round sounding and
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: really cool. And I stole a couple of David Gilmore
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: ideas with the way he kind of approaches notes so
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: that you'd hear all the inflection of just one guitar,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: not a whole bunch of instruments, and so it was
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: a very style. It was our most stylized track we've
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: done up to that point, I think. And then we
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: asked Gene Paige to do the orchestral arrangement because we
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: loved what he was doing with that Philadelphia soul sound
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: and his stuff was just off the charts. It was
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: so cool and at first, in fact, when we first
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: when we heard it, none of us liked it. We
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: heard it, but it was so fucking weird that when
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: we heard it as far as it was like, really,
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: oh my god, that's a bit cheese, and then there's
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: a there's this, But then you know, the more we
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: heard it, he was like, Okay, got it because he's
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: a really special was a very special arranger. Okay. The
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: album after that also cut in uh Colorado Rock of
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: the West. He's one of my two favorite tracks on
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: that you actually have a writing credit which has grows
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: some funk of your own. What happens there? Well, well,
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: that song I love on the album The way the
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: track comes in after Island Girl, because it follows Island Girl,
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: which is the Puppy first hit. I think off the record,
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: the way it grows some funk comes in couldn't have
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: been more exact the way I imagine it when we
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: wrote it. We wrote it the night before and Elton's room.
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: We were screwing around writing. We wrote a couple of
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: songs in His and His Lug happen that week, three
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: songs in fact. But Gross and Funk happened after we'd
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: written the song which is the opening song on the album,
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: the medley, Yell Help Um, And that was purely my
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: idea from I was listening to a lot of Jjkle
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: stuff back then, and I was based in my rhythm
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: ideas for that song on that. But Gross and Funk
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: was much more of a Okay, here's a great rock riff,
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: but what about changing the key so that starts off
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: with a slamming rock driff and then goes into a
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: two part harmony guitar line. Down damn down, Dada da.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: So it was like, oh, yeah, this is gonna work
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: because Caleb and I were doing two guitar parts, and
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: then later on in the song, Ray Cooper was able
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: to use the vibes in such a way, the Eddie
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: Kendrick's vibe at the end of the song. You know,
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: the musicians we add in that band allowed us to
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: do some great things on that album. Apart from Caleb
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: and Me doing the guitars, which you were really astounding
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: on a lot of that record. But James as keyboard,
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: James Newton Harder's keyboard on the album is fucking unbelievable.
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: James and I have always really worked well together and
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: had a lot of fun together. Yeah, so it's all
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: been so much fun. I think you grow some funk.
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: I believe Kicky and I did some background vocals on
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: that song as well. Okay, the next album is Blue
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: Moves in the fall of seventy six. This is simultaneous
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: with Elton coming out as gay, which is not a
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: big deal today. I think it's been over emphasized. I
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: don't think it really was as big a deal as
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: they said back then. But the album was not as successful.
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: Sorry seems to be the hardest word. Ended up being
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: a huge hit. Did you get a bittersweet vibe from
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: the reception and what was going on there? Yeah, to me,
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: even when we were recording the album. There's some great
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: stuff on it, no doubt, absolutely no doubt. But as
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: it went on to me, it was a little it
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: was almost like diluted. It was almost like fresh orangues.
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: It's been diluted. Suddenly it became not what I remembered
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: it being. And it wasn't because suddenly there was seven
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: people in the studio instead of four, you know, or
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: five when Ray would be a part of the band
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: as well. It was more than that. It was like,
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: hold on, how many people were in that band? Shit
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: to Elton, myself, Ray Rogier, Pope, Caleb Quay, Kenny Passarelli,
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: James S. Newton heard Roger Pope? Is that right? Roo?
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: So yeah, seven people a lot of people. It's a lot,
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: a lot more ideas. And I think Alton was being
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: extremely generous in suggesting that we write some songs it.
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: It was so very very kind of him in that way.
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: It kind of in a booknd to what we were
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: talking about earlier about about if people think they should
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: get a piece of a certain song on this record.
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: I feel that Alton was more bringing us in that
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: particular band into songwriting, which was a very generous thing
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: to do for any artist or any musician, I feel,
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: and I don't think it hurts the record in that
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: the way the record turned out, because it turned out
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: to be a much more to me, a much more
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: sober collection of songs than anything we'd come up with before.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: Things that didn't quite make sense to me. To me,
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: it wasn't cohesive as cohesive any of the albums that
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: we've done previously. That's again chefs my personal opinion. I
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: have no idea how the rest of the guys feel
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: about it. And I think that the album cover and
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: the packaging kind of the album covered that is the
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: insert and the picture was kind of happy, and that
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: was fine, But the album itself all being blue with
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: that Patrick Proctor painting, it was fine, and I guess
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: it's what they wanted to do at the time, and
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: it was very artsy, but maybe for me I thought
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: it was a little too artsy. Okay, do you realize
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: the end is coming? After that album? Elton breaks up
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: the band? You're on your own? Did you see that coming?
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: And what did you feel when that happened. I did
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: see it coming. I didn't know what was coming after it.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: I did see an end to the thing, and we'd
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: talked a little bit about stuff and because of his
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: health mainly and the amount of work we were having
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: to do to tour with all the product that was
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: out there and the demand to see Elton and the band,
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: and it was phenomenal. It was a wonderful time. But
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: he was very, very straight up about it. He sat
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: the whole band down with Sean Reid, all of us together,
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: and he said, guys, I can't do this anymore. I'm done.
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: I have to dissolve the band because I don't know
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: what I'm going to do next. I just need time
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: for myself to recover from what we've been doing for
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: the last seven years or whatever I've been doing. I
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: need a break. I need to be me and find
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: myself and have rest, etcetera, etcetera. And he gave everybody
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: a really nice handoff to say, you know, you guys
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: have been amazing, and all the rest of it now
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: all down the line. For myself, the situation has always
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: been a little bit different. Elton's always been in touch
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: with me. I think the longest period when he didn't
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: call me was after what he decided to do another
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: band thing and I was already working with Alice Cooper
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: and then that segued into some work with Meat Love.
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: So I was already a very busy session guy, and
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: he wanted to work with with other I think he
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: wanted to work with other people. He had asked me
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: a couple of times about doing a couple of projects,
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: and I did a I think I played on one
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: of his solo records, A single Man. I played on
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: one track of that. So I've always been in touch
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: with him more than anybody else music wise, hence the
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: musical director kind of tag. But I did get up
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: in jam with a band that he had right before
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: we got back together in nineteen end of eighty one
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: beginning of eighty two. He had either a tour I
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: think that encompassed that Central Park gig that he did
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: where he wore the Many Mouse sorry not many Mouse,
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: Daisy Duck costume, Donald Duck costume. Right, he had Central
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: Park and back then he had d and Nigel back
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: in the band, but he had two other guitar players
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: he had Um I kind of Tim Rennick, I think,
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: and Richie Zero. I want to say that's my guests
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: UM and I think, I don't think Ray was even
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: in that that band and some background singers, three background
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: singers who I can't remember who they were, so it
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: was different, but it wasn't people who were owning the music.
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel I want to see it at the
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: Forum when when the show came through, and you know,
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: Elton said, well, why don't you get up on a song?
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: And I got up on bite your lip, get up
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: on dance and blew some some rock and slight guitar
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: and it was great good to see him see them
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: and do that again. But I could tell right then
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: he wasn't happy with what was going on then, and
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: if he was going to tour again, I could tell then.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: It was almost like it's going to happen very soon.
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: And yeah, but I was just getting done with the
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: meat loaf thing. He hopped to call me and said,
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: I really think we should put the band back together.
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: It's so funny, Bob, because here in that phrase. I've
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: heard it done jokingly in so many sitcoms and different
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: things and used in different contexts. But when he said
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: I really think we should get the band back together,
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: I said, you're absolutely fucking right, we should. You know,
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: it was just okay, let's do it. And again we
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: went into Mark two and it went the same way. Okay,
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: when he does break up the brand, how much does
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: that fuck you up? How do you lift yourself off
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: the floor? Are you okay financially? What happens in that
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: interim before you start to work with Alice Cooper, etc. Well,
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: first of all, I started to do sessions with other people.
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: I started to work with other producers like Richard Perry,
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: robert A Pere, Bill Schnay because they again knew what
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: I did, and they would invite me to play on
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: their track and also artist occasional I would just say,
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: would you come and play on my record? I'd like
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: Alice Cooper and people like that. So I built up
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: some I was never really that short of work immediately
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: following Elton, and my intention at that point was, Okay,
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: well we're going into nineteen seventy seven. I just kind
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: of take some time for myself. So I went to
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: Tahiti for a month and almost didn't come home. I
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: fell in love with Bora Bora, absolutely loved it. Got
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: completely away from music and anything to do with touring
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: or anything, and really cleansed myself, you know, and and
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: we finally came back and slowly got back into life
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: in California, because I just started living in California. I'd
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: rented a place in Hollywood. And to be totally honest, Bob,
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: there was also an awful lot of the rock star
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: thing coming creeping into my my life. Then when I
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: say the rock star thing, what I mean is dangerous
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: amounts of alcohol and drugs and women started to creep
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: into the picture. And it began to get very very
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: dodgy and scary. Quite frankly, Um, I managed to come
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: through the other end, but not through, you know, not
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: from a lot of bumps and bruises and and and
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: you know, potholes, false starts and what have you. You know,
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: as as we all do, as life, as life takes us,
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: it can't all be up, you know, it certainly can't
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: all be up. And I had a great time. I
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: got to tell you, I went on for like a
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: couple of years of really having a good time. I
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: put it this way, I thought it was having a
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: good time. Um. Although the parties were quite legendary amongst
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: the people who who came and enjoyed them for a
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: couple of years, but like any other person in that situation,
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: when you're hosting that kind of event on a regular basis,
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: you suddenly wake up and go, well, either you don't
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: wake up, or you wake up and say, you know what,
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: everybody's around my house? I think what happened? What really
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: shook me up? One night, it was about three four
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: in the morning when a dear friend of mine happened
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: to be Lowell. George May rest in peace. So I'd
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: dore little Feet, that one of my favorite things of
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: all time. And Richie and Lowell and those guys would
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: hang out at the house as well. So they were
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: into notorious, notoriously into various forms of you know, stuff,
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: and so they'd be they'd be fixtures in the house.
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: But I was fast asleep on it, and it was
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: about four in the morning, and it was Lowell's wife
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: banging on the door, wanting to come in and party,
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: you know, and those kind of things. That kind of
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: thing already happening, and people like Oliver Read the actor
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: showing up. I don't know all of her fucking read
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: and he shows up in my house, and you know,
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: it was just bizarre. And I suddenly thought, all right,
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to get again, a little bit of respectability,
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: get that into my life. And I figured the best
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: way to do that was to get married and have
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: some kids. And that's what happened with my second marriage
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: and had two wonderful children. Rosa my wife at that
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: time I met. She was a dancer with Alice Cooper's band.
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: When I went to work with Alice, so you know,
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 1: mister rockstar picks up the dancer. And the tour was
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: Rose my wife at that time, and Cheryl Cooper, Alice's wife,
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: with the two female dancers, and there were two gay guys,
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: and you know, that period was it was kind of
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: interesting because working with Id segued into working with Alice,
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: and it was so much fun. It was just hilarious.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: And Alice is still a dear friend to this day
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: and his wife, Cheryl. That marriage at that time wasn't
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: to be. It really was what I had mentioned to you.
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: It seemed to be like a way of me gaining
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: some kinds of respectability, responsibility also, but it didn't pan out.
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: I just wasn't willing to stop my ways, my rock
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: star ways, and I wasn't certainly wasn't ready the quick
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: touring when Elton when the band came back together, So
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: really that second marriage was doomed. And what about getting clean,
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: because Elton famously got clean. Yeah, I thought it was
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: amazing when I was so proud of him when he
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 1: got clean. Of course, like many, like many alcoholics and
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: drug addicts, you know, it wasn't for me that time.
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: When I saw him do it, I thought, it's so
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: great he's doing it, and I was so happy for him.
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: I was having a wonderful period of time because I
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: just met my wife, my present wife, Kay back then
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, and he got sober in nineteen
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: ninety so it was the perfect timing for me to
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: have this year getting to know my new wife. Oh,
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: we weren't married at that point. We were together for
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: the first two years, had a baby, and then we
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: married in ninety two. But it was a wonderful time
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: to have a vacation, really start enjoying family. This this
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: woman I was in love with, and suddenly I thought,
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: that's it. I found the right combination for me and
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: you know, for her, I think. And we had a
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: beautiful baby and we decided to travel everywhere together and
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 1: that's what we did. There was still a lot of
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: party in going on, mainly drinking because the Danes are
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: probably as big drinkers as the Scots, and I wasn't
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: ready to stop drinking, definitely not. And ten years of that,
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: my wife and I was still very much in love.
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: But when we lost our son in two thousand and one,
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: that was such a jolt. Obviously it sounds like a
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: very weak way of putting it, but it shook me
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: to the core, obviously. But I didn't stop drinking for
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: another seven years after that because I was I think
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: I was on a course to killing myself. Nothing mattered.
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't matter if I was around or not, and
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: I was still when I got back to working. The
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: band were always very you know, Elton was great. He
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: was very supportive all the way through it. I mean
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: he supported me in more ways than I can tell you,
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: and the band were kind to me. It was difficult
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: because you know, I went back. It was right in
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: the middle of the Billy Joe whole thing that I
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: lost my son and saw that going back after four
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: or five months of being away in dealing with that
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: grief was really difficult. It was really hard, and you know,
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: I found myself getting into antidepressions and stuff like that,
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: which didn't help with the drinking. So I wasn't stopping
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: any of it until the fall of two thousand and nine.
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: And with Elton, he invited me back to his place
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: where we're doing in the middle of a tour, and
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: occasionally over the years he'd invite me back for a
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: few days and we'd hang out and you know, listen
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: to music and do you know whatever, have dinners and
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: just have fun, and to inviting me back after while
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: we're on tour in two thousand and nine and the fall,
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: and he sat me down at breakfast one day. He
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: just comes down for breakfast and we're having like bald
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: eggs and toast and marmalade and cups teen we're chatting
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: away and he just turned to him and he said,
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I think you should do something about your
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: drinking and your drugs and stuff. And my first I said, really,
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: I said, the drummer is much worse than me. He said,
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the fucking drummer. I'm talking about you.
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: So right there was a wonderful nudge from one of
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: my dearest friends of all time telling me you better
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: sort this out. It's time. So he got me on
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: that path and from there I met several people who
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: have been so helpful. And the people I've met in
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: that program have just been so unbelievable. And yeah, I
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: have not a drinks since two thousand November two thousand
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: and nine or thirteen years, okay, over thirteen years. So
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: you went to AA or you went to rehab, or
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 1: you did it yourself. I've done both, Bob, for good reasons.
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: I did it myself first, and I was wonderful and
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: got it and got the whole thing and adored it.
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: And then some years later the beginning of this Farewell
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: tour actually and I was having an issue with pain
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: medication for neck and shoulder injuries. I've still go I'm
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: still going through thanks a lot of guitars. And I
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: decided to go to Eric Clapton's place, Crossroads, which I
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: had heard about from some friends. And I have a
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: dear friend in music Cares Harold On, who helped me
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: hook me up with that. And I decided at the
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: end of a leg of the tour, and I sat
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: down with Alton and said, look, in two weeks time,
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: I want to go and sort this out. And he
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: said I think that's awesome you're doing that so because
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: I you know, I was worried about the pain medication
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: and it never affected my drinking or anything like that,
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: but I was worried about other ways of not being sober.
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: And I went to Crossroads for a month, had the
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: best time I had, you know, wonderful counselors and therapists,
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: and came out of there free of everything. And freedom
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: is the is the key, Bob. In fact, that was
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: the That was the reading I've read this morning. It
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: was all about freedom. You know, when you have a
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: life where you feel free and you're not worried about anything,
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: you're not guilty about anything, you don't owe anybody anything,
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: you're not concerned about somebody saying your name, and you
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: turn around thinking, well, what the fuck is that? You know?
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: It's that's real freedom, and that's what I have nowadays. Okay,
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: you cut us an individual project in the seventies, you
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: put out an album last year. Did you ever have
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: a desire to be your own act or these are
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: just side things you had to get out of your system. Yes,
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: definitely sight things, you know. The opportunity here to do
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: my first solo record was when I just joined Elton
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: literally six months in to play with him. He said,
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 1: I love what you do. You've got to make you right.
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I do. I said it's not very
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: commercial what I write. He said, doesn't matter. He said,
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: I'm forming a record label and I'd love you to
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: be one of the artists on it. He said, I
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 1: have Kiki d I have a band called Long Dancer.
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: I'd like you to be one of the artists on it.
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: I said, I love tim. I'm very touched that I
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: get to make an album. So I got gusts to
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: produce it. Um. I really enjoyed doing it. I used
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of good friends like Joe and Armor Trading.
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: I got to play piano on a couple of tracks myself,
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: which was fun. I used Dudley Moore's drummer on a
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: few tracks. I was able to use d and Nagel
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: on a few tracks. I just and I used Elton
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: on the opening track on the record, which was really
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: great fun and but it was definitely not out of
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: commercial venture and but one that many many people mentioned
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: how much they enjoyed the music on it over the years,
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: and I'm grateful for that. It never got slammed because
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people heard it, quite frankly,
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: but the people who did hear it seemed to love it.
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: So fast forward almost fifty years to COVID and I'm
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: sitting it home, thinking, wow, I'm going to be home
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: for a while. This might be a good time for
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: me to write some music and enjoy early retirement, because
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: who knows what's going to happen. So that's exactly what happened,
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: except in this case what I've written something. I've got
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: some talented kids, Bob, I've told you that I would say.
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 1: There was one song I wrote it brings to mind.
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: You know why all started again. It's to do with
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: the Beatles, I suddenly thought, and I got the kids together,
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: Elliott the singer, Charlie the engineer, keyboard player. I said, guys,
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 1: why don't we just record a song. We're just sitting
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: at home here, nothing's going on, you know, let's wrest
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: record something together. And they said, okay. So I picked here,
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: there and everywhere. Well, just a great Beatles song, as
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: you well know. And we didn't copy the Beatles version,
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: but we did it in a way that was I
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: think beautiful, and we did it all up in Charlie's bedroom,
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: literally sitting on the bed doing it, and you know
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: it said the acoustic guitar part first, then the Mandolins,
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 1: then put some bass on it, and then I had
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: Elliott sang on it, and then Charlie put some keyboard
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: on it. This is the way we did the whole record. Really. Obviously,
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: as I started to write more, I started to concentrate
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: more on the guitar aspect because I was writing a
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: thing that was more my kind of record. And Yeah,
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: what came out was just a really enjoyable collection of
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: songs I feel, and Elliott sang lead on almost all
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 1: of them. I sung the vocal on one and I
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: did two instrumentals, and it was just a joyous thing
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 1: to do this stuff with my children. And the studio
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 1: that I'm in right now belongs to my friend Marlin Hoffman,
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 1: who's sitting next door, I think, eavesdropping, And we did
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 1: the whole thing in the studio which is Marlin's home studio. Okay,
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 1: what is one thing people don't know about Elton or
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: a misconception? Quite a lot of thing that Elton doesn't
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: remember about Elton. Elton makes a really good cup of tea.
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: Once in the studio in Book Studios, another residential place
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 1: in Denmark, who were making a record called Sleeping with
• 2:26:57
  Speaker 1: the Past, and I was doing a guitar overdub and
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: he came over to me, came into the room where
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 1: I was, had my amplifier and my guitar and put
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: a cup of tea down and I said, oh, thanks, Helton,
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: and I carried on doing the soul or whatever it
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: was I was doing. How to drink of the tea
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: A few seconds later, put my guitar down, put the
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 1: headphones down, and went out of the studio to find him.
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: I said, Elton, this is the best cup of tea
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: I've ever had. I said, how would you know how
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: to make the tea that I love? He said, Davy,
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: I've known you for like sixteen years already, surely i'd
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: know how to meet you a fucking cup of tea.
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 1: And there's another thing about album that people don't know
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: that I'll squeeze in. And it's another domestic fact about
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: our hero, Sir Elton. He and I went up on
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: we went up to see the Warner Brothers tour. It
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: was a rock and roll tour with little feet tier
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: of power Graham Central Station. This is in nineteen seventy
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: three in the fall, and what a tour. And we
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: were both little feet freaks. So he says, come on
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 1: jumping my rolls. We jumped in the rolls with his driver.
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: We took off up to Manchester. We checked into a
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: sleazy little hotel, had some Indian food and went to
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: see the concert, which blew our minds. We ended up
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 1: on stage with the Dubies and Lowell and all these
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: people and having a great time. And we ended up staying,
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: you know, hanging out partying with the band. And we
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: came back late lately. We probably got back to my
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 1: house in London about five in the morning. I opened
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: the door and again I've got a nanny. My wife's
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: away at that time, the first wife. There is a
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: disaster in the kitchen, my young son, Tam, who's only
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: just coming up for a year and no by this
• 2:28:59
  Speaker 1: time he's three. There's coffee, tea, milk, whatever you can find,
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 1: PORI jokes, everything all mashed up together on the floor.
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: And he's in the middle of the kitchen floor and
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: I walk in and he goes Da Hi and Alton.
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: We both look at it and he shrieks. Obviously he
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't like mess. And I said, oh man, I can't
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: believe this, and he said, look, you take take take
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: time upstairs and change him, clean him up, do what
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: you gotta do. I don't know what that is. I'll
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: clean up down here. This is Alton Joe. And I'm
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 1: taking my infant son, my three year olds down upstairs
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 1: to clean him up and bathe him. And I'm thinking,
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 1: Alton's a good guy. You know, he's downstairs cleaning my kitchen.
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 1: And I go downstairs and I swear it's fucking spotless.
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 1: So I don't know many other people who can claim
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: that to have something that Elton has done for them,
• 2:30:02
  Speaker 1: but a great cup of tea and a great kitchen cleaner.
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: Plus he's my buddy. Great stories. Let's say it really
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: is the end? Yeah, can you sit at home and
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: be retired? I mean, is that really an option for you? No?
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 1: I wanted at home and be retired. I would never
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: do that, Bob, I'm not. I'm not that guy at all.
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 1: I'll be I'll continue to make music forever. And I've
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: got a couple of things up my sleeve. One that
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: I've been working on for many years, just gathering slowly
• 2:30:35
  Speaker 1: gathering stuff for it, which is a documentary based on
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: the original band and the way this whole thing came together.
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm talking about you know, Elton, Me, d
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: Nigel and then later on Ray and it's really coming
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: together and the stories are hilarious for the most part.
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 1: Obviously there's some deep other kinds of stuff going on
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 1: in there. You know, there's everything you could imagine. So
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 1: when this thing is over, I'm getting back to it
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: and probably take me about a year to finish, I
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: would imagine. So either the very end of next year
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: or the beginning of twenty twenty five, there'll be a
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: documentary and it's a tentatively titled Harmony. Okay, one other thing.
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 1: If you're not working, you playing the guitar every day,
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: you know what. Normally I don't because I wouldn't necessarily
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: pick up a guitar between tours because I just wanted
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 1: to get away from music. But I found that, especially
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: with COVID, as soon as I felt free enough and
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: loose enough to do something for myself, the daily playing
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: became fire against something that I haven't done for many,
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 1: many years. So that's a very very acute question you
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: asked me there, Bob, Because Yeah, I suddenly started to
• 2:32:00
  Speaker 1: enjoying it again. Because there wasn't a deadline. I didn't
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 1: have to worry about doing a certain thing, working a
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 1: new song, a song that we've done with Elton for
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: the band. It was just all about what I wanted
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 1: to do, and that's what I'm enjoying. I'm going to
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 1: enjoy getting back to well on that. No, Davy, this
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: is a natural point of demarcation before the band gets
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: back together, and so many things, and they're certainly you know,
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: you talk about sleeping with the past. I got a
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: lot of questions about that, but I think we're going
• 2:32:31
  Speaker 1: to bring it to an end for today. So I
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for spending this time
• 2:32:36
  Speaker 1: with my audience. I've enjoyed this so much, Bob, and
• 2:32:40
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for inviting me. Thanks for having
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 1: me on here. And I'll call Dave Page to thank
• 2:32:44
  Speaker 1: you for suggesting it. Oh listen great, I'm going to
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: contact Page two in any event, till next time. This
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: is Bob left Sex