Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Bill Curbishley
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left That's Podcast.
- 0:12Speaker 1: My guest today is manager Bill Kurbish, Lick Bill, how
- 0:17Speaker 1: are we doing? Okay, So, how did you get the
- 0:21Speaker 1: How did I get the who? Or how did they
- 0:23Speaker 1: get me? Well? I got the who because in the
- 0:29Speaker 1: very early days one of my oldest pals from school
- 0:33Speaker 1: two were very early days. Put a year on it. Well,
- 0:37Speaker 1: when I was a boy, Okay, when in my early years,
- 0:40Speaker 1: I went to school with two guys, Chris Stamp and
- 0:43Speaker 1: Mike Sure. Oh, I didn't know you that far back. Yeah,
- 0:46Speaker 1: we were scored together, and then we we left school.
- 0:49Speaker 1: We became MUDs in our teenage years. Anyway, Mike Shure
- 0:54Speaker 1: was constantly on at me about going with Oh he
- 0:58Speaker 1: was originally a lightened director for a comedian called Normal Wisdom.
- 1:03Speaker 1: And they then got together and they they were messing
- 1:07Speaker 1: around trying to create an independent label. Okay, this was
- 1:11Speaker 1: Christap and your other friends. Yeah, and along with then
- 1:16Speaker 1: Stamp got together with Kit Lambert. So eventually Mike Share
- 1:20Speaker 1: persuaded me. He said, listen, like music has been your life.
- 1:24Speaker 1: You know, we've been powered since we're at school, Come
- 1:26Speaker 1: in with us. So I went in with them. What
- 1:29Speaker 1: year was that? That was seventy, so that is the
- 1:33Speaker 1: year of the Timmy tour. In Who Live It leads
- 1:37Speaker 1: exactly around that period. And unfortunately it wasn't long before
- 1:44Speaker 1: I realized that both Chris and Kit we're suffering the
- 1:48Speaker 1: vagaries of excess drugs, different stuff, different ship. So um
- 1:55Speaker 1: I had a quick learning curve in that sense, and
- 1:58Speaker 1: I had to try and keep the ship afloat. And
- 2:01Speaker 1: we had over the that couple of years prior to
- 2:05Speaker 1: them really getting themselves in trouble, we acquired a lot
- 2:09Speaker 1: of really good artists. You know. We had Jimmy Hendrix,
- 2:12Speaker 1: he was brought to us by Chess Chandler from the Animals.
- 2:15Speaker 1: We had Mirk bol and t Rex and thunder Clapped Nerman,
- 2:21Speaker 1: and we were one of three small independent labels. Really
- 2:27Speaker 1: we had Trek Records. The only others were Chrysalist and
- 2:30Speaker 1: Charisma at that time, so it was quite innovative. And
- 2:36Speaker 1: we were dealing with Polydor PolyGram Polydor Records, which was
- 2:40Speaker 1: mainly a German company and as far as I and
- 2:44Speaker 1: R went, they didn't have much. So we did a
- 2:48Speaker 1: tape lease still with them, which enabled us to give
- 2:51Speaker 1: our artists, quite a very good royalty. But then we split.
- 2:55Speaker 1: We had a profit split with the distributor, so we
- 2:58Speaker 1: were often running. However, um Kit and Chris died really
- 3:04Speaker 1: suffering from their excesses. And I was a little bit
- 3:06Speaker 1: naive in away because I thought that they were really
- 3:10Speaker 1: just like banging away out cocaine and bows, but they
- 3:13Speaker 1: were doing smack. And there's only it's a one way road.
- 3:17Speaker 1: There's only one it takes. It takes the fire away
- 3:21Speaker 1: from you, you know so. And also my great pal
- 3:27Speaker 1: Mike Sure, he suffered a car crash. He was taking
- 3:31Speaker 1: some lights and stuff up to the cavern in Liverpool,
- 3:34Speaker 1: which is famous of course the Beatles, and he was
- 3:38Speaker 1: in the van and he hit a patch of fog
- 3:40Speaker 1: on the motorway. He hit some fog and they found
- 3:43Speaker 1: him the other side of the motorway and as a
- 3:46Speaker 1: consequence of the car crash he became quadriplegic. However, he
- 3:53Speaker 1: had a great music, suns, great mind, and he continued
- 3:56Speaker 1: to work with me for several years after that, quite
- 3:59Speaker 1: an number of years, but it was left to me
- 4:02Speaker 1: in a sense to steer the ship. And at that
- 4:06Speaker 1: time as well, we were heavily heavily involved in the
- 4:09Speaker 1: making of the movie Tommy. So I would get phone
- 4:13Speaker 1: calls from Stick would Bill, can you come in and
- 4:16Speaker 1: see me? They're driving me fucking mad. Why what's wrong? Well?
- 4:21Speaker 1: Kit wants his money and gold bullying, and Chris I
- 4:25Speaker 1: can never find. So I helped him stitch together the
- 4:28Speaker 1: the Tommy movie. I didn't really understand much about movies
- 4:32Speaker 1: in those days, so I used to go off and
- 4:35Speaker 1: pick the brains of friends of mine, you know, like
- 4:37Speaker 1: David Putnam, Sandy Leeberson who made quite a few movies,
- 4:41Speaker 1: you know, a long distance runner, all those, and I
- 4:44Speaker 1: used to pick their brains. Go back, change it a
- 4:46Speaker 1: bit with Stiggy, go away, come back, change it. Eventually
- 4:49Speaker 1: we got a great deal on what we wanted and
- 4:52Speaker 1: we made what's a classic movie of course. Um then
- 4:58Speaker 1: Chris Kit unfortunately Lee suffered probably fell down the stairs
- 5:04Speaker 1: and suffered a brain hemorrhage. And Chris went off to
- 5:07Speaker 1: New York and after quite a number of years, cleaned
- 5:11Speaker 1: up his act a bit and went into counseling of
- 5:15Speaker 1: all things. So from that moment on, I was often
- 5:20Speaker 1: running on my own. Um I got a call, I
- 5:24Speaker 1: took a little small office up above Pink Floyd's office.
- 5:28Speaker 1: Steve O'Rourke, who managed them, was an old mate, old
- 5:31Speaker 1: mate of mine, and I took a small office up
- 5:34Speaker 1: above and almost I didn't have much, you know, and
- 5:38Speaker 1: I had I kept getting some calls from Pete Rudge,
- 5:42Speaker 1: who at that time was with the Rolling Stones, and
- 5:45Speaker 1: he said to me, Bill, will you do? Will you
- 5:48Speaker 1: put together this tour of Europe for the Stones? You know,
- 5:51Speaker 1: you know all the promoters, you'll get us the best deals.
- 5:54Speaker 1: I said, Peter, I can't, I'm too busy, nothing. And
- 5:59Speaker 1: he kept coming and in the end I got the
- 6:02Speaker 1: deal I wanted and did the did the put together
- 6:07Speaker 1: the tour for them, went out on tour with them
- 6:09Speaker 1: and Pete, who's always been a friend p Rudge and
- 6:13Speaker 1: did the Stones tour and then it all happened. Who
- 6:17Speaker 1: came to me and they said, you know we're we're
- 6:21Speaker 1: into litigation with Track Records. Would you manage us? I said, well,
- 6:25Speaker 1: the only way we can do it if you're in litigation,
- 6:28Speaker 1: you know, which I'm sad to here, but um, if
- 6:32Speaker 1: you are in litigation, the only way to do it
- 6:34Speaker 1: is to get some cash flow, and that means going
- 6:36Speaker 1: out on the road and working and getting some cash
- 6:40Speaker 1: flow because it's all going to be locked up. And
- 6:43Speaker 1: I should back track slightly, because the reason why I
- 6:47Speaker 1: left Trade Records and them was that after we did
- 6:52Speaker 1: the premiere of the Tommy movie in New York, we
- 6:56Speaker 1: did it in a subway in New York. I was
- 7:00Speaker 1: promised a percentage of that film, of the management percentage
- 7:06Speaker 1: of which I was going to split with my pal,
- 7:09Speaker 1: the boy who was paralyzed, and it was never thought.
- 7:12Speaker 1: Come in. You could never get the pair of them
- 7:14Speaker 1: to sign anything laments then, I mean, they were at
- 7:17Speaker 1: war with each other. You would never find them in
- 7:20Speaker 1: the right state of mind to sign anything. And so
- 7:23Speaker 1: as a result of that, I'm gone. You know, you're
- 7:28Speaker 1: not only didn't pay me, but I was going to
- 7:31Speaker 1: split it with Mike Chris. He was worth us all
- 7:36Speaker 1: away through score his our pal. So you're not only
- 7:39Speaker 1: sucked me, you're sucked him. And I left and he
- 7:42Speaker 1: never thought I was going to leave, but I did.
- 7:44Speaker 1: And that's that was the story. Okay, So who was
- 7:48Speaker 1: running the management company in the label after you left?
- 7:51Speaker 1: If these two guys were such druggius they weren't able
- 7:54Speaker 1: to run it. I mean Mike, sure, try it in
- 7:56Speaker 1: his own way. He tried the boy but it was
- 8:01Speaker 1: awfully difficult for him, and so it just collapsed really
- 8:04Speaker 1: And that's when they came to me the WHO and
- 8:07Speaker 1: I was in as I said, I was in that
- 8:08Speaker 1: little office. I was doing the stones to her and
- 8:11Speaker 1: they came to me and said, you know, would you
- 8:14Speaker 1: manage just And prior to that, because it was in
- 8:17Speaker 1: such a disarray, Daughtry had a solo album which I
- 8:21Speaker 1: went to Lambent Sam. I said, look, he's he's made
- 8:23Speaker 1: this solo album and all the songs were written by
- 8:27Speaker 1: a new young singer. Say, got a great story here,
- 8:31Speaker 1: so m I said. They said, oh, we don't want
- 8:35Speaker 1: don't know, We're not going to release. I said, listen,
- 8:37Speaker 1: if you release it and it's successful, it will help
- 8:41Speaker 1: tremendously because it will help Roger's self esteem in this
- 8:45Speaker 1: whole situation because Pete was the main man, the writer,
- 8:50Speaker 1: the guitarist, he was the main man. And it was
- 8:53Speaker 1: an attempt to get some sort of democracy going, you know,
- 8:56Speaker 1: and and for for Roger to feel he's for it.
- 9:01Speaker 1: And they said, well, if you want to do it,
- 9:02Speaker 1: you can, so I said, okay, I will so I
- 9:06Speaker 1: came over to Los Angeles. In those days, m c
- 9:09Speaker 1: A was run by Artie mogul So this seventy three. Okay,
- 9:14Speaker 1: Artie mogul Forest in the music business. He's now this
- 9:18Speaker 1: He's known as a legendary crook, a big gambler, show
- 9:22Speaker 1: keep going. So I came over and the people that
- 9:26Speaker 1: were running m c that m c A at that
- 9:30Speaker 1: time were Mike Maitland, Lu Cook, very very honest man,
- 9:35Speaker 1: and Artie mogul So. I had three I had three albums.
- 9:40Speaker 1: I had the Roger Adultery solo album, the Leo Sayer album.
- 9:44Speaker 1: Adam Faith had asked me to bring and an album
- 9:47Speaker 1: by a band, a Dutch band called Golden ear Ring.
- 9:51Speaker 1: Of course, so I played them the three albums. So
- 9:54Speaker 1: they said, yeah, we love for the Daultry album and
- 9:58Speaker 1: we really liked this new kid. He eventually went to warners,
- 10:02Speaker 1: but we really love this new kid. I'm not sure
- 10:05Speaker 1: about the Dutch band. I said, listen, they're fantastic. Come
- 10:08Speaker 1: when are you going to be in London? So they said,
- 10:11Speaker 1: oh so so time. I said, listen, they're playing the
- 10:13Speaker 1: Lyceum in the strand come see them because they're a
- 10:17Speaker 1: great life and they're all good looking guys. I didn't
- 10:20Speaker 1: tell them they were opening for somebody else. I think
- 10:23Speaker 1: it was mounting all one of those means. So comes
- 10:27Speaker 1: the night of the show at the Lyceum and they're
- 10:31Speaker 1: just ready to go on stage, and then it's clear
- 10:35Speaker 1: the theater. It's an ira I R a bomb scare.
- 10:38Speaker 1: There's a bomb in the building. Everyone out. So everyone's
- 10:42Speaker 1: out and they're all in the strand and we're waiting
- 10:45Speaker 1: industry and for like maybe an hour or so to
- 10:48Speaker 1: get clearance. Eventually we get clearance, We go back in,
- 10:54Speaker 1: earing go on stage. They played their set. There's no
- 10:58Speaker 1: one there from m c A. So I own the
- 11:00Speaker 1: next morning. I said, where the funk were you? They said,
- 11:04Speaker 1: where were we? We We couldn't get anywhere near that
- 11:07Speaker 1: theater for the crowds. We want that band. They thought
- 11:10Speaker 1: the crowds were all there for them. We want that band.
- 11:14Speaker 1: And so they took the album, which was an album
- 11:17Speaker 1: called Moonten had a huge hit on it called Radar Love,
- 11:21Speaker 1: and then it's a driving song and the rest is history.
- 11:26Speaker 1: You know that. That's so. And Roger had a successful
- 11:29Speaker 1: album with his solo album Mud Not to the Distress
- 11:33Speaker 1: of Kit and Chris. But to the bewilderment I think,
- 11:37Speaker 1: and I'll never forget Lambert. I saw Lambert in New
- 11:43Speaker 1: York and he was wasn't compassment as and he said
- 11:47Speaker 1: to me, when we're going to release the Golden Earring album?
- 11:50Speaker 1: And I said, it's number five in the charts? What's
- 11:53Speaker 1: wrong with you? So it was a bit of a shambles, bob,
- 11:57Speaker 1: you know, And so I went forward. Then who came
- 12:00Speaker 1: to me for management? Okay, just to go you quit
- 12:04Speaker 1: since they said they weren't going to put out the
- 12:06Speaker 1: adultry album? Were you putting it out by yourself or
- 12:09Speaker 1: as part of their bellage, part of their management? Then
- 12:12Speaker 1: the Tommy movie came along after that, and that's when
- 12:15Speaker 1: I quit. So all those albums came out before the time. Yeah,
- 12:20Speaker 1: And coming back from New York after the premier of
- 12:23Speaker 1: the Tommy Movie was when I quit. On the plane? Okay,
- 12:27Speaker 1: So what was your first album with the who Oh ship?
- 12:30Speaker 1: Now you're asking me who by numbers? Was still the
- 12:33Speaker 1: old guys? Yeah? No, no, no, no, it was us. Okay,
- 12:37Speaker 1: that's nine four, So that was it. Am Whistle did
- 12:40Speaker 1: the sleeve to it. Who by Numbers? They could have
- 12:43Speaker 1: been the first one, but I was with it at
- 12:45Speaker 1: the time in the studio. Through those years, I worked
- 12:49Speaker 1: with him on Quadraphenia in the studios, you know, UM,
- 12:54Speaker 1: and much much later UM. I produced the movie Quadraphonia
- 13:03Speaker 1: that I constantly going on record, I'm just not stroking you.
- 13:06Speaker 1: That's the best rock movie ever. When people talk about it,
- 13:09Speaker 1: that's it because it's not only Quadrophenia. It works as
- 13:12Speaker 1: a movie. I can literally tell you where I saw
- 13:14Speaker 1: it so longer, a theater in Westwood and phenomenal. Yeah,
- 13:18Speaker 1: well that do you want to jump to that now
- 13:21Speaker 1: because we can come back to Yeah, we'll go back
- 13:24Speaker 1: to it, but let's go so so yeah. So they start,
- 13:27Speaker 1: they needed to tour to get cash flow, and then eventually,
- 13:31Speaker 1: Um the litigation was resolved, and as I said, Kit
- 13:39Speaker 1: had a bad he felt understairs. It was sad because
- 13:43Speaker 1: he came to see me like two days before that.
- 13:48Speaker 1: He wasn't in great shape, and he said, Bill, he said,
- 13:52Speaker 1: you're doing a great job with them, he said, better
- 13:54Speaker 1: than we did together. I said, well, thanks, Kit, you know,
- 13:59Speaker 1: and he wasn't in great shape. So I gave him
- 14:03Speaker 1: some money and he went away. And then two days
- 14:06Speaker 1: later he had the accident. Okay, going back to the lawsuit,
- 14:12Speaker 1: the word on the street is that the Who had
- 14:15Speaker 1: a terrible deal, the managers were bad with money. What
- 14:19Speaker 1: was the truth there? The truth was, if you're heavy,
- 14:27Speaker 1: heavy into addiction, one of the overriding things that envelopes
- 14:33Speaker 1: your life is fear, fear of not having enough money
- 14:39Speaker 1: to feed that drug addiction. And that was one of
- 14:41Speaker 1: the problems. I'm not saying that they stole money. They
- 14:46Speaker 1: thought they borrowed it, but they didn't. In the end,
- 14:51Speaker 1: if you're borrowing money without any real possibility of repaying it,
- 14:57Speaker 1: that's not good. And so they were raid. In some
- 15:01Speaker 1: of the other accounts we had as well, the Hendlix
- 15:04Speaker 1: account some of the other artists, it was just grab
- 15:07Speaker 1: it for what they needed. But with the Who, what
- 15:12Speaker 1: what is true in fact is the Who will always
- 15:15Speaker 1: offer promised fort of track records ten percent each as
- 15:21Speaker 1: or Moon Daltry Towns in which they never got. They
- 15:26Speaker 1: just didn't get it to this day, never got it
- 15:29Speaker 1: to this day. And added to that, there was some
- 15:34Speaker 1: double dipping going on because um, their commission rate was
- 15:38Speaker 1: really high high was it other than the colonel I
- 15:46Speaker 1: don't know. Anybody's gone beyond twenty but okay exactly, so
- 15:51Speaker 1: it was um they had the publishing tied up, and
- 15:57Speaker 1: then it was a later day the pete discovered that
- 16:03Speaker 1: everything wasn't right within his publishing the income as well,
- 16:07Speaker 1: and that was it. That was the straw. Okay, So
- 16:11Speaker 1: how did the litigation resolve? It resolved in the sense
- 16:15Speaker 1: that the company basically eventually went bankrupt. They had to
- 16:21Speaker 1: repay the band all of the missing royalties, so they
- 16:26Speaker 1: did on which they found very difficult because they don't
- 16:28Speaker 1: have any money because they blown the money. Usually you
- 16:30Speaker 1: can get a judgment, but you can't have any money.
- 16:32Speaker 1: So what I was left to do was to renegotiate
- 16:37Speaker 1: a lot of their record deals and instead of the
- 16:40Speaker 1: amount that would usually go to track, you know of
- 16:45Speaker 1: profits and the overage after the artist's royalty, I made
- 16:49Speaker 1: sure it went to the WHO. So eventually, over a
- 16:52Speaker 1: long term, they got back as much, if not all,
- 16:56Speaker 1: of what they were rowed. But they weren't treated well
- 16:59Speaker 1: and it was completely unnecessary. I mean, I'm talking about
- 17:02Speaker 1: the whole friend of mine from Scooter, completely unnecessary. But
- 17:06Speaker 1: I knew, Bob, I knew that I was dealing with
- 17:09Speaker 1: a different person, the one who was my pal. He
- 17:13Speaker 1: was on heroin. He was a different person, you know.
- 17:19Speaker 1: And he was a good man. He had a good heart. Um,
- 17:23Speaker 1: but it all gets distorted, you know, it all gets changed,
- 17:27Speaker 1: and it was sad to see. Okay, before the drugs,
- 17:33Speaker 1: were they good managers? They were good. I don't think
- 17:37Speaker 1: they did lack in certain areas. I mean when I
- 17:41Speaker 1: came in and started doing the touring for the band,
- 17:43Speaker 1: for example, the first thing I saw was that they
- 17:48Speaker 1: were into taking a guarantee but not really really looking
- 17:52Speaker 1: at the back end. So what I did with the
- 17:54Speaker 1: band was I immediately changed that ship and I went
- 17:58Speaker 1: into the promoters and I took suffer guarantee, but I
- 18:01Speaker 1: wanted a nine deal. A lot of people give Peter
- 18:05Speaker 1: Grant credit for that. I was doing it way before Grant. Okay,
- 18:09Speaker 1: glad we're going on the record, because there were moth people.
- 18:11Speaker 1: I even I thought it was Peter Grant. No it wasn't.
- 18:13Speaker 1: I was doing nineties ten deals before Grant, head Zepplin
- 18:17Speaker 1: and so Um. I was earning them a lot more money,
- 18:21Speaker 1: a lot more money, and the band especially well Pete
- 18:27Speaker 1: says it in his book and Rogers always acknowledged that,
- 18:31Speaker 1: you know. And it was a simple leap of faith
- 18:35Speaker 1: on my part because I thought ship this band is
- 18:37Speaker 1: a great, great band. They can go into overage, and
- 18:41Speaker 1: I wanted to see them get the lion's share of
- 18:43Speaker 1: that overage. And that's how I've proceeded with them, with
- 18:47Speaker 1: them all my life, and everything is completely and absolutely transparent.
- 18:54Speaker 1: And I don't have a contract. Okay, let's got the
- 18:57Speaker 1: Egypt in America was Frank Barcelona, he was it was
- 19:00Speaker 1: Frank in Premier and who was in Europe? We were
- 19:03Speaker 1: great friends. We didn't have an agent in Europe. Initially
- 19:09Speaker 1: they put it again through their agency New Action. I
- 19:14Speaker 1: did it and in those days I used to do it. Oh,
- 19:17Speaker 1: I used to go I used to book them out
- 19:18Speaker 1: in Europe. I used to go out with him on tour.
- 19:21Speaker 1: I was met tour manager, accountant, the whole, the whole bundle.
- 19:28Speaker 1: So I used to settle after shows and do it all.
- 19:31Speaker 1: Let's talk about that now. This was the days when
- 19:34Speaker 1: you get paid in cash, right, because a lot of
- 19:38Speaker 1: it was because you didn't trust the promoter, didn't trust them.
- 19:40Speaker 1: I would want the I'd want the advance against the
- 19:43Speaker 1: guarantee into our account before we ever went and then
- 19:48Speaker 1: the balance in cash. Okay, so tell us some stories
- 19:52Speaker 1: about trying to collect the back end. I can honestly
- 19:56Speaker 1: say I never ever had a problem collecting that back end. Okay.
- 20:02Speaker 1: So that's one good thing. They at least had the money.
- 20:05Speaker 1: But I have been in the offices of promoters. Weren't
- 20:07Speaker 1: seen the two sets of books. They're said in the
- 20:10Speaker 1: set they show to the acts. So how do you know?
- 20:13Speaker 1: You know everybody stealing from everybody in this business, So
- 20:16Speaker 1: how did you deal with that? Well, one of the
- 20:18Speaker 1: things I've always said is I've always had a photober
- 20:22Speaker 1: figures really, and so I was very quick to be
- 20:26Speaker 1: able to do deals on foot on the bounce. But
- 20:31Speaker 1: also I would on a lot of those shows, I
- 20:36Speaker 1: would click people in and they have people on the
- 20:39Speaker 1: doors clicking them in. And in some instances I found
- 20:43Speaker 1: extra extra rose. In Germany, for example, I found extra rose.
- 20:48Speaker 1: You know, there was p and then instead of like
- 20:51Speaker 1: there was m N O P q Q. So you know,
- 20:56Speaker 1: got once they knew that you were into it, they
- 21:00Speaker 1: they stopped all that ship, you know. And ironically, when
- 21:04Speaker 1: I was doing when I made that shift um and
- 21:09Speaker 1: doing when ruddering me about doing the Stones to her,
- 21:14Speaker 1: you know, of Europe. I think that also set a
- 21:17Speaker 1: bit of a standard for me, because in my opinion,
- 21:21Speaker 1: I did some great deals for them, and I don't know.
- 21:24Speaker 1: I think the Stones were in a similar situation in
- 21:27Speaker 1: those days. It was early early days, that's as you know.
- 21:30Speaker 1: And some of those contracts and some of the promoters
- 21:32Speaker 1: were like give them the advance and ripped them. And
- 21:38Speaker 1: you have to be very careful. You have to look
- 21:40Speaker 1: at what the rule rent was on the hall, and
- 21:43Speaker 1: I used to go through it forensically. I wanted to
- 21:46Speaker 1: know how much a faultlift cast everything, because I was
- 21:49Speaker 1: my my aim. It was really to get this band
- 21:54Speaker 1: what I felt they deserved. And I guess if I'm
- 21:58Speaker 1: proud of anything, it's Townsend said in his book, from
- 22:03Speaker 1: the moment I took over, he was never in need
- 22:06Speaker 1: of money. It's their money. Without them, I wouldn't be here.
- 22:12Speaker 1: You wouldn't be here, that's for sure. It's the artist
- 22:16Speaker 1: comes first. I couldn't agree. What why is it called Trinifold?
- 22:19Speaker 1: It was the company I just picked off the shelf,
- 22:23Speaker 1: no other reason. I had a young accountant at that time.
- 22:26Speaker 1: I said I need to start a management company. He said, well,
- 22:30Speaker 1: he just took a company off the shelf four hundred
- 22:33Speaker 1: pounds and it was Trinifold. He's got no meaning. Okay,
- 22:37Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. So you're born where
- 22:40Speaker 1: I was born in London, in the East end of London,
- 22:43Speaker 1: in West Ham. Okay, So what was it like growing
- 22:46Speaker 1: up there? Ah? It was great. I mean it was
- 22:50Speaker 1: the East end of London. My father worked in the docks.
- 22:54Speaker 1: What do you do there? Well, my father was during
- 22:57Speaker 1: the Second World War. He was a chief injury near
- 23:00Speaker 1: on a submarine base in Salon and they called them
- 23:05Speaker 1: chief engineer artifica. Anyway, he came back after the Second
- 23:09Speaker 1: World War went into the docks and he was a
- 23:12Speaker 1: marine engineer in the docks. So it was ship repairs
- 23:15Speaker 1: and that's where we lived, around the docks. And then
- 23:18Speaker 1: your mother worked outside the home. She did um and
- 23:22Speaker 1: she sent me to school when I was four instead
- 23:25Speaker 1: of five so she could go to work. And she
- 23:28Speaker 1: did what she worked in various She was assistant cook,
- 23:35Speaker 1: she worked in a button factory. She did anything to
- 23:38Speaker 1: keep us alive. And I was say embarrassed later in
- 23:42Speaker 1: life because she altered my birth certificate to get me
- 23:45Speaker 1: into school, and you can't change a two into a one,
- 23:51Speaker 1: and it looked like there was a fucking hole in
- 23:53Speaker 1: the paper. So I passed what they had then the
- 23:57Speaker 1: day the scholarship in England called the eleven plant that
- 24:01Speaker 1: then if you pass that allowed you to go onto
- 24:03Speaker 1: a much more elite school, a grammar school or a
- 24:06Speaker 1: technical school or whatever. So I passed that at ten
- 24:10Speaker 1: instead of eleven. So when I had to go to
- 24:13Speaker 1: register to the school, I had to take this birth
- 24:15Speaker 1: certificate with me. A man, was I embarrassed? I mean,
- 24:18Speaker 1: you could see through it. I went down, I was
- 24:20Speaker 1: dreading it and they didn't even look at the So
- 24:23Speaker 1: so I went through school, all the way through school,
- 24:26Speaker 1: a year younger then I really should have been. Okay, So,
- 24:32Speaker 1: how many kids in the family? Six? And where are
- 24:34Speaker 1: you in the hierarchy? The oldest? You're the oldest. How
- 24:38Speaker 1: much older are you than the youngest? Uh? The youngest Paul,
- 24:44Speaker 1: here's eighteen years younger than me. Okay, what's your relationship
- 24:48Speaker 1: with the other five? Fantastic a live No one of
- 24:52Speaker 1: them is not the boy my brother who was the
- 24:55Speaker 1: next one down to me, Alfie. He sadly died like
- 25:00Speaker 1: ten years ago. Um, he was the next one down
- 25:03Speaker 1: to me. He was great. He was a good heavyweight boxer.
- 25:07Speaker 1: He was good. Then I had two sisters. One now
- 25:10Speaker 1: lives in New Zealand, then my other sisters still lives
- 25:14Speaker 1: in London. And then the two youngest brothers both were
- 25:19Speaker 1: soccer players, I have to say soccer soccer players. They
- 25:25Speaker 1: both played at west Ham, but one of them became
- 25:27Speaker 1: much much more famous than the other one. And so
- 25:32Speaker 1: the elder of those two Alan, he's sixteen years younger
- 25:35Speaker 1: than me. He had his first proper game in the
- 25:38Speaker 1: Premier League when he was sixteen and he played in
- 25:43Speaker 1: the England World Cup when he was fourteen. He was
- 25:47Speaker 1: a very great player and he's known very well in England.
- 25:50Speaker 1: He had he had nineteen years as a player, played
- 25:54Speaker 1: for west Ham. He played for West and Villa, Birmingham
- 25:58Speaker 1: Great Teams and Brighton and then he ended up at
- 26:03Speaker 1: a club Charlton, which was in the Second at the
- 26:05Speaker 1: end of his playing career Second Division, and he became
- 26:10Speaker 1: the coach there and took them up into the Premiership.
- 26:13Speaker 1: And he had nineteen years as a manager and he's
- 26:17Speaker 1: now a man of leisure. Now he's a pundit. But
- 26:20Speaker 1: the other thing about it, when he became a star,
- 26:23Speaker 1: salaries were much lower. Oh yeah, he he was top
- 26:27Speaker 1: of the tree as a player, and I guess he
- 26:30Speaker 1: was making then three hundred pounds five hundred dollars a week.
- 26:36Speaker 1: By the time he became a manager, he was making
- 26:39Speaker 1: two or three million a year. So he ended up
- 26:43Speaker 1: being in the game long enough to his rewards. And
- 26:47Speaker 1: his kids are growing up now and he was constantly
- 26:51Speaker 1: being poached at one time to be the national manager
- 26:55Speaker 1: you know, um, And he said, well at the moment now,
- 27:00Speaker 1: the way it is, he said, there's four or five
- 27:02Speaker 1: teams with money all the rest want you to work
- 27:05Speaker 1: a miracle. He said, I've had like thirty eight years
- 27:08Speaker 1: of it. I'm chilled. And he goes and does quite
- 27:12Speaker 1: a bit of punditry from um. He goes to Qatar
- 27:16Speaker 1: and does it for around. I mean, you might see
- 27:19Speaker 1: him over so we were in America, we'd see it's
- 27:21Speaker 1: a broadcaster a college. Yeah, he's a pandit and a
- 27:23Speaker 1: broadcaster for the Premier League. And a lot of it
- 27:26Speaker 1: comes over here because it goes everywhere but the UK.
- 27:29Speaker 1: So I know lots of friends in America have seen
- 27:32Speaker 1: him pontificating after certain soccer slash woodball is getting bigger
- 27:37Speaker 1: and bigger. If Army Arsan was alive, it'd turn over
- 27:41Speaker 1: in his grave. I went to the World Cup with
- 27:45Speaker 1: Armored and Nessuy Hurtrican because Armored they were both manic. Well,
- 27:50Speaker 1: they brought the broad Pellade in New York exactly for
- 27:53Speaker 1: the Cosmos. And I went to the World Cup with
- 27:57Speaker 1: the pair of them, and we went down to Barcelona
- 28:00Speaker 1: for the semifinals and then into Madrid for the finals,
- 28:04Speaker 1: you know, and he was always and then he started
- 28:06Speaker 1: the Cosmos, and people thought, well, what's he doing. What
- 28:11Speaker 1: they didn't realize was that with the complete ethnic mixture
- 28:17Speaker 1: in America, you know, you had a sport there that
- 28:22Speaker 1: was appealing to them, whether they be Latin, American, Greek, this,
- 28:25Speaker 1: that Italian. But more to the point, it was a
- 28:29Speaker 1: sport that you had to be normal, normal higher. You
- 28:32Speaker 1: didn't have to be three hundred pounds, you didn't have
- 28:34Speaker 1: to be seven ft tall like basketball. It was for
- 28:37Speaker 1: normal size. So that's why it took off right me
- 28:42Speaker 1: out on the street. So going back to your five siblings,
- 28:45Speaker 1: did any of them ever work for you, well, my
- 28:48Speaker 1: younger brother. They did actually, but I only sold that.
- 28:52Speaker 1: I did a huge show in the football stadium in London,
- 28:57Speaker 1: and I had my brother, the one who who's deceased
- 29:00Speaker 1: healthy and the one Alan who was the soccer player.
- 29:03Speaker 1: They were selling programs and merchandise for me. And then
- 29:06Speaker 1: it was four or five weeks after that that he
- 29:10Speaker 1: got his first game, my brother for West Ham Um
- 29:14Speaker 1: and they played Newcastle and he scored the first goal
- 29:18Speaker 1: sixteen years of age, and he made the winner. And
- 29:21Speaker 1: that night they said on TV a star was born today.
- 29:27Speaker 1: Of course you would never come to work for me
- 29:28Speaker 1: again after course, after that. Okay, So you were a
- 29:32Speaker 1: good student. Yeah, I was a good student. I was
- 29:35Speaker 1: unruly and and disciplined, but I found a lot of
- 29:41Speaker 1: it easy. Okay. So you went to school and you
- 29:44Speaker 1: finished what we call high school here and then and
- 29:47Speaker 1: he thought of getting any more education, or you said
- 29:50Speaker 1: I'm done, I'm not going to school anymore. No, I
- 29:52Speaker 1: didn't know. I'm done. I had to get get out
- 29:55Speaker 1: and get a living. We were a very poor family.
- 29:57Speaker 1: We lived in a very poor area and it was
- 30:01Speaker 1: necessary to go to work, you know. So that's what
- 30:04Speaker 1: I did. Your whole you're seventeen and you're going to work. Well, yeah,
- 30:08Speaker 1: I was supposed to be seventeen, but I was really sixty,
- 30:12Speaker 1: and so for me it was work. And then I
- 30:15Speaker 1: went in of all things, I went into this boy
- 30:18Speaker 1: Mike sure I'm telling you about who was paralyzed. We
- 30:21Speaker 1: both decided we wanted to go in the merchant Navy.
- 30:24Speaker 1: We wanted to see a bit of the world, and
- 30:27Speaker 1: our plans were disrupted a little bit by the fact
- 30:30Speaker 1: that we had to go on different boats. So the
- 30:32Speaker 1: first time I ever came to America was as a
- 30:37Speaker 1: emergency seamen. When was that, oh funk that I was?
- 30:41Speaker 1: That was fifty nine, Okay, fifty nine, I was seventeen. Okay,
- 30:47Speaker 1: let's go. How long were you a merchant seamen? I
- 30:52Speaker 1: did one long five and a half months trip, which
- 30:56Speaker 1: took seven months because every time I got somewhere good,
- 30:58Speaker 1: I jumped right and I was what you would call
- 31:02Speaker 1: a distressed British seman. Okay, what did you actually do
- 31:06Speaker 1: on the boat? A mixture of things. I was originally
- 31:11Speaker 1: what you would call a comy waiter, but after that
- 31:15Speaker 1: it wasn't much else. I mean, I was scrubbing stuff. Um,
- 31:20Speaker 1: look picking up ship, you know it was it sounds
- 31:22Speaker 1: like hard work. It was hard work. Okay. So the
- 31:25Speaker 1: first time he came to New York, do you were
- 31:27Speaker 1: just on the border. You got to experience New York. No,
- 31:30Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying to you. I came New York.
- 31:32Speaker 1: You have a few days off. I got to Los
- 31:35Speaker 1: Angeles show days off. The big slap was from Los
- 31:40Speaker 1: Angeles to Tokyo. That was heavy. I remember it was
- 31:44Speaker 1: really heavy. Seas Um. I didn't come back to the
- 31:47Speaker 1: ship in Tokyo. I hooked up with a girl there
- 31:50Speaker 1: in Japan, and I was there for a week or two,
- 31:53Speaker 1: picked up another boat, and that's when I was classed
- 31:57Speaker 1: as a distressed British seman um. So I did that
- 32:02Speaker 1: in a couple of places. So let's go back to
- 32:04Speaker 1: the girl in Tokyo. This is a Japanese woman, of
- 32:08Speaker 1: course it was. You could have bet it, you could
- 32:10Speaker 1: have met it. No, she was Japanese, okay, and she
- 32:14Speaker 1: didn't speak English. I don't think only a little bit.
- 32:17Speaker 1: But I'm telling you, if you get a lot for
- 32:19Speaker 1: an Elvis Presley album in those days, and okay, you
- 32:24Speaker 1: you ever have any contact other than that week no, okay,
- 32:28Speaker 1: So now you ultimately make it back to the UK,
- 32:31Speaker 1: now you are seventeen, then what do you do? Well,
- 32:36Speaker 1: I did's various various work on building, science and ship
- 32:40Speaker 1: you know. And yeah, so then and it wasn't that long.
- 32:47Speaker 1: It was a number of years afterwards that I joined
- 32:49Speaker 1: by Track Records. But I hustled around a bit, had
- 32:55Speaker 1: various jobs. Well did you what were you thinking in
- 32:59Speaker 1: your head? This is going to be my whole life
- 33:01Speaker 1: for I'm gonna do something different. I'm gonna have a
- 33:02Speaker 1: big score. Uh not really because at that age, and
- 33:09Speaker 1: this is how I think about my my kids today.
- 33:11Speaker 1: You know, I didn't really focus too much on the
- 33:15Speaker 1: future and time. I never ever thought, I mean, to me,
- 33:19Speaker 1: people of forty years of age were old of course,
- 33:22Speaker 1: you know. So oh and I went to Jersey in
- 33:24Speaker 1: the Channel Islands. I had a great time there. For
- 33:28Speaker 1: a year. I was working with the divers and they
- 33:30Speaker 1: were widening the dock there. So they used to dive
- 33:35Speaker 1: with explosives because it was a very narrow inlet into
- 33:40Speaker 1: the into the docks in St Helier. So I worked
- 33:43Speaker 1: with them and they were like they used to clear it,
- 33:46Speaker 1: you know, detonate it. Get rid of the rock and
- 33:48Speaker 1: clear it. So I had a great year there with them.
- 33:51Speaker 1: Came back because in those days a lot of young
- 33:54Speaker 1: people used to go. That was the place to go,
- 33:57Speaker 1: the Jersey in the Channel Liners. Lots of fun, lots
- 34:01Speaker 1: of girls, lots of everything, you know. So I went
- 34:04Speaker 1: back for that year, came back for like five or
- 34:08Speaker 1: six months. Then I went back again for another six
- 34:10Speaker 1: months and had some great times, you know. And I
- 34:13Speaker 1: was a ski bum after carcind of thing. You're not
- 34:16Speaker 1: making any money, but you do what you want doing
- 34:18Speaker 1: what you're doing. Yes, So it traveled around a lot
- 34:20Speaker 1: and it was great, okay, and then you come back
- 34:29Speaker 1: and you start working with your buddy. Where is there
- 34:33Speaker 1: something else you want me to tell you? Yeah, when
- 34:39Speaker 1: I was twenty one, I was arrested for a crime, okay,
- 34:45Speaker 1: and it was a crime that I didn't commit. As
- 34:49Speaker 1: I sit here now and everybody knows, it's a bit
- 34:52Speaker 1: of a legend in the East End that I was
- 34:56Speaker 1: charged with an armed robbery along with four the guys
- 35:01Speaker 1: and I wasn't involved in it. Um so anyway they
- 35:06Speaker 1: put me onto it. And this can only happen in
- 35:09Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. It wouldn't happen today. So they put
- 35:13Speaker 1: me on an identity parade. What do you mean is
- 35:18Speaker 1: that's a line up and if somebody chooses it. So
- 35:21Speaker 1: I'm in a lineup and I'm picked out by a policeman.
- 35:24Speaker 1: And this policeman said he was riding along on his
- 35:27Speaker 1: bicycle and he saw these guys Robin an armored vain
- 35:33Speaker 1: and the guy that he saw running away was five
- 35:37Speaker 1: ft eight with frizzy, bushy hair. The judge is a
- 35:44Speaker 1: wonderful man. I hope he's still fucking dying from cancer.
- 35:48Speaker 1: He said, Well, members of the jury, you might think
- 35:53Speaker 1: that curbishly. If he was running and stooped over, he
- 35:56Speaker 1: would look five for eight and with the wind rushing
- 36:00Speaker 1: in through his hair, it would look frizzy. That's ridiculous. Indeed,
- 36:05Speaker 1: So there was that, And there was one other woman
- 36:09Speaker 1: who said she saw somebody jumped from this land rather
- 36:14Speaker 1: and she said, when she saw me in the lineup,
- 36:17Speaker 1: she said maybe, But on eight previous identity parades she
- 36:24Speaker 1: picked out somebody definitely, and they were all innocent people.
- 36:29Speaker 1: And that's the evidence. That is the total evidence, right,
- 36:33Speaker 1: So other than the fact that two of the other
- 36:38Speaker 1: guys who were charged with the robbery. They were friends
- 36:41Speaker 1: of mine and known to be friends of mine, and
- 36:43Speaker 1: they did commit their they were part of him. Some
- 36:47Speaker 1: sentenced to fifteen years. You're a sentence. Well, let's go
- 36:51Speaker 1: a little bit slower. You don't have any money. What
- 36:53Speaker 1: do you do for a lawyer? You get what's called
- 36:56Speaker 1: legal aids. Okay, you get public defender here, but use
- 37:00Speaker 1: your public defender. Here's a million cases. And you don't
- 37:02Speaker 1: get such a good defense. You don't get such a
- 37:04Speaker 1: good defense. But the QC I had was really quite good. Okay,
- 37:10Speaker 1: just one more time. So they arrested you. Why because
- 37:14Speaker 1: they had already arrested four other guys, and two of
- 37:19Speaker 1: them were friends of mine, and I was a known
- 37:21Speaker 1: associate with them, so they thought, why not him. I
- 37:25Speaker 1: have to ask before this, this particular arm robbery, were
- 37:29Speaker 1: you involved in any illicit activities with those other two? No? No,
- 37:33Speaker 1: but I was a known friend, and that I'm just
- 37:35Speaker 1: trying to say the way you said non friend, Medis
- 37:37Speaker 1: had a sinister elevance, know, and we went we went
- 37:39Speaker 1: to drinking clubs and things like that, you know. So
- 37:43Speaker 1: so anyway, I was a known associate. Right, So now
- 37:45Speaker 1: you're in court you say you have a good public defender,
- 37:49Speaker 1: and you got fifteen years. So then what happened? I
- 37:53Speaker 1: went to prison and uh so, I mean, you couldn't
- 37:57Speaker 1: write all of this, It's just I went to prison.
- 38:01Speaker 1: So the first prison, I went to. Second prison, I
- 38:05Speaker 1: went to Hope I'm by the way. The other guys
- 38:10Speaker 1: who were convicted all made statements saying that I was innocent,
- 38:14Speaker 1: because they did before we do senses. Yeah, no, no,
- 38:17Speaker 1: they said you were innocent. Yeah, they said I was innocent,
- 38:20Speaker 1: but nobody took much regard of that. So we had
- 38:23Speaker 1: an appeal and obviously died. So did they also get
- 38:28Speaker 1: fifteen years or all of them? So I then went
- 38:30Speaker 1: to um one prison. Then I went to a notorious
- 38:34Speaker 1: prison called Dartmoor, which is in the moors and way
- 38:39Speaker 1: way in the wilderness in England. Whoever designed it must
- 38:43Speaker 1: have been a total mesochist, or say this rather anyway,
- 38:48Speaker 1: um I eventually I tried to escape from there. And
- 38:51Speaker 1: then now from watching the movies, they say, if you escape,
- 38:56Speaker 1: you know you don't get out early. That's right, So
- 38:59Speaker 1: what was going through your head? I just wanted to
- 39:01Speaker 1: get out, you know, I mean, I knew I was innocent.
- 39:04Speaker 1: I just wanted out and I thought, rightly or wrongly,
- 39:10Speaker 1: I thought, if I get out, I can try and
- 39:12Speaker 1: do something about this, prove it, or go missing. I
- 39:15Speaker 1: just to me at twenty one years of age, you know. So, Um,
- 39:22Speaker 1: I tried to escape with another guy and as a
- 39:25Speaker 1: result of that, they sent me to a very very
- 39:29Speaker 1: high security prison. Just so I know, did you actually
- 39:33Speaker 1: get outside the prison wall? No? No, we had keys.
- 39:36Speaker 1: A guy made keys for us, and um, somebody must
- 39:40Speaker 1: have said something because the next thing I knew was
- 39:42Speaker 1: the doors smashed open. I'm taken out at five am
- 39:46Speaker 1: in the morning, and I'm taken from the West Country
- 39:50Speaker 1: all the way up north past Newcastle to a place
- 39:54Speaker 1: called Durham. And in Durham they had a special special wing,
- 39:59Speaker 1: high high security. And when I tell you, I went
- 40:03Speaker 1: in there and there were twenty other prisoners and I
- 40:06Speaker 1: was the shortest sentence of fifteen years, and five of
- 40:12Speaker 1: them were great train robbers. Really, yeah, okay, did you
- 40:16Speaker 1: have was it like isolation or you so you so
- 40:20Speaker 1: you could talk to our these people? Yeah? We we
- 40:22Speaker 1: became great friends. We mixed together and we became great friends.
- 40:28Speaker 1: And I then a couple of years later, and you're
- 40:35Speaker 1: talking about my We were talking about my sister who
- 40:37Speaker 1: lives in New Zealand. She came to visit me because
- 40:40Speaker 1: she was leaving to go to New Zealand, and as
- 40:44Speaker 1: she was leaving, a little incident occurred. And the upshot
- 40:51Speaker 1: of that was the next day I attacked a prison
- 40:55Speaker 1: order as a result of what he said on my
- 40:57Speaker 1: visit and the insults and my sister. So I attacked
- 41:02Speaker 1: the prison mortar order and it was it was a
- 41:08Speaker 1: nice attack, really because it wasn't that physical. I just
- 41:12Speaker 1: put a whole pot of piss all over his head,
- 41:17Speaker 1: so I got them moved. But the key to the
- 41:20Speaker 1: story is that during all this time I had a solicitor,
- 41:25Speaker 1: a young man who was absolutely convinced by innocence, and
- 41:31Speaker 1: he was fighting to try and get me released, and
- 41:34Speaker 1: he came along to see me. As a result of
- 41:37Speaker 1: this thing in Durham with the prison guard, they moved
- 41:41Speaker 1: me to Lincoln in the Midlands, and he came to
- 41:46Speaker 1: see me and he was continuously trying to get something
- 41:49Speaker 1: done about my case. And then one day the governor
- 41:54Speaker 1: came into my cell. I was in isolation and he
- 41:58Speaker 1: came in is the government and the runs of prison. Yeah,
- 42:01Speaker 1: the governor, yeah, the chief warden. And he said, look,
- 42:05Speaker 1: he said, I've just been to London. His name was
- 42:08Speaker 1: Fred Owens. He said, I've just been to London. He said,
- 42:12Speaker 1: I met a couple of friends of yours. I said really,
- 42:15Speaker 1: he said yeah, he said, and they told me all
- 42:18Speaker 1: about what had happened to you. So I said, well, okay,
- 42:22Speaker 1: what are you going to do about it? He said, well,
- 42:25Speaker 1: I can't do anything really, he said, but if you
- 42:27Speaker 1: stay out of trouble for three months, I'll get your
- 42:31Speaker 1: moved to London so you can deal with your case
- 42:33Speaker 1: and your solicitors much more easily being in London. So
- 42:39Speaker 1: I said okay. So I stayed out of trouble, and
- 42:42Speaker 1: true to his word, he got me moved down to London,
- 42:45Speaker 1: and then I had access to my lawyer and other
- 42:50Speaker 1: people helping me on a much more daily basis. And
- 42:55Speaker 1: my lawyer was at that time solicitor, was friends with
- 42:59Speaker 1: a journalist and he was an independent journalist who wrote
- 43:02Speaker 1: for the Times, and so he um did a story
- 43:08Speaker 1: and it was front page on one of the Sunday papers.
- 43:12Speaker 1: This man is innocent. So as a result of that,
- 43:17Speaker 1: I got a re hearing in the in the Courts
- 43:21Speaker 1: of Law with not with a jury, but with three judges,
- 43:28Speaker 1: and they heard all the new evidence and everything, and
- 43:31Speaker 1: they refused it. And I was going back to the
- 43:34Speaker 1: prison and I never forget this. I was going back
- 43:36Speaker 1: to the prison in a vein. It was just before
- 43:39Speaker 1: Christmas and I'm on Tottenham Court Road and I saw
- 43:44Speaker 1: a bus and it was advertising the movie The Graduate,
- 43:49Speaker 1: and I think it was Jeremy or something, and he said,
- 43:51Speaker 1: this is Jeremy and he's worried about his future. And
- 43:57Speaker 1: it was great. Within Over the Christmas there was a
- 44:01Speaker 1: postal strike, so nothing much was getting through. Straight after
- 44:05Speaker 1: the Christmas, I was again, I've chosen at that time
- 44:10Speaker 1: to be a lot on my own, because you go
- 44:12Speaker 1: through cycles where you don't want to really mix too
- 44:14Speaker 1: much with people. You want to chill a bit more
- 44:17Speaker 1: on your own, you know. So I'm in the cell
- 44:20Speaker 1: and the doors opened and the guard said you're wanted
- 44:23Speaker 1: over at the parole at the parole office. I said,
- 44:26Speaker 1: go fuck off. I thought it was friends of mine playing.
- 44:30Speaker 1: I said, I'm not due for parole for another light
- 44:32Speaker 1: four or five years or even longer. He said, I'm
- 44:36Speaker 1: telling you get changed out of your working year. You're
- 44:40Speaker 1: wanted over, I said, I said, fuck off. So they
- 44:42Speaker 1: then sent up the principal officer and I told him
- 44:46Speaker 1: the same. So they dragged me over to the parole
- 44:49Speaker 1: office in the dressed in overalls and everything, and took
- 44:55Speaker 1: me in front of the parole board. So they said,
- 44:58Speaker 1: we've considered your case and we've think you're suitable for parole.
- 45:02Speaker 1: I said, well, how do you work that one out?
- 45:04Speaker 1: I said, I've got another five or six years to
- 45:06Speaker 1: do and I don't think I've been a model prisoner.
- 45:11Speaker 1: How about telling me I'm eligible for parole because I'm innocent.
- 45:17Speaker 1: So the head of the parole board said to me, listen,
- 45:20Speaker 1: I want you to go outside for five minutes and
- 45:24Speaker 1: consider what I'm saying to you. He said, whatever, if
- 45:28Speaker 1: you're out there on a working out scheme, you will
- 45:33Speaker 1: be able to do much more for yourself then you
- 45:38Speaker 1: will in here. He said, go outside and think for
- 45:41Speaker 1: a bit. So I came back in and he said well,
- 45:45Speaker 1: I said, okay. He said, well, we're moving you to
- 45:49Speaker 1: Penterville Prison, which was in North London. He said, and
- 45:53Speaker 1: as of we'll move you there in two weeks time,
- 45:56Speaker 1: and as of that time, you have to find a job,
- 46:00Speaker 1: You go out to work, you come back every night
- 46:06Speaker 1: to the prison, except that you have weekends at home.
- 46:11Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a half way house. Yeah,
- 46:13Speaker 1: that's where it happened. So where did I go to
- 46:16Speaker 1: get my interview? Mike? Sure track records? Okay, so what
- 46:21Speaker 1: year do you get it? Go on parole? Okay? So
- 46:26Speaker 1: you're in jail for how long? Six and a half years? Okay?
- 46:31Speaker 1: You know this is a bad analogy, but they say
- 46:35Speaker 1: in football, if you play one game, you're never the
- 46:38Speaker 1: same same thing like being if you're homeless for two weeks,
- 46:40Speaker 1: you're never the same. You're in jail for six and
- 46:43Speaker 1: a half years. How did that change it as a person?
- 46:50Speaker 1: I think it changed me tremendously. I've got to say
- 46:53Speaker 1: that for many years after that, I was fueled by anger.
- 46:59Speaker 1: We're out any doubts all. I was fueled by anger
- 47:03Speaker 1: when I drink on it, and but then that dissipated
- 47:08Speaker 1: after a while and when I was able to really
- 47:12Speaker 1: really reflect on it all, I think in some strange ways,
- 47:16Speaker 1: Although I wouldn't like to turn the clock back and
- 47:19Speaker 1: do it all again, I think I gained some intangibles,
- 47:24Speaker 1: intangible assets from that time, I mean, how to deal
- 47:28Speaker 1: with people, how to deal with myself and to deal
- 47:31Speaker 1: with people and to deal with their adverse situations. I
- 47:35Speaker 1: think that if you speak to most people that know me,
- 47:41Speaker 1: I'm a very calm person. I don't get dramatic. Nothing
- 47:48Speaker 1: phases me. Really, to be honest and nobody. So I
- 47:54Speaker 1: think I came out of it with a lot of assets.
- 47:59Speaker 1: To you think you're only calm because you went to prison.
- 48:03Speaker 1: I think I learned. Yeah, I think I learned how
- 48:05Speaker 1: to how to meditate on staff, how to how to
- 48:09Speaker 1: deal with it. Um ironically, I mean, as I said,
- 48:13Speaker 1: you couldn't write this script because I made a movie
- 48:17Speaker 1: not long after coming out about the prison I was in,
- 48:20Speaker 1: starring Roger Daltrey, called mc vicar exactly, and that was
- 48:25Speaker 1: the place I was in. So you know, who would
- 48:29Speaker 1: have thought two years, three years later on making this movie.
- 48:32Speaker 1: Of course, as they say, we're getting your story right here.
- 48:35Speaker 1: But you know, in today's prison movies were the reason
- 48:38Speaker 1: I mentioned it is because Roger mentions it in his books.
- 48:41Speaker 1: So I saw the movie when it came out. I
- 48:43Speaker 1: sided westbod Connecticut. He mentions the whole thing about me
- 48:46Speaker 1: being in prison and so on in the book. So
- 48:48Speaker 1: and I'm it's nothing that I'm ashamed of, you know
- 48:51Speaker 1: what I mean? Innocent? Yeah, in fact exactly, And so
- 48:56Speaker 1: as they all knew, and those periods, I've got people
- 49:03Speaker 1: who have been pushing me and pushing me for a
- 49:05Speaker 1: few years to either bank a movie or do do
- 49:08Speaker 1: a TV series around it. Um. I was quite reluctant
- 49:12Speaker 1: to do any of that when my children were younger.
- 49:15Speaker 1: I didn't want to embarrass them. And you know, our
- 49:18Speaker 1: cruel some children can be to others when they were
- 49:20Speaker 1: in store. But now that they're adults, they're pressing me
- 49:24Speaker 1: to do it. So I'm looking at seriously doing it,
- 49:26Speaker 1: you know. Okay, But I have to ask, what was
- 49:31Speaker 1: it like being in prison every day the same as
- 49:35Speaker 1: every other day. Well, they talk about men reaping and gangs,
- 49:39Speaker 1: and that wasn't any of that in those days. You
- 49:43Speaker 1: there was men being raped in those days, but it
- 49:47Speaker 1: was very tough. You didn't have the ship you got today,
- 49:49Speaker 1: you didn't have telephones. You've got one visit a month,
- 49:53Speaker 1: that's what you got. Um, And it wasn't so so orientated.
- 50:02Speaker 1: But also I was quite fortunate because I knew whatever
- 50:09Speaker 1: prison I went into, I knew a few people, now
- 50:13Speaker 1: you know, And as I said, I became very friendly
- 50:16Speaker 1: and Durham with five of the train robbers who remained friends. Um.
- 50:22Speaker 1: So I never had a problem in prison, m h.
- 50:26Speaker 1: And it's a bit different in when you're in what's
- 50:29Speaker 1: called a high category, top security long term prison. It's
- 50:35Speaker 1: a bit different. Okay, So why are you in prison?
- 50:38Speaker 1: Before you get out? You knew? Could you envision getting
- 50:42Speaker 1: out of prison at one time? And what you're gonna do?
- 50:46Speaker 1: When we were in Durham, the then Home Secretary was
- 50:49Speaker 1: the main called Roy Jenkins, and he he put us
- 50:53Speaker 1: under armed guard with machine guns and sam bags because
- 50:57Speaker 1: he said that he had heard from a good authority
- 51:00Speaker 1: that the train robbers were going to blow the wall
- 51:02Speaker 1: down to escape. And I used to walk around that
- 51:05Speaker 1: little yard convincing myself I would have as much good
- 51:10Speaker 1: luck as I as I've had bad luck. And indeed
- 51:14Speaker 1: God has been good. I've had more good luck than
- 51:17Speaker 1: bad luck, and I'm very very grateful. What was your
- 51:20Speaker 1: romeetic situation before, during and after prison? Before I went
- 51:26Speaker 1: into prison, I was with a girl, and when I
- 51:30Speaker 1: went into the prison, I said, you better forget about me.
- 51:35Speaker 1: I'm dead. And I didn't see her or anybody other
- 51:41Speaker 1: than my immediate family for all those years. And when
- 51:48Speaker 1: I was telling you about getting the retrial that was
- 51:51Speaker 1: on a front page news, I went downstairs to the
- 51:55Speaker 1: censor and I said, I don't want any letters coming
- 51:58Speaker 1: through here from crazy people, right because now it's in
- 52:02Speaker 1: the nose. I don't want that ship. I only want
- 52:04Speaker 1: letters from all the correspondents have been corresponding with me
- 52:07Speaker 1: for the last six years. And a postcard came through
- 52:11Speaker 1: from this girl and she had been married during that
- 52:17Speaker 1: period and divorced, and she had two children. So I
- 52:24Speaker 1: had her down to visit me, and then within a
- 52:28Speaker 1: couple of months I was out and we eventually married.
- 52:33Speaker 1: I adopted to two children, one of them lives here,
- 52:36Speaker 1: and we married and then we had She worked with
- 52:41Speaker 1: me all those years with the WHO, and we eventually
- 52:47Speaker 1: divorced after twenty five years, and then sadly she died
- 52:51Speaker 1: last year. Okay, two years ago. Why did you get divorced?
- 52:56Speaker 1: We just grew apart, we really did, you know? We
- 52:59Speaker 1: grew apart as people. Um, But it was good before that.
- 53:04Speaker 1: It was great before that. Yeah. It was good before that,
- 53:06Speaker 1: and we were soul mates and we were, but she
- 53:10Speaker 1: changed and I changed. Okay, so now you're working at
- 53:14Speaker 1: track Records. One of the things I did do just
- 53:19Speaker 1: I'm thirty one year sober, unclean, and that's when I
- 53:27Speaker 1: stopped drinking whatever. And then it changed everything I think.
- 53:34Speaker 1: And then in we divorced, you know, okay, I have
- 53:39Speaker 1: to ask it. Did she still drink? Yeah, but she
- 53:42Speaker 1: wasn't a big drinker. Okay, So when were you always
- 53:44Speaker 1: a big drinker? Oh? Yeah? And anything other than alcohol,
- 53:49Speaker 1: not really. I dabbled with I dabbled with marijuana. Um,
- 53:56Speaker 1: I had a little experiment with cocaine, but it wasn't
- 53:59Speaker 1: my drug. My my drug was alcohol. Okay, So how
- 54:02Speaker 1: did you go? Moivate you to get clean? I stopped,
- 54:06Speaker 1: But what motivated you? I had a young guy who
- 54:09Speaker 1: was an accountant who started with me when I first started,
- 54:13Speaker 1: and he was coming home from a party in the
- 54:16Speaker 1: early hours of the morning and he killed an old
- 54:19Speaker 1: lady on the crossing. And I was such a pig
- 54:22Speaker 1: in those days. Nobody could tell me not to drive
- 54:25Speaker 1: when I was drunk. And I stopped short and I thought,
- 54:30Speaker 1: what are you going to do. If it's someone's son,
- 54:33Speaker 1: someone's daughter, you know, you don't listen to people. And
- 54:38Speaker 1: I thought about it long and hard, and I stopped,
- 54:42Speaker 1: and I started getting fit and training, and I got
- 54:44Speaker 1: through the first Christmas because I didn't say this is forever.
- 54:50Speaker 1: But I stopped, and I got through the first Christmas,
- 54:54Speaker 1: and then before I knew it, I was into a
- 54:56Speaker 1: second Christmas. I had a similar situation. My life was
- 55:01Speaker 1: too crazy. I was arrusted for drunk driving and then
- 55:04Speaker 1: you get summary probation, which means within the two years,
- 55:09Speaker 1: if you get stopped at all with any alcohol, you
- 55:11Speaker 1: lose your license. This is l a. You have to
- 55:14Speaker 1: have a driver's license. And you know, the name of
- 55:16Speaker 1: the game is delay. So in the window for when
- 55:19Speaker 1: I was first arrested the night John Lennon uh was killed,
- 55:23Speaker 1: till going to jail, going to court, like eight months later,
- 55:27Speaker 1: I was stopped again on the freeway and I said,
- 55:31Speaker 1: so then once it was summary, I didn't get They
- 55:34Speaker 1: let me go, but I was stopped again. I said,
- 55:36Speaker 1: this couldn't happen. I said, you know, I'm not gonna
- 55:39Speaker 1: drive within eight hours, have a good drink. And then
- 55:41Speaker 1: I was I mean, I've told this story before I
- 55:43Speaker 1: one on one. I probably go on it fur the lake.
- 55:46Speaker 1: But I started to see this woman in there's the
- 55:48Speaker 1: beginning of sushi, so you would go, this is West Hollywood,
- 55:52Speaker 1: and okay, if I drank saki, I had to stay
- 55:55Speaker 1: at her house, which was a good thing until one
- 55:59Speaker 1: night she bit me. And there's a long story after that.
- 56:04Speaker 1: But uh then she said she would never do it again.
- 56:08Speaker 1: She did again. I said, my life is just too complicated.
- 56:11Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop drinking, you know, I gotta be able
- 56:14Speaker 1: to drive whatever. And I was not tending to quit forever,
- 56:17Speaker 1: just like you. And then all of a sudden, because
- 56:20Speaker 1: you know, the first couple of months is hard. It's
- 56:23Speaker 1: not the miss alcohol. So what you missed the lifestyle.
- 56:26Speaker 1: You know, it's a lifestyle. What's relevant, it's where did
- 56:30Speaker 1: she bite you? She didn't buy me where that's where
- 56:35Speaker 1: we go, and she bought me bit me on the Netflix.
- 56:39Speaker 1: So you understand where I'm coming from that because you know,
- 56:44Speaker 1: lots of other people whose names remained nameless now you
- 56:48Speaker 1: know they're famous answers or whatever, all stopped around that
- 56:52Speaker 1: same time or just after me, you know, and we
- 56:56Speaker 1: frequently see each other and they're clean and dry, and
- 57:00Speaker 1: why they're still alive. They really are well. I mean,
- 57:03Speaker 1: as they say, one thing, I know, you know because
- 57:06Speaker 1: l A you can. This is another thing. I ran
- 57:07Speaker 1: into somebody who wanted to be reasonable with and I
- 57:10Speaker 1: had had a couple of drinks and he didn't he
- 57:11Speaker 1: could tell. They said, whenever I'm in a situation, I
- 57:14Speaker 1: want to have all my marbles with me, and you know,
- 57:18Speaker 1: I don't really have the urge anymore. And sometimes when
- 57:20Speaker 1: you're a restaurant it's midnight and they've had a couple
- 57:22Speaker 1: of bottles that everybody's having a good time. But I
- 57:25Speaker 1: also remember what was wigging up was exactly and I
- 57:29Speaker 1: never I never do because honestly, our older wife, for
- 57:35Speaker 1: my wife and friends, it never occurs to me. It's
- 57:37Speaker 1: a different life. And my two kids. I've got a
- 57:40Speaker 1: daughter of twenty three with this current marriage, and a
- 57:43Speaker 1: boy of twenty one. And they've never seen me drunk,
- 57:46Speaker 1: which is great, right, right right. They've seen me grumpy,
- 57:50Speaker 1: they've seen whatever they've seen me in mood swings, but
- 57:53Speaker 1: never seen me like that, which is very very important
- 57:56Speaker 1: because it's not it's not do what I say is
- 58:01Speaker 1: do what I do you know. Well, that's what the
- 58:03Speaker 1: other thing you mentioned about driving drunk. I went to
- 58:05Speaker 1: college in Mark. This is on the dark era. That's
- 58:08Speaker 1: not ad whatever. That's what we used to do. You
- 58:11Speaker 1: get drunk and we're gonna go out driving. I remember
- 58:13Speaker 1: I lived in Utah sche Bump for a couple years.
- 58:15Speaker 1: I remember, and that's a pretty you know, dangerous road
- 58:18Speaker 1: driving back down to the canyon don the canyon. I
- 58:20Speaker 1: remember one morning I woke up and I had to
- 58:22Speaker 1: go out and look at my car and said, you know,
- 58:24Speaker 1: is my car really here? And intact I literally went
- 58:27Speaker 1: around the whole Guy said, I just can't believe I
- 58:29Speaker 1: lived in Spain. And the honestly, the road around the
- 58:34Speaker 1: mountain to where I lived was one car wide. He's
- 58:38Speaker 1: shaking his hits on the time hour survived. But you know,
- 58:43Speaker 1: there's another side to it all as well. I mean, um,
- 58:46Speaker 1: I know that some of the artists I was with
- 58:48Speaker 1: some but maybe two, I don't know, one of them
- 58:52Speaker 1: sort of resented it or couldn't understand it, or you know,
- 58:56Speaker 1: whether there's an element of I would like to be
- 58:59Speaker 1: like that in it, or little element you know, having
- 59:02Speaker 1: work with I don't know whether it's worse with English people.
- 59:06Speaker 1: But up until first of all, this was before mothers
- 59:09Speaker 1: against drum driving, but up until sometime in the nineties
- 59:13Speaker 1: when it became kind of cool not to drink. Oh
- 59:15Speaker 1: you actually get shipped. You got to a bar, hey
- 59:17Speaker 1: have one, and they exactly, well it's all like bring
- 59:21Speaker 1: them into the into the group, exactly, it makes them
- 59:24Speaker 1: feel better. But coming back to the the reasons as well,
- 59:29Speaker 1: is that this young solicitor I was telling you about
- 59:32Speaker 1: who fought for me and for me, I saw him
- 59:37Speaker 1: when I was released, and I didn't see him for
- 59:39Speaker 1: a while after that, and then lo and behold, it
- 59:42Speaker 1: moved to San Francisco and I saw him in San
- 59:46Speaker 1: Francisco in seventy three. He had two little baby girls, twins,
- 59:52Speaker 1: and he came with me to the count Palace, which
- 59:55Speaker 1: was the infamous night when the fake drummer Keith Moon
- 59:59Speaker 1: falls off the drum right right. And so I never
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: saw him after that for all those years, and then
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: I saw him two years ago. He's now a rebi
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: in Israel. That's a crazy story. That is crazy, really crazy, okay,
- 1:00:22Speaker 1: But he was not the person who killed somebody. That
- 1:00:25Speaker 1: was somebody else in your office. Oh yeah, that was
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: an account. Okay, I just want to make sure I
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: got the story this. This is a solicitor who understand
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: who who defended me? Right? I understand through. Okay, So
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: a different question. Um, you said it earlier that you
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: were always a big music fan. Yeah, so what did
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: that look like? Did your parents play music in the house?
- 1:00:45Speaker 1: How did you be going? Oh? Yeah, my mom was
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: a singer. She used to sing in pups. My dad
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: used to drink and she used to sing, and she
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: was a good singer, and and her her sister, my aunt.
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: So it was music. Music. And then as a young man, Um,
- 1:01:02Speaker 1: we were mods. So we would go out what quadraphenia
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: is all about. Really, we would go out on a
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: Friday night and we'd come back Monday morning and go
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: to work. I mean, we were industrious, the MUDs. We
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: weren't living off Social Security. And I would go out,
- 1:01:22Speaker 1: go to wherever we were going, where the MUDs went,
- 1:01:24Speaker 1: and then a lot with a couple of pals, we'd
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: go down to what was then a notorious black area,
- 1:01:31Speaker 1: Cable Street in Stepane, and they had all these small
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: sabines and clubs, and that's I don't know what shebine
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: is a word for a club, and it was all
- 1:01:43Speaker 1: blue beat reggae, and that was it for me, you know.
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: And it was all about Prince baster King pleasure all
- 1:01:51Speaker 1: those songs that were coming in and a lot of
- 1:01:53Speaker 1: that stuff was brought in by American g ias after
- 1:01:56Speaker 1: the Second World War, you know, and and then brought
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: crossed through from from the Caribbean, from Jamaica. So music
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: was very much in my blood. And then I gravitated
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: a bit from that to jazz, became a real real
- 1:02:11Speaker 1: aviad jazz fan, you know, all the way through. And
- 1:02:15Speaker 1: so it was in my blood, okay, And I never realized.
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: Um so when you're saying about what did I gain
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: from that? I found something that hopefully I'm reasonably good at.
- 1:02:33Speaker 1: And I'm forever grateful for that because I found something
- 1:02:39Speaker 1: in my life that I think I'm pretty good at.
- 1:02:43Speaker 1: And the people I work for and I stressed for
- 1:02:47Speaker 1: and with I feel the same. So it worked out
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: certainly from our viewpoint. Um, you know, we only heard
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: about it, we ultimly the movie Quadraphenia and Elite seven,
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: but we read about the Margin rockers what was really
- 1:03:03Speaker 1: going on there? Well, I'm doing it. I'm working on
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: a TV series at the moment, just going to explore
- 1:03:09Speaker 1: the whole cultural change. Is going to be three series,
- 1:03:14Speaker 1: the whole cultural change after the Second World War in England,
- 1:03:19Speaker 1: and it's quite phenomenal because what happened was I went
- 1:03:24Speaker 1: to meet some people at a C a m C.
- 1:03:26Speaker 1: And they said, how would you sum this up? You
- 1:03:29Speaker 1: mean like AMC movie theater. Okay, So they said, well,
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: how would you sum this up, this thing you're talking about?
- 1:03:35Speaker 1: I said, Well, when I was a boy, my parents,
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: if anyone came through the door wearing a suit, it
- 1:03:42Speaker 1: was yes, sir, yes sir, I said, and everybody followed
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: their father into whatever profession he was in. I said,
- 1:03:51Speaker 1: But without generation Second World War, there was a reaction
- 1:03:55Speaker 1: to it and instead of yes sir, we said, funk
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: you and we wanted something more and that's what happened.
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: So with the evolution. I remember when I was fifth
- 1:04:05Speaker 1: in NFT eight, when I was sixteen, when we were
- 1:04:08Speaker 1: not we were murdered. It was all about the clothes,
- 1:04:12Speaker 1: you know, being like a peacock wearing those clothes. We
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: worked as hard as we could to make the money
- 1:04:19Speaker 1: to buy the clothes. But the changes were. It was
- 1:04:23Speaker 1: a revolution, the changes in advertising, fashion, design, music. You
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: know what happened. You've got the invasion of English and
- 1:04:36Speaker 1: that's incredible that you've got an invasion of English music
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: right as a result of the Second World War, not
- 1:04:43Speaker 1: French or German or Dutch. I mentioned one Dutch being.
- 1:04:46Speaker 1: But it was all English right coming to America, and
- 1:04:52Speaker 1: everybody's saying in American right right, that was wed You
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: noticed that exactly, we didn't see yeah, we didn't sing
- 1:05:00Speaker 1: in English, right right. And so all of that was happening,
- 1:05:05Speaker 1: and from there came people like Riddy Scott, Alan Parker,
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: David Partner, movie greet movie directors, movie executive from from
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: advertising through there. So the TV series that I'm doing
- 1:05:18Speaker 1: embraces more than just Quadrophenia, because Couadrophenia was three days
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: in the life of a Mud. What we're doing is
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: it's starts in with the wind wind rush generation coming
- 1:05:32Speaker 1: in from the Caribbean and from Jamaica into England immigrants,
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: and it takes us through the sixties and through the seventhies.
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: So we go through that all those cultural changes, all
- 1:05:46Speaker 1: that color, because after the Second World War everything was gray.
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: So all that Color, Carnaby, street pop, arts, advertising, fashion.
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: Then we've got Margaret Thatcher, Industrial Strikes, Punk which came
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: and went through to the end of it, and it
- 1:06:07Speaker 1: takes us up to the end of the seventies maybe
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: early eighties. Okay, did you have a scooter? No? Do
- 1:06:14Speaker 1: you know what we had? We had a funeral hearse.
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: We had a funeral hearse. We used to go down
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: to Brighton where the riots were in a funeral hearse,
- 1:06:24Speaker 1: eight or ten of us and um, oh yeah. And
- 1:06:29Speaker 1: when we first did the movie Quadrophenia, the first scenes
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: we had to shoot with the riot scenes because it
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: was very late in the year and we had to
- 1:06:37Speaker 1: simulate summer and it was like the end of September
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: and it was freezing down now. And I went to
- 1:06:44Speaker 1: my youngest brother's school with two buses to big coaches
- 1:06:49Speaker 1: and got all the kids out of there for extras
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: for the riot scenes. Know, so we never know. We
- 1:06:54Speaker 1: didn't have scooters. We had Okay, the others? Was the
- 1:07:00Speaker 1: mart tell me about the Rockers? Were the Rockers again
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: in the first series. In the movie of Quadraphine, You've
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: got the fantastic scene when Jimmy's in the bath and
- 1:07:14Speaker 1: he's singing, and someone's singing in the other bath and
- 1:07:17Speaker 1: it's Kevin, his pal. And when they come out, Ray Winston,
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: when they come out, he looks at him and he goes,
- 1:07:24Speaker 1: what the funk you're wearing? Because he's a rock He's
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: a rocker. So yeah, the rockers they were in weirdly enough,
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: their their music appealed to me as well, you know.
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: I mean, I can remember the first time I saw
- 1:07:40Speaker 1: a rock around the clock, the Bill Haley movie, you know,
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: And um, all of the rock music appealed to me
- 1:07:50Speaker 1: to a great extent, but the dress didn't so much.
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: The leather gear and the big bikes and to what
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: degree with their battles between the bids and the rockers
- 1:07:59Speaker 1: a lot. And I was involved in a lot of that,
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: going down to Brighton and Margate and getting involved in
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: in the fights down there. It was it was all
- 1:08:09Speaker 1: the time, It was there all the time. Um. And
- 1:08:14Speaker 1: it's I guess everything we can ever talk about is
- 1:08:19Speaker 1: in Shakespeare anyway, So it's all Romeo and Juliet in
- 1:08:22Speaker 1: the end West Side stories, Romeo and Juliet. The modern
- 1:08:26Speaker 1: rockers are to a great degree, you know, so um,
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: but you get those tribes. It's all tribal. We have
- 1:08:33Speaker 1: tribal in America right now. It is, of course, And
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: on that subject talking about tribal you know, and and
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: and some of the things that happened. I mean, it
- 1:08:42Speaker 1: was quite extraordinary for me because I was born in
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: this working class area and I'm telling you they were
- 1:08:51Speaker 1: pretty rigid in lots of ways, and there was a
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: lot of discrimination. But having said that, one of my
- 1:08:57Speaker 1: best friends was a black boy who lived next door
- 1:08:59Speaker 1: to me. But more than that, there was this prejudice everywhere.
- 1:09:05Speaker 1: But for me growing up, my role models, my icons
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: were all the black blues musicians and black athletes, you know,
- 1:09:14Speaker 1: Joe Louis Sugar, Ray Robinson, Mohammed Ali, Cassis Clay, Mohammed Ali.
- 1:09:20Speaker 1: So I guess I was strange in a way because
- 1:09:23Speaker 1: I was devoid of that prejudice, but it was around
- 1:09:27Speaker 1: me all the time. And so when you talk about tribes,
- 1:09:33Speaker 1: you know, I fully I was bewildered a bit by
- 1:09:38Speaker 1: America and the prejudice and the fact that someone like
- 1:09:44Speaker 1: Cassius Clay could come back from the Olympics and not
- 1:09:47Speaker 1: going into a restaurant of his choice, you know. Um,
- 1:09:52Speaker 1: But thankfully the world has changed. It was changed to
- 1:09:55Speaker 1: a certain degree. But what do you think of brexit?
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: Oh for funk saying, how long have you got? Okay,
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: I haven't got an hour for brexit, but I got
- 1:10:04Speaker 1: a few minutes from Brexit. Okay. Brexit I think is
- 1:10:08Speaker 1: essential for one real reason. It started off as a
- 1:10:14Speaker 1: trade in family, just purely for commerce the EU, and
- 1:10:21Speaker 1: it started off as a trade in family, and it's
- 1:10:25Speaker 1: been distorted and distorted over the years to the point
- 1:10:30Speaker 1: where the other twenty seven countries involved have lost their
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: ability to pass their own laws to even increase interests
- 1:10:39Speaker 1: in the banks. They're governed by Brussels. And I think
- 1:10:43Speaker 1: it's to me it's doomed. It will not survive in
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: the Union in my opinion the EU. Is it more
- 1:10:53Speaker 1: about the currency or more about the laws. Well, firstly,
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: we as England have your own currency. We would ever
- 1:11:00Speaker 1: have survived the two thousand and eight economic disaster without
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: having our own currency because we were able to fluctuate
- 1:11:07Speaker 1: the interest rates and go with with you know, currency
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: eas in which they in Brussels refused the other countries
- 1:11:16Speaker 1: to the way. And what they've got now is they've
- 1:11:18Speaker 1: got these dependent countries Portugal, Italy, Spain, you know, Greece, Greece,
- 1:11:25Speaker 1: and what they did to Greece I think is abominable.
- 1:11:29Speaker 1: If you read there's a finance minister who was the
- 1:11:32Speaker 1: finance minister for Greece at the time, and they maligned
- 1:11:36Speaker 1: him and said he was an idiot. In fact, he's
- 1:11:38Speaker 1: a highly intelligent man, Yannis, and the way he describes
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: what they did to them is like punitive and repugnant.
- 1:11:48Speaker 1: So for me, Um, I would like to see us out.
- 1:11:52Speaker 1: I would like to see us trade in with the
- 1:11:54Speaker 1: rest of the world and free of those sheckles, because
- 1:11:59Speaker 1: I consider of the EU is corrupt. It really is.
- 1:12:02Speaker 1: It's a corrupt machine. There's been many books written. One
- 1:12:07Speaker 1: body X finance minister who's a woman who is um
- 1:12:11Speaker 1: half argentinean half American and she was a head of
- 1:12:15Speaker 1: head of funds there and what she So we're better
- 1:12:19Speaker 1: off out of it, Okay, So what about I mean,
- 1:12:21Speaker 1: I know in our world, I had experience with Richard
- 1:12:25Speaker 1: Griffith's manager, and I've been with his partner at a
- 1:12:29Speaker 1: gig and we were getting together the next day and
- 1:12:33Speaker 1: I emailed hearing I didn't hear back from him. I
- 1:12:36Speaker 1: texted her email Richard, and he got back to immediately said,
- 1:12:39Speaker 1: I know, I thought you were in I think he
- 1:12:41Speaker 1: was an Amsterdam with one d okay whatever. They said, No,
- 1:12:44Speaker 1: we took the private jet home. I'm home already, and
- 1:12:47Speaker 1: it's like at twelve o'clock at night. Because of all
- 1:12:49Speaker 1: the relaxation under the EU, they don't have all the
- 1:12:52Speaker 1: customs and all that other stuff. Now in your world
- 1:12:54Speaker 1: there's a direct you know, interference customs wise. Yeah, I
- 1:13:00Speaker 1: guess so, but it will ease. I mean, my daughter
- 1:13:03Speaker 1: said to me, dead dead when if we leave, will
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: I be able to go clubbing in Germany? I said,
- 1:13:10Speaker 1: you do you think Canadians and Americans don't go clubbing
- 1:13:13Speaker 1: in Germany? Do you think they turn them away when
- 1:13:15Speaker 1: they've got their money in their hand? Come on, So
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: it's all about money, Bob. Everything that happens in this
- 1:13:23Speaker 1: world is driven by money. The wars that we look
- 1:13:27Speaker 1: at that so fucking awful. Money. Money. Money. Just to
- 1:13:33Speaker 1: go one step further, there are a lot of European
- 1:13:36Speaker 1: companies who have built factories and held up propped up
- 1:13:40Speaker 1: a lot of low income communities in England, and those
- 1:13:44Speaker 1: companies will go, won't there? Be fewer jobs. No, not really.
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: I think that's a lot of it is scare mongering.
- 1:13:50Speaker 1: I think we're going to find markets. I don't. I'm
- 1:13:53Speaker 1: not saying it won't be tough in the beginning, but
- 1:13:57Speaker 1: you see, you've got a lot of young people who
- 1:13:59Speaker 1: don't remember it before that. I can remember what we
- 1:14:03Speaker 1: were before we joined the EU. Digor never wanted us
- 1:14:07Speaker 1: there anyway, he said, we're in island, We're not landlocked.
- 1:14:11Speaker 1: We shouldn't be in Europe. Don't start me, under Gaul.
- 1:14:15Speaker 1: I remember, I mean without America, we wouldn't be a
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: free nation. Of course, I'm telling you. And I remembered
- 1:14:25Speaker 1: the Gal and I think it might have been Foster,
- 1:14:27Speaker 1: that is, who was then the American ambassador, and the
- 1:14:32Speaker 1: Gore said to him, I want every American military personnel
- 1:14:39Speaker 1: out of France within six months. So he said, does
- 1:14:44Speaker 1: that include the ones that are buried here? Okay, let's
- 1:14:52Speaker 1: jump back, you nourball, you've got a track records. What's
- 1:14:57Speaker 1: happening at track Records? When you get there? When I
- 1:14:59Speaker 1: get there, they, as I said, I was quite naive.
- 1:15:05Speaker 1: I didn't realize what they were into, et cetera. On
- 1:15:10Speaker 1: how much the drugs were part of their life. But
- 1:15:13Speaker 1: I started learning incredibly quickly, and it wasn't long before
- 1:15:19Speaker 1: I was taking the band out on the road. And
- 1:15:22Speaker 1: then I went to Lambert Stamp with the old contracts
- 1:15:27Speaker 1: and I said, listen, these don't look great to me.
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: I think I could do these better. Well, they couldn't
- 1:15:34Speaker 1: be bothered, you know. They said, well, if you think so,
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: I see what I can. So I took them out
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: on one tour, and I think I made them in
- 1:15:44Speaker 1: those days could have easily been five or six hundred
- 1:15:49Speaker 1: thousand pounds more. So in essence, Lamber and Stamp made
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: a lot more, and I got a little bit of
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: a bonus, a little bit of a bonus, but I
- 1:15:59Speaker 1: thought I've proved something here, and and I went forward
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: on that basis, you know. And then what happened was
- 1:16:06Speaker 1: the more and more I did with the band, the
- 1:16:08Speaker 1: more and more I suppose we became family. You know.
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: It was a bit slower with Pete than Roger. Roger
- 1:16:15Speaker 1: was always my champion, always, especially once I did his
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: solo album. But Pete is slow to take two people.
- 1:16:24Speaker 1: But eventually he came round, and now we're really really bonded,
- 1:16:28Speaker 1: you like let's talk about Pete and Roger. How do
- 1:16:32Speaker 1: they get along? Well, someone asked me that the other day,
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: and I said, they're a little bit like Richard Burton
- 1:16:39Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Taylor. I'm not telling you who's Elizabeth. It's
- 1:16:45Speaker 1: a it's a love hate thing in a sense, I
- 1:16:48Speaker 1: mean all it is. It's not love hate, that's wrong,
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: it's love irritability. They were just like having a brother
- 1:16:57Speaker 1: and since, yeah, they irritate each other. Okay, Now, whatever
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: happened with Speedy Keeen Thunderclap Newman. I was a huge
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: fan of that initial album, Hollywood Dream Speedy. I gave
- 1:17:10Speaker 1: him the title ironically because I got it now because
- 1:17:15Speaker 1: I just come home Previous Convictions that was his album,
- 1:17:20Speaker 1: and boted I got it. And we were great friends
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: and I spent time with them, and Speedy was a good,
- 1:17:27Speaker 1: great friend. And Speedy was with a girl, Janet, who
- 1:17:32Speaker 1: used to work with us in track records. She eventually
- 1:17:36Speaker 1: married Asthlete Right Janet Astley Right, don't no. Lesley was
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: one of the She was one of the family that
- 1:17:46Speaker 1: Pete married into. Her name was Jen Jen. It'll come
- 1:17:52Speaker 1: to me in a minute, but anyway, she ended up
- 1:17:56Speaker 1: marrying Phil Daniels from the movie. Okay, now, um, how
- 1:18:03Speaker 1: about Jimmy McCullough, who ultimately went to play with Wings.
- 1:18:06Speaker 1: He went to Wings, Jimmy and his brother they were
- 1:18:09Speaker 1: on track. I got on great with them. You know,
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: he was phenomenal, little Jimmy. They were they were great guitarist.
- 1:18:17Speaker 1: So we had so much great talent coming through our hands.
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: You know, it was phenomenal. Really in those days it
- 1:18:26Speaker 1: was so vibrant. Who owns all those masters? Now, because
- 1:18:32Speaker 1: of the debts and the money that was missing, we
- 1:18:35Speaker 1: sold all the masters to PolyGram in order to pay
- 1:18:39Speaker 1: the artists there ortists. Okay, Now, also in seventy two,
- 1:18:43Speaker 1: I think at the end of seventy two, and you know,
- 1:18:45Speaker 1: Pete produced something in the course, I know that. And
- 1:18:48Speaker 1: then but he put out a solo album who came first?
- 1:18:53Speaker 1: Now that wasn't available on CD until right go sometimes
- 1:18:56Speaker 1: like now that wasn't that on track records? Though? That
- 1:19:00Speaker 1: was on track records absolutely, So how did that get
- 1:19:02Speaker 1: excluded from the deal with Poley Graham? It was When
- 1:19:08Speaker 1: you say excluded in what way? It was? Wounds it
- 1:19:11Speaker 1: today they do, Oh yeah, just like when I took
- 1:19:16Speaker 1: an album much much later that Pete did called Empty Glass,
- 1:19:20Speaker 1: and I did a deal with Doug Morris Echo, much
- 1:19:23Speaker 1: to the chagrin and Mo Austin and and Jerry Mars
- 1:19:27Speaker 1: soon chasing me. Um. There's a little story involved there
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: where I really felt that Doug Morris was so hungry
- 1:19:35Speaker 1: for it. He just started at CO and I thought,
- 1:19:38Speaker 1: this is a guy who's going to die for this album,
- 1:19:40Speaker 1: which he did, and he's He often says the two
- 1:19:44Speaker 1: albums that set him on his career were Pete towns
- 1:19:47Speaker 1: As Empty Glass and Stevie Nick Solo. Listen I Empty Glass.
- 1:19:52Speaker 1: I just put it the other day. You know, a
- 1:19:53Speaker 1: little is enough in the title track, unbelievable, especially Empty
- 1:19:58Speaker 1: Glass when I used to drink. He likes a mess.
- 1:20:01Speaker 1: You know, I hold an empty glass. Okay, but let's
- 1:20:05Speaker 1: go back. You're still with m C. A quadrophenia comes
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: out with m C and m C A. This is
- 1:20:10Speaker 1: a question you may may not be able to answer.
- 1:20:13Speaker 1: Roger and Pete. What do they prefer a quadrophenia or Tommy.
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: That's very difficult for me to answer for them. But
- 1:20:24Speaker 1: because there obviously for Peter as a writer, they relate
- 1:20:29Speaker 1: to two different periods of his thinking. And I often
- 1:20:34Speaker 1: say that Tommy is the hippie opera and Quadrophenia is
- 1:20:40Speaker 1: the industrial opera. UM. In their own ways, they've had
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: several incarnations, you know. UM Tommy was was the stage
- 1:20:53Speaker 1: production and the movie. Ironically, the movie came first UM
- 1:21:00Speaker 1: and Quadrophenia. Incredibly, I still can't believe it, but we
- 1:21:04Speaker 1: celebrated the fourties anniversary of the movie Quadrophenia earlier this year.
- 1:21:10Speaker 1: All of the cast turned up Sting Ray Winston, all
- 1:21:13Speaker 1: of them. We had a great night, raised money for charity,
- 1:21:17Speaker 1: and it's still being shown on TV. HOWU. It's just insane. Now,
- 1:21:20Speaker 1: that's a movie that you know, it's not deated whatsoever.
- 1:21:23Speaker 1: Certainly it's a period movie to begin with. But yeah,
- 1:21:26Speaker 1: but the only thing that stated, Bob are the uniforms,
- 1:21:30Speaker 1: the dilemma, the problems, the whole core of the film
- 1:21:35Speaker 1: are the same your kids, My kids. They get to
- 1:21:38Speaker 1: their teenage years and they're faced with a minefield and
- 1:21:42Speaker 1: they've got to walk across that minefield and it's full
- 1:21:45Speaker 1: of ship. You know, it's full of all kinds of
- 1:21:47Speaker 1: real big problems, whether it be what we deal with
- 1:21:51Speaker 1: with teenagers with cancer, is they come through their teenage
- 1:21:55Speaker 1: years and don't get anything like that. You praise God.
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: There's other stuff out there on the streets, the drugs
- 1:22:01Speaker 1: and everything. So the teenage years are a minefield, and
- 1:22:04Speaker 1: every teenager thinks his problems are unique. He won't go
- 1:22:09Speaker 1: to Dead Willie because dad says, I know all about that.
- 1:22:12Speaker 1: I went through that you couldn't have done. They go
- 1:22:14Speaker 1: to their peer group to look for answers, and the
- 1:22:19Speaker 1: answers I'm afraid and not with the peer group. So
- 1:22:23Speaker 1: so um yeah, I think that in Tommy is a
- 1:22:29Speaker 1: metaphor deft, dumb and blind. It's a metaphor of uh,
- 1:22:34Speaker 1: you're you know, being not having your senses. They're are reawakening, etcetera, etcetera.
- 1:22:41Speaker 1: Quadrophenia is totally different. Quadrophenias are coming in of Age
- 1:22:45Speaker 1: movie A Journey, And so for me, if I had
- 1:22:51Speaker 1: to have a choice, my choice it's quadrophenia. I can't
- 1:22:56Speaker 1: say about Pete and Roger. I mean, you've got great
- 1:22:59Speaker 1: songs in Birth. Well, the only thing is switching give
- 1:23:01Speaker 1: us a little bit. When I was in college, we
- 1:23:03Speaker 1: used to have a thing name a better album than
- 1:23:05Speaker 1: Who's Next from beginning to end and all that stuff
- 1:23:09Speaker 1: is held up. But how did you end up switching
- 1:23:11Speaker 1: from mc A to Warner Brothers with who? Um? I
- 1:23:16Speaker 1: think that was the advent of it, that we didn't
- 1:23:20Speaker 1: switch really until I did the Townsend deal with Glass
- 1:23:26Speaker 1: And on that subject you're talking about when you were
- 1:23:29Speaker 1: at college. I made a movie two years ago called
- 1:23:33Speaker 1: The Railway Man, and it's a true story about a
- 1:23:37Speaker 1: guy who was a Japanese prisoner of war. And it's
- 1:23:43Speaker 1: basically a movie about forgiveness. It's a true story and
- 1:23:48Speaker 1: he's tortured terribly by the Japanese and he was on
- 1:23:53Speaker 1: the Death Railroad railroad, you know, the Burma Railroad. So
- 1:23:56Speaker 1: it starts Colin Firth and Nicole Kimmon. You should go see.
- 1:24:00Speaker 1: It's a good movie. I'm very proud of it. Anyway,
- 1:24:04Speaker 1: during location, Colin Firth said to me, listen. He said
- 1:24:09Speaker 1: a lot of these musicians, he said, they collect things,
- 1:24:12Speaker 1: don't They said, there's this guy who collects ferraris. I said, no,
- 1:24:16Speaker 1: that's Nick Mason pink Floyd. So I said, um, I said,
- 1:24:24Speaker 1: you know a lot of them clicked things. I said,
- 1:24:26Speaker 1: you collect anything, which I knew he did, he said,
- 1:24:28Speaker 1: because my partner told me. He said, well, I suppose
- 1:24:32Speaker 1: you could say. He said, I'd collect guitars. I said,
- 1:24:35Speaker 1: can you play them? He said, well yeah. After a fashion,
- 1:24:39Speaker 1: he said all right, he said cards on the table.
- 1:24:42Speaker 1: He said, my favorite album of all time is Quadrophenia.
- 1:24:47Speaker 1: I said, Colin, don't give me that ship. Tell me
- 1:24:49Speaker 1: a song from it. He told me every song on Quadrophenia.
- 1:24:54Speaker 1: So I said, well, where did you get into that?
- 1:24:56Speaker 1: He said when I was at university. I said, okay.
- 1:25:00Speaker 1: So I went home the next day, so I phone Pete.
- 1:25:03Speaker 1: I said, Pete, you don't have a guitar, do you
- 1:25:05Speaker 1: that I could give Colin Firth. You know I'm making
- 1:25:08Speaker 1: this movie with him. He said yeah, he said I do. Actually,
- 1:25:11Speaker 1: he said, I've got the guitar that I wrote Quadrophenia on.
- 1:25:15Speaker 1: I said what, he said, I've got the said you're
- 1:25:18Speaker 1: not going to give that. You won't give that way?
- 1:25:20Speaker 1: He said, yeah, yeah, I will for it for you
- 1:25:22Speaker 1: for him, So he signs it. I'll go back on location.
- 1:25:26Speaker 1: I said to him, Colin, we need to see you tonight.
- 1:25:29Speaker 1: Andy and I over at the hotel. Got to have
- 1:25:32Speaker 1: a talk with you. He said, it's not about this mustache.
- 1:25:34Speaker 1: Is it you had a mustache in the movie. So
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: I said no, but come over the hotel. So he
- 1:25:40Speaker 1: came over the hotel. So I gave him the guitar.
- 1:25:43Speaker 1: He said, what's that? I said, open it? He said
- 1:25:47Speaker 1: ship He said for Gibson. I said, it's more than that.
- 1:25:50Speaker 1: I said, it's it's the guitar. The townsend wrote Quadrophenia
- 1:25:54Speaker 1: on he went. He said that means more to me
- 1:25:59Speaker 1: than you, Oscar I got for the King's speech. You know,
- 1:26:05Speaker 1: music sitting in the Sheridan Gibson okay, So how do
- 1:26:09Speaker 1: you are? How does the band okay moon dies? Did
- 1:26:15Speaker 1: you see that coming? Well, we always saw it coming,
- 1:26:20Speaker 1: but even so when it happens, it's a shock. And
- 1:26:23Speaker 1: the day that it happened is quite peculiar in a way,
- 1:26:27Speaker 1: because I went to PolyGram and the guy who was
- 1:26:30Speaker 1: the MP deer PolyGram at that time in England was
- 1:26:33Speaker 1: a man called Fred high On. He was from Holland
- 1:26:36Speaker 1: and he was the original manager of Golden ear Ring
- 1:26:39Speaker 1: and let's how I got the Golden ear Ring thing.
- 1:26:42Speaker 1: And he was always a raven her fan. And I
- 1:26:44Speaker 1: went to PolyGram and they agreed to give me the
- 1:26:48Speaker 1: money to produce the movie Quadrophenia. M mcvickor and I
- 1:26:53Speaker 1: did them that year, back to back, and I came
- 1:26:57Speaker 1: back to the office. I got there and my x
- 1:27:01Speaker 1: or I said to me, sit down. She said Moon's dead.
- 1:27:07Speaker 1: I said, what she said, Moon's dead? Fuck? You know.
- 1:27:11Speaker 1: And it was so hard to assimilate and to take
- 1:27:15Speaker 1: in because I was told by that doctor who gave
- 1:27:19Speaker 1: him those pills him and never in pills. They were
- 1:27:23Speaker 1: pills to combat shakes and detis and epilepsy if you're
- 1:27:27Speaker 1: because he was trying to come off the brose. And
- 1:27:30Speaker 1: I was told there were no side effects. But I
- 1:27:32Speaker 1: suppose if you take twenty three of anything, that's going
- 1:27:34Speaker 1: to be side effects. Um. So I've often said, you
- 1:27:38Speaker 1: know that if if Moon Moon's death was inevitable, then
- 1:27:49Speaker 1: John it was Yours was unnecessary. Okay, a little deeper,
- 1:27:55Speaker 1: you know, it was unnecessary because with John we all
- 1:28:00Speaker 1: knew he had a little bit of a hard thing,
- 1:28:02Speaker 1: but it was always played down. He was very flippant
- 1:28:06Speaker 1: about it. Nobody ever thought it was anything more than
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: something you just took a pillful, you know. So yeah,
- 1:28:16Speaker 1: but but coming back to Moon, Um, even though you
- 1:28:20Speaker 1: expect these things, and I don't know if Moon would
- 1:28:24Speaker 1: have would have if he would ever have made old bones.
- 1:28:28Speaker 1: He just wasn't that type of character to make old bones.
- 1:28:31Speaker 1: You know, how can you envisage an old Keith Moon?
- 1:28:34Speaker 1: I don't know. What I do know is if Moon
- 1:28:39Speaker 1: has had any discipline whatsoever, he could have been one
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: of our greatest character actors because he could sit with
- 1:28:45Speaker 1: you well, but he could sit with you and within
- 1:28:48Speaker 1: ten minutes he would have of all your idiosyncrasies, all
- 1:28:52Speaker 1: your body language. He was a great mimic, fantastic, but
- 1:28:57Speaker 1: no discipline. Well, one other thing, you know, remember I
- 1:29:00Speaker 1: saw the band performed Tommy at Fillmore East. This is
- 1:29:04Speaker 1: six and I've never seen a drummer like Moon. You know,
- 1:29:08Speaker 1: he almost it would take two people to replicate him.
- 1:29:11Speaker 1: It was just unbelievable the way his arms moved. Well,
- 1:29:13Speaker 1: he's dynamic and he's so unorthodox, you know. And my
- 1:29:18Speaker 1: tour manager, Rex King, he came to see us play
- 1:29:23Speaker 1: at the Hammersmith Odeon with John Bonham and as they
- 1:29:27Speaker 1: came out, Bonham said to him, We've just seen the
- 1:29:30Speaker 1: best band on the planet, the best band on the planet,
- 1:29:34Speaker 1: and I've had artists through my career. You know. I
- 1:29:37Speaker 1: was twenty six years with Robert Plant and fourteen of
- 1:29:41Speaker 1: those years Jimmy Page was with us and superlative musicians. Yes,
- 1:29:48Speaker 1: but when the Who are on, the Who are on.
- 1:29:50Speaker 1: I remember a headline we had we had from one
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: concert and it said, yes, Zeppelin, Zeppelin and the rest
- 1:29:59Speaker 1: of the good, but they can't kiss you good night
- 1:30:03Speaker 1: like the Who. Well, I just remember when they had
- 1:30:05Speaker 1: the Madison Square Garden concert after nine eleven and the
- 1:30:09Speaker 1: Who just blew everybody else off the stage. Were that
- 1:30:11Speaker 1: nine eleven? Things quite interesting because funnily enough they were
- 1:30:16Speaker 1: Pete and Roger were in my office. So I got
- 1:30:18Speaker 1: a phone call from Weinstein. So he said, what the
- 1:30:21Speaker 1: Who did the nine eleven thing? I said, Harvey, we're
- 1:30:26Speaker 1: not a cabaret action. I said, if we come and
- 1:30:28Speaker 1: do that, I want forty five minutes. He said, at least,
- 1:30:33Speaker 1: he said, you've got it. You got it, He said,
- 1:30:35Speaker 1: no problem. He said, but if the Who come on,
- 1:30:38Speaker 1: all the other artists will come on. So I said,
- 1:30:41Speaker 1: he said, where do you want to play on the bill?
- 1:30:44Speaker 1: I said anywhere. I just want that fifty minutes back anywhere.
- 1:30:51Speaker 1: And that day was fucking magic and I'll never forget
- 1:30:55Speaker 1: Elton John Old Power, but he came into that dressing
- 1:30:58Speaker 1: room to the boys and he were I've never seen
- 1:31:01Speaker 1: anything like it. And for me, I've been with them
- 1:31:05Speaker 1: forty nine years. The most moving experience I've had was
- 1:31:12Speaker 1: that we did nine eleven. And we've had some amazing stuff,
- 1:31:16Speaker 1: but we did nine eleven. And then some time after that,
- 1:31:20Speaker 1: we went to Washington for the Kennedy Awards, and Dave
- 1:31:25Speaker 1: Grohl spoke about how they were responsible for him being
- 1:31:30Speaker 1: in the music business, and we had all the other
- 1:31:32Speaker 1: artists up there would do songs, you know whatever, and
- 1:31:36Speaker 1: then right at the last song, I could hear require
- 1:31:41Speaker 1: on that last song, and the curtain opened and it
- 1:31:44Speaker 1: was all the police and firemen from New York. Fuck
- 1:31:49Speaker 1: the feeling. I can't describe to you what I felt like,
- 1:31:53Speaker 1: because to return that and to say there, thank you
- 1:31:59Speaker 1: was something else. You know. It was just such a
- 1:32:01Speaker 1: moving experience. And I'm not given to goose bumps or stuff,
- 1:32:05Speaker 1: but I'm telling you that was a moment. I you know,
- 1:32:09Speaker 1: I can feel it over here and I can't add
- 1:32:12Speaker 1: anything to that. So I'll go to a more minor point.
- 1:32:15Speaker 1: Why did it end with you? And plant? I was
- 1:32:22Speaker 1: with him twenty six years. We encouraged him to come
- 1:32:28Speaker 1: down to London and to get out from the Midlands
- 1:32:32Speaker 1: with all the old cronies. I think during that period
- 1:32:37Speaker 1: he was with me, we made some great albums Palms,
- 1:32:41Speaker 1: that album, Feed the Nations best solo album, incredible record,
- 1:32:45Speaker 1: Fate of Nations twenty nine, Palms, the two other albums
- 1:32:49Speaker 1: I gave him the title for Now and Zen and
- 1:32:55Speaker 1: No One. Zen was huge, and then he did the
- 1:32:58Speaker 1: album with Addison Krause, right, that was still when he
- 1:33:01Speaker 1: was you were managing him, yeah, oh yeah. So then
- 1:33:04Speaker 1: what happened. It came down in a way to a point,
- 1:33:11Speaker 1: a principle on my part, and the only way I
- 1:33:15Speaker 1: can really really explaining it to you is that we're
- 1:33:22Speaker 1: deal in different currencies. And my currency is that I
- 1:33:29Speaker 1: believe that the real wealth in life is what you've got,
- 1:33:35Speaker 1: is what you've got after they take away the money,
- 1:33:38Speaker 1: what you've got left, and that's family, friends and principles.
- 1:33:46Speaker 1: And I've always lived that way. And he deals in
- 1:33:50Speaker 1: a different currency. And if he's got any regrets now,
- 1:33:56Speaker 1: then he has to be honest with himself. But for
- 1:33:58Speaker 1: both those guys, I would like to think that I
- 1:34:03Speaker 1: did a really good job. And Jimmy bumped into a
- 1:34:07Speaker 1: friend of mine, an agent, a few months ago, and
- 1:34:13Speaker 1: he said, has Bill so Rod said, oh, he's great,
- 1:34:17Speaker 1: he said, send him my love. He said, tell him.
- 1:34:19Speaker 1: I've only just started realizing how much he really did
- 1:34:23Speaker 1: for us. But it's okay. But with Robert, I said
- 1:34:27Speaker 1: to him, it's going to come a time. And I
- 1:34:32Speaker 1: don't want to sound him modest here, but yet there's
- 1:34:34Speaker 1: going to come a time when you're going to realize
- 1:34:37Speaker 1: you've lost your best friend. I said, because I would
- 1:34:41Speaker 1: have stood in front of a train for you, but
- 1:34:43Speaker 1: not anymore. And it was about a point of principle.
- 1:34:47Speaker 1: And I don't wish him any ill. I wish him
- 1:34:50Speaker 1: every success. But there's a thing about artists, Bob, not
- 1:34:56Speaker 1: all of them, but the majority percent of them. They
- 1:35:02Speaker 1: don't have any friends from the past, very few of them.
- 1:35:07Speaker 1: What happens is they choose a career that takes them
- 1:35:10Speaker 1: away from their childhood and teenage friends, and so they
- 1:35:15Speaker 1: go on a different journey. And while they're on that journey,
- 1:35:21Speaker 1: they lose a sense of loyalty. And what takes over
- 1:35:27Speaker 1: and becomes more important to them is where's my album
- 1:35:31Speaker 1: in the chance this week, etcetera, etcetera, and they lose
- 1:35:36Speaker 1: their real sense of friendship and loyalty. And I'm big
- 1:35:44Speaker 1: on that. I'm sorry, I'm just really big on it.
- 1:35:47Speaker 1: And so that's what you find with lots of artists,
- 1:35:50Speaker 1: and we a lot most of us run away with
- 1:35:53Speaker 1: the idea of thinking that arts because they're artists, they're
- 1:35:58Speaker 1: nice and good people. They're not. They're not. Listen. I've
- 1:36:03Speaker 1: met some of the greatest artists in the world. I
- 1:36:05Speaker 1: want to mention them, and they're just unbelievably narcissistic means
- 1:36:09Speaker 1: of them. And it's like, you know, they're exceptions who
- 1:36:12Speaker 1: you know live up to them. But no, the other
- 1:36:14Speaker 1: thing about an artist, they'll funk over anybody for themselves exactly.
- 1:36:19Speaker 1: There are number one. So when you take out on board,
- 1:36:23Speaker 1: and I'm a personal manager and I give a bit
- 1:36:26Speaker 1: more than some other managers, they may get a contract
- 1:36:31Speaker 1: and they put it in their desk and that's it.
- 1:36:35Speaker 1: I don't live like that. I don't have a contract
- 1:36:37Speaker 1: with the who I haven't had one for forty nine years.
- 1:36:40Speaker 1: If they want to leave me tomorrow they're dissatisfied, they
- 1:36:43Speaker 1: can go. I don't want to go through any litigation.
- 1:36:46Speaker 1: I just want to be paid for what I've done.
- 1:36:48Speaker 1: But it becomes a friendship. Judas Priest have been with
- 1:36:51Speaker 1: me thirty seven years. Again, it's a friendship. You give,
- 1:36:58Speaker 1: you become friends. You give the it and I give
- 1:37:00Speaker 1: to them a promise. That's what I do. So and
- 1:37:06Speaker 1: I've got friends right back to my school days. I
- 1:37:09Speaker 1: still go see them in the East End. We're mates.
- 1:37:12Speaker 1: Sadly every year ago there's one less. But you know,
- 1:37:15Speaker 1: how about all these old people. I mean, obviously you're
- 1:37:17Speaker 1: very successful financially. Do these people your family members ever
- 1:37:21Speaker 1: come to you for money? Well? My other what my brothers,
- 1:37:25Speaker 1: sisters and people we're brothers and sisters are friends both. Yeah,
- 1:37:30Speaker 1: and how do you feel about that? I'm okay, okay,
- 1:37:33Speaker 1: you know what money is. Tell me, money is a
- 1:37:37Speaker 1: means to end. Money is a means for you to
- 1:37:44Speaker 1: help the people you love enjoy their life. And if
- 1:37:48Speaker 1: you can do that, that's all it is. It's a commodity.
- 1:37:51Speaker 1: That's funny because Cliff Bernstein said something very similar to me, like,
- 1:37:54Speaker 1: you know, be able to help people's lives, you know,
- 1:37:56Speaker 1: at the same time, So okay, yea, So Pete says
- 1:38:02Speaker 1: he can't play live anymore. Well, before that, who say
- 1:38:06Speaker 1: we're retiring? I remember making it too, Yeah, I remember
- 1:38:09Speaker 1: making said of my Nakamiti tape deck, you know, and
- 1:38:12Speaker 1: then they keep coming back. What's up with that? Well
- 1:38:16Speaker 1: in two that's when he said, he said, I want
- 1:38:19Speaker 1: to be with my kids. I don't want tour in him.
- 1:38:22Speaker 1: A couple of years ago we played Hyde Park and
- 1:38:24Speaker 1: Tom mzer Ardino, he was the promoter of the Cotton Bowl.
- 1:38:28Speaker 1: On that last tour, he said, I've got a T
- 1:38:29Speaker 1: shirt for you. He gave me. It was the Who's Fair.
- 1:38:33Speaker 1: But so Pete didn't want to do it. So from
- 1:38:35Speaker 1: A two two I think it was a tight. We
- 1:38:40Speaker 1: didn't do that interestingly enough. And that's when I picked up.
- 1:38:45Speaker 1: Someone said to me, you're interested in Judas Priest. I said, yeah,
- 1:38:48Speaker 1: they're good, Lfe Ben. Where are they down in Texas?
- 1:38:52Speaker 1: They want to see you? So I went down there.
- 1:38:55Speaker 1: And so you know, we had all those years where
- 1:38:58Speaker 1: they didn't her, which as have said loss in a way,
- 1:39:01Speaker 1: but um, and now it's turned full circle and Pezz
- 1:39:05Speaker 1: the one who wants to tour. He's really enjoying it
- 1:39:08Speaker 1: and he wants to tour. And I guess it's in
- 1:39:12Speaker 1: all of our minds that, you know, if life's a
- 1:39:16Speaker 1: three week holiday, we're on the third week and this Wednesday.
- 1:39:22Speaker 1: But what about his hearing issue? About what? I don't
- 1:39:27Speaker 1: know if you're saying that as a joke, but Pete
- 1:39:28Speaker 1: farm famously said he had tonight is and he couldn't play, etcetera.
- 1:39:32Speaker 1: And then he played acoustic guitar behind plastic you know,
- 1:39:35Speaker 1: whatever he did, he had the tonitus and he was
- 1:39:39Speaker 1: getting a lot of pain from it. But there are
- 1:39:42Speaker 1: lots of meds now today that can lessen that, you know,
- 1:39:46Speaker 1: and he's finding that. Okay, Pete. One of the problems
- 1:39:49Speaker 1: we've got is Roger uses ear monitors and Pete uses
- 1:39:52Speaker 1: stage monitors, you know. And I, I mean, I listened
- 1:39:56Speaker 1: to this ship and I think, am I really live
- 1:40:00Speaker 1: in here in the real world? Or is this the afterworld?
- 1:40:03Speaker 1: Because sometimes they'll come off stage and Roger was saying,
- 1:40:07Speaker 1: funking on the stage, I can't fucking hear anything, And
- 1:40:11Speaker 1: I said, you told me that have the fucking silver
- 1:40:13Speaker 1: dome in right right right, you know. So they're all
- 1:40:17Speaker 1: getting different sales up there on stage. Um, And I
- 1:40:22Speaker 1: can't do anything about that. I said to them, Look,
- 1:40:24Speaker 1: I can do everything for you to help you with
- 1:40:28Speaker 1: what happens off the stage. I cannot do anything about
- 1:40:32Speaker 1: what's on that stage. I can't be where Pete is
- 1:40:36Speaker 1: when you're playing a song or where you are get
- 1:40:39Speaker 1: your ship together. You know you should be able to
- 1:40:41Speaker 1: do it. Okay, So moon dies, they play with different drummers,
- 1:40:47Speaker 1: then Entwhistle dies just before the tour, they continued to work.
- 1:40:52Speaker 1: Is the motivation? What is the motivation for them? If
- 1:40:58Speaker 1: it's in your blood, it's in your blood. I don't
- 1:41:01Speaker 1: know that you're going to go and do anything else.
- 1:41:03Speaker 1: Pete's got lots of sides to him. He's just finished
- 1:41:06Speaker 1: the book Age of Anxiety. He's a constant worker. But
- 1:41:12Speaker 1: what else are you going to do? You know, if
- 1:41:14Speaker 1: you're given that gift, and it is a gift, what
- 1:41:19Speaker 1: else are you going to do? So you do carry on.
- 1:41:22Speaker 1: It's got to be the same with Jagger and Richards.
- 1:41:25Speaker 1: They they don't need the money. But I've often believed
- 1:41:29Speaker 1: that God works in mysterious ways, and in a lot
- 1:41:34Speaker 1: of ways he's fair. So what he does is he
- 1:41:37Speaker 1: takes someone like these artists and he gives them a
- 1:41:41Speaker 1: special gift. He gives them a little bit extra more
- 1:41:46Speaker 1: than you, all right, But at the other end he
- 1:41:49Speaker 1: leaves something off unless where we fit in. Okay, how
- 1:41:54Speaker 1: did the deal with c S I come together? Oh?
- 1:41:58Speaker 1: That was I forget who who actually rang me in
- 1:42:01Speaker 1: the first place? It was Jack what's his name, Jack Rossman?
- 1:42:05Speaker 1: Jack slipped my mind at the moment, but it was.
- 1:42:09Speaker 1: It was either Brookheim or somebody who was who was
- 1:42:12Speaker 1: a raven Houfen and they were looking for somebody. But somebody,
- 1:42:18Speaker 1: as is usual, somebody who's an underling who never ever
- 1:42:22Speaker 1: probably got credit for it, said hey, listen to this stuff,
- 1:42:25Speaker 1: you know. And it was the synthesizer songs. And it
- 1:42:30Speaker 1: was amazing, wasn't it. Because so many people started coming
- 1:42:33Speaker 1: to concerts and saying, oh, at least the people who
- 1:42:37Speaker 1: do see it, you know. So that's how it came about. Okay,
- 1:42:43Speaker 1: but you know, they get the guy's name now. But
- 1:42:45Speaker 1: he was from CBS. Okay, But that was he. He
- 1:42:48Speaker 1: was one of the first artists of his era, Jack Sussman.
- 1:42:53Speaker 1: He was one of the first from his era to
- 1:42:55Speaker 1: license these songs. So was he reluctant for a credibility
- 1:43:00Speaker 1: did he say, hey, you know, if you're Peter three,
- 1:43:01Speaker 1: I'll make the deal. No, he came round to it.
- 1:43:04Speaker 1: I remember years ago. I went back and I said him, Pete.
- 1:43:08Speaker 1: It was with the advent of mobile phones, you know.
- 1:43:11Speaker 1: I said, Pete, I've got a fantastic deal for you
- 1:43:14Speaker 1: with a T and T for going mobile, the song
- 1:43:18Speaker 1: co Mobile. I said, I've got a great deal for you.
- 1:43:22Speaker 1: He said, Now, I'm not selling songs to that. I'm
- 1:43:23Speaker 1: not doing any of that. No, no, no. And then
- 1:43:26Speaker 1: a couple of years later he did a complete turn
- 1:43:28Speaker 1: around and they were picking up whose songs for all
- 1:43:32Speaker 1: kinds of I did a deal as well. I mean,
- 1:43:36Speaker 1: she worked these artists out. Bob. I did a deal
- 1:43:40Speaker 1: with GM Motors for rock and roll, right for led
- 1:43:45Speaker 1: Zepplin right. So, and it was a huge, huge amount
- 1:43:49Speaker 1: of money, I'm telling you so. Um. First thing, first
- 1:43:54Speaker 1: it was ken million, wasn't it more than that? Okay,
- 1:43:58Speaker 1: more than that. So I'm on the road with Robert
- 1:44:03Speaker 1: Plant and we're going to go to the jail. And
- 1:44:07Speaker 1: by the way, as part of the deal, I said
- 1:44:09Speaker 1: to them, can you give Robert Plant an escalade in
- 1:44:12Speaker 1: every city? So he picks up an escalade. When he
- 1:44:16Speaker 1: after he's done it, he drops it back at the airport.
- 1:44:19Speaker 1: We're going to get to Detroit. So I said to him,
- 1:44:22Speaker 1: when you get to Detroit, you've got to come to
- 1:44:24Speaker 1: the factory and sign people's albums, you know, I said,
- 1:44:27Speaker 1: the workers. He said, yeah, yeah, okay. So we go
- 1:44:30Speaker 1: to the factory and he's great. He's signing all their albums.
- 1:44:33Speaker 1: And then the CEO came down, who was a little
- 1:44:36Speaker 1: bit to me. The typical American maverick flies his own plane,
- 1:44:42Speaker 1: you know whatever, right, you know, So he says, Mr Plant,
- 1:44:46Speaker 1: He said, how are you enjoying the escalade? So Plant,
- 1:44:52Speaker 1: he looked at him and he went, I like the
- 1:44:54Speaker 1: fall better. I went, what he said? He's so the
- 1:45:00Speaker 1: guy looked at him. He couldn't believe it. So when
- 1:45:04Speaker 1: we get outside, I said, are you for fucking real?
- 1:45:06Speaker 1: I said, you've had all that money, You've got this.
- 1:45:10Speaker 1: He said yeah, he said, but you know, he said,
- 1:45:12Speaker 1: that commercial for the escalator it's on TV too much.
- 1:45:17Speaker 1: I said, what do you mean it's on TV too much?
- 1:45:19Speaker 1: That's what they paid for and that's why your kettital
- 1:45:21Speaker 1: has gone through the roof. So we get home, he
- 1:45:26Speaker 1: phoned me A few weeks afterwards, he said, Bill, he
- 1:45:31Speaker 1: said that guy GM. I said, yeah. He said, do
- 1:45:34Speaker 1: you think you can phone him up and see if
- 1:45:36Speaker 1: you can get us to escaladors one for me and
- 1:45:38Speaker 1: one for my son. I said, no, I fucking can't
- 1:45:41Speaker 1: tell me to go to forward exactly exactly. Work it out, Okay,
- 1:45:47Speaker 1: So that the actus ever get jealous of one another,
- 1:45:50Speaker 1: they don't have your time? Yeah, how do you manage that?
- 1:45:54Speaker 1: I think that it's difficult. I think that that was
- 1:45:57Speaker 1: one of the problems with Robert plant Um. I think
- 1:46:02Speaker 1: that he resented any time I spent with the who.
- 1:46:05Speaker 1: I tried to juggle it as best as possible, but
- 1:46:08Speaker 1: I think he resented that a bit. But I was
- 1:46:11Speaker 1: forever jumping off one to the other. Um and I'll
- 1:46:19Speaker 1: go there. Pete Townsend is the complete complete artist. He
- 1:46:27Speaker 1: writes everything, he sings it, he gives you a demo.
- 1:46:32Speaker 1: It's phenomenal. The Scoop albums. Yeah, he's the real deal.
- 1:46:40Speaker 1: A lot of the others need to partner with someone,
- 1:46:44Speaker 1: and I'm not potting them down. They're great artists. But
- 1:46:47Speaker 1: you know, for me, Elton John, I love him. We're friends.
- 1:46:54Speaker 1: The songs he wrote with Bernie Special songs, Jagger Knees,
- 1:46:59Speaker 1: Richards plant needed page. That's all I can say. So
- 1:47:05Speaker 1: there is a little bit jellously because Townsend is the
- 1:47:08Speaker 1: complete deal. He writes it all complete musician. Okay, So
- 1:47:14Speaker 1: what is it you do as a manager that makes
- 1:47:16Speaker 1: you so great? But it must be something because you're
- 1:47:21Speaker 1: you're actually talking about There are some managers were traffic cups.
- 1:47:24Speaker 1: They deal with the incoming. Then there's some managers were visionaries,
- 1:47:28Speaker 1: and you've put out some visionary thing. So are you
- 1:47:30Speaker 1: the type of guy who says, listen, I have a plan,
- 1:47:32Speaker 1: we're going to do this or that, or you're fielding
- 1:47:35Speaker 1: calls or what is it doing? I do a lot
- 1:47:36Speaker 1: of that stuff, but I often joke and say what
- 1:47:40Speaker 1: I do really really well is I do the unnecessary
- 1:47:43Speaker 1: for the ungrateful. But but yeah, I do I plan
- 1:47:49Speaker 1: with them. Um. But if I had to say to someone, now,
- 1:47:58Speaker 1: what are the essentials for management, I'd say, never be
- 1:48:03Speaker 1: afraid to say no, never be afraid to make a mistake,
- 1:48:09Speaker 1: Try as hard as you can to make more successful
- 1:48:13Speaker 1: moves than unsuccessful. So at least it's like, well how
- 1:48:18Speaker 1: many goals did they score? You know? So that your
- 1:48:22Speaker 1: your average, because everybody makes mistakes, everybody, and so you
- 1:48:27Speaker 1: have to sit between it. And if you've got four artists,
- 1:48:32Speaker 1: it's much easier. Well maybe it's not asked John Reid
- 1:48:35Speaker 1: and people like that who have had solo artists, but
- 1:48:38Speaker 1: it's usually a lot easier with a solo artist because
- 1:48:42Speaker 1: you're answering one person with one set of problems than
- 1:48:44Speaker 1: it is with three or four. And if those three
- 1:48:47Speaker 1: or four of really forceful characters like Daughtry Towns in
- 1:48:53Speaker 1: the Moon were and then and Whistle was in his
- 1:48:55Speaker 1: own right he could be quite forceful, then you're juggle in.
- 1:49:00Speaker 1: It's difficult. So I don't know really how I've totally
- 1:49:05Speaker 1: managed it. It's um okay, Well that's managing the people.
- 1:49:11Speaker 1: How many of the ideas will you say, oh, let's
- 1:49:14Speaker 1: play within an orchestra, or oh let's do an album,
- 1:49:17Speaker 1: or this is the way the yard should be. A
- 1:49:20Speaker 1: contribute quite a bit to that, but I mean it's
- 1:49:22Speaker 1: to give Rogery's dew. It was his idea to come
- 1:49:25Speaker 1: with the orchestra because it used the orchestra only solo
- 1:49:29Speaker 1: stuff and it sounded so great. I mean he recorded
- 1:49:32Speaker 1: this the concert from Bethel and it was great, and
- 1:49:36Speaker 1: when he put it to Pete, Pete was quite skeptical.
- 1:49:39Speaker 1: Now Pete sort of loves it. Not only is it
- 1:49:42Speaker 1: great and sounds great, but it's easy for him. He's
- 1:49:46Speaker 1: finding it easy up there, you know. So And and
- 1:49:49Speaker 1: for me it was a good move on Roger's part
- 1:49:52Speaker 1: because he he gave it another dimension, the who music.
- 1:49:58Speaker 1: Um what I think that if I've got a forte,
- 1:50:02Speaker 1: I think it's in projects, in coming up with projects,
- 1:50:05Speaker 1: you know. Um, like with the Quadrophenia movie, going back
- 1:50:10Speaker 1: all the way back again. There that guy Frank Roddon.
- 1:50:13Speaker 1: He never made a movie. He had made a couple
- 1:50:16Speaker 1: of TV movies and one of them was great. It
- 1:50:19Speaker 1: was this true story about a deaf and dumb girl
- 1:50:22Speaker 1: who was raped. She she kills the killer, and we
- 1:50:27Speaker 1: gave him I was so impressed with him. We gave
- 1:50:30Speaker 1: him the Quadrophenia film to do. I think he made
- 1:50:33Speaker 1: a masterpiece. He came over here and he made a
- 1:50:37Speaker 1: movie for Fox called The Lords of Discipline, great book.
- 1:50:42Speaker 1: They ripped the fucking film to pieces. He came back
- 1:50:45Speaker 1: so disillusion he said, I'm never making another film. And
- 1:50:49Speaker 1: he did a TV series which was huge in England
- 1:50:52Speaker 1: called r V the same pet didn't mean much in
- 1:50:55Speaker 1: the rest of the world, and then he did Master Chef,
- 1:51:02Speaker 1: So we don't need a benefit for Frank, right. So
- 1:51:04Speaker 1: what are you most proud of in your career? I
- 1:51:09Speaker 1: guess I can't really pick out a concert because there's
- 1:51:16Speaker 1: been so many superb and superlative concerts. But if I
- 1:51:22Speaker 1: had to pick out a concert, I'd have to fall
- 1:51:27Speaker 1: on the side of that of nine eleven for the emotion,
- 1:51:33Speaker 1: just a sheer emotion of it, although we've had such
- 1:51:36Speaker 1: wonderful concerts. But proud, Yeah, the Kennedy Award. But I'm
- 1:51:43Speaker 1: proud that I've got two people who trusted me with
- 1:51:49Speaker 1: their lives, because that's how I look at it. When
- 1:51:53Speaker 1: an artist comes to me, they're putting a life in
- 1:51:57Speaker 1: my hands because there are artistic endeavors and their dreams
- 1:52:04Speaker 1: are their life. And that's what I'm proud of that
- 1:52:09Speaker 1: I've managed to manage. I hope I managed to do
- 1:52:14Speaker 1: a good job for them. And you're gonna do it
- 1:52:16Speaker 1: till you drop. Yeah, because I wouldn't say I want
- 1:52:21Speaker 1: to do it at the same rate and pace. Because
- 1:52:23Speaker 1: I enjoyed doing projects as opposed to the band thing now.
- 1:52:28Speaker 1: Pete laughed the other day because I said to him, well,
- 1:52:31Speaker 1: I don't fancy going down to the pig and whistle
- 1:52:33Speaker 1: and listen to another young band's problems. I want to
- 1:52:36Speaker 1: do projects. I want to do films. I want to
- 1:52:38Speaker 1: do this. I want to do it. But it will
- 1:52:40Speaker 1: always be music. Um so yeah, I mean. And it's
- 1:52:47Speaker 1: about realizing dreams, isn't it. My two My two kids.
- 1:52:50Speaker 1: My daughter she's just come out from university. She got
- 1:52:55Speaker 1: a great degree in English lit and creative writing. She
- 1:52:59Speaker 1: wants to go into publishing novels. My boys termed professional
- 1:53:04Speaker 1: as a golfer. Um, it's allowing being able to help
- 1:53:09Speaker 1: people hopefully realize their dreams. And if the who had
- 1:53:15Speaker 1: dreams when I first met them, and I know they did,
- 1:53:21Speaker 1: then I think I've helped them get there and realize
- 1:53:23Speaker 1: a lot of them. Well, Bill, this has been fantastic.
- 1:53:27Speaker 1: We could go out for like five hours. We've really
- 1:53:29Speaker 1: got the essence of who you are. Thanks so much
- 1:53:31Speaker 1: for doing this, and well, it's been a pleasure to
- 1:53:33Speaker 1: be here. And what we've managed to do this afternoon
- 1:53:38Speaker 1: is to turn crumpy old Bob into nice Bob. Hey, listen,
- 1:53:43Speaker 1: I our side away personality til next time. If Bob
- 1:53:46Speaker 1: Wes