Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Eric Bazilian

Transcript

Eric Bazilian · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

0:04
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My
0:08
Speaker 1: guest today is guitarist and songwriter extraordinary Eric Bazillium. He'll
0:13
Speaker 1: know him from the Hooters, also as a songwriter of
0:16
Speaker 1: Joan Osborne's one of us bon Jovi songs, Billy Myers
0:21
Speaker 1: Kissed the Rain. We'll go on and I'm Eric. How
0:24
Speaker 1: you doing, I'm great, Bob. Thanks. So let's start from
0:27
Speaker 1: the beginning. You live in Sweden. I do live. I
0:31
Speaker 1: live in Stockholm now. I've been living there, uh since,
0:34
Speaker 1: since the summer. I've spent every summer there since I
0:37
Speaker 1: met my wife in nine and then every other Christmas.
0:41
Speaker 1: Done a couple of full years, but we decided to
0:44
Speaker 1: do it again. Now did she meet you based on
0:46
Speaker 1: your fame? Absolutely not. She sat next to me on
0:49
Speaker 1: a flight from from JFK to Stockholm. We were on
0:52
Speaker 1: our way to do a festival by that basically by
0:54
Speaker 1: the North Pole. She had been. She had lived in
0:57
Speaker 1: l A for a bunch of years, moved back to Sweden,
0:59
Speaker 1: went back to l A to keep her green card
1:01
Speaker 1: active and see if the the ex boyfriend was a thing.
1:06
Speaker 1: So we sat next to each other, um exchanged phone numbers, um,
1:12
Speaker 1: stayed in touch, found myself back there a few few
1:14
Speaker 1: weeks later, and you know, it happened and the rest
1:19
Speaker 1: is history. So you've been bands, most specifically the Hooters
1:23
Speaker 1: were still together. Is who the members married to? Does
1:27
Speaker 1: that affect the harmony of the band? It really can? Yeah? Yeah,
1:31
Speaker 1: I mean I was married what I call my training
1:33
Speaker 1: marriage um before this, and she uh, she was also
1:37
Speaker 1: our bands stylist and visual director. Um. So she's responsible
1:42
Speaker 1: for those colors that we wore and that got weird,
1:46
Speaker 1: it got really it complicated things a lot. Okay, So
1:50
Speaker 1: you're from Philadelphia. I am from Philadelphia. Okay, when how
1:53
Speaker 1: did you first get into music? Um? I saw the
1:57
Speaker 1: Beatles on edge before that. Were you into music? It
2:00
Speaker 1: get all before the people. My mom My mom was
2:02
Speaker 1: like a child prodigy concert pianist. She like, yeah, she
2:04
Speaker 1: went to Curtis when she was nine, Curtis the famous
2:07
Speaker 1: Curtis Institute, and um uh she was studying at the
2:11
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania. She met my father when she was eighteen,
2:14
Speaker 1: got married, had me And Okay, wait, did you finish
2:17
Speaker 1: college or she drop off? When she finished college in Wow,
2:24
Speaker 1: did you finish a pen? She did? She she graduated
2:26
Speaker 1: Penn after I did, so what motive hit her to
2:29
Speaker 1: go back? She and my dad got divorced when I
2:31
Speaker 1: was twenty one, and so she wanted to, you know,
2:34
Speaker 1: find herself. And she apparently I don't remember this, but
2:38
Speaker 1: apparently she asked me, you know, what do you think
2:39
Speaker 1: I should study? And I said, well, because my mother,
2:42
Speaker 1: being even though she was a musician, had a serious
2:45
Speaker 1: scientific bent about her. So I said, well, how about science?
2:48
Speaker 1: So anthropology. So she ended up majoring in physical anthropology.
2:53
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable. So your parents get divorced when you're twenty one.
2:57
Speaker 1: I have a very good friend whose parents got divorced
3:00
Speaker 1: right after we graduate from college. It really messed him up.
3:03
Speaker 1: Didn't mess you up? I didn't think it did at
3:05
Speaker 1: the time. In retrospect, yeah it did. I mean, it's it,
3:09
Speaker 1: you know, it shakes the foundation. But you know, I
3:11
Speaker 1: was I wasn't living at home. Um, but you know, yeah,
3:17
Speaker 1: I think on some level it definitely did. So since
3:21
Speaker 1: she's a concert pianist, did she introduce you? She make
3:24
Speaker 1: you take piano lessons as a little kid. She didn't
3:26
Speaker 1: make me. I I asked her for them, and I did.
3:29
Speaker 1: She used to play the piano in the house all
3:31
Speaker 1: the time, and I would sit next to her while
3:33
Speaker 1: she was rocking chopin really and I would you know,
3:36
Speaker 1: that was the first that was really my first rock experience.
3:39
Speaker 1: Even though she was playing chopin. I would just see
3:42
Speaker 1: the way, you know, her eyes would roll up into
3:43
Speaker 1: her head and she would you know, I want that?
3:46
Speaker 1: Did She also play records in the house, not that much.
3:49
Speaker 1: But then my uncle, my my father's brother, played guitar.
3:53
Speaker 1: He was a folk musician. Yeah, of any noted, no, no, no,
3:57
Speaker 1: but he taught me my first guitar chords and my
3:59
Speaker 1: first song on guitar. But the first song that I
4:02
Speaker 1: ever learned to play and sing was El press Nueva
4:04
Speaker 1: by Joan Bayaz and I learned it in Spanish. And
4:08
Speaker 1: how old were you? I was nine or ten? I
4:11
Speaker 1: think I was ten at that point, Okay. So you
4:13
Speaker 1: start playing piano at what age six? Probably okay? And
4:16
Speaker 1: when you when you pick up the guitar at what not?
4:18
Speaker 1: Eight or nine? Not? Probably nine? And so you were
4:21
Speaker 1: taught how to read music? To this day, can you
4:23
Speaker 1: read music? I was taught to try to read music.
4:27
Speaker 1: It's like I learned the alphabet, but I could never
4:29
Speaker 1: like make music out of it. I've had a recent
4:32
Speaker 1: experience with with reading because I am Someone showed me
4:36
Speaker 1: a video of Chris Theely doing a Bach solo violand
4:39
Speaker 1: sonata on mandolin. Now, mandolin, here's a mandolin. My my
4:44
Speaker 1: career basically in the United well in the in the
4:47
Speaker 1: United States, began with these cards. So I owe a
4:52
Speaker 1: lot to the mandolin, but I never really addressed it
4:56
Speaker 1: as a serious instrument. It was a spice in the Hooters,
5:00
Speaker 1: the Hooters Arsenal of sounds. Um. Someone showed me this
5:04
Speaker 1: video of Christinely playing this Bach piece and I said,
5:07
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna learn that. And this was right when
5:10
Speaker 1: we had moved to Stockholm, and I walked into the
5:13
Speaker 1: famous Hellstones music store and he had just gotten in
5:16
Speaker 1: this ninety five Gibson mandolin. The price was right. I
5:20
Speaker 1: didn't have a mandolin in Sweden. Bought the mandolin, went home,
5:22
Speaker 1: downloaded the sheet music, printed it out. And that was
5:26
Speaker 1: early September. And I am still struggling to play this piece,
5:29
Speaker 1: but I can kind of read a little bit. Now. Wow,
5:34
Speaker 1: so okay, you're playing guitar and piano a little bit
5:38
Speaker 1: and then are you listening to the transistor? Philly has
5:41
Speaker 1: a legendary radio stage. Yeah, oh, I listened to. You know,
5:43
Speaker 1: it's funny that the Beatles weren't the first thing that
5:47
Speaker 1: that shook my rock to my question? So what was ironically?
5:50
Speaker 1: The first record I ever bought was do Move? Uh
6:07
Speaker 1: nak We can't play the too because we get into publishing, right,
6:14
Speaker 1: But that was certainly good. But continue, So the first
6:16
Speaker 1: song I learned was Sukiyaki, right, which is really called
6:20
Speaker 1: Aruko by Ki Sakamoto. And I would stay home from
6:23
Speaker 1: school feign illness to listen to the radio to hear
6:26
Speaker 1: that song, which they were playing every playing every hour.
6:29
Speaker 1: Your father was a psychiatrist. He didn't realize you were
6:32
Speaker 1: feigning illness. No, he didn't notice. How many siblings do
6:37
Speaker 1: you have? None? None? You're the old there's a lot
6:39
Speaker 1: of pressure on you. Okay, So the Beatles. It's February
6:42
Speaker 1: sixty four, February nine, The Beatles come on, Sullivan. How
6:47
Speaker 1: does that change? My parents had gone to Baltimore to
6:50
Speaker 1: look at it a Steinway for my mom, and I
6:53
Speaker 1: opted to stay home because I wanted to watch the Beatles.
6:55
Speaker 1: So I went over to our friend Bernie's house. You know,
6:58
Speaker 1: they walked out, they did um all my loving and
7:02
Speaker 1: you know, wow, And I remember when they remember because
7:05
Speaker 1: underneath it they put the status of all the people.
7:08
Speaker 1: And then he's married. I think it was. It was
7:12
Speaker 1: during It was either at that point or I want
7:14
Speaker 1: to hold your hand where I realized I want to
7:16
Speaker 1: be him. First I looked at Paul, because no one
7:19
Speaker 1: Paul was cute and he and and dark haired and
7:23
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be him. And then I looked
7:25
Speaker 1: at George, who was playing the solo for till there
7:28
Speaker 1: was you, and I said, no, I want to be him.
7:30
Speaker 1: Then I saw John, who was like the coolest guy alive.
7:32
Speaker 1: I said no, I want to be him. And then
7:34
Speaker 1: I saw Ringo, and no one had more fun than Ringo.
7:37
Speaker 1: I realized I wanted to be all four of them. Okay,
7:39
Speaker 1: So then what happened next? So what happened that next
7:41
Speaker 1: was the next day Bernie and I started our first band.
7:44
Speaker 1: Bernie was gonna play drums, and once again, Bernie's your
7:46
Speaker 1: best friend, best friend. Okay, Bernie had any musical experience,
7:50
Speaker 1: none whatsoever. Okay, and did you start said band? We did?
7:54
Speaker 1: We did, We did it with our friend Paul. So
7:57
Speaker 1: it was a trio. We and I called us the
7:59
Speaker 1: Limes stuff like the quarry Men. And so before this
8:04
Speaker 1: had happened and I had learned to play this Joan
8:06
Speaker 1: Bayz song, my uncle I knew a guy named Gene
8:09
Speaker 1: London who had a local kids show in Philadelphia, and
8:12
Speaker 1: I performed on that show. So performed playing the guitar
8:16
Speaker 1: and playing the guitar, singing the song. Well, that's pretty dramatic.
8:18
Speaker 1: Unfortunately they the tapes are long gone, but he brought
8:23
Speaker 1: us back. So the Limestones performed on the Gene London show.
8:26
Speaker 1: We did A Hard Day's Night and House of the
8:28
Speaker 1: Rising Sun. I mean, I'm speechless. So in high school
8:31
Speaker 1: you must have been the biggest thing going. This is
8:35
Speaker 1: so I was getting the crap kicked out of me
8:37
Speaker 1: because I had long hair. Wow, you went to public
8:40
Speaker 1: school or private? I went to public school through sixth
8:42
Speaker 1: grade and then I went to private school. But you
8:45
Speaker 1: didn't get yours k I actually did. In private school.
8:48
Speaker 1: I went to a Quaker school, and I thought, oh,
8:50
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm gonna be certain. No, it all
8:52
Speaker 1: changed in like ninth grade. Uh, And like the guy
8:55
Speaker 1: who was kicking my ass and eighth grade suddenly is like,
8:57
Speaker 1: you know, my biggest defender of So you see the Beatles,
9:01
Speaker 1: you need an electric guitar, API I got. Well, I
9:04
Speaker 1: wanted to play bass because I wanted to be like
9:06
Speaker 1: Paul first, So I got. I got you know, Dan
9:09
Speaker 1: electro bass for eighty dollars. Okay, eighty dollars your parents
9:12
Speaker 1: give you. Um, I had saved it, um, and I
9:16
Speaker 1: got the bass. And we thought that Paul, who knew
9:20
Speaker 1: a couple of chords, was going to play guitar. Well,
9:21
Speaker 1: Paul couldn't play guitar, so Paul played bass. I played guitar.
9:26
Speaker 1: And where'd you get a guitar? Paul had a guitar,
9:29
Speaker 1: he had a Superro, he had like a thirty and
9:32
Speaker 1: you had the amps too. I think we had one
9:33
Speaker 1: amp between us, which is what the Beatles had for
9:38
Speaker 1: a while. And we did, Um, yeah, we did. We
9:40
Speaker 1: did the TV show and then um, that's sort of
9:43
Speaker 1: never really caught fire. It wasn't until I was fifteen,
9:48
Speaker 1: um that my first real band jailed. It was still Bernie,
9:53
Speaker 1: Bernie and I and then um, there was a kid
9:55
Speaker 1: that I went to Hebrew school with and Paul Vernick,
9:59
Speaker 1: who kept trying to get me to play with him,
10:01
Speaker 1: but he was such a nevish he was just like,
10:04
Speaker 1: come on, man, come on man, I can sing, I
10:05
Speaker 1: can play. Okay, fine, And then Bernie. It turns out
10:07
Speaker 1: he went to high school with Bernie, and uh, Bernie said,
10:11
Speaker 1: you know, this kid is really good. So we got
10:13
Speaker 1: the three of us got together. By this point, Bernie's
10:15
Speaker 1: playing bass, We get a drummer. This kid opens Paul
10:18
Speaker 1: opens his mouth, and I'm like, oh god, this is like,
10:23
Speaker 1: you know, Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney. This was like the
10:26
Speaker 1: voice and he played great rhythm guitar and he wrote songs.
10:29
Speaker 1: So we had our first real band at fifteen sixteen.
10:33
Speaker 1: It was called Evil Seed, and I just got in
10:36
Speaker 1: touch with What are The guy who managed us back
10:39
Speaker 1: then got in touch with me. He had recordings which
10:41
Speaker 1: I thought were all gone, Wow, Where are Paul and
10:44
Speaker 1: Bernie today? Paul is no longer with us. He had
10:48
Speaker 1: substance issues, which ultimately kim okay. Bernie is in northern
10:53
Speaker 1: California doing, you know, living a real life, having a
10:56
Speaker 1: real job, still playing bass. We get together sometimes and
10:59
Speaker 1: it's like where one brain with four hands Okay, so
11:03
Speaker 1: you have Evil Seed, you're fifteen years old. What happens next? Musically?
11:08
Speaker 1: You know, we start getting really good. Uh, and then
11:11
Speaker 1: they come over to the house and fire me because
11:14
Speaker 1: I have another year of high school left. I was
11:16
Speaker 1: a year younger and um, and I was also taking pictures.
11:20
Speaker 1: I was really into photography at that point as well.
11:22
Speaker 1: I don't know whose idea it was, but they fired me.
11:25
Speaker 1: And then three months later they came back cap in
11:27
Speaker 1: hand and said, sorry, man, would you come back? And
11:29
Speaker 1: did you go back? I did? I did because it
11:32
Speaker 1: really was a great band. I mean, listen, how much
11:34
Speaker 1: were you working in terms of you know, playing like
11:36
Speaker 1: forts parties and stuff like that. We we actually someone
11:39
Speaker 1: actually did hire us for about misfah and they shut
11:41
Speaker 1: us down after the first song. They did not want
11:43
Speaker 1: to hear Cream and Hendricks covers. So this was a
11:46
Speaker 1: band you played in the living in the basement or
11:49
Speaker 1: in the party room, but you didn't play out. We did.
11:52
Speaker 1: We did. We played you know, coffee houses. There was
11:54
Speaker 1: one legendary coffee house called the heck It Circle, like
11:57
Speaker 1: he could he They got us um where a lot
12:01
Speaker 1: of weird, a lot of weird ship went down but
12:04
Speaker 1: I managed to stay away from all that. So so
12:06
Speaker 1: this band, Evil Seed takes you all the way through
12:08
Speaker 1: high school, all the way through high school yep, and
12:10
Speaker 1: then you yourself go to PEN and I myself go
12:13
Speaker 1: to Pen. Band kind of breaks up. At this point,
12:15
Speaker 1: Paul has already had his his substance issues have already
12:19
Speaker 1: gotten the better of him, and it turns out that
12:20
Speaker 1: there are other mental mental health things involved. So yeah,
12:24
Speaker 1: I go off to Pen and my first week there,
12:27
Speaker 1: I go to an electronic music class that they have.
12:30
Speaker 1: They have him Moog synthesizers, serial number zero zero three,
12:34
Speaker 1: and I see this guy in there with really long
12:36
Speaker 1: blonde hair down to his waist and I recognize him.
12:38
Speaker 1: He's in another Philly band called Wax that I've seen
12:42
Speaker 1: open for the Birds, and um, we start talking and
12:47
Speaker 1: hanging out and it turns out that his band, Wax
12:49
Speaker 1: guitar player had left. At that point, their configuration was
12:52
Speaker 1: two electric pianos, two drummers, a bass player, and a singer.
12:55
Speaker 1: And I'm like, put me in. So I joined that band,
12:59
Speaker 1: and that was challenging because he was at that even
13:03
Speaker 1: at that point, Rob Himan was like that was Robbin. Yeah, Okay,
13:08
Speaker 1: challenging because of his personality or because you weren't up
13:11
Speaker 1: to snuff musically. I was up to snuff, but I
13:13
Speaker 1: really had I mean I really did have to up
13:16
Speaker 1: my game the musically. It was really some sophisticated music.
13:19
Speaker 1: It was even then even instead we're talking about like
13:22
Speaker 1: September seventy one. Okay, so you joined that band. How
13:26
Speaker 1: much time goes to that band as opposed to school?
13:29
Speaker 1: A lot? In fact, I basically almost flunked out second
13:33
Speaker 1: semester freshman year. But you graduated a physics major. Right
13:37
Speaker 1: by everybody's standards. Physics is not easy. You know, I'm wired.
13:41
Speaker 1: I'm wired. Funny, I guess I was getting seasoned history
13:44
Speaker 1: courses and a's in physics. Yeah, he just just comes naturally.
13:48
Speaker 1: It didn't I had to work hard. But if I
13:49
Speaker 1: worked hard, I'd get it and and the feeling of
13:52
Speaker 1: satisfaction was similar to learning a piece of music. You
13:57
Speaker 1: know that understanding Newton, understanding einst I there was there
14:00
Speaker 1: was a moment, you know, there was magic eye paintings.
14:04
Speaker 1: For me. It was like that I would stare at
14:05
Speaker 1: a problem, and stare at a problem, and all of
14:07
Speaker 1: a sudden I would see it clearly, and then if
14:09
Speaker 1: I looked away, it would disappear. Okay, the obvious question
14:13
Speaker 1: people would ask today is you have anything to do
14:16
Speaker 1: with physics today? Not externally, but I think internally my process,
14:20
Speaker 1: the way my subconscious mechanism works. I think it's the
14:25
Speaker 1: same thing. I was going to ask that question second.
14:27
Speaker 1: So you certainly answered it. But when people don't get
14:29
Speaker 1: today today, when it's funny, because it's our generation and
14:32
Speaker 1: even younger generations, they send their kids to school as
14:35
Speaker 1: a glorified trade school to get a job. Where we went.
14:38
Speaker 1: Our parents said, if you go and you graduate, we
14:40
Speaker 1: don't care what right. That's what That's what mine said exactly.
14:44
Speaker 1: So you are now playing with Rob in this band Wax,
14:47
Speaker 1: to what degree? Do you have a dream of further success?
14:51
Speaker 1: That's all I really want to do. In the meantime,
14:53
Speaker 1: I took all the premed requirements and you know, got
14:56
Speaker 1: my degree. Rob graduated three years before I did. H
15:00
Speaker 1: So he and the singer David went off and just
15:02
Speaker 1: kept writing songs. Meanwhile, Rick Schurdoff, who was the drummer
15:05
Speaker 1: in that band, goes and gets a job for Clive
15:08
Speaker 1: Davis as an A and R slash producer. His first
15:12
Speaker 1: act of a and our heroism is he finds Mandy
15:14
Speaker 1: for Barry Manilow. By Clive's terms, that's a huge victory. Yeah,
15:18
Speaker 1: well by anybody's terms. I mean, Clive is always about
15:21
Speaker 1: when you would go for a meeting with Clive, when
15:22
Speaker 1: you want to hire somebody, he would say, bringing five
15:25
Speaker 1: songs that are out there that you believe will be
15:27
Speaker 1: covered and be hits. That's exactly what he what. I
15:30
Speaker 1: think that was one of them. I think peaceful Easy
15:32
Speaker 1: Feeling was one. I think Mandy came later. I don't
15:35
Speaker 1: think that was an audition song. So so so Rick
15:37
Speaker 1: goes off there and you're left at pen doing what
15:41
Speaker 1: studying physics? And I had a band, you know, my
15:43
Speaker 1: my roommate who had known from high school years. He
15:47
Speaker 1: had a Hammond organ, and then we found some other guys.
15:49
Speaker 1: We had a band called Cyclic Blowfield and his funky calypsos.
15:53
Speaker 1: Definitely the seventies. And to what degree were you known
15:57
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia? Not at all? We played fat part ease um,
16:01
Speaker 1: you know, w and what to what degree was there
16:04
Speaker 1: a scene in Philly at that point? There wasn't. That's
16:07
Speaker 1: the thing there really wasn't much of a scene. Yeah,
16:09
Speaker 1: the famous Tower Theater where David Bowie cut his live album,
16:12
Speaker 1: So there was a live music scene, but none of
16:14
Speaker 1: the local people were populating. The Tower didn't really start
16:18
Speaker 1: going until the mid seventies, right seventy four, even seventy
16:24
Speaker 1: There was a spectrum and where the roof blew off?
16:27
Speaker 1: Where the roof? Yeah, yea for those I don't know,
16:30
Speaker 1: that's a famous arena in Philadelphia. So the roof blows
16:32
Speaker 1: off the spectrum. But were you an avid concert going yourself? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
16:36
Speaker 1: I was a photographer too. Did you have a dream
16:39
Speaker 1: of being a successful to be the Annie Leeb of it? No,
16:41
Speaker 1: I had a dream of being John Paul George and Ringo.
16:44
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, I enjoyed taking pictures of these
16:46
Speaker 1: people and I love being in the dark room. I
16:48
Speaker 1: loved printing them. So it was purely a hobby. Yeah, yeah,
16:51
Speaker 1: except that at that point, bands would play two nights
16:53
Speaker 1: at the Electric Factory. They play Friday and Saturday. I've
16:56
Speaker 1: got on Friday. First in line, get right up front,
16:58
Speaker 1: which is literally pushed up against the stage, which is
17:01
Speaker 1: about a yard high. Shoot Shoot Shoot, Shoot, Go Home.
17:05
Speaker 1: Developed the negatives, let him dry overnight, spend all day printing,
17:08
Speaker 1: go back down, get first in line, and sell prints
17:10
Speaker 1: to kids online. So you were obviously dedicated. You would
17:13
Speaker 1: sell them to the sell them to the people in
17:15
Speaker 1: the line. How much would you selve them for? Buck?
17:17
Speaker 1: Buck and a half? Maybe? How big were the prints?
17:18
Speaker 1: Five by seven? Eight by ten? Really? Yeah? And what
17:21
Speaker 1: was somebody's supposed to do with the print during the show? Yeah,
17:24
Speaker 1: you know, nobody ever seen. But then I would I
17:27
Speaker 1: started handing them to the bands on stage. People would
17:30
Speaker 1: come out, someone would come out and say, with the
17:32
Speaker 1: individual who handed those photographs to Rod Stewart please come backstage?
17:37
Speaker 1: And did you meet Rod Stewart? I did? I did?
17:39
Speaker 1: And Ronnie Wood. It was the first Faces tour and
17:42
Speaker 1: like like an idiot, I sold the Negatives while Rod
17:46
Speaker 1: Stewart was so cool back then he was So those
17:49
Speaker 1: were the first rock stars you met? Or did you
17:51
Speaker 1: met other people? Um? I actually had um? Well, but
17:55
Speaker 1: yeah that was them, Jeff back ten years after. I
17:58
Speaker 1: really went after ten years after because I wanted to
17:59
Speaker 1: be Alvin Lee and I actually got to be friends
18:02
Speaker 1: with them because I was fifteen sixteen, but I looked
18:05
Speaker 1: twelve my voice didn't change a lot of sixteen. So
18:08
Speaker 1: this begs the question greatest guitarists in rock history. Ah,
18:12
Speaker 1: that's that's a pantheon. I mean I have my favorites
18:16
Speaker 1: for different things. George Harrison obviously, because he was the
18:21
Speaker 1: first guitarist that had parts, he really played orchestra Ley.
18:24
Speaker 1: Then came the Holy Trinity, Clapton, Beck, and Hendricks. Okay,
18:27
Speaker 1: of those, how do you rank those three or the unrankable?
18:30
Speaker 1: They're kind of unrancable, I say, technically Beck right, hands
18:34
Speaker 1: down if you like panatonic blues, Clapton revolutionizing the guitar
18:38
Speaker 1: as a world Hendricks. Okay, so let's go back. So
18:42
Speaker 1: Rick Shart off to New York working for Clive, and
18:45
Speaker 1: Rob is playing in his own band because he graduated
18:47
Speaker 1: three years before. He and David the singer are writing.
18:50
Speaker 1: They're just writing songs so that Rick can signed them
18:52
Speaker 1: to Arista. Right when I'm about to graduate, they get signed, right,
18:57
Speaker 1: that's Baby Grant. That's Baby Grant. So again it's a
19:00
Speaker 1: keyboard player and a and a singer. They need a
19:02
Speaker 1: guitar player. Okay, So were you in touch with them
19:06
Speaker 1: when they called you? Yeah? I touch all through. Okay,
19:08
Speaker 1: so you called, so you must have thought you made it.
19:10
Speaker 1: I thought, this is it. You know, I'm gonna I'm
19:13
Speaker 1: gonna make a lot of money right away, and you
19:15
Speaker 1: know we're going to go on the road and all
19:17
Speaker 1: that great stuff that goes along with it. And then
19:20
Speaker 1: what happens, Well, well, we're still working on the songs
19:24
Speaker 1: and and you know, Rob's playing me these songs. And
19:27
Speaker 1: you know, the thing about meeting Rob was I met
19:29
Speaker 1: my equal, you know. I mean, Paul, who was in
19:32
Speaker 1: The Evil Seed was an amazing songwriter singer, but Rob,
19:36
Speaker 1: you know, his musicality just was on another level. I
19:39
Speaker 1: mean really it was. To me, it was like Steely
19:41
Speaker 1: Dan on steroids, the way his his sense for chord
19:44
Speaker 1: changes and melodies, and and David who wrote all the lyrics. Then, um,
19:48
Speaker 1: so it really really challenged me and it made me
19:51
Speaker 1: up my game, especially when it was time to arrange
19:54
Speaker 1: these songs and come up with signature guitar parts, and
19:57
Speaker 1: I would come up with like instrumental sections. I'd go
19:59
Speaker 1: off and would it and come back with this you know,
20:01
Speaker 1: three minute exploration and they loved it because you could
20:05
Speaker 1: do that. Then yeah, well listen, nothing better than having
20:07
Speaker 1: your work be loved. So you make the record who
20:10
Speaker 1: produced that record? Rick Rick and Rob Okay and the
20:13
Speaker 1: record comes out. I have to own that record where
20:16
Speaker 1: you're not on the cover and you got the person
20:18
Speaker 1: made out of vegetables. And that's the second album. Well
20:20
Speaker 1: that's the second album. I don't know if I own
20:22
Speaker 1: the first. First one has has a Botero painting. I
20:24
Speaker 1: have to go back to my collection. I certainly remember
20:26
Speaker 1: the second. So you get to make two records. But
20:29
Speaker 1: by my standards, nothing really happens with either of those rounds. Now.
20:32
Speaker 1: I mean, we had a couple of shows where it
20:34
Speaker 1: really felt like it was happening, and afterwards we're going,
20:36
Speaker 1: We're the next Beatles, But uh no, it didn't happen.
20:39
Speaker 1: I think we were. We were ten years ahead of
20:42
Speaker 1: our time or ten years behind. But you know, our
20:44
Speaker 1: first album came out when Talking Heads was happening, and
20:48
Speaker 1: it was everything was going minimal and you know, and
20:50
Speaker 1: if you you know, if you could play really well,
20:52
Speaker 1: you kind of had to hide it. Whereas I'm playing
20:54
Speaker 1: like I'm getting paid by the note. But Clive is amnimal.
20:57
Speaker 1: He's behind it, he's behind it, but you can tell
21:00
Speaker 1: he's like Rick was his pet A and R guy,
21:04
Speaker 1: so we'll let Rick have his fun with these guys.
21:06
Speaker 1: But after we did the second album and we started
21:08
Speaker 1: writing songs for the third and by this point that
21:11
Speaker 1: Robin David had brought me in as a full member
21:13
Speaker 1: of the band, and you know, brought me into the
21:15
Speaker 1: songwriting process, uh, And we started writing songs and sending
21:19
Speaker 1: them to Clive, and Clive kind of sat us down
21:21
Speaker 1: and said, guys, you know what a hit song sounds like,
21:25
Speaker 1: and he played us actually something that he thought was
21:28
Speaker 1: going to be a hit song, which was really lame.
21:30
Speaker 1: And it was not a hit. No, but you know what,
21:33
Speaker 1: nobody nobody bats a thousand. Even Clive doesn't take away
21:36
Speaker 1: from anything. So we sit down and and we we
21:39
Speaker 1: just realized this is not the place for us. And
21:42
Speaker 1: then at some point Rob and I realized that it
21:46
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna happen the style of music we were doing. Um,
21:50
Speaker 1: the singer wasn't a rock star. And he even told us,
21:54
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I wasn't born to rock. So
21:57
Speaker 1: Rob and I decided to give it one more shot.
21:59
Speaker 1: This is seventy nine. We're gonna have We're gonna have
22:01
Speaker 1: one more band. What are we gonna do? How are
22:04
Speaker 1: we going to make it into something that everyone else
22:07
Speaker 1: isn't doing because we're not gonna do punk, because we're
22:09
Speaker 1: just way beyond that. Um. At this point, the SKA
22:13
Speaker 1: Invasion was happening, of course, so you know, we saw madness,
22:17
Speaker 1: we saw the Selector, we saw the Specials, the police
22:20
Speaker 1: were happening. And Robert Rob actually grew up going to
22:23
Speaker 1: Jamaica as a kid and he was way into reggae,
22:26
Speaker 1: so he said, you know what, no American bands were
22:28
Speaker 1: doing this sca thing. Let's try that. And we had
22:32
Speaker 1: already found a drummer. When originally we were going to
22:35
Speaker 1: do it as a three piece, I mean, Robin I
22:36
Speaker 1: looked at each other and I said, can you sing?
22:38
Speaker 1: I don't know? Can you I don't know? Well let's
22:40
Speaker 1: try it. Well at least if we sing together, at
22:43
Speaker 1: least we can cover each other's asses. And we originally
22:46
Speaker 1: we're going to do it as a as a three piece.
22:47
Speaker 1: Rob was going to play left hand bass like Raymond's Eric,
22:50
Speaker 1: but then um, the drummer was was in a band
22:53
Speaker 1: which was which was breaking up because the lead singer
22:57
Speaker 1: and lead guitarists were leaving. So I went with them
23:00
Speaker 1: with that band, they had a two week commitment at
23:02
Speaker 1: this club, and I realized, here's a great drummer, a
23:06
Speaker 1: great bass player, a great guitars will bring them in.
23:10
Speaker 1: And that became the Hooters, the original, the original Hooters.
23:13
Speaker 1: So this is this is at this point, it is
23:16
Speaker 1: eighty this is living in New York. Were living in Philly, Okay,
23:22
Speaker 1: And what's the next step with the Hooters. Next step
23:23
Speaker 1: with the Hooters is to write some songs, get a
23:26
Speaker 1: band name, and get some gigs. Now the band is
23:31
Speaker 1: named after the melodica. Yeah, Well, what happened was we
23:33
Speaker 1: went into do our first first demos and uh my,
23:37
Speaker 1: my friend Glenn, who was actually sitting out there and
23:40
Speaker 1: in the control room, had had a melodica. Uh. Rob
23:43
Speaker 1: and I being into reggae, we're listening to a lot
23:45
Speaker 1: of Augustus Pablo, you know. He would just play melodica
23:49
Speaker 1: over over these these tracks. Um, and Rob said, how
23:53
Speaker 1: we should try a melodica, said, well, my buddy Glenn's
23:55
Speaker 1: got one of them. And the meantime a friend of
23:58
Speaker 1: ours had a mandolin and he also happened to have
24:02
Speaker 1: some recording gear, so he recorded our first demos so
24:06
Speaker 1: we're set up setting it for the first demos. I'm
24:08
Speaker 1: playing a mandolin better than that, but um, And then
24:17
Speaker 1: the engineer says, give me a level on that hooter. Ah,
24:21
Speaker 1: And we looked at each other and went, okay, well,
24:23
Speaker 1: this is a hooter. This is a hooter. The band
24:27
Speaker 1: name thing took a few days because we were looking.
24:29
Speaker 1: We wanted to be a plural noun so that each one,
24:32
Speaker 1: each guy in the band could say I am a beatle,
24:35
Speaker 1: rolling stone, not a shoe, not a chair, and it
24:37
Speaker 1: couldn't be a household name. And then dawned on one
24:40
Speaker 1: of us that it could be a hooter. So you
24:42
Speaker 1: become the Hooters. And what's the next step towards success?
24:45
Speaker 1: Rob's girlfriend at the time had a successful record store
24:49
Speaker 1: that like alternative punk, new wave record store, and she
24:54
Speaker 1: took it upon herself to to manage us with with
24:56
Speaker 1: with Rob and we had a we had a very
25:00
Speaker 1: successful marketing campaign. We printed up, we got she made
25:03
Speaker 1: a logo for us, and printed up a bunch of
25:06
Speaker 1: yellow eight and a half by eleven sheets of paper
25:08
Speaker 1: that said h oo question mark, and we papered them
25:12
Speaker 1: all over the city. Right, that's a good campaign. I
25:15
Speaker 1: gotta give her credit. And then a week later Hooters,
25:18
Speaker 1: and then the the date of our first show, which
25:21
Speaker 1: was I think June of at a bar in Levittown,
25:25
Speaker 1: and was it successful to people show up? People showed
25:27
Speaker 1: up well because the band that I had played in
25:30
Speaker 1: with David, our drummer, had a following, so they knew
25:33
Speaker 1: David and they knew me, And yeah, they came, you know,
25:37
Speaker 1: a hundred maybe the first night, two hundred the second night,
25:40
Speaker 1: and we ended up playing at the bar called Vernon's
25:43
Speaker 1: five nights a week, four sets a night, so that
25:46
Speaker 1: was like that was our Hamburg exactly. I was just thinking, so,
25:50
Speaker 1: how do you end up getting a deal with Columbia?
25:52
Speaker 1: That was a long road really Yeah, yeah, yeah, we
25:55
Speaker 1: did Vernon's places like that. Then we started doing a
25:57
Speaker 1: residency at a place called Grendel's Lair in the City
26:00
Speaker 1: on South Street in Philly every Monday night. Again. The
26:04
Speaker 1: first time maybe we had seventy five people, second time
26:07
Speaker 1: and fifty and within a few months the line was
26:09
Speaker 1: around the block. Then a very lucky thing happened. Uh
26:14
Speaker 1: this this jockey named Michael Tearson. I hear from Michael
26:17
Speaker 1: tears all the time of course you do, Of course
26:20
Speaker 1: you do. He decides he's going to put the studio
26:22
Speaker 1: on lockdown and only play the music he wants to play.
26:25
Speaker 1: Guerilla Radio. That was the that was the original Guerilla Radio.
26:29
Speaker 1: So Betsy the manager calls him and says, hey, we
26:33
Speaker 1: got some demos. Should we come down and said yeah.
26:35
Speaker 1: So he plays our our first demo. It was a
26:38
Speaker 1: sky instrumental called Man in the Street. Um, he plays it,
26:42
Speaker 1: and I guess the phones went wild because they started
26:46
Speaker 1: playing it like in regular rotation. This is w MMR.
26:49
Speaker 1: This isn't like you know, you know, cheesy little. That's
26:52
Speaker 1: one of the original so called underground FM rock stations. Yep, yep,
26:56
Speaker 1: it was the second one. You know, things just and
27:00
Speaker 1: then we put out our first single. We did a
27:03
Speaker 1: live broadcast. We opened for for the Beat, for the
27:07
Speaker 1: English Beat, who are our heroes right mirror in the bathroom,
27:10
Speaker 1: Oh my god? And um we opened for them, and
27:14
Speaker 1: we did a live version of All Your Zombies, which
27:16
Speaker 1: they started playing and started really playing it. So we
27:19
Speaker 1: put that out as our second single. So things are
27:23
Speaker 1: really heating up. We're really getting gigs and it's spreading
27:26
Speaker 1: out into the you know, into Jersey into Delaware. But
27:30
Speaker 1: what happens in Philly stays in Philly. You know, you
27:32
Speaker 1: go to New York to try to get somebody interested,
27:34
Speaker 1: we'll come play in New York. So you go, I
27:36
Speaker 1: think the place was called Privates and ten people show up,
27:39
Speaker 1: you know, the A and our genius has come out
27:41
Speaker 1: and say, well, it wasn't electric, right, but you try
27:44
Speaker 1: being electric in front of ten people. Hey, it's Bob
27:51
Speaker 1: left Sets. I thank you for your time. Welcome to
27:53
Speaker 1: my new podcast, the Bob left Sets Podcast. Remember to
27:57
Speaker 1: subscribe on tune in iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
28:05
Speaker 1: So the Cindy law Per record was before the Hooters deal. Yes, okay,
28:11
Speaker 1: Rick calls you Ricks, the producer of that. What does
28:13
Speaker 1: he say? He says, because she she's already come from
28:15
Speaker 1: failure in bankruptcy, right, he says, And he was basically
28:19
Speaker 1: assigned her. Um and he says, I got this artist
28:23
Speaker 1: and uh, he took her to see a number of
28:28
Speaker 1: musicians and apparently she didn't like me at first. She
28:31
Speaker 1: liked Rob, but she wasn't nuts about me. So it
28:34
Speaker 1: was originally going to be another guitar player. But then
28:37
Speaker 1: I don't know if Rick talked her into it, or
28:39
Speaker 1: she saw us again and decided I was up to snuff.
28:43
Speaker 1: But we started hunkering down in our We had this
28:46
Speaker 1: rehearsal studio that we called the ranch like but it
28:50
Speaker 1: was like not a ranch. It was like here in Philadelphia.
28:53
Speaker 1: It was really like Deliverance world around there. Um and
28:58
Speaker 1: Rick had is his suitcase full of songs. He had
29:02
Speaker 1: girls just want to have Fun. Well, that's a Robert
29:04
Speaker 1: Hazard song from Philadelphia. Did you know Robert Yeah? Oh sure.
29:08
Speaker 1: He was our competition. He was our arrival. He had
29:10
Speaker 1: that one thing, you know, We had that song on
29:11
Speaker 1: the Elevator of Life. Which Escalator of Life? He talked
29:15
Speaker 1: about his taking his mas to to the supermarket. He's
29:17
Speaker 1: dead himself at this so okay he had that. And
29:21
Speaker 1: then where do time after time and all that stuff
29:24
Speaker 1: come from? Time after time? It was a later rival
29:28
Speaker 1: girls this one am I allowed to play any of girls?
29:30
Speaker 1: Just one to happen, but keep it short. Okay, this
29:33
Speaker 1: was how it was originally written. But come home in
29:37
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, my father. I haven't heard
29:40
Speaker 1: the original version, so Cindy and it was boys just
29:43
Speaker 1: want to have fun? No, it was girls just when Western.
29:45
Speaker 1: Yes it was, but Cindy said, I will never sing
29:47
Speaker 1: that song as song as I don't like the music
29:50
Speaker 1: and it's demeaning to women. So we tried doing it
29:54
Speaker 1: as a reggae. We tried doing it as a sky
29:57
Speaker 1: we tried doing it as like a cat Stevens. She
29:59
Speaker 1: was not having any of it. But Rick, who was
30:02
Speaker 1: really an a and our genius, he knew that that
30:04
Speaker 1: voice singing that song was gold. So finally one day
30:10
Speaker 1: we came in and Rick's like, can't we figure out
30:12
Speaker 1: a way to do this? Now? This was when Come
30:14
Speaker 1: On Eileen was all over the world, and who didn't
30:16
Speaker 1: love Come On Eileen? So Cindy says, can't you make
30:19
Speaker 1: it sound like come On Eileen? And I remember that
30:23
Speaker 1: I have such a clear visual memory of that moment.
30:26
Speaker 1: I had an eight to eight drum machine, that's what
30:28
Speaker 1: we did all of the demos, of course, and I
30:30
Speaker 1: turned it that big tempo knob down. I changed the
30:33
Speaker 1: kick drum pattern. I picked up my guitar and I went, yeah, yeah,
30:41
Speaker 1: that's that's what's it like when you hear that riff
30:44
Speaker 1: that you just come off that easy. When it became
30:46
Speaker 1: ubiquitous all over TV, and radio did that kind of
30:50
Speaker 1: just like blow your mind. It was pretty wacky. I
30:52
Speaker 1: mean it was yeah, yeah, I probably felt like Raphael
30:57
Speaker 1: Ravenscroft felt when every year right Acre Street, because I
31:00
Speaker 1: got paid about as much as he did for that.
31:03
Speaker 1: But um uh, And you know, of course a week later,
31:06
Speaker 1: she's saying, you know, I always wanted to sing that song.
31:08
Speaker 1: That song is so empowering to women. Oh listen, leave,
31:11
Speaker 1: I'll leave it in today's environment. I won't make any
31:14
Speaker 1: comment about that. So you're making that record? How long
31:16
Speaker 1: does it take to make that album? We spent about
31:18
Speaker 1: six months demoing the songs that that that Rick had
31:22
Speaker 1: brought in a couple of them Cindy had co written.
31:25
Speaker 1: It was a Jewels sheer song. There was all through
31:27
Speaker 1: the night, and then we went into um, we went
31:30
Speaker 1: into the record plant and okay, you make the record.
31:33
Speaker 1: You have any idea it's going to be this gigantic smash,
31:36
Speaker 1: which it turns out to be. I was really sort
31:39
Speaker 1: of running on fumes creatively at that point. Cindy is brilliant.
31:43
Speaker 1: I love her. She's like that wacky cousin that you
31:45
Speaker 1: like have Thanksgiving with and and and you're tired afterwards.
31:50
Speaker 1: But but she's great. I mean, I think she's one
31:53
Speaker 1: of the greatest singers ever and fine, fine person, but
31:58
Speaker 1: it was it was draining. And then towards the very end,
32:02
Speaker 1: Rick was saying, you know, we could really use a
32:03
Speaker 1: couple more songs, and Cindy was reading TV guide looking
32:07
Speaker 1: for titles, so she found two titles Vertigo and time
32:10
Speaker 1: after time I got Vertigo. We tried to write a
32:14
Speaker 1: song called Vertigo. It wasn't good. She and Rob meanwhile,
32:17
Speaker 1: come to me a couple of days later, say hey,
32:19
Speaker 1: we got an idea for a song. They play me
32:21
Speaker 1: the chorus like a verse idea and the chorus, and
32:24
Speaker 1: I just said, you've you've just written yesterday. We're gonna
32:28
Speaker 1: We're gonna hear the song for the rest of our lives.
32:31
Speaker 1: Who created the arrangement? That was really me and Rob
32:34
Speaker 1: and Rick and Bill Whitman, who was the engineer and
32:37
Speaker 1: is now Cindy's musical director for fifteen years. So, but
32:40
Speaker 1: the album comes out and goes nuclear. Did you foresee
32:43
Speaker 1: that at all? No? I remember when I got got
32:45
Speaker 1: my first pressing of it. I just listened to that.
32:48
Speaker 1: I get aside from time after time, time after time
32:51
Speaker 1: was a slam dunk. But like I heard, girls just
32:53
Speaker 1: want to have fun coming out of my speakers, and
32:55
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know, I just don't notice. H
33:01
Speaker 1: But obviously I was wrong. Okay, so that's a big success.
33:06
Speaker 1: How do the Hooters get signed? A lot of it
33:08
Speaker 1: was on the strength of that. I mean I think
33:10
Speaker 1: that gave Rick the ammunition he needed to be able
33:13
Speaker 1: to sign us. So you basically owe your career to
33:15
Speaker 1: wreck absolutely and even more so as in the next chapter,
33:19
Speaker 1: Will Will Will reveal. But um, you know, we we
33:22
Speaker 1: got we got a deal. We made the record, and
33:24
Speaker 1: you know, All Use Zombies was the first the first
33:27
Speaker 1: they were now in the MTV era. Okay, so when
33:30
Speaker 1: you started the Hooters, it was before that because August
33:32
Speaker 1: of eighty one is MTV. So how does that affect
33:38
Speaker 1: the creative process and what you end up doing. It
33:42
Speaker 1: didn't affect their songwriting or record making at all. I mean,
33:45
Speaker 1: we just figured somebody would come in and make a video.
33:48
Speaker 1: So okay, so you do All Use Zombies, which becomes
33:50
Speaker 1: a huge yet became it's funny. It's funny. I think
33:53
Speaker 1: it peaked at number fifty seven. Yeah, but the numbers
33:56
Speaker 1: are irrelevant. They played They played it all the time
33:58
Speaker 1: on the on the video channel, and then the next
34:01
Speaker 1: track comes and we danced, which was really was what
34:04
Speaker 1: made us go platinum. And now you're touring and you're
34:08
Speaker 1: living the life, living the life, and do you believe
34:10
Speaker 1: that you've you've achieved your dream? I was too busy
34:13
Speaker 1: to believe anything. It really you miss it the first time.
34:17
Speaker 1: You know, we weren't we weren't that young. I mean
34:19
Speaker 1: I was already in my early thirties when this was happening.
34:22
Speaker 1: But you know, it's such a whirlwind. I mean, we
34:25
Speaker 1: played live AID, live aid. You know, people ask me
34:29
Speaker 1: what was it like? I don't know. You know, we
34:31
Speaker 1: walked on stage, we did two songs, we were off.
34:33
Speaker 1: Do you hang out the rest of the day? I
34:35
Speaker 1: actually there were there were personal issues. I actually ended
34:39
Speaker 1: up going home for for a few hours, and I
34:42
Speaker 1: went back for the for the finale. But um, I
34:46
Speaker 1: was there for a fair amount of it. Okay, So
34:48
Speaker 1: the first album comes out, goes platinum, and then where
34:50
Speaker 1: does that leave you? Um? When we toured a bunch,
34:53
Speaker 1: we opened for Lover Boy, Turn Me Loose, YEP, and
34:56
Speaker 1: we opened for for Squeeze. UM, Don Henley for two weeks,
35:01
Speaker 1: Squeeze for a couple of months, and Lover Boy Um
35:04
Speaker 1: and then we have to make another album. And then
35:06
Speaker 1: Day by Day was the third single, which was actually
35:08
Speaker 1: the highest charting single. But you have three hits, which
35:11
Speaker 1: by today's standards is gargantrain, actually four Where did the
35:15
Speaker 1: Children Go? The single didn't really do well, but the
35:17
Speaker 1: video was number It was our highest charting video, number two,
35:21
Speaker 1: a live video. So then we have to make another record,
35:23
Speaker 1: and there's that, you know, sophomore. We've used you know,
35:26
Speaker 1: we've used all of our But while we were on
35:29
Speaker 1: the road, we stayed busy, you know, we we're we're
35:32
Speaker 1: on a bus. I had a mandlin and um on
35:36
Speaker 1: one day, on a drive from New Orleans to San Antonio,
35:39
Speaker 1: I picked up a mandolin and start going, etcetera, etcetera.
35:47
Speaker 1: It's just that easy, just comes to you. Yeah, m
35:50
Speaker 1: the brain and the fingers become one, okay, and you
35:52
Speaker 1: realize you've written something that's gonna go. I realized I've
35:56
Speaker 1: written something that's gonna make me go. For a while.
36:00
Speaker 1: The whole band was in the back lounge when we
36:02
Speaker 1: when we did that, and you know, Rob was playing
36:04
Speaker 1: in the melodica the hooter Um, and it actually took
36:07
Speaker 1: us six months to write the song because you know,
36:10
Speaker 1: a riff like that is just a riff you got right.
36:12
Speaker 1: At some point you have to sing something, and I
36:14
Speaker 1: never thought the song actually came up to the level
36:17
Speaker 1: of that. I wish that we would have found a
36:19
Speaker 1: way to sing that melody, but the words never came. Okay,
36:22
Speaker 1: But that's the second album. Now, that's the second album,
36:25
Speaker 1: so that we do the second time, we take a
36:26
Speaker 1: big chance a chordion's mandolin's uh, really going going out,
36:31
Speaker 1: going for our ethnic weirdness thing. We've left the reggae
36:35
Speaker 1: thing behind at this point. You know, we're staying with
36:37
Speaker 1: our God theme, you know, all you zombies as a
36:39
Speaker 1: Bible story. And we write Satellite, which is about like
36:42
Speaker 1: Jimmy Folwell and and that el evangelist thing. Everybody thinks
36:47
Speaker 1: we're like a Christian band or you know know, we're
36:50
Speaker 1: a couple of lass Hebrews right and stuff. So the
36:52
Speaker 1: album comes out and it's Ships Gold, which they took
36:55
Speaker 1: back from us because after the returns um Our first
36:59
Speaker 1: single from that album was Johnny b which the video
37:01
Speaker 1: was directed by David Fincher. Did you know he was
37:04
Speaker 1: going to turn into David Fincher. Nobody knew who he
37:07
Speaker 1: had to turn to David Fincher. But um, and we
37:10
Speaker 1: toured with Bryan Adams on that album, but it never
37:12
Speaker 1: really caught hold in the US. Meanwhile, Germany happens. Johnny
37:18
Speaker 1: b is a smash ubiquitous in Germany. We go there
37:22
Speaker 1: and wow, I can do this, Okay, Germany and Scandinavia.
37:27
Speaker 1: But what does the label say? Label says, that's great,
37:30
Speaker 1: But um, you know, we gotta do another album. So
37:33
Speaker 1: we go back and we've come off the road and
37:36
Speaker 1: we're a kick ass band. I mean we still are.
37:38
Speaker 1: We're more now than ever. Really, it's a rock and
37:41
Speaker 1: roll show and the mandolins and the accordions make it
37:44
Speaker 1: rock even harder. We play at we play at hard
37:47
Speaker 1: rock festivals in Europe. Now. We played between like Black
37:49
Speaker 1: Label Society and Azzi really Yeah and Pete. When we
37:52
Speaker 1: pull out the mandolins and the according to they go nuts,
37:55
Speaker 1: they lose their minds. So it's the energy that appeals
37:58
Speaker 1: to that. It's the energy. It's the energy and the
38:00
Speaker 1: songs because we write real songs. Okay, So you're making
38:03
Speaker 1: the third record, making the third record, I want to Rock.
38:05
Speaker 1: I Want to Rock. We end up doing five miles,
38:08
Speaker 1: a cover of five hundred miles, and we have Peter
38:10
Speaker 1: Poe and Mary sing on it with us, and it's
38:12
Speaker 1: kind of a lugubrious reggae vibe. The whole album ends
38:15
Speaker 1: up being our folkiest album yet, and I can't blame
38:19
Speaker 1: it when anyone I signed off on every decision that
38:22
Speaker 1: was the album that wanted to be made. It's like saying,
38:24
Speaker 1: I'm going to conceive and give birth to a nuclear
38:27
Speaker 1: physicist and he turns out being a basketball player. You can't,
38:30
Speaker 1: You just can't. You know, every song, every recording has
38:33
Speaker 1: a life of its own, its decide. The one chooses
38:36
Speaker 1: the wizard, chooses the Wizard. That's a good one. I've
38:38
Speaker 1: never heard that one before. It's from Harry Potter, whose
38:42
Speaker 1: I haven't read it. There you go. It's in the
38:43
Speaker 1: films too. But so we do our focus album yet
38:47
Speaker 1: and at this point Columbia basically drops us. I mean
38:50
Speaker 1: they don't drop us, but you know, they pulled the
38:52
Speaker 1: plug on everything. We're touring places where we were selling
38:56
Speaker 1: out theaters, were playing at at clubs and strip malls,
39:00
Speaker 1: nobody's coming, nobody's playing the record on the radio. We're
39:03
Speaker 1: fighting on the bus. Then we get a call we're
39:06
Speaker 1: going to Sweden. We're going to Stockholm. So March ninety
39:10
Speaker 1: we played the concert house coat who said in Stockholm,
39:13
Speaker 1: which is one of the most beautiful venues in the world,
39:16
Speaker 1: it's sold out. Everyone knows every word to every song.
39:19
Speaker 1: Five Miles is a number one record there, And it's like,
39:22
Speaker 1: at this point, okay, we're a European band. We knew
39:26
Speaker 1: even then. Okay, let's segue. Now do you becoming a songwriter?
39:31
Speaker 1: Because was the year of Joan Osborne. Joan came a
39:36
Speaker 1: bit later along what year was John Osborne? Joan Osborne
39:39
Speaker 1: was um came out in God, I guess it's in
39:43
Speaker 1: the past and it's all blending together. So at what
39:45
Speaker 1: point do you side you're gonna write songs for other people?
39:48
Speaker 1: Rob and I did a bit a bit of that.
39:49
Speaker 1: We we did an album with Patty Smythe We wrote
39:52
Speaker 1: some of the songs on that. We did Uh. We
39:54
Speaker 1: did Cindy's third album with her and we wrote we
39:56
Speaker 1: wrote a lot of that. But Rick and I've actually
40:00
Speaker 1: simultaneously found Joan in ninety three, she was playing at
40:02
Speaker 1: one of our manager's clubs in Philadelphia, and Um, we
40:06
Speaker 1: decided to have her over and see what happened, and
40:09
Speaker 1: we we clicked. Okay, I love that album. She's never
40:12
Speaker 1: been able to follow it up with Ladder and all
40:14
Speaker 1: those other songs. Get But how do you write one
40:16
Speaker 1: of us? Okay, Well, here's how you write a one
40:18
Speaker 1: of us. It was like a laboratory. We would go
40:20
Speaker 1: in every day to to our our place. Anybody had
40:23
Speaker 1: an idea, we would develop it, try to make a
40:25
Speaker 1: real song. And the meanwhile, I've been on tour with
40:28
Speaker 1: the Hooters. I sit down on a plane, a flight
40:31
Speaker 1: from from JFK to Stockholm, and this beautiful, obviously Swedish
40:37
Speaker 1: girl sits next to me. I asked her her name
40:40
Speaker 1: in Swedish because I was already I had a feeling.
40:43
Speaker 1: I had a feeling was gonna come in early Andy,
40:45
Speaker 1: and um, she says, I'm a Swedish girl with the
40:47
Speaker 1: Jewish name. Oh, Sarah, Well, I'm a Jewish boy with
40:50
Speaker 1: a Swedish name. Um. And one thing leads to another.
40:55
Speaker 1: That January, she she moves in with me. We're making
40:58
Speaker 1: We're gonna make the Jonas on record. She has my car,
41:02
Speaker 1: picks me up at one of our sessions. I have
41:04
Speaker 1: a guitar riff. You saw, you saw the thing with
41:07
Speaker 1: the fingers. I picked up a guitar at Rob's one
41:09
Speaker 1: morning and I did this. It just came out that
41:16
Speaker 1: that's what it's the riff doujor. That was the riff doujur.
41:21
Speaker 1: So that was in my head. I was playing that
41:23
Speaker 1: playing on the piano. In fact, when Sarah came to
41:25
Speaker 1: pick me up from the session, I was sitting at
41:27
Speaker 1: the piano playing it and Joan was like riffing, doing
41:29
Speaker 1: her Joan bluesy riffing thing over it. Maybe we'll make
41:33
Speaker 1: something out of that. So we go home, we have dinner.
41:35
Speaker 1: We watched the Making of Sergeant Pepper. You've seen that
41:38
Speaker 1: documentary George Martin at the flat four channel. So it
41:43
Speaker 1: ends and Sarah says, well, four track recording. What's what's
41:46
Speaker 1: that all about? I said, well that, well, that crap
41:49
Speaker 1: on my dining room table. That's a four track recorder.
41:52
Speaker 1: Oh record something for me, she says, So, okay, I've
41:55
Speaker 1: got this guitar riff. I have a little keyboard with
41:58
Speaker 1: you know, drum sounds. And bass sounds. So I make
42:00
Speaker 1: a little arrangement, a little track arrangement. Okay, I'll for
42:03
Speaker 1: the verse, I'll just apeggiated of chord changes. Yeah, and
42:08
Speaker 1: then I'll go somewhere for the B section. Yeah. Um.
42:13
Speaker 1: And I put together a little arrangement and recorded it,
42:16
Speaker 1: and I thought she'd be really impressed. And she's like, oh,
42:20
Speaker 1: that's cool. Now sing it? Like sing it? What do
42:23
Speaker 1: you mean? You need a chorus, you need a title,
42:26
Speaker 1: you need a concept, and you have to write verses.
42:28
Speaker 1: And then you realize that the verses don't fit the chorus,
42:30
Speaker 1: so you change the course. And then two weeks later
42:32
Speaker 1: you realize you ruined the whole thing, and you start over,
42:34
Speaker 1: and eventually you know it takes takes some time here. Meanwhile,
42:38
Speaker 1: she falls asleep on the sofa and I hear the
42:41
Speaker 1: voice of Brad Roberts from the Crash Test Dummies in
42:43
Speaker 1: my head, singing, if God had a name? Right? So, yeah,
42:49
Speaker 1: I've told you this before, so but tell everybody else, telling,
42:52
Speaker 1: telling everybody else. I hit record and I sang the song.
42:57
Speaker 1: I sang the whole song except the last line of
42:59
Speaker 1: the chorus. I was stuck just the stranger on the
43:03
Speaker 1: bus and Sarah wakes up and goes trying to get home.
43:09
Speaker 1: Stranger on the bus trying to get trying to trying
43:13
Speaker 1: to make his way. Thank you, go back to sleeve. Okay,
43:18
Speaker 1: you finished the song. Finished the song. One in the morning,
43:20
Speaker 1: my my five year old daughters asleep upstairs. Go into
43:23
Speaker 1: our our writing session the next day, have the little
43:27
Speaker 1: dad tape with me. Forget about the song. I forget
43:29
Speaker 1: that I've done it. Take a break in the afternoon. Um,
43:32
Speaker 1: there might have been some herbal component to the to
43:34
Speaker 1: the break. Uh. And then I remember, oh, guys, I
43:37
Speaker 1: wrote this crazy thing, popping it. Rob pops in and
43:40
Speaker 1: it was we were at Rob's at this point. Song ends.
43:42
Speaker 1: I look up at first I see Rob and he's
43:44
Speaker 1: sitting there with his arms crossed with that Oh god,
43:47
Speaker 1: here's another one of another one of Eric's weird songs.
43:49
Speaker 1: I look at Joan and she's like, you know, okay,
43:51
Speaker 1: when can we get back to work? And Rick is
43:54
Speaker 1: just looking down in that deep Rick space that he
43:56
Speaker 1: gets into. Looks up says Joan, you think you could
44:00
Speaker 1: sing that? He didn't say do you want to sing that?
44:03
Speaker 1: Because she probably would have said, right, do you think
44:06
Speaker 1: you could sing that the story I tell us she said,
44:08
Speaker 1: I can sing the phone Book right out the lyrics.
44:11
Speaker 1: I don't think she actually said that. She did say
44:13
Speaker 1: something about a phone book, but it wasn't in that context.
44:16
Speaker 1: But I wrote out the lyrics. I plugged the guitar
44:18
Speaker 1: in and we just did a live to tape version
44:21
Speaker 1: with guitar and vocal, and we all just looked at
44:24
Speaker 1: each other and went, okay. I got remembered. That session ended.
44:28
Speaker 1: I got in the car, poptica set in, listened and
44:31
Speaker 1: started writing the grammy speech I should have gotten to give.
44:35
Speaker 1: So you knew right away. I knew. I knew that voice,
44:37
Speaker 1: that that was the voice that was born to sing
44:40
Speaker 1: that song, and that was the song that that voice
44:41
Speaker 1: was born to say. Okay. Now that song became ubiquitous,
44:44
Speaker 1: to the point there was even a backlash. Did you
44:48
Speaker 1: experience that as the writer? No? Yeah, they protested Joan
44:54
Speaker 1: Osborne the Catholic League, which turns out has nothing to
44:57
Speaker 1: do with the Catholic Church. Yeah. Really, And I saw
45:02
Speaker 1: the guy interviewed on TV and he says, I remember
45:05
Speaker 1: him saying, yes, you know her album, there's lots of
45:08
Speaker 1: spirituality and sexuality and it raises questions. That's what a
45:14
Speaker 1: song does. We'll have none of that here, but okay,
45:17
Speaker 1: you write a song of that magnitude, two opportunities come
45:21
Speaker 1: to you. Bone starts ringing off the Desmond Child. This
45:24
Speaker 1: is where Desmond comes in. My buddy Glenn was sitting
45:27
Speaker 1: out there, met Desmond at a dinner in Miami, calls
45:31
Speaker 1: me and says, can I give Desmond Child your number?
45:33
Speaker 1: I'm like, are you kidding? Right? Right right? So Desmond
45:37
Speaker 1: calls me and he says, I've got this artist in
45:39
Speaker 1: uh in London that I'm gonna sign. I've got a
45:43
Speaker 1: song title Kiss the Rain, and I want to write
45:46
Speaker 1: that song with you, and I want you to play
45:48
Speaker 1: your guitar like you played it on one of us,
45:49
Speaker 1: and I want your lyrical quirkiness for this, okay. And
45:53
Speaker 1: I said, well cool, but I'm going to France next
45:56
Speaker 1: week for this songwriting thing at my Miles Copeland's castle. Okay,
46:00
Speaker 1: I'll come. So he followed me there and that's okay,
46:04
Speaker 1: and that's where we started the song. And then he
46:07
Speaker 1: lured me to London where we finished it with Billy
46:09
Speaker 1: and at the Houseyon Hotel. Okay, how hard is it
46:12
Speaker 1: to write when you're giving those prescriptions as supposed to
46:15
Speaker 1: waiting for inspiration. I'll tell you how it happened. We
46:17
Speaker 1: were standing by a wall in the courtyard and in
46:21
Speaker 1: the castle and I picked up the guitar and go
46:31
Speaker 1: and Desmond says, that's the chorus. That's that you've We've
46:35
Speaker 1: just started kiss the Rain, okay, and it's cool. And
46:39
Speaker 1: so we went to London. I played that and Desmond,
46:41
Speaker 1: you know, kissed all right? That was you know, you
46:45
Speaker 1: know I I do too, in fact of what you hear,
46:48
Speaker 1: and that we recorded on My My, um My then
46:51
Speaker 1: State of the Art Roland vs. Eight eight in that
46:55
Speaker 1: hotel room in London. So what are your some of
46:58
Speaker 1: your other favorite sort of sort of songs for hire
47:01
Speaker 1: that you've written. I still like old before I die.
47:06
Speaker 1: Robbie Williams first single, Okay, you know we live in
47:09
Speaker 1: America where Robbie Williams never made it. How big was
47:11
Speaker 1: that song in the UK? Huge? Huge all over Europe
47:15
Speaker 1: over here? Okay? So you write these songs. We hear
47:17
Speaker 1: all these stories about the music business. Do you believe
47:20
Speaker 1: you were a the deals were fair and you got
47:23
Speaker 1: the money you were entitled to. I still not have
47:27
Speaker 1: not seen a scent from from our our Sony records,
47:29
Speaker 1: our Columbia Records were still in the red. Wow, that
47:33
Speaker 1: was a songwriter. Um, I've always kept my publishing, so
47:39
Speaker 1: that's yeah. That was good. That continues to be good.
47:42
Speaker 1: You know that the balance is changing now because streaming
47:45
Speaker 1: favors the the rights owners. So right, the songwriters are
47:49
Speaker 1: screwed in terms of percentage wise with streaming. Draconian. Okay,
47:53
Speaker 1: so do you now view yourself You've had these successes,
47:56
Speaker 1: We're going back twenty years to you know yourself yourself
48:00
Speaker 1: as a songwriter as opposed to performer. I'm a musician,
48:03
Speaker 1: you know. I'm a guitar player. I'm a singer when
48:07
Speaker 1: I need to be. I'm an entertainer. I love performing.
48:10
Speaker 1: I write songs because I need something to play. And
48:12
Speaker 1: at this point in time, do you write the song
48:15
Speaker 1: and then find the artist or to use or is
48:17
Speaker 1: it like with Desmond Child, Hey, here's the title, here's
48:21
Speaker 1: the situation. Right for this, it's usually with the artist.
48:24
Speaker 1: You know. I had a great relationship with Amanda Marshall.
48:27
Speaker 1: I wrote almost all of her second album. She was
48:30
Speaker 1: whatever happened to her, you know, I stay in touch
48:32
Speaker 1: with her, and she she had a nightmare thing with
48:35
Speaker 1: her management and with with her her record company, and
48:38
Speaker 1: she literally couldn't make music for five years, six years.
48:42
Speaker 1: And by then, but I even saw at the Troupe door,
48:44
Speaker 1: I was a huge fan. I wrote eleven of the
48:47
Speaker 1: thirteen songs on that second album and produced the singles.
48:50
Speaker 1: I loved her. I love her as a person, her voice,
48:54
Speaker 1: she did things that were I wept after she did
48:57
Speaker 1: the vocal for if I Didn't Have You, which is
48:59
Speaker 1: I think one of the best songs I've ever written.
49:01
Speaker 1: She did a song on the Tin Cup soundtrack. We
49:04
Speaker 1: involved in that. That was earlier. Okay, So okay, you
49:07
Speaker 1: said you work with her and any other situations recently, Yeah, yeah,
49:11
Speaker 1: I mean I've been writing with the Scorpions for two
49:13
Speaker 1: thousand three. About Scorpions went on their retirement tour. I
49:19
Speaker 1: think I know the age, and I think the retirement
49:20
Speaker 1: tour was three and a half years ago. And then
49:23
Speaker 1: there's been two new albums since those five years ago.
49:25
Speaker 1: And I actually wrote the single from that album, the Bet,
49:27
Speaker 1: which was called the Best is Yet to come? Right
49:30
Speaker 1: have been a clue? So you know, some people would
49:35
Speaker 1: say that's a huge journey from Joan Osborne. But I
49:38
Speaker 1: guess if you're a guitar player, it all works. It's
49:40
Speaker 1: all music. It's all music. You know. I've done a
49:42
Speaker 1: lot of folky stuff I've done, I've done r and
49:46
Speaker 1: you know, it's music. It's finding a melody in some words,
49:48
Speaker 1: and finding a way to play it. So how do
49:50
Speaker 1: you decide to get the Hooters back together? You get
49:53
Speaker 1: the band back together as well. We sort of we
49:57
Speaker 1: never broke up. The phone started ringing off the hook
49:59
Speaker 1: for me. You know. Rick signed us again to his
50:03
Speaker 1: his label, PolyGram, but the well had sort of run
50:06
Speaker 1: dry for Hooters songs, uh and Rob and Rick had
50:09
Speaker 1: this concept for an album called Largo, which was based
50:11
Speaker 1: on the Vorjak's epic journey across America. I wasn't feeling it.
50:16
Speaker 1: I didn't really get what the concept was. Um, but
50:20
Speaker 1: the music was beautiful. Um. It was just it was
50:23
Speaker 1: ironic that on on the heels of my biggest ever hit,
50:26
Speaker 1: which was totally lyric driven, I didn't write a word
50:28
Speaker 1: of lyric on on the Largo album and it ultimately stiffed.
50:32
Speaker 1: It did, which is a shame because it did. It
50:34
Speaker 1: really did deserve to be heard, but there wasn't a
50:36
Speaker 1: real artist. You know, I didn't. I did not want
50:39
Speaker 1: it to be called the Hooters. It to me it
50:41
Speaker 1: was not a Hooters record. The Hooters are a rock band.
50:44
Speaker 1: That was not supposed to be Hooter's album. Um it's
50:47
Speaker 1: a beautiful record. In fact, we performed it at Joe's
50:50
Speaker 1: Pub last year because Rick and Rick is on a
50:54
Speaker 1: mission to make a musical out of it. But there's
50:56
Speaker 1: no book. It's like it's that kind of asked backwards.
50:59
Speaker 1: But God us and his tenacity is is noteworthy. But uh,
51:04
Speaker 1: you know Rob wanted you know, we had kids were
51:06
Speaker 1: do you know we're raising our families. Rob wants to
51:08
Speaker 1: build a studio. I'm getting all these opportunities, and you
51:12
Speaker 1: know I did just I wanted to do a solo record,
51:14
Speaker 1: which I did. I finally released that in two thousand
51:17
Speaker 1: to no acclaim. But it's but I enjoyed it. Thank
51:19
Speaker 1: you you did, and you wrote a really nice thing
51:21
Speaker 1: about it. Time just went by all of a sudden.
51:23
Speaker 1: We hadn't you know, played in six years. And then
51:25
Speaker 1: we get a phone call from Pierre Robert at w MMR.
51:28
Speaker 1: He's celebrating twenty years with the Hooters get together and
51:31
Speaker 1: play at his anniversary concerts. So we get on stage.
51:33
Speaker 1: We played forty minutes before Fuel. So we get on stage.
51:39
Speaker 1: You know, we re hearsed a couple of days and
51:40
Speaker 1: we remember playing looking around. We even think this is
51:44
Speaker 1: the best band I'll ever be in. I mean, you know,
51:46
Speaker 1: I've played with the greatest musicians in the world, but
51:48
Speaker 1: this is the best band I will ever be in.
51:50
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, we all had we had commitments
51:53
Speaker 1: through that summer. So but finally two thousand three we
51:55
Speaker 1: went back on. We went back to Germany. We toured
51:58
Speaker 1: all summer. And how much you work now basically it's
52:01
Speaker 1: a it's a summer job, okay. And how many of
52:03
Speaker 1: the people are original people? Well, our bass players only
52:06
Speaker 1: been with us since seven and everybody else, everybody else
52:11
Speaker 1: is originally Yeah, and we had we added a six
52:14
Speaker 1: member in two thousand ten because I broke my shoulder.
52:16
Speaker 1: Didn't know if I'd be able to play skiing don't
52:18
Speaker 1: do not a bad fall, but it was a snow
52:21
Speaker 1: uh snow ice snake under this powder snake. I landed
52:25
Speaker 1: on my on my elbow. Snap. I didn't know if
52:27
Speaker 1: I'd be able to play, So we added friend who
52:29
Speaker 1: I always said, if I hurt myself, you're the call.
52:31
Speaker 1: So can everybody make a living from their music? From
52:34
Speaker 1: the Hooters? We we we Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Okay,
52:39
Speaker 1: So if you achieve the dream looking at it from above,
52:42
Speaker 1: of course, I've written a song that everyone in the
52:43
Speaker 1: world knows and loves. I play in a band that
52:46
Speaker 1: plays as much as we want to, when we want
52:48
Speaker 1: to where we want to. I still feel there's a
52:50
Speaker 1: bit of a restless thing. I feel like there's something
52:52
Speaker 1: I still haven't done that I'm gonna do right, And
52:54
Speaker 1: how hard are you working at it? I am working.
52:57
Speaker 1: It's so hard. I'm working it so hard. I'm know
53:00
Speaker 1: now that I'm living in Stockholm, I'm in the center
53:02
Speaker 1: of the songwriting producing universe. So one day I'm writing
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Speaker 1: a pop song. Uh, the next day I'm writing with
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Speaker 1: a hard rock band. So you okay, So how does
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Speaker 1: that answer your work? There's a network or you have
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Speaker 1: to create the network for yourself. They come to me
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Speaker 1: that we have to. You have come to listen to
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Speaker 1: the Bob Left Sets podcast with Eric Basilian. We heard
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Speaker 1: amazing stories about his band Cyndi Lawper other successes. Thanks
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Speaker 1: so much, for doing this. Thank you, Bob. Always a pleasure. Hi,
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Speaker 1: this is Bob left Sets. I don't want to thank
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Speaker 1: you for being a fan of my podcast. You can
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Speaker 1: email me at Bob at left sets dot com and
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Speaker 1: let us know what you think. We're open to all ideas.
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Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to tune in, iTunes or your
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Speaker 1: podcast player of choice. Can think of