Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / A "Red" Hot Discussion Of Sammy Hagar, Van Halen & More with Darin Bristow & Brent Kinnaird [Episode 184]

Transcript

A "Red" Hot Discussion Of Sammy Hagar, Van Halen & More with Darin Bristow & Brent Kinnaird [Episode 184] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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  And I can tell you everyone who is a fan of Sammy who hasn't had
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  the opportunity to meet him, I can tell you unequivocally he is everything that
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  you think he is. He gives a shit about his fans. It's not
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  bake, it's not put on, it's not an act. He's everything that
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  he portrays himself to his fans. He truly is. We're totally booked rock
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  and roll. Well, I mean, I'll leave you. You're reading little
• 0:25
  hands this. It's time to rock and roll roll out. I totally booked.
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  Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about to read
• 0:39
  and rock. Find the podcast at booked on rock dot com. You can
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  find every episode of Booked on Rock there, along with links to your favorite
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  listening platforms, exclusive videos, blogs, links to all of the social media
• 0:50
  sites, and the latest rockbook releases. Also, you can now watch every
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  episode in full on video on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel at Booked on
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  Rock and at book on rock dot com. It's another chapter in the dialogue
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  series, a chill and chat with authors, fellow podcasters, musicians, and
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  more. Our guests are Darren Bristow and Brent Canaird. The host of the
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  podcast devoted to Sammy Hagar, called The bogus Otis Show Nine Degrees of Sammy
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  Hagar. The guys fill us in on how they got the podcast started,
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  what's behind that name bogus Otis, and what it was like having Sammy Hagar
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  himself appear on their podcast. They also talk about Sammy's twenty twelve book Read
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  My Uncentered Life in Rock, some of the other books on rock they've read
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  the Wednesday still want to read in the books on rock that haven't been written
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  yet, but they hope one day will be. So let's get read with
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  Darren and Brent. Darren and Brent, Welcome to the podcast. Great to
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  finally have you on this podcast. Yes, sir, thank you for having
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  us. I've gone back to school, I've been reading, I've been doing
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  a lot of role I know you've been. I asked you guys for some
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  of your favorite books. Books. You want to read the whole thing,
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  so we're going to have some fun with it. But first, before we
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  get into all of that, guys, tell us about yourselves, where you're
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  from and your backgrounds and how you guys know each other. Give us the
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  backstory. Darren's always pointing in me. I don't know if he wants me
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  to go first, just because you go first. His resume is a lot
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  bigger than mine, so you know, it's saved the best for last,
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  saved the best. Yeah, listen, I am a van Halen fan of
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  can we we show our age when we say this forty years Wow? Yeah,
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  it was nineteen eighty four and we all know what happened that year.
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  Van Halen has just been a part of the soundtrack of my life. And
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  it's funny how all of us as fans are intertwined and we get the chance
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  to connect and meet. And about three years ago a mutual friend kind of
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  hooked Darren and I up and he's like, I can't believe you two giant
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  fans don't know each other. And there's a little story we kind of figured
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  out we did actually know each other. And hey, a year and a
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  half ago we started this crazy little thing called the bogus Otis Show, all
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  focused on Sammy in the nine Degrees and VH popping in all over the place,
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  and you know, we've been having a blast doing it. And for
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  me, I'm an avid reader, it's either two things. It's true crime
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  or it's music biographies, and so I feel like I was born to be
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  a guest on booked on rock. That's all I'm gonna say. Cool.
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  Now, Wait, which one of you guys did or helped to put together
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  video for Sammy? I'm trying to remember which one of you guys that's Darren.
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  Yeah, see his resume is bigger. I'm telling you. Yeah.
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  Well it's funny because Brent I is still getting to know each other. And
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  dude, I didn't know that you like true crime. Let's talk. Let's
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  talk after this. I think we have another podcast. I didea, yeah,
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  true crime, but like, well, so I came into the van
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  Hale and fold a few years later. So I discovered van Halen eighty seven
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  ish eighty six eighty seven where someone gave me a mixed ape of Sammy first,
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  and then I discovered van Halen with Roth and like, who's the new
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  guy? So I kind of came into it backwards, but love both eras
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  of van Halen. But when we were looking at something to start a podcast
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  and talk van Halen, there's already a bunch of obviously awesome van Halen podcasts
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  out there, so we're like well, look, we're huge Sammy fans and
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  there's no Sammy cast, so let's let's do that. And that's how we
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  started that there weren't any Sammy podcasts out there, so we're we yeah,
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  shocking a little bit. But the beautiful thing, Eric is now we get
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  to say in the opening of our show that we are the world's only dedicated
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  Sammy Hagar podcast. So we're, you know, trying to put ourselves at
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  the top of the heap there. But more importantly, the fun that we
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  have had in meeting people, interviewing guests and talking to other people that have
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  a passion for the same music that we do. For me, that has
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  absolutely topped anything else that has happened on this show. It's just been awesome
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  to connect with peop And I'm sure we can probably also say in common that,
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  well, probably the three of us, that Van Halen newsdesk was always
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  there in the background by almost my entire Van Halen fandom, right, So
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  I mean, I'm go back to the Van Halen mailing list. Yes,
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  I remember, I remember dining up through Pine and talking you know dial up.
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  Yeah, listen, I'm with you, guys. Even though I worked
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  for the Vanillen NEWSESK. I'm still a fan because I go back to the
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  the days of the Inside magazine and that was like Christmas morning when that thing
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  came. Well look, in a way vh ND kind of inspired our show
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  was just which is basically, let's just keep flagging, you know, waving
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  the flag for the greatest rock and roll band ever. Right, yeah,
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  yeah, absolutely absolutely. Now tell me about the name of the podcast.
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  And I did ask you this, or I think you guys provided this information
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  when we put an article up on Van Halen News ESK. But for those
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  who aren't familiar with bogus Otis, what does that mean? So the bogus
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  Otis show nine degrees of Sammy Hagar, So what's meeting behind that? And
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  what's also behind the nine degrees of Sammy? That part of the title,
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  well, I guess it goes back to the very inception right where we're thinking
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  up names and we wanted something kind of inside baseball. And for those of
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  us who read, you know, diehard red rocker fans, bogus Otis is
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  Sammy's crazy chicken on his r rightit is it a chicken? Yeah, though
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  that's farther than me. He has it now. I haven't got mine yet.
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  So he's got his bogus Otis on his arm. That's it. Yeah.
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  I think I didn't even realize that the origin of that tattoo is as
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  far reaching in history as it is. I think Sammy got that tattoo when
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  he was like seventeen years old or something like that. So we're talking,
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  you know, almost six decades this thing has been on his arm, and
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  it's always been this little mysterious character that pops up here and there through the
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  history of the band. And you know, we were throwing names around,
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  as Darren said, and you know, I tend to go to the very
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  cliched well often and I'm like, maybe we should name it after a song
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  lyric or something. And he's like, I've been thinking of what do you
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  think about bogus Otis. And I was like, boom, brilliant. You've
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  got a ring to it, right. We had originally was bogus Otis podcast,
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  Like, that's not that's too long. That isn't bogus Otis show,
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  Sammy Hagar, I'm assuming this is just so that's basically Sammy's love of nines
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  right of the nine. Yeah, and really it's an excuse for us to
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  talk about everything ever connected to Van Haleim. Yeah, I was gonna say,
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  Plus Samy knows everybody to who's anybody that he's not friends with? Yeah,
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  but also we should gloss over we can't close over this part. Like
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  so Brent, you know, Brent comes from the field of live entertainment and
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  man staging and putting on massive concerts and uh, he comes from that side
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  of the entertainment world, and I come from the production of content and animation
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  and music videos and things like that. So we kind of came out of
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  two angles. So we also both both you know, love Cabo libations,
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  especially of the Sami kind food. So really we had a lot beside the
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  music we had. We felt we had more than enough topics that we could
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  kind of come at together. Right, So that's where the nine degrees kind
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  of fits in as well. Yeah, speaking of Cabo, how many times
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  have you guys been there to Sammy's Club? I don't know if I can
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  count that high really that many times? Huh, I've been to Cabo and
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  this is this is the reason why I know this number. I have been
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  to Cabo fifteen times, and the reason why I know fifteen is I have
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  this little ritual my wife and I every time we go to Cabo, I
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  bring back a little bottle of sand from the beach in Cabo, usually Madano
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  Beach, and just like in a little water bottle or something or a little
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  plastic bag, I bring home some sand as a little souvenir. And then
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  what I've done is every time I empty a bottle of Cobbo Wabo tequila,
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  I've put the sand from a trip in the bottle. So I actually have
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  them right here, I can show you. So I've got I've got fifteen
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  bottles empty bottles of Cobbo Wabbo tequila and they all have sand in them from
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  Cobbo San Lucas from Pretty Cool Now. For those listening to just audio,
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  this episode is on the YouTube on her YouTube channel, so you can check
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  it out. Yeah. Yeah, bottle is cool man. It's just classy
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  looking. Yeah. All the logos are pretty awesome in their own way.
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  They're they're very cool. Yeah. So just a little bit a little bit
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  of home away from home, the sand from Cowbo. So yeah, fifteen
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  trips for me and counting. Okay, is it fifteen hangovers? No?
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  No, no, no, no, no, There's there's at least three
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  hangovers there in each trip. So yeah, I've got to be close to
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  that, right, I got it somewhere in there. But yeah, And
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  the only other thing I wanted to make was I have been very fortunate,
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  just by nothing other than pure, truthfully, pure dumb luck. Twice.
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  I've never been to Cabo during a birthday bash. Firstly, it's always been
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  outside of the of the birthday bash, wondering and very serendipitously. It just
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  has happened twice while we've been there, He's been in town and I get
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  messages from somebody like, hey, did you see on Facebook Sammy's in town
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  and blah blah blah. And so twice I've actually, purely by chance,
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  caught him at the club. Once he was doing a little acoustic set with
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  Dick Johnson, right when they were road testing the acoustic album, the Light
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  Roast album. Yeah. And then the second time he had Trey Cool,
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  the drummer of Green Day, was in town with him, and he showed
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  up at the club with Trey Cool and they jammed a whole set with the
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  house band, and I was just like mind blown just to have that opportunity.
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  I think that's it's now been ten years since that album came out.
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  Yeah, I think there's twice fourteen. Wow. Yeah, crazy, we're
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  still like thirty Yes, sure, of course, of course that's crazy,
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  Darren. Have you ever gone for Sammy's birthday? Have you ever seen Sammy
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  perform there? So? I have so I directed, I produced and conceived
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  the directed music video for Getting Up when he was in chicken Foot, and
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  when I presented it to his manager at the time, they were really happy
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  with it. And for a little while there I was. I went.
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  I was invited to a couple bashes. In fact, I was also at
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  the twentieth anniversary in twenty ten, which was just a one night not like
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  a massive sixth night already extravaganta for his birthday. It was just like a
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  one off, one night, awesome party, but it was treated like a
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  birthday bash. But he had all kinds of guests there and it's a ton
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  of fun. I mean, I've been going there for many years before the
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  bashes and after where I couldn't get in, but it's always a blast to
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  be there. Even if he's not there, you can just feel the aura
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  it's just fun to kind of be in the presence, you know, of
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  the band himself, right, and like bringing back sand I bring back I've
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  been bringing back. The store has gone now, but it's across the street
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  called the Faces of Mexico, right across from the canteen that collecting of the
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  Dead art. So every time I go back, I bring back some sort
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  of Day of the Dead something or other, you know. And there was
• 12:26
  that one point there where that was just a deserted island almost, I mean
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  nobody was there, Sammy. Yeah, you guys in Van Hillen took over
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  and now it's it's a huge it's just it's like a vacation destination for so
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  many people. Now, Yeah, it's it's incredible every year that we've gone
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  back. If I think about the last five or six years minus about eighteen
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  months in Covid, where you know, no one could go anywhere. If
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  I think about my last probably five or six trips there. Every time you
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  go, you're driving from the airport to your hotel and it's like, oh,
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  there's another shopping mall, there's another resort, there's another something. Like
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  it's just been building up and up and up in that corridor from San Jose
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  del Cabo where the airport is down to Cabo San Lucas is just it's it's
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  booming. There's condos, there's homes, there's resorts, like it's just the
• 13:20
  growth in the last half dozen years is it's mind blowing. It's crazy.
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  You've had some great guests on the podcast. You've had, you had Sammy's
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  sister, You've got guys that worked with Sammy. Tell us about some of
• 13:31
  the guests that you've had that people can check out if they haven't listened to
• 13:35
  the podcast yet. It's available everywhere. Well, we've got to start with
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  you, man. You were a first uh double header, right guest.
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  Yeah. Our recent one was for balance, Yeah, for balance, Yeah
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  yeah, But Sammy's sister, how about that? Man. Yeah, We've
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  we've had some fun, some fun times chatting with people and and sometimes you
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  know, ones that have caught us a bit off guard and ones that have
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  really been surprising telling some interesting stories. But Velma was amazing. We reached
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  out to her cold, she had no idea who we were from anybody,
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  and she responded back. She was very gracious. I think she probably took
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  a few days or a week to maybe think about it. I'm sure she
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  probably made some calls and she was like is this okay? But she she
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  came on and she told us some incredible stories about their childhood. She she
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  was very open and honest. She's a great lady and she was a lot
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  of fun. We had a blast chatting with her, and we're gonna have
• 14:35
  her on again. Mike Frasier Mike Fraser was a ton of fun right in.
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  Really cool. Yeah. So he's a mixer and producer, Canadian guy
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  actually in Vancouver on the West Coast, and he had a hand in mixing,
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  recording, producing Balance both Chicken Foot Records. He's actually worked with Sammy
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  quite a bit, so we got some interesting insight from him into the whole
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  world of engineering, mixing, mastering the recording process, which was cool.
• 15:09
  We spoke with Jorge, Sammy's partner in Baba Wabble Cantina. We've had former
• 15:15
  bandmate Jesse harms On, who was part of the Wabbos. We had Bro,
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  we had Bro Dave lauser On, who's a you know, a Wobbo's
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  member, and I think one of Sammy's oldest friends, Darren did this crazy
• 15:28
  deep dive research and he comes to me and he's like, we're gonna get
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  this guy called Daniel Kleinman on the show. And I was like, who
• 15:35
  the hell is Daniel Kleman. Who start doing a bit of research and it
• 15:37
  turns out, I mean, Darren's a big James Bond fan. And so
• 15:41
  Daniel Cleman has done a lot of I guess what the the opening He's done
• 15:46
  all the opening of the Bond since Golden Eye, actually since Licensed to Kill.
• 15:52
  He started on License to Kill. And he's very much inherited the baton
• 15:54
  from Maurice Binder who did the all the iconic ones, but his his are
• 15:58
  incredib or. They're almost like mini music videos. And it's funny. If
• 16:02
  I had reached out to him asking him talk about Bond, he probably would
• 16:04
  never have said yes, because he's a pretty big guy like Oscar Winner for
• 16:10
  his visuals, he probably would have said no. But we since we asked
• 16:11
  to talk about Live Without a Net, which he directed, which he directed,
• 16:15
  dam he came on. It was a lot of fun, right yeah,
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  incredible chat with him. He talked about I mean, you got to
• 16:21
  remember Live Without a Net was fifty fifty two or nineteen eighty six. So
• 16:25
  you think about the technology that was available that time for recording video and audio,
• 16:30
  and I think he said they had I think it was twelve cameras that
• 16:34
  were set up around the venue and they had to keep changing the reels of
• 16:41
  tape and so he had to catalog them basically and name them and put them
• 16:47
  in order, and then after the fact go back and stitch it all together.
• 16:52
  So when you see there's a couple of clips in Live without a Net
• 16:56
  where you see a red clock that's somewhere up and those yes, yeah,
• 17:03
  those were actually time clocks that they used at as vantage points, so they
• 17:08
  knew where where they had to change reels and stitch things together. Yeah,
• 17:14
  for editing, right, Yeah, it was so fascinating listening to him.
• 17:17
  Amazing that that show is forty five minutes from where I live. I mean,
• 17:19
  I went to college in New Haven, and in fact, Steve Roth,
• 17:23
  the host of dlar Cast co hosts with Darren palchw was went to school
• 17:26
  in New Haven. And I remember in high school, this is before I
• 17:32
  became a huge Van Aillen fan. Right around the time when I did on
• 17:34
  nineteen eighty eight or so, I had guys in my class that said they
• 17:37
  were there, and they'd say, if you pause, that's such and such
• 17:41
  spot of the video, you'll see me in there. You'll see me waving
• 17:45
  or whatever. That. Yeah, the New Haven Coliseum, which is not
• 17:49
  there anymore. And that's such a great that's such a great video. I
• 17:52
  wish the whole show, Yeah, was in there. And we asked them
• 17:57
  about that. We asked them, yeah, he's probably got it somewhere.
• 18:00
  He's got to dig through it, but he's like, I have it somewhere,
• 18:03
  right, the book done. Rock Podcasts will be back after this.
• 18:08
  You also had another guest, the guy what was his name, Sammy something,
• 18:14
  Sammy, Yeah, he ambush right, that guy him, He didn't
• 18:18
  really ask us him tell us about this. This whole thing is you did
• 18:22
  not see this coming. This wasn't expected by you. I don't think it
• 18:26
  was. It was hoped for. And then but we you know, we
• 18:30
  were there to interview the brewmaster for Red Rocker Logger and his son, right,
• 18:36
  and uh, we we were told that Sammy would be obviously in the
• 18:41
  house because it was also a gig at the film or Detroit. So and
• 18:45
  but we were told that he's gonna come. Sam's gonna come down. He's
• 18:47
  gonna We're situated at the side of this bar. We found a cool spot
• 18:51
  to kind of set up, and uh, when he we were told he's
• 18:55
  gonna come down, he's gonna serve drinks to his colleagues and friends at this
• 18:57
  kind of VIP party. So we were told just to kind of do our
• 19:00
  thing and he comes over, we probably want to move or pick up all
• 19:03
  of our stuff and move to the bar because he's gonna be serving drinks.
• 19:08
  Well he didn't. He came around the bar hood right past all those people
• 19:11
  pretty much crashed the show, and he's like, what are you guys up
• 19:14
  to? Using my tattoo, and we thought he was going to give us
• 19:17
  trouble, but then he's like, no, you're you're good. You're good.
• 19:18
  I checked you guys out, man, You're good. Yeah. It's
• 19:22
  funny that the chat with him, I mean it was it was brief and
• 19:26
  certainly unplanned and as Darren says, you know, unexpected but hoped, and
• 19:33
  you know, a really cool moment for me was he kind of gave us
• 19:37
  this like, oh, how the hell did you guys get in here sort
• 19:41
  of reaction, and he plunked himself down and the literally, Eric, I'm
• 19:45
  not kidding you, the first words out of his mouth is he actually said,
• 19:49
  He's like, I'm really glad you guys are here because I've been wanting
• 19:52
  to tell you for a long time. I really love what you're doing.
• 19:56
  And I just went, oh, man, like I can die now.
• 20:00
  Yeah, that's it. Take care right, and he and he did say.
• 20:03
  He asked us, He's like, who's so, who's your favorite guest
• 20:06
  you've had on the show? And we said Velma and he was like,
• 20:07
  oh man. He told us a couple of Elma stories and then he you
• 20:12
  know again, as we as we were wrapping up, he's like, you
• 20:17
  know again. I got to say when I first heard of you guys,
• 20:21
  you know, I was kind of some someone put put you on my radar
• 20:23
  and I was I was like, can we can we use a foul language
• 20:27
  on that? He he was like, I saw, He's like, who
• 20:33
  the fuck are these guys, you know, using my name and using my
• 20:36
  this, And he's like then I checked him out and I was like,
• 20:37
  oh, these guys are cool, they're great, blah blah blah, and
• 20:40
  it just for us, I think it's you know, it obviously was hoped
• 20:44
  at some point in time we would have the opportunity to chat with him.
• 20:48
  The fact that it happened in person was a bonus, But for us,
• 20:52
  I think it just kind of validated that what we're doing is it's important to
• 20:59
  fans and listeners and it's important to us, and I think we realize that,
• 21:06
  you know, hey, this is this is kind of fun and it's
• 21:08
  a really cool opportunity. And I just who knew forty years ago that we'd
• 21:15
  be in this position where suddenly, you know, here we are hosting this
• 21:18
  show and the very guy that the show is all about comes to us and
• 21:23
  says, I've been listening to you and I love your show. And we're
• 21:26
  kind of like, no, but you're you're our idol. It's not the
• 21:30
  other way around, right. Very cool. There's one more podcasts that doesn't
• 21:34
  exist. It needs to be needs to be made. A Michael Anthony podcast.
• 21:38
  Yea, we need a Mikey podcast. Yeah we do, we do,
• 21:42
  Yeah, yeah, we do. Our season of The bogus Ova Show
• 21:45
  could be just to Mikey one hundred percent. It absolutely could. And you
• 21:49
  know, the last thing I want to say about this, truthfully, because
• 21:53
  I don't. I don't come at this honestly with any ego. Anyone who
• 21:57
  knows me, I'm I'm a very egoless person. It just I actually feel
• 22:03
  like truthfully blessed and like humbled that we've been able to do it and that
• 22:07
  we had the chance to talk to him. And I can tell you everyone
• 22:11
  who is a fan of Sammy who hasn't had the opportunity to meet him,
• 22:17
  I can tell you unequivocally he is everything that you think he is. He
• 22:22
  absolutely he gives a shit about his fans. It's not fake, it's not
• 22:26
  put on, it's not an act. He You know, sometimes when you
• 22:32
  meet someone who is an idol and you're like, oh, that guy was
• 22:33
  an asshole. That's a real let down. Sammy, I can tell you
• 22:38
  he was gracious, he was kind, he was easy to talk to.
• 22:45
  He's everything that he portrays himself to his fans. He truly is. And
• 22:49
  for me, I'm just like, that's all I need to know. It's
• 22:52
  awesome. Well that's saying never meet your hero, because you never know unless
• 22:56
  he's Sammy. Right, Yeah, Well, Eric, you kind of touched
• 23:00
  touched upon it, right. It was like there we were shocked that there
• 23:02
  wasn't some sort of Sami centric podcasts already out there. So really the whole
• 23:07
  genesis was like, well, like let's do that because he you know,
• 23:11
  he deserves the legacy and credit that he's earned, and let's just talk about
• 23:15
  it. And we don't claim to know everything. We're like, we're there's
• 23:18
  stuff that many other fans no way more than we do. Well, collectively,
• 23:21
  we know a ton, but I mean we we just like talking about
• 23:26
  it and meeting other people to talk about it as well. Right, we
• 23:30
  were not just Samit fans. We love Van Handlin, Right, there's a
• 23:33
  chance to learn more about him exactly. Yeah, it's I think I think
• 23:36
  that's been the you know, the other sort of fun side piece of this.
• 23:40
  We talked off the top about, you know, how you you end
• 23:42
  up connecting with other people who have a like interest and you know, develop
• 23:47
  some connections. That's been a really cool part. Specifically with listeners. We
• 23:52
  get messages on Facebook and Instagram, people reaching out saying, hey, I
• 23:56
  discovered the show or hey I've been listening since you know blah blah blah episode.
• 24:00
  It's really cool. You know, it's interesting. I love it.
• 24:03
  But also They will make comments about some of the episodes and say to us,
• 24:07
  like, you guys were talking about such and such a thing, and
• 24:11
  they're actually filling in blanks that we had, giving us more details and information,
• 24:17
  and so it becomes an education for us. And so we start this
• 24:22
  cool dialogue and I just you know, I mean the Hammy Sagar Barbecue guys
• 24:25
  down in Memphis a great example. You know, we reached out to them
• 24:29
  cold on Instagram and we're like, you know, you guys are clearly fans.
• 24:33
  It's super unique what you're what you're doing with the barbecue team. Let's
• 24:37
  get you on. They came on as an episode, had a great chat.
• 24:41
  But more importantly, we've become like friends over distance and we're chat back
• 24:47
  and forth all the time. I made so many great friends through podcasting.
• 24:49
  Now you guys in the podcast will Rock and I mean you name it.
• 24:55
  I mean lots so many authors now that I would say I'm friends with now
• 24:59
  just through the podcast. And we know Sammy's had an amazing career. We're
• 25:03
  talking fifty years. I mean, we're going back to you know what,
• 25:07
  early seventies when all this started. So this is a this is one of
• 25:12
  those what if questions. He started with Montrose, then he goes solo.
• 25:19
  The self titled debut for Montrose is a classic, of course, but he
• 25:23
  goes solo in seventy six nine and A ten Scale was the first solo album.
• 25:26
  And then he hits his peak commercially in early eighties, mid eighties standing
• 25:32
  Hampton three, Locked Box VOA, which as I Can Drive fifty five.
• 25:34
  Then comes Van hill in nineteen eighty five. But we later find out that
• 25:38
  he was considered at one point to possibly be the singer of Van Hillen.
• 25:45
  There was that talk that Ted Templeman and Warner Brothers will saying, well,
• 25:51
  you know, it's a little tough with Dave's voice. Maybe Ted new obviously
• 25:55
  knew Sammy through the Montrose album because he produced it. Here's a big what
• 25:59
  if? What if if that happened? What if it was the reverse?
• 26:02
  How would things have panned out for Sammy and Van Halen if he was in
• 26:06
  the band then? Because I have my thoughts on this wo that's a juicy
• 26:11
  one. Yeah, because I feel like he was joined Van hill at the
• 26:15
  right time. I think so too. I'll just go first because mine's short,
• 26:18
  Okay, Yeah, I don't think keyboards worked out for Roth. So
• 26:22
  I'm glad he kind of did his tenure when he did, because I think
• 26:26
  the Eddies songwriting and an aggression and tone kind of fit that vibe. And
• 26:33
  I'm happy when say, Sammy joined when he did. Be honest, yeah,
• 26:36
  would they have written the type of songs that would have been as as
• 26:41
  big as the ones that he wrote when when Eddie's now in his thirties and
• 26:45
  looking to do something different, you know, and and and obviously you know,
• 26:51
  we got to give props to Dave. David Lee was the guy who
• 26:56
  he introduced. He introduced the band to a wider audience, I think,
• 27:00
  just because of his outrageous personality. So yeah, it's it's one of those
• 27:06
  what ifs. What do you think? RNT? Yeah, I tend to
• 27:08
  agree with with with both of what you guys are saying. I think the
• 27:11
  timing was right. I don't know if it would have been the same had
• 27:15
  he, you know, been in there at the beginning. And you know,
• 27:21
  props to Roth as you say, right, I mean, he he
• 27:23
  made that band more than a band. They were larger than life. Right,
• 27:29
  There's there's absolutely no question that's undeniable. The success that they that they
• 27:33
  had with him. The music obviously, but beyond the music, they were
• 27:37
  truthfully larger than life. I think Sammy came in at the right time because
• 27:45
  he was able to take this larger than life machine and just hone the musicality
• 27:53
  of it even even more. You know, him coming in with look,
• 27:57
  there's no question, a broader vocal range, guitar playing, chops, some
• 28:03
  more experience as a songwriter, and so I think he I think he helped
• 28:07
  to make the band mature and grow up a little bit, and it just
• 28:15
  sort of seemed like the natural evolution. If he was in there as a
• 28:18
  you know, a twenty two year old with all of them in nineteen seventy
• 28:22
  eight, I don't know if it would have been the same vibe, because
• 28:26
  I think Sammy became a better songwriter with each successive album as a solo artist.
• 28:30
  Yes, you hear it more and more with each album. Yes.
• 28:33
  And I think vocally Sammy hit his his golden throat stretch, you know,
• 28:38
  the Geffen Eras onwards. Right, So by eighty four when he was hitting
• 28:45
  his what I consider his peak vocals, you know, for him to depart
• 28:48
  Van Halen at that point, if we're going to reverse roles here, I
• 28:52
  think would have been Yeah, he would he just he was just coming into
• 28:56
  his fifty one to fifty voice in eighty four, right, Yeah, talk
• 29:00
  about his voice among the best? Would he rank him? I mean his
• 29:04
  voice is amazing, it still is. But you think about what he did
• 29:10
  on song like Dreams, but not just that, not just the range and
• 29:14
  how many notes he can hit. It's like when you hear him singing,
• 29:17
  you know it's him, it's it stands out. It's it's not sterile,
• 29:22
  it's not you know by the book. It's it's it's his own. He's
• 29:25
  got that. He's got that almost like the Rod Stewart type of thing with
• 29:29
  the you know, like there's somebody, Yeah, just enough wilt on the
• 29:33
  rose, Just enough wilt on the rose. Yeah, that's it's a great
• 29:38
  way of putting it. I mean, no them up among the greats.
• 29:42
  Look, I think, uh, you know, at seventy six years old,
• 29:48
  he's proven he can still sing in a live setting. He was he
• 29:52
  was never a screamer. He can hit the high notes, and he still
• 29:57
  can in some of those songs. But for me, it's always been kind
• 30:02
  of the he's got this perfect blend of a melodic sounding voice, but the
• 30:08
  power is also there and it's hitting those notes. Yeah, And for me,
• 30:15
  it's longevity to be able to you know, is he singing at the
• 30:18
  same level as he was thirty years ago? Of course not who is nobody.
• 30:22
  But I think the fact that he's still singing the style that he is
• 30:26
  and he can still sing a lot of those songs from thirty years ago with
• 30:32
  the power that he is, you know, in his mid seventies, is
• 30:37
  it's it's near impossible to find. We were just talking the other day about
• 30:41
  the new Judas Priest album. So I heard I heard the first single.
• 30:45
  I think it was great. I haven't heard it at all. I just
• 30:47
  heard it's pretty good, man. Yeah, guys on three sides of the
• 30:49
  Coin the Kiss podcast. One of the guys on there said it's just phenomenal.
• 30:52
  I haven't heard it is man, it's pretty awesome. There's some fifty
• 30:55
  and fifty drums in there too. Some Simmons drums are kind of make a
• 30:57
  guest appearance. I mean we always talk, we talk about this all the
• 31:00
  time. Obviously in my money, I think the only other person I guess
• 31:06
  they're kind of retired. Now, in my mind, who could stand against
• 31:10
  Sammy musicality, you know, vocal wise, would be David Coverdell. I'll
• 31:15
  probably get a lot of people upset. But also David Coverdell doesn't play guitar
• 31:18
  like Sammy, you know. So Sammy has this whole on the side that
• 31:22
  most people forget. It's this he can tangle with some of the greatest guitars
• 31:26
  that ever have happened. I can't see Robert Plant picking up a fiddle and
• 31:30
  jamming with Eddie van Haile. So obviously we're biased, but I put Sammy
• 31:36
  probably at the top there right, although the Judas Prison is pretty good.
• 31:38
  Yeah, no, it was Halford can still sing. I agree with you,
• 31:41
  but he doesn't play guitar. No, And we've also even thrown like
• 31:45
  a Paul Rodgers in the conversation. Sometimes Sammy is such a huge fan re
• 31:49
  member. You talked to Sammy Sammy's road trip show a Paul Rodgers. He
• 31:53
  was like in awe of fall, like I can't believe I'm interviewing you,
• 31:57
  like a like he was a fan more so than a fellow singer, you
• 32:01
  know, fellows. But Sammy's also soulful too, right, Like, yes,
• 32:05
  I would probably at some point. I mean, low Graham is past
• 32:07
  his He's nowhere near where he's awesome. He has some health issues minding me
• 32:13
  into it because his book is great, But you know, he's got that
• 32:15
  soulful side to him that Sammy has as well. Right, So Sammy can
• 32:20
  belt out the rockers, the meat and Potato rockers, he can also get
• 32:22
  pretty soulful. He's even you know, he's done some like country esque songs
• 32:28
  right and folk rock Americana. So he's kind of got a massive range too
• 32:32
  that you could compare against. I don't know, has Coverdale anything done anything
• 32:37
  that's kind of country esque you I don't know. Man, No, it's
• 32:40
  funny that you say. You know what I was thinking when you said soulful.
• 32:43
  This is going to sound crazy, But let's take a let's take a
• 32:46
  deep cut off of VOA, a song like Dick and the Dirt. Sammy
• 32:51
  can sing Dick in the Dirt and make that his voice is still soulful.
• 32:54
  Like it's as crazy as it sounds. Right, It's true. I love
• 32:58
  There's a great story I'll never forget. So I was in junior high,
• 33:00
  seventh grade and one of the kids in my class had the cassette VOA and
• 33:06
  he was just so proud, like he just he was so tough. You
• 33:07
  know, yeah, I got to check out this song taking the there he's
• 33:14
  like a tough guy and he and even let's look at an album like I
• 33:17
  never said goodbye. That happens, you know on the heels of fifty one
• 33:23
  fifty. You know that record is one of those ones. We have talked
• 33:28
  about that that record quite a bit. Actually in recent episodes Top to Bottom
• 33:32
  you can listen to that entire album, and you know, that's another one
• 33:36
  for me that just his his vocal range, the power in his voice,
• 33:43
  and the songs are there. It's inspirational stuff. It's just E goes fly.
• 33:47
  I think this is the best song he's ever written as a solo artist.
• 33:51
  Yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he had
• 33:54
  that huge run with VH the fifty one fifty album eighty six and then you
• 33:58
  have all you went two foreign level corner knowledge balance and then he's out of
• 34:02
  the band in ninety six, where you as shocked as I was when you
• 34:07
  heard that he was out of the band, because I just thought those guys
• 34:08
  are so tight. I mean, what was your We talked about this all
• 34:13
  the time. Manu s Yeah, things was like, oh we're getting another
• 34:15
  glimpse of like they're going even heavier and darker. Wow, this is great
• 34:20
  and then boom shot, Yeah, yeah, I think I think I think
• 34:23
  my favorite story to kind of put this into some context. Another great guest
• 34:29
  that we had not that long ago, handful of episodes ago or so,
• 34:34
  was Bob Dates, who was their road manager for Van Halen for probably ten
• 34:39
  years, and it was interesting. We kind of grilled Bob a little bit
• 34:45
  about the balance to our sort of saying like, what was going on behind
• 34:50
  the scenes, because you know, clearly there was a divide at the time,
• 34:53
  no one really knew because you look at the production, the live show,
• 34:58
  the balance to or the Toronto pay per view like they were killing it
• 35:01
  on stage, they sounded great, the tour was huge, all of this
• 35:07
  stuff, but you know, and now we know now that was things were
• 35:10
  crumbling behind the scenes. And we asked Bob like, were there signs?
• 35:15
  What was you know? And he said, here here's the thing. It
• 35:21
  didn't matter what was happening off stage. These got his words, were these
• 35:27
  guys are professionals, and so when they stepped on that stage. They gave
• 35:32
  everything for the audience in that show. It didn't matter if they had,
• 35:37
  you know, had a big fisticuffs fight ten minutes before they went on stage.
• 35:42
  They're pros and they're there to do a show, and they brought it
• 35:45
  and you would never have known that that was going on. And at that
• 35:49
  time, is that the grunge era around there, And you just figured that
• 35:52
  was it. And they're older, you just figured that was just you know,
• 35:53
  they're a little different as far as the way they are on stage and
• 35:59
  that it's not like the like the Live with on a Net. It's like
• 36:01
  they're just I love it. They're like just high school dudes hanging out and
• 36:06
  partying together, you know. But they were a little older, so I
• 36:07
  just I just thought of it that way. I didn't think there was any
• 36:12
  tension between anybody. They were just not as buddy buddy, you know,
• 36:15
  as they were in eighty. I did question the back of the record we
• 36:20
  barely see Sammy. I thought that was strange at the time. Yeah,
• 36:22
  I mean I had no clue what happened a month or a year or so
• 36:25
  later, but I thought that was very weird. Right, here's the guy
• 36:29
  who's been front and center and you can barely see it sam So I thought
• 36:34
  that was kind of weird at the time. Well here's the other big what
• 36:36
  if? What if Sammy stayed in the band? I mean, would that
• 36:38
  lineup have continued with number one albums and big tour? Do you think their
• 36:42
  sound would have changed with the times because there were few bands that were able
• 36:46
  to stretch that out into the early two thousands Aerosmith, I remember Jaded was
• 36:52
  a big hit single in the early two thousands, and then things started to
• 36:55
  fade off commercially. So would they have still in one of those juggernauts,
• 37:00
  you know, and one of those few bands that could just survive and keep
• 37:04
  cranking out number one albums? Yeah, I think yes. And probably one
• 37:09
  of my biggest regrets or disappointments as a fan over the years is that they
• 37:15
  let gaps in time happen when they could have been producing and doing things,
• 37:21
  and you know, even just seeing how the sound had evolved with a song
• 37:24
  like Humans Being and you know, again there was a ton of friction at
• 37:29
  that time, but I mean, what a powerful song, what a shift
• 37:32
  a little bit? Yeah, And I mean if you had have had an
• 37:37
  entire album of that following up on balance. For me, I think the
• 37:43
  fan base was as big still and as loyal that they could have despite the
• 37:50
  shifting landscape of music. They could have continued as a hard rock band and
• 37:53
  probably done three more albums and been successful. I really think so yeah could
• 38:00
  have been Yeah, Yep. I think if they'd gotten through, if he
• 38:04
  had stayed, I feel like Van Halen three as it is as we know
• 38:08
  it today was kind of like a demo. And that's not a slam on
• 38:12
  Gary, and I don't mind by Van Halen three to be honest, but
• 38:14
  I mean I feel like that that was a demo and maybe if Sammy had
• 38:19
  shaped it, we would have saw seen the or heard the you know,
• 38:22
  the V two of it with Sammy kind of shaping some things with the melodies
• 38:25
  and stuff that we know Sammy brings that kind of got them through. Maybe
• 38:29
  today they would be as revered as this is going to kill me to say,
• 38:34
  I don't mean this is I don't mean this is a slight either against
• 38:36
  bon Jovie fans, but I feel like they would be revered as a bon
• 38:38
  Jovie now they would have kind of gotten through and kind of been secured a
• 38:43
  place at the top, and we'd see these young kids walking around today with
• 38:46
  more Van Halen shirts than we see def Lepper shirts. And not it's not
• 38:51
  a slam against def Leppard either, I'm just saying that's some of these bands.
• 38:53
  I feel that because of the the path that Van Halen took and the
• 38:58
  inactive years, as Brent mentioned and took, it took a bit of a
• 39:01
  hit on them. But I'm so happy that Sammy kept a flag going outside
• 39:06
  of it, you know, he kept the sound with his voice going on
• 39:07
  the side. So well. We remember a time when pretty much every everybody
• 39:14
  around you knew who Vane Hillen was, either knew who they were or a
• 39:16
  huge fan. And now it bums me out because talk to people were younger,
• 39:22
  and they they're just they don't give a ship. I mean, they
• 39:29
  don't even really know about it, don't you know. And that's that's the
• 39:31
  worst part. They don't know everywhere For years, just year after year,
• 39:37
  they were everywhere on MTV, on the radio, they whatever interviews, on
• 39:40
  television, covers of magazines. It was like a given. It was like
• 39:45
  following a team that won the Super Bowl every year. And then all of
• 39:47
  a sudden, the bottom drops out and uh, you know, it's kind
• 39:52
  of like the New England Patriots like right now, it's like there are people
• 39:54
  now of a certain age that they won't remember what it was like to go
• 39:59
  see the New England pages, Tom Brady over year winning all the time.
• 40:02
  That's what it feels like, and it's a bomber, especially when bands like
• 40:06
  Judas Priest Yes, who are there before Van Halen emerged, and they're now
• 40:10
  still releasing albums afters. I feel that also hurts the Van Hanlon legacy a
• 40:15
  bit because these bands, you know, one hundred years from now or five
• 40:17
  hundred years and then we look back, some of those bands that I feel
• 40:21
  should not be as rated legacy wise or remembered as much, maybe will place
• 40:27
  higher on that list, which really bothers me to say. Yeah, you
• 40:30
  know, I think with the Van Halen three thing, you know, I
• 40:35
  think there's there's a lot of props that have to be given to Gary Scharon.
• 40:37
  I mean, the guy Darren and I were talking about this just I
• 40:40
  think yesterday in the day before he stepped into an impossible situation. There's no
• 40:46
  way that he could have he could have truly been successful in the spot that
• 40:51
  he was put in. And I think if you really drill down, the
• 40:55
  fact of the matter probably is I don't know how much creative license or freedom
• 41:02
  he had in the recording and the making of Van Hilln three. It might
• 41:06
  have been you know, okay, Gary, you're gonna write some lyrics,
• 41:09
  but this is this is what you're gonna sing kind of a thing. Whereas
• 41:12
  to Darren's point, with a more seasoned guy like Sammy been around longer,
• 41:16
  been in the band longer, all of this, if you take what became
• 41:22
  the Van Heiln three record, could you imagine if Sammy had have pushed the
• 41:27
  envelope a little and tweak this and change that and inserted his will a little
• 41:32
  bit more here and there, that could have that could have been a really
• 41:37
  interesting sounding record with him at the microphone. And again that's still all respects
• 41:44
  to Gary, because I mean, I think he did a great job stepping
• 41:46
  into literally an impossible situation. Well yeah, and then now it's become like
• 41:52
  the thing to just trash it, to just say that nothing's good on there
• 41:57
  is just not true. Without you is a good No, Yeah, it's
• 42:01
  a solid album. Here to the day is cool. They're just they're very
• 42:05
  long songs. They're not they weren't really made for the radio. They were
• 42:07
  more of more of Eddie's progressive rock roots, the long, extended songs,
• 42:14
  and it's just something he wanted to do. He did, it didn't work,
• 42:17
  but yeah, I kinda that affected him. I mean it was a
• 42:22
  long time before he was he recovered from that. Yeah, who's to say
• 42:27
  if Sammy had stayed and Van Hilen three came out as a different version of
• 42:30
  what we know it is today. I mean, who knows, maybe Eddie
• 42:35
  would have gone on a different course wrote the two thousands, right, who
• 42:37
  knows? The book down. Rock podcasts will be back after this. Sammy's
• 42:44
  book in twenty twelve read Mind Centered Life and Rock. A lot covered in
• 42:49
  that book, but of course it's the chapters on Van Halen that that got
• 42:53
  a lot of the headlines, and a lot of it is from the reunion
• 42:55
  tour in two thousand and four, And there's things in the book about Ed's
• 42:59
  drinking and he lived like a vampire in his house, et cetera, et
• 43:02
  cetera. So do you do you think he should have included that in the
• 43:09
  book and retrospect was worth it. Do you think he regrets it? I
• 43:15
  mean, did it? Did it bump you out? I guess first when
• 43:16
  you read it, heah that because it goes against everything that again we just
• 43:23
  thought they were buds and everything was cool. Yeah, I think. I
• 43:28
  mean, there's been times in many interviews where he has conceded some some regret
• 43:34
  in sharing some of the stories and saying some of the things that he did.
• 43:38
  However, I don't, I don't fault him. I don't. I
• 43:40
  don't blame him for it because I think, you know, he was talking
• 43:45
  authentically and it was a lived experience. I mean, by all accounts,
• 43:51
  that two thousand and four reunion tour was kind of a disastrous experience for Sammy,
• 43:57
  right, and unfairly to him. So you know, I'm sure he
• 44:02
  probably looks back and thinks, maybe I shouldn't have said some of the things
• 44:06
  that I did. But it is what it is to tell all book.
• 44:09
  I guess you gotta tell all. I mean, the the publishers. I'm
• 44:14
  sure we're saying, you know, look, we got to get we got
• 44:15
  to get something in here that I don't know, I don't know where they
• 44:21
  were they looking for stuff like that to sell copies or was it just I
• 44:23
  don't think. I think Sammy was the one who made all the final There
• 44:25
  wasn't a different draft. There's a whole other book that he wrote. I
• 44:29
  have it somewhere interesting. Yeah, a few years before, that's right.
• 44:34
  Yeah, I think there was maybe three or so chapters that were actually leaked.
• 44:38
  Yeah, I read those. I read those. Yeah, blocked him
• 44:44
  or from he tried to block the publisher from from putting it out, or
• 44:47
  something any worse than what Ross would say. Lately, we have to drag
• 44:52
  on the d l R Boys on here, but I mean to me,
• 44:57
  maybe I'm speaking for all of us, but like we like to see our
• 45:00
  van HALLI will smile. So whenever you read anything that's derogatory about them,
• 45:02
  it kind of bums me out right. Yeah, but that's what happened.
• 45:06
  I mean, maybe it's not exactly verbatim, but like we could all saw
• 45:10
  that Eddie was I thought he was gonna die in the two thousands. I
• 45:13
  was waiting any moment pick up a newspaper, and newspapers that thing with the
• 45:16
  paper has words on it. I thought he was gonna I was gonna wake
• 45:22
  up and find that he died, So I mean, yeah, yeah,
• 45:24
  that was It's still it's still hard to believe that that even happened, just
• 45:29
  to see pictures of him. It's just not it wasn't him. That's not
• 45:31
  him, that's not the I'm so happy he didn't die that way. I'm
• 45:35
  so happy he came back. We got that healthier miling d for a while.
• 45:38
  Right, Absolutely, there was. I saw three shows on the two
• 45:43
  thousand and four re and tour. Two of them I had that five star
• 45:46
  package thing that they sold, so you got to go and see soundcheck and
• 45:50
  do a little you know, tour backstage the whole thing. And the soundcheck
• 45:55
  was it was hard. It was hard to watch. I mean we all
• 46:00
  see videos of of the of the tour, of of you know, during
• 46:04
  the show, but there were a couple of moments in the soundcheck pieces that
• 46:10
  I was super fortunate to see, like what a unique experience. But it
• 46:15
  was hard to watch because he he was, he was there was It was
• 46:20
  not good. It wasn't even him. So who is this imposter? Because
• 46:24
  the the the Eddie that that everybody knows personally of close, but also the
• 46:30
  Eddit that we know as fans you just seemed like such a sweetheart of a
• 46:35
  guy, gentle soul, smiling, humble. You know, people coming up
• 46:42
  to him tell him he's the greatest thing ever, and he'd be like,
• 46:45
  you know, I'm just a punk kid who plays guitar, right, And
• 46:47
  it just was like this is is this really? Him? Is just like
• 46:51
  somebody else that is taking his place? But again, thank thank man,
• 46:55
  thank god he turned it around and and I wish he was still here.
• 46:59
  But the way he was able to pull you always say, if there is
• 47:02
  a movie on ed that that's it's got a great ending to it. At
• 47:05
  least you have him. You know, he sounded amazing by the end.
• 47:10
  Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that that's why Alex isn't talking to Sammy?
• 47:16
  More to it than here we go, Here we go? Yeah,
• 47:20
  I think I think there's a bit more to it. I think, you
• 47:22
  know, you you read with great frequency. Sammy has said in interviews like,
• 47:28
  you know, I'll I call al and I leave him a voicemail or
• 47:31
  I send him a text and he doesn't reply, and you know that sort
• 47:35
  of thing. I think probably Alex is just it probably started stemming from what
• 47:40
  was written in the book, But I think he just is probably just not
• 47:45
  not interested. He just moved on to a different, different part of his
• 47:47
  life, right, Because I mean Mick and Keith, they Keith said some
• 47:52
  stuff about Mick and his book that hurt Mick, and they just moved on.
• 47:55
  So that's why I say, maybe it's it's more than just the book.
• 47:59
  Maybe Alex would say whatever. Yeah, I mean, it pissed me
• 48:00
  off that you wrote that stuff in the book, But it's not just that
• 48:04
  you know you you don't know. We don't know, but maybe we will
• 48:07
  find out. Because Alex's book is coming out. It's titled and he said
• 48:10
  he's going to set the record straight. Right when I read that, I'm
• 48:14
  like, oh, that's to Sammy. So that's how I took that comment.
• 48:15
  Yeah, what do you think he's going to talk about in this book?
• 48:20
  What do you think? What do you hope he covers? You know,
• 48:22
  will he get into this early sam of years, will he get into
• 48:25
  the reunion tournal four? What are your thoughts on the book? I just
• 48:30
  hope it's not more things to make me sadder as a Van Hailem fan.
• 48:36
  But I'd love to I would love to hear his side of it. It
• 48:38
  might be a feel good story more than anything else. To the title,
• 48:42
  it might be something of a little bit of a tear jerker at the end
• 48:44
  because we know how things ended, Yeah, because I mean he had he
• 48:47
  had a motorcycle accident and people kind of forget that part. That's what kind
• 48:51
  of found the tumor, right, I guess from what I remember, Right,
• 48:54
  So there's a whole stretch there, like after twenty fifteen, sixteen seventeen,
• 49:00
  that what was happening. I'd love to hear more of what was really
• 49:01
  happening in there before he really found out that he had cancer, right,
• 49:07
  So like what were they planning? What were they going to do? Maybe
• 49:09
  we'll find out some of those things, right, some good things. I
• 49:12
  think that's interesting that you that you hit on that, Darren. For me,
• 49:15
  I mean, there's there's been some amazing books written about the early the
• 49:20
  early history of the band, obviously, like Greg Rernoff's and Kevin Dodds and
• 49:23
  you know, on and on and on. There's been some really really excellent
• 49:27
  books, obviously Steve Rosen's Tone Chaser, right, talking about all those early
• 49:31
  years. For me, I would be very very interested to know what happened
• 49:38
  exactly as you said, from kind of the end of the twenty fifteen tour
• 49:44
  where he looked so good and so healthy and his playing was incredible and he
• 49:49
  seemed to be having a great time those those years kind of twenty fifteen to
• 49:53
  twenty twenty. What was what was really going on? And I think you're
• 49:59
  right probably if we hear some of that, it's gonna be heartbreaking, there's
• 50:02
  no there's no question, but very curious to hear what was going on in
• 50:08
  that time, and even the talk about, you know that that whole kitchen
• 50:12
  sink concept. You know, let's get David Sam. We're gonna do one
• 50:15
  last big mega tour like it just if there was ever one, would it
• 50:20
  could have should have been for a Van Halen fan. Man, it would
• 50:22
  have been that tour for sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think
• 50:25
  whatever is in the book is the reason he's not on the tour right now.
• 50:29
  So that's my fear. He's like, there's something big, the other
• 50:31
  shoe is going to drop, uh, which is why he's not. You
• 50:36
  won't see him on the tour, I mean I hope, I hope that
• 50:37
  we do see him, but I mean him joining in a larger way especially
• 50:43
  because it is in a way for his brother. Unless he doesn't see it
• 50:45
  that way, It's is gonna be wild. If he goes out there and
• 50:49
  does even one interview on TV, it'd be like, oh my god,
• 50:52
  there is we haven't seen him. He hasn't talked since that he passed.
• 50:54
  You know, it's like up to yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 51:00
  I think very either way, very interesting, and I think it'll be a
• 51:04
  fascinating story. I mean, the bond that the two of them had,
• 51:07
  you know, even as fans, casual observers, people that you know,
• 51:10
  don't know either of them. I think it'll be very interesting to get the
• 51:16
  dynamic of that brotherly bond between the two of them because they were, you
• 51:22
  know, literally joined at the hip from the moment they got off the boat
• 51:24
  in the US until they died, until he died, right. I'd love
• 51:29
  to hear I'd love to hear Alic's thoughts on the Van Allen three era,
• 51:31
  you know what he thought. I'd love to hear what he thinks on that
• 51:34
  album, you know, how it went down and how it came together.
• 51:37
  He's going through a divorce at that time, I recall correctly. Yeah,
• 51:42
  yeah, I think you're right, Yeah, yeah, it'll it'll it'll be
• 51:45
  interesting, And I mean, I just think it's great that, you know,
• 51:47
  he's breaking that that silence. He was never one to say a lot
• 51:52
  and always sort of tended to be in the background and you know, didn't
• 51:54
  talk unless there was something to say, so to speak. So I think
• 52:00
  it'll be really interesting to to finally hear from him the book done. Rock
• 52:05
  Podcasts will be back after this, I guess are Darren burstyle Brent Canair,
• 52:10
  host of the podcast devoted to Sam Mahagar, called the bogusotas shown ninety Degrees
• 52:15
  of Sammy Hagar. Let's get to the books that you guys have read that
• 52:17
  you really enjoyed. Darren, you're a huge reader, especially Rock bios.
• 52:22
  You love pretty much every Van Helen related book out there, so that goes
• 52:25
  without saying. But let's get some of the others. I mentioned the Keith
• 52:29
  Richards book. That's one that's on your list. Life from twenty ten also
• 52:34
  a close race between that and Read For the best book you've ever read on
• 52:39
  Rock, I would say, yeah, okay, oh yeah, it's because
• 52:43
  it's it's pretty well anyone sees it. It's it's you don't need a coffee
• 52:46
  table. It is the coffee table. It's so damn thick, right,
• 52:50
  it's a there's a lot of juice information and you know he trash is making
• 52:52
  there or makes fun of mix. Sometimes there's some good there's some juicy stuff.
• 52:55
  There's some controversial things, but it's also just fun. It's like listening
• 53:00
  to a pirate telling old pirate treasure Pale right. You can almost you can
• 53:05
  hear Keith's whiskey stained voice telling you the story the way it's written right,
• 53:08
  which I thought was a great book. But second to that, I would
• 53:12
  say, there's here's these holding these up. Some listeners at home can't see
• 53:15
  them. But oh, okay, yeah, these are two of my other
• 53:17
  two favorite books. Okay, so he's holding up Luke Graham jukebox here.
• 53:22
  On the other one is is it's uh, well, there you go.
• 53:24
  It's another drummer book. It's Joey Kramer from Merolsmith. Get Hard from Errol
• 53:28
  Smith, which is actually really full book. Right. Yeah, well,
• 53:30
  I's just say, Brent, you may want to grab a drink and sit
• 53:32
  back. This is quite a list that it's giffing me. They want to
• 53:37
  check back a little while he's got a long list, an impressive list.
• 53:42
  It is well. I like hearing the stories usually, but how they came
• 53:45
  up right? I mean, the Grenoff is probably the ultimate, right,
• 53:50
  but I like to hear like how it did all come together? How did
• 53:52
  they meet? Steven Todler book is great for kind of talking how they got
• 53:57
  together, and then you know it's kind of answered. And Joe Perry's version
• 54:01
  of the truth. Oh well, that's the funny too. You always get
• 54:05
  the different versions. So that's here's a little here's a cool aerosmith. He's
• 54:08
  arithmat trivia. The first time they ever played dream on live was in Connecticut
• 54:14
  and Willemanta, Connecticut at a place called the Sheboo Inn. Did you know
• 54:17
  that? I did not know that. Maybe I did at some point when
• 54:21
  I read the book, but I forgot. I don't think he mentions in
• 54:22
  the mid I don't need the book, so maybe it's in there. Maybe,
• 54:27
  but yeah. Dave Mustain's bio titled Mustaine from twenty eleven you noted awesome
• 54:32
  read and inspiring. Anthrax Is scott Ian. I'm the man that one's good.
• 54:37
  That one's good because you feel like it really gives you a snapshot,
• 54:40
  and if you're a Metallica fan, you need to read that book because there's
• 54:43
  a ton of like you can feel like you're the cold streets of New York
• 54:49
  as those guys were sleeping on cardboard beds, and he had to wake up
• 54:52
  early to wake up Headfield to get to a Metallica like. You can really
• 54:57
  feel the grit of the New York early eighties metal scene in that book.
• 55:02
  The Great Book and the Mustaine One is insane because he Mega Death exists purely
• 55:08
  out of rage and revenge for getting Yeah, he was just thrown out,
• 55:15
  given one way train ticket back to New York, and then still sniffing blue
• 55:22
  months later in his parents' bedroom, he out of rage bursts Megadeth and somehow
• 55:30
  manages to bring that band uh up to you know, worldwide startop. So
• 55:36
  it's a it's an amazing lightning strikes twice type of book. Cool moment though
• 55:39
  of Metallic ever decides this is our farewell tour. Have him come up on
• 55:44
  stage. That'd be cool, Yeah, it'd be cool. It's a good
• 55:47
  book, though, it's a good book. And then he falls asleep on
• 55:50
  his arm and loses the complete use of his guitar playing hand and then Eddie
• 55:55
  money too, and he got ye, messed up on drugs and he fell
• 56:00
  sleep on a same thing with the stage. Then he reaches out to a
• 56:01
  company that built this like bionic glove that he would wear that would stimulate the
• 56:07
  nerves over the course of like and he basically retaught himself how to play guitar,
• 56:10
  and again out of probably pure rage. Right, amazing. It's a
• 56:15
  good book though. It's a good book. And you're a big Aerosmith fan.
• 56:17
  As we just mentioned, Joe Perry's book Rocks, Stephen Tyler's book Does
• 56:21
  the Noise in My Head Bother You? And you mentioned Joey Kramer's book Hit
• 56:24
  Hard, a story of hitting rock bottom at the top, Joe sat Train
• 56:28
  his book Strange Beautiful Music. Right, that's the one I think. Yeah,
• 56:32
  Zach Wilde's book You Got It Signed? Is this Bringing Metal to the
• 56:37
  Children? That's the title of the book. Uh? Is that the one?
• 56:44
  Yes, that's it. Yeah, he did a book tour stop in
• 56:49
  Toronto, I believe. Okay, now tell us about there's a great story
• 56:53
  behind the Lou Graham book You Got It Signed. This is Lou Graham's jukebox
• 56:58
  here of my five decades in Rocks. It intersects with Brent here because so
• 57:05
  Lou Graham's post Foreigner band just called the Lou Graham Band kind of Christian rock,
• 57:09
  but there's you know, if he didn't really pay attention to the lyrics,
• 57:12
  they kind of sound like Foreigner. They played at the festival that Brent
• 57:16
  put together and managed, called the Sound of Music Festival, which is Canada's
• 57:20
  largest free festival. So Lou was playing there and I picked up the book
• 57:25
  and I read it and I had him sign it because it's funny. Oddly
• 57:29
  enough, no one He also changed his appearance over the years because he was
• 57:32
  quite ill, so you maybe wouldn't have recognized the guy's sitting there, but
• 57:37
  I went over to him and had a great conversation with him and he signed
• 57:38
  it. It's a fantastic book because for those who don't know Foreigner story,
• 57:44
  Lou Graham awoke one day with an inoperable brain tumor at the size of a
• 57:46
  grapefruit and was totally six months to live, six months to live, early
• 57:51
  two thousands, and after that the band thanked him for that by kicking him
• 57:55
  ount and he was kind of on his own to live through that ordeal,
• 58:00
  and then he kind of came back to the fold corner. Right, So
• 58:02
  it's a pretty cool uh, rise to the top, fall to the bottom,
• 58:07
  rise to the top again. Right. I saw him play solo and
• 58:10
  it was maybe three four years ago, and he had worked really hard to
• 58:14
  get his voice back. Yeah. Yeah, he couldn't even spell for a
• 58:16
  while, right, So he couldn't even he couldn't read, He couldn't spell,
• 58:19
  so he had a hard time really relearning his own vocals for a while.
• 58:22
  The criticism of people saying he was gaining weight, Yeah, that was
• 58:25
  the prednisone from this massive operation he had, right, And everybody's like stop
• 58:30
  eating. Man pushed the plate, you know, and he's like, yeah,
• 58:32
  you don't get it. It's it's part of the my recover. Yeah.
• 58:36
  He was just trying to like focus on the next lyric on there,
• 58:38
  right, Yeah. Crazy Stephen Pearcy's Sex Drug Rat and Roll, Sex Drugs
• 58:44
  Rat and Role. He just recently talked about another one he wants to put
• 58:46
  out. He's gonna work on a second one. Stephen Pearcy, that's a
• 58:52
  pretty it's a sleazy book. It's a fun Reade. It's kind of like
• 58:54
  if you like the Motley Cruz stuff, it's kind of a sleezy tell al
• 58:58
  right, well, speaking of the Crew Book, The Dirt You Got on
• 59:00
  Your List, The Black strat Pink Floyda History of David Gilmore's Black Fender Stratocaster,
• 59:07
  The Lightning Hopkins Bio, His Life and Blues, The Delta Blues,
• 59:12
  The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters who Revolutionize American Music. Martin Scorsese
• 59:19
  presents The Blues and Musical Journey Highway sixty one. I found more than a
• 59:24
  few under that title. Which specific one is it? This one's more of
• 59:29
  a book that if you ever wanted to take, I guess, the Mississippi
• 59:34
  Blues trip. There's a photo book. It's a photo book that stops at
• 59:37
  kind of them in the places where you know, the crossroads apparently and you
• 59:42
  know, different gravestones of different to this day and now people aren't really sure
• 59:46
  where Robert Johnson's buried, right, So this book kind of touches upon that.
• 59:50
  If you're ever going to do the Blues trail, they call it,
• 59:53
  it's kind of the map or the guidebook that you take along with you,
• 59:57
  right, it's a cool book. Yeah, Blues, Booze and Barbecue.
• 1:00:01
  Is that the Is that Billy Gibbons book? No, No, this one's
• 1:00:06
  kind of the same book as you just talked about, except for it.
• 1:00:07
  It's just a photo book taken in all these you know, Hammy Sager guys
• 1:00:14
  might be in some of the photos. I got a check. It's about
• 1:00:15
  kind of the you know, the Southern barbecue, how important barbecue is to
• 1:00:20
  blues and food and gathering. So it's just a bunch of photos of fairly
• 1:00:23
  obscure blues players playing at these juke joints and outdoor barbecues, and its raining
• 1:00:30
  as you just feel like you're in the South. I want a quick trip
• 1:00:32
  to the South, pour yourself a drink and flip through that book. Right,
• 1:00:36
  it's pretty cool. Yeah. One of my all time favorites on the
• 1:00:37
  list, Phil Collins not dead yet Love Phil Collins. Yeah that was a
• 1:00:42
  good book too, man. Yeah, the idea he was such a druggy.
• 1:00:45
  You're an alcoholic, I hadds. Yeah, you always seem like upbeat,
• 1:00:50
  happy, the jokester, and you realize he's gone through some some bounts
• 1:00:53
  of depression. Yeah, hard to handle by former Black Crose drummer Steve Gorman.
• 1:00:59
  Have you heard the new Black Crow songs? I have awesome fingers are
• 1:01:04
  good, But I miss him, man, I miss him. You're right.
• 1:01:06
  I was gonna say it sounds doesn't it's just the brothers. I think
• 1:01:09
  maybe the bassist from the original lineup is there, maybe one of them from
• 1:01:15
  Yeah, but he's like Steven Adler where like he's there's got that kind of
• 1:01:19
  swing or messed up thing that just sounds like early Black Crows. Right,
• 1:01:22
  you can't kind of replace right, this is you have a book on your
• 1:01:27
  list. I'm so glad you mentioned this because this is one that I got
• 1:01:29
  years ago and I got a ton of great information on zz Top front.
• 1:01:32
  The band's Roady David Blaney put out a book, Sharp Dressed Man, zz
• 1:01:36
  Top behind the scenes from Blues to Boogie to Beards. This is from way
• 1:01:39
  back in nineteen ninety four. That's a great book. It's an awesome book,
• 1:01:44
  and Disney does not want you to have it, so I guess Hyperion
• 1:01:47
  went out of that's a subsidiary of the Disney books and it only had a
• 1:01:52
  very short run and zz Top tried to get it kind of squashed. I
• 1:01:58
  was thinking, Yeah, I was wondering how they responded. If you find
• 1:02:00
  it, well, they don't really talk about it. They kind of don't
• 1:02:04
  acknowledge it because if you read it, if you can find it's AO book
• 1:02:06
  if you like Zzy, topic kind of tells about how that kind of came
• 1:02:09
  kind of what it is behind the scenes, right, But there's there's I
• 1:02:12
  think the probably the biggest sore spot for the guys in the band was the
• 1:02:15
  Eliminator album and who gets songwriting credits? Right, because he was talking about
• 1:02:21
  I can't remember the guy's name, but there was a guy that came in
• 1:02:23
  and really helped to form these songs and the sound of the Eliminator album,
• 1:02:29
  if I remember correctly, I think that was Yeah. And they kind of
• 1:02:34
  introduced Billy to the Linn drum machine. Yeah. And then when Dusty and
• 1:02:39
  Frank kind of came back in there they hear like an early mix. They
• 1:02:44
  were like, that's not me because it was obviously a machine, right,
• 1:02:50
  And they all were very upset by that until they started cashing the checks from
• 1:02:54
  Eliminator. Yeah. But then and also I think there's a guy who didn't
• 1:02:58
  get credit for some of the songs. The guy who kind of engineered it
• 1:03:01
  all. I can't remember his name, but it's in the book. And
• 1:03:04
  yeah, he kind of feels like the forgotten piece because he kind of introduced
• 1:03:08
  that kind of synthesizer drone effect that kind of holds the glue on all those
• 1:03:14
  eliminator hits like legs and stuff like that. Right, Slash's memoir titled Slash
• 1:03:19
  Dave Grohle's first book, which I believe is the storyteller Tales of Life and
• 1:03:22
  Music. That's the one you're talking. Okay, that was good, and
• 1:03:25
  you're about to start a book on cheap Tricks early years BJ Cramps. This
• 1:03:30
  band has no name. He was on the podcast A phenomenal book. Yeah,
• 1:03:35
  that's what maybe get it? That episode made me get it. I'm
• 1:03:37
  a huge gea. I didn't know the book was out until I heard that
• 1:03:39
  episode. So thank you. Started reading yet I have not. I'm going
• 1:03:43
  to start it now. You're gonna love it. It right here behind me?
• 1:03:46
  Yeah, all right, books, Darren wants to read, but has
• 1:03:52
  it yet? You want to read one on CCR and you're looking for a
• 1:03:53
  recommendation. You can't go wrong with Fortunate Son by Fogarty. Okay, you
• 1:03:59
  can't think I'll pick that one up the man himself, John Fogerty. Yeah,
• 1:04:02
  book you would like to see written one on Kim Mitchell of Max Webster.
• 1:04:09
  That's a really cool I'm trying to get him to write it, are
• 1:04:14
  you. I'm trying. It's not working. Yeah, He's His exact words
• 1:04:18
  to me is I'm not want to dish dirt on people. So if I
• 1:04:24
  took that out, probably no one would want to buy it. Kim Mitchell,
• 1:04:28
  if I'm not mistaken, go for soda, correct, right? I
• 1:04:31
  love that song. Yep. That was a song my local REX station used
• 1:04:34
  to play here here in Canada. He's, you know, his original band,
• 1:04:40
  Max Webster, is quite revered as per progressive art rock. You want
• 1:04:45
  to follow up to Red by Sammy? I think we all do. Man.
• 1:04:47
  There's a lot that's happened since twenty eleven to now right follow up to
• 1:04:51
  David Lee Roth's Crazy from the Heat of course. Yeah, a lot's been
• 1:04:56
  happening since. And of course Mikey's bio. I've heard that said so many
• 1:05:00
  times, and he's he's thought about it, but he said, just like
• 1:05:04
  Max Webster, if I'm going to put a book out. It's I'm gonna
• 1:05:06
  have there, But that's fine. Tell us about give us stories about the
• 1:05:11
  songs, you know, how they were written, and or just set the
• 1:05:14
  record straight to how many songs you actually played on that. People sometimes say
• 1:05:17
  that you didn't, right, because I think he's played great fun store tons.
• 1:05:21
  Yeah, yeah, that'd be cool. And now we can vote.
• 1:05:25
  We can add d l R book there we go. Yes, yes,
• 1:05:28
  great book Darren Paltritz, which you can buy at the Van Halen store.
• 1:05:31
  Wink wink. Nice and and and here's one you'd like to see a book
• 1:05:36
  written about how the Van Halen newsdesk came to be. Ah, nudge,
• 1:05:41
  nudge wink. When's that coming out? I told this to Jeff Housman,
• 1:05:44
  right, we had a talk recently and and he didn't say no, I'm
• 1:05:48
  gonna just say that. Okay, he got his attention. I said,
• 1:05:51
  let's do it man, Yeah you should. Yeah, that would be interesting
• 1:05:57
  because I'd love to know the history of of that, because some people even
• 1:06:00
  forget that it's it's a fan site because it's really you know, it's it's
• 1:06:05
  like like Darren Paltrick says, where the de facto source for news. It's
• 1:06:11
  like, yeah, it is quote unquote a fan site, but you know
• 1:06:14
  a lot of the source and you wouldn't know that by the terms of like
• 1:06:16
  like, I can't think of another fan driven site where it's kind of become
• 1:06:21
  the de facto go to. I mean, you guys kept the lights on
• 1:06:24
  in the and the flag going and all the quiet years, which is a
• 1:06:27
  lot of years. So thanks the book down. Rock Podcasts will be back
• 1:06:31
  after this. Okay, Brent, are you still there? We're still with
• 1:06:36
  us there, Yeah, I just woke up from my nap. I told
• 1:06:43
  you I could have gone out of a drake. No, no, I'll
• 1:06:45
  tell you what. There there's a there's a few books that were I love
• 1:06:53
  it all right, So Brent's picks you ready, Darren? Are you aware
• 1:06:57
  of these at all? This is? This is some of them I've perused.
• 1:07:00
  I've seen the shelves, all right. James Maynard keenan of Tool,
• 1:07:04
  a perfect union of contrary things. Yeah, you know the interesting thing.
• 1:07:10
  So I've seen Tool once live and not necessarily my style of music, but
• 1:07:16
  I was blown away in the live setting. And then Sammy actually interviewed him
• 1:07:23
  as part of his Rock and Roll road trip and like Maynard's got like he's
• 1:07:28
  got a winery and he's got a you know, a pizza oven restaurant at
• 1:07:32
  his winery and all this stuff, and I was like, this guy's interesting.
• 1:07:35
  And so I watched a few interviews on him, and right away I
• 1:07:42
  was like, this, this dude is like very intellectual, super interesting guy.
• 1:07:45
  And I also love the title of the book, A perfect Union of
• 1:07:47
  contrary things, Like it's just it's probably one of the best book titles I've
• 1:07:51
  ever read, the terc ever seen. Read his lyrics and you're like,
• 1:07:54
  yeah, this dude's deep, perfect sect. Yeah. Yeah. Did he
• 1:07:59
  do on stage? I don't know if he does his every tour, but
• 1:08:01
  it's like the light is shining down on him and he's on this separate part
• 1:08:05
  of the stage and he just it looks like he's not even human, like
• 1:08:09
  he's doing all these weird yes. So the tour that I the one show
• 1:08:14
  that I saw that tour, they had him on a riser kind of behind
• 1:08:18
  and to the side of the drums, with a single blue light on him,
• 1:08:24
  and he was wearing like a tactical police gear and it was like he
• 1:08:28
  was moving almost like the Terminator. It was crazy super cool. Yeah cool,
• 1:08:32
  yeah, yeah, really really good book, like surprising, the stories
• 1:08:36
  and his upbringing and you know, some of his youth amazing. I didn't
• 1:08:41
  write down what year that came out, but not too long too, I
• 1:08:44
  got it right here. Yeah, okay, the same side there, while
• 1:08:46
  you look that up. Kurt Cobain, Serving the Servant by Danny Goldberg,
• 1:08:50
  twenty sixteen, twenty sixteen, Okay for that one. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:08:55
  Serving the Servant was really interesting too. You know, Nirvana not a band
• 1:08:58
  that I was necessarily a big fan of in their heyday, but have come
• 1:09:02
  to appreciate in later years. And what I learned from from reading this,
• 1:09:09
  uh, this book by Danny Goldberg is when he're Serving the Servant is amazing.
• 1:09:14
  So Kurt Cobain, actually I really got a sense of him as I
• 1:09:19
  think he was a very kind, old soul sort of guy. And you
• 1:09:27
  would you would never think that, you know, in terms of his persona,
• 1:09:30
  but he was a guy who I have come to learn heard deeply about
• 1:09:35
  people and the way people were treated, and especially groups that you know,
• 1:09:41
  might might be considered in the minority because of race or religion or something like
• 1:09:46
  that, and he was. He was like, I'm going to stand up
• 1:09:49
  for you when nobody else is going to stand up for you. And so
• 1:09:54
  I think he was he was much more of a I don't know if humanity
• 1:10:00
  is necessarily the right word, but he had a real compassion for people and
• 1:10:04
  sticking up for people that you know hadn't been treated very nicely. So it
• 1:10:10
  was kind of interesting to get that side of a guy that you you know,
• 1:10:14
  you'd look at him and go not not even in a million years would
• 1:10:17
  you think that, right, right, Yeah, And he was the conflicted
• 1:10:21
  part of him where so he did want to he did want to make it
• 1:10:25
  big, but that at the same time he gets he gets thrown into this,
• 1:10:30
  yeah, this spotlight that I don't know if anybody's been in that position
• 1:10:38
  before, since it was like no, I mean he was talking about it
• 1:10:42
  was like he was like some kind of God and he was just like,
• 1:10:46
  way too much for him to take. Yeah, totally, he he was.
• 1:10:49
  You're right, he was very conflicted, and there's there is some talk
• 1:10:53
  about that in the book where he's sort of like, you know, we're
• 1:10:57
  supposed to be part of this underground movement and we're supporting the you know,
• 1:11:00
  the kind of alt community, and there was a there was a magazine called
• 1:11:05
  pop Smear that came out, and you know, he was very loyal to
• 1:11:10
  you know, this sort of underground publication and all of that, and so
• 1:11:14
  whenever he was asked to be interviewed in the mainstream press, it bothered him
• 1:11:18
  because he didn't he didn't he didn't want that attention. He didn't want the
• 1:11:23
  fame and fortune of being a rock star. He tried, he tried to
• 1:11:28
  put the horse back in the barn. I guess you could say with a
• 1:11:30
  uteral, like, let's make an album that's not going to be pop at
• 1:11:33
  all and it still becomes huge. And I think at that point he was
• 1:11:36
  just like, ah, fuck man, yeah, I can't even you know,
• 1:11:41
  I can't even shake the you know, like he's he'd see all these
• 1:11:46
  high school football stars in in in the crowd. These are the dudes that
• 1:11:49
  beat the ship out of him when he was in high school. You know,
• 1:11:53
  now they're like, yeah, man, Kurt one hundred percent, and
• 1:11:57
  you look too. I mean, the the very short, like truly meteoric
• 1:12:01
  rise of that band and the short timeframe that they were on top of the
• 1:12:05
  world, but they they went from nobody to being one of the biggest bands
• 1:12:11
  in the world like that. There's a story I tell and I wrote about
• 1:12:15
  it on when I was working at radio, wrote a blog about it and
• 1:12:18
  New Haven back in ninety one. In October of ninety one, I think
• 1:12:23
  it's like a month before Smells Like Teen Spirit took off. They played at
• 1:12:29
  a tiny club there which is not even there anymore. It was called the
• 1:12:32
  Moon and there's like a hundred people in there. They were completely unknown.
• 1:12:39
  Nobody knew who they were outside of the like that fringe audience, the people
• 1:12:43
  that talk to each other and say, hey, you know, I heard
• 1:12:45
  about these dudes. They're good man, you got to go check them out.
• 1:12:48
  It's like a hundred people there. It's on YouTube, you can see
• 1:12:51
  it. And it's like within six months he's you know, he's playing.
• 1:12:57
  They were popular enough to be playing Arena is Yeah, mind blowing. It's
• 1:13:01
  just mind blowing. Dave Grohl kind of he was able to be level headed.
• 1:13:05
  I think in Chris Novasalik and Grol. You have his book The Storyteller
• 1:13:11
  on your list. Storyteller is incredible and not not anything directly to do with
• 1:13:17
  the book and in a different media. But I really I've never claimed to
• 1:13:24
  be a Food Fighters fan necessarily, but Dave Groll, I think, is
• 1:13:29
  another example of an incredibly intelligent person, a smart businessman, a good human
• 1:13:35
  I think, and his interesting story that kind of actually got me turned on
• 1:13:43
  to going seeking out the book. Well, somebody told me, and here's
• 1:13:47
  one for your listeners. Go search if you haven't seen it on YouTube.
• 1:13:53
  South By Southwest about maybe eight or so years ago, Dave Grohl was the
• 1:13:59
  keynote speed here at the south By Southwest event keynote address, and so there's
• 1:14:03
  a there's a video of it on YouTube. It's about forty minutes long,
• 1:14:06
  I think or something, and it is honestly probably one of the best speeches
• 1:14:12
  presentations that I've ever seen. It talks about how he first learned how to
• 1:14:17
  record music. And I don't want to give it away because you got to
• 1:14:21
  watch it to see the whole thing. But it just he recounts in his
• 1:14:26
  speech on stage at south By Southwest when he first learned how to put music
• 1:14:30
  together and record himself, and it just his whole speech is it's incredible.
• 1:14:35
  On YouTube, it's awesome. Yep, yeah, you just do Dave Girl
• 1:14:40
  south By Southwest keynote and it'll pop up. It's amazing. Tell me a
• 1:14:44
  little bit about this Alison Shaine's book on Your List, The Untold Story by
• 1:14:46
  David Desola. The interesting thing that I think he I listened to an interview
• 1:14:53
  with David. I think it was him and the Layne Stale, the singer.
• 1:15:00
  He wasn't doing hard drugs for a long time. It wasn't until like
• 1:15:05
  ninety three or something that he got turned on to it by somebody, which
• 1:15:11
  is kind of surprising. I thought he was a drinker mostly. Yeah,
• 1:15:15
  absolutely, you're right. And this book is interesting because it's kind of an
• 1:15:18
  account of someone who was, you know, sort of a friend of the
• 1:15:23
  of the of the band members and was kind of on the inner circle a
• 1:15:27
  little bit. It's a really good story of their early beginnings and their rise.
• 1:15:32
  And they're another example of a band that I wasn't necessarily a fan of,
• 1:15:39
  even when I saw them open up for Van Halen on the Run Awful
• 1:15:42
  Car Knowledge, to where I was sort of like, you know, these
• 1:15:45
  guys suck and why is this the opening band? And what is this?
• 1:15:47
  And then like two or three or four years later and subsequently, I've really
• 1:15:51
  grown to appreciate their music. Of course, Jerry Cantrell and Sammy are our
• 1:15:58
  friends, and he's been down to Cabo with the Birthday Bash and all that.
• 1:16:01
  Alison Chains has blossomed into one of my favorite bands, and this this
• 1:16:05
  story was I mean, there's some sad moments again because it's that rise to
• 1:16:12
  fame in the grunge era and not being able to handle it or maybe even
• 1:16:16
  want it. And Jerry Cantrell has said in interviews that Lane Staley is probably
• 1:16:23
  like the best singer that he's ever known, and like the voice, the
• 1:16:28
  guy's voice incredible, and you know, not necessarily the best technical singer,
• 1:16:35
  but his tone and the grittiness of his voice, it just like there's there's
• 1:16:42
  nobody that sings like Laide Staley. The guy's unbelievable. So this was a
• 1:16:45
  really good one because it talked about a lot of their early days and their
• 1:16:50
  evolution as young guys, and you know, even the the deaths that they
• 1:16:55
  went through with Mike Starr, the original bass player, you know, having
• 1:16:59
  dying from a druggle and Lane Staley dying from a drug overdose. It's just
• 1:17:03
  really kind of sad. Right, and they've done well with the new singer.
• 1:17:09
  He's not even new anymore, he's been there for a while. Yeah,
• 1:17:11
  he's incredible too. Ye what's his name, that's William de Vall.
• 1:17:15
  Well, yes, right, yeah, he's amazing. He pulls he pulls
• 1:17:18
  off some of the old stuff live like killer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:17:25
  Of course you got Sammy's book read on there. Yeah, so books
• 1:17:28
  on rock that you haven't read yet, but you want to Neil Pierrett ghost
• 1:17:31
  Rider, The Police, Walking on the Moon by Chris Campion, I want
• 1:17:35
  to read this one too. Love the Police. Yeah, Police incredible and
• 1:17:40
  a sting. I think is a fascinating human who again is like like not
• 1:17:45
  unlike David Lee Roth. I think it's incredibly intelligent, very well read,
• 1:17:49
  and just an interesting, interesting guy. And yeah, this is the I
• 1:17:56
  think this is. In the promo for the book, it says ambition brought
• 1:17:59
  the together. It also tore them apart, but not before they became the
• 1:18:02
  biggest band in the world in the first supergroup of the nineteen eighties. There
• 1:18:08
  isn't one bad album. They're all great, all every single Police album.
• 1:18:13
  So if you know it's too bad they couldn't continue, which Andy Summers said
• 1:18:16
  him and Stuart Copeland wanted to they didn't because Sting wanted to go solo.
• 1:18:23
  That's a bummer. But boy they went out on Top Synchroniation. Yeah,
• 1:18:28
  pretty good album, I would say, yeah, what a catalog? Absolutely,
• 1:18:31
  yeah, yep, yeah. Uh. There's some crazy stories in there
• 1:18:35
  two about just them getting into fights. It was just just the one was
• 1:18:40
  the one that Stuart Copeland, Sting and Andy could could talk like they they're
• 1:18:47
  a little more uh what's the word, I'm moving for experience like in music
• 1:18:54
  terminology, right, and Stuart Copeland wasn't, and so Stinging and Andy would
• 1:18:59
  purposely talk and say things that would kind of mess with them a bit.
• 1:19:05
  I mean, it was just like they did things just to just to poke
• 1:19:10
  each other, you know, and kiss each other off. Thee's a clip
• 1:19:13
  of them on MTV where it wasn't for fun. They were like they just
• 1:19:20
  started wrestling on the ground. It's like some outdoor festival. It's like the
• 1:19:26
  stories we used to hear of Eddie and Al when they were kids. They
• 1:19:29
  just end up having fisticuffs. Right. I get the feeling now all these
• 1:19:33
  years later that they are all friends. I mean they talk about that,
• 1:19:36
  but at the same time, they'll they'll all tell you if we get back
• 1:19:39
  in the room together again, if it's me, if it's staying Stewart Nandy
• 1:19:43
  back room together again, get ready because it's gonna it's gonna all come back.
• 1:19:46
  It's a fight. Yeah, it's a fight. That's The Police are
• 1:19:50
  definitely a band that I would love to see reunite for like, just do
• 1:19:54
  us one little tour a series of shows. Yeah, it's interesting Sting is
• 1:19:58
  going on on tour with a three piece and two other guys. So what
• 1:20:01
  does that tell you? Right, that's much like the Police books that you
• 1:20:06
  want to read or would like to see written it. And haven't the Ross
• 1:20:12
  follow up The Crazy from the Heat of course a book on the Cult?
• 1:20:15
  What a band? Yeah, The Cult is another one of my favorite bands,
• 1:20:18
  seeing them live a handful of times. And I think Ian Aspury is
• 1:20:24
  another one of those guys that I put in the category of I think he's
• 1:20:28
  extremely well read and a very very intelligent person. And I mean if you
• 1:20:33
  listen to a whole bunch of the Cult songs, like the album Ceremony is
• 1:20:38
  a great example. The lyrics on some of the tunes are just really really
• 1:20:43
  smart and super deep. And I just feel like that would be a band.
• 1:20:46
  You know, him and Billy Duffy, They they've stuck it out together,
• 1:20:49
  the two of them. So many bass players, so many drummers have
• 1:20:53
  rotated in and out of that band, even back when they were called Southern
• 1:20:57
  Death Cult in their early years. I just think fascinating. Guy, I
• 1:21:01
  just would love to hear something. And there's no books on them. Yeah,
• 1:21:04
  I thought, nothing that I can find. Nothing you can find.
• 1:21:06
  Yeah, he should write a book too, Yeah, yeah, that'd be
• 1:21:11
  a great read. And there's one. You said you want to read a
• 1:21:13
  book on Chris Cornell, and there's one I can recommend because I did interview
• 1:21:15
  the author. This is from twenty twenty. Corbyn Reef wrote a great book.
• 1:21:19
  It's called Total Fucking Godhead. That's the title, The Biography of Chris
• 1:21:24
  Cornell. Gee, I wonder what that's about. Excellent book. Excellent,
• 1:21:29
  Yeah, cool, Thank you for that. That's awesome. And when you're
• 1:21:31
  reading a book on rock, you're looking for life off the road, in
• 1:21:34
  business and in dealing with fame. That's what you're looking for in a book.
• 1:21:38
  So all right, guy, So where can people find the podcast.
• 1:21:41
  Where can people reach you on social media? Let the world know. Yeah,
• 1:21:47
  no, thank you for that. We're We're on primarily Instagram and on
• 1:21:53
  Facebook. Just at the bogus Otis Show. And you can get episodes of
• 1:22:00
  the podcast everywhere Apple Music, Spotify, pretty much any platform that has a
• 1:22:05
  podcast you can you can find us. Just to get on the Google and
• 1:22:10
  search up the bogus Otis Show. Yeah, Darren, how about you on
• 1:22:15
  social media? You guys want to get your personal social media sites or people
• 1:22:18
  can just reach you through the podcast. Yeah, come find us on the
• 1:22:24
  on the bogus Otis feeds for sure. You know, both Darren and I
• 1:22:27
  on on Facebook and Instagram are really active on there. We're always answering messages,
• 1:22:31
  responding to comments, and we just we should probably encourage more people.
• 1:22:35
  We don't write ever encourage people to send stuff, and they do, but
• 1:22:39
  we should probably encourage it more because we do monitor all the notes and answer
• 1:22:42
  and we'd love to hear what other fans I want to hear us go on
• 1:22:46
  about, right, like topics, right, I DA's like we have our
• 1:22:48
  own thing, but like a few times, people like you guys should talk
• 1:22:51
  about this. We're like that's a great idea. Oh yeah, in fact,
• 1:22:54
  you should come on to talk about it with us. Just just the
• 1:22:57
  episode that we did Eric with you. We when we did the Ranking of
• 1:23:00
  Balance. We've had a ton of messages and comments from people that just loved
• 1:23:04
  kind of hearing our ranking and sharing, you know, what they put as
• 1:23:09
  their their top songs off of Off of Balance. So it just spurred some
• 1:23:13
  really really fun conversation. There's no right or wrong, it's just what you
• 1:23:15
  like. Yeah, boy, I'm taking some heat. I was on in
• 1:23:19
  the podcast for Rock to talk about Van Hallen too rank the songs. You
• 1:23:23
  know, I'm gonna listen to that. What I had Somebody Get Me a
• 1:23:26
  Doctor kind of low on the of the list, and they're busting my stones
• 1:23:30
  on that one. Yeah, they're just like, how could you possibly have
• 1:23:34
  that? I think I had it like something no right or wrong. Yeah,
• 1:23:40
  but if it's Somebody get Me a Doctor with Michael Anthony singing lead vocals,
• 1:23:43
  then it's it's ranked higher right the time. Do you guys know any
• 1:23:46
  any guests that you can tell us who's coming up? Anybody do you have
• 1:23:51
  in mind? Uh? Specific guess nothing yet, but we can tell you
• 1:23:59
  dare can we we can talk a little bit about season four as something kind
• 1:24:01
  of cool brewing away today right. In fact, today was a big breakthrough
• 1:24:05
  about that. So go for you telling you tell the man. So in
• 1:24:09
  the in the big picture, we just wrapped up season three of the show
• 1:24:13
  where we had Dino McCord as a guest. He's the lead singer of a
• 1:24:16
  band called Red Voodoo out of Sacramento, and Samy's kind of been a bit
• 1:24:20
  of a mentor for for these guys in this band, kind of helping them
• 1:24:24
  along and you know, bringing them on. They've played at the CANTEENA,
• 1:24:27
  They've done a couple other little private gigs where Sammy's showed up and supported them.
• 1:24:31
  So we wrapped season three chatting with him, good, good young guy,
• 1:24:35
  who's you know, trying to keep rock alive, just like Dirty Honey
• 1:24:39
  and some of those other bands out there, and so and a one hundred
• 1:24:44
  percent yes, thank you. And season four we're about to kick off.
• 1:24:49
  And what we're going to do is, you know, here in a few
• 1:24:54
  months, on the eve of the Best of All Worlds Summer tour, we're
• 1:24:59
  going to theme all of season four around uh guests and topics and things that
• 1:25:05
  connect back to this summer tour. So we got a few cool plans in
• 1:25:11
  the works. There's a few guests that we're chatting with that we haven't we
• 1:25:14
  haven't firmed up yet, but season four basically is going to be dedicated to
• 1:25:19
  the big theme of this this summer tour. With with Sammy, I'm so
• 1:25:25
  glad you mentioned that. I can't believe anyone ask this is there's one song
• 1:25:28
  that you hope to hear on this tour, like one Van Halen song from
• 1:25:30
  Sammy's era that you'd love to hear them play live that that he hasn't,
• 1:25:39
  whether it be on his own or even with with Van Halen. I'm going
• 1:25:42
  back. I'm going back to our balance ranking. It's got to be for
• 1:25:45
  me, it's feeling feeling okay, okay, Yeah, that would be a
• 1:25:50
  great pick, Darren. Mine's maybe controversial coming from a cobo host of a
• 1:25:56
  Sami Hagar podcast, but this is a I love a song where Sammy if
• 1:26:00
  you want to go have a beer and relax and rest up for the second
• 1:26:03
  half of the show, I would love to hear inside and have it just
• 1:26:06
  be a jam or they just jam out and have like nose Jump comes up
• 1:26:11
  and they all just take some time to jam that tune out right cool screw
• 1:26:15
  around. I have two I'm gonna pick one hard rocker and one ballad,
• 1:26:18
  and I know the ballad will. I doubt it's gonna get played, but
• 1:26:21
  feel so good. Oh killer, be awesome. I don't think they ever
• 1:26:27
  played it live. And I'm to this day, I still remember my friends
• 1:26:30
  in high school saying no, no, they played it. I don't think
• 1:26:32
  they've ever played that live. And Judgment Day. Judgment Day would be awesome,
• 1:26:36
  man, Yeah, great choices. I feel like that's the opener before
• 1:26:40
  the lights come on, it'd be Judgment Day. Kick ass right the lights
• 1:26:44
  are still dark, Yeah, that would be cool. All right, guys,
• 1:26:47
  thanks so much for being on and uh, well Eric, I got
• 1:26:49
  a question for you though. Man, we got to ask you something.
• 1:26:53
  Man, Oh we're switching. Well, you have I have a lot of
• 1:26:56
  the books I've been reading latelies because I've been following your show, listen to
• 1:26:59
  your podcast, so I love I love the show man, So thank you.
• 1:27:01
  But of all the books that you've read, like what's your favorite?
• 1:27:05
  You have the list of a couple of really top favorite books. Oh wow,
• 1:27:11
  yeah, favorite? Just look over at do they have to be van
• 1:27:15
  Haler or not van Halem? What do you think Brent van Haler later or
• 1:27:18
  not? It's wide open. Yeah, give us your favorite. I mean,
• 1:27:24
  just just one that you really loved, let me do you and this
• 1:27:28
  would be like ones that were featured on the show or not. Man,
• 1:27:30
  I'm just curious what you read because I love all four of the Kiss books.
• 1:27:35
  Each member that put up, love that one, love that series,
• 1:27:40
  I should say. But I'm just thinking, I know there's one I'm gonna
• 1:27:45
  go with, you know what, I'm going to go with, an obscure
• 1:27:46
  one that I highly recommend everybody read. Okay, and this is like kind
• 1:27:51
  of out of left field, but so you know the song Chris Isaac's Wicked
• 1:27:57
  Game, right, Yeah, Okay, I'm gonna give I'm just gonna throw
• 1:28:00
  this out there because it really all of these books are just I always find
• 1:28:06
  something in each and every one of these books, and these guys work so
• 1:28:10
  hard. And but there's a there's a book called Wicked Game, the True
• 1:28:16
  story of guitarist James Calvin Wilsey. Michael Goldberg wrote this book, and if
• 1:28:24
  you don't recognize the name James Calvin Wilsey. You have heard him. He
• 1:28:29
  does the guitar work on that song. He's he was Chris Isaac's guitarist and
• 1:28:33
  here's that really guitar work on Wicked Game. And he struggled with drugs and
• 1:28:43
  his story is just fascinating because it's one of those what could have been,
• 1:28:48
  you know, all these musicians had such respect for him, but he ended
• 1:28:54
  up, you know, one of the casualties of drugs, to the point
• 1:28:58
  where he was sleeping out side of a record producer building, like literally sleeping
• 1:29:04
  on like cardboard, and the owner of the place came out and was just
• 1:29:11
  like, you know, I'm sorry, you gotta leave. You know,
• 1:29:12
  we can't have you sitting down here. And then he says, I'm sorry.
• 1:29:15
  He goes, you know, you're so and so right. He said
• 1:29:17
  her name, Yeah, she you know because I remember, you know,
• 1:29:21
  I worked with you for a little bit. She's like, didn't recognide you
• 1:29:26
  know, I'm sorry. You know what your name James, James Calvin Wilsee.
• 1:29:30
  I was with Chris Isaac on Wicked Game. And the woman said it
• 1:29:32
  was like, holy shit, you know, sad, very sad, but
• 1:29:39
  Goldberg just goes into this guy's life from childhood till right until the end,
• 1:29:43
  and it's just an amazing story. It really, it's a sad story,
• 1:29:46
  but it's just one of those books that I'm kind of like, Well,
• 1:29:49
  I was championed the underdogs, and this is a guy who could have been
• 1:29:54
  so much. He put out a couple of solo albums are just phenomenal,
• 1:29:57
  phenomenal. I'm in I read that. That's how cool? Amazing? Yeah,
• 1:30:01
  thanks man, that's but I mean, like I said, I mean,
• 1:30:03
  there's so many books now that I've read that Cheap Trick one is is
• 1:30:08
  definitely a must read. Definitely. Yeah, I'm excited. It's pretty securely
• 1:30:12
  right because what ends when the band kind of forms as we know it?
• 1:30:14
  Right? Right? Yeah, it's like really early days, right, And
• 1:30:17
  let's hope Greg Runoff's book it follows through and there's a movie on the book.
• 1:30:21
  You guys don't want this? Yes, Yeah, that's amazing. I
• 1:30:25
  contacted Greg and asked if I could play the part of Marshall Burrow. He
• 1:30:30
  said he said he'd think about it. Yeah, what can I get a
• 1:30:32
  roll? What do you think? Who should I play? That's what you
• 1:30:40
  know I should have I should ask for That's what I should have done.
• 1:30:43
  I'll just be like one of the roadies Eddie Anderson. There you go play
• 1:30:45
  that role testing, testing sibil and sibilants. Okay, guys, Mike's working
• 1:30:51
  all right, guys, Thanks so much. Man. I look forward to
• 1:30:54
  hearing the next episode. And hey, anytime you want me back on,
• 1:30:58
  we'll talk. We'll talk Sandy and Daniel many times. One hundred percent.
• 1:31:06
  That's it. It's in the books. H