Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Willie Nile

Transcript

Willie Nile · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Set podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is singer, songwriter musician Willie Nile. Willie,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: you had an adventure at the end of the year
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: your home town of Buffalo. Tell us the story. Hello, Bob,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I was born in Buffalo, raised there,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and I live in New York. I've lived in New
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: York off and on for about fifty years. And my dad,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I have a father's one hundred and five years old,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: lives at home outside of Buffalo. One of my brothers
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: lives with him. In the last four years and he's
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: one hundred and five. But he's doing great. He goes
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: to church every day. He's like he just takes no medication.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: You'd think that he was in early eighties. So I
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: went up to Buffalo for Christmas and staying at his home.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: He's a great storyteller and funny guy. And after a
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: couple of days, we saw this big storm was coming in,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: you know, the Buffalo blizzard, and I read about it
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: ahead of time about how high winds, really high winds
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and cold weather it can cause frostbite. Anyway, So I
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: wake up on Friday morning, two days before Christmas twenty
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: third of December, and I, you know, eleven fifteen, I
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: wake up. My brother says we're on a power no heat,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: and I thought, you're kidding me, right. Apparently someone in
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: a truck ran into a utility pol and with a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: driving band on. I wanted them to put that person's
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: picture on the front of the Buffalo newspaper so that
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: everyone know who ran into the pole. They caused eight
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty some homes to be without power. So
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: there was no power, Okay. I got up, got dressed,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and Dad was doing Crossford puzzles like all this. You know,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: he doesn't complain, it's really great. So we were without
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: power for three days and three nights. It was eighty
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: mile in our winds. It was eight degrees outside and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: it was freezing. It was so cool. I grew up
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: in Buffalo, you know, I know the winner there's eighty
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: five words for snow, and buff there's not. But it
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: was so cold. I had we had a fireplace, but
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: no wood, had you know, gas fireplace. We turned it on,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: lit it all the way up, but it doesn't emanate
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: much heat. I would put my hands at the top
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of the you know, the fireplace just to hole. You know,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the stones had warmth that it didn't emanate heat. Long
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: story short, there was a neighbor next door who was
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: really great x marine. In the middle of this blizzard.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: There was four feet of snow in the driveway. It
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: was beautiful. Everything was going sideways because the wind was
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: so hard, and so I thought, my phone's dying, you know,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: like later in the day on Friday, and we had
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: no contact. We were we were everyone was stranded in
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood. Everywhere there was so much snow. So I
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: made me It took about ten minutes to go just
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: right next door. I used to shovel as an anchor
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: to get through the snow. Was I just to pull
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: myself up. Knocked on their door and they that they
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: hesitated to open the door. There was some figure in
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: black outside their door. They didn't know who it was.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: The guy answered and said, Hi, you know I lived
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: next door. My dad's one hundred and five and my
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: phone is dying. Can I use your car, you know,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: to charge the phone. He goes, oh, we'll do it inside.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: So I took my phone. He charged my phone like
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: six or seven times over the course of three days.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Sunday morning. The third day, they couldn't do it anymore.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And the second when I went back Saturday morning to
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: get my phone one time, I said what's your phone number?
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: And he said, I'll give it to you later. Go No,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I'll take it. I'll take it now. I took my
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: glove off for thirty seconds. How long does this take?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: The type of number the phone? I typed it in
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and you know, my hands were really cold, put it
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: back on, went home and my fingers, my three fingers
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: on my right hand are still a little numb. It's
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: gotten better, but it's not one hundred percent. And this
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: was well whatever. It was a twenty fourth of December.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Long story short, we had We were freezing. Getting in
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: bed on Friday night was brutal. Dressed we might have
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: been going skiing in the Alps. We were dressed that
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: that much on multiple coats, hat, socks, all kinds of clothes,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and it didn't help much. Woke up early early six
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: o'clock because it was so cold you couldn't sleep. And
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Dad was great. My brother he took the grill off
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: his grill and put it on the fireplace and on
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the great and he made some eggs and some coffee
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: for Dad, but it was still so cold, and Dad
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: never complained. Once I had we had wine, you know.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So I opened up bottle of wine. We were drinking
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: and I made a couple of video clips and put
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: them on Facebook. Next thing I know, on Tuesday night,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Inside Edition goes meanwhile in Buffalo, this guy cuts to me,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: this guy, So I'm changing my name officially to this guy.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: And they did edits my clip of Dad, and the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: thing about the clip was and so many people responded, oh,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: your father. I love your dad. You know, he's a
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: really good guy. But people, here's one hundred and five.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: And I said, I'm looking at my phone, you know, selfie, Hey, Dad,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: say hello everybody, Hi, everybody. We're having a blast. He
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: holds up his glass of red wine. And it was
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: really cold, and I did another clip where I said,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: just so you know how cold it is, and I
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: would just breathe out and you could see my breath
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: three feet away, you know. And it was pretty rough
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: and brutal. On the third day, in the morning, I
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: woke up with chills and low fever, and I thought,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: this is going downhill, you know, So I called there's
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a plow service we have for my dad. And I
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: called the guy and say, I'll give you five hundred
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: dollars if you can get my dad out of here.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: You know, Max's wife lived a mile and a half away,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: and he says, I'm trying to get there. I hope
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: you in two hours. He called me up. Two hours later,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: he goes, I'm at the six houses away and I'm
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: stuck in ten feet of snow. But i can get out,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go to the local fire hall. Because
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I called nine one one, I called the National Guard.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I got put on lists. I called the fire hall. Anyway,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: he went to the fire hall and said there's one
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: hundred and five year old man in a house that
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: they're stranded. We weren't the only one stranded, but you know,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: it wasn't eighty five, he wasn't ninety five. He was
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: one hundred and five. And he didn't say a word. Occasionally,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: it's say, you know that born name is Robert Bob. Bob,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: turn on the Christmas tree lights. I go, dad, there's
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: no power, Oh yeah, yeah right, you know, God bless him.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: He never complained once I did. I complained. My brother says,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: it's not going to help the complain. I go, well,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: it's helping me. The police and fire rescued us on
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: the third day at three o'clock and there was a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what you call him, a snow cat
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: or something, one of those a snow removal thing with
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: not wheels, but like a tank, snow cat, I don't know.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: It went over everything, got down our street, went in
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: a driveway, backed out and took snow out enough for
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: another emergency vehicle to back end and we got in
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the car. That was the first heat we had in
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: three days, and I thought, wow, And I was thinking
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: about the people in Ukraine during that I thought, you
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: know what we have. At least we have gas, we
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: could cook, you know, whatever we have. I could put
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: my hands on the stones. You know, my hands are
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: really you know, I'm extra sensitive now to the cold,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and there's still numb in these fingers in the tree.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: But I thought about the poor people in Ukraine. They're
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: getting bombed to hell, you know, just absolute savagery, and
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: they don't have gas, fireplaces I can turn on. So
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I just really my heart went out to them. And
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: they took us to a warming center and it was
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: a junior high school. And you know when one hundred
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and five years old, sitting on a little stool, dad
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: said I need something at my back, and someone heard
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: them and went and got a real chair. And I
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: must say this, there's a silver lining to us, the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: way that neighbors treated neighbors, like I believe in this country.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's obviously a lot of a lot wrong,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: a lot wrong in the history, there's so much wrong.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: But when you know people are shoveling each other's driveways out.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I saw a neighbor across the street go into the
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: next two houses checking on people. The guy next door
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: on Saturday morning, he comes over and brings a bag
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: of handwarmers. Those handwarmers saved our butts, they really did.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I carry one of my in my pocket now, just because.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: And the volunteers, the cops, the firemen, the people volunteering
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: in the vehicle that rescue. We were in a car.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: We were five different cars that day, and because we
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: went to two warming centers, went to a hotel, whatever,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: three hotels, finally got in. But the way people pitched
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: in to help each other, it was really I thought,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: this is really encouraging to me. People are there is
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: good in a lot of people. So it was really
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: a brutal experience. Dad was fine. I mean he I've
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: heard of going to bed Saturday night. Second night. I
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to go back in that bed. I moved
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the couch in front of the fireplace. Even though it
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: didn't give much heat, it was light the illusion of heat,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and I heard Dad get into the bed. Oh he's
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: a hundred and five, were crying out loud. Anyway, the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: silver lining was that I'm with his man. There's some
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: really good people. People pitched him to help each other,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: and it was heartening to see. Anyway, that was my Christmas. Okay,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you say your father called out to Bob. Your real
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: name is Bob Noonan. Yes, how did you become Willie dile?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: So I moved. I graduated from the University of Buffalo
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: in seventy two, and I know I was. I was
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: writing poetry in high school and college. I started writing songs.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I played to classical piano lessons. My grandfather ran an
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: orchestra for twenty plus years in Vaudeville when he died
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: in fifty three. Eddie Cantor had a nationwide TV show,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and does It Come up Camaradie with musicians, and my
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: dad has talked about it for years. And when he died,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: figured Eddie Cantor's got a live TV show across the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: nation half an hour. He's probably on the air for
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes or twenty two minutes. And he took time
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: out to say, my good friend Dick Noonan passed away
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: this week, and Condole insisted the family that he would
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: do that from New York City. I thought, man, those
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: guys must have been close. Both Angles. Robinson used to
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: send him Christmas car every year and he also carried
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: a gun, you know, a black man with money. And uh,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: it's just fascinating stories growing up. So I'm in high
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: school as we started studying the poets, and I become
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I think maybe I'm a poet because I stare at
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: sunlight when it's coming into classroom and blah blah blah.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: So I started writing songs. So in my college years,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I was writing songs, and then when I graduated, I
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: went to New York City to try to make a living,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: you know, making trying to get my songs recorded. You know,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: I was never I didn't. I don't care about fame.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: It's not stinking rich. I'll take that. Give me on
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the minute, I'll be stinking. I could be stinking rich.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: But fame didn't do a lot for Michael Jackson. That's
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: not why I do what I do. And anyway, So
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I used to play open mics. I'm writing rock and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: roll songs, and but I couldn't afford a band. I
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: was broke, did not want to join a group, no
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: curiosity whatsoever for that. I just wanted to sing the
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: songs I wrote. So just acoustic guitar open mics, and
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I used to the Bitter End, had one every week
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: on Bleaker Street, Folks City, whatever, a few different ones.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So one night, when I was at the Cafe a
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Go Go, I went on stage. This is why I
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: changed my name. Let's to answer your question. I'm on
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: stage at the Cafe Go Go, and I played three songs,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: you know, and I would very expressive when I play.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: They were rock and roll songs. And I jumped off
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the stage when I was done or whatever. So I'm
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: clouding around and introducing imaginary characters playing behind me. There's
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: little bit event Beethoven on bass. Whatever. Anyway, So when
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I was done with my three songs, set. I'm walking
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: off the stage. The guy announcing goes, we'll have some
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: more gorilla music for you in because it was suddenly two.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: It was like sensitive singer song at a time. You know,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: no offense to James Taylor, but he was like a
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: successful guy at the time, and there were all these sensitive,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: oh so sensitive people, and this guy said, we'll have
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: some moret guerrilla music. I wanted to take my guitar
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: and smash him over the head, and my wife said, no,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: no, no no, we can't afford a new one. Don't and
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't. The following week, I'm in line at the
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Bitter End. I put my name on a list, stand
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: in line for forty five minutes because back then there
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: were long lines. I'm in line and I can in line.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And the comedian who was taking the names it just
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: didn't care anything about music. And I put my name
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: down and he didn't get until three or three in
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: the morning. He would put his friends on ahead of
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the people on the list. Very disrespectful. Whatever. I take
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: it as it comes. Next week, I go there and
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I'm in line waiting in the rain. I said, I go, hey,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: my name is Bob Noonan. He goes, I'm sorry what
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I couldn't hear you? What? I go, It doesn't matter,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you can make one up. He goes, Oh no, no,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: he goes, it's very important. It gives me the thirty
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: second lecture about how important is what your name is?
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Oh no, it makes a big difference. Oh really, says I. Well,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: in that case, my name is Huey Rosenbag and he
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: goes Rosenberg. No, no, Rosenberg like the pictures mound. You know,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I refused. I refused to play that game. To this day,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I do not. I will not. So the next week
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I I was I was uh. First week I was
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Huey Rosenback. Next week I was osgod pe Quad. I
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: gave the guy different every name Modown's umberto snorts. I
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: just gave this guy a different name every week. He
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: didn't know the difference. He did not care. So my
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: wife and I would sit in the back waiting for
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: this clown to say this ridiculous name. And I was
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: watching Uh, It's great PBS documentary documentary but series search
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: for the Nile Terrific Series. And one night I woke
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: up Willie Nile. I'm a philosophy major to say something's
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: nihilistic made me laugh to say, Willie Nilly is kind
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: of selfie facing, which I thought, you know, if they're
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: going to praise me, they can use their name I
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: made up. If they're going to slam me in the press,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: go ahead, use my made up name. So it's and
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: it's I thought it was a good rock and roll
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: name and it served me well. So yeah, that's that's
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: how I changed my name and why it did it. Okay,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: In your private life, people call your boss, how do
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: they call you? Willie? Everybody since seventy two, it's Willie.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: When I'm back with family, cousins, you know, or brothers
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: and sisters on one of a it's a very large family,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: and we have one hundred and five. When we all
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: go on vacation every year, it's Bob or Bobby. But
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: everybody else on the planet's Willie. Okay. So you grew
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: up in Buffalo. How many generations was your fabily at Buffalo?
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: My father was born in Buffalo in nineteen seventeen. His
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: father was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and his mother in
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four. Their parents were born in Ireland, and
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: so and my mom's parents something similar. Her parents were
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: born in eighteen eighty nine and eighteen I'm sorry, eighteen
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: ninety nineteen hundred, and her father's grandfather was born in
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: French Indian Territory. I remember seeing, you know, I thought,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and I looked at a picture of him when he
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: was I used to work at Showtime TV Networks as
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: a proofreader when I got broke. I was a proof
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: reader for not a bunch of years, and I was
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: running my little record label out of my little cubicle,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: and I put I would print out these old family
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: portraits and put them all over the queue, at least,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: you know, old school stuff. One day, I'm looking at
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: my grandfather's picture when he was three, my mother's father,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to wait a minute. He was from
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Attica in New York and his great great his great grandfather,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: now his grandfather was born in French Indian Territory. I
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: look at his face, and he was He died at
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: sixty from smoking since he was twelve. Check black hair,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: really dark skin. I go, there's Indian blood in this guy.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: You know, you could see the photograph. So anyway, that's
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: where they go back, mid mid three generations, something like that,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds of all came over here. The Irish famine,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: you know, kicked a lot of people out of Ireland.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Why Buffalo, So? Why Buffalo? So in the mills and
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a low Massachusett started closing, you know, and there was
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: no work. So my father, my grandfather, Dick Noonan, and
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: his brother John Noonan were musicians. You know. Dad tells
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the story of at one point the local pastor of
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the priest, the priest from the local church, came to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: the house to talk to my mother, my grandmother's father
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: this waiting, saying, your daughters shouldn't be going out with
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: a musician. That's not a good thing. You know. I
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: can't disagree. He was a sweetheart, but they were. John
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: noon and the older brother son, I'm gonna go to Buffalo,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: see if there's worked there. So he moved to Buffalo,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: was there a few months, called his brother and said
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: there's tons of work here. Because Buffalo was like the
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: gateway to the west, you know, to northern Canada and
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: the west. If you left New yorkle outs that you
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: went Buffalo as a main And I often wonder because
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: my brother, my uncle, my great uncle, John Noonan, was
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the orchestra leader for Cha's Buffalo great, great old theater.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I saw in excess there. That's an amazing place, and
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that the Marx brothers passed through there. I'd
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: love to talk to both those guys. Go tell me
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: about the Marx brothers, you know whatever. So, yeah, that's
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: how that's how they got to Buffalo. So what did
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: your one hundred and five year old father do for
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: a living. My father, when he got out of the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: army in h forty five, my father was an accountant.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: He was a CPA, took the CPA exam, had a
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: couple of kids, and so he was a certified public
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: accountant for some years and early fifties fifty three or four,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: he had a beer distributorship, which was awesome for us
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: kids because in nineteen sixty one, Elston Howard, the Yankees
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: catcher MVP that year, of course, I mean, came to
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: our house. We were like, if you're back then the
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: only TV was two stations. There was Channel two and
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Channel four. This is before Channel seven. Think where we
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: are now and think what my father has seen since
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. So Elston Howard during the day weren't making
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: much money. So in the wintertime. They had other jobs
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: and he was a pr whatever for I don't know,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: I was Lobat's Beer or Valentine Ale or what paps
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: blue Ribbon, one of those. And my dad was the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: distributor in Buffalo. We weren't rich, you know, we weren't poor,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: but we were, you know, somewhere in the middle. And
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Elston Howard came to our house. We were on the moon.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: What was I in nineteen sixty one, I was born
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: or forty eight, so you know, I was like, you know,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I was just a kid, thirteen years old or whatever.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Elston Howard come on, you know, and yeah, it was
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: it was priceless and he was really nice. His hands
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: were huge and I couldn't believe my eyes. Yeah, okay,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: he went back. My father went back to be in
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: a CPA and we had no money. He lost the business.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: It was it was bad. Business was bad. He lost it,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: and really, you know, he had to say. He took
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: a job teaching accounting, so he was fine. He was
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: an accountant, taught for a few years, paid back his debts,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: and then he worked till he was seventy eight as
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: an accountant. Hard working guy to this day, he wakes up,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: goes to church, comes home, has breakfast, hits the crossword puzzles,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: gets his pencil out, has got his e racers, got
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: his pencil sharpener. He has crossor puzzles for a couple
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: of hours. Then you'll read for an hour or two
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and read books. He loves history. Then you go back
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: to doing more crossword puzzles. So the accountant in him
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: is still there. When Mom died seventeen years ago at
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the age of eighty seven, he just he says, you
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: got to just get up. I said, how do you
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: How are you doing it? How are you feeling? You know?
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Like some months later he goes, I'm all right. He says,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: you got to pick yourself up. Life will hit you hard,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: it'll hit all of us. Hit don't getting around at
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: And he said, you gotta just pick yourself up and
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: get on with it, you know. And he he sure
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: did it. So accounting in him I still see at
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the kitchen table when he's doing his crossword puzzles. A
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: dear guy. He went to the doctor this week. My
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: sister took him for a check up. Doctor looks at
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: his hands. He's got a lot of bruises. Doctor says,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: what happened to your hands? I was checked by a chicken. Anyway,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I've been writing down things he's been saying. I've got
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: like thirty pages, and I have hours of him. When
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: he starts telling stories when I was a boy, I
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: get out my phone and hit voice memo. I got hours.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: I love the guy. We're all lucky having still So
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: your parents stayed married all that time? Oh did they ever?
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: They would wake up in the morning, you know they
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: were They went there very devout Catholics, and they would
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: wake up in the morning, you know, get cleaned up,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: get dressed, and go to church. Before the church, Good morning, Bob,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Good morning Joe. And they kiss each other on the
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: lips and they go, what planet are you people from?
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: They're like eighty five years old. They just loved each other.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: It was so beautiful to see. We're a lucky bunch
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: of kids having parents like that. How many kids in
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the family. There were eight children in the family, six boys,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: two girls, and we had nineteen fifty six. We always
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: saw that dad was the center of the family until
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: mom died and we realized, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's just
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: sweet woman, gentle kind. Never had a bad word about anybody.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: I remember in nineteen seventy two, I'm watching TV and
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Richard Nixons on I'm sitting there with Magoon and point,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: this is a bad guy. This is a bad Oh, Bobby,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: there's good and everyone. And I went, yeah, I'm not
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: so sure about this guy. And she she wouldn't hear it.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: She was a sweet woman, and they had the greatest relationship.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: But in fifty six Mom decides they were part of
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: this thing called the Christian family movement. We said more
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: prayers growing up than I don't know. And she said,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I think we should get a foreign exchange student to
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: my father. Okay, Joe, And so we got eight kids.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: A cousin who was a lost sheet, you know. He
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: joined a Trappist monastery and he was suicidal and the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: head of the monastery called my dad. He was like nineteen.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: He called my dad, he goes, this guy's in really
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: bad shape. You should come and get him. So that
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: one and got him, took him back home, and I
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: thought he lived with us for two or three years.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: It turns out it was ten. And mother, with her
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: love and her kindness, you know, the guy did great.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Graduated from Kinesius College, got a master's you know. And anyway,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: so with nine people in the house and two parents,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: my mom thinks it's a great idea to get a
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: foreign exchange student. So Elena Segatti from Bueno Cyres, sixteen
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: year old comes to our house. Boy did we love her.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: She stayed a year. When she left, we cried for
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: two days, every one of us, balling our eyes out
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: like a little baby. I'm serious. And the next year
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: we had Francis Kuggenheim from Dunkirk, France, and again we
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: just all hit it off. Was so a year. And
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the year after that was Ronado zenenga banker's son from Milan, Italy.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: And you know, they came and went. My parents eventually
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: start every year we had some foreign exchange student. And
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: because we lived in Buffalo near and I Falls, where
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: foreign visitors would come all the time, they would go
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: to this Christian family we want to go to a
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: normal American family came to our house and we knew
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: it was not a normal American family. There was no
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: house around our neighborhood that was going All this stuff
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: was going on. We had a governor from India, we
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: had the head of the education thing in Vietnam. Who
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: or red robes, who my mother couldn't speak to because
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: she was female, or wait on, my father had to
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't dig that anyway. There was so much name
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: a country in this world. They came to our house.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: So it was us kids from what was I eight
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: years old? Seven eight years old? Had foreign visitors, priests
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: was priest was in jail for twenty years in China.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Taught people our family how to use chopsticks. We had
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: a guy from Hungry in fifty seven or eight whenever
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: they had the revolution fifty six without a thumb. They
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: tortured him, cut his thumb off. Nice guy. We just
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: name So growing up with different people, different language, is,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: different dress, different smells, and it was fascinating experience. It
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: was not normal. So we had eight kids in the family,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Long West cousin and everybody from around the world. Okay,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: so if the eight kids, where are you in the
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: hierarchy of what kind of kid were you growing up? Well,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in the hierarchy, I was fourth, and my brother Richard,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Tom Nancy, then myself Teresa, Joey friend and John and
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I was fourth. So they were ahead of me, three
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: of them and behind me. So I saw him coming
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: and going, and I was kind of like, I wouldn't
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: say the wise guy the group, but like, you know,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: with that many kids, you could you could run wild,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: which we did, and I had a lot of fun.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I love my brothers and sisters very much, and we're
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: all really close to this day. And I was inquisitive.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I would walk into a room like at two or
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: three years old. I remember, I remember seeing a two
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: years old I'm what, I was just about to go
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: to bed. And my grandfather, the piano player, boy he played.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: He would throw at a white sheet over the piano,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: play the sheet. That was a parlor trick, I was told.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: And he would play a song like in the Shade
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: of the Old Apple Tree. Well hit the word tree.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: He was the most the wrongest note you could hit
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: in the piano in the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: And the women he had him laughing and crying. I
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: saw that, and I saw and I heard all kinds
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of stories about the early part of the last century.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: So I really my grandparents on my mom's I lived upstairs,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: so there was a lot of neighborliness. And you know,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: my grandma, Grandma said, if everybody pitches in the job,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: will get done quicker. Just really good people, shirt off
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: your back kind of people, you know. So we were
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: really blessed because not everybody gets so lucky. Oh okay,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: so did you have a lot of friends. Did you
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: do well in school? Yeah, I had a fair amount
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: of friend I had so many brothers and sisters, but
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: I had friends at school. School was easy for me.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I just would clown around. I didn't have to study,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: you know. And I was very small. I'm small now,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: but I was really small. I have I'm celiac now
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: fifty eight years old. All of a sudden, couldn't eat gluten.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: But I ate everything up to then. But I must
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: not have digested everything because I just didn't grow much
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: in high school. I grow a little bit. One of
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: my five four now a towering five four, I might say,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and I would. I had a great time in school,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: I mean with it was friends. It was boring as hell,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: like great school is. But my older brothers brought home
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: rock and roll records. They would have the radio on.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I saw Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan because they had
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: the TV on. So I was exposed. At the very beginning.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: We went to camp. I'll never forget this. Camp Turner
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: was one of those summer camps for kids, and I
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: went one year, and my brothers would go, and you know,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: it's a bunch of kids in the wild, animals in
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the country, in the woods, whatever. And on the way home,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: on the bus, they had a radio and Rock around
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the Clock came on and the kids on the bus
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: started going crazy. And that beat. I went, oh, I
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: like this. It was rock and roll, you know, And
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: that was and Elvis, a little Richard, Chuck Barry, give
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: me a break, you know, and Buddy Holly Everly brothers.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: So that stuff hit me a red square and I went.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: It changed my life. And I met some years ago.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I think it was two thousand and nine. I was.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I went to south By Southwest. I went there about
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: four to five times, and this lawyer friend I played
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: at like twelve thirty in the morning or towel thirty
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon some gigs, Willy came here as somebody
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I want you to meet. And the way he said,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I thought this sounds interesting. He takes me over near
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: the merchship because Willy, this is Marie Elena Holly and
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I almost fell off the floor. I went no, Marie
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Elena Holly, Buddy Holly. The first record I ever bought
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: was Peggy Sue. I had two quarters. I went to Cabbage,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: just walked by myself. I've never been in a record store.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I walked in. Uh, hi, sir, I want to can
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I buy? I want to buy get Peggy sup By.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Buddy Holley gives me the forty five. I gave him
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: my quarter, two quarters, and I had a little plastic
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: white record player and I played a thousand times then
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: didn't didn't, didn't pay. Suit changed my life. And here
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I am meeting Marie Helena Holley, who lived a fleet
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: blocks for me. They lived with a six months before
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Buddy died on Fifth Avenue in ninth Street in the village.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: And I said, I mean, I love her. She's such
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: a sweetheart. She's in Dallas now and uh it was
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: an honor to meet her. And she said she want
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: me to sign a CD. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa, No, no,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: no, no no, how about I get your autograph? She was
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: so nice. I remember I saw her a couple of
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: years later in then I played. She signed with us,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: you know, south By Southwest, so I'm there two years
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: later and they have a had a Buddy Holly Educational
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Foundation party. I am an official ambassador to the Buddy
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Holly Educational Fund Foundation, which I still can't believe. You know.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: It's like a who's who a rock and role, you know,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: like this Mick and Keith, you know, everybody you know.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: And I got to get what's wrong with this picture?
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Who's this little guy at the end of the line.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: And Marie Lena said, I want willing to be an ambassador,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: you know, And so I got a Buddy Holly guitar
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: with one of his frats on the inside for a
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: two year loan. Dion's got it now, I think, permanently.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: And they gave me a really nice people. And I
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: said to Maria Elena we were having dinner in Nashville once.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I said, Marie Lena, you live a couple of blocks
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: some where I live now I've lived for fifty years.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: What did you do for dinner? Where did you go?
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: What did you and Buddy do? And she said, Buddy
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: loved New York. Buddy, would they live in the fourth
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: floor of this you know, I don't know how many
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: fifteenth floor apartment building? Right on Fifth Avenue in Ninth Street.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: I walked back many a time. I give people tours
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: in my neighborhood and say, you know, Buddy Holly lived there.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: She said. He used to stand on the balcony all
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: the time and just in wonder, watching New York Goodbye.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: She said he would take his acoustic guitar into Washington
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Square Park one block away and play it. He just
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: loved to play it. Kids would come up to him,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: not knowing his Buddy Holly, and asked him about chords,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: and he would show him stuff. And so they said,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: when we get older, let's have an educational foundation for
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: teenagers kids who want to learn music. And so to
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: this day there's a Buddy Hall Educational Foundation, and I'm
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: I'm an ambassador anyway, asking Marie, oh, I said to
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Marie Lena, I go, Marie Lena, did Buddy like Elvis?
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Because like this, you're talking to the horse's mouth here.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: You know, I love history and I love right and
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: you know I can ask her things that nobody else knows.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Marie did he like Elvis? She goes, oh, he loved Elvis.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Elvis came to Let's you're talking love at Texas. You know,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and she said, one day Alvis came to town. They
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: went to a movie together. He loved Elvis and they're
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: both kids basically. And I said, what about Little Richard?
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Did Buddy like I got a story for you? Did?
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: But did Buddy like little Richard? She was, Oh, boy,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: he loved little Richard. One day he brought out. He
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: brought little Richard back to the house. This is Lumpock, Texas,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: the Deep South. And he comes to the front door
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: with little Richard, this little tall black guy and his
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: father comes to the door and he says, this, so
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: and so is nut coming in this house. So Buddy
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: took himround in the backyard and they did they had
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a cook out or whatever. But he couldn't go in
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: the house. So Buddy Holly had this is, I don't
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: know what you're Buddy died about fifty eight, so I
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: figured fifty seven eight he you know, and he married
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: a Puerto Rican woman. You know, Buddy Holly. I really
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: wonder what Buddy would have done like James Dean, you know,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: people gone too soon. But Buddy Holly, yeah, I forget
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: how I got on that story about Buddy Holly. But uh,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: oh okay, But let's go back. So you're talking about
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: all the music and buying the record, etc. Were the
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Beatles that they broke a big impact upon you? Oh
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: my god. Yeah. So I used to listen to the radio.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Gary Gary Us Bonds is a friend of mine. I
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: used to listen to the radio waiting to hear quarter
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: to three. I transistor. I had a green, I'm kind
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: of puke green transistor radio under my pillow and I
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: go to bed at night and I turn it on.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I just put it to my ear and listen. I mean,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and it was magic. You heard these songs. I got
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to sing it with him with Springsteen at Chase Stadium
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: years later. I mean, it's so funny. I tell these stories.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: You can't make this stuff up. So much of this
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: stuff is like that that really happened. Well yeah, and
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: it goes on and on. So I listened to the
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: radio all the time. I loved rock and roll. And
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: you know I heard at school I saw I think
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: it was I'm and Steve Allen. One night there was
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: a clip about this sensation in the in England called
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: the Beatles. And I saw the clip and I went, wow,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: that looks like fun So, yeah, I saw him out
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: as Sullivan and just changed my life, like so many
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: people of our generation to see. And the thing about
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: it was four guys like a gang, clearly drusted the same,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the way, the way they interacted each other. They they
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: were a little club, a little gang they had. They
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: were self sustainable. They were the joy. That's what amazes me.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: You know. You and I could go to fifty fifty
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: different venues and see people play music and that could
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: be good, bad and ugly, yeah, like always, and then
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: if you walk in this other club and there's this
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: guy's having the time of their life, just emanating joy,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: emanating like you know, irony, sarcasm, passion. You know, it
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: was just to this day watch those clips that are
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: like the energy. That was something beautiful. I've been to
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: their boy I went to John Lennon's boyhood and Paul
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: McCartney's boyhood. Holme my private tours of those places, you know,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: the curator and his wife, this great guy, Colin Hall.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I saw a National Geographic Hours show about the fixing
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: up of Mendips John Lennon's boyhood home and how they
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: tried to find a curator and Colin got it and
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: I get there this. A friend of mine was taking
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: us for a private tour, a few of us in
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: my band, and Colin comes to the gate and he's
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: holding my first Vinyl LP. I thought, oh, we're in.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: He's a fan, and we had to I mean, I
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: don't know if you've been there, Bob, but to go
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to John's because like that. He took us for a
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: walking tour around what's it called Woolton, which is like
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: seven houses down the little village where John they showed
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: the movie theater John used to go to where they
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: show John Wayne movies, the graveyard where they got eleanor
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Rigby's name on it. Wherever that came from, who knows,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: But we just it's like history coming to life. Fascinating
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: and I forgot what question by the Beatles I mean
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: changed my life and to see them grow and to
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: see it was the same time like Dylan hit you know,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I think the first song on Dylan's I heard was
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: I Shall Be Free number ten. I'm just average, common too,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: just like him, the same as you. I'm every buddy's
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: brother and son. I ain't different than anyone. And they
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: used to talk to me it's just the same as
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: talking to you. And the next song was Chimes of
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Freedom and the dichotomy. The contrast was not lost on me.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait a minute, something's going
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: on here. And at the same time you had these
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: four guys from Liverpool starting a real revolution, the combany
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: and everybody and the Stones give me a break. The
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: whole British invasion hit me like a wave. And as
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: a kid back then, as you know, Motown, Hello, Memphis,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Stacks come on the wide Range. You had like Walter Brennan.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: You had Jimmy Deane singing about whatever, and you had
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: rock and roll, you had Little Richard, you had all
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: this great stuff, you know, a surf music. So the Beatles,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: absolutely it was a major force that helped change my life.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of reasons why, but the energy,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: the purity. It was something wild, something innocent, something play
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: so much playful. I mean, look at the movie, look
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: at Hard Day's Night. What a riot? Is there anybody
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: around at all making music now with that kind of vibe? Maybe,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: but it's it's that was pretty special and I loved it.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: And then the Stones come, these the Stones, the rolling
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: up these whatever the us to call them, and they
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: were so gray. I'm not gonna smile. You know, watch
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: them on TV carrying on, Come my Satisfaction. Best song ever,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I saw television and we'll talk about it
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: in a minute. CBGB's I Got Stories and I'm so
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: sad about Tom Verlaine's passing. And one night I'm on
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: the side of the stage I went every time they played.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: They would open for Patti Smith, and one night, all
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, at his encore, Tom was Dad, Dad,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: got what they're playing to it? Anyway? I love the Beatles.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: To answer question, yeah, changed my life. Okay, what point
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: did you pick up a guitar and become a wannabe
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: rock star? Um? I played eight years old. I took
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: classical piano, and my older brothers played. We always had
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: a piano in the house. We had a you know,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: stereo like a you know, a piece of furniture. Mom
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: played classical music, big band music. My brothers play. My
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: uncle's one of my uncles, Uncle Ray, was an incredible
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: ragtime player. Incredible. I mean, I've seen you know, the
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: clips of famous ragtime players, and this guy played the
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: lightside of the piano. His father, my grandfather, took him
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: to a piano the best piano teacher in Buffalo. And
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the guy said, to Ray, my uncle is. The teacher
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: said to Ray, Ray play something. And Ray we started
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: playing boogie woogie and Ray think, okay, that's enough, and
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: he said to his father, he said, you're wasting your money.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: He already knows too much. He played by side and
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: the guy, you know, so he didn't teach him. He
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: taught his other brother, Rich, who was a fantastic piano player.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: But that was always music. So when I was eight
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: years old and I loved music, I took piano, classical piano,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: but I also wanted to play the drums. I remember
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: having a real angsty one fall. I go, I don't
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: want to play the piano. I'll play the drums, and
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: they said, no, you got you can take both, but
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: you can't. You know, you gotta play the piano, which
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: was I'm so grateful they did that. And I took
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: piano lessons until I was about sixteen. And uh, you
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: know when you begin in high school and you're looking
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: to party and chase girls and you know, play sports,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: listen to rock and roll, sitting out the piano for
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: half an hour practice and nah, so I played the
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: piano and I quit. And when I went away to college, um,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: I didn't play any guitar then. I never even thought
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: about being a musician. I was writing poetry in high school,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: went to college and my room. I went one year
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: in Canton, Ohio, to Walsh College. I clowned around in
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: high school, and when I tried to apply to colleges,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: I couldn't get in. I was I was, you know,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I had like eighty six average or something, and it
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is not looking good. And so
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: one day the guidance counselor said, well, there's a school
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: in Ohio that just built a dorm and they need
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: out of state students. You might want to apply there.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: So me and all the other losers from the northeast whatever.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: And so that dormitory was full of wise guys, losers,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: you name it, crazy's And my roommate, one of my roommates,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Denny Wentz from Pennsylvania, from Pittsburgh, had a guitar. And
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: it was boring. I mean, you're you're in three miles
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: north of Canton. It's flat, there's nothing, there's cows. There's
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: a Hoover factory three miles down we're talking nothing. So
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I said, well, can you teach me? And he goes, yeah, sure.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: The funny thing but he was a writing and I
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: threw things with both hands. But I was a lefty
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: guitar player, and I played pool left handed at bow
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: and arrow. If I shot a gun, it's left handed.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: And I suspect when I was a kid, and I said,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: put the pen in your right hand and start writing.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: At first grade, I can do things with both hands.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I'm a little bit of both. So I washed myself
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: to learn to play the guitar right handed. And so
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I learned to play the guitar, just simple chords. My
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: first song I learned was Love and Spoonful. God, I
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: love Love and Spoonful. It was darling be home soon,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: d G A easy and even an idiot like me
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: could do that. And I met John John Sebastian years
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: later and told him, hey, I learned. He goes, my
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: wife plays your records at our dinner table. I go,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: what get out of here? You know? Anyway? So I
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: learned to play guitar at school. And what that did
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: for me because I was still writing poems. I just
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: stream of consciousness. I love the beat poets, just whatever
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: comes to mind. You know, there's no right and wrong,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: there's no nobody looking over your shoulder. Oh that's not right. No,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: it's like you can write whatever you want. So I did.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: So I started putting songs together, and then all my
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: writing went into writing songs and just simple stuff. My
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: stuff is quite simple. And I came home from Buffalo
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: that Chris that that you know, that bread semester break.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: I sat at the piano, which I hadn't played in
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: a while, and I started playing chords on the piano,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: g E minor ce, the just chords, and I started
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: playing songs, and I stride like the left hand when
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: you like this, the left hand back and forth. My
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: uncles did all that, so I taught my I re
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: taught myself to play the piano. And I could teach
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: a kid now in ten minutes to play Twinkle Twinkle,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Little Star or jingle bells. Real simple, you know, it's
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: easy chords. There's a guy anybody listening and wants to
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: learn the piano for real. His name is Scott Houston,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: and he's the PBS piano guy. I was in Sweden
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: one time. I landed in Sweden and it was four
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: in the morning and I was wide awake. I'm watching
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: television and this guy comes on TV, you know, pitching
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: his videos and stuff. And I watched him and I go,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: that's what I do. I just play chords so he
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: can teach adults. There's no end to when you can learn,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter how old you are. My uncle John broad
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: RECUISO sergeant and the police force in Low Massachusetts, after
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: watching me play for half an hour one summer, said, oh,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: I give anything to be able to play the piano. Well,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: now had I known that back then? I go, you know, Juny,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: this guy you don't need to read music. It's chords,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: you know, and you can learn your favorite songs. And
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: it's easy. I'm telling you. If you google the piano
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: guy PBS Scott Houston, look at some of his videos,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and it's you can learn by the piano in no time.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: And I did that. I thought myself that style. Okay.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: So you're going to school in Ohio. Then what happens
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: you end up switching from there to Buffalo. Yeah. I
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: went to school in Ohio, and you know, it was
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: a time of experimentation. You know, drugs made their way
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: into our into our circle, you know, smoking weed took
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: LSD a few times, but it was not it was
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: just no, it was nothing. You know, I go, I'm
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: not feeling nothing, what about you now? Nothing? And it
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: was it was just beyond boring. Although I will say
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: the silver lining there it was there were two great professors.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: That was a great philosophy professor and a great English teacher.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: You know, you get a great teacher who can open
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: up things to you, whether it's history or language. So
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: I transferred. I got. You know, the night before final exams,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: we were growing our hair and it was a Catholic college,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: and so the night before final exams we were called
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: the Haystack Crew because of our hair, and we were
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: getting in trouble a lot. If you got to the
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: dorm after midnight, you had to do fifty push ups.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, really, why don't we babies here? We basically
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: were babies anyway, So the night before exams, the Prefective
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Discipline calls us into his office. He goes, you can't
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: take exams unless you get a haircut. And I said
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: to him, you're kidney right, this is united serious. Oh
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I'm serious, brother, James, brother. We had to get our
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: hair cut. I mean really, it wasn't even nearly as
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: long as this, and uh so I got, I got,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: you know, Dean's list, you know, and uh I did
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: good grades, and so I transferred University Buffalo Night School.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: What a difference. People smoking in class, dressed the way
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: you want hair growing. Timothy Leary walking through that, it
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: was so fast. The University of Buffalo was a great
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: place in nineteen sixty seven, sixty eight, nine, seventy it
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: was really seven. I think I went there from sixty
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: seven to seventy one, something like that. Ginsburg, Gregory Carso
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: came to read. Oh was he good? I met him,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I met, I've been did a couple of gigs with
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: with Alan Ginsburg. Always fascinating. I saw all the great
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: poets come through you University of Buffalo. It was inspiring.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin came. Many times. Abby would
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: go on stage, do a handstand, walking around on his hands,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: and then talk revolution. It was just like fascinating times.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Remember seeing Timothy Leary walking through the student center out
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: of his mind. He was just looking up at the
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: going oh oh yeah, staring at the ceiling. He spoke
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: that night, but he didn't say two words. It was
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: just a fascinating time of change. And there were marches,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: there was protests. I got gassed one day. They were
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: marching on one side of the campus and they tear
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: gassed everybody. And these poor people across the campus waiting
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: for bus home from work. You know, they weren't doing
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: nothing and they're getting gassed, you know. And anyway, I thought, Wow,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: crazy world. So I went to University of Buffalo, graduated
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: with a philosophy degree. I just took classes that I liked.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: So how did you end up moving to the city,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: and what was the plan I graduated? I went in
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: my senior year, I went to see my guidance counselor
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: for the first time. I had no plan. Now, when
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: kids go to school smartly, so they go, well, I'm
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: going to become an engineer, I'm gonna be a doctor,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a whatever, and you take courses. I
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: just took what I liked. Philosophy of art and beauty.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: I took that. It was lousy, you know, Walt Whitman,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: you know, the beat poets. So in my senior year,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I went to my I got good grades. It was
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: easy for me you know. I just came easily four
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: point er a couple of times, and classical quik mythology fascinating.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: And I thought, well, I had all these songs, and
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, these songs aren't bad. They're not much
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: worse than anything i'm hear on the radio. I'm gonna
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: go to New York. So I said to George Boger,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: my philosophy teacher, my guidance counselor how am I doing?
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: He goes, You're doing really good. You got a three
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: point five average and you're a philosophy major. And I thought, oh, philosophy.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Well that sounds heavy. What can I do with the
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: philosophy degree? He goes, you can go to graduate school.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: I went, no, no, no, no, I'm out. I'm going
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: to New York City to make records, thanks George. Which
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: I graduated, you know, And I went down to New York,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: got an apartment, got married, moved to New York and
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: got a little apartment. When the village just stopped, stopped
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: for a second. How many times have you been married?
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I've been married twice. I got married in seventy two,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: moved to New York the day after we got married,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: and lived in New York. I've been there fifty years
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: right now, and same apartment. And I got married two
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: years ago October in Italy and the Italian Alps. I metam.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I got divorced the ninety one and while touring, I've
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: been to Italy a lot. I've been to Europe a
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: lot over the year's touring. And one time, the promoter
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: in Italy was almost thirteen years ago. Hired a photographer
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: to come shoot me Christina, and we started. We hit
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: it off right away, you know, And it was the
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: year that the volcano in Iceland was stopping all flights,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: so we did some shows. All of a sudden volcano
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: happens and I couldn't get me or my band back
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: to the States. So they're on my dime and I'm
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: not making big money. I'm not a big rock star.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: I never was this then, it was never my plan anyway.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: So I ended up my UH road manager called Christina.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: We met, we had we just met that night. We
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: just really hit it off, and she wonder why I
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: went mine. But a few days later my road manager
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: calls her up and said, you know, we're trying to
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: find places for Willie and his band can wham state
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: at your place. She goes, yeah, I'll take Willie. I
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: went there and it's spend ever since, you know, or
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: just really I got really lucky, you know, and we
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: we got married. We were apart for six months in Covid,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: you know, we couldn't get in each other's country, and
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: we finally met in Edinburgh, Scotland at a friends because
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: we a friend's house, dear friend Jonas, so we could
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: see each other. And she said, you know, they just
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: changed the laws in Italy for long term relationship can
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: get in. And she said, if we were married, we
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: could get in each other. Like, let's do it. I'm
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: not I'm not moving, I'm in love with you. Let's
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: do it. So we got married in a small town
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: in the Italian Alps, at this little city hall, it's
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: like a medieval building, fifty yards from a waterfall. Da
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Vinci drew in the fifteen hundreds. She decided she wants
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: to ride a horse. It's a beautiful fall to day
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: as fifteen people. This is twenty twenty October, the middle
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: of Covid, you know, and like fifteen people, her male person,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the male woman came. It was just she was our
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: one of our witnesses in front of the the a
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: notary public. It's just you can't make this up. So
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: she so she gets she's had a horse. She rides
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: a horse onto the property and I said to her, after,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: why did you want to? Why did you ride a horse?
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: When was the last time you rode a horse? He
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: goes that was five? I got, well, why did you
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: want to? She's a very independent woman and one of
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the great photographers in the world. Jackson Brown fleor to
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: uh Scotland to shoot him. You know, he hasn't let
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: photogot photographer is on stage. But she's great, all the
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: album covers since twenty thirteen American Ride. She shot. Just
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: a brilliant photographer. And we've been We've had a great
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: thing going. I'm very lucky. Okay, So why did the
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: first marriage break up? I think in the long run
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: it was the hardship. You know, we were married for
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: eighteen years together, twenty three. We were like sixteen and fourteen.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: We were childhood sweethearts, great woman, you know, dear dear woman,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: love he her pieces, you know, and I think that
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: I would say over the years, you know, like I
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: got mono nucleosis, and I think seventy four whatever something. Now,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Luke was born in seventy three. We moved on seventy two,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: and I was writing songs at night, working in a
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: mail room during the day, and I was, you know,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: working too hard. And I got a really wicked case
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: of hYP pneumonia that winter, and I had to go
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: back to New York get a job because my son
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: was about to be born. Love story short. I got
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: a really bad case of mono, like eight months in bed.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: It's probably upstein Bar back then. And it was a
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: struggle for years, you know. And I think that the
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: struggle and she was she stuck with me all those years.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I would say to her, No, woman would be staying
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: with me all these years? Are you crazy? You know,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I go, she goes, No. She hung in there so long,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: and I think it just took its toll, you know.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: And and there was medical issues at her end where
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: she thought she might be on the way out, you know,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and that caused like a fight and flight whatever. But
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: we had a great run, you know, And it was
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: a difficult break up. But I love her dearly, you know,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: and she's a great grandmother, dear friend, and and you know,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: I met Christina and Italy and I basically married Italy.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: How how many kids do you have? I have four children,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: four great children, you know, Luke, Josephine, Mary and Bob.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: They're great. We're all close, you know, given my parents
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: close relationship, and they're always encouraging family. It's about family,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: you know, take care of each other. You know. We
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: grew up with that, and to this date, the whole
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: family goes on vacation on the coast of New Hampshire.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: One hundred and five, we ran a bunch of beach houses,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: you know, and one hundred and five people. We used
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: to all go to one house for dinner. But once
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: it got over it eighty five people couldn't do one house.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: So the last few years it's been it's glorious. It's
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: just a really close family. And yeah, and I have
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: four children, have four grandchildren who I'm crazy about. My
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: sister and Nancy said to me when Jason was born,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: he's no Lilian. Lilian's fourteen now, she said, that's a secret.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: Witting down the road, you know, grandchildren now, granted, kids
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: can be a nightmare, you know. It's the people who
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: don't have children. It's some people have a rough time.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not always easy, you know, And when it's
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: when it's good, it's really good. And I've been blessed,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: four kids, four grandchildren. I'm on the moon. I'm lucky.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: To dude, I've been. I must be still dreaming, Bob.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: It must be that I must have taken some at
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: the LSD must have kicked in in nineteen sixties. I'm
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: still dreaming. Okay. You talk about the struggle. Did the
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: struggle ever stop or you still struggle? You what kept
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: you going? Well? I think I don't. I didn't didn't
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: know what else to do. But I'm so driven. I
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: so love what I do. I get to express myself
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: in words and music. At still, the fire still burns
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: in me big time when I play the original songs
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: back from nineteen eighty. I still plan with the same
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: passion and vigor. I think I'm too dumb to know better.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: That's probably the first answer to I don't know what
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: what else would I do? You know, I could be
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: a delivery man, I could you know, Liverpool point A
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: to point B. But I kept writing songs that I
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: believed in. I thought this doesn't suck, you know. I
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: remember I was in Buffalo. I walked away my music business.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: I made two records on ariston. I got signed. That's
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: another story about getting signed by Robert Palmer saw me
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: play at Kenny's Castaways on Bleaker Street nineteen seven eight
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: July twenty ninth, and he wrote an incredible review. I
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: was the opening act, you know. And Don Hill, who
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: was a manager at the time, great club owner for years.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: It's gone now and miss him. Robert Palmer, great New
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: York Times reviewer, was coming called and some I'm a
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: coming to see the headliner. And Don said to him,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: I didn't know about any of this till later. You
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: might want to come early to see the opening act.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: He's real good. So Robert came early and wrote this
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: incredible review. You know, it's like if if my mom
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: sat down to write a review about how Sweller Kid was.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: It just was a really great review, you know, compared
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: me to Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, whatever, and it was
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: really and that guy means I'll tell you what. I
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: learned a major lesson with that because I knew people
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: in the village for years, you know, and I was
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: opening shows. It was six nights a week, you'd played
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Kenny's Castaways in two sets, and I get written up
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: in New York Times, and you know, this guy's declaring me,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: you know something special. And I liked what I did.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: But I never never went to my head, not a minute.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: All that great press that first record got. I knew
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: that it was just whatever. Anyway, that night when I
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: when a paper came out that day, when I walked
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: into Kenny's Castaways, you could barely get in. People hanging
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: off the balcony areas areas. You know, people that knew
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: me for years looked at me completely different. Something about
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: being in writing gives it a certain kind of validation
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: that the music on that song might not. And so
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I was on stage and I did my set. I
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: didn't know Robert was in the audience at night, and
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: I was introduced to him later. And I'm on stage
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: doing my thing, planning my song, was introducing the maginary
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: on drums tonight We've got William Shakespeare whatever. And I'm
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: jumping off the stage, telling stories, carrying on, having a
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: good time, having fun with it, you know. And before
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: I got off the stage that night, this guy comes up,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: steps up because Hi, I'm Paul Rothschild, I managed the
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: doors or whatever. I want to talk. I want to
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: work with you. And it was that Clive Davis came
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: out different record labels. The coolest thing for me that
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: night was that Clive Davis wasn't like the fourth table
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: and behind him was Luck sin Terrior and Ivy Roorschok
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: at the Cramps who who I knew? The Cramps at
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Clive Dave are like, oh this, you can't make this up.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: It was so cool. And four days later on Clive's
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: office doing a show and tell in his office in
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: front of forty five whenever the top people on the label,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: and you know that that was terrible. The sound in
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: the room was dead. But I did it and I
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: got signed that day. Okay, you know Clive, he's got
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: his self promotion machine going, but a lot of artists
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: complained that he meddles with the music. How was your experience?
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: I was very lucky. Um well I was. You know
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: when I when I told him what eleven songs I
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: wanted to put on the record, you know, he so
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: this is great. I played when I played Across the
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: River on the piano, a song I wrote about the
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: people starving in Ethiopian Chad and seventy eight. He thought
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: that was our hit, you know, so I went in.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: I made the record, no interference whatsoever. The next year
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: I made and that year I was at the label
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: in this early spring, and my A and R guys said,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: product manager said, oh, I hear Pete Townsen loves your record.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, these great reviews were coming in, you know,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: like that's great, you know, I mean I was insulated
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: enough as a guy who wrote poetry and libraries and
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: college and just wrote his heart out. I was writing
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: for that. I was just trying to express myself, not
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: trying to prove anything, convince anybody, how swallow. It was
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: none of that. I was just expressing myself. And I
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: can call up by the chorus, make a song out
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: of it, you know, entertain So all the great press,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: I was grateful because I was just hoping after such
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: a struggle, and I was you know, I was broke
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: for years, and I thought, well, maybe this could help
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: change things, you know, And when I heard Pete towns
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: and loves your record, I just thought, oh yeah, I
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: didn't believe it. I thought, yeah, sure he does. And
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: then we took the last tour. We did that that
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: uh for that. The last show we did was in La,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles at the Roxy in nineteen eighty and uh,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: we just they just did it. Look the records over,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: but we're going to have you go out and play
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: in LA just because you know, it's for the it's
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: for the cameras. I didn't care. I'll go. Let's go.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: I'd like to go. I've never played in LA and
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: went there played the Roxy. Freddie Mercury came to the show.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: Graham Parker came out and unbeknownst to me, Bill Kurbishly
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: from the Who in a bunch of the whose management
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: were there, came backstage and you know, he came up
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: to me and said, how well much you liked the performance?
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: And he said, you know, we're on tour and out
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: turn across the US, and we'd love to have you
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: opened the tour. I mean, I think the Pretty Things
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: were already opening. They did eight shows in the West Coast.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: And I thought he was kid and I just laughed,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, And then I thought, well, wait a minute,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: he means it. You know, I go. I'd love to assure.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: Let me call Clive, you know, And so I got
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: word from the label that they weren't going to support it,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: the reason being I was driven around LA in a
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: fancy car and fancy streets, explaining, look, when Bruce Springsteen
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: played opened up for Chicago at the Garden, they booed.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: They didn't know he was and it left a bead
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: taste in his mouth. We didn't want that to happen
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: to you. I figured, well, whatever, you're not going to
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: support it, I can't. What am I going to do?
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: So I went backed up Bill Kurbishly and this is Bill,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: they won't I can't do it, and he says, what
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: do you need? Have your tour manager make up a budget,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: and you know that's seven. Got five guys in the band,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: a roady and a road manager. Flights, pay, hotels, cars, meals,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: They paid the WHO paid for everything, you know, and
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: I toured. I went across the United States. It was
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: time of you know, you couldn't make that up. And
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: I'm friends with the WHO to this day, you know.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: So we toured across the US. I made another album
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: next year, and we've gotten a legal problems former manager lawyer,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: and I thought when it became more about business than music,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: I just came home one day, I was I was
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: going to arbitration in the morning, playing at night. It
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: was such a bad taste in my mouth. You know,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: I got in this for I wanted to have to
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: be a joyful thing. And obviously I'm not. I'm a
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: bit of an idiot. But they're killing my buzz. I
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: said to my wife, let's get out of here. They're
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: killing my buzz for music. I didn't want that, so
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: we moved back to Buffalo. Not the smartest thing to
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: do a little a little bit slower. What was the
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: legal issue specifically, Well, uh, there was complaints coming from
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: the number two guy at Arista call me on the
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: phone and said, you know, this record not going to
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: come out at the moment because your representation is not
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: to par. And so it was problems with the management
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: and a lawyer, and uh, you know, I tried to settle.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: I said, look, you know, I don't want to hurt you.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: You know, Uh, you could stay part of the team,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: but let's let's bring in somebody who could help make
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: the most of this. You know, I love you. You're
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: trying to help me, but you're I'm I'm getting told
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: that you're you know that I might not put the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: record out. So long story short. Um, I had to
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: fire a couple of people, you know, and it wasn't
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: any fun. I didn't get in this business to fire people.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: That's that's hurtful to me, you know. I don't want
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: to do that anyway. And I back at a family,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: had two I had three kids at the time and
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: another one to come in, you know. And and the money,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: whatever money we got, was twinland. And so we walked
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: away from the I walked back from a business and
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: lived in the you know, Siberia Buffalo snow. But I
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: kept writing songs, you know, just that's what I do.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: I write the right songs. I'd expressed myself. Wait wait, wait,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: wait a little bit slower. The second record does come out. Sure,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Golden Down came out right. And then after the second
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: record comes out, what is Darris to say? Are they
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: willing to make another record or they're saying, hey, we
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: don't like this or we don't like that. Well, no,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: they were, they were willing. But um, let me think,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: scratch my memory. Um, it wasn't. It wasn't them that
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: I had. Clive was always good to me, I must say,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: you know, two albums. Second album, same thing, by the way,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: to answer your question, never meddled. I played that whatever
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: how many songs are on that rec panim for Clive?
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: He goes, great, good. You know Mark Knopfler back then,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: God bless him. Jimmy Ivin called me one day, Hey, Willie, Yeah,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: I'm in a power station with Mark Knaffler. It must
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: to meet you. Come on down. So, you know, up,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: I go to the power the power station in New York.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Mark's in the back of the studio barefeet doing the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: solo for Tunnel of Love. You know, just a magical moment.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: And Mark we hung out talking. He said, what do
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: you what are you doing? I'm looking for a producer,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: He said, I'd love to do that, you know, and
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I go, oh, I'll tough live. You know. But the
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: time when I told Clive, he said, well, what's he done?
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: You know, he had produced. He didn't have a name
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: then as a producer. Who was the nineteen eighty eighty
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: I made that album. I was in the studio and
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: night John Lennon was killed in the same studio, and
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: that's another story. But so you know, Mark had not
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: enough credibility, so I ended up Tompizi and I co
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: produced it with Jimmy Iveen executive producing it. You know,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: I love the way because the night sounded, you know.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, who didn't like that record? So you put
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: the second? Second record comes out? Yeah, told me about
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: going back to Buffalo because you have to earn a
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: living too. I had some money saved up. I just
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: was like impulsive, and I said, they're killing my buzz.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: I'm getting out of here. And oh you know, Um
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: I had new management who a really good guy, Fret
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Kuley's going now and UH and Bert Block who started ICM,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: and Uh, I got out of my record company. I went,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: I have a filed bankruptcy, you know, and got out
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: of my ars to contract. You know, it's a long story.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: And UH signed with Geffen for ten minutes. I made
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: some demos from Buffalo. They didn't like him, drop me.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: You know. So I had some money saved and uh,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: it just I thought I was already I had already.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: It was a on that I forget the timing. I
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: walked away somewhere and then I got you know what
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: I didn't this is this is turning into a business nightmare.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: What fun is that? That's not. That's not like listening
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: to the Beatles on that sold. And that's not like
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: hearing Bob Dylan saying like a rolling stone, driving around
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: with your buddies, hanging out the window, yelling at people.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't any fun. So I thought, to
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: hell with this business. And then two years later, living
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: up in Buffalo, I had all these songs, so trying
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: I couldn't get arrested. I made phone calls calling people up, Hey,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: I got some songs, couldn't get couldn't get a phone
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: called answered. You know, you know it better than I do.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: You've seen them much more of the business, and it's like, well,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: you know, they dropped it like a hot potato, and
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: I don't. I never had. When I first moved to
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: New York, I saw so many musicians with chips on
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: their shoulder. Another reason I changed my name. I don't
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: want to be like that. You know, to this day,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: I don't have any hard feelings none. You know, nothing's
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: handed to you on a platter. Oh yeah, you're good,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: we like your hair. Here's a lot of money. Don't
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: worry about the rest of your life. It doesn't work
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: that way, you know. And so I was realistic enough
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: to know, you know that dozen things don't always work out.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: And there was a lot of good people who tried
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: to help me for real, tried hard, believed in it,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: but I couldn't get arrested, and I stopped touring. I
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: think the last show I did was in eighty one,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: and uh then tour again and eighty seven. So anyway,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: during that period, I read out of money, brought a
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: bunch of money and worked in a post office briefly.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: I was too inept, couldn't cut it. You know, it
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: was a lousy postman. You know. I'd be delivered mail
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: at four or thirty, people coming up to me and
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: I under rote, where's my mail? Where's my check? And
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't last and I got a publishing deal in
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: eighty seven that really helped a few years. And then
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: in eighty seven I went to maybe it was eighty
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: five I went to I got a phone call one
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: day from a promoter in Oslo who said Greg Trooper
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: was touring here, and he said he knows you, and
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: there was a famous writer there. His name might come
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: to me in a minute. He was like the godfather
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: of writers in Norway. I hope it comes to me anyway.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: He died in some kind of a car accident coming
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: back from on a Sunday visiting of the magazine Whatever.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Really good guy championed me big time. So I get
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: this phone call. They're doing a benefit for his wife
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: and kids. Would I come over and play? And I
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: hadn't played since you know eighty one The Greg Trooper's
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: Band will back You. Larry Campbell, a Bob Dylan's guitarist,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: was in the band. I knew all those guys. God
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: bless Gregg. He's gone now. Great guy, a little talented cat.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: So I went to Oslo and did a twenty five
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: minute set that was filmed, and I carried on like
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: I usually do, had a good time, and I got that.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: I took that film to Rick Chardoff at Columbia Records
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: in eighty seven and eighty eight. Eighty seven, I guess
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: at the end of the year, and I had just
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: written a song called Renegades, and I played it for
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: him and he didn't tell me at the time, but
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: that's all he needed to hear, and then he saw it.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: He was at arrist in nineteen seventy eight and wanted
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: to produce my first record, but he had not he
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: didn't have enough credibility. I didn't know what he could do.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: And by then he had had a lot of hits.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: And a good guy, good dear friend, signed me to
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Columbia for peanuts. You have no idea how a little
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: bunch of money I got. I got a family of
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: four with a wife, you know, and anyway, they took
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: a chance on me, which I'm very grateful for. And
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: I made a record. I love like places places I've
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: never been. You know, Roger mcgwins on that record. Richard
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Thompson's on that record. Tebone Woke co produced it. You know.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: Two guys from McCartney's band, Wicks, the keyboard player Robbie
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: McIntosh Stewart Smith. I mean he's with the Eagles, but
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: he played. I was so blessed with some of the musicians.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: I've always been lucky that way, and made that record
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: and that you know, it turned out to be a
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: wrong time, wrong place. You know, the business, Sometimes it's
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: right time, sometimes it's a wrong time. Won that record fight.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: It took two years to get it made because Rick
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: was appointed head of an R and they didn't want
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: it in the studio. We were looking for a producer. Now,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: I waited for two years while I finished a Patty
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: Smith Smith's record and our Hooters record Tommy Conwell, And
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: when it came time, no, We've done six months searching
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: for a producer. By the time it came out, he
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: was on the way out of Columbia. So it was
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: just my champion there was was not able to help.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: Had it been a year earlier, he could have pushed
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: the buttons. I could have opened up for Tom Petty
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: and blah blah. But at the time, I was just
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: genuinely grateful that I got to make that record. You know,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: it's the music that I care about. You know, I'm
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: not the smartest cat on the planet. I loved the
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: record and I go, well, too bad, bad luck, bad
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: timing for me, and so I was back out again,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: you know, out of the you know done. You know,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: Ron Fierstein was managing me at the time. Time, and
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: you know, there's right time and right place. But I
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: kept writing. I've always been written. I'll do that. If
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: I was a plumber new in Alaska, I would still
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: write songs. That's what I do. You know, it's meaningful
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: to me. You know, what do you do in your life.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: It's meaningful. Some people coming to watch the sun and
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: chant home. Some people shoot guns at a gun range
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: and imagine them in their teachers. I don't know, but
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: I like the right songs. And I've been blessed looking back,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: and there's more than a million stars I can tell
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: you, you you know. The first day I went to see
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: BGBS before television, played before it became the punk me
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: Guy played there, and through the hard times in the seventies,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: the hard times, because you earlier it asked about the struggle.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: The hard times in the eighties, very hard, you know,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: trying to kids go to go to school in September,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: needing to new shoes, they need new clothes, they need books,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: you know, and the money's like running out. A lot
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: of a lot of a lot of years like that.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: But got through it, you know, and persisted. I was
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: never very good at making a living, and just stayed
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: with it, you know, made the Columbia Record. A year
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: later there was an election and I had a song
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: called hard Times in America. So I put a little
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: ep out because I wanted to get the song out,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: you know, and small label didn't didn't make a ripple,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: and you know, remember Friday Morning Quarterback. I don't know
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: if it's still around, but on ninety one, yeah, I
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: was on the cover of that in the February of
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: ninety one. You know, God bless Paul Hine. And you know,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. I'm not feeling
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: that I'm old or anything, you know, but I must
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: say my father said this when I first started out,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: when I moved to New York struggling. He said, you know,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: enjoy these Enjoy this hard climb, which says, because if
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: you become successful, it'll just taste all the sweeter. Well,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: I never gave up. You know, there's a there's a
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: guy making a documentary about me now, and I met
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: him to say, no, I didn't know it was guy
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: wants to make a movie about you. We've been doing
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: it five years now, on and off. So I spent
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: forty five years, you know, struggling, trying to have quality,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: the highest quality, trying to make masterpieces, you know, and
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: somebody come along make a lousy movie about all that. No,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: thank you. So he flew from Vienna, Austria. I met
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: him as a courtesy because he flew over. I got
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: a bunch of letters, I'll meet you, but I meant
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: I want to say no, you know. We so we
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: met at Cafe Reggio on McDougall Street, and how nice
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: to meet you. Thanks for coming, thanks for wanting to
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: do it. But why do you want to make a
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: movie about me? I'm not a rock star. I don't
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: have its songs, you know. And he says, because he
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: says right away, you never gave up. You're doing your
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: best work now and with New York City as a backdrop,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: it's the story of inspiration and okay, because I love
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: New York City, madhouse that it is. And we talked
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: for two hours and every single thing picked up on.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: We were just you know, talking about our lives, telling
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: the stories, you know. Being in Paris, I did an
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: interview tour with JD Doherty, my drummer. We just drank
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: our way across Europe, you know, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Zurich, Munich.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: We drove through the Italian We drove through the Alps,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: throwing stop every half an hour to throw snowballs. In
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: June and the Alps, it was like talking to God.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: End up in Hamburg, you know where the Beatles played.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: We went to the Reaper Bomb, fascinating, the red the
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: Red Light District, the most unsexty place you'll ever see,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: and it was. It was magical. But everything he picked
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: up on this director Lucas was like really smart. Like
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: if we talked a few things, everything he picked up
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: and I go, this guy's pretty smart, you know. And anyway,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: I thought, you know what, maybe I'm wrong about this. No,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: you know, Okay, well let's try it. And so that
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: was like five years ago. So Phil, we filmed in Italy,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: in London at the BBC with the great Johnny Walker,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: around London, around I was Buffalo, in the northeast New
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: York City, a ton of New York. You know, it's
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: pretty fun. You should do it sometime. Put has somebody
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: put a microphone on you in a camera and follow
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: you walking the streets in New York. Within ten minutes,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: something's going to happen. That's peculiar. It's happened time and
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: time again, and it's really fun and interesting. You know.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: I like character, whether it's you know, a medieval city
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: hall and the Italian Alps, or whether it's you know,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: some grungy club in Lower Manhattan on a Bowerie. You know,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: things with meaning a character. I love that. That inspires me.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: That's why I keep doing it. Anyway, this thing's coming
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: along pretty good, this film. You know, we did a
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: show so I tore it to who in nineteen eighty
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: across the US, right, And I've kept good, great relations
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: with Bill Kurbish, Lee and Roger Daltrey and Pete Towns
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: and they've been really good to me. You know, I
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: played a few years ago, five years or so, the
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: Music Cares was honoring Pete Townsend and Bill Kurbishly. I
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: get a call one day early May and it's my
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: book an agent and he says it a few years ago, Hey,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: what are you doing May twenty eighth? I remember that date.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: I go, i'mre in New York because we just got
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: a call from the Grammys. They want they're honoring Bill
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: Kurbishly and Pete Townsend. They want to get five artists
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: to sing two Pete Townsend songs, Bruce Springsteen, Roger Daltrey
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: joint you at Billy Idol and you I'm thinking, what's
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: wrong with this picture? What's wrong with this picture? Wait
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: a minute, there's anyway. That's that's how nice these guys
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: have been to me, and sure enough whatever the Danocchia
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Theater or whatever it was called, what a blast. You know.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: I got to play with the Who, I mean, give
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: me a break again. It can't make it up. And
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: I sang substitute and the kids are all right, two
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: of the best songs ever. And and then so we're
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: sound checking. Here you go, you can't make this. We're
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: sound checking. And I did my sound check electric guitar,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: signed my songs, you know, with the Who band. I mean,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: Pete wasn't playing when I played so great. And then
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: Bruce sound checked, and then we all went out to
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: do the encore run through. I won't get fooled again.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: And I'm at the very end of the stage microphone,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: says Willie Nile. At the bottom of it. I go
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: so proud to be here. Won't get fooled again. I
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: never played on guitar, but I know I tip my
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: hat to the new constitute. I'll send the chorus. So
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: Pete comes with this acoustic guitar and he's looking down
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: to all the people that goes, we need another electric guitar,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: and he's looking at me. I'm going, we need another
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: electric guitar. He's looking right up and go ah, I'll
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: get bye. So I turned around. I walked back again.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, what are you doing, you idiot. I'm not
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: Richard Thompson. I cannot I don't know where how to
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: play it. So get my guitar. I'm thinking, jeez, now
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: you did it. And I get back to this front
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: of the stage and then moved my microphone right next
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: to Pete and uh and Roger and Bruce. I'm going,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: this is this is not work. This is gonna be trouble.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: And so I'm so they started playing the song. I'm going, oh,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: this is fun, but I'm petrified. I knew two of
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: the chords I hit him and then the rest. I'm
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: just going I was just chinking away. I didn't know
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: the chords. You know, if I was Richard Thompson, I
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: could have pulled it off. So Pete goes, oh, that
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: was pretty bad. Looks around him. He goes, will he
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: loosen up? It's like right out of a Bill Murray movie,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: right and and uh. So we did it again, and
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: I did the same thing, you know, and I thought, well,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: Bruce will be really allowed, you know, he'll cover it.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: He was you couldn't hear him. And he goes, ah,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: well we'll be okay. Pete left, you know, and and
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: Bill Bill Kurbers and God blessed him goes, well if
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: there's not even if there's no mistakes, it won't be
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: a who show, you know. So so we go in
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: the dressing room. I'm walking by Bruce. I go, I'm
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: taking this to the dressing room. I don't know how
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: this song goes. So I get in the dressing room
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: sitting down. Bruce comes back with his guitar and the
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: lyrics are spread out in front of us by Kevin
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: dear guitar tech. And so Bruce and I picture this
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: fifteen minutes on a couch like like teenagers, like high
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: school kids, learn it. Won't get fooled again. He didn't
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: know it either, and I go, I think that's a
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: being minor. He goes, I don't know, like yeah, yeah. Anyway,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: After about ten minutes, he goes, I got it. I go,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: I don't. So I took the lyrics, went in the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: corner for other twenty minutes and learned it, and we
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: played it that night and it was so much fun.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: You know, this clip of the clips of it on
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: if you Google, Won't can Fool Again? With a Who
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: and Bruce and me. It was just glorious. You know,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: when you've got nothing to lose and you go on
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: stage and you're not trying to show off, and you're
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: there because you love the music. I mean, that's why
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: you like it, you know, you you you you persist
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: because you love it, you know, and because you care.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: Obviously it's mostly crap, but there's some great stuff. And
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: growing up the way we did with all that music,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: that's so much inspiring music, Soul music, Won't R and B, Blues,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: British and Fade Dylan, you know, the whole revolution that happened.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: You know, it's meaningful, you know, and music still means
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: something to me, it really does. You can tell. I'm
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: I mean it, you know, and I make these I
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: made nine albums in the last twelve years on my
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: own label, you know, House of a Thousand Guitars, The
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: Innocent Ones, American Ride ten years ago. I made an
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: American Ride. Last week we did a tenth out of
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: anniversary and played a top to bottom. I hadn't heard
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: half of those songs and years that was so much fun,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: you know, and I'm gonna do Streets in New York
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: next month at the City Winery in March. Nine albums
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: in the twelve years and two thousand and six, when
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: I put out Here's the sixth, Here's the positive side
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: of this story. In two thousand and six, I put
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: out an album called Streets of New York Again. You know,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: I waited for Andy York, the great guitarist who helped
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: co produce the records Rich Pogano and my band and
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: made this. I waited for Andy. He's worth waiting for
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: his melancamp's lead guitar play, and he was busy. Finally
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: had some time. We made this record and I love it.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: It's about the streets in New York. It's a picture
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: on the back of my feet, you know, on the
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: stones my son took and a great photographer, and it
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: came out and it put men, put me back in
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: the map. You know. It made the charts in Billboard whatever.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: It didn't make me rich. You know, nothing's made me
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: rich that's coming anyway. I thought, then, you know what,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: I can't control the business. I can't control radio. All
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: I can control is the songs I write and the
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: records I make and the shows I put on live.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to try to make a masterpiece
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: every time out. I'm just gonna try to make the
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: best records I can make. Why wouldn't I. You know,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: when I make a record, I don't make them in
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: the studio. I got the songs written, you know, and
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: I have it picked out. I sometimes sequenced before we
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: record them, and I won't go in. I won't record
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: a song if I don't think it's special. I don't
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: want anybody to subject anybody to that. There's enough crap
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: out there with I me ed to it. So I've
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: made these records and I try to make everyone and
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: there's a now that I said I'm gonna build a catalog.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: I didn't care about fame anyway. Money, Yeah, I'm open
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: to that. But now I have, you know, fourteen records
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: I put out and our thirteen whatever, and I'm proud
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: of them, and you know, I feel really good about that.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: So the journey, the struggle which continues. You know, I'm
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: still working hard. I'm not rich. I still live five
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: flights up. You know, we got it in the documentary.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: There's film footage to me walking up. You know, you
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: shoot somebody's feet from the back walking up five flights
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: carrying a guitar in a bag at two in the morning,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: with wet socks, damp underwear, wet pants. You know, you're
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: still close from the show. And over the years I
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: used to hate those stairs. Now I thank you, thank you,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: thank you, because it's kept me fit, you know, three
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: times a day walking up five floods, you know, and
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: it's been fascinating. The characters I've seen that I've met,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: but many of gone now, you know, George Girty's many people.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: And I wouldn't trade it for anything, you know, I mean,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: it was hard on my family. All They will say
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: this if in nineteen eighty when I made that first
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: record and there was a double page spread in Billboard,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: page seven and eight Willie Nile's first album, Isn't He Swell? Whatever?
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: Whatever it said, you know, New York Times, La Times,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: Terry Review, glowing reviews. I was deeply grateful for I
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: really was, for the people who wrote those for Aris
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: to try and for me, you know. And from then,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: if I'd become really, really rich and really famous, who
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: knows what destruction that could have wrought. Would my four
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: kids be as good people as they are now being
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: able to have anything they want. I need a new
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: car dead, oh you know what I need. You know,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: my kids are really good people, you know, and we
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: all love each other, and my grandchildren because there's a
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: sense of family. Had fame and riches entered into that equation,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: might it be the same, I don't know. It was
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: certainly a hard road and it continues. I'm seventy four
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: years old now, you know. And there's a gig at
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: this June Willie and Ail's seventy fifth birthday. That's funny.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: I don't feel it, you know, And I'm enjoying it.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: And I got one of the best bands in the world,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: and it's never been better, actually, so I live to
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: tell the tale to this point. Okay, if you go back,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: those of us were there when the first Erast album
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: came out, which I certainly bought. There was a huge buzz.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: So from the outside it looks like it didn't happen.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: So from the inside all of this, you're, you know,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: your very level, but I have to believe you were
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: really distraught or maybe temporarily bitter when you have these
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: setbacks before you equalized. Oh my god, Yes, it was
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: so hardn't I don't know if bitter is the word.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Distraught absolutely, you know, just terrified, absolutely, and it didn't happen,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean it was a lot of hype.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: It was overhyped, but they were trying. You know, it's
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: a work. Sometimes it doesn't. But it was really difficult.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: The strain on my family was really immense. So it
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: was a very difficult times. I mean mostly really hard years.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm not not trying to put a rosy
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: picture on it. You know, it was tough and you know,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: trying to make a living as a musician not the
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: easiest thing, you know, and sometimes you can be deserving
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: of it and doesn't happen. You know, there's no deserves
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: in this world. It is what it is. But I
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: was I absolutely brewed blue and distraught and dismayed and heartbroken.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: Oh absolutely absolutely. But like my dad says, you got
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: to pick yourself up and get on with it, you know.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: You know it's funny. This is a pretty good example.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: Last December a year ago, I was in Buffalo for
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: the holidays, stand at the dad's house and it was
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: four degrees out and it's the morning Dad's waking up.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: He's going to go to church. My brother's gonna take
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: him to church. And I'm waking up to you know,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: wash my face and you know, hit the men's room
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: and go back to bed. And I'm coming out of
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: the bathroom and Dad's about, you know, in the shirt,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: you're getting ready. I go, it's like four degrees out there.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: It's pretty cold. And he goes outside the door to
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: get the newspaper, comes back and he goes, yeah, he says,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: that's cold, and he goes he pauses for a minute.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: He said, bring it on. The guy's one hundred and three,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: one hundred and three years old, and he goes, bring
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: it on. I mean that kind of spit that, you
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: know what. Yeah, I'm knocked down, but I'm getting back up.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: What's that great band movie where Levan says New York City,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: He'll kick you, kick your ass, you know, and you
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: run out of you leave town with the tail between
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: your legs, and you get back up again, you go
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: head back into the fight. I ain't never given up.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: I'll drop before that. But was I blew? Was I
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: just maye? Was I broken hearted? Absolutely? Oh my god? Yeah,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: trying to support a family and there's no you know,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: there's no ways. Everybody's got a tough story to tell.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: Mine's no different than anybody else. Everybody's got it hard.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: That's why that's what music offers us. Okay, Gay, go back.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: You said it earlier that you were a proof feeder
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: for showtime. When was that? Yeah, it was a proof
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: feeder for showtime. So in nineteen ninety nine, I had
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: a ninety seven eighty nine, I had a band in
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: New York, Willie All and the Worried Dolls and New
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: York Rich Bergano Bread I'll Better great, scrappy little band,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: My god. We made a We went in to cut
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: some demos and came out with I thought, this is
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: an album called beautiful record the world, you know, and
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: it holds up to this day and I love it.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: And at ninety nine, I'm running out of money again
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: and I go and yeah, I'm getting broken. He goes, yeah,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: it kind of sucks, but you can always proof read.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: I go, what's that and he goes, well, that's pretty bad.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: It's probably boring, but like you know, you can survive.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: So I found this place. He gave me this number
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: you could call, and this guy gave a three day,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: two hour class what it was about, and he brought
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: up a fake resume, and so I take this fake resume,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: you know, and I would go into a you know,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: employee places, and I guess they sent me out for
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: a job. I go to a law firm I didn't
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: even know. I remember the first I get that showtime.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: I had a job I was doing legal proof reading.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: And it was easy because on the left side you
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: had a pile of paper, on the right side had
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: a pile of paper. He said, to make sure that
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: they were they were the changes were correctly made. So
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: so I did that and a financial proof reading midnight
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: to eight. Oh my god, I'm drinking coffee all night.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: I get home at eight in the morning. I laid
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: down to go to sleep, and my eyes are wide open.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: I couldn't sleep anyway. I got to offer part time
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: job at showtime. A dear friend said, they're looking for
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: a part time proof reader. This is like June or
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: July of two thousand, I think it was something like that.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: And I went up and I applied. Yeah, sure, you know,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: it was easy. The boss there at Paul was so great.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: I get this part time job and I'm there in
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: the summer and it was easy worked. It wasn't much work.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: And one day I hear my boss playing beautiful reck
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: of the World in his office and he calls me in. Willie,
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: get in here, Yeah, he goes, He holds on my record.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: He goes, this is really good. I got thanks. No, no, no, no,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: this is really good. He says, I know music. I
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: used to play saxon a band. This is really good.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: And I was, well, thank you, and he says, you
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: know what, I'm looking for, a full time proof read
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: you want the job. Just like that, I went, yeah,
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: So I got a day job at Showtime in the
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: creative department. Great, great people. The CEO of Showtime, Matt Blank,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: huge fan, the president less mmm wait less, Oh, come on,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: might come to me Les Moonves, who's not not Moonves?
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: It was I'll come to me, great guy, he was
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: a president. They'd stopped me in the hall. How are
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: you doing you making another record? Meanwhile, I'm in my
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: little cubicle running my little label, river House Records, and
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: doing the work or here comes the work, no problem,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: ba ba blah booh, okay, okay, next what about you know?
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: And uh we filmed it for the for the documentary,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: we got footage of me in that cubicle. And one
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: day I leave the cubicle. You know, I got a
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: call from Terry who was somebody called me a Springsteen people.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: Bruce wants you to come to Giant Stadium when they
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: were closing the last five shows at Giant Stadium. Bruce
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: has been really good to me. I mean, he's invited
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: me on stage many times. He's joined my band on
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: stage many times. You know, he's just he's been really
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: good to me. And so I'm it's I'm a cubicle
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: doing this, you know, this job. And it was I was,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: it's steadied my boat after all those years of wolf
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: at the door, you know, fear and worry and stuff,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: and that was clowning around in there, of course. But
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: so next thing, and so I got out of work,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: I get a boss. I go to Giant Stadium. I'm
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: in Bruce's dressing room and he goes, We're gonna play
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: American Land. It goes like this, it plays me and
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: I got it. So I'm on seventy thousand people going
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: nuts at Giant Stadium. It's loud, and I'm laughing at
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: because I know the Eastreet band, I'll play with him
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: before they got it covered. So I figured this is easy.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: So I go up and I'll play with Bruce. And
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: because I'd played with him at schae Stadium in two
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: thousand and three, and this was the last five shows
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: at Giant Stadium. And uh, I go from my cubicle,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: you know, and near Time Square too, you know, in
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: front of seventy thousand people going nuts. And I finished
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: the song, left the stage and next time you here,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: they're going, well, he wants it back. He's going get well,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: I'll back up here. I go back up. We do
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: two more songs and do you know how at the
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: end this shows Bruce so the band will all go
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: to the front of the stage. Well it was that
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: moment when they all went to the front of the stage,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: you know, the very front. So I go, well, I'm
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: going too, So I followed him at the front of
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: the stage. I remember looking down. This woman's looking up, going,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: who the hell is that guy? I just looked at
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: I went I looked like, I don't know, I'm just here,
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: you know. And God bless him. Generosity is that spirit
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: of He's got that spirit of loving the play, you know,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: loving the music. That makes a difference. Anyway, I forget
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: where I started off on that tale. But how many years?
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: How long did you work for Showtime? Twelve years? I
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: worked at twelve years, and they were so good to me.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: It was interesting. I never minded going, you know, And
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: because it was not hard work, I wasn't thinking ditches,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: you know. And I had I had. I had healthcare.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: My brother, my youngest brother, John, had a heart attack
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: at fifty years old because he had no healthcare. For
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: four years, he managed a club restaurant of our restaurant
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: that went that he had that went under, and for
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: four years he was doing the apartment fix ups. So
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: I didn't go to a doctor. I asked a woman
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: to do the autopsy. I found his body an apartment
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: right next to mine. Then I have two days. I
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: found his body and it was just dreadful, and I
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: asked a woman to do the autopsy. I said, hey,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: if he went to a doctor, she goes, oh, yeah,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: he'd still be here, you know. But he couldn't afford it.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: So Showtime I got. I had a regular salary, I
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: could pay my bills, I had healthcare, and I could
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: run my record label, make records, and Showtime was nice
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: enough to let me get unpaid leave to go to
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: Europe to tour two weeks here, two weeks there, until
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: one time they said to me, a boss, Paul, I said,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: you know, we can't do that anymore. This people are saying, well,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: why can't If will he can do it, why can't
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: I get unpaid leave? And I understand that, and so
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: I really had to make a decision. It was a
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: real fork in the road for me. Do I quit?
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: You know, I was doing gigs? Do I really take
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: that jump off the deep end? Well? The deep end
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: must be my home. Because I took the leap. I figured,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: all right, I'm leaving this job and I'm gonna try
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: to get gigs on my own and no book an agent,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: no manager, and buddy my always managing me. No, I
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: think it stopped at that point. Anyway, I worked a
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: show down twelve years and met Christina around that time,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: and then I've been making records and touring as much
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: as I can since then. You know, Oh, okay, so
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: let's start with that. How many gigs a year do
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: you do? What are the economics? You have a band?
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: How does this all work over there. It varies. Before COVID,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: I was doing maybe fifty sixty shows a year or
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: something like that. You know, i didn't have a book
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: an agent for a while, but I've had one for
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: some years now. So sometimes i play solo, sometimes duo,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: sometimes full band, depends on my I'm getting paid, you know,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: and I've been blessed with a great great players who
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: if you see the band play every single song, they
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: give everything they got every night. Nobody phones it in like, yeah,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: pay me, none of that. They are passionate about it
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: as as I'm i and economically I'm going to the
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: UK for some shows in April. Four shows Edinburgh, Leicester,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: Chichester and London. We're playing one hundred Club. I'll played
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: there before, The Who played there in the sixties, The
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: Sex Pistols played there, a great venue. The great Johnny
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: Walker is going to come to the show that night,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: you know, the great legendary DJ from the UK. And
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: I was going to get a couple of guys from
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: the two there's a guitar player, drummer. I'm taking my
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: bass player. That was original plan. There's two guys would
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: join us in Edinburgh and Joe Strummer's old drummer in
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: the mescal Aros Smiley, Bernard Barnard and James Stevenson from
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: The Alarm the Cult. We're going to join me in
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: two of the gigs, and all of a sudden they
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: couldn't do one of the gigs because they had to
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: rehearsal all day with the Alarm. And I wasn't bringing
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: my band because it didn't pay for itself. You know,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: I couldn't afford to bring them flights, pay band, pay hotels,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: van rental backline. So taking going to Europe having instruments
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: or not instruments, but amplifiers, drums, and transportation. That adds up.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: If you were in a group, you could split it three,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: four ways, five ways. But when you're a solo artist,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: you pay. You have to pay people. So I've done
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: play tour with a Spanish band in Spain, and I'm
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: gonna spands great players there in Italy. I got I'm
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: doing dates in Italy the February duo show with a
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: great blues guitarist. So it depends where I go, how
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: much money is being paid, if I could take the
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: full band or not. A great friend and fan has
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: come up with some money to allow me now to
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: bring my New York City band to the UK. So
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: uh for three shows. Three of those four shows, I'll
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: so in London. I'll have my guys, my New York
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: City bad Boys. It's gonna be fun. So it varies, Bob,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: from from how much you're making but you can't afford.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: And I've been, I mean I've I've been. I've played
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: oh my goodness, uh arenas, I've played dentist's office. I've
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: played no Kid in south By, Southwest. It was a
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: dentist's office. You know, this guy did gigs for He
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: would do work for musicians who couldn't afford it. So
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: they were doing a concert in his dentist office. We've
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: done everything. We've played, closets, played, uh you know, arenas, whatever, it's,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: it's all of the above. And I find that pretty
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: looking back fascinating. You know, it hasn't. It hasn't. There's
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: no chip on my shoulder and hasn't knocked me down yet. Okay,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: So if you stop today, do you have any money?
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: Not enough to live on? Nope, Nope, not no nest egg.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: It was doing all right before COVID hit. You know
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: when Covid hit. There was a lot of gigs and
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: I was doing all right, you know, starting to save money,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: you know, and but COVID came in. The gigs went
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and twenty. After I had a gig
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: with the band February twenty ninth, and then we had
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: one gig the rest of the year. One gig. I
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: did a series of online once a month online shows,
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: you know, through veeps dot com, and they're fascinating. One
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: of them we went, I went with my bass player
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: on the streets of New York and we went to
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: the Bowery Mission through a song we went to outside
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: the the Dakota where John Lennon was murdered, you know,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: and just did songs around New York, told stories about
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: the city. I had my band in Bowery Electric Great Club,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: in the Manhattan Punk Club, Jesse Mallen's Club. So I
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: got through that year by doing online shows. Well after
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: that year that people don't care about seeing online shows anymore,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: and there's gigs enough to survive. But it's the last year.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: It's been thinner, you know, it's been thin. So COVID
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: has been thin, and this year we'll probably finished the
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: movie this year. I've got gigs lined up, you know,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: different parts of North America and Italy, UK, you know, England, Scotland.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: So I'm working away. I'm a working musician, you know,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: and I'm grateful to be. You know, I never thought
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: I would. I mean, the Kidney, I never dreamed. I
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: never dreamed, you know, this kid in college writing poems
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: in a library, that I would be, you know, standing
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: on a giant statium with Bruce Briegstein, that I would be,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: you know, playing with Lucin to Williams, you know, Richard
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: Thompson singing. The last time I opened for Richard. He's
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: a dear guy. And I said, he said, what do
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: you want to do for a cover? Let's do the
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: last time by the Stones listen to what do you
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: want to do for a cover? I go, let's do.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: I want to be sedated? So lousten to this, this
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: great show, and I got to do it. I want
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: to be sedated. That's fun. And so it has up
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: been hard? Hell yeah, oh my god. Would I advise
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: anybody else to do it? No? But having been through
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: it and survived it so far, you know, and I
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: must say it tastes sweet. I got to places I
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: never thought I would get ever never. I mean, my god,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: I mean the who I played with, the who I
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: played with, Springsteen, Ringo start two. I put an EP out.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: I get a phone call. I met Ringo on Friday night.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: Somebody I was just a friend of sometimes took me there.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: I shook his hand at Radio City. I get a
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: call the next day the person opening up and Monday
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: night at Jones Beach is sick. Can you and your
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: band play the show? And we did and it was amazing.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: I'm backstage. Check it out. You asked me about the Beatles.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: I'm a beatle freak. Love the Beatles, love the Stones.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: So Ringo star. So we get Monday, a June hot night,
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: Jones Beach, outside of New York City on Long Island.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: We get there and me and the guys are standing
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: back behind the stage, and incomes this bus was Ringo,
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: Dave Edmunds, Joe Walsh, Timothy B. Schmidt, Zack's Darky Um,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: Dave Edmonds, Uh, Todd what's his name? Todd Rundgren. I
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: mean it was a pretty pretty rocking band. And Um
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: Ringo walcome back stage, sees me, comes right over to
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: us and I mean old school too. Here's two great stories.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: Ringo comes over to me, Are you willie? Then I'll
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: go yeah. He goes, thank you for doing it. We're
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: happy to have you. You know. He looks, right, are
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: these the lads? Then? You know we were all just dying,
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: you know? So he goes, so we're sound checking. He
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: walks on stage standing like right, you know, ten feet
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: looking like what's what's He cared about what the audience
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: was gonna hear. And so my bass player wasn't there,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: so I had my roadie who didn't play bass. Anyway,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: he probably goes, we'll see we did great. We rocked
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: at night, and they said they want us to do
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: another half a dozen show. So these are like out
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: indoor outdoors, six twenty thousand and sixteen thousand capacity places
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: and it's it's Ringo for crying out loud. And so
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: the last night of the tour, and this just goes
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: to show you this is old school. I went out there,
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: did my half an hour set, you know, twenty two
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: thousand people what twenty thousand, and ring goes up planning.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: I saw him before I went downstairs. Two of my
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: kids were there, and I said, Ring you know. I
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: got a couple of photographs with Ringo and he's on stage.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: He finishes a set with photograph. But all I've got
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: is a photograph, and I really, you know, I'm tears
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: of my eyes. He comes off before the encores and
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: he sees me, and I'm about thirty feet away. I'm
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: not near him. Does a bee line, walks right over
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: to me. He shakes my hand, he goes he's thank you, Willie,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: big hug. He says, I want to thank you did
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: a great job. I want to thank you. He hugged.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: I get a big hug, and he's all wet and
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking beetles sweat. I'm covered in beetles web sweat.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not washing it for another of a month. And
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: he says, do you want to you want to come
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: and sing? I get by with the help of my friends.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: This all happened, Bob. I'm telling you this happened. I mean,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: I must be still dreaming. So wake me up. When no,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: don't wake me. So I go. Let me get my coat.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: So I run backstage get some ridiculous polka dot jacket
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: that I was wearing. I walk on stage and Rick
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: Danko's on stage, who's Rick was a friend? And Ricos Willie,
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: how are you nice? You know? And I'm on mike
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: with Nils Lofgren again like I had been with Bruce,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: and Ringo goes and you all know who this is
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: and he gives me one of these hand gestures alluding
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: to me, and we sang. I get by with little
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: help from my friends, which was really bitter sweet for
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: me because this was nineteen ninety two and in nineteen
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: eighty I was making my second album for arist at
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: the Record Plant. Started the album on December fifth. John
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: Lennon and Yoko were. I was in Studio B and
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: they were in the mix room upstairs doing Walking up
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: Walking on thin Ice and on a Sunday night. We
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: started on a Friday and Tom Ponenzio, my co producer,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: new John, and he said, when do you want to
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: meet John? I said, well, let's you know, Monday was
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: being spent fast, so I said, let's let's do a
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: couple of days and maybe you have some tracks and
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: who knows, maybe playing something, or let's let's get some
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: work done first Tuesday night. I'll meet him Tuesday. So
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: we record Friday night Saturday, Sunday night. It's midnight. Phone
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: rings and it's John Lennon's engineer, and he said, John's
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: out of strings. Does any you have any guitar strings?
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: He's tell him my tomponenzio and we go, yeah, we
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: got strings. So I got some strings, my lead guitar
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: games and strings. And I was going to put a
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: note to John thanks for the music. I love you.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: That's too corny. Just send him up. I'll tell him
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: when I see him. And this is Sunday night. When
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: I see him Tuesday. So we come in the studio
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: Monday to work, which is December eighth, nineteen eighty, and
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: we started a fourth third and we were recording a
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: song called I Can't Get You Off of My Mind.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: And I'm playing the piano that John played often in
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: the record plant. And seven thirty John came in with Joko.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: I didn't see him. We didn't know anyway. Ten twenty
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: the phone, right PM, the phone rings. Tom Panunzo answers
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: the phone. Tom's a great guy. I love him to death,
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: and he goes, all right, I'll be right out, hangs
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: up and he says I'll be right back. We were
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: all listening to a playback because we did a couple
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: of takes. We were listening back making tweaks talking about
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: the arrangement. Tom leaves he didn't say that he was
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: going out to meet John by the elevator to get
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: an autograph for whoever, the guy that gave him the strings,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: Tom Panuz, who had a buddy in Jersey, Ken was
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: his first name, who had bugging him all week to
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: get an autograph from John. And so Tom figured, well,
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: Tom knew John, he'd worked with them before, you know,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: they were friends, and so he called and says, Hey,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: the guy who gave you the strings, whose name is Ken,
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: last night, would to get an autograph of John? Could
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: John give an autograph? So the phone call was the engineer,
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: Saint John's coming down in five minutes. He'll give you
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: the autograph. Then, so Tom goes out to meet him.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: He didn't tell us because we would have all wanted
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: to go out to the elevator. He goes out to
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: the elevator, sees John a big hug. John signs an
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: autograph and says, to Ken, who strung me along? Love piece,
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: piece and love John. John Lennon drew a picture of
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: his face and Tom. He walked out into it to
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: his car, and five minutes later he was murdered. The
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: last autograph, the last thing he played was on guitar
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: strung strings that we sent up, and all last autograph
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: was to the guy who's sent up the strings. And
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: we get a phone call and Tom comes walking back
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: in the studio fifteen minutes after he walked out, and
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: he's goes, somebody just shot John. And the band and
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: I were listening to a playback and I said, John,
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: John who, Because you know, I didn't know what that
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: meant is John Lennon? I go, what what do he
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: means somebody? And I thought, well, maybe he got shot
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: in the and you know, and sure enough the phone
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: rings front desk and David Geffen and he said, John
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: Lennon's all right. I just got a call from Yoko's
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: best friend who said John's on his way to the hospital.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: And now no he left ten minutes ago or whatever,
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: you know. In the phone running off the hook, we
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: couldn't record. You know, I heard my dear drummer J
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: D Dorry. I heard crying in a corner behind the doors,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: crying his eyes out. You know, I'll cry, I I
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: gotta stop first, I cry thinking about it. So we
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: went we went out to the bar and went to
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: a bar and we drank the night away. And the
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: next day we'll get to the studio and the record
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: Plan had hired uh a bodyguard for John when he
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: was there. His name was Bobby, six feet six, three
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: hundred pounds, big guy, very nice guy. I would I'm
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: a little guy, and I would like challenge him to
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: a fight, you know, just clown around. We were friends
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: even just after a few days, and he was broke
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: and hearted. He said what happened was that they had
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: just mixed Walking on Thin Ice. He said, John was
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: in the greatest mood. I mean, I choked up. You've
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: been thinking about this, but he said, John was in
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: the greatest mood. You said, they just mixed a song
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: him that he thought was going to be a hit
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: for Yoko Walking on Thin Ice. And if you listen
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: to the guitar plan on that it's the most searing,
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: gut ripping guitar and Double Fantasy was number one. The
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: press were finally given us and John was getting some
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: respect from the press. He was in great spirits, so
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: he says to Bobby, Bobby told us the next day, Hey, Bobby,
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: let's he put his arm around him. No, he said, Bobby,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: let's go to dinner and celebrate, you know. And Bobby said,
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: I'm sick to my stomach. So John put his arm
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: around him and says, oh, you go home. Don't worry,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: you go home. We'll go celebrate another night. So instead
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: of an agat came downstairs, John got in the car,
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: you know, Uh, signed the autograph Componenzio down stairs on
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: the main floor, walked out in the car, went home,
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: got shot, and had he not been sick, they had
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: gone to dinner, the car would have taken them to
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: the Dakota where Bobby would have gotten out of the
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: car with John. Who knows it's it's moot now, but
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: that happened. So it's yeah, it makes me choke up.
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, if John Lennon was alive, could you imagine? No?
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: I can't. But just stopping for one second, you're are
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: you died? Intelligent, very verbal person. How come you don't
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: do a one man show where you tell all these
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: stories starting off Broadway? Well, you know what I'm thinking.
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: There's this documentary and I've seen a bit of it.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: It could be good. I mean, it could be good.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of well long people in it. But
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: that's not enough. You know, you know what my dad
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: steals and shot my father. Isn't it us talking telling?
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: He's telling stories. We're going to finish it this year,
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: and I'm hoping that that can make enough noise. You
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: know where you can raise you know, uh, raise the
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: level of the kind of places I can play, raise interest,
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: you know, let me sell a catalog or whatever. And
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: but that's an idea. I didn't think about that. I
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: don't know if I could do that night after night.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think the same I do. I do solo
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: shows more often now. You know, it's like Springsteen. It's
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: not exactly the same every night. You don't have to
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: tell the exactly the same stories. But you know, you're
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: you're there. You talk about Buffalo, and you strum a
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: few of the songs that you that you heard growing up.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: You do a little satisfaction, do a little last time
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: you tell your stories. I could listen to you talk
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: all night. Oh well, you know, seriously, a lot of
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: people are boring or do self congratulatory. I mean, you've survived,
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: I've really struggled myself. I know what this struggle is.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: My ex wife left while I was struggling too. I mean,
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: you know that was a big part. There's no fucking money. Yeah,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: you know, most people give up. Everybody told you to
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: give up. That's the weirdest thing. I'm too done to
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: know better to give up, right, you know, it's basically
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: an inner strength. So you know, you have all this stuff,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: and you know, maybe just rejuggle it into a different form,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: and I think it would be a success. Listen, you
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: started in one of those hotels like Robuster Point extra plays,
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: you get a review, you do it. Maybe you do
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: it once a week for you know, six months. I
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: think the word of mouth and the reviews would be
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: it would start to take off. I really do That's interesting.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: I like that idea. That's actually I'm going to think
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: about that because I like to play up at a
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: piano that main instrument. I could play the piano for
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: two hours. I played the guitar. The stories to tell
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: I've done thing and seeing things, you know, whether it's
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: walking to CBGB's on a summer night, seeing a guy
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: on Mulberry and bleaker, homeless guy with his head actually
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: on a concrete cinder block as a pillow, and that
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: inspired the song Old Men Sleeping on the Bowery on
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: my first record, I've seen that. I've seen you Chase Stadium.
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: I sung with Little Stephen on Mike singing Twist and
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: Shout where the Beatles sang it. You know. I've been
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: on Mike at one of Bruce's Christmas shows with Sam
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: Moore singing Santa Claus is coming to town. I mean,
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: I must be still dreaming from an lst trip in
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: the sixties and I just haven't woken up yet, because
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: you can't make that stuff up. But I like your idea.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give some thought to that, because I
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: love telling stories. You know. I'm not full of myself.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: I love the journey, you know, and I've survived it.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: I'm stronger because of it. How about that? How about that? Absolutely,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: you survived that stuff. Absolutely I have a better person
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: having been through these things. And I'm too either too
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: dumb to know any better, or there's some serious spit
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: and grit in my bones. But I want to say
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: one thing. I think that my divorce was triggered by
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: not by the hardships didn't help, but she had some
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: medical issues and thought she was on the way out
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: and had they called fight and flight, and just thought
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: she was going to die. And you know, she's a doll.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: But she hung in longer than I thought anybody ever would.
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: So there was a struggle. Sometimes it's worth it, and
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't if I had to do it again, would
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: I go through? You know how many years? I moved
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: in seventy two to New York, signed a record deal
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: in seventy eight, record out in eighty eighty one, walked
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: away from the business like an idiot, you know, and
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: put a record, got signed to Columbia Records, put a
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: record out in ninety one, Wrong Time, Wrong place, put
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: an EP out the next year. Another few years with nothing,
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: and then a buddy of mine convinced me, you should
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: make your own put it on your own record. People
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: are starting to do on your own label. People are
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: starting to do that. So I ray some money, borrowed
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: some money from a friend, made beautiful Record of the World,
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: paid him back, you know, And I've been making records
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: on that little label ever since, you know, and it's
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: kept me afloat, and I'm I've got stories to tell.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: That's for sure. And you know, my dad has a
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: real gift of storytelling, you know. And and the movie
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: you'll see some of it. It's like, I mean, I
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: didn't even more to begin. I was kicked by a chicken.
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: That guy, he's something else. How is your health? I'm
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: knocking on wood. You know, I've been really lucky because
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: like when the seventy fifth birthday business this summer, it's like,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: I don't feel my age. I don't feel seventy five.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: You know. I've been very lucky. You know. I had
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: some melanoma on my face like about fourteen years ago,
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: so I go checked my skin checked everybody's six months
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: but buying large. I've been lucky, you know. And you
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: know I've never had problems with drugs. I like whine
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: with my dinner, you know, but I've never I managed
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: to stay afloat from being sidetracked by that's that nonsense,
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: you know. And I'm small enough and close enough to
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: the ground, and I was always pretty well. I was
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: always an athlete, you know. So I feel fit. I
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: feel still I'm still sharp, you know, well you could
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: call it sharp, but I still feel like I'm engaged,
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: way engaged to life. And I write these songs because
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: they inspire me. They made me I can make sense
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: out of something. I put a record out in a
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: fall called Wake Up America Steve Earle to do it
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: with Steve. You know, I wrote it just I follow
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: the news really closely and I care about the world,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's it's like what a place, my God,
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: And there's the good, the bad, and the ugly, and
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: my songs inspire me when I plan with the band.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: I gave a show in nineteen ninety one and Providence,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: Rhode Island, and it's big, huge hall. That capacity was
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: twelve hundred. There were twelve people. I'm on Columbia Records.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: There's twelve people. I invited them all on stage at
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: the end of It's the same with us. Hey, so
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: I've seen the good, bad and ugly, and I must
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: say the song's inspire me. And when I play, and
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: you could see it on my band, they're inspired. And
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: if the audience people leave happier than when they came in.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: How many can't tell you how many times people have
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: come up and said, you know, you've signed CDs for
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: some people after a show, and oh, somebody my mother
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: died six months ago and I've been down. I haven't
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: been out. My friends said, oh, you should go to
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: a Willie show. You'll feel better. And you know, when
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: people that makes me feel good. If I can, if
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: my music can inspire me and my guys to feel better,
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: be able to pay some bills, and an audience could
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: come out and feel better. The experience in Buffalo with
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: the blizzard, I must say the silver lining was to
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: see the good side of neighbors, how people can be
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: good to each other, you know, look out for each other.
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: I saw that right in the face because this life threatening.
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: You know. My dad's one hundred and five, you know,
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: and I'm seventy four and my brother's seventy and we're
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: a freezing We made it. And anyway, I'm still a believer.
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: I guess should say I believe in I always say
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: I believe in people. I mean, I know there's some
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: nasty customers out there, let's be you know, there's a
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: lot of them, but there's also a lot of really
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: good people. You know. My politics start like if there's
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: a cul de sac and it's a little seven year
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: old kid riding his bike in the cul de sac
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: and Tucker Carlson's got a house on one side and
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert on the other side, and the little kid
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: gets it back. It's the bike and down he goes.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: I would think that those two guys would come out
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: and see what they could do to help. That's where
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: my politics start. You know. Call me naive and clearly am,
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: but I do believe. I believe in music. I believe
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: in the redemptive quality. I really do. I'm on my
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: soapbox now, but I do in rock and roll. In music,
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: whether it's classical, jazz, blues, swamp boogie woogie, they're salvation
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: in it. There can be, you know. So I that's
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: the that's the way I've been riding, you know, and
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: it's not has been easy. Hell no, oh my god. No.
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: You know. When I leave here, I'm gonna go up
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: walk up my five flights of stairs. I don't know
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: if a gig tonight, so I don't have to carry
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: my I have you electric in my bag. But it's
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: kept me, it's kept me healthy. Knock on wood anyway, Well,
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: hopefully you'll be around here for many more years. Willy.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking this time to
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: talk to my audience. You've really been a riveting listen.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: It's been my pleasure. Really, I appreciate you taking the
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: time to have me on Bob. You know, I'm I'm
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: grateful for the journey that I've had, happy to share it.
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: And I believe, and I think people listening, keep the faith,
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: do your best. My dad's advice while going through my
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: divorce best device I've ever heard, because I didn't need
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: for a month. I was really in bad shape back then.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: And he said, look, you can't control with anybody else
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: does in this world. The one thing you can't control
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: is what you do. Walk a straight line, treat people good,
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: you know, right from wrong. And you know he would
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: say leave the rest in God's hands because he's a
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: very a man of faith and it served him well,
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: I must say. But like you know, do the best
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: you can really in this world. Just turn pick you
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: if your neighbor's down, pick him up if you can.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: But hang in there, do your best and have some
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: faith in that. You know, I'm a believer and I'm
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: you know, someday I'll drop, you know, And we all
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: got what a clinist would say, we all got it coming.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: In that great film unforgiven. Well, I'm alive and i
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: want to celebrate it, and that's what I'm I'm trying
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: to do my best at so I'm very grateful for
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: you to have me on. Thank you for taking the time, Bob. Well,
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: you've been great. Till next time. This is Bob left
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: sensed