Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / 'Dirty Dancing' Songwriters Stacy Widelitz & John DeNicola [Episode 166]

Transcript

'Dirty Dancing' Songwriters Stacy Widelitz & John DeNicola [Episode 166] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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Finally I looked at him and I said, you have to give me thirty
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seconds. And he said for what I said, just give me thirty seconds.
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So he said okay, and I looked at the floor and I just
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said, I can't believe Raymond Zeric is in my part. I can't.
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And I repeated this about ten times, and then I looked at him and
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I said, okay, I'm done. I'm li I know dialogue. How's
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I found the conversation round? That's like geyser interesting? Interesting? Yes,
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provocative? Daddy Man back Man who rocking? All? Welcome to book down
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Rock, the podcast for those about to read and rock. Find the podcast
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at bookdown rock dot com. You can find every episode of Booked on Rock
0:44
there, along with links to your favorite listening platforms, exclusive videos, blogs,
0:48
links to all of the social media sites, and the latest rock book
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releases. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. It's another chapter in the
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Dialogue series, So chill and chat with authors, fellow podcasters, musicians,
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and more. Two very special guests joining us, Stacey Weilitz and John Di
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Nicola. Wielitz is an Emmy nominated composer and songwriter. He co wrote She's
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Like the Win smash hit from the soundtrack to the nineteen eighty seven film Dirty
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Dancing. He was nominated for an Emmy for his contributions to the ABC series
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World of Discovery, and he's written compositions for various films and made for TV
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movies, including Disney's Pocahontas two. Dinicola is an oscar In Golden Globe winning,
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Grammy nominated songwriter and producer. He's the co writer behind two of the
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most enduringly successful songs in music history. I've Had the Time of My Life
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and Hungry Eyes, also from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Whitelets and Denicola are
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here to talk about their amazing careers, their songwriting process, and the massive
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success of Dirty Dancing. Whiteltz has a great story about meeting ray Man Zeric
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of The Doors and his friendship with Jeff Skunk Baxter of Steely Dan and Doobie
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Brothers fame, who is also a missile defense consultant. Dinacola tells us about
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his love of the Beatles how he helped to launch the career of Maroon five
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by producing the band's very first album back when they were called Kara's flowers.
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He's also got a new documentary. I'm Peter Lewis of Moby Grape. I'll
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tell us about that as well. Here are Stacey Wieletz and John Dinacola.
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John and Stacey, thanks for being on the podcast. Let's start with a
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little background where you guys are from and how music became a part of your
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life. Stacy, you're from the New York area, correct, right.
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I grew up on Long Island, plain View, Long Island, or as
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I always say, Exit forty six of the Long Island Expressway. My parents
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were not musicians. They were artistically minded, so they played a lot of
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music in the house when I was growing up. My father tended towards classical
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music and jazz. My mother tended towards folk show tunes, even interestingly gospel.
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I remember Mehalia Jackson records, So I had this cross section. Then
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I started playing piano when I was about eight. I had been flunked out
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of the band program in fourth grade in public school and sent home. I
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was studying the flute and couldn't make heads or tails of the thing, and
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I was dropped by the teacher with a note saying please return Stacy's flute.
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He exhibits no musical ability whatsoever, which was very funny. But how did
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you handle that? You didn't give up? Clearly? Well, what happened
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was it didn't really you know, I had a mixed relationship with school already
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by that point, and my cousin was a child prodigy classical pianist, and
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so he would have been about fourteen at the time, and I was about
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eight, and my father had picked up an old Wurlitzer upright piano, and
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my cousin was stuck in our house in a snowstorm with his mother, my
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aunt, and he's downstairs playing chopin and all this stuff. And I was
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just enthralled. And he's watching me, and he said, oh, let
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me see if I can teach you something. So Seth taught me how to
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play chopsticks, my cousin, and I picked it up fast, and he
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said, oh, let's see what else. And there was a method book
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that my parents had gotten, and so he was showing me stuff that suddenly
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clicked in my head that didn't make sense when I was trying to do it
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with the flute, like even where middle c was. You know, After
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about an hour, he ran upstairs and told my parents that they need to
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get me piano lessons, because he said he just went through the first ten
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weeks of the method book in an hour. The piano teacher was an interesting
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guy. He wasn't the typical classical. He had three jobs. He taught
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piano at night, going home to home. On the weekends, he played
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weddings and bar mitzvahs on Long Island, and during the day he was a
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barber. But he did something that was very unusual for beginning teachers that I
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owe him a dead of gratitude for my entire life, which is he taught
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me theory from a very early age. He started teaching me chord structure,
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what constitutes a triad, a major triad, a minor triad, all these
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things. And it later that became so valuable because it was most kids were
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learning that by, you know, when they got to high school, and
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here I was in junior high school already knowing all this stuff. And what
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also helped was I found out that I had perfect pitch. I could hear
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a note on the piano and tell you what it was. And that was
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discovered by the school music teacher, Missus Harrington. She played a note on
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the piano, said some musicians, if I just played this note, they
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can tell you what it is. And me, being you know, a
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wise ass, I yelled at that's an A. And she looked at me
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and she said, can you see the keyboard? And I said no,
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and she said how did you know it was an A? And I said,
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I just know. And then she tried out some other notes and she
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said, you have perfect pitch. You should tell your piano teacher. So
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that helped me in terms of being able to figure out chords and songs and
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all this. I could, I could hear it. So does it bother
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you when something's a little attitude? Oh yeah, I'm like really bad,
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Like, well, it can't. And it was funny when I was the
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accompanist of my high school choir, which was an excellent choir. The choir
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director, mister Cohen, used to lean down because I'd be sitting at the
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piano and he said, somebody's out in the sopranos. Who is it?
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And I'd say it's Audrey again, you know, something like this, And
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so you'd say, Audrey, you're sharp, and she would just stare at
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me because she knew I was, you know. But yeah, so I
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was doing stuff in school, playing accompanying kids and you know, and all
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this, and I was involved in theater productions in school, and then I
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started going to this arts and science camp during the summers called the Fidell School.
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I think it was in that time period, when I was about twelve
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or thirteen that I said this is what I'm going to do for my life,
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and much to my parents' chagrin, but they knew I was stubborn.
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And then I started playing clubs and getting paid for it when I was fifteen,
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and actually joined the Musicians Union Local ATO two in New York when I
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was fifteen years old. So from that point on, it was just you
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know, a fat, a complete that it was going to happen. Then
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I started writing music and getting paid for it when I was nineteen for a
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little recording studio in Stanford, Connecticut, which is right there, We're recording
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area in Connecticut, that's right. And then that studio expanded into doing industrial
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shows, and I quit college after two years thinking well, I'm working,
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why do I need a degree. Let's just get a jump on career.
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And then got the opportunity with my then girlfriend Wendy to write the theme for
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the Richard Simmons Show, which then became a hit, and that prompted us
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to move to LA the next year. Nowadays, you are in Nashville,
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John, You're from New York area as well, right, yes, tell
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us about your background. When did music become the thing for you? Like,
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when did you know this was going to be something you're going to do
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full time? Yeah, that was early on. I'd say like seven or
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eight years old. I just picked up a guitar and you know, started
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plucking. I had no idea what I was doing, and I don't know
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music. Music just hit me. Gosh. I can remember hearing like pretty
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Woman, you know, the Roy Orbison song, and just I don't know
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it somehow seemed like that. I guess I just knew that. Then it's
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there's some kind of loose attachment to love and girls and women, and with
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music, you know, just you know, you hear those songs when you're
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I don't know, That's how it hit me, and I was like,
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wow, this is uh, this this is big, this means something to
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me. So I had tunnel vision my whole life. Really, it's it's
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almost sad at this point, I'm like constantly still music, just going.
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I have a studio in the barn, and it's just uh, you know,
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and and at some point it's like, you know, we we stace.
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You know, I got really lucky because you know, you could actually
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still make money off songwriting. You know, these days with streaming, it's
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it's just it's dissolved, it's it's hardly there. But I still do it
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just because I love I just love doing it. So I always knew,
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always, you know, always knew I wanted to play. I was a
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mediocre musician until I was like, you know, eighteen or nineteen, and
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then I really I actually settled down with my bass and I studied a lot.
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I early on, I got somebody like Stacy who turned me on this
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book. I wish I could find it. I can't find it anymore.
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But it was all music theory and teaching the modes. So as soon as
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you know the modes, it really starts to make a lot of sense.
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You know, now you know the n C major just started on D from
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D to D and now you're Dorian, your you're minor. You know,
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that just opened up a lot for me. And that was early on.
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I had a base teacher lived in glen Cove. Actually who who got turned
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me on that book? And I still don't know the nyme of the book
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anymore. So it's about basically songs, structure, how to how to write
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music, how to understand music, or what's mode For those of us who
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are musicians, A mode is a scale basically like we think of a C
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major scale. What John was just saying that you do it sounds it's still
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a scale and it sounds different, but you can use it, and it's
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that's the basis of a lot of Miles Davis's work, later work in uh
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John Coltrane. So a mode is a scale. A lot of them have
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Greek names because they actually do go all the way back to classical Greek times.
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But if you just play, just play the C majors, play a
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D minor triad there. I mean, that's just if you're in the key
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of C, that's just the second note in that scale, and what it's
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the second fourth and sixth note. If you bring that down a whole step,
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so that's minor. It's hard, it's too hard to explain a lot
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to it. You know, they're all mathematical relationships basically, but then you
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have to take all of that complex language, musical language, and then to
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connect with the everyday person like myself. You know, I love music.
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I can't live without it. But what is it that I'm connecting to.
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It's got to be something emotional. So you got to put those two together.
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Well, the different chords, you know, in the way a chord
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where a melody sits on a chord and that progression that can just pull on
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your heartstringth it's just it just I don't know why it just does. Yeah,
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it's it's totally abstract, which is I think why music is so universal.
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Every culture has music in one form or another, and every culture can
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enjoy another culture's music because it is abstract. It's not having to do with
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translation or anything like that. You can't put it into words. Yeah,
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when you mentioned about, you know, putting that language together to create that's
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the intellectual side of it. The emotional side of it is still Hey,
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does this sound good? Yeah? Do you mean it? John? According
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to your website, you played bass with Paul Jung and Corey Hart and then
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it was during that chapter of your career that you co wrote I've Had the
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Time of my Life in Hungry Eyes with Frankie Previtt and Donald Markowitz. Correct,
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right, I've had the Time of my Life was among one hundred and
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fifty songs submitted as the main song for the Dirty Dancing film goes on to
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wing a string of awards, including the Academy Award for Best Original Song and
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Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, the
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vocals, of course, coming from Bill Medley and Jennifer Warrens. Can you
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talk about how this song all came together? Frankie had the lyrics written,
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You came up with the music. Did that come to you quickly? Do
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you recall how that all came together for the Time of my Life? Actually,
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the lyrics came after the music we did. Okay, Donald Markowitz and
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I got there. Frank you know, and I had already written Hungry Eyes
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together for Frankie to try and get a record deal. So we had just
14:07
started working together, and maybe not just started. We had written about eight
14:11
or nine tunes together. And he got a call during that from Jimmy Iner,
14:16
who was the musical supervisor on the movie, and he said, we
14:20
need this song. They've been listening to songs and they can't find the song
14:24
for this final scene in the movie. And so they explained to Frankie what
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Jimmy explained. They needed it to start slow and then get you know,
14:35
get into a dance thing. And that guy Johnny, you know, was
14:39
accused of stealing wats just a really basic, stripped down version of what it
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was. And so I got a hold of my friend Donald Markowitz, and
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he had a drum machine and an eight track tape recorder. We were working
14:56
together, So I just went over to his place and we just started jamming
15:00
out this music. So basically, if you take the vocal off and just
15:05
listen to the music, that's what Donnie and I came up with. We
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had the string parts, and then we sent it to Frankie and Frankie jammed
15:13
with it and I guess what they call top lined it and started singing to
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the track that Donald and I put together. That's how the song came about.
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And then they had submitted one hundred and fifty that's what we heard,
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one hundred and fifty songs. They listened to it, and you know,
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they were depressed because the next day they had this. They were filming at
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a sequence and they were going to have to do the dirty the Time of
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my Life sequence or what became the Time in my Life the closing sequence,
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and they were still dancing to a temp song by Lionel Ritchie and then this
15:50
song one of the last cassettes they put in. That's how long ago it
15:52
was. It was on a cassette they put it in, and as soon
15:56
as they put it in, Eleanor Bergstein, Kenny Ortega, Emilodlino, they
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all went, this is the song. We have it. They were elated
16:07
that they were able to find the song. Finally, we had to fine
16:11
tune it, We had to slow it down. We added more percussion.
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They wanted more Latin percussion, which didn't end up in the final but they
16:18
want Kenny wanted more Latin percussion and stuff, and the rest is history.
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They filmed the movie to the demo so Patrick, and when you see Patrick
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mouthing words, it looks like it's out of sync because he's singing to the
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demo that we did, which Frankie Previtt sang. Frankie and my friend Rachelle
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Capelli sang the demo, and that's what they and they were kind of locked
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into that demo for a while. They got a little bit of demo ititis
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and was a little slower to get on board with the Jennifer Warren's Bill Medley
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version, But of course Frankie sang it up an octave, so they were
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in the same range where Bill Bill brought it down. So that really set
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up the projection of Johnny and Baby. You know, so I think that
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really worked, and you and Frankie wrote Hungry Eyes. Eric Carmen initially turned
17:08
it down something like that. Yeah, we were supposed to. Frankie was
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supposed to sing it, and Eric was like, I don't like to do
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songs that I haven't written. You know, he wanted to do his own
17:19
songs, which I don't blame him, but you know, I don't think
17:23
he had a whole bunch of things going on at that moment. So Jimmy
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said, you know, you should do this, and he did, and
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we went in to see Emil and Eleanor for music for another scene. I
17:37
think it was actually it we ended up being I carried the watermelon scene,
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and when we went in to go listen to that or look at that scene,
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we were saying, well, yeah, we're going to go into the
17:45
studio tomorrow and start cutting Hungry Eyes, and the min went, no,
17:51
we already, we already have that. Eric Carmon did it, so we
17:55
didn't even know. They just kind of did that behind our back. And
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then there's the third smash hit single and we go to Stacey for that one.
18:02
She's like the Wayne, sung and co written with the late great Patrick
18:04
Swayze. And the story behind this song is fascinating. Stacy, you had
18:10
a chance meeting with Patrick that leads to this song and it wasn't initially intended
18:14
for dirty dancing? Is that the other part of this story? Yeah.
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Basically, my then girlfriend and I Wendy, who is a great singer who
18:22
sings on she's like to win. We moved to la after we had written
18:25
the theme for the Richard Simmons Show and that show became a hit, so
18:29
we're writing music for TV and another friend of mine, who was a very
18:33
good musical comedy guy, asked me to play piano for him in his acting
18:37
class because he wanted to do a musical scene from Shenandoah and he knew I
18:42
was accomplished the companist, so I did the scene in the class and there
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was like sixty students in the class, very famous acting teacher named Milton Kitsells,
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and it turned into a discussion about theater and music in theater, and
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the teacher brought me into the discussion. We you know, it was an
19:02
interesting conversation. And the class took a break and I was gathering up the
19:07
music and this guy came over to me and he said, Hi, I'm
19:11
buddy. I really like you're playing and what you were saying about music.
19:15
I said, you know, you look really familiar to me. He said,
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well, have you seen The Outsiders? And I said no, and
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he mentioned a couple of other things that I'd never seen. And then a
19:26
blonde woman came over and he said, this is my wife, Lisa.
19:30
And I said, okay, now I have it. The two of you
19:33
are always working on your black dots in two forty z on the weekends on
19:38
La Joya Avenue, and so they said, yeah, you know that,
19:41
and I said, I live right around the block from you. I see
19:45
you every weekend. So we lived two houses away. And so he thought
19:49
you saw him in the movies, right right, He thought, I employed
19:53
that I would had not seen in the movie. Yeah, Outsiders, by
19:56
the way, it's just a classic. I love him so anyway, so
20:00
the four of us started hanging out and we talked about music and theater.
20:03
I had somewhat of a background in music for dance as well, having worked
20:08
with the Jose Lemone Dance Company in New York. So we became fast friends.
20:14
And then probably another year went by and he was doing a movie called
20:18
rand View, USA with Jamie Lee Curtis and Tommy Howell, and he called
20:23
me up. He said, Oh, they're looking for songs for Grandview.
20:26
I've had this idea for a song for a couple of years, but I
20:30
can't get anywhere with it. Do you want to work on them with me?
20:33
So I said, yeah, sure, you know, come on over.
20:36
I knew he was musical, that he'd been on Broadway, that he
20:38
played some guitar, So he came around the block with his guitar and I
20:42
was at the piano and he had two chords only, but lots of lyrics
20:48
like four line stanzas and the first couple of lines where she's like to win
20:55
through my tree she rides the night next to me, and I didn't like
20:59
the third and four lines and said so and he said, well, what
21:02
would you say? So I said, she leads me through moonlight only to
21:04
burn me with the sun. He said what does that mean? And I
21:07
said, I don't care, just write it down. Then when we started
21:11
to move it to another place musically, and then when we realized that she's
21:18
like the wind could be the hook for the song, not just the opening
21:21
line, that it could be the title, that's when we knew we kind
21:26
of had something. And we did a really good demo of it at the
21:30
time, with him singing it, Wendy doing some backgrounds in this little duet
21:33
with him that ended up in the final version. I programmed the synthse brought
21:37
in a guitarist, but then it wasn't used in Grand View and it sat
21:42
around for a couple of years, and then he called me from the set
21:47
of Dirty Dancing and the lake Lord and said, oh, they want it
21:48
for this movie. And I knew about the film, and so that's how
21:52
it ended up in Dirty Dancing, but with no expectations because the word on
21:57
the street was this is a bad movie that's going straight to video after one
22:02
week. Yeah, I read that. Yeah, nobody, nobody knew it
22:07
just and then it exploded and everybody was just surprised Patrick probably most of all.
22:17
But it was it was an amazing story and and how it just spread
22:22
like wildfire. And I was just in London and Paris. I was sitting
22:26
in a cigar lounge in London and there's a guy sitting across from me and
22:30
he found out, you know what I do and what I've done. He
22:33
sang me the whole song. That's great. It was. It was crazy,
22:37
and I said, you know how surreal this is that all these years
22:41
later there's a guy sitting across from me in Saint James, London, upstairs
22:45
from where Churchill used to smoke cigars, and he's singing me. She's like
22:49
to win. So it's crazy. The book Down Rock Podcasts will be back
22:53
after this. I know you got to run. You got maybe a minute
22:59
or two lefts, So maybe we should sneak in a few good stories from
23:02
Eustacey and then I'll pick things up with John. But you had some stories
23:06
we're talking about before we jumped down with John. There's Jeff skunk back to
23:10
your Friends with But the other one was I think we wanted to talk about
23:12
the ray Man Xeric story right, because yeah, your main thing is in
23:17
photography, has been your recent passion, but your main thing is writing music
23:22
for television and movies. So that's where this Rayman's next story comes in,
23:26
right right through his scoring work, writing music to picture, which is a
23:29
very different mindset than songwriting, very technical, very collaborative. It's interesting.
23:37
So anyway, I was at this point represented by the William Morris Agency,
23:41
and I had a great agent, Joel, who's still my great friend to
23:45
this day. I was working on a show for NBC called Eerie Indiana,
23:49
which I absolutely loved because it was like the Twilight Zone meets the Wonder Years.
23:56
I actually think it was the model for the show Stranger Things. Working
24:00
on scoring work is incredibly intense, labor intensive, time intensively. You're in
24:06
the tremendous deadlines, so there's no waiting for inspiration or wasting time. You
24:11
got to get the job done. My phone rang was Joel, and he
24:15
said, you know, I've got a guy in my office who comes more
24:21
from the rock world and he's interested in learning about how scoring works. And
24:26
I figured that since you're working on Eerie, maybe he could come over to
24:30
your place and watch you work. And I said, I don't know,
24:33
Joel, you know, I don't know if I want somebody else in the
24:36
room with me. I don't know if I can handle that. So I
24:40
said who is it? And he said it's raymon Zerk And I said,
24:45
Rayman Xeric of the Doors is sitting in your office right now. When I
24:49
was twelve, maybe even eleven, I figured out all the keyboard parts on
24:56
the Strange Days album of the Doors, which is still one of my favorite
24:59
records. So this was a guy who played a big part, you know,
25:03
in my childhood musical growth. So I said, yeah, he can
25:07
come over. So the next day Ray shows up at my place. Very
25:14
nice guy, he was very polite. He asked a couple of questions along
25:17
the way, but otherwise I was working and he would say, well,
25:19
what are you doing there? Because I could do in that show because it
25:22
was kind of science fiction, y, I could do very complex music that
25:27
was harmonically in a whole different thing with you know what you can do with
25:33
suspense and sci fi. And when was this, I'm sorry to say,
25:37
wy when was this? Okay? Yeah, about nineteen ninety. At one
25:41
point it was funny I said, okay, I need to take a break.
25:45
I'm gonna make some tea. Let's just go have some tea and sit
25:48
for half an hour in the living room. We can chat. We talked
25:52
a lot about the Oliver Stone movie of the Doors, which ray had his
25:57
name taken off of it because he felt it was a very inaccurate representation of
26:03
Jim Morrison. After you know, like fifteen minutes, it's peer to peer.
26:08
I mean, it's yes, it's my one of my idols, but
26:11
we're professionals. But then finally I looked at him and I said, you
26:17
have to give me thirty seconds. And he said for what I said,
26:21
just give me thirty seconds. So he said okay, And I looked at
26:25
the floor and I just said, I can't believe Raymond Zeric is in my
26:29
apartment. I can't. And I repeated this about ten times, and then
26:33
I looked at him and I said, okay, I'm done like this.
26:37
He was laughing, and he came over again. The next day. It
26:41
was, you know, similar, and then the fun upshot to the whole
26:44
thing was about a month later. I was standing online in a music equipment
26:48
store of West La Music and I'm on line at the counter to buy some
26:53
cables or something, and I hear this buzz and I hear all these people
26:57
saying it's d not Sarah. We meant so I turned in this Ray at
27:02
the doorway with the manager of the store, who I also knew Mark,
27:07
and Ray's looking around and he saw me online and he pointed at me and
27:11
he yelled out, get that man some service. That man is a genius
27:18
like this, and everybody's staring at me, and I'm like this, But
27:22
he was such a gracious, you know, nice person, and really,
27:27
when you listen to what he did on those records, it was pretty remarkable.
27:32
He's playing bass at the same time at a lot of on a lot
27:33
of the records. Very intelligent guy. Yeah, yeah, Like another friend
27:37
of yours, Jeff Skunk Baxter, a defense consultant. Yes, Jeff is
27:42
an interesting person. We met also through my agent in nineteen eighty eight and
27:48
we became well. We were then hired to work together on a TV show
27:55
called TV one oh one, which I think was Matt LeBlanc's first TV show.
28:00
Short. We just hit it off. I'm very into world history and
28:03
the English language and you know different then, so is Jeff, And you
28:08
know, he was telling me about the work that he does with the Defense
28:11
Department, and I'm thinking he's out of his mind. He's he's one of
28:15
these people. He smokes a lot of pot and he's get the right.
28:21
But then I was at his house that he rented a part of a house,
28:26
and at that time he had his studio in there, and there's a
28:29
fax machine and a fact starts to roll in from Washington, d C.
28:33
With like a you know, the whole thing, and I'm reading it,
28:36
thinking I don't even know if I should be reading this, and he and
28:41
I thought, this is for real. He's not joking. And at that
28:45
time, he was still smoking a tremendous amount of pot. And then one
28:51
day we were hired to work together again and I said where's the joint And
28:56
he said I quit And I said really health And he said, no higher
29:00
security clearance. So he had moved up in the organization. So he had
29:06
to give up all drugs. But to this day he can board a plane
29:11
carrying a gun. One time I called him on his cell phone, which
29:15
he calls the back phone, and I said where are you and he said,
29:22
I'm in Afghanistan, and I said, we're in Afghanistan. He says,
29:25
I can't tell you that. Wow. So it's really fascinating but incredibly
29:30
intelligent guy. And on top of that, you know, one of just
29:33
the best rock geitarists there ever was Steely Dan Doobie Brothers. Yeah, people
29:38
know that. Fans of those bands certainly know who he is. And then
29:41
before we let you go, Stacey, I want to give you a chance
29:44
to plug whatever you have going on your website. But since this is a
29:47
podcast on books, would you ever write a book about yourself or your career?
29:52
Yeah. I'm being urged to do that actually, and make it a
29:55
combination of my photography, which is my new found passion, and stories from
30:00
my career growing up. I even have a title for it, which is
30:06
taken from a true experience when I was about eighteen and playing clubs on Long
30:11
Island. I was walking in Bayville on the north shore of Long Island with
30:15
my father and we passed a restaurant and there was a sign in the window
30:22
that said piano player wanted must know how to open clams. And so that
30:29
is going to be the title for the book, where it's like and I
30:33
Remember my father looked at me and says, I don't want to see you
30:36
opening clams. You better up your game. Well you know you're welcome here
30:40
to promote it when that comes out. Well, thanks, I appreciate that.
30:44
But yeah, it would be a fun project to do. And you
30:48
know, sometimes you think this of, oh, who really wants to read
30:52
this stuff? You know, something like that. But you know, like
30:55
I was recently at a high school reunion and you realize the careers that John
31:00
and I and Frankie have had. This is not the usual thing. I
31:03
mean, it's not what most people do people. Yeah, so it is.
31:08
It is pretty fascinating. So have me back whenever you want. This
31:14
is an open invite. Yeah. And so your website where can people reach
31:17
you and anything you want to promote. You've got the photography, which is
31:21
fantastic by the way, which we were talking about before. It's great work.
31:23
If anybody's passing through Nashville Airport between now and the end of February,
31:30
I have an exhibit of my work up at the airport www dot staceywidelets dot
31:36
com. There's a mixture of stories and photos. And then if you put
31:38
my name into Instagram, that's where I keep my most up to date work.
31:45
Like I just posted a photo from Paris, I think this morning or
31:48
yesterday. Okay, yeah, it's it's it's a blast. So people can
31:52
find that way. I'll put the links in the show notes page. But
31:55
it is spelled w I d E l I t z. Yeah, wid
32:00
e l I t z Yeah, pronounced widelets. Yeah. All right,
32:04
Stecy, We'll let you go and John's gonna hang out a little bit longer.
32:07
But thank you so much. And we had a great discussion about our
32:09
love of old movies, black and white movies before we Yeah, so you
32:14
got lots more to talk about in the future. That's great. That's great,
32:17
right, thanks, great to see you, John, as always,
32:21
Yes, Daisy, Yeah, so yeah, John. You released a solo
32:23
album twenty nineteen called The Why. Because this is a collection comprised largely of
32:29
your originals, it also includes I've Had the Time of My Life, your
32:31
songwriter, your producer. You're the founder of the indie label Omad Records.
32:37
You discovered and fostered the careers of many acts, including a band called Keras
32:42
Flowers or Carras Flowers. Yeah, either one, either one. But we
32:45
know who they became Maroon five. Can you talk about your history with that
32:51
band. You produced an early album by them and they were just teenagers,
32:53
right, Yeah, they were like fifteen, sixteen years old. Yeah.
32:58
We went out. The guy a friend of mine that was part of we
33:04
had a production team together, Tommy Allen, was living in Malibu and he
33:09
was walking along the beach and he heard this music coming from somewhere and he
33:14
went to this garage and just introduced himself and it was Karen's Flowers and he
33:21
was just so blown away by what he was hearing. We took him into
33:24
the studio. We did the first day, you know, was just to
33:29
see if we liked working, you know, if they liked us, we
33:30
liked them. We went to Sound City, Sound City, the famous studio,
33:36
and we did like four demos that day and they were really into it.
33:40
They loved it. So we we recorded over the next number of months
33:45
a whole record with you know, over dubbing, and we did, you
33:50
know, spend a lot of time on it. You know, it didn't
33:52
it's a long story, but they didn't get off the ground yet. But
33:57
I knew immediately that with Adam Levine, I mean it was just, you
34:02
know, obvious, he was overflowing with ideas and great guitarist, great writer.
34:08
In fact, he recently not so long ago, when he was still
34:12
on the voice, they asked them who was your chair turned around person?
34:17
You know how they somebody right, and he said, yeah, that would
34:22
that would be John Di Nicole and Tommy Allen. They were the first ones
34:24
to get us in the studio and and and acknowledge our you know what we
34:29
had, so that that's awesome. Yeah, yeah, but they were they
34:34
were That was a fun process. The record sounded great, had a lot
34:37
of young energy, and but they you know, they just didn't get off
34:42
the ground. And then they ended up on Warner Brothers. And then they
34:45
disbanded and then reformed. Two of them came to the East Coast and went
34:52
to a school in a Long Island. They got a little more R and
34:57
B influenced there on the coast and took that back with them and reformed as
35:02
Maroon five. Same four guys, and then they edited another guitarist, so
35:08
just extremely talented the whole band, and the songs that you produce on that
35:13
album, they end those ended up on their debut major label album, some
35:19
of them, just a few, but they ended up re recording most of
35:22
them with Rob Cavallo, who had produced Green Day, and a couple of
35:27
others, and interestingly enough, I maybe a few years later because that kind
35:32
of they spent a lot of time trying to re record and Rob's dad,
35:38
Bob Cavallo, said to us, man, they should have just put that
35:43
record out the one we did, because it had it had that. You
35:46
know, it's hard to go and re record songs you recorded already. You
35:51
know, there was this youthful excitement you could hear in our tracks that was
35:57
kind of lost, you know, by re recording and taking another year and
36:00
a half. And then that year and a half the music scene changed a
36:05
little bit too, so you know, they I think they would have been
36:08
you know, there was a few songs that did survive, but most of
36:12
it was redone and not as good. And I think they came out just
36:17
before the streaming took over, I believe. I mean, to a band
36:23
or an artist who's just getting into the business now, or they want to
36:28
they want to do this full time, I mean, what what do you
36:30
what's your advice? I mean, it's a whole different world now it's tough.
36:36
You know, I can't see that this is gonna stay like this because
36:40
I don't know how anybody there's not enough money to be made with his current
36:47
you know, the way it's set up with streaming, there is just I
36:51
feel like something's going to give somewhere along the line. And the Spotify's are
36:54
making plenty of money, but when you get down to the art artists,
37:00
you know, it's the sliver gets really slim, which is ridiculous. We're
37:04
talking about pants of a penny dream. I mean, it's just it's it's
37:10
it's unsustainable for anybody a new artist coming out. I mean what the end
37:15
up, what your recording ends up doing, is being a calling card for
37:21
your live show. I guess that's as we say, yeah you do you
37:23
suggest do you develop a great live show and then have the music just be
37:29
something that is is just something for the fans to have or a reason to
37:34
go out and tour. I don't know it's all. But then again,
37:37
how do you build an audience as a live act without having a hit single?
37:44
Yeah it's hard, it's hard, and you know where is the airplay
37:47
these days? I mean you have iHeart radio making the decisions for the whole
37:53
you know, all their stations like one guy's making a decision. So gone
37:59
is the low radio station playing the local band that breaks, you know,
38:05
explodes out of that area. That's all gone because you're not going to get
38:09
those songs on iHeartRadio. It's going to be you know, it's it's all
38:15
going to be major label stuff. And it's changed a lot. And uh.
38:19
I always like to say to people, if you like a band and
38:22
you're you want to support them, go to iTunes and down buy the record
38:28
and download it, or buy a CD that they have or an LP that
38:32
they have, because the streaming is it's not sustainable, it's not enough money.
38:38
So I know it's tough. I'd hate I wouldn't I wouldn't love to
38:43
be starting out in this climate. But you know, when when you have
38:49
the music and you're going to do it, the book done. Rock podcasts
38:52
will be back after this. You're nice enough to give me a list of
38:58
books that you've read. I think you've read all these books, so these
39:00
are good recommendations. You have anything for a hit and A and R.
39:06
Women's Story of Surviving the Music Industry, Dorothy Carvello. That's from twenty eighteen.
39:12
Deserves Got nothing to do with it. Five Elements that will help You
39:15
survive your emotional Journey to Success by Charlie Midnight twenty twenty one. Bloody Crossroads,
39:22
Art, Entertainment and Resistance to Trump from twenty twenty one by Danny Goldberg
39:27
twenty twenty. The Real Frank Zappa book by the man himself, Frank Zappa
39:32
that goes back to ninety nineteen ninety music and revolution. Greenwich Village in the
39:37
nineteen sixties. That's from twenty twenty two by Richard Baron. I'd love to
39:39
read that one. Here's what I have read. I have it. Sound
39:43
Man of Life Recording Hits with the Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin,
39:45
The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces by Glenn Johns. That's a
39:50
great book. Twenty five million. Al Schmidt on the Record, The Magic
39:53
behind the Music by Al Schmidt twenty eighteen. View from the Bottom Fifty Years
39:59
of Big Playing with Bob Dylan, The Doors, Miles Davis and everybody else
40:02
from twenty twenty by Harvey Brooks. Here There and Everywhere, My Life Recording
40:07
the Music of the Beatles two thousand and seven by Jeff Emrick and I think
40:10
this is the last one. All you need is Ears The inside personal story
40:14
of the genius who created the Beatles nineteen ninety four from George Martin, big
40:19
Beatles fan. I'm assuming, yeah, which era of the Beatles is your
40:22
favorite? You always say Revolver is like that first. It's like the first
40:28
classic rock album. Pretty amazing. When you co back, you know,
40:31
I was, I'm a funny Beatles fan because I may not have been that
40:38
excited about him as a youngster. I sort of as I grew as a
40:45
songwriter, I began to kind of look back at it and realize, just
40:52
how, you know, they're in their own category. There's no one,
40:55
nobody touches them, They're the best, and that it's you know, it
41:01
was. It was a couple of things. I mean, first of all,
41:06
you had John and Paul, who were super talented, just you know,
41:13
it's like having two Mozarts in the same band. I mean, they're
41:17
just And then you realize how much George contributed, and and then you realize
41:23
how you know, Ringo was a superb drummer. I think he doesn't get
41:30
as much credit as he should. His approach. First of all, his
41:35
timing is impeccable. He's all. He does these kind of elaborate fills,
41:43
not that they're technically amazing, but they're so tasteful and such a big part
41:50
of the Beatles sound, and he's able to do them and be not changed.
41:54
The time stays like a clock. He does this rim show sound.
42:00
Almost every hit he hits is like a That's what gives the Beatles that sound.
42:07
I mean, it was just a lineup of the stars in the sun
42:13
and just that those four got together and produced the music that they made.
42:19
My first time around as a kid, I guess I noticed them the most
42:24
with Magical Mystery Tour. I don't know why, but that one grabbed me,
42:30
you know. And then then now I'll go back to I don't think
42:35
I could pick an era, but I didn't focus enough as I was younger
42:39
on Revolver, and I mean, the innovations on that record, there's so
42:45
many sonic innovations, and then of course Roberts Soul. So I don't think
42:51
I can keep an answer to that. Somebody recently talked about how insane it
42:57
is to think about how incredibly fast they evolved in that short period that they
43:05
existed as Yews. Yeah, but you know, even early on they were
43:09
so innovative. Yes, what was like, what was that? What's the
43:14
album with like Babies in Black and Oh yeah, I mean that that's those
43:17
they were playing chord changes that nobody was hearing, you know what I mean.
43:22
They came out of you know, right then we're talking uh, you
43:27
know, rhythm and blues and fifties and and they and they took that those
43:32
influences, you know, which they admit with you know, little Richard and
43:37
you know, Buddy Holly and and stuff like that, but they they took
43:43
the American you know, Americans took kind of blues chord changes and and evolved
43:51
on that or expounded on that. But they took it, and they evolved
43:57
the blues in a way and added a little bit of English folk to it,
44:02
some the Dylan influences there. But they would always take a turn that
44:10
was a little different, even early on. That was Beatles for Sale,
44:14
by the way, nineteen sixty four, that's yeah, great great songs.
44:17
What else was on the song listing there? Yeah, let's see no reply.
44:23
I'm a loser. Babies in Black Rock and roll music which is the
44:27
Chuck Barry cover, I'll follow the Sun, mister Moonlight, Kansas City,
44:31
Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, side to eight Days a Week,
44:36
Worlds of Love, Buddy Holly Cover, Honey, Don't Carl Perkins. That's
44:39
another one there. Yeah, every little thing. I don't want to spoil
44:44
the party. What you're doing. Everybody's trying to be my baby. Carl
44:46
Perkins. I think in a way, at least some of the John songs,
44:52
I think that was his take on Dylan, you know what I mean.
44:55
But you can hear the you can see the traditional you know, Kansas
45:00
City and the Carl Perkinson, and then you hear the little odd chord changes
45:07
that they would add to to like you know, the songs, some of
45:10
the songs you mentioned, and you know, it's just it was like it
45:14
was. It was like a rocket ship from there. And you know,
45:16
Paul obviously is just an amazing musician. Play piano, pick up bass,
45:22
pick up guitar. You know a lot of times he was He's playing the
45:24
solos on some of that early stuff. But I won't say, but I'll
45:29
say end John was there too. I mean, he'll pick up a piano,
45:35
he'll pick up a bass guitar. But John would always have that like
45:40
out of nowhere chord change, you know, and a lot of change that
45:46
sort of defied you know pop or you know, rock or even classical.
45:53
It just it just was, you know, uniquely him that he'd come with
46:00
these chord changes and melodies that you know, you just don't normally. You
46:06
know, it's it's out of the box. He was an out of the
46:10
box writer. What did you think of what they did with his song?
46:14
Now? And then? You know what, I love it? People don't.
46:19
There's a lot of people critical of, you know, how Paul did
46:22
it, and you know, John didn't really finish the song, so what
46:24
did they do it? I you know, I'll take what I can get
46:28
from sure eyes. At this point, I liked it. I liked it.
46:32
My only complaint would be and I guess, I guess you have to
46:37
do it that way. It was a little to me it was a little
46:38
too modern sounding, that drums were a little too big, and the production
46:44
was a little too compressed. I would liked to have heard it, but
46:46
you know, I guess you can't go back and try and sound like it
46:51
did. But it was a little too heavy handed for me sonically, but
46:54
I love it. I'm appreciative of it. I'm glad they did it.
47:00
Glad you know. I can hear Ringo's voice in that chorus and I love
47:04
it. I bought it. I have the LP one side well, their
47:07
first song ever, which I think is as It Please Please Me. I
47:10
can't remember what's on side one, and side too is then and now a
47:15
vinyl that you know cut it forty five rpm. So I love it.
47:21
Yeah, I mean, just to think in the year twenty twenty three there's
47:23
a brand new BA song that's that's pretty cool. That is pretty cool,
47:27
and Paul McCartney Ringo are still touring regularly and recording. Yeah, that's pretty
47:34
cool. I love it. Let's plug anything you want to plug, because
47:37
I should mention too, because I did want to and I mentioned this to
47:40
Stacey earlier. We should get out there. You know what people can do
47:44
as far as pancreatic cancer. And you're fighting because I know my mom's neighbor
47:46
who was only like my age, early fifties, and he's he's got it.
47:51
So I know that you've you've got involved with this. Patrick Sadley Passano
47:55
nine from it, and I know that you have. Both you and Stacy,
48:00
along with Frankie, done some great work for It's called PANCAN, the
48:04
Pink Creatic Cancer Action Network pincin dot organs a website. But what can people
48:07
do to help educate themselves about it? Is it? Is it preventative?
48:12
It's very difficult to detect. I think what Stacy told me earlier right,
48:15
and by the time it's detected, it's kind of gotten to a bad state.
48:22
Frankie has been more involved in this. He's He's set up we have
48:25
our dirty dancing demos for sale and one hundred percent of those demos sales goes
48:31
to the Pancreatic Cancer Network. I think you can you can just put in
48:37
dirty dancing demos on Facebook and find that to contribute to. But again that
48:43
was more Frankie's. I think through the years we've and it's been a good
48:47
chunk of money from the sales that have gone to that. But you know,
48:52
as far as what I've been doing, I have the Omad Records omadrecords
48:57
dot Com where I I've been working with different artists and recording, producing and
49:04
recording in my studio out here and we're actually working on a documentary on Peter
49:10
Lewis, who was one of the founders of Mobi Grape. Moby Grape Okay,
49:15
nineteen sixties band that Peter mother was Loretti Young, who was an Academy
49:22
Award winning actress, and then Peter was in Mobi Grape. And it's a
49:27
documentary, but it's really more about Peter's daughter, Arwyn came to him at
49:32
like twenty six years old and said, teach me to play guitar, teach
49:37
me to write. And so it's like a documentary. Isn't titled fall on
49:42
You, which is one of the bigger songs Mobi Grape did that Peter wrote,
49:46
was called fall on You. So it's really more about a story about
49:51
a father daughter and a sort of passing of the torch from his actress mom
49:57
to him and then him to his daughter. And both of them are on
50:01
my record label, both Irwin and Peter, and I just finished the Peter
50:07
Lewis record which has got some great reviews. And Peter's kind of like a
50:13
kind of like a Neil Young, you know, he's a hero to a
50:17
certain crowd of people that were into the sixties San Francisco sound. Although Mobi
50:24
Grape and a guy named Skip Spence, who was in Mobi Grape was also
50:30
very influential to the next few generations. I know Beck and people like that.
50:36
Skip Spence was Jefferson Airplane, right, wasn't he? He was the
50:38
original drummer, right, and then then he went off and played guitar with
50:44
he started the band Mobi Grape. Yeah, I mean, Moby Grape was
50:47
just tied in. They were just all They were the first band out of
50:52
the San Francisco scene to get signed, and they had a bidding war for
50:57
them. But everything went wrong. The first thing was the label put out
51:04
instead of putting out one single and at a time, they put they they
51:08
had the bright idea to put out five singles at once, so nobody knew
51:13
which song to play. Oh wow, that's got And that's just one of
51:16
the problems. There was so many problems, but they if you talk to
51:21
Robert Plant, if you talk to Stephen van Zant, you Little Stephen.
51:25
If you talk to Chrissy Hind, if you talk to there were just so
51:30
many people influenced by Bobie Grape. If you haven't heard their first record,
51:36
you should go listen to it, which is hard to find because it's not
51:42
on spot It's on Spotify, but only a few of the songs that no
51:45
one knows why you can't get the whole record there. But if you can
51:49
get a hold, you can go on YouTube, I guess and hear the
51:51
whole record. But there are you know, guys like David Frick who is
51:57
Rolling Stone Stone. He's huge, huge fam we became friends through. Would
52:02
be great. That first record is on a lot of people's greatest but it
52:08
might be on Rolling Stone's Greatest one and the top one hundred greatest albums ever
52:15
done. Certainly debut album. They were touted to be the the American version,
52:22
Americans answer to the Beatles. That was how that was touted Bailey Wow.
52:27
And everything just fell apart. And the website Omadrecords dot com and I
52:34
just recently put up and I have to change the name to it. But
52:37
if you if you were to google fourth Wall f O U R th H
52:43
wall W A L L and put in oh Mad Records. At the same
52:46
time, I just put up this website. It's it's a merch website and
52:52
it's got some really fun merchant and part of it is to do with I
52:59
on my last record that I put out, which was you mentioned the why
53:02
because but there's a record I did in twenty one, twenty twenty one that's
53:07
called She Said, and it's those were all songs I wrote for myself for
53:13
the first time, you know, the first record with songs I had written
53:15
for other people that I was able to cover. This one was all songs
53:22
that I have written for myself. And there's a song on there called float
53:25
on Hope, and it's about kind of a you know, it's a hopefully
53:31
it's it's not a bunky on the head, but it's it's about global climate
53:37
change. And I found this great animator after a long period of time to
53:42
do a video. It's called float on Hope and it's it's you can find
53:45
it on YouTube. And Jenna Shot kind of translated our script using this mouse
53:52
is the mouse from a mouse? We always had this thought about. We
53:57
have a friend of ours, a close friend who is Braziz and she's from
54:00
the Amazon, and she was from an house, and we have in the
54:06
video the mouse from an House, which sort of represents everybody on the planet
54:12
Earth. And he has to in the song. As the song goes,
54:17
he has to leave his mom and everybody to try and find a place for
54:22
humankind to move, and he ends up waking up out of this dream.
54:27
But it's this young little mouse. Long story short. The images from the
54:34
video we have on our merch translated to these really cool sneakers. I'm looking
54:40
at it here. Yeah, the T shirt and T shirts and stuff.
54:44
And it's not the only thing. I mean is Peter Lewis stuff. There
54:46
is arn Lewis stuff there, but that's just recently launched. That's cool.
54:52
Well, I'm happy to put a link up on the show notes page too,
54:54
so people can just go right to the show notes page, click on
54:57
the link there and the video to a link people up to the video.
55:01
Very cool. And you know one other thing I wanted to mention too,
55:05
Frankie. You know, he wanted to be here, he was unable to.
55:07
But he has an event coming up we want to mention too. He's
55:09
the co producer of the upcoming Taylor Simon King Tribute Concert in New Jersey.
55:14
That's Sunday, December third, three pm at Rareton Valley Community College. It's
55:20
the celebration of the music of three American troubadours, James Taylor, Carly Simon
55:23
and Carol King. It's an honor of taps and honoring gold star fallen families
55:29
of the US military. So if you live in the New Jersey area,
55:31
you want to go head to Taylor Simon King dot com for more info Taylor
55:35
Simon King dot com and also link on the show notes page. And your
55:40
main website is I think John Dash. Yeah, you don't have to dash
55:45
in, but yeah, it's either John Dash Dinaicola dot com or John Denacola
55:50
dot com. But yes, and then the Omatt Records is where I'm also
55:55
all right, John, thank you so much. And Stacy's listening to this.
55:59
Thank you again. All right. Thanks meeting him. No, no,
56:10
that was an adventure. I was quite assure you put onto the Well,
56:15
let me just close this conversation by saying you are one unique individual.