Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Richard Marx

Transcript

Richard Marx · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Richard Marks. Richard, you have this
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: new song with John Stamos, Take Care of California. How
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: did that come to be?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Well, John Stamos and I became friendly in the last
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: 10 years, just really socially. And I was aware that
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: he was a musician, plays with the Beach Boys, plays
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: percussion in different bands and he came to a studio
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: to do some overdubs on some tracks on my last album,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: my latest album called After Hours. He said, by the way,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: I've co-written this song that's like a love letter to
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: California and it would be really, really cool if you
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: sang some background vocals on it. Honestly, when it comes
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: to people who I like and I mean, the song
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: would have to be just horrendous for me to say no.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't. I actually kind of liked it. It
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: was kind of catchy and real simple. But there was
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: an earworm about it. So I said, well, I would
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: do it for you anyway because I like you. But
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I said, the song is cute. So I went in
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: and I was doing a bunch of background vocals. And then,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: of course, I get the text. Hey, since you're there,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: it wouldn't be the most awful thing If you sang
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: the bridge by yourself. And so then it just sort
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: of became a feature thing. And then we shot a
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: little video together. And really, it's just an excuse to
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: hang out with John. He's a really lovely guy. And
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I was happy to do it.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: So you didn't co-write the song?
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was totally his song.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: I just did a buddy a favor, just as he
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: did for me.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: You no longer live in California, right?
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: I still have a home in Malibu. But my wife
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: and I are Florida residents as of this last year.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: That's where I am now. I'm in Miami.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: How'd you decide to move to Florida?
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: My wife's family's here. I came to Miami and throughout
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Florida touring over the years, but I never really spent
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: much time here and honestly didn't really get it. I
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: didn't really get Miami. When I would come to Miami
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: in the past, I would be like, I'd come here
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: to work and then I wanted to get out. And
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: then I sort of was reintroduced to it through Daisy,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: my wife, when we started dating. I'm sure you can
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: understand this. You discover a place that you thought you
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: knew in a totally different way. I kind of fell
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: in love with it. All her family is here. We
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: bought a house here maybe six, seven years ago because
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: we were here so often. Then it just made total
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: sense to to become residents in the last year, um,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: because we love it here. We're here most of the
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: time and why not take the 13 and a half percent?
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Yeah.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: There's obviously tax advantages, but what's it like living in
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Miami compared to other places you lived?
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I've really only lived in Chicago and LA and
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Miami is very different than both of those. Um, I
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: would say that the biggest difference is that when I'm
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: in Miami, other than when I spend time with Daisy's family,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I don't really have friends here. I don't hang out.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I don't really work here. I don't have any kind of,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, I have a guitar and I have a
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: keyboard set up in a room, but this is not
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: a musical place for me. This is just a place
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: where we live. And I, I really do enjoy, you know,
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: where we are. We're not in Miami beach. We're kind
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: of outside of that. So we live in a, quieter
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: part of Miami that has become, especially at my ripe
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: old age now, something that I appreciate. I appreciate sort
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: of just being quiet. And I like the lifestyle here.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: It's kind of almost like island living. We can be
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: in the Bahamas in no time. So it's a little
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: like living on vacation when I'm here, but I kind
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: of feel that way in Malibu too. I feel like
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I've carved out for me at least, the perfect existence.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: So other than Daisy's family, you don't have a community
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: there personally?
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Not so far. I mean, I'm friendly with some of
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: her people. Daisy and I hang out the most with
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: her sister and brother-in-law. That's our couple. We travel with them.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: They come to LA. I hit the in-law lottery sometimes.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I love her family and we love being together and
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: we have a lot of fun together. But I have
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: not formed a friend group here like I have in L.A.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I have my core. Like if if I'm in L.A.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: for a couple of weeks, for sure, I'm going to
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: be going and having breakfast or lunch with Matt Scannell,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: who's my best friend, or Feeway Bill, my other best friend.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Or I have my my guys there, but I don't
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: have anybody here.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: You know, Matt from Vertical Horizon, great guy. But how
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: do you know him?
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's a great story. I discovered the band. They'd
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: had a couple albums out, as you might know, before
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Everything You Want blew up for them. I was not
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: aware of them until I heard that single. The single,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: this was in probably 1999, the single prompted me to
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: go buy the album. And I really loved pretty much
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: every song on that album. I loved Matt's voice. I
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: loved his guitar playing. But his songwriting was a weird thing, Bob,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: because for the first time in quite a while, I
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: felt like this other songwriter was speaking to me. I
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: was going through a really hard time personally. And the
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: songs that Matt put on that record, he had been
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: going through some dark shit. And I responded to those
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: songs emotionally in a way that surprised me. So I
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: became an uber fan, like a fanboy of Vertical Horizon,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: particularly Matt, because I knew that Matt was really the guy.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: So I started telling all my friends about them. Well,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: six months later, eight months later, this is at a
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: point now where I know every lyric, every note, every breath.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: I can mimic every song on that album. And I'm
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: doing a gig in Tampa. They had shut down the
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: downtown area of Tampa for a Super Bowl event because
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: the Super Bowl was in Tampa that year. So 2000.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: And there's different bands playing on different stages. And so
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: I'm playing on this main stage downtown somewhere. And there's
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: other bands playing. And I honestly didn't pay any attention
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: to who else was playing. And I'm about to go
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: on stage. And my tour manager says, hey, there's this
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: band here. They wanted to meet you and say hi.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: They're called Vertical Horizon.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I went.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: It was like he said Elvis was here. And I said,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: oh my God, are you kidding me? And so I
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: met them very briefly and they watched my show. And
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: then I said, have you guys already played? And they said, no,
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: we're playing in about an hour. So I went to
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: their show. And then we ended up on my tour
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: bus at the end of the night, hanging out. And
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Matt and I sat in this little banquette in my
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: tour bus at the time. and talked for an hour,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: exchanged numbers. And basically from that point on, we kept
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: in touch. And then over the next couple of years, um,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: he eventually, I was living in Chicago at the time
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: and I had a studio there and Matt came to
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Chicago a couple of years later and spent a week
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: with me. And we ended up writing a little bit,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: but mostly just sort of getting to know each other.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: And over the last 25 years, um, He's become my brother.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: We're really thick as thieves. He knows where all the
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: bodies are buried and vice versa. It's just been one
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: of the most remarkable friendships of my life.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. The record spoke to you during a difficult time.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: What was in the record, did that transfer into your
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: conversations and your relationship, your connection?
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, good question.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We've not initially because you're getting to know somebody,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: but then the more we got to know each other,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: the more we started to trust each other. And with
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: the more we started to realize how much we had
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: in common as men. And yeah, he and I have, it's, it's,
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: it's interesting. That's a really good question, Bob. You are
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: good at this already.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I'm already impressed.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Matt's vulnerability is, his lack of fear of confronting dark stuff,
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: all of that resonated with me in a way that
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: I am. And over the last 20-something years, it's not
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: like he's just my pal who I love hanging out
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: with and going to get a coffee with. In my
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: darkest times since I've known Matt, He's my soundboard. He's
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: my guy. And same in return. Because we understand each
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: other and we trust each other and we both have
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: lived in this really, we've wallowed in this dark place
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: that we both recognize as being very similar. Our circumstances
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: might not have been the same, but the fact the
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: emotion of it and the overall aesthetic of it we
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: both can identify it as like oh yeah dude i
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: oh man do i totally get that.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit about your dark places.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Um I think that it's interesting. I had a really
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: happy childhood. I was an only child, amazing parents, no
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: struggle at all. As a kid growing up, my circumstances
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: were incredible. So I spent a lot of time and
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: money in therapy trying to figure out why I was
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: always sad, why I always had this Sadness in me,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: aside from just being alone a lot, because I didn't,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: it's not like I didn't have friends. I had friends,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: but I spent the bulk of my childhood by myself,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: which in retrospect, I really appreciate. And I feel good
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: being by myself. In fact, I need time to myself.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: And I like myself. I like my own company. But
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: there was a melancholy about it growing up. And I
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: noticed it in ways that, so for instance, when I
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: was 10, 11, 12, I would see a scene in
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: a television series or I would see a movie and
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: it would choke me up and it would make me cry.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: And I noticed that my other friends who were the
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: same age were looking at me like I was from Mars.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Like they didn't connect. They didn't, it didn't hit them
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: that way or pieces of music, particularly like if there were,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: I remember, I think I must've been, I was born
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: in 63. So I'm going to guess I was eight
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: or nine. There was this TV movie called Brian's song.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Do you know about that? Yes. Remember that one?
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: James Caan, Billy Dee Williams. And it's about Brian Piccolo, the,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: the former football player for the Chicago Bears, who died
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: very young of lung cancer. And there's a scene where
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Billy Dee Williams, and it's a tear-jerking scene, no question.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: It's a brilliant acting performance where he's telling the team
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: that Brian's dying and we have to keep Brian in
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: our prayers. And then Lalo Schifrin's theme of Brian's song
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: creeps in. I was a mess. I was an absolute puddle.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: And so I think that there was always something that
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: resonated with me about melancholy or sadness. And I remember
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: being a kid and feeling my heart hurt. And I've
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: never really understood where it really came from. But that
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: kind of sensibility as a kid translated into adulthood, into relationships.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: And so when I feel something, I feel it very deeply.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: And so I've had my heart broken badly and I've
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: fallen in love beyond what you can imagine. So I
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: don't feel things small. I don't feel things lightly. And
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: so when it's dark, it's really, really dark. And I
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: kind of, I feel like I kind of had a
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: pass until I was 33. I remember in my 20s
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: and my success happened and my career is going great.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: And then I get married and I have three kids.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: There was always something in the back of my mind thinking, yeah,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: there's another shoe that's going to drop. Because how many
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: years can a human being get off scot-free? And it
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: was always the biggest fear for me up until I
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: had kids of my own. My biggest fear was anything
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: happening to my parents. And so I lost my dad
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: really suddenly and tragically when I was 33. And it
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: wasn't just losing my dad. It was losing my best friend.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: He and I were thick as thieves. And so events
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: like that, I felt like I processed them. I don't,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: I won't compare to anybody else's sense of grief or loss,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: but I had, I would kind of check out for
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: a while. It took like, grief is something that sticks
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: with me and stays with me. So I've had to
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: learn how to get along and process the worst of times.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: But I have been, I go through long periods of
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: depression or darkness. I haven't in a long time. I
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: feel like I've I've learned so much about myself through
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: therapy and just life that I feel like I have
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: a better handle on things now. So now if I'm down,
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: it's very brief and it's nothing like it used to be.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: But up until maybe a dozen years ago, when I
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: would get depressed, it was really, really, really dark. And
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: circling back, I gravitated towards a couple of people who
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: understood that. And that's one of those people.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: What would trigger? this darkness other than specific, you know,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: there's certain things like your father dying. That's, you know,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: it's a very significant moment in anybody's life, but generally speaking,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: other than those top level things, what would trigger your darkness, sadness?
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Um, sometimes it was really just, uh, uh, I want
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: to say a lack of perspective about time. Um, even
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: when I was in my, 20s and 30s, I had
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: this weird sense of running out of time and needing
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: to make time count, but you can't ever, that's a
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: losing game. I think that part of my dark times
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: had to do with me not having learned to be present.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: So I was always living into what's next. I was
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: living for what's next. in a way that I didn't
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: enjoy what was happening to me at the time. And
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: I think that when you are bad at being present,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: and especially if you're not good at being grateful for
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: what's going on in the present, which took me a
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: long time, a guy like me can just head down
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: a path that's dark, that's where you're focused on the negative.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Your thinking isn't right. The thoughts you're choosing are ill-advised.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: The thoughts that you're choosing are not helpful to your process.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: And it's one of those things, like if you're lucky
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: to ever learn it in your life, to learn the things,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: the habits that you have that are not serving you,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: the earlier you can learn those things, the better, obviously.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: And it took me quite a few decades to wake
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: up to what I was doing wrong. And so now
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: I have a different understanding and perspective so that If
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: things go sideways for me on something or there's a
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: particularly stressful time, I handle it really well now. I
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: don't really go into that dark place that I used
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: to for long periods of time.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: You talked about going to therapy. Was that something you
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: had history with or your family, or did you just
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: get closer to the edge and say, I got to
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: talk to someone, or someone said, you better talk to somebody?
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: I think it was my choice. No, there's really not
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: much history of it in my family, although I do
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: look back now and I see periods in both my parents'
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: lives where I think that they were depressed and they
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: were struggling in a way that therapy might have helped them.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: But for me, it was, uh, I don't know. I
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: think it was, I started, I started dabbling in it
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: in my twenties. Like even before I had a record deal,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: I think I even reached out to somebody cause I
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: went through a, I had an experience. I won't go
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: into the details, but I had an experience in my
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: early twenties that was a sort of, it was a
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: romantic entanglement if you will. But I remember that it,
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: went against my sensibilities. It went against my integrity. And
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: it messed me up because I understood that I was
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: violating my own integrity.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Wait, this is fascinating. You know, I can only speculate.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: The person could be married or they're a drug addict
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: or you're doing.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: You know, this is really... I go to the shrink, okay?
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: And I'll talk about situations. And he would say, he says,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: he says, He doesn't use the word integrity. That's just
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: not who you are. You wouldn't do it.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Right. Okay? Right.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: So in this particular case, were the lights flashing, but
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: you decided to play anyway?
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It carried away, you know, caught up
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: in it. And and the fallout was much more about
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: me asking myself what the fuck dude like what do
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: you what were you thinking and and if you did
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: that now how many like are you is this who
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: you are like is this going to be your life
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: and i knew that um it wasn't that I didn't
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: have a soundboard with my, even with my parents. I
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: remember talking to them about it. It wasn't like I
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: hid it from them, but I didn't feel like, you know, look,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: there are certain things that people who love you are
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: not the right people to talk to.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: And so I found, I forget how I asked somebody
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: to recommend somebody and I went and I worked with,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: I worked with this guy. It was the first time
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: I had therapy. I worked with him for just a
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: few months and, And at the end of it, he
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: actually fired me after the eighth session. He was like, look,
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you came. I'm glad we worked through this.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you understand this. But all this other, the
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: rest of you and the rest of your life, just
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: carry on. You're fine. You're good. And that was true.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: I worked through that period of time where I'm not
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: going to repeat that. I now understand what I was
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: thinking and why I did what I did and how
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: I got involved in that. And I think that now
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: the guardrails are up for that. So I'm not going
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: to worry about that. So, and I was only 22,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: something like that. So then therapy didn't come back into
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: my life for quite a while and, you know, navigating success,
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: ups and downs, family, relationships, all of that stuff. And
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: so throughout time, throughout the last, several decades of being
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: in and out of therapy and taking breaks from it,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: I can't recommend it enough. I really can't. But when
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: I say that to people, I say, look, I can't
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: recommend therapy enough as long as you have the right therapist.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Because therapy with the wrong therapist is you're just not
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: helping yourself.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you lucked into the first guy. Was that
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the person you continued to see when you went back?
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: No, no. And then I had a couple of bad
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: situations where... So in the aftermath of my dad's death,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: I just couldn't get okay. I couldn't find okay. I
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: could function. I was thriving. I was creative.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: I was doing what was expected of me, but inside
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: I was not okay. And for years, I couldn't come
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: to terms with it. And so a friend of mine
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: who I was working with professionally, who's a really, really soulful,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: wonderful guy named Wayne Isaac. Do you ever run across
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Wayne Isaac?
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know about him.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: He introduced me to a therapist because he could see
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: that I was really struggling. And so I worked with
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: this guy for a couple of years who really, really,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: really did help me through that process, that particular process
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: of coming to terms with my father's death and the
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: manner of his death and the hole that he left.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: What happened though, is that, you know, the longer you
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: stay in therapy, the broader it gets and the more
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: topics you get into and the more aspects of your
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: life you get into. And so when it came to
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: other parts of my life, my marriage, my relationships, um,
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: my history of relationships, I found that, uh, and it's
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: really the reason I stopped seeing this guy. I found
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: that when it came to those kinds of situations, um,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: I felt like this man was, he was maybe eight,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: 10 years older than me. I felt like he was
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: giving me, consistently giving me a man, get out of
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: jail free card. I felt like he was giving me
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: a pass. And there was a lot of, well, you know,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: we're men. That's, you know, it's normal for, it's okay. But,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: and I started to go, yeah, but that's not okay.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Just cause I'm a guy like to act like a
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: lot of men do in that situation is not a
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: pass for having that mentality or having that, making that choice.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: And so I was like, no, this is not serving
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: me anymore. This is, I need somebody who's going to
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: call me on my shit, you know? And so I
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: kind of stopped therapy for a while. And then when
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: I came back to it a year or two later, I, I, um,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: chose a female therapist for a while because I wanted
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: a totally different perspective. And I want, and I wanted
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: someone who wasn't going to give me a pass because
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: we're both guys. So I've kind of had, I've run
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: the gamut. It wasn't until maybe 10, 11 years ago, um,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: that I found a therapist who I still work with now,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: who he's by far the longest, uh, therapist I've had
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: a relationship with. And he's, uh, He's my guy. He's
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: my guy until the end, I think.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: So have you ever taken medication? No.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: No. It's been recommended to me, but I never took it.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Okay. You're a guy who's had success relatively early. You're known.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: You've had more than one success. You've written the songs,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: which is the heart of creativity. If I take you
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: into a group of other accomplished people, Are you going
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: to say, these are my people, I feel comfortable? I'm
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: not talking being in the studio making a record. I'm
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: talking something more social just in general, okay? Or are
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: you going to say, I don't quite feel comfortable here.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I just can't relate to these people. Maybe
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: it's imposter syndrome, but it's more like, I'm different from
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: these people. Or do you say, no, the celebrities and
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the other people, these are my people?
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: It's a good question too. It's not imposter syndrome. And
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: it's not, I'm, well, yeah, I'm different. Depending on who's
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: in the room, I'm different in that my experiences are
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: very different and my life might be very different. Generally
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: throughout my life, my acquaintances and my friends and people
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: I hang out with the most are other musicians. our other,
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: but they're, it's interesting. I've definitely had, I've had and
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: have friendships with people who are very famous and very successful,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: but my closest friendships with maybe one or two exceptions
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: are people who, uh, have common experience, common understanding. They
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: have an understanding. We have a shorthand about what life
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: is like being in the public eye, what life is
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: like chasing the next hit. And I don't mean necessarily hit,
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: like hit single, but like the next hit, getting that
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: next hit of the rush of whatever is next of accomplishing.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: But my closest friends haven't, and they, they, they reference
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: it sometimes like, well, you know, I can't relate to
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: it on your level or something like that, but we
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: have a common, we have a common ground for sure. And,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: and then I have a couple of friends who, um,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: are not, no, they have nothing to do with entertainment or,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: you know, I have a friend for 30 years, who's
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: a retired cop. And, and I realized that for me, it's, uh,
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: it's the people who I gravitate towards, who I want
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: to spend time with have to be funny. If they're,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: if they're not funny, it's not.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: That I'm going to be funny or that they get
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the jokes.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: They have to be funny. They have to, they have to,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: I have to think of them and go, he's funny
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: or she's funny because that's what I, that's what I like.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: That's who I, that's the, and I don't mean just
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: funny because I have a couple of acquaintances who, who
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: are just, they're always funny, but they're never serious. They're never, like,
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: I can't really have a real conversation with them. And
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: that gets tiring. You know, I want to have it
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: all when it comes to a friend. So, you know, look,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: we've already talked about Matt. Let's talk about Matt. Matt
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Scannell is arguably the most thoughtful. And I don't mean
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: thoughtful in terms of like, oh, you're so thoughtful. I mean,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: the way he thinks, the depth to which he takes
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: things on. Smart, but so funny.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: The biggest laughs I've ever had in my life are
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: with Matt. And sometimes something will happen and it's literally,
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: we just look at each other and we're gone because
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: we just get it. And we have shorthand. And he
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: thinks funny. And it's also not just funny, Bob. It's
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: a certain kind of humor. It has to have a
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: level of, he's sardonic. There has to be a level
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: of sarcasm. It's not just goofy funny. It's got to
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: be smart funny. And that's really important to me and
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: a friend.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Okay. You say you don't have local friends in Miami.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: In today's world with the internet, the phone, et cetera,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: you can be in touch with people all over the world.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Are you the type, you're in Miami, you're getting iMessages,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: you're emailing, whatever, or when you're there and the people
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: are not physically there, you're more in your own space?
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm pretty good. In fact, it's a... And I
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: take it as a great compliment. I'm known in the family.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: One of the things people say about me is that
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: I'm really good at keeping in touch with people and
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: reaching out to people and Especially, you know, the majority
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: of my friendships are with men who are considerably older
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: than me. So it's not necessarily, it's not, it's not
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: just that I feel an obligation, but I also sort
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: of feel like I worry about them. You know, I'm now,
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: I'm 63 and a lot of my friends are in
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: their seventies. One of my dearest friends is 95 years old.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: And I, you know, he's not mobile. Okay.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Just stop for a second. How do you know this person?
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: I've known him for 30 years.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: But how'd you meet him?
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: How did I meet him? How did I meet George? Um, Oh,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: I met him through, I met him at a dinner
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: party through mutual friends and I met him and his
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: wife and he's a successful businessman. He's not really in
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: the entertainment business, but he, uh, He owns a hotel
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: in Los Angeles and he's owned and started a couple
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: of major companies. And he's a very successful and shrewd businessman.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: And he and I just hit it off. We liked
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: each other's company. We didn't spend a whole lot of
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: time together over the years, but whenever we would see
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: each other, it was always like, oh, I like this.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: I really like this guy. And so over the last...
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: 10 years or so, when I moved from Chicago back
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: to LA, I got divorced in 2013 or 14, and
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: I moved back to California. And I picked up my
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: friendship with him now more on a regular basis. And
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: so he's now 95. He doesn't leave the house too
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: much because he has a lot of physical ailments, but
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: he's still a thousand percent him. So I go to
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: see him. I go and we sit and we talk
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: for hours and he's funny and he's sharp and he's
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: curious and he's just like, he's my pal. I just
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: absolutely adore him. But my point is that I check
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: in on him and I check in on my friends
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: who are older, especially the ones that are not doing
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: so well. And from here, And when I'm in Miami,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: I do that. I check in on people. But I'm
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: not social. Like, I don't have anybody to go, hey,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: you want to go get coffee or want to go
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: have a drink before? I don't have anybody here for that.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: So how did you decide to get a divorce?
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Wow. You married?
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: I've been divorced. I'm in with the girl I'm with
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: now for, we lived in for 20 odd years.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: We're not married, but you've been divorced. Absolutely. Um, it's
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: not a thing where you wake up one day and go,
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: I feel like I want to get divorced. Uh, in
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: my case, it was very difficult and painful decision because
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: it wasn't because I didn't really love this person. She's
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: an incredible person. Um, I realized that at a certain
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: point when our sons were adults and my youngest son
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: had graduated from high school and was starting to live
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: his life, that our lives as a couple were not
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: headed in the same direction. The things that were really
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: interesting to me and the things that I was interested
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: in doing and the the path that I saw was
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: not the path she saw.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Can you just give a couple of examples so we
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: can put context to it? Yeah.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, and look, this is just my perspective.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Of course. Of course.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: She might, she might feel differently. And I think in
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: some cases she would still say that she does feel differently,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: but it wasn't, that wasn't, I just didn't feel that
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: that was what was happening. You know, the best way
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: I can put it is At a certain point when
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: you raised your kids, and for me, I never stopped
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: being a dad. My sons are all in their 30s,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: but I still feel like I'm constantly checking in on
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: them and I'm not hovering or anything like that. They
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: totally have their own lives. But you never stop being concerned.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: But there is a huge difference between when they're in
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: high school to when they leave. And so when my
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: sons were all about to depart, my brain was like,
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: I want to do more. I want to do all this.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Like whatever, for lack of a better word, whatever chains
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: around me are gone. I don't even have to think
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: about how long I'm on the road. Or I can
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: go and do a tour for three months and not
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: ever come home. And then go from there to visit
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: these countries I've never been to. And my ex.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Was really happy being home. And like, I wanted everything
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: to be bigger and she wanted to keep things small.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: And that was a real divide between us. It was
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: one of the things that, it was the way we
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: saw the rest of our lives were very different. That's probably,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: that's one example. And, you know, you put that together
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: with a long, you know, we were together almost 30 years. you,
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: anybody who's been in a long relationship, doesn't even have
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: to be a long relationship. When you identify things that
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: are not simpatico, when you identify things that are not
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: serving you individually in that relationship, you, some people just
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: stay the course and they go, you know what? The
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: good outweighs the bad. Uh, it's not, you know, there's no, um,
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: deal breakers. There's no cheating. There's no this, there's no that.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: So why would we separate? And then there are people,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: and I'm one of them who just saw a fundamental,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: different life, fundamentally different life that I wanted. And it
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: was really hard. It was a really hard decision to make,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: but I, but I found, I think I became the
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: most authentic me I've ever been after I got divorced.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: I was, I was never authentically me in that. And look,
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: life is compromise, but I felt that I was compromising
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: too much of who I really am in to make
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: other people happy. And so, and I'd never, I had
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: never really been single in my adult life. So that
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: was kind of a, a real interesting period too. Didn't
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: last long, but.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: So what are your three sons up to?
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Trying to figure it out. Trying to figure it out.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: What's your viewpoint on them being on or off the payroll?
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: So it's a conversation I have with a lot of
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: couples and, people who have grown kids. I recognize that
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: the landscape and the circumstances now are very different than
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: when I was their age or younger. When I set sail,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: I left home at 18, never took a dime from
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: my parents. Luckily, never needed help from them and was
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: just sort of relentless and definitely hit Like in those
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: first four years when I left home, between 18 and 22,
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: there were some times when I should have asked for
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: some help financially, and I just I just wouldn't, I
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: couldn't do it. It wasn't, it's just not who I am. And,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: you know, that was generational and my son's, um, you know,
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: it's a, it's a tough thing, Bob, because when my
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: kids were really young, much like when I was really,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: really young, my parents spotted my talent. They spotted They
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: were musicians. They were in the music business. They had
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: the jingle business, not the record business. But my dad
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: and my mother, he's just hearing me walk around the
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: house singing monkey songs. They were like, wait a minute,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: he's singing. That's perfectly in tune. And so they helped
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: cultivate that. And they saw that that's what I loved.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: That's what I wanted to do. But I had a gift, obviously.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: I was talented when I was a kid. Well, all
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: three of my sons, same thing. I would hear them
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: sing and I'd go, shit. And I saw that they
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: loved it, that they were really interested in it. And
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: so when they were, from the time they were still
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: single digit, I started having them sing together and learn
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: how to harmonize with each other. And then it was really,
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: and when they were kids, it was just this cute
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: thing that every Christmas I would record a classic Christmas
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: song and I would arrange it in a way so
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: that they would sing leads and then harmonize together. And well,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: all of our friends who were on that email card
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: every year they were like oh my god i can't
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: wait for the next one not because it was so
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: cute but because they're badass because it was like holy
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: crap because they have this i tell people it's sibling
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: harmony there's no replacement for it it's why the bg
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: sounded that way it's why the everly brothers sounded that
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: way there's a thing with sibling harmony that you can't
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: compare to And they just have it. But individually, by
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: the time they were in their teens, they're writing songs.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: They all want to have careers in the music business.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: They want to follow in my footsteps, for lack of
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: a better term. Well, guess what? When I was at
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: that point, there was an array of ways that I
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: could support myself in the music business. I could sing
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: background vocals for people. I could play keyboards on people's demos.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: I could produce people's demos. It didn't have to be
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: that I had to have a hit or be an artist.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: I could make a living in the background. There were jobs.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Those are gone. Gone. So by the time it was like, okay,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: now you have to really support yourself. The music business
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: that they wanted to be in was a totally different world.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: And they, my middle son, Lucas, I think all three
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: of them, the other two would agree, has always been
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: the most focused and the most driven. So he's the
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: one who's actually made some, made a bit of a
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: living because he's a featured artist on a handful of
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: songs that have big streaming numbers. He's co-written, he's got
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: a Katy Perry cut. He's, he's, he works it and he's,
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: He's as dedicated as he can be to it, but
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: he doesn't support himself with music. He supports himself otherwise.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: He's got a real estate thing where he makes money.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: My other two sons, they don't know what to do.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: They're not sure what to do because they were always
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: going to be in the music business. And now they
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: really don't have a place in the music business. So
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: it's really frustrating. I mean, sometimes it's been frustrating as
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: a father where I'm like, okay. figure it out.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: Okay. I mean like, okay. Yeah. It sucks. Trust me.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: I'm heartbroken that you can't be stars in the music
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: business or even just have a great, make a great
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: living in the music business, but okay. What else? You know?
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: And it's at the end of the day, it's easy
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: for me to say, um, the most important thing is
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: that my relationship with them be great. And it is.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: So whatever contention there has been, here and there where
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: I go, what the fuck? What are you going to do?
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Though that's few and far between. It's usually me just saying,
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: what about this? And honestly, I only really have to
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: help one of them. The other two, they don't ask
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: me for help. They figure it out.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: But they're still on the cell phone plan. You still
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: pay insurance. Yes, yes.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: They're still on the plan.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're in Chicago. Were you chomping at the bit, man,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: I can't wait till I graduate from high school or
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: move to LA? How did you decide to move? What
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: were the circumstances?
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: I started writing songs when I was 15. And I wrote,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: I just wrote and wrote and wrote. And I wrote
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: a handful of songs that I and my father actually
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, they were songs by a 15-year-old, but they
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: were pretty well constructed. They were pretty good. And my
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: dad had built a studio in Chicago for his jingle
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: business because when he started out in the early 60s,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: he was running from Universal Studios to this one to
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: that one. And then ultimately, he couldn't keep up with
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: the volume. He was doing so many sessions and so
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: many jingles every day. So he built a studio that
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: was designed... at the time in the early sixties by his,
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: his engineer, a guy named Bruce Swedeen. Wow. So Bruce
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: Swedeen started in Chicago and ended up being my father's
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: engineer on all those jingles until I guess, late sixties
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: when Quincy took him. Um, but I, when I was
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: a kid, I, I hung out, like I went to
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Bruce's house, Bruce and B's house. And, um, so he,
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: he built the studio. which was a beautiful state of
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: the art studio in Chicago. And that's where he did
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: all the jingles. Well, my dad, when I was 15,
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: 16 said, you know, you want to demo these songs.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: I will give you the studio for the day, but
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: you have to pay the musicians. There was no like,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no. Just my dad immediately made me
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: see it as a business and like, Oh, you want
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: to do this with these guys, these session guys that are, Yeah. Well,
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: they get paid and I'm not paying them. I'll let
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: you use the studio, but you've got to pay the
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: engineer and you've got to pay this. And so I
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: had a little money saved up from Christmas gifts and
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: I had some money.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Time out for a second. You're 15. You're going to
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: high school.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Are you doing everything in your own bedroom or are
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: you playing in bands, any of that kind of stuff?
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: I never played in a band. Never had a band. Tried.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: I tried to put bands together in high school. I
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: I couldn't find anybody that took it seriously. I couldn't
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: find anybody that was into it like I was. And so, no,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: my high school years were spent in the basement of
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: my house at the piano writing songs and envisioning myself
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: as the next Elton Billy piano playing troubadour.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, so your father says if you can get the
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: act together, you can use the studio. Continue there.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: So I went in and we cut, I don't know,
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: five songs with these studio musicians and mixed it, had
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: a cassette. So now I'm... This actually happened a little
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: bit later. I don't know. That was the first time.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: And we sent out the tape to... Every record company,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: of course, rejected it. And we tried to find people
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: in there. Because my dad, even as successful as he
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: was in the jingle business, that's not the record business.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: He didn't really know anybody in the record business. And so,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: as will happen, no interest. And then I did it
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: again a year later with a new batch of songs.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Same thing happened. Then when I was starting my senior
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: year of high school, the songs got better. And I
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: did another round of demos. And this is such a
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: fluke of a story. My best friend at the time
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: was a year older than me. So he was now
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: a freshman at Emory University in Atlanta. And he lived
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: in a dorm and all his friends in the dorm
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: would play music all day, like when they're studying, whatever.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: And that was the music of the day. It was
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: Queen and REO Speedwagon and whoever. And so my buddy...
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: had my demo tape, and he would play it mixed
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: into this other music. And these other people were like,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: who is that? What is that? Oh, he's my friend
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: from Chicago. He's trying to make it as a singer-songwriter.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: He's really great. And this one guy says, you know,
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: I grew up with a guy. I'm not kidding, Bob.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: I grew up with a guy who works with the
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Commodores now. I wonder if I get him the tape.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: I wonder if he could get it to Lionel Richie.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: So this is what I hear from my friend. Now
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: it's three people removed. Right. And my friend says, hey,
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: my roommate knows a guy.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Who knows a guy.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And they're going to get the tape to Lionel Richie.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know. two months later the phone rings at
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: my parents house and it's Lionel Richie now this is
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: this is interesting this is an interesting part of the
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: story Bob before I carry on for years and years
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: I've told this story in a lot of interviews about
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: how really Lionel Richie essentially discovered me. He called my parents'
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: house because he heard the tape. My phone number was
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: written on the back of the cassette box. This is 1980.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: He's just been up for an Oscar for Endless Love.
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: He's leaving the Commodores. He's arguably in the top three
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: or five most successful people in the music business right now.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: And he takes the time to call this number on
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: the back of this cassette. not knowing really much about me,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: just to say, hey, I heard your tape. I really
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: think you're good. These are good songs. I really like
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: your voice. What are you going to do? So when
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: I would tell this story for decades, when I would
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: tell this story in interviews, I would always say I
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: couldn't believe it. And I realized I wasn't lying, but
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: it took me until about 10 years ago to realize
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: that that was bullshit because of course it was an
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: initial shock of like, oh my God, it's Lionel Richie
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: on the phone. The truth is I believed that he
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: was going to hear my tape and call me. When
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: my friend said that to me, I didn't think, oh,
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: that's never gonna happen. I thought, oh my God, Lionel
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: Richie's gonna, I believed it. And it's important to me
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: because my life has been a series of... Manifestations has
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: sort of become this word that's a little like, I'm
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: bored with it. But it's how you think. And I
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: love that quote. I think it's Henry Ford. Whether you
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: There was something about me from the time I was
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: a kid who just thought that this was going to happen,
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: or I'm going to meet this person. Mostly it's been
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: with people. I have pulled people into my path so consistently.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: People who influenced me, who affected me. Maybe with the
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: exception of Elvis Presley, who died when I was 12.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: Every single person who's made a real impact on me,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: not just musicians, actors, I've met, or I've worked with,
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: or I've become great friends with. Every single one. And
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: so when I look back to that 17-year-old me on
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: the phone with Lana Richie, I now realize that I
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: had something to do with that happening. It doesn't change
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: the fact that the grace that existed in him, that
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: he would pick up the phone and call some kid
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: in Chicago, There's a lot more I could tell you
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: about Lionel Richie, but that's kind of all you need
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: to know about him. That's who he is. That's who
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: he still is. And so long-winded way of saying, he
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: encouraged me to not go to college and to come
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: to LA. And he said to me, I don't have
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: any work for you. I can't promise you anything, but
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: I can tell you this, what you want to do,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: you're not going to do from Chicago. So you got
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: to I think you should come to LA. You could
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: try it in New York. It's a much tougher place
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: to be. And if you come to LA after you
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: graduate from high school, here's my number. Look me up.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: And so that's what I did. And eight months later,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: my dad and I went out to LA. I got
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: in touch with Lionel. He was making his first solo album.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: He invited me and my dad to the studio one day.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: And We're sitting in the room and they're working on
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: this song from his first album called You Are that
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: became a big hit for him. And they happened to
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: be doing background vocals the day I showed up. And
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting there watching and I'm in the control room
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: on a couch. And there's four singers, Lionel and three
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: background singers. And I overheard that they'd been working on
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: this particular background part and this song for two days.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: My dad and I looked at each other like, What?
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Who the fuck has the budget for that? And they
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: can't quite get the sound that Lionel's after. He keeps saying, no,
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: it's not the sound. It's not the sound. And he
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: keeps switching parts. Finally, I can see he's getting frustrated.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: And he looks into the control room where the producer,
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: James Carmichael, was behind me up on the consoles. And
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Lionel looked and he pointed to me through the glass.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: He was like, hey, come here. And I did one
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: of those like turning around like me. He said, come
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: out here. So I go out and he said, you've
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: been listening. Do you know what part I've been singing?
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: And I went, yeah, I think so. He said, okay,
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: I want you to sing my part. And then you, David,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: you switch this and Debbie, you do. And he left
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: the room, went in the control room and they played
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: the track. And the chorus came and we all sang.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: And like out of a movie, Lionel hit the talk
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: back and he went, that's the sound. And I had
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: a job. And he had me sing on the whole album.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: More importantly, Bob, he said to me earlier, like the
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: second day or something, because he said, come back tomorrow
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: and I've got another song to have you sing on.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: And when I was leaving the studio that day, he said, listen,
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: I've got a couple more months of recording this album.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: And I don't know how much background work I have
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: for you on this. But if I'm in this room,
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: meaning the studio, you're welcome to be in this room.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: And I thought, my God, what an invitation. And so
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a job. I didn't have a job
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: to make money. But I had saved up enough money
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: to get me through a year in L.A. And I
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: was making a little bit of money as background singer
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: with him. But more importantly, I was like, oh, I'm
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: coming in. I'll be here every day. And I never
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: missed a day of recording. So I watched him cut
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: basic tracks. I watched him do string dates. I watched
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: him do percussion overdubs. I watched him do guitar solo overdubs.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: I watched him make a record that ultimately sold 5
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: million records. It was like going to record producer college.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: And it was so fun. And then I met Greg Fillinganes.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: And I met this one and that one, like these
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: studio musicians who were coming into play. And it was
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: the most thrilling first six months of my adulthood at
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: 18 that you could have imagined. And then he had
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: me back on the second album and I sang on
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: All Night Long and I sang on Running With the Night.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: But more importantly, in between the first two albums, I
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: now have Lionel Richie on my resume. So now I'm
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: getting work as a background singer. And I'm getting hired
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: by this producer and that producer who heard, oh, this
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: is this young kid from Chicago who sang on Lionel's record.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: So I got this Lionel stamp of approval, right? And
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: then Lionel recommended me to Kenny Rogers, who was making
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: an album a year later. So I got hired to
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: do two days with Kenny. And at the end of
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: the first day, I sang some background vocals and I
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: overheard Kenny telling his producer that they were still short
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: a song and what he wanted. And I went home
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: to my apartment that night knowing I had a session
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: with him the next day. And I wrote a song
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: called Crazy. And I came in the next day and
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: I did exactly what the background singer should not do.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: Go up to the artist and say, hey, I'm a songwriter.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: I got a song. Really good way to get fired.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: But instead of calling security, Kenny Rogers said, well, let
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: me hear it. And he sat down, we sat down
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: at the piano and I played it for him and
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: he cut it and it was a number one song.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, he put his name on it, took 50%,
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: but we joked about it to the end of his life.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Let's go back. You're talking about manifestation, et cetera. Is
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: it manifestation or Or is it self-belief, believing that I'm
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: going to make it?
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: It's not just self-belief because I know people who really
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: believe in themselves and they don't get the reward for it.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: There's some mechanism that doesn't connect either.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I know what the mechanism is. The mechanism is you.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, of course. Right.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: And the same thing is, okay, you show up, you
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: sing on the first Lionel Richie solo album. You go
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: home to your apartment. The phone isn't looking for you.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: You're working it on some level.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: Of course. I was relentless.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: Tell me how you worked it in the early days.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Yeah, because it is a big component for sure.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: And it's, look, it's that, I mean, as much as
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: I hate certain cliches, I love certain cliches. And one
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: of my favorite cliche lines is, success is where opportunity
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: and preparation collide. So I think partly because I was
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: raised by a father who absolutely loved what he did.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: He loved making music so much, more than anything. But
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: he was as pro as they came. He was never late.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: He was never ill-prepared. He was a total badass. And
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: he had a mentality that was old school in that way.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: And I have a lot of that. And I always did.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: But drive and relentlessness. I recognized at 18 that no
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: one was going to hand me shit. I have to
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: go try to fight for it. Whatever I want, I
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: have to go get it. Now there's a fine line
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: and sometimes it's just personality. And if you're lucky, you're lucky.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: And if you're not, you're not. There are certain people
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: who have a drive and they have a relentlessness and
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: you don't want to be around those people because there's
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: something about their personality that's off.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: Right. For whatever reason, I guess I just sort of
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: had a balance. David Foster has said it so many times.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: Like he said, it was clear how driven you were,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: but you were a good kid to have around. Like
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: you were funny. And we liked having you, we liked
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: you having, having you in the room. And he said
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: to me, he said, you always knew when not to talk.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: And he said, and there's no way to teach that.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: Like there could be something going on in the room
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: and you would know when to say something or say
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: something funny or whatever, but you really knew when not
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: to talk. And I, That's just instinct, I guess. All
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: of those things really served me. But yes, to your point, Bob,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: any opportunity I saw, I took because I knew that
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: it was up to me to get what I wanted.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: And I knew that it was all like building blocks.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: It was like, well, if I write enough songs with
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: enough people, that's going to get the attention of record
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: companies or, you know, the more songs I write, the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: better a songwriter I'm going to be. Um, the more
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: sessions I do, the more I learn about how to
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: make a record so that when I, if I do
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: get a record deal, I want to produce my own records.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: I need to have that experience. And so I started
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: connecting myself to all these different artists and all these
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: different people so that I became one of the guys
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: I became, uh, uh, part of that community. And I
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: loved it. I was working with the Toto guys and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: I was working with David Foster and I was working
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: with Kenny Loggins and I was working with like, but
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: I was the kid. I was always the kid in
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: the room. But I also knew that, um, I think I,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, I think I knew what
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: my limitations were, but I don't think I did. I
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: didn't think I had any limitations.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's say for some reason a session doesn't
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: run as late as they usually do and you come
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: home and it's 7 o'clock. Are you burning up the phone,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: making relationships, looking for background stuff? When you reach a
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: certain level, people call you, but it takes a while
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: to reach that level.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, it was a combination of, no,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: at night. And that's the thing I try to explain.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: I even explained it to my sons. Because a couple
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: of times over the last 10 years or so, a
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: conversation has come up about, well, I've done everything. I've
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: tried everything. And I go, no, you didn't. You think
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: you did. But for me, to answer that exact question,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: if I found myself home in my apartment at 7
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: o'clock on a Tuesday night, I was writing. I was
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: trying to come up with the next song. Here's the thing.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to do anything else. It wasn't a
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: thing of like, I'd love to play video games. That's
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: what I really want to do. But I should write. No.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: It's like, fuck, I don't want to do anything else.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: Because there's nothing else that interests me more than trying
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: to come up with better songs or come up with
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: a chorus that I can play for somebody to see
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: if they want to finish it. It was always work
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: on the puzzles. And I don't mean the puzzle on
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: the table. I mean, work on the puzzle, put another
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: piece in the puzzle. I was constantly listening to other
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: music to keep listening to what was happening and let
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: influences come in. It's no other way to put it.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: It was like, and that lasted the majority of my life.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't feel that way anymore, but maybe
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: up until 10 years ago, man, I didn't want to
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: do anything else but just work on music and try
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: to come up with another song. And during the day,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: in between sessions, I was calling people and checking in like, hey,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: I'm around this week. Thursday's wide open for me. What
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: are you guys doing? You need keyboards on that? Yeah, constantly.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: And that's how you propel your career. But More importantly,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: at that time, that's how I made a living. That's
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: how I could get a job. So I never had
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: to apply at a restaurant to be a waiter or
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: a bartender. There were times when I thought, shit, am
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: I going to actually have to get a job somewhere?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't know what to do. But then at the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: last minute, there would always be some musical job that
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: came that saved me, that paid my rent.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, you're growing up in Chicago. You're talking about your
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: college buddies going to Emory. You move at age 18
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: to LA. You have an instant situation with Lionel Richie.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: You kind of reference there. In this period before you
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: have your first hit, which is gigantic, but before that,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: is there ever any regret? Well, shit, maybe I should
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: have gone to college or I'm missing out.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, God, no. No. Never. Never. No, the only thing
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: that ever– the only regret that only came up maybe
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: 10 years later in my late 20s. In my late 20s,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: I realized now I had a different group of friends,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: all of whom had gone to college. And the one
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: thing that I would notice about them in their stories
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: was the friendships that they made and the experiences that
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: they had in that– for those who just went for
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: four years, that I thought, oh, that– First of all,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: it would have been fun. But second of all, I
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: think I would have maybe learned more about myself in
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: that four years to write about. It's always like, how
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: does it serve me now? How does it serve the songwriting?
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: But yeah, the only regret I've ever had is never
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: having experienced the kind of friendships and relationships and experiences
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: that I hear from people who loved when they went
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: to college, who they look back on their college days
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: with such fondness and.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: Love. Did your kids go to college? Did you tell
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: them to go to college? How did that work out?
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: My kids, when they became college ready, they were all
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: poised to do what I ended up doing, except it
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: didn't work out for them. I was like, look, I
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: did the same thing. I didn't go. And you can
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: always go back. So yeah, just keep at it. So no,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: my kids didn't go to college. My one son took
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: some business classes at DePaul University in Chicago, but it
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: didn't really stick. And the other two, no, none of
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: my kids went to college. And I don't think that
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: they regret it, but I regret it. Because I think
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: that I actually regret it. for them because I think
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: that they would have had some experiences that would have
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: served them now. But I also feel like maybe they
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: would have found something else if they had discovered something
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: other than music during that time that they could be
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: pursuing now, rather than now being like, the music business
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: is dead. So what am I going to do? But
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: I can't even think twice about that because it just
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: didn't happen.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: Okay. You're there. right in the heyday. The 80s have
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: certain things. CDs generate a lot of revenue. Therefore, there's
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of money to make the records. If the
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: record is successful, it's on MTV. If it's successful on MTV,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: it can be on MTV around the world. You can
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: have a worldwide hit. Needless to say, that no longer exists.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: But in addition... Most artists have a period within which
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: their hits happen, and then after it, they don't happen.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: Without generalizing about those people, what do we know? The
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: number one record in America, most people don't know.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, we walk down the street, no judgment on
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, but you say, sing two songs from the
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: new Taylor Swift album. They can't. Okay?
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: Depends on who you ask.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: My point is it's not universal in the way that
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: 100% agree.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: How does this affect your motivation and how do you
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: march forward?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: Good one again. I would love to say that at 63,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: the idea of chasing another song that could potentially be
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: a big hit is something that exists in me and
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: it doesn't. And a big part of it is what
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: you just described. Even though a lot of the songs
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: that I wrote that became very successful, there was no
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: hard labor involved. There was no heavy lifting. Some of
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: the biggest songs I wrote so fast and were so effortless,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: they wrote themselves practically. And then there are other songs
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: that I have worked on that I had worked on
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: for Jesus. There are a couple of songs I recorded
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: that probably took a year and a half to finally
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: crack the code. that no one knows, except for my
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: diehards who listen to the whole album. The motivation to
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: write songs and come up with cool stuff now, unless
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: it's something that I just truly feel like, oh my God,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: I can't not do that. That's just fun for me.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: That doesn't happen very often anymore. And so the other
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: motivation that existed for a long time which was, yeah,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: a hit song means money and means another notch in
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: the belt. And it means, you know, staying in the game.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: And that motivation's gone for me.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: But wait, how much of the motivation has gone that
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: the game changed or you changed?
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know that that's possible to ascertain, but I
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: think it's the game changed. So for instance, I get
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: asked to co-write with people a lot. And most of
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: them are people who are up and coming artists or
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: people who've been around for a while, but they think
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: that they want another hit, whatever that is. And for
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: a long time, if somebody asked me to write with them,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: and if I appreciated what they did to some degree,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, yeah, Sure. I don't do it anymore.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: And I finally stopped making bullshit excuses. And I finally
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: started telling the truth, which is at this stage of
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: the state of the business that we're in. And very importantly,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: me being 63 years old, married to a woman who
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: I just adore and I love our life together. My
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: thing now is I say, listen, If you want me
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: to give up walking on the beach with Daisy Fuentes
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: or going to lunch with Daisy Fuentes to sit in
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: a room to write a song that no one's going
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: to give a shit about, no matter how good it
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: might be, I'm picking Daisy. There's no upside for me.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: There's no point for me. I totally get why you're
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: doing it and I applaud it, but I think that
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: most of the people who've And I say that with
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: a level of, I guess, I don't mean it to
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: be arrogant, but it's an arrogance that comes with having
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: had the experience of having big songs. If I'd never
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: had a hit song or if I'd never had a
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: song that got mass acceptance, I would absolutely be chasing
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: it still probably now and until the day I died.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: But when you've been gifted... with the experience of something
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: you wrote that everybody knows. Anybody could sing it in
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: the world. And especially when you've done it multiple times,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: there does come a point where that part of it
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: is off the table. Like I've had, I mean, it's
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: always nice to think, oh, I'd love to see, I'd
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: love to feel that again. I'd love to see that again.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: But I know that the chances are none. They're zip.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: So I don't really want to invest time In that,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: because it's no longer fun for me the way it
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: used to be. And there's no real reward. What is
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: rewarding for me at this stage of my life is
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: all the other things that I could do with that time.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: Even if it's just sitting, having an iced latte and
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: talking to my wife for an hour. That's more valuable
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: to me than sitting in a room with some artist
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: who is hoping to have a hit with the song
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: that we're writing. I wish I didn't feel that way,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: but I'm being totally honest. That's just kind of where
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: I'm at now.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: Does it ever come... If you talk to people who
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: write songs for a living, you're also an artist. They're
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: still writing songs. Let's use the Nashville example.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: Perfect.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: But we're not going to give you the song if
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: you're not a hit artist. Because there's only money in
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: the hit because of streaming. They don't listen to the
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: 10th song on the album, whatever. Does it ever come
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: at this late date that someone where... Some act of stature,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: whatever you say, they call you and you say, well,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: this could go, this could work, as opposed to the
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: person who's still rising up from the bottom.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know, Bob. I mean, and also that mentality
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: that you just described, which is true, is also so
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: short-sighted because especially in 2026 and beyond, the artist who's
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: going to maybe have the breakaways hit, we've never heard
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: of today. In fact, it's like these people who like
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: these songs that become, I mean, who heard of Ellie
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: Langley before? Right. So I wonder how many songwriters in
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: Nashville didn't give a shit about co-writing with her. We're
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: not interested because she wasn't a hit artist. Well, now
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: they're going, God damn it. Right. So, you know, I
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: had a similar thing, but for totally different reason, uh,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: 20 years ago, 22 years ago, I guess, I'm having
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: dinner with Scott Borchetta in Nashville, who I was friendly
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: with through some work we had done together. And he
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: had just started Big Machine and we finished dinner and
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: it's nighttime. He says, I want to show you the offices.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: So we go over to, he opens up the office.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: He's got the keys and it's a brand new office.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: And I'm very happy for him. He's very excited. He's
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: brand new record company head. And he says, I got
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: to play you something. So he plays me the first
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: two or three Taylor Swift demos. And he goes, would
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: you want to write with her? And I went, no,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. And not because I didn't appreciate
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: what I heard, but I honestly said, Scott, what is she, 15?
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: He said, yeah, she's 15. I said, dude, what the
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: fuck am I going to write with a 15-year-old girl?
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: I can't help her. And, and, and if I were
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: to try to contort myself into the person who could
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: facilitate something musically or whatever, like, Oh no, I don't,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: I just, I wish you the best with it. Well,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: now people go, when I tell that story, they go,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: Oh my God, you must be kicking yourself. And I go, no,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: I did the right thing. Like I wouldn't have been
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: any good to.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: Her, you know?
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: So, but that's just a little sidebar. I feel like, um,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: The other answer to your question is, once in a
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: great while, I'll hear somebody. I'll hear a demo or
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: I'll hear an independent thing that somebody put out. And
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: I'll really like it. I'll really appreciate what it is musically.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: And if for whatever reason they reach out to me,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: that I'll do. Because if it's somebody who I go,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: I'm a fan. I really love what you do. And
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: the other criteria has to be that I think that
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: I can serve you, that I think I can, I
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: can help you in a way that you can't already
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: help yourself. Um, so that's happened here and there, nothing successful,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: but I would, I think I would always be open
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: to that, but it's a very, very narrow window because
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: even people I think are kind of okay or like,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they're good. That doesn't get me. That's not
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: going to get me to go in a room. It's
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: got to be somebody I go, man, I'm such a
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: fan of. Like, I'll give you an example of somebody
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: who's successful. If Tove Lo, for whatever reason, said, I
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: got this idea, but I feel like Richard Marks would
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: be really good to help me with this. Oh, my God.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: I'd get on a plane. I'd fly to Sweden. Whatever.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: Because I'm such a fan of hers. And I don't
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: give a shit what happens to the song. I just
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: want that experience. And I want to create something great
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: with someone who I think is amazing. So those are...
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: The only examples where I would get motivated to collaborate
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: with somebody at this point.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: Okay. Your last album, new album, is a covers album,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: also in a different style from your normal work. Most
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: acts were, let's say, 10 to 15 years older than you.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: The vast majority of them do not put out new music.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: They'll go on the road, but they're not putting out records.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: In your case, do you anticipate putting out new original work?
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: That encompasses so many things. A, you got to be
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: motivated to write it. Then you have to work to
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: record it. Then you have to find somebody to put
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: it out. You put out yourself, then you have the market.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: There's an incredible lift involved, okay?
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: And expense.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: Right. And then there is the lift so high or
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: the barrier so high that you say, kind of like,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: I'd rather hang out with Daisy and do what I'm
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: already doing. Or they're still inside some of, well, you know,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: I'm a songwriter. I wake up one day, I have
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: an idea, I have to write a song. And maybe,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: you know, something could happen.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: Well, in my case, one correction, it's not a covers album.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: So after hours, because I don't see any scenario where
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: I would ever put out, quote, a covers album. What
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: it is, is an album that's half standards that I've
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: always loved and half songs I wrote that I tried
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: to evoke. Yeah. Now that was the hook for me. No, no, no,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: of course. That, to your point, was the hook for me.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: Because the minute I thought, how much fucking fun would
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: it be for me to literally pretend that I'm some
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: young songwriter in New York City in 1948 trying to
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: get Sinatra to cut one of my songs? Let me
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: be a character. Let me write in a way that
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: I don't write. Let me write chord changes I would
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: never use in a pop song. Let me even write
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: lines of lyric that are kind of old fashioned and
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: let me arrange and visualize these songs to try to
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: fit in with the way you look tonight and fly
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: me to the moon and these handful of songs that
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: I love. And Bob, I got to tell you, it
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: was the writing of the album or the writing of
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: the half the album that I wrote was the most
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: enjoyable songwriting I've had the experience of in years. And
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: I still really love writing songs. I still love writing
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: songs for myself. I write songs with my sons now,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: which is really amazingly fun for me. I still write
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: with Matt Scannell. I'm never going to stop writing and
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: recording songs. That's never going to happen because it is,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: when I decide I need to make music and I
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: need to have that, it's heroin. I need every so often,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: maybe it's every other year, I need to sit and
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: listen back to something that I created that I'm singing
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: because it's heroin, because I'll never not need to have
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: that hit. I need to have that experience every so often.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: It's ingrained in me. But writing the songs for this
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: album was joyful and fun and no expectations. I didn't
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: think anybody was going to give a shit about this record.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: But once I started working on it and then having
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: the idea that I wanted to do it all live,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: so we did the whole album in three afternoons. And
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: I sang every take live. And I got the best
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: arranger in the world that I think exists, a guy
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: named Rob Eklund, this young British guy. And we went
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: into Evergreen Studios. And I had Vinnie Cagliuta playing drums
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: and Dean Parks on guitar and Randy Waldman on piano
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: and 28 men and women playing instruments and dancing. 30,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: whatever that is, people and me made music for three
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: afternoons like the old days where I had every fucking
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: oboe player and trumpet player coming up to me in
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: between takes going, dude, nobody does this.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: This is so fun for us.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: They were having so much fun because we were just
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: human beings making music. No auto-tune, no punching in, like
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: a couple of overdubs because I thought of, oh, it'd
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: be great to get Chris Bode to play the trumpet
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: solo on this. But the core of the record was
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: just three or four takes of every song. We picked
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: the best take. It was the experience of making the
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: album was joyful. The writing songs was joyful. Playing these
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: songs live in the context of my greatest hit show
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: is joyful. So I gave myself a really, really great
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: gift in making this record. And so looking forward, If
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: you see that I've put out new music, it's because
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: I wanted to, not because I feel like anybody's going
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: to give a shit.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: Okay. Who paid for this record?
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: You're looking at him.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: You decide to do it. You're on the creative end,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: but at some point, there's a business end.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: Expectations are one thing, but two, you're in the red.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: In today's modern world, how do you approach getting the
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: music to the potential audience and hopefully recouping some of
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: your money?
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: Well, I think if you're realistic about it, for someone
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: like me, you know that the likelihood of even break-even
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: strictly on the record itself is pretty much never going
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: to happen. So then you go, okay, well, Do I
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: invest this couple $ 300, 000 into something that's a labor of
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: love and give yourself the gift of that experience knowing
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: that you're not going to make that money back in
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: album sales and record sales. But with touring and merch,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: I look at it as that was a business expense
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: for that year. knowing that I'm going to go out
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: and do 70 shows and I'm going to, you know,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: I'm very lucky that I still work a lot and
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: I have all these other income streams. And then it
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: was just really, really a matter of like, am I
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: willing to eat whatever money to have this experience? And
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: also to think a little bit bigger picture, to portray
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: myself musically in a different way than I ever have
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: before might also open up opportunities for me that I
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have normally had. And they already are. I already
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: am sort of like, I've had these opportunities based upon
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: a couple of the songs on this record and the
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: concept of the album where people are like, Oh, I
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: didn't know Richard Marx did that. Like he's kind of like,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: he can do like the big band thing. And all
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: of a sudden it's like, Oh, could he come and
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: do this thing with this orchestra? Like it's just an
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: eye opener. So it's, But I knew going in that
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: there was a possibility that I was looking at this
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: whole project in a bigger picture kind of way. So
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: I didn't hesitate. I mean, I don't like writing those checks,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: knowing that there's no way to recoup that money on
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: those in that way. But I would do it again.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Okay. The other guest artists, were those overdubs also Rod Stewart,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: Tom Scott?
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, no, Tom Scott was actually... He was on
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: the session date, so his solo was live. Rod overdubbed
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: his vocal. Kenny G overdubbed his solo and Chris Bode
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: on his.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're on the road where the rubber meets
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: the road. You play, you know, let's talk traditional rock bands,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: arena acts, whatever. They play the new music. It's a
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: joke song. That's when everybody goes to the bathroom.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: So what's it like for you when you play this stuff?
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a huge difference between when I played this
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: stuff on this last tour versus when I've played a
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: new song or two from other albums in the past.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: Because I've done a new album every couple of years.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: And I put a song or two in my live show.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: Part of it is the approach. So my show... my
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: live show for ever is very interactive. I talk a lot.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: I feel like my job every night is at the
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: end of the night. I want the audience to feel
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: like they hung out with me and that they would
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: want to go have a drink with me. I love
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: performing now in a way that I never did before.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: And I look at, I look at the, I look
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: at the whole activity of it as being so important
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: in a way that I never did before. The act
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: of being in a room with, whether it's 2,000 people
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: or 10,000 people, that we, I have an opportunity for
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: two hours to let everybody forget about everything else and
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: just totally entertain them. And just, we can all be,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: we can all have a couple hours where we're just
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: doing this where we're not scrolling and we're not stressing
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: or we're not bitching or we're not. And we're all
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: just sort of like having this time together. Now I
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: try to, I hope that as many people in that
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: room are into it, like I am and the rest
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: of the audience, I can tell from the reaction that
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: generally speaking, that's what happens night after night after night.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: And I think that they see from the minute I
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: walk out on stage that that's my motivation. So I
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: say that because when I have new material that I'm
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: going to sprinkle into the show, I make sure that
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: the audience knows it's only going to be quick and
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: it's not going to hurt too much.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: How do you do that?
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: Because I tell them, this is my rap. It has
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: been for years. Listen, there are going to be a
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: couple of new songs tonight, here and there, but just
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: a couple because I go to concerts too. And if
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: I go see a band or an artist I love,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: if I go see Foo Fighters and they're going to
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: load up 25 minutes of the new album, I love
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: Foo Fighters, but fuck that. That's not why I came here, man. Dave,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: play Everlong. Play times like these. You know what I mean?
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: I get it. I totally get it as an audience member.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: So once I say that and I honor it, I'm
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: a man of my word, the audiences, they don't get
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: up and leave. They go, oh, it's just this one song. Yeah,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: let me check it out. I'll check it out. I'll
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: listen to this. In the case of this album, I
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: set it up. I say, look, I'm going to play
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: a few songs from this album. Here's what the whole
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: vibe is. There's something also about the pacing of it,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: where you put it in the show. The majority of
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: my audience, surprisingly, they want to hear me sing just
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: the way you look tonight. Even if they haven't heard
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: the album, they want to hear what I sound like
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: singing that song. And then I go to the piano
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: and I do this ballad version of Fly Me to
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: the Moon that gets a standing ovation every night, every
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: single night. And then I saved my favorite song from
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: the album that I wrote with Daisy actually called Magic Hour,
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: which is the sort of tango fun. It's such a
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: fun song and it's super catchy. I don't have to
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: make any apologies. People are up and dancing to this.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: And I even say to them, Bob, because it happens
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: so frequently, I stop at some point when that happens
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: and I say, I need to just take a second
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: and acknowledge that That I just played you guys a
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: song you never heard before. And you reacted like that.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: And that's why I keep writing songs.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: Okay. As the person on stage, since this album is
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: unique relative to your previous material, would you say that
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: the stuff on this album goes down easier and is
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: more easily accepted than than stuff that fits with the
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: rest of your catalog. Irrelevant of the quality, just style.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. I think so. I think that... And I
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: don't know that I'm actually sitting here thinking if there's
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: any other comparison to any other genre or... I think
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: it's that there's something about... And when I say the
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: Great American Songbook, I'm only doing one or two of
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: those standards. I'm focusing on the songs I wrote for
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: the album But I think that, again, also it's demographics. Like,
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: would I have been able to get away with this
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: 20 years ago with my audience? I don't know. Maybe not.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: They would have been like, dude, what are you, 100?
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: What are you, Tony Bennett now? But my audience is
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: older as I am. And so they're kind of like
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: more like, oh, yeah, this is fun. This is cool.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: I love this. Because there are, you know, even there
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: are men in the audience, because I've met them. I've
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: talked to them. in meet and greets or at restaurants
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: or whatever, people who come up to me and I go, dude, I'll,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm a lifelong metalhead, but I put on
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: the Sinatra station now. And I love, I actually have
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: an appreciation for what you do, your old ballads. And
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: it's just an evolution. You know, people are more open
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: to stuff that feels, what's the right word? Not comfortable,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: but it just makes you feel good. And, This is
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: a real feel-good record. But I don't think that that
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: would apply to, like if I made a country record,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: like a real, like I decided I'm going to make
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: a Merle Haggard record. And I asked my audience to
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: sit through three or four of those songs. Everybody would
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: be in the bathroom or getting a popcorn. I get it.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: I would never put them through it.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about image. You break in the mid-70s with
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: a song you only have to hear once. I went
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: out and bought the album.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: 80s.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: It's got Joe Walsh on it. It's just, you have
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: to hear it. Yes, you must say at the time,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: most people having hits with that... First of all, not
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: many people were having hits with that kind of music
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: at the time. But those who did were more from
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: the Joe Walsh demo than from your age. So, you
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: have that gigantic hit. Then you continue to have hits
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: in slightly different genres. They are popular. They are not,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: as I say, if one hand you have metal, on
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: the other hand, you have Sinatra. They're moving more towards
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: the center. So, my first question is.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: In terms of image, do you feel that you get
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: a bad rap because you're talented or you accept and
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: you have your fan? How do you feel about the
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: world's perception of you?
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: I try not to think too much about it because
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: I have no control over it. I mean, I definitely
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: had my times of thinking about like, why am I
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: perceived this way or I wonder how people, and it
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: reminds me of that great line, you wouldn't worry so
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: much about what I thought about you if you knew
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: how little I did.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: So I try not to, especially when I'm creating or
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: when I'm about to put out a record, I try
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: not to think about it too much because I have
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: no control over it. I think that I think that
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: the general perception of me by people who know me
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: or know of my music is somewhere between slightly accurate
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: and totally inaccurate. But I also totally get that. So,
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: for instance, you mentioned Don't Mean Nothing, my big breakthrough single.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: It was an Eagles record when the Eagles weren't together, basically. Right.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, the song was just a pretty standard rock
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: blues song. I love that song, and I'm really proud
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: of my lyrics on that song. I was actually trying
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: to rip off You Can Leave Your Hat On.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: The Randy song.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: Randy Newman, right?
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Randy Newman song. Because it had that... That's
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: kind of how I heard it. There were a lot
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: of sort of rock fans and even critics who just
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: loved it. A, because I think the quality of the
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: song was strong. My vocal was strong.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: I was this kid.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: I was 23. But it was also... I think it
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: was a breath of fresh air because on the charts
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: in 1987, it was predominantly either hair metal or dance music.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: So for me to put out this sort of Southern
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: California rock and roll song with Joe Walsh playing the
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: guitar solo and Timothy Schmidt and Randy Miser singing background vocals,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: that was the hook that got attention. But radio wasn't
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: going to continue to play it unless it really connected.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: So I'm very proud of that, but I think that
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: the people who jumped on it and loved it Then
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: we're like, wait a minute, what is this Endless Summer
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: Nights song? That's not that guy. Yeah, it is. Yeah,
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: same guy. And from that point on, I was like,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: why would I do Don't Mean Nothing Part 2? Or conversely,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: Right Here Waiting Part 2. Right Here Waiting, which was
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: the biggest song of my life, I've actually had people,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: especially at record companies over the years, going, give me
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: another Right Here Waiting. It's like, no, I fucking gave
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: it to you. So I think that back to the
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: question about perception. I think that, again, I don't know.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: I could be wrong. I think that there's a general
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: perception that I'm this romantic balladeer. But then you go, yeah,
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: but he did Don't Make Nothing. And people, oh, right. Oh, yeah,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: that was rocking. Or, yeah, but he did Satisfy. Satisfy
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: was the number one song. Oh, yeah. Hazard. It's really weird.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: Murder mystery song. It was all like, not really of
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: any genre.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: So it's like one of those things where if you
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: sit with that one person who has that perception of
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: you and you remind them of these other aspects, they go.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: Now you might have changed their perception. But their perception
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: that's just instinctive is what it is. And believe me, Bob,
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: I've spent years trying to figure out how can I expand,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: not change, but expand people's perception so that they understand
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: the whole picture of And I finally was like, they're
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: not going to. Just move on. Just live your life, man.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: It's frustrating. It has been frustrating sometimes. But at the
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: end of the day, it's like, what am I going
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: to do about it?
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: So who comes to a Richard Mark show? Forget if
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: you're opening like with Rod Stewart. It's a headline show.
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: Who's your audience?
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: They're predominantly, well, it used to be more skewed female,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: but now I don't think it is. I think it's
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: pretty 50-50. And it's now people from 40 to 70.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: I have my little pockets of 20s and 30s because
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: their parents were fans. So I'm on that second generation
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: of fans, which is really great. It also depends demographically.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: So I did a tour this spring in Australia where
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: I saw a lot more younger people because I'm a
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: coach on The Voice down there. So now I'm on TV.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: I had a young kid. I was just there last
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: weekend to do this tribute to John Farnham, the Australian singer.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: So I was just in Melbourne for two days, but
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 2: I walked out of my hotel to go get a
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: coffee and people came up to me and But then
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: as I was getting in the elevator, this kid, like
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: 10 years old, came running. He was, hey, hey. He says,
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: are you that guy from The Voice?
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: It was amazing.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my audience is the people who were there when
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: the hits were really happening. And I say this with
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: such gratitude. I have a lot of people who are
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: there for their third time or seventh time or twelfth time.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: So many of these people who started coming to see
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: me in the 80s, and when I'm around, they come
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: see me. It's awesome.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: You were talking, you referenced this obliquely, but are you
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: worried about maintaining the number of people who see you?
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: Are you worried about that falling off? It's just out
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: of your hands or what?
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: Some of it's out of your hands, as you know,
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: but some of it's not out of your hands. So
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: what's really different now, and this is a different part
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: of the music business that we're talking about now, but
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: in terms of the touring business, it's also radically different.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: So in the 80s and 90s, even into the early 2000s,
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: if you did a concert in New Orleans, The responsibility
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: of getting asses in seats was the promoter, was the
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: person who booked you. They have a marketing plan. They
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: have a marketing budget. Their job is to make sure
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: that everybody in New Orleans knows you're playing at that
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 2: venue on that night so that they buy a ticket
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: and see you. They are appealing to your fan base,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: of course, but it's their job to make sure that
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: people know. Those days are long gone. That's why the
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: word promoter is gone now. they're, they're buyers. It's just corporate.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: And what, and yeah, do they still have a marketing budget? Yeah.
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: But you know, it's up to us, the artists to
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: make sure that we sell as many seats as we can.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: So the onus is on us to promote our shows
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: via social media. And there are smart ways to use
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: the web and social media to target. Like you can like,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: You can invest in yourself. You can buy ads in
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: certain parts of the country or parts of the world.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: If somebody clicks on a YouTube video, they're going to
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: see an ad for your concert. So I think it's
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: become a thing where you can't be naive. I work
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: my touring. I make sure I post about it. I
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: stay on top of it because I absolutely do not
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: want my business to fall off. I want, if nothing else,
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: to increase it. I'm very happy with where things are
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: and how many shows I do and where I'm playing
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: and all that. But I don't see, well, first of all,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: I don't see ever retiring. So if I want to
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: be Tony Bennett and I want to be singing on
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: stage in beautiful theaters when I'm 93 years old, I
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: have to maintain my audience, which means every show I
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: do Every year, I have to be sure that what
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: I'm giving people who pay to be there is something
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: really valuable, is something really worthwhile. And a lot of
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: that comes from me, at least. I mean, I'm very
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: lucky that I still sound the same. I see so
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: many of my peers and people slightly older than me
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: who are really struggling vocally. It's so heartbreaking. I can
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: only imagine. I don't take it for granted. I'm just
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: so far, you know, I'm still out there hitting those
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: notes and I can sing for two hours plus. No problem.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: But for me, the show is what happens in between
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: the songs. I think that that's, what's going to get
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: people to constantly come back to see me. It can't
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: be like, Oh, I have a new hit. That's not
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: going to happen. So you gotta keep making sure that the,
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: that the show that you're putting on for people is
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: authentically fun. Because the minute I've seen people who I
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: love and if I feel like they're walking through the
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: show or they're not really truly happy to be there,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: I don't want to come back and see them ever again.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: And there are nights when I don't feel good or
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: I'm tired or I'm really pissed off about something. But
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: I look at these shows, Bob, in a way that
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: I never did before, which is that especially for the
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: last 10 years. And a huge part of this is
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: my relationship with Daisy, which has opened my eyes to
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: all kinds of things in my life that I wasn't
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: aware of. But no matter what's going on with me
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: on a given day, for me to be able to
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: know I have a show that night, I can't wait.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: I literally, no matter what's going on, Even if I'm
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 2: worried about, like, if for whatever reason I got cold
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: or something and my voice isn't 100%, I'm always a
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: little nervous about that because I want to be as
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 2: great as I can be. But no matter what, the
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: act of doing it for me has become something that
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: is other than what it used to be. Because it's not,
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not chasing anything anymore. I'm truly enjoying it. I'm
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: truly enjoying it's almost like enjoying the fruits of your
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 2: labor where you feel like in your twenties and thirties
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: and even into my forties, I was working so hard
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: and I was trying so hard to get to a
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: point where I could do what I'm doing now, which
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: is to do only the shows I want to do
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: and want to do the shows that I'm doing. So,
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: and I know that that sounds so, uh, savvy, but
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: it's really hard to explain to somebody I find this like,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: I don't, I don't know that many other artists. I
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: know a lot of artists. I'm friends with them. There's
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: only a couple of Rod Stewart is another example. The
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: fact that he announced he's retiring from touring next year.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: I know what that means to him because with everything
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: that guy has accomplished and we've become really good friends
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: in the last few years, it was so inspiring, Bob
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: being on that tour with him, even though, you know,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 2: we had to cancel dates and he, he had definitely
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: had some serious health issues, but Our conversations offstage about
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: how lucky we are and how much we love it.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: Like we both, there's never like, oh, fuck, I gotta
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: be on stage tonight again. Or I've got three in
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: a row. We're just like, we're so lucky that we
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: get to do this. So that's where I'm at too.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: Okay. You mentioned social media ads, A. Do you post
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: on social media or do you have a team? And B,
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: how accessible are you online, which bleeds into C, do
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: you personally know? I don't mean to go to their
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: house for dinner. You're hardcore fans.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: I post everything myself. I'd say 99%. I have a team. Yeah,
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: I have a team. I have a guy who kind
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 2: of handles. I manage myself. I don't have a manager
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: anymore as of. 18 months ago, best 18 years of
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: my career. I have a guy who handles social media,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: making sure that, all the T's are crossed and the
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: I's are dotted in terms of making sure that the
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: account's doing what it's supposed to do. When I put
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: out a record, he's making sure that the streaming platforms
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 2: are all set. Is that something? I don't have time. Um,
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: and I have a guy that does all my content
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: for me. So he creates stuff for me to post.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: But a lot of what I do is very, you know, DIY,
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 2: like a lot of people where I just post and I,
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: I try to make it fun or funny or, um,
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: I do pay attention to my social media platforms because
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: I think that is, it's currency. You know, it's, it's
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: like the P these artists were like, I don't want
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: to know about social media.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: Well, you're going to be left behind. your last question.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: Tell me the last question again.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: Well, as a result of social media, do you.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, do I know my fans? Do I know my fans?
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: Like, if you go to Cleveland, you know that Robbie
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: and Janie are in Cleveland. They might come back, stay
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: high backstage. Or is it anonymous like it was in
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: the 80s?
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: Well, it's less anonymous. But... I do meet and greets
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: every show and very often it's people I've met before
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: who come back time and time again. And it's unbelievable.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: Like I had a woman, one of the last shows
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: we did was a 27th Richard Marks concert. And I said,
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: Oh my God, I feel like I should give you
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 2: some money or something. Personally, I feel like I should
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: Venmo you or, um, so incredible. Um, And then every show,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: there are new people, you know, and then they might
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: be repeat customers as well. I think that, yes, I
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: am interactive in that I actually answer people sometimes. I
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: try to jump in. Look, reading the comments on social
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: media is a very slippery slope.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 2: So... I try to get on there every so often
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: and particularly answer people who say really nice things or
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: ask a question that's legit. I can't help myself once
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: in a while when I see somebody write something really nasty.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: I usually just hide it or ignore it. But every
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: once in a while, I feel compelled to answer it.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: But I almost always answer it in what I think
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: is a funny way. So yeah, I'm more accessible, I think,
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: as an artist than most because some of my friends
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: would go, why would you even respond? And I go,
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It just felt like something I wanted
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: to do at the time. I saw it and I
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: answered it. It'd be like if I were sitting on
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: an elevator and anybody had the balls to actually say
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: something to my face, would I just stand there or
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: would I go, wait, what did you just say? It's
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: kind of the same thing to me.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: Okay. You mentioned earlier your different revenue streams. Do you
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: still own all your work?
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: I do. I co-own my publishing for not too much longer,
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: a few more years, and then it'll all revert back
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: to me. Never made a deal for my writer's share
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: of my songs. And then A few years before Taylor
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: Swift did it, I re-recorded all my masters. I produced
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: and or co-produced all my hits in the past. So
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: doing that was, it wasn't the most fun thing in
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 2: the world because we tried to recreate and be pretty
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 2: much to the letter. There were a couple of songs
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: I just said, I don't want to do, I don't
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: want to recreate it. I'll just do a different version
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: of it. But I did stay faithful to the majority
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: of And so I own those re-recorded masters, which sound identical,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: except for one or two that I deliberately did differently.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: And this is important because when you own your other assets,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: for instance, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice came out a year ago, a
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: year and a half, whatever. There's a scene in the
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: movie where Michael Keaton, as Beetlejuice, sings my song Right
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: Here Waiting. but it's to my record, it's to my voice.
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: So he was lip syncing it. That along with any
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 2: other opportunity for a sync, my stipulation is that they
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: use my re-recorded, not the original master. And usually I
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: get an initial pushback because the person who's making this
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: deal is not a musical person. Usually they're business affairs.
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: And so I always say, they go, no, we really
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: want the originals. And I go, okay, well, I'm going
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: to send you both unlabeled. If you can tell me
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: which one is the original and which one is the
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: re-record and so forth. And they always go, no, it
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: sounds exactly the same. So that's a really, really important
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: asset that I have is that my re-records are very
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: valuable because I keep licensing them instead of the original masters. So, yeah,
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: I own everything except the publishing on Amazon. The songs
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: prior to 2009, which I will get back entirely in
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: a few years.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: Okay. Did you make a deal from the moment those
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: songs were written, they were with that other publisher, or
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: did you get a payment and then that term is
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: going to end?
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, the latter. I made a deal in 2008 or 2009.
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: Up to that point, I owned everything completely.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, in retrospect, knowing what you know now in the
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: last 15, 17 years since you made that deal, would
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: you make that deal again? No.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: It was a good deal. Great deal at the time,
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: but at the time. I also, you know, I made
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: a deal also based upon what was going, when I
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: say at the time, 2007, 2008, we were also still
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: in the throes of Napster and a lot of illegal
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: downloading was the term that nobody ever uses anymore. In fact,
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: when I, when I'm on stage every once in a
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: while that I talk about, like I've said it recently
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: at a show, I was like, so this new album
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: after hours, you know, buy it, stream it illegally, download it.
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: I don't give a shit. I think that it was that,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: that was part of the reason I thought, Maybe copyrights
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 2: are about to plummet, and maybe this is the time
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: to do this. If I can get a number that
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: feels good to me, and I got a number that
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: felt good to me at that time. But in retrospect,
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: the answer to your question is, I wish I hadn't
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: made that deal. Luckily for me, in the 11th hour
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: of that deal, I put in a reversion, which was
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: Believe me, my attorney and especially their attorney wanted to
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: kill me. But I stuck to it and I said, no,
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: without this reversion, the deal's dead. And they capitulated. So
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: I'm so grateful that I did that in the 11th hour.
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I wish I could say to you, I
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: own everything 100% outright right now because so few people can.
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 2: but I will. I'll be able to say that to
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: you in a few years.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: Okay. In a few years, because God willing, you have 30,
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: 35 years left. Could anybody come up with a number
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: where you'd push the button or based on this experience,
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: you're going to own it after taxes, your sons will
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: own it. How do you feel?
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, do you know anybody? You got a name? Here's
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: how I feel about it, Bob. Yeah. Evaluation. I'm sorry.
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 2: Go ahead.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, so if the right number, you do it.
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 2: The right number, I would do it. Um, but I'm
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: not really, I'm believe me, the sharks have been circling
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: for the last several years and I have people, I've
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: had people come to me going, Oh, don't worry about
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: the part you don't know. Now we'll buy that out now. And, um,
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: my attitude is, uh, Yeah. So I think that what you're,
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: maybe what you're getting at is, is there an emotional
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 2: component that would prevent me from ever saying, you know,
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: I'm going to turn my creations over to somebody else.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: I don't, I'm not emotional about that. Oddly enough, I don't,
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: but I also feel I'm, when I say this, it's,
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: it's a, it's a tricky thing to say and have
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: it be received as, properly. I say this with nothing
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: but immense gratitude. It would have to be a deal
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: that was so stunning and that I think might actually
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: change my life in some way, which I don't. You know,
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: a couple of people have already, a couple of companies
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: have already come to me with, and I've gone, wow, that's, that's,
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: that's amazing. But it's not going to, that's not going
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: to change my life. And, so it would have to
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: be something really extraordinary. Otherwise, I'm lucky that the catalog
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: keeps earning what it earns. And so it's really not
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: a question of lifestyle or wealth particularly, because if you
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: made a deal like that, First of all, a lot
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: of people go, oh, so-and-so made a $ 200 million deal.
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: He got $ 200 million for that company.
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: Well, no.
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: Let me tell you what he actually got. You know
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: what I mean? So it's something that is absolutely always
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: on the table for me. I'm always open to it,
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: but I'm not chasing it.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: So you got a lump sum when you made the
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: deal 20 years ago. What did you do with that money?
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, I invested it. I invested it as smartly as
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: I possibly could. Okay. And it was good. It was
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 2: a good investment.
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. There are certain acts out every summer who've had
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: hits because they need the money to pay the bills. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: In your case, if you stop touring, is the income
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: from all these other things enough? Or do you got
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: to tour to stay alive?
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: No, I don't have to tour to stay alive. I'm
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: very lucky that way. I love the... financial reward of
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 2: touring in fact i love it because it feels like
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: that's the only as much as i just went on
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: and on about how much i love doing shows which
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 2: is absolutely true it is also the only thing i
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 2: do that i think is work and the work is
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: not the two hours on stage as you know right
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 2: it's the 22 hours in between and it's like you
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: know and especially as you get older the wear and
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: tear becomes more and more. And the lack of sleep
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: and sometimes I'll agree to a run of shows that
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 2: I'll then look at or Daisy will see and go,
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: what is wrong with you? Why are you doing eight
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: shows in a row? And I'll go, well, no, it
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: just routes that way. And I don't need a night off.
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to go blast through it. Also, you
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: got to remember, Bob, I'm lucky enough in another way,
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 2: which is that I tour in such different configurations. So
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: some of the touring that I do every year is
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: just me and a guitar. I do these solo acoustic
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: shows in theaters. And I wouldn't say it's more fun
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: than my band shows, but it's a totally different thing.
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: And it's much more talking and much more silliness and
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 2: having people yell shit out that I then answer because
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: I can hear them. And getting audience members to stand
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: up and like, it's my solo acoustic show is so
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 2: much fun for me. And it's also very lucrative because
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: there's no expenses. So I love that revenue stream, but
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: I don't need it.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: So how did you meet Daisy?
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: I met her on Twitter.
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: Twitter. Well, you got to give me a little more
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: than that.
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 2: So Twitter, when Twitter wasn't the hell hole, that it is.
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: I was very active on Twitter. I was, I met,
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: I have friends in my life who I met through Twitter.
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: Daisy and I both, unbeknownst to each other, followed Martha Quinn,
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: who was one of the original MTV VJs. Martha and I,
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: this is 2012, something like that, maybe 2011. We, we
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: had a, funny kind of banter going between me and Martha.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 2: And so that showed up in Daisy's Twitter feed. And
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: so she saw it. She was like, Oh my God,
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: Richard Marx. And she chimed in, she added to the
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 2: thread and said something like, Oh, you guys are giving
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: me the sweetest eighties flashback right now or something. And
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 2: so then I saw that and I went, Oh, Daisy.
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: And I'd always had a crush on Daisy. And, And
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: more than a crush, like back in the day when
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: she was hosting the Top 20 Countdown and she was
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: a VJ. And even after that, when she was on TV,
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 2: she had a couple of talk shows and she was
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: on America's Funniest Videos. Anytime, and I never met her
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: in all those years, but every time I would see
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: Daisy on TV, it was never just how beautiful, physically
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: beautiful I thought she was. There was always something about
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 2: her that, made me think i bet she's fun i
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 2: bet she's a great oh yeah you know there was
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: just something about her and i had no way of
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: knowing that because i just i'd never met her so
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: now i see her hadn't heard about her in a
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: while so i you know the shallow part of me
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: of course googled daisy fuentes now.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 3: Right to wish i was like oh my god she's
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 3: even more beautiful than ever But I was also really
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 3: happy to see that she started this lifestyle brand and
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 3: she was a very successful businesswoman.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: And I thought, oh, good for her. She always seemed cool.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: And so now we start following each other. But I
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: don't interact with her. I don't DM her. I'm married.
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 2: And I'm not even thinking that. I'm just like, oh,
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 2: this is cool. And now Daisy Fuentes and I are
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: following each other. And then I noticed that she would
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 2: retweet me here and there or I would see something
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: funny that she would. I thought, oh, my gosh, she
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: is funny. Some of the stuff that she tweeted, I
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: was like, oh, God, she's funny. And then I got separated.
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: And I'd been separated for a couple of months and
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: I didn't date or I was really in a bad place.
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 2: I was really in a bad place. But I had
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 2: to come to L.A. to do a show at the
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: Grammy Museum. And this is like two years later after
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 2: we started following each other. And I DM'd her. And
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 2: I said, or she tells the story, he slid into
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: my DMs. I DM'd her and I said, hey, it's Richard.
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 2: I'm coming to L.A. I think you might still live
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: in L.A. And I'm doing a show at the Grammy Museum.
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: And I'd love you to be my guest. And she
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: didn't answer me for a couple of days. So I thought, oh,
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: you know, whatever. Well, again, unbeknownst to me, she sees
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: the DM. She calls her publicist and says, hey, Richard
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: Marks invited me to the show he's doing at the
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 2: Grammy Museum. And I'd really like to go, but I'd
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: like to get tickets. Can you help me get tickets?
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: And her publicist said, he's my client.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: And Daisy went, what?
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 2: When the fuck were you going to tell me that
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: you represent Richard Marx? And she's, I don't tell anybody
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 2: who I represent. He doesn't know I represent you. And
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 2: she said, I'm going, you can come with me. So
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 2: she and our then publicist sit in the front row.
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 2: And I did this, uh, it was kind of like you,
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you've seen these kinds of shows where it
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 2: was kind of like an inside the actor studio thing.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: You sit and you do an interview. And then I did,
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 2: I did a performance of like eight songs. And, uh,
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 2: And there was like a little, you know, in the
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: little lounge green room thing, there was, you know, people
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 2: back there and she came backstage and when she walked
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 2: through the door, all I can say is I had,
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 2: you know, I've written songs about this and I fantasized
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 2: about it, but I'd never experienced what it, what it
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 2: actually was. And it, it was definitely a lightning bolt,
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 2: but it was different. It was, And I love telling
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: this story because I think people can understand what I mean.
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 2: When she walked through the door and I locked eyes
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 2: on her, she's walking over to say hello to me.
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 2: Something in me knew that everything now was different. I
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 2: didn't know what that meant. I didn't know if I
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: was going to know her, date her. I just knew that, oh, wow,
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 2: everything is different now because now I'm about to meet
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 2: this person. There was something, there was an energy about
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 2: her and an aura that made me go, wow, this
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 2: is wow. And there were, there happened to be a
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: Getty photographer there. So there's a photograph of the minute
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 2: we met. Wow. And we had a really nice little
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 2: chat and then she DM me her phone number that night.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: And so I asked her, I was kind of back
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 2: and forth from Chicago. I hadn't moved back to LA yet,
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: but I was in the process. And so I came
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: back a few weeks later and I invited, I asked
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 2: her out to dinner and, um, And she was like,
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 2: she's called her publicist. She goes, what's up with this guy?
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 2: Isn't he married? Is he a douchebag? And because I hadn't,
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't public knowledge that I was split
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 2: for a while. And then we just very slowly started
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 2: to see each other. And two years later, we got married.
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: It's just been the greatest thing that ever happened.
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: And at this late date, when you're not on the
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: road and you're not chilling in Miami, what does your
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: life look like with her? Is it more hanging out
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: or you guys travel? What are you doing?
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 2: We travel a lot. When we're not, we travel. We
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 2: always have fun when I'm on tour. We make it fun.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: She comes with you on tour?
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: She's with me 95% of the time. I mean, sometimes
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 2: it's hard because she still runs her business and she's
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 2: got other commitments, but we sort of made it. That's
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 2: a big part of our romance is the travel and
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 2: our relationship has, when we realized pretty early on in
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: our courtship that we traveled well together, we both love it. We,
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: The best thing for me, Bob, is I went from
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: always being on the road alone, always being by myself.
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 2: And that's a heavy thing to reconcile. You're in front
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 2: of a crowd of people who are screaming, I love you.
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: And the dopamine hit is beyond anything I can explain.
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: And then I'm alone in a hotel. that messes with
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: you over time. So now when I'm going to go
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: to St. Louis for a show, I walk off the
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 2: stage and Daisy's, first of all, she's there usually shooting
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 2: video and shooting pictures. And as I walk off the stage,
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 2: she's standing there with a martini, which I sip. And
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 2: then she says, okay, I've got a table for us
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 2: at this really cool place. Then she makes touring so
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 2: much fun. We have such a blast, even in Towns
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 2: where it's hard to have fun, we have fun. And yeah,
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 2: it's a huge part of why my whole attitude about
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 2: touring is what it is. It's because I enjoy the
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: other 22 hours for the most part.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: Well, Richard, this has been great. I really appreciate your honesty,
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: not pulling any punches or anything. I'm going to let
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: you go at this point in time, but really great
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: talking to you. Thanks for taking this time with my audience.
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, Bob, it was my pleasure. A real pleasure.
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: Till next time, this is Bob Lefsetz.