Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Tales Of Apple Records & Psychedelic Feasts: Barry Greenfield's Journey [Episode 292]

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Tales Of Apple Records & Psychedelic Feasts: Barry Greenfield's Journey [Episode 292] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On this episode of Booked on Rock, he was offered
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: a deal with Apple Records, toured with John Lee Hooker,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: recorded an unreleased masterpiece at RCA Studios in Hollywood, had
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a very psychedelic Thanksgiving dinner with Mike Nesmith of The Monkeys,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: all of these incredible stories of more with musician and
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: author Barry Greenfield. We're totally bummed rock and roll.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, I leave you you're reading. Little Hands says
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: it's time.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: To rock and roll roll. I totally booked. Welcome back
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: to book Don Rock. I'm Eric Senich. This episode's guest
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: is Barry Greenfield. He's the author of My Journey to
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Blue Sky. Barry, thank you so much for being here.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: It's a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Let's start with your love of music. You write in
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the book. Quote Saint Thomas Aquinas, and renowned Italian philosopher
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: from the Kingdom of Sicily twelve twenty five to twelve
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: seventy four, explained that there is a first cause or
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: prime mover that is the origin of everything. Just discovered
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: my first cause of music in nineteen sixty three while
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: listening to a transistor radio in our Salisbury kitchen. Take
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: us back to that moment and its importance.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: When you live in Soldier, Rhodesia and it's nineteen sixty two,
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: you get no rock and roll, you get white country music,
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Eddie r and Old Patsy Climb, the Andrews Sisters.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: But every Saturday from twelve thirty to one, twelve ety
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: noon to one, there was a one hour gift a
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: rock and roll show in Rhodesia, and the last song
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: they played on that half hour segment was always the
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: number one song on the BBC. And I would stay
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: glued my radio every Saturday, drinking in the energy of
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: that new music. And then one day, it must have
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: been in the early part of the year, Please Please Me,
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: was number one, And like so many millions on the planet,
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: when the Beatles hit, it's unimaginable to someone your age
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: to imagine the landing of that.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: And when it landed, it just changed me.
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: And it's all I sort of thought about the next
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: five decades. I know that Billy Jowell and I know
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: that Springsteen would probably echo that, because there was a
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: certain shouldn't say quah that those four lads brought to
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: the table that was new.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Good timing that I'm wearing my Beatles shirt today. I
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: decided to wear that for this. But yeah, so many
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Billy Joel Springsteen, so many will tell you it's either
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: hearing a Beatles song on the radio or seeing them
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: on Ed Sullivan in February of sixty ninth.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: Nineteen sixty four, they were on this one and I
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: wasn't here. I was living in Durban, South Africa at
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: that time, so I didn't really have a visual connection
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: with the Beatles. Mine was all oral. I didn't really
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: see them or understand what they look like. I saw
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: a hard day's night.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Before we get into the stories from the book, tell
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: us about your career as a musician.
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Well, I guess I should begin by saying, whenever I
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: get asked that question, I always qualify it by saying,
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: I'm not really a musician.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I'm a songwriter, because that's where my head is.
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: I listened to these Beatles songs and luckily a few
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: flights up for me. In a high ez in Durban,
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: there was a gentleman who was in a band called
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: the Deans, and his name was Color Horowitz, and he
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: played rhythm guitar, and I went and bought a guitar,
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: and my family gave me the fifteen dollars I needed
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: and I didn't have a clue.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: I'm very very on musical Eric. I had trouble tuning.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: I had trouble working out chords, Hence I became a songwriter,
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: inventing my own music. But he taught me the chords
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: to early songs like for Your Love and I Love Her,
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: and that led to me learning songs which I never
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: was satisfied with. So I started writing my own songs.
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: And then I won the battle with my parents to
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: leave Apartheight and come to Canada at sixteen. It took
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: a year of solid negotiating and debating, saying.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: We have to get out of this place.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: It's not right, and we came to Canada and that's
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: when the world exploded, and the number one song that
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: week in Canada when I got off the plane was kind.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Of a drag by the Buckinghams.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: From there on, I just got more and more into working.
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: I believe that you have to work. There's a great
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: line in Inglorious Foster's where Brad Pitts says the other fella,
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: how do you get to Carnegie?
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Who all will you practice? And I'm a work. I
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: work at what I did.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Your song New York Is Close Tonight became a cult
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: favorite and solidified your reputation as a poetic voice in
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Canadian music. What inspired the song and the lyrics to that?
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: I was in a basement of a friend Harvey is
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: a basement in Kislano, a hippie area in Vancouver in
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: nineteen sixty eight. I was seventeen and I always played
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: guitar for these guys. That's what I did. I was
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: the guy paid the guitar. So I was going through
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: a magazine and I saw a full page ad. It
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: was a Life magazine, and it was a full page
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: ad of a light bulb, and that's all it was.
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: And underneath the light bulb it read New York is
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: Closed Tonight, and it was I believe, not certain, but
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: I believe it was about conserving energy. But I'm not sure,
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: but I know there's a songwriter. And you can read,
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: as you do many books by the authors, they find
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: songs in the air, and I found this one on
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: a page, New York is Closed Tonight. So I wrote
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: thirteen verses and it took me an hour. And there's
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: about pollution, in New York, and my bass player was
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: also the journalist at the local, the biggest newspaper in Vancouver,
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: the regular newspaper, and he interviewed Bo Diddley and Bo
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: Didley was playing in Vancouver. Bo Didley, he asked them,
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: if you listen to this tune New York is Post
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: Night that Barry had demoed. Bo Didley loved it and
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: took it to New York and gave it to a
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: guy called Fred.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Allett, A H. L. E. R. T Jr.
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: Who was Birdbacherack and Hal David's publisher, and he fhoned
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: me up, and after six months of saying no, I
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: said yes, and I recorded the song begrudgingly.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: And it's one of those songs that has legs.
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: And I got an email yesterday from a gentleman I
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: never met, who said, you can't believe that I live
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: in Vancouver. Still this has always been his favorite song,
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: And that happens many times, many times, but a few
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: times a year.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: How great is that? Though?
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: It's unbelievable because it's all I want. I don't want fame.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: I don't want you know, I don't want fame. I
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: just want to write songs. And be able to share them.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: And here I am still doing can it's still selling
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: out and still writing. I mean I wrote new songs
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: this week. I mean, you know, I don't quite When
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: I'm dead and gone and I look back from up there,
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: maybe I'll understand it. But I just love writing.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just that creative release, that's what you need. And
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: then if it connects with others, hey, that's even better.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: And I was very lucky that I've always attracted the top.
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: Like when you're working with Backracking, David's publisher and usual manager,
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: it's an easier route because they have connections and all
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: you do is sit back and say okay or no,
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: whichever one you want to say, and it opens doors.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: So in my fifty years of flogging songs and trying
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: to get myself noticed, I've always had small s success,
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: but never biggest success.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: And so well, I think George Harrison said fame and
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: money can ruin creativity, Yeah, and I think what he
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: means by that is, of course, once you get into
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: that stage where the record label's expecting you to come
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: up with a hit, expecting you to look a certain way,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of pressure and it can take away
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: from the creative vision that you.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Have, especially if you allow it to.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: If you allow it to exactly because I was just
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I'm watching the Grateful Dead documentary. Finally after all these years,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: what a long, strange trip it's been. And when they
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: were recording their albums, they would say to Warner Brothers,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: take it or leave it, this is what we want
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: to do, and they would because they would say, I
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: don't know what can we do with this? There's no single. Hey,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: we stand our ground on that, but that's easier said
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: than done.
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: I saw The Dead with Garcia twenty twenty five times,
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: and they are that is an inspiration to how to create.
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: It's not about trying to write it. I've never tried
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: to write a hit. I've never tried to write a
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: radio song. It's trying to write something that satisfies what
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: you feel about its subject. And Graham Nash said that
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: a successful song is when you write a song that
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: the listener thinks is about them, relates to and that's
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: always my goal to One of my new songs is
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: called Invisible Baggage, and it's about an.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: AA meeting or an NA meeting.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: Or a cancer meeting, about people in the round room
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: sitting on hard chairs, and I've never been to any
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: of those meetings, but I wanted people that had been
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: to those meetings to feel that.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: I nailed it.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: And I hadn't shared this song yet, but that's my
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: goal always is to write something that is felt personally.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: Does that extremely well, as Paul Simon, with songs like
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: Homeward Bound Everybody understands the loneliness of the Road and
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: American tune and something So Right That is a genius song,
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: but he takes a long time to do it. They're
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: not like the vomit songs like nowhere Man and songs
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: that come out quickly.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Some songs are like Da Vinci's. They take a long
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: time to paint.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: What's behind the book title, My Journey to Blue Sky.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: I've done eleven albums, but the only one we really
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: talk about is the one I did in seventy three
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: in Los Angeles, which is called Blue Sky. So my
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: name is Greenfield, so I had an epiphany and a
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: holiday in Greenfield Blue Sky. Rica liked it, but to me,
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: the book title is about my year from the book
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: starts when I'm thirteen and ends when I'm seventy four,
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: and basically, I'm on, what's that something you just used
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: to the Grateful Dead?
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: What a strange what a long strange trip it's been?
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: Okay, well, what a long, strange, beautiful trip it's been.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: Because it's always surprising. I'm not attached to money or fame,
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: so I don't get disappointed. And blue Sky is nirvana,
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: Blue Sky is joy, Blue Skuy is playing with your grandchildren,
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: Blue Skuy is kissing your wife, Blue Skuy is enjoying
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: that spaghetti meal, Blue Skuy is driving on the open
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: road in the outback. You know, it's whatever makes you
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: feel connected to what you are, what you seek, and
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: Blue Skuy you never You're always seeking it. So my
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: journey to book.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: On rock podcasts will be back after this.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: When when patience patients, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: There are five acts you say, who stood atop Everest
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: for you in terms of your development, So I want
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: to talk about eats just briefly. You know what it
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: is that inspires you about these particular bands. The Kinks
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: is one.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, start with the because of the volume and because
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: of the lyric, because of Ray Davies's understanding of the
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: English culture.
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: He was unique. Ray Davies is one of the best.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: The Hollies because of Graham Nash and his phenomenal harmonies
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: and pop ditties. Look through any Window, It's just a
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: marvelous song written by my really good friend Graham Moveman.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: The Beatles because of the work ethic. George Harrison to
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: me is the outstanding beetle. George Harrison to me is
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: the human beetle. John Lennon is Da Vinci. He's an
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: alien and he's so uniquely talented. It's phenomenal at the
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: top of the hill standing the shoulder of giants, as
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: is McCartney. Ringo is a very very solid drummer and
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: never got tired. Bob Dylan because Bob Dylan is the best.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: He writes words that we all wish we could. There's
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: one I've left out and it's definitely.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Not Oh, let's see Dylan, The Hollys, the Beatles, the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Who and the Kinks.
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: Pete Townsend, right, the best line from Pete Townsend was
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: we were three geniuses and a lead singer and they.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Though he's a brilliant songwriter too, just like.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: Ray Davies and Pete Townsend, like they're like two ends
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: of bookends. They're brilliant, they're knowledgeable, they're calm, they're articulate,
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: they're not ego. Ego is you know when Quincy Gerones
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: wrote on the studio entrance for We Are the World,
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: leave you egos at the door.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: I've produced a lot of records and what a common
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: thread is.
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: After about an hour or two hours, maybe three hours
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: of listening to these bands coming through these really expensive speakers,
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: they start comparing themselves. Oh this sounds like the who Oh,
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: this sounds like the Beatles.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Oh this sounds like you too, But it don't.
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: It sounds like them, and you can get your ego
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: is so easily fed in this business. You know when
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: I get notes about Blue Sky, still get notes every
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: year about my wife.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Was dying of cancer and Blue Sky help.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: I get all those kind of priceless things, but it's
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: never really about me. It's about the song, and I
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: was given the song. I write hard songs, but the
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: great songs sort of come to you, like Van Morrison says, well,
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: Michael Jackson said they sort of channeled through you, and
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: that they come very easily.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Bob Dylan's interesting in that he doesn't want to reveal
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: what these songs are about, which leads to so much speculation,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: so many books written about him, classes where people study
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: his lyrics as an artist. Do you prefer that way
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: or are you okay with telling people this is what
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the song is about.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: Absolutely the second one. I'm a storyteller. After every song
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: I do in concert, I talk about it. That's how
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: his book came about. People would leave concerts and they'd
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: say to me, Oh, I just love your music, But
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: the stories, man, you know, and then because they come
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: from the heart, and storytelling, you know, it gives people comfort,
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: you know, sitting around the campfire. Watch Apalyptica, the Mel
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: Gibson movie, how the wise owl is telling the story.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: To the troops. You know.
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: Storytelling is kind of what you do in this podcast.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: You allow people to storytell and you guide it. You're
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: like the guy in the back of the motor boat
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: with the rudder. You're the rudder guy and I'm the
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: guy paddling.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I always find with these every single interview I do,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I always at least is how I feel. It starts
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: off good and just gets better as it goes along
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: because you become more and more comfortable with that guest
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: for or I don't know. I just I'm always I
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: always start off a little little stiff and then all
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: of a sudden just loosened up by the end. And
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I almost wish I could start the interview midway through
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and when I'm feeling loose. But maybe people don't pick
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: up on that. That's your own internal analyzation of your craft, right.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: I think you that nails it. First of all, I've
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: a lot of your inter use, so I've never noticed that.
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: But also, you know, when you leave the station, the
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: train goes slowly and then it goes faster until it
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: gets to speed. And if it started off fast, it
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: wouldn't make sense. So you go on a fly and
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: you're flying from New York to LA and it's five hours,
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: and you sit down next to this person and you
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: don't say nothing, and then three minutes later you say
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: where you find you, And then an hour later you're
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: deep into conversation that you get very often anywhere else.
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: That doesn't happen in a plane or a train or
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: an airport, where you know it's a very short thing.
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: And if you're smart enough not to try and exchange
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: emails and just keep that two hours three hours as.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: A gem, what you learned. That's what these interviews are like.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: But with you, it's a little bit different from me
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: because I've been connecting to you for a few weeks,
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: especially the last few days, all of the one you
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: did with the music publishers last night. That helps me,
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: so I don't feel like I'm futting with the stuff
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: if you are.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't that interesting? But that's each individual person in
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: their creation. There's I think we are a little too
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: hard on ourselves and that's what makes it difficult to
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: share it with everybody. But there's also part of me
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: that you probably have as well. There's also a part
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: of it like, yeah, to hell with it, you know,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: this is what I'm gonna this is what I do.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put this out and let's just see what happens,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: because otherwise you'll never put it out and you'll never
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: share it with anybody if you get too not insecure,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: but you second guess yourself too much. Just put it
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: out there and share it because you're only human, You're
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: not perfect.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and see where it lands.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: But also what you and I have in common and
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: people that take risk is courage. Now when you walk
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: into the fire. When you write a book, you know
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: it is this book courage to be honest and be
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: There's flaws in the book.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: I'm not perfect, and that's what makes.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: It a readable book, because you know the dude is
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: expressing himself honestly.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: I had journals. I spoke to people that were there
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: when I could. It's alive and I remember the things vividly,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: even though the famous people don't remember. I know that.
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: I spent three hours with Harry Nilsen. But if Harry
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: Nilson was here today, he'd say, I don't remember.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: That, but you remember it well. I'm going to ask
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: you about that story too. That's one of the many stories.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Let's get into some of these great stories. At seventeen,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: you traveled from Vancouver to London. Did you grow up
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: in Vancouver. I'm trying to remember.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: I'm a road rat. I was born in Manchester and
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: at age seven my father transplanted the family into Rhodesia,
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: which became Zimbarbwe. At twelve, I had animalists, analysts, horribilists.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Whatever the right phrase is.
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: Worst year ever I was beaten and beaten, beaten, So
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: I said to my parents, are twelve, I'm going to
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: go to live in England with my aunt.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: That's in the book.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: I go over to England by myself, which was phenomenally scary.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: I got lost in early airport. It's a very scary moment.
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: Talk about courage, yeah, yeah, And I've always had it
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: and it is it was critic I don't know how
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: my parents let me.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: They're not alive today, so Kon asked them.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: But and then I spent two and a half years
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: in Manchester and that's when this Holly's Kink Schoo thing happened.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: And that's what I did, was they became my family.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Because my mom and my sister and my father were
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: nine thousand miles away.
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: It's not like in this day where you can skype
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: and you can text. You were alone and I cried
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: a lot, but I had music a solace. And I
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: don't only listen to music eric. I studied the music
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: and I realized that my generation, and all day and
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: all of the night were energetically difficult to get to.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: Like safe bands like The Searches or the Mersey Beats
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: or Scylla Block We're okay, but not for me. But
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: when you go to the risk bands, the ones that
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: go fade away who you know they took the F
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: word and took a chance. When you go to the Kings,
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: we talk about dead Ann Street. You know, when you
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: go to Dylan, who is like even the President of
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: the United States has to stand naked sometimes Like these
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: are things that made me realize, Hey, songwriting is not
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: about can I dance with you honey, or marry me?
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: Or I love you? Or your eyes make me sing?
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: It's about the street. And as Neil Young so wise,
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: he said, I'd rather walk in the gutter than in
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: the middle of the road. And what he means by
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: the gutter is go to places like Ray Davis went
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: with Lola. I was listening to Rocking in the Free
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: World by Neil Young a few days ago. It's not
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: only the lyric that's right, it's the guitar that's right.
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: And people criticize Neil Young for not being a great
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: guitar player.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: He's a great Yeah, I disagree with what you say that.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's great and he kicks ass. And you can
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: listen to my records till you're blue in the face. Eric,
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: You'll have no idea what I'm like live live. I'm
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: nothing like that. I'm much more like people that go
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: on the edge with their music. Townsend comes to mind,
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: a c DC comes to mind.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Petty. Petty is a.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: Phenomenal American talent. Phenomenal as is Lindsay Buckingham. Lindsey Buckingham
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: on stage is all a flu with macarr apart from
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: the drummer and the bass player Stevie Nicks's fluff.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: But Lindsey Buckingham.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Is killer guitar, absolutely highly underrated.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's his personality. His ego is so huge. You know,
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: he's not much of a sharer. He's more of a
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: look at me kind of guy.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he wants to be in charge from more.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: When you share, you get more. When you listen, you
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: get more.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: Even if or not as good as you there, if
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: they're ten percent of the pie, it's still better than
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: your pie. I really believe in collaboration. I'm a huge
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: fan of that.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: People that are better than me, people that are as
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: good as me, people that aren't as good as me.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: All work well.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Booked on rock podcasts will be back after this. The
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: future is so going back. You're seventeen years old. You
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: traveled from Vancouver to London to play your music for
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: John Lennon. This is nineteen sixty eight. What you were
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: offered was not what you expected. Share this story and
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the decision you made and how you feel about it
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: all these years later.
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: Okay, watching TV, I remember the day, but it was
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: May nineteen sixty eight, probably rather fourteenth or the twelfth.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: You can look it up in Wikipedia.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: John Lennon and Poul McCartney food to New York and
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: they did the Tonight Show to sell pitch Apple Records.
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: So they walk out through the Burins and lo and behold,
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: Johnny Carson.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Is not there.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: Joe Garigiola a baseball catcher and a drunk through Lebanka
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: waiting for John and Paul. And I've since read that
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: they were very, very disappointed at that, and they had
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: every right to be. And that's almost disrespectful to have
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: an act that size and not have Johnny there.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: So the interview is twenty two minutes long, two eleven
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: minute segments, and it was pretty bayl stupid questions like
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: how are you going to follow Sargent Pepper. But when
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: John was allowed to speak, because he did the most speaking.
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: He said, listen, we here because we're opening a company
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: called Apple.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: We want you to come from all over the world.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: That was his phrase.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: Bring your songs, bring your poems, bring your plays. There'll
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: be no one there with suits to meet you. Come
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: to Apple, and we'll be here.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: To listen to your music, listen to your poems, listen
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: to your plays.
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: So I had eight hundred dollars in the bank, which
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: was my first year university money. I was still in
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: grade twelve, and the courage to overwhelmed. And I don't
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: think it's arrogance. I think it's just I don't think
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: I felt I was going to be accepted. I thought
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: why not? So I bought a ticket and I flew
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: over to England almost days later and got off the plane.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: It was three in the afternoon. I walked to Apple Records,
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: which was Apple Music, which was threesaddle row.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: I looked at the door.
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: I went back to my eight pounds a night bedsit
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: and I slept. Got up the next morning at ten o'clock.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: In the following morning, I walked into Apple and there
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: was up the stairs just like you see in the film,
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: and up the stairs inside and there was this enormous
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: run down British office building with this ginormous oak desk
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: at the top of the stairs. And behind this oak
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: desk was a young girl my age I was seventeen, some.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Tring shoes about that. She said hello, can I help you?
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: And I said yes, I'm Barry Greenfield. I've flown from
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Canada because John invited me on the Tonight show. And
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: she had no idea what I was talking about, so
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: she said, you have an appointment? Said no, and she said, well,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: have a seat.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: So I sat down there and I waited maybe twenty minutes,
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: and the then twenty minutes, John and Yoko walked up
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: the stairs and John was dressed identical to the Hey
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: Jude album.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Cover with the black hat and the black clothes. Yoko
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: was dressed in white. And I said the same thing
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: that John, the murdering chapman said, good morning, mister Lennon,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: and he said to.
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: Me hello, and then she didn't smile. She just kept
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: on walking. And they went into Alan Klein's office and
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: they started smoking.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Galois cigarettes which nearly choked me, and talking, and then
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: out from the back comes Derek Taylor, and Derek Taylor was.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: The Beatles publicist, and he bent down it in me
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: and I'm sitting in it. They had two church pews,
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: they weren't any benches or church pews, and he said,
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: can I help you? And I said, told him the
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: same story. He said, well, John's kind of busy. Can
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: you play them for me? He said, you have a
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: cassette to leave for John? And I said, oh, no,
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: I've never recorded these songs. I never played these songs
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: for anybody. And I think he thought it was kind
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: of funny, and I guess he was thinking, is this
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: guy weird or he seems nice? So we walked through
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: Apple and it was winding halls, all mtry offices, nothing
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: there yet, The picture and the Greek pitcher was still
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: on the floor, hadn't been hung yet. And we went
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: to an office and I played Derek ten songs and
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: he said the F word, these are incredible. You're incredible.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: Come back at ten o'clock tomorrow. So I came back
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: ten out tomorrow and John and Derek said, we're going
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: to do two of these songs we've picked with this
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: new Girl and Loves for Young and Old, and we're
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: going to take you to EMI and you're going to
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: demo them. So I thank them both went off to
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: EMI sat on a stool and the guy who produced
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: this session was Larry Page from Larry Page Records, who
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: also managed the Kinks. He was tough and he just
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: said do it again and again and again. And I
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: did the two songs and then I left it. Came
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: back the next day and John said he wanted to
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: release him as a single. And I said, excuse me,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: and John said, we're going to do this, these two
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: songs for a single. We're going to do Love Us for
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: the Young. No, no, it's the A side with this
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: new girl as.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: The B side.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: And I said, well, who's going to sing them? And
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: he said, well, you're going to sing? You sing him great?
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: And I said no, no, I'm not singing him. I
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: don't want to sing him.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: He said, oh.
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: So I went away and I walked the streets of
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: London and I thought about it and thought about it.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: I phoned my mom. My mom didn't take a stand.
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: She said, do it if you want Berry and I
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: didn't go back to Apple because I was scared to.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: I went back to Ardmore and Beechwood to Chris Webb,
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: who was the publisher who I met the day earlier.
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: We set up the EMI thing, and I told him
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: the truth that I wasn't ready. I can hardly too
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: my guitar. I had never played in public. I had
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: never signed for anyone but my sister. It's ridiculous. It's
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: not what I came for. I came to sell my
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: songs so that people on Apple could sing them. And
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: Chris Webber like looked at me, not really bewildered, but
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: kind of surprised.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: That you were. I understand.
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: And the last question you asked me, how do I
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: feel about it today?
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: How do you feel about that decision all these years later?
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: The right decision? Absolutely one percent?
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: Man, Mary Hopkin, I don't want to be Mary Hopkin
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: Jackie Lomas who bad fingered two suicides. I sent it
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: an email to you. What Livy DeVito said. You know,
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: it's terrible business. You've got to be strong. I mean,
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: I'm in the business. I do it all the time.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: I'm talking to you. You got to be You've got
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: to be strong.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: And I was a kid.
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: It was like they should have said, you know, go
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: away for a year, write some more songs, come back
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: in three months. You know, they should have thought what
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: they were looking at a guy who couldn't tune his guitar.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you were just hoping that they would take the
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: songs you old songs.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: I want the same today.
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: I've had about twenty five covers, I've had three movies,
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: I've had lots.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Of accolades, I've won awards.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: But I've never got what I really really want, which
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: is a song, a big song in a film. And
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: at seventy four, that's still my goal and I kind
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: of don't know how to do it.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Booked on Rock Podcast, We'll be back after this.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Come out, Come out, wherever you are.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Barry Greenfield is the author of My Journey to Blue Sky.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: You tour with my favorite blues artist, John Lee Hooker.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: This was in nineteen seventy two when your single New
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: York Is Close Tonight was atop the charts. You played
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: thirteen co headlining shows with him. Tell you about the
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: story about after the shows, because he went through some
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: rough times as many of the artists, did you know
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of black artists. The blues artist Chuck Berry,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: famously known for getting ripped off by promoters as a result,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: there was something that he would have you do after
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: each show in his hotel room and.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: I first met John. He very quiet, not sure, but
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: by the third day or the second day, he knew
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: he could trust Barry, so he insisted that we travel together.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: He was the king, and he insisted that we stayed
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: on the same floor. So every night he got paid
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: in cash. Because you don't pay John Lee Hooker by check.
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: You don't promise you're going to pay John Lee Looker,
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: you pay him by cash. I got paid at the
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: end of the tour, and I got paid him full.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: I was not readed off biting get paid at the
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: end of the tour. I got a pdem every day,
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: just like John and the band did. But he allowed
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: them to pay him after the gig, so he was paid.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: His individual share was cash, and I don't want to
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: say the amount because I'm not one hundred percent sure,
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: but I think it was one thousand dollars a night,
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: but I'm not really sure, and a lot of it
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: was in ones, so we'd sit on his bed.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if he could count.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: I've never really understood how well he read or if
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: he could count to one thousand. I wasn't really sure,
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: and I had to do it in front of him.
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: One to ten twenty thirty sixty, one hundred and forty,
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: one hundred and eighty, and I had to do it slowly.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: And this happened thirteen state, thirteen times.
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: He was never ripped off by a dollar, and he
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: seemed to really appreciate that, and he let me into
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: his life.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: He was only one step from slavery his parents. I mean,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: you know, he lived the real blues and he might
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: be a favorite blues artist. The guy is one hundred
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: percent pure. When he hits his guitar, it's like watching
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: no one else hit the guitar. He's not a flamboyant player,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: he's not bb king. He's served rumble, ramble, ramble, and
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: it's just I watched him every night and loved it.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Eric Hendrix had a great line which I've always stolen.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Only two kinds of music, very good music and bad
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: music's breaking the blues. It can be reggae, can be folk,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: can be classical, can be baroque. See the good or
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: is bad.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: It's what he could do with one cord, one court.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Just what you'd mentioned in that book. Yeah, it's been imitated,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: but never matched.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: Naturally, he'd sit on the chair, the same kind of
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: chair I was sitting on today a hard chair, and
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: he looked at the orders with his hat on and
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: he growled.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: He didn't really talk, and he knew how to set
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: the amp. And it was pure, and it was real,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: and it was true, as New York Clothes says, it's real.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: It's true. New York is closed to night. It's real,
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: it's true.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: It's John Lee Hooker, you write quote. A producer is
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: one of the key elements in the recording process. That
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: role can add or subtract. I learned that lesson in
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Stockport in nineteen seventy with ten CC tell us about that, Well, that.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Was a story where the producers failed.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: I have stories for producers succeeded, but the ten sec
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: one failed. I flew back to England after the Apple
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: story a year later to see if I was dreaming.
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: I didn't go to London. I went to Manchester and
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: I thought it would be easier to find publishers and
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: matched less competitive. Manchester is now the second city in
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: England after London. Back then it was just coming out
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: of it. It was nineteen seventy. It was still struggling
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: back like Liverpool. And I got on a bus to
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: go to see publishers with my guitar, and the bus
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: was empty upstairs except for one girl.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: And I walked up to the girl and I said
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: hello to a you.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: Musician, and I said, no, same way I said to you,
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: I'm a songwriter. Anyway, To cut a long story short,
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: her boyfriend was Laul Cream, and low Cream was the
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: rhythm guitar player intensec. But that band in those days
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: was called Hot Legs and they had a big hit
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: con the andatole Man. And I was really impressed with
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: the anatole Man, a very great brave song. So she
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: gave me Law Cream's phone number. Now that wouldn't happen
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: in twenty twenty five, but this is nineteen seventy, where
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: people were still kind and trusted each other, and you
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: didn't have an agenda. So I phoned and Law was cold, arrogant, cool, distracted,
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: didn't want to help. He said, that's not my job.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: Phone my manager, and he gave me the manager's phone number.
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: Now the manager was Manchester, Brian Epstein. He managed Freddie
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: the Dreamers, he managed Herman's Hermits, went on to manage
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: Tim Rice, Andrew weber Ken CC and others, and so
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: I phone this dude up and he answers the phone,
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: mind blown that I'm phoning my home and I said, Hi,
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: my name is Barry Greenfield. I'm from Vancouver. Lollkeep loll.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: Gave me your phone number.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I'm a songwriter and I'd like to play my song
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Steven see what you think? Where are you?
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm on Sedrick Road in my Anticedes house. He said, well,
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: your twenty five minute walk from where I live. So
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: I left the poor part of Manchester, walked for twenty five.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Minutes to the rich part of Manchester, which really blew
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: me away to know it existed that close, and into
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: a very very large house to meet Harvey Lisberg.
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: Harvey Lisberg, I played half a song. He said, you
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: sound like Kat Stevens and I've heard of Cat Stevens
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: and I said oh, and he said, hold on a set,
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: and he picked the phone and he phoned Graham Goulman
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: and he said, Graham, I've got this kid from Canada
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: here and he's fabulous.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Can you come by and listen to him?
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: And Graham said, well, I'm on the way to the airport,
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: but I'll stop him. So Graham loved what he heard
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: and he said to me, write a hit, So he
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: went away for ten days in the holiday to MAJORCA.
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: I wrote Sweet America, which I think is one of
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: my best songs. And he came back and we went
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: in the studio at NCC and they just didn't really
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: listen to me.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: They didn't really connect with me. They were smoking, they
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: were lazy. We made a record. The A side, Sweet America.
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: Was okay, and the B side was disaster, and I
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: was devastated that they tried so little. And it wasn't
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: that they weren't talented, it's just that they didn't care.
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: So the record was released and lo and behold, this
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: crappy record became the BBC Record of the Week, the
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: most played song in England that week. The week before
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: it was Another Day by Paul McCartney. The week after
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: it was Ticket to Ride by the Carpenters. So that
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: shows you how lucky I was to get that slot.
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: Now how much Harvey's power had to do with that acceptance,
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: we'll never know. But music business, as Libby de Vito
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: so wisely told us, is not honorable.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: It's not good.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: I didn't like it. I didn't like working with Tennesseec.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: I loved Graham. He's my friend to this day. I
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: think he's a very talented man, obviously, but they wanted
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: me to sing, and I'm you know, he'll we go again.
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: So flew back to Vancouver and the song faded Away.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Book on rock podcast, We'll be back after this.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Short pause, hold your breast for the dynamic.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Duo Loose Guy the album let's talk about that now.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: You recorded that at RCA Studios in Hollywood nineteen seventy three.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: You worked with some world class musicians, including guitarist Larry Carlton,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: who's famous for working with Steelee Dan, bassist Joe Osborne,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: and drummer Jim Gordon, who is on so many legendary
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: recordings and co wrote Layla from Derek and the Dominoes.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And his name comes up so often, and I'm not
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: surprised because he did so much work. Tragically, his life
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: took a dark turn. Joel Salvin wrote a fantastic book
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: on him called Drums and Demons. I had him on
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: an amazing drummer you worked with him. The production was
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: overseen by David Kershenbaum, who went on to work with
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Duran Durant Tracy Chapman, Joe Jackson, Laura Brandigan, Kat Stevens,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Brian Adams, Super Tramp, Elki Brooks, Tory Amos and more
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: So tell us about that experience and seeing your songs
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: come alive.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: I had one names that Kashia Momless, and that's Bob Dylan.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, I got.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Him record in Canada.
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: New York is close to night all because of Fred Allen,
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: and it broke all kinds of records. So Fred parlay
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: that into a deal with RCA, and RCA gave us
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: a twenty thousand dollars US advance. I got ten, Fred
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: got ten and a chance to make an LP in
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: Los Angeles. And I said, if it, I'm going to
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: do it. If tensec a thing, I can do it.
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: If John Lennon thinks I can do it, who is
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: Barry Greenfield to say I shouldn't. What's the worst that
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: can happen. It's not my money, it's their money. So
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: they treated me like oh. They flew me down to
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: Los Angeles. They had a black limousine waiting for me
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: with my name. As I got out of the car,
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: out of the plane, Berry Greenfield couldn't believe it.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: I was ready to get a bus. I can go
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: on the limousine and the next day I'm seeing an
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: RCA interviewing producers to produce my LP. There was three
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: guys that they brought for me to interview. One of
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: them was Paul Rothschild, who did the Doors, and I
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: absolutely love the Doors, especially La Woman. Paul Rothchilds's best
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: piece of work because he used a real bass player,
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: not the left hand of Manser. Didn't like him.
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: I thought he was there for the paycheck. I didn't
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: think he really wanted to know about my songwriting. Didn't
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: seem right. The second guy, I can't remember, but the
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: old man. The second guy, he was really really famous.
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: But play the truth there I can't remember it was
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: didn't mean anything to me, didn't feel a connection. But
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: then walks David Kersherbohm. David Kersherbohm was the bottom of
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: the totem pole. And if David was sitting here, he'd laughed.
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: Because it's true. Because David and I still talk. And
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: David said, I'm the one that gave.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: Him the break.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: He had done nothing, he had never produced a record,
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: and I picked him because he sold himself to me, just.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Like you he's real.
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: I only like real. I don't really care about credits.
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: I just like real. So I said, I want this
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: guy to do it. So they believed in him and
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: they gave him was called double scale. So most people
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: that get to make a record don't get double scale.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: They get single scale, and they get really good guitar players,
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: really good drummers. With double scale, you get Larry Calton,
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: Jim Gordon, Joe Osbourne, Larry Mahobrat from Frank Sinatra. And
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: because you're an RCA, when you phone Larry Calton, he'll
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: take you seriously and say yes because he must turn
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: down ten for each twenty excepts.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: So the key to the success.
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: Of Blue Sky and Blue Sky Is a good record
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: to this day is all these components. But there's one
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: I really have to bring to the four that wasn't
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: a producer, and that's the arrangement. And the arranging for
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: this album was Jimmy Haskell. And Jimmy Haskell did The
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: Magnificent Seven, did Moon River. He was the guy from
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: the fifties and sixties that did lots of really really
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: great records and won Oscars and Grammys.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: So this is how IC do it. They phone, Jimmy.
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: Haskell up and they say, we want you to arrange
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: barriers music. Can he stay with you? Jimmy says sure.
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: I go to Jimmy's house and for three days I
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: live in Jimmy's house and we spend twelve hours a
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: day for three days doing the twelve songs for Blue Sky,
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: and I kind of write a note of music. What
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: do you want, Barry, he's an electric piano. I'm an acoustic.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: I like that. I don't like that. And when there's
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: one that so he improved them, just like Kushienbaum improved them.
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: And not with a small eye, with a medium to
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: a large eye. He made them better.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: So we go in the studio and I don't know
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: who these guys are. I don't know the names, Larry Carleton,
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Jim Gordon, but there's a circle and apart from Jim
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Gordon and the other drum, we uses Russ Kunkle. We
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: use Russ Kunkel for the slow ones. For he was
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: from Carol King and James Taylor and Jim Gordon for
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: the rock ones. He's from Derek and the Dominoes and
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: other great bands of volume. And he's behind a petition
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: to keep the drum sounds, and they're in a circle
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: around me, and I don't have a guitar, and they've
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: got their sheet us with him, and I sing. As
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: I sing the song.
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: To these musicians, Larry Carton asked me to play him
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: the song the way I play it. He then copies
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: the way I play it, but makes it fifty times better,
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: but still the way I play it, but better. And
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: he's got a caravan of guitarist fifty guitarist, seventy guitarist
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: and a guitar tech. And by the time he finished
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: the first.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: Song, I can you believe it?
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: Like you know, like the sum of the pie is
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: equal to the ingredients of the pie, because if you
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: have organic blueberries and really good cane sugar and nice dough,
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: you're gonna get a blueberry better blueberry pie than if
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: you go to Costco.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: So that's what I had. I didn't have Costco. I
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: had parrots.
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: I had the best department store in my room, working
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: and without going into the arrogant side of town because
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: I don't want to.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: I don't like it. They liked me, so for.
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: Three weeks we worked nine hours, eight hours a day,
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: and then they look forward to coming to work, and
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: they look forward to making Blue Sky better because their
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: name was on it, and they weren't there for the money.
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: And Larry Calton became my friend, and Larry Carton became
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: my route to these other guys because I couldn't really
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: talk to Joe Osborne. Joe Osbourne was reclusive, He's from
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: the wresting group. He was quiet, he was didn't really talk.
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: So Larry could say in section A Joe and Jimmy
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: Hosker would do this too in section A bar thirty
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: two traveled a bit or hold it longer or coming
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: a bit later. And I didn't know what they're talking about.
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: I just did my best to try and sing to
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: these arrangements. And I did a rough vocal when they
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: played the band track, and then I did the lead
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: vocal when they all left and I sat by myself.
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: And another thing I should add, because it's important, is.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: I was in Elvis's studio, Studio B at RCA, Hollywood,
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: and my engineers were Elvis's engineers. Wow, so suspicious minds
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: or not, I don't know, but they were Elvis's boys.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: And I said to Rick rit Riggieri, I said, Rick again,
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: please don't take me the wrong way. They liked me.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: I said, Rick, where did Elvis stand? And he said,
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: Elvis always stood. Came in stood here, and I said, Rick,
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: I want to stand there. I stood in Elvis's the
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: same thing in Nashville where Dylan stood. I stood where
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: Elvis's stood.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's not important, It probably isn't important, but it
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: was to me, and I hadn't the microphone, didn't use
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Elvis's mic I don't think because my voice is different.
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: I'm not comparing myself to the king. Please don't think that.
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: But I did as much to get the lighting like Elvis.
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: Mus liked to which I did, and stood in the
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: same spot, and he said to me, Elvis never overdone.
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: Elvis did everything in one take, so if you made
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: a mistake or didn't like it, he didn't like the Beatles.
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: You know, Bar twenty seven cut George Wyman's cut, cut,
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: Cut cut today, it's insane, it's you do a nose,
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: It's ridiculous. We did it all in one take, So
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: all the vocals that you hear on Blue Sky, the
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: lead vocals are one take, because that's how Elvis did it,
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: and the album is magic. It just had his fiftieth anniversary.
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: It was never released the album. That's another thing we
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: should say.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's what terrible.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's the best thing ever helped me. Maybe it's
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: the worst thing.
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: You decide, Eric, But my manager, Fred blah blah Allett
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: phoned David Kirschenbrom or maybe phoned Don Berg him in
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: the president of RSA probably has said something. And I
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: don't know what it was, but I think it was
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: he wanted a whole bunch of money up front.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: That's my only guests if that's true.
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: And Dunberg come, the president of RCA, went to David
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: and said, film Berry and tell Barry, we're not dealing
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: with this guy.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: We're not doing it.
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: Tell Barry he's got to leave them, and we'll give
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: him the lawyers and we'll set it and we'll get
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: him a manager and we'll release Blue skym we'll do
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: a second album.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: David phoned me up at home.
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: I lived in an eighty dollars a month basement suite,
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: one room with a bed and a sink toilet, and
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: I picked Fred Allot over David Kirshienbom because Fred Allen
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: published Burt Bacharach and Hal David and I had mononucleosis
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: when I made the decision, and I learned something from
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: my beautiful wife Laurie, and that is it's meant to
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: be the way it's meant to be. So do I
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: have regrets about leaving Apple.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: No. Do I have regrets about leaving tenn CEC. No.
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: Do have regrets about leaving David kushienbom Sbolutely, I think
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: it was the wrong decision. I should have stayed with RCA,
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: So wind the pock Ahead. The record was never released.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: It was the No. One. You can get it on
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: discogs and you know.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: And now it's on Spotify.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, the deluxe solution. I put it out.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: You put it out.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: I've got control of it from RCIA. Don't wanting to
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: do it, don't even remember me. And I remastered it.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: I added a lot of demos and plet the one
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: that did with Apple with this New Girl, and I
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: put it out and it's doing well. It was just
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: what's the word when they put.
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: You in a Hall of Fame wing of the Canadian
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: Museum of Music, and it was described as one of
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: the most outstanding Canadian LPs ever recorded.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: That's beautiful and one of my favorite tracks is the
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: first one starts right away with on the Road to Safety,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: which I love.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: You know, brother, Can I tell you the story about
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: that show?
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: By the way, I'm going to put a link to
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: the whole album in the show so people can live.
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: Let people listen to it, because it's his seventies record
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: analog with the greatest musicians in the world. I mean,
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: he listened to Larry Carlton's work in Steely Dan and
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: everybody else, the Crusaders, listen to his.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Work on my stuff. It's on New York's Close to Night,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: the Minute and a half tagged with Larry solo to
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: me is with the Price of Mission.
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: So David KERSHIMHM plays me on the Road to Shambala,
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: the song that Three Dark Knight recorded, written by B. W. Stevenson,
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: And he said, I'd like to put this song on
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: the record. And I said, David, I don't understand what
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: it's about. And shambalar I think means Nirvana on the
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: Road to Blue Sky, I could have called my book
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: on the Road.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: To Shambala, now that I think about it.
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: And he said, well, can you write a song as
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: good as this, and I said, let me see. I
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: went back to the hotel that night, came back with
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: on the Road to Safety. And it's the one song
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: that I felt was rushed in my writing. I recorded it,
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: didn't think much of it. I had none to do
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: with a song order. But how many times have I
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: heard what Eric said, my favorite track on that album
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: is on the Road to Safety.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: It may be my favorite.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Well, many people say that, many many people, And.
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: What they say about it is Russ Kunkle's drum intro
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: just gets them and the tempo and it's a fun
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: song and it's about I swear I've got it beaten.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: I know I've got it beaten. I know I'm on
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: the road to safety because he's his heart is broken.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: And I love songs where the guy lies to himself,
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: I'm okay, I'm okay.
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: Now I'm on the road to safety. Tempted by the
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: Fruit of another. There's another really clever song. And I
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: was listening on the other day where it was Blondie
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: song with the reggae song I'm Tiah.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: You're lying to yourself.
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: You know I'm number one, I'm going to be number
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: You know that you're never gonna be, but you write
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: a song as if you're going to be because it
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: might make he come true.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: And that's on the Road to safety.
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: This poor dude singing this song has a broken heart,
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: but he's on the road to safety. He's not he's
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: heading down this tunnel like we all do when you're eighteen,
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: nineteen and or fifty three or twenty six and your
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: heart's broken, be male or female.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: The song that I really like on that record is
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: one that might be dated. I'd like your opinion on it,
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: and that's the Lady.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Which one oh for the Lady track two, Yes, I
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: like that very much. That's the follow up to on
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: the Road to Safety that follows it.
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, I think that's that electric piano sold on there
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: by Larry Mahobrak. Was all done in one take free.
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: The Lady to Me is about my mom. Not that
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: my dad was bad to my mom with a capital B.
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: But he wasn't a good husband.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: He wasn't attentive, didn't really listen a lot of things
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: that a lot of husbands get accused of doing. And
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: I wrote that song for my mom, and when I
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: played it for my mom, she cried. I was eighteen
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: took it to Kirshenbaum, took it to the arranger Jimmy Haskell.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: I said I wanted a long solo in it. They
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: let me do whatever I wanted to do.
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: They made it six minutes long, stem as long, and
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: we started to record it and I was starting to
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: do the vocal when the president, Don Burg Khanmer, who
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: was vice president of RCA became president, walked to him
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: with pizza.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: He walked to me three or four bucks of pizza
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: for the band.
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't need because I'm singing, and he said, I'm
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: only staying for five minutes. Boys, he stayed for three
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: hours because of free The lady took me that long
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: to do the vocal until I got the take I
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: liked and the harmonies.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: I'll never forget the president of RCA saying he really
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: liked it. Every song on that album is a part
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: of my soul.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: And just to give listeners an idea of just how
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: successful this album was right out off the bat and
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: could have been each number fifty four with a bullet
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: on Billboard in the US market, RCA released the single
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Suite America, and then the first week number.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: Fifty number one.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: They said headed for number one.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: That's why they told me that's talking not it was
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: fifty four to the bullet. I think it's good. I
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: don't know if it's rare.
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: I mean, the Beatles went number five with the Bullet,
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: but I'm not the Beatles. So it was a new
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: artist and it was being played right across America.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: As a new artist. Fifty four Yeah, really good?
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, thank you?
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Now, I mean it's not like you had the cachet
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: behind you that people knew who you were. So the
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: music spoke for itself.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: Again, Larry Carton, Jim Gordon, Jimmy Haskell. So the song
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: was about America. It's about Vietnam, and it had this
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: line street America, sing about America, then fall down on
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: your knees and cry. I love Americans. I have many
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: American friends. I've recorded in America, I've done business in America.
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: But I'm not a fan of the gun. I'm not
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: a fan of it in tolerance, I'm not a fan
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: of racism. So the line of the song is falled
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: down on your knees and cry. Whether that was the
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: key line to making the song get accepted to fifty
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: four with a Bullet or its anchor.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: We'll never know.
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: But the second week, when they told me they expect
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: to go into the top twenties, John McCain and one
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: hundred and eleven hundred and fifty other Hanoi Hilton prisoners
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: came back from Hanoi and the song, because of the
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: line fall down on your knees and cry, was pulled
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: from America Radio.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: Coast to coast.
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: Kershenbaum, Don Burra Khandler freaked out, flew me to Los Angeles.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: The next day.
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: I spent two days on the telephone speaking to radio programmers,
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: I know, you know, radio programers saying, you know, hey,
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: it's not an anti American song. We don't care Verry,
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: We're not playing anything like that. We've got John mccainebat,
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: We're not doing this once again, is Lorry Wright. It's
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: meant to be the way it's meant to be. And
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: then fred Alla made his claim, I want this, I
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: want that, I want this, I want Barry gets this.
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: Barry gets that, I get this. They said, if you
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: and I walked away. Here I am fifty years later,
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: as happy as can be with my life, but wondering
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: would I have had the album? Is I had dinnery
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: of the Night with friends who talked about Piano Man
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: and Piano Man album. In some ways it's Billy Joel's
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: best work. Maybe the Stranger is equal. But would Blue
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: Sky have been Baker Street? Would and Blue Sky have
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: been Piano Man? This was before James Taylor, it was
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: before cast Evens, it was before Carol King. Would it
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: have become a singer songwriter record? I don't know, and
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: you'll never know, and you can sell it's really good
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: and it could have. But there's so many variables. But
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: the one thing you can't deny. It's fifty four with
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: a bullet and RCA believed it, and they tried it
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: with Emmett Rhodes.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: They tried it with B. W. Stevenson after me, and
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: they kept on trying it and they never quite got it.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what if they if they followed a second single
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: on the Road to Safety?
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: Yes, Fred Allen, you know you have a glass of water.
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: You put a drop of mud in that glass of water,
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: you can't drink it. And that's what Fred Allen did.
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: He got greedy. Business is uh, cutthroat.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: But it has happened so many times. Your story is
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: so familiar A lot of line up just so.
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I don't regret. I mean I regret well
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: not knowing would have happened. But it could have gone
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: either way. Eric, I mean, it could have gone the
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: way of Batfinger with two suicides exactly. I'm a very
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: fragile guy.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not like I mean.
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: I think Springsteen is a really really tough guy. I
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: think John Annon was very very soft, and I think
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: he struggled. I think with FAMI help, I need somebody, help, help,
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: please help me. You know, McCarney is cool. He wore
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: off a Dutch back to him with that. Say anything
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: you want about him. Laugh at his eighties records, he
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: doesn't care. Laugh at Press to Play, he doesn't care.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally understand. I'm the same way. I tread
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: carefully with everything that I do because it's very easy
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: to trigger. I think maybe the creative people I find more,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: we have these active imaginations and it could take us
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: down some pretty It could take you to some great
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: places creatively, but if it could take you down a
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: dark turn, if you really you can overthink things and
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: it could take a while to get back on track.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: And I think that's with a lot of these fame
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: when you're younger seems great. Fame and fortune. Oh that
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: seems great, but there's a lot of pressure.
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, look at Away in Sys. I mean,
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: so they've got fifty million quid in the bank, so
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: what you know? He lost his brother and now they're
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: putting this megatory together.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'd love to have dinner with Janis Ian.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: I'd like to know what happened with if she wrote
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: a song called Act seventeen.
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: And then puff Now wasn't because she was gay? I
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: don't think so, but it happened with them. I wish
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: I was your lover. It's a very very cruel business.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: Booked on Rock Podcasts. We'll be back after this. Hey guys,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: thanks so much for checking out the Booked on Rock podcast.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: If you've just found the podcast, welcome. If you've been listening,
• 57:33
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• 57:35
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• 57:38
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• 57:44
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• 57:57
  Speaker 1: episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel it at
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back to
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: the show.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: Harry Nilsson. I printed off the Harry Nilsen take me
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: three minutes to read it?
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: For me to read it, well, that was my next question,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: because I.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: Make it a bit different. I could read what I wrote, sure.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: I recently yeah, and I recently interviewed Fred Mallin and
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: I think you did hear that episode? Yeah, producer composer
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: Fred Mallin. In his book, he wrote about an encounter
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: with Harry Nielsen did not go well. Nielsen in the
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: throes of his addiction and was pretty nasty to him.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: You have a Harry Nilsen story in the book. He
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: was great to you. You met him in Ringo Starr.
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: Very nice to me. And what year was Mullin's connection.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: That would have been? I want to say that's seventy nine,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: eighty eighty one maybe around.
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: That page, so that's six years after mine. And in
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: my story he's also abusing.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: So but what a talent I mean, Oh my god.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: It's a story. I'm told story.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: So Jim Gordon was on his album Too Yeah, and
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: his drumming on does he jump into the fire? Oh,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: jump into the fire. He ends that song. It's jaw dropping.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Jim Gordon is sitting on his drum kit.
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: There's lines of coke on Larry Nettell's piano, and Larry
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: Netviell is the guy from Brett.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: He's the guy that played the guitar solo in Guitar Man.
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: Larry Netchill is the guy that played piano to Paul
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: Simon and Garfunkle's Bridge over Trouble Waters and is angry
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: to this day that he didn't get arranging credit or
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: a part of the Grammy because Larry Nettell was a genius.
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: They had coke on the piano, the grand piano, and
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: the only one that did the coke was Jim Gordon
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: and Larry Nettele. So Jim Gordon goes over there, does
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: a line or two and says you won't want and
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: I said absolutely not. And he points to his watch,
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: obviously a Rolette or something of that help I don't know.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: And he said, hey, Barry Layla bought me this watch.
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: I said, pardon and he said, what you just said
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: he wrote the piano part to Laila.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, listen to how beautiful that is.
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that can't be what they had much to do
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: with the success of Leila.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: I've always wondered, but it shouldn't her beautiful.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: There's a chapter in that book by Joel Salvin when
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: he's in jail, prison, jail, whatever it was, where they
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: after he murdered his mother. It's just terrible to even
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: say it out loud, just to just to think of that.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: But he's in jail and he and they're in the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: music room and he sits down and starts playing the
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Leyla piano part. These inmates are looking like, oh my god,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: this is Jim Gordon. You know, he was just.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if he was six eight or six
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: four or sixty six. He was a huge man, good guy.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: He listened to me like they all did. He was
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: so kind.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: That's what's sad.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if he had, if he had wrestled those demons,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: had the right help, it would have turned out differently.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: I think money fame. If your listeners do, go to
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: your link and play Blue Sky on Spotify. I don't
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: have a favorite baby in the album, but New York
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: is closed. Tonight has an incredible drum part by Jim
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: Gordon top to tail and an incredible guitar solo at
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: the end by Larry Carlton, and probably my best vocal
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: and with a listener.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: So is it okay if I read this?
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Please do? Yeah? This is the Harry Nielsen story.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, this is the Meat and Potato is. So
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting in the studio. I walk into the studio.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: Blue Sky, and the signs all over the RCA building
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: Welcome Ringo, Welcome Ringo.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: Started running to the studio B and I say to to Kushimbrom,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: What's what's going on? What's going on? Bring a ring
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: a Ringom.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: Well, Harry Nilsen's in A. We're in B and Ringo's
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: coming to visit. So that's how the story starts. So
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: we're all waiting for Ringo. So it's eleven thirty am
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: and nature called. So upon walking into the toilet, I
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: find that I was not alone. Harry Nilsen was sitting
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: on a block leather stool next to the shelf that
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: ram below the mirror. He was smiling at me. Well,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: I'm a shy guy, and I froze in his right hand.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: He held a small silver spoon in his left, a
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: small plastic bag with powder in it. Well, that really
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: freaked very out. I had never been in the company
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: of a criminal drug and I'm not.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: The bravest of dudes, and I may be naive, but
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: I knew from watching the movie Circuco that bag was
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: not talcum powder. It was cocaine. And the small silver
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: spoon was my confirmation. Music industry reality one oh one, Hi,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: said Harry. Hello, I replied, I'm Harry. Who are you?
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: Do you want some?
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: A groupulated on me outside the building. No thanks, but thanks,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: I'd better answer, I thought, I'm Barry Greenfield. I'm working
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: in studio B I studied. It's always weave. When two
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: men chat in a bathroom, we both know that we
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: were there to relieve ourselves. Harry had different motives. Someone
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: can walk in, but it can still offer a certain privacy.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: Sometimes a brief, warm couple of sentences happened. So I
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: relieved myself. Then he filled his silver spoon and he
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: did it once in the left, once in the right.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: I washed my hands. I was not relaxed. Harry wanted
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: to talk, so me and Nilson chatted for ten minutes.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: It seemed unimportant that we were in a small corporate
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: men's watchroom. He looked just like Harry. He sounded just
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: like Harry. He was kind, friendly, open and normal. I
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: relaxed more. Things concluded with Harry saying, if you have time,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: come into A and help me with the mix. He
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: was gone, help him with the mix. I ran back
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: to be shared my story. Kershenbaum listened to my tale
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: and quickly emphatically said, go, go, go, go go. We'll
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: finish the accordion without you. That we're doing an accordion
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: part on Jack and Jill. Don't pass up to such
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: an opportunity, Barry. So I went to A and I
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: did not waffle. I knocked the door of.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: A like you.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: Do on a neighbor's front door. I walked in. He
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: invited me to sit in a large leather mixed chair
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: to his left. He spent two hours working on a
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: Harry track. I played with the game the eq the
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: auxiliary sends, the pan, the volume, the reverb levels. I
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: learned a great deal that day from Harry. Two hours
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: full of classroom. It was amazing hearing the great sounds
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: pop out of the huge speakers in a He was
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: an extremely talented player. He was extremely talented players in
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: the track, Harry told me recorded the song in London
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: and was joined by a close foreman, Ringo, Peter Frampton
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: and George Harrison, who played the cow bell. The names
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: he dropped made me shiver. I requested to hear the
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: cowboy park isolated George Harrison. Harry laughed and gave me
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: ten seconds. He would occasionally refresh his nose. Never seemed
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: out of control. Time flew by. I grew more at
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: ease until the world's axis reversed on its spin. At
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: two PM. The door swung open, and the magic of
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: that Thursday was about to dissolve In a nano second.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: In walk, Ringo Starr and Richard Perry, Harry and Ringo's recabucer.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: Back in the day, Ringo had a bottle of Jack
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: Daniels half full in his left hand. He passed to Harry,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: he took a chug, then to Richard Perry. He chugged too.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: I was not included. No one thought to offer the
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: kid a chug. I rose from my honored seat left
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: of Harry and went to the chair behind the original
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: seat sat empty Ringo and Richard stood. Harry was thrilled
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: at the arrival of his mates. It was so lovely
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: to see and feel. They chatted about the confusion in
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: the RCA parking lot. But I was ignored. I felt
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: like the invisible man. I was quiet, ignored, uneasy. At
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: long last, Harry turned to me and said, Richard Starkey,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: this is Barry Greenberg. I did not correct Harry's error.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: He repeated the same intro with Richard Perry Barry Greenberg.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: I was Richard smiled and shook my hand. Ringo smiled
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: and shook my hand. And that's where I'll stop. They
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: were both bigger than life. But I read somewhere where
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: Eric Clapton told a similar tale about he was known
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: as God for the small g in London, back when
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: he was Cream and the Blues Breakers, and wherever he
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: went he was like in awe put in all by people.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: But when he went there with George Harrison, which did
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: a lot, he too became invisible. Because when there's a
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: beadle in the room, I don't know how they live
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: with it. They lived with this in the sixty three
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: sixty four. Everybody changes.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: He's still Ringo he's still Paul, He's still George, but
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: you're not. You're in the company of a beadle. And
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: that's what happened. When Ringo walked in. Everything changed. You
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: could literally feel the molecules change.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: They see him and Paul all these years later, they
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: do seem very all things considered, being one half of
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: the greatest band of all time, pretty damn humble.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how they are able to
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: remain connected with mankind the way they are able to.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: It's just because they are royalty and they're still going,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: still going strong.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: And I don't know if it was twenty or twenty
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: five years ago that Ringo put down the bottle when
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: he walked into Studio A that day he had Jack.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: Daniels af drunk and did coke.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: And maybe Ringo is great today because twenty five thirty
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: years ago he went to a my song Invisible Baggage,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: And maybe that allows Ringo to be Richard.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: And it sounds like you're able to say no often.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: That was all around you, the temptation.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: Never I'm very timid man. I was at Rudge Stewart's
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 4: dropping the ink. I was at Rouge Jewart's house for
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: a party, and I thought, I'm at rudge Jewi's house
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: for party. I'm going to drink the brandy that he
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: drinks for was to get the name of it, but
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: very expensive brand, and there's lots of blouze.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: And all kinds of things there. And I got really
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: really drunk and realized it's not for me. I'm not
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: good with alcohol and drugs. I like being buried. I
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: had my problems, but those are not and I have
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: a deal with my daughter and my wife that when
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: I do a concert and it's not as good as
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: not better than the concert before I stopped singing. And
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: I did a concert two weeks ago and it's the
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: best one I've ever done. I'm doing another one in
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: Tobbonny do two a year, and it's enough for me.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: My voice is not lost a lot of his timber.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: It's gone deeper, of course, because age does that. But
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: I think that Paul McCartney has every right to ever
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: he wants to do at eighty three eighty four, and
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: if he wants to do three hour shows, and I've
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: seen six of them, god bless them. My wife crave.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: When McCartney came on stage.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: It was so emotional to be in the same room
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: and listen to Band on the Run and Lady Madonna
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: and the great songs of his catalog. When we lose
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: Dylan and McCartney, those the big two, and we will
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: lose them. Another one bites the dust be a different
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: planet for me.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: Booked on Rock podcast. We'll be back after this. I'll mean,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: there's like no way that we can just pause for
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: a minute.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: You guys just go home and do your stuff with
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: it tomorrow we can just like continue.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: You find the bookdown Rock website at bookdown rock dot com.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: There you can find all the back episodes of the show.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: We lit this episode in video and audio, plus a
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: video highlight and link to our YouTube channel. Links to
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: all of the platforms where you can listen to the podcast,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: plus all the social media platforms were on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: Also check out the Booked on Rock blog, find your
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: local independent bookstore, find out all the latest hot rock
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: book releases, and before you go, check out the Booked
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: on Rock online store. Pick up some Booked on Rock merch.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: It's all at booked on Rock dot com. Okay, one
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: last story I have to ask you about Thanksgiving dinner
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: with Mike Nessmith of the Monkeys and what was on
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: Netsmith's tray of Thanksgiving treats that took you by surprise.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: We will finish with this story.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: Another wonderful guy. I was VI's houts for Thanksgiving. Dinner
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: was nineteen sixty eight Thanksgiving and he was in the.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: Monkeys sort of. The TV show was over, but they
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: still toured. So I go to his house and we
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: drive up the driveway and there's a big sign by
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: his mansion do not leave a car and attend it.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: And there's a German shepherds running around the car parking
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: that was bigger than a building. Mike comes out and
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: this is the puddles must be shared. He was wearing
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: his green monkey too Thanksgiving me. That's something I've never
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: asked him.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: He took it off for a while, but he wore
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: when he greeted us, and he spoke to the dog
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: in German, and the dog sat down, and we got
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: out of the car and we had dinner. And I
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: thought it was his wife, but it wasn't. It was
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: his living girlfriend, Joanne. He wrote that great song. Her
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: name was Joanne, Beautiful song. His best song and we've
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: had dinner, which was turkey and broccoli and pumpkin pie
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: and very nice America everywhere America, salt and pepper, shakers,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: red white and blue stripes.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: Everything was nice. And then Mike was drinking wine and beer,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: and my friend Pete, who drove me there, he was
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: a DJ in America, was drinking wine and beer and
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: I was drinking tea and coffee. And then we go
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: in the living room and in walks Joanne with a
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: proper English tray, a wide one.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: Will you hold the handles like this where you put
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: the teapot the cups and if you go over in
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: his tea, But there was no tea on the tray,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: and there's no cups.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: There's no sources. It was like lines of pills, different
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: colored pills, and a hash pipe and a chunk of
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: hash and I don't know eight I can't remember ten pills,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: maybe six of each, maybe more, but lined up like
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: by someone who's like add.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: Like they had to do it properly in the right space.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: I noticed all that shit and he put it down,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: and Mike said, in his quote, it's time for dessert, gentlemen.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: Well, Pete said, no, no, not for me how to
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: stick to beer.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: And I said I could have another cup of coffee, please,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: another cup, And they lit the pipe. And even though
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: I didn't smoke pot or hashback then, I just always
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 4: loved the smell.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: It was never like an offensive smell to me.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: So there were.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: Room just filled the smeuntain room smell.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: And I learned later, but I'm sure it's true that
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: night that you get contact eyes.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: So I was high and there was a lot of
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: hash moke.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: They get filled in the pie and then they take
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: a pink bill and they discuss it. It was so weird,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: and I described it in the Book of Think like
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: two Italian chefs.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: That's something a Portuguese shift. Well, if we take and
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: they knew the names. If we take I'm making these
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: names up.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: If we take andropleine and melolene and wait ten minutes
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: and then take a doula data, it should be great.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: Oh my Mike, she takes an atropine and melopene, and
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: then ten minutes later this add lady takes the judola.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: But they never really got stupid. They just were normally.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: I guess Stone and he was so nice, and so
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: they did a lot of drugs. I didn't do any
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: He did a lot of drugs. And then Mike brings
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: out two guitars and he said, play me something. So
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: I played in New York's Close to Night and he
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 4: played me different drum and he played me Joanne, and
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: he played me some monkey songs and it went on
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: for an hour and a half. Then I taught him
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: some I remember. I taught him how to play play
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: with Fire the Stone song e Minor d c Affley.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: He was really happy to learn that. And then Peter
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: fell asleep on the couch because he passed out. Joanne
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: disappeared hours earlier. She was borne on her on her
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: own private high tied of talking about the Beatles and
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: the Kings and the Stones and the Hollies and the Foremost.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: And me and Mike went.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: Out to the pool and we were dressed in up
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: clothes who weren't going swimming. It was eleven o'clock and
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: he had two speaker chairs in there. And Eric had
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 4: never been to see love in Las Vegas.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: No, it's not anymore.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: If it ever goes inhere, it's beautiful, but it has
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: a chair you sit in with the left speaker and
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: the right speaker, and the music George Martin did for
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: the love mixes, it comes through blows your mind.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: I had my eyes closed and even watch sirt solatises
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: and music most time. So we had these two speakers
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: and he was he was raving about Paperback Writer, and
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: he played Paypack Writer.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: The single over and over and.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: Over again through these two speakers twenty times, twenty five times,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: and he kept them raving about Paul McCartney's base, and
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: Paul McCartney's base had been recorded differently for the very
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: first time on Rain and Paypeck Writer.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: It's done through an amplifier. And he kept on raving,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: and he kept saying how shit the monkeys were and
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: how much he hated their music, and how he was
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: going to go tomorrow to San Francisco and come back
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: with ten grand and how he didn't deserve it. And
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: I left it two in the morning after having the
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: most pleasant evening with a very talented man. And my
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: book is not a negative book. It's a pleasant read
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: because I kept out as best I could.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: I used the stories that brought joy to my heart
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: and my life. And it's called My Journey to Blue Sky,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: not My Journey to hell.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly, and there are more stories in the book, and
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: the book is out now. You can find it wherever
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: books are sold. Look for it at your nearest independent bookstore.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: If there's one nearby. You can find out if there
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: is one at booked on rock dot com. And if
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: it's not in your local bookstore, tell them to get
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: a copy of it. And where can people find out
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: more about your music, Berry, and all about anything else
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: that you have coming up, because you said you have
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: some gigs lined.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: Up, one gig in Vancouver.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: If you want to find out about Barry Greenfield, my
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: daughter built me a fabulous website, Barry Greenfield music dot
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: com has a lot of stuff. I've got maybe seventy
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: videos on YouTube. I love making videos to my songs,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: some of them with full bands.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: Some of them go back as far as nineteen sixty eight.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: Not the videos, but the music.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: The best place to start with Barry Greenfield is New
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: York is Closed. Tonight Blue Sky is the best album
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: I ever did because of the people on it. There's
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: a lot of songs like Invisible Baggage one, two three.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: There's a really good song on YouTube called the Beautiful Band.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: My tribute to the Beatles that I'm extremely proud of.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: And the other thing that I've done, if you're interested,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: is I spent a lot of time writing about Auschwitz,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: and I've written a documentary, a musical documentary about Auschwitz
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: that runs thirty.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: Three minutes long.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: And if anybody wants to copy of that on YouTube,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: you have to come to me Berry Greenfield at shaw
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: Shaw dot ca. That's my email, Berry Greenfield at show
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: dot Ca.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: Eric. This is the best one I've.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: Done, man, Thank you, Thank you, sir.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: By thirty seven miles and four inches and half a centimeter.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. Thank you so much for your support. You've
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: become You've become a listener, regular listener now. And by
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: the way, I want to get a photo. You sent
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: me some photos, quite a few great photos. I want
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: to make sure we get some of those up, including
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: one of you and your wife. Right. We want to
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: give a shout let me.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: Laurie is my best friend, my mentor, my teacher. She's
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: a very great friend and wife. And I'd like to
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: also mentioned my.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: Daughters McCartney, Andrea and Melissa, and my grandchild Navy and
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: my STUDI born grandchild who at this point in time
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: will remain nameless.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, you have a beautiful life. You've got a beautiful life.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Everything turned out perfectly.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: I found Blue Sky Man on my journey and they
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: said about the destination. It's always about the journey.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: Barry Greenfield, thanks so much.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: God blessed. That's it. It's in the books.