Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "Secret Stars: The Greatest Underdogs of the Rock 'n' Roll Era"/Matt Berenson [Episode 140]

Transcript

"Secret Stars: The Greatest Underdogs of the Rock 'n' Roll Era"/Matt Berenson [Episode 140] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Oh, We're totally booked, and I think I'll leave you do you're reading
0:05
Little Hands, It's time to rock and roll roll. We are totally booked.
0:16
Welcome back to bookdown Rock, the podcast for those about to read and
0:19
rock. Make sure you subscribe and follow the podcast on YouTube, Facebook,
0:24
Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. We've got video segments from episodes on all the
0:30
platforms links to all the social media sites at bookdown rock dot com. Matt
0:35
Barrenson is this episode's guest. The book is called Secret Stars, The Greatest
0:39
Underdogs of the Rock and Roll Era. Get ready to discover some amazing musicians
0:44
that flew under the radar. Will explore the greatest underdogs in rock and roll
0:48
history included in Barrenson's book. Some you may have heard of, so you
0:52
may not have. These bands and songwriters may not have received as much radio
0:56
play, er and your radio play at all as their more famous counterparts,
0:59
but their music and stories are just as incredible, and you're going to find
1:03
out in just a minute. When we talked to Matt Barnson over on the
1:07
show notes page, you can find a playlist of the bands and artists that
1:08
we cover in this episode. They are all taken from Matt's book. Before
1:12
each chapter, he offers up a playlist for you to listen to while you're
1:17
reading through the chapters. It's a phenomenal book. We're going to get to
1:21
it all right now here is Matt Barnson. Hey, Matt, Welcome to
1:26
the podcast. Thanks Eric, glad to be here. Your first love is
1:32
music, but you've had quite a career in the film industry. Can you
1:34
tell us a little bit about yourself in your background in Hollywood? Sure,
1:40
I was born in Los Angeles, so not in an entertainment family, though
1:45
I'm not connected to anyone in the business, but I grew up around it,
1:48
and certainly I had friends who were connected in one way or another.
1:53
And I grew up, you know, a detour of six years. I
1:57
was living in Bethesda, Maryland with my family, but mostly grew up in
2:02
LA And when I was getting out of college in the summer of nineteen ninety,
2:07
I knew I wanted to work in either film or music, and a
2:10
friend persuaded me to go with film, oddly enough, because he said,
2:15
if you wanted to work in music, you should have started scouting bands when
2:16
you were eighteen why did you even go get a college degree? You know
2:21
what I mean, just like dive in. And I thought that was interesting
2:23
and smart, and I was like, oh, good point, Like I
2:27
could have started four years ago. You don't really need a college degree to
2:30
be in like to work in rock and roll, but in film you actually
2:34
kind of do. Not everybody has a college degree, but there's just tons
2:38
and tons of reading involved scripts and books, and so I tend to be
2:44
college graduates. And so I was like, Okay, you know, let
2:46
me see if I can get an entry level job in entertainment. And I
2:50
started in a mail room at the old venerable William Morris Agency, which was
2:53
the you know, one of the two biggest agencies in town. When I
2:57
started and worked my way up, figured out after the first couple of years
3:01
that I really wanted to be on the creative side of things, not on
3:04
the deal making side of things. So I started working for different producers and
3:08
one thing led to another, and by the time I started producing, about
3:13
eight or nine years into my career, I produced a little high school comedy
3:16
called Whatever It Takes, and then hit pay dirt with a comedy with Eddie
3:21
Murphy called Daddy Daycare, you know. And then I was sort of off
3:23
to the races. I mean, you know, one hit movie doesn't guarantee
3:27
a career in Hollywood, but it did help. It definitely was the turning
3:32
point where I was like, Okay, I can do this. And for
3:37
a while I was pigeonholed as a comedy producer and produced a number of comedies.
3:40
But then I kind of crossed over into drama and what I would just
3:46
call quality films for adults. I was running a company for a guy called
3:53
Sidney Kimmel, and I produced a movie called Place Beyond the Pines with a
3:58
group of other producers, with Bradley Cooper and Ryan Gosling. I bought the
4:03
script that became Hell or High Water, which was nominated for Best Picture of
4:06
the Year. Actually that I left that company, and that script was written
4:12
by Taylor Sheridan, who's gone on to create a Yellowstone and all of its
4:15
spinoffs, so he's yeah, you know. And then and then over the
4:21
last eight or nine years since I was at that company, I've produced The
4:26
Boy in its sequel, those horror films, and a movie called the Best
4:30
of Enemies of Sam Rockwell and Taraji Henson a bunch of things. So I'm
4:33
basically a career film producer at this point who then got bitten by the music
4:39
bug again and realized, like, you know, I need an outlet for
4:42
this, And here we are, Yeah, and here we are. We
4:46
were talking about this before we started recording. The Place Beyond the Pines from
4:48
twenty twelve is one of the my favorite movies ever, Like period. I
4:54
love that movie. Well, you know, those who haven't seen it are
4:57
listening now, please go see it because it's it's so good. Thank you,
5:01
Eric. Look, it's definitely one of the films in my career for
5:04
sure that I'm most proud to have been involved with. I mean, I'm
5:10
you know, one of many, uh you know. Certainly the writer director,
5:14
Derek c. And France is really the author of that film and deserves
5:17
most of the credit for for how it turned out. I was running the
5:21
financing entity that fully financed the film, Sydney Kimmel Entertainment Um, and had
5:26
a lot to do with the casting and the cut and music and what a
5:30
cast, What a cast? Yeah, Eva Mendez, ray Leota rest in
5:39
peace, yeah yeah. Ben Mendelsohn, Roseburn there's some the kid who plays
5:45
that the son of Bradley Cooper, who is he Emery Cohen. He was
5:48
a great discovery in the film for sure. And and you know another me,
5:55
herschel Ali was pretty new when when Derek cast him in that role.
6:00
He was still going by mihrschel a Hashabazali and we asked him if he could
6:05
shorten it for the poster. And since then he's been mihrschel Ali and he's
6:11
won Oscars. And you know, he was in Green Book and I think
6:15
it was either one an Oscar was nominated for that, and you know,
6:17
it's had a big career. But it was an incredible cast and I'm you
6:21
know, Derek is the filmmaker, is amazing with casting. The material was
6:29
so strong. It was such an original and beautiful screenplay that you know,
6:32
every actor wanted wanted to do it. It was it was a fun problem
6:35
to have, for sure. Love that movie. Great movie, great performances.
6:40
So let's get to your love of music here. Baptism by Fire was
6:44
literal but also spiritual. As you write in your book, can you tell
6:46
the story about the dead Kennedy's concert, Well, that's certainly you know,
6:51
when I had the idea for this book and started working on it, you
6:57
really do reflect on like how your music old journey began. You know,
7:00
everybody who loves music, probably somewharer between the age of ten and thirteen,
7:06
falls in love with a certain band or certain albums and it kind of goes
7:12
from there. I was definitely two or three years into that journey. I
7:16
was a huge you know, Clash and Elvis Costello and even like big fan
7:20
of Van Halen's first record. You know, my taste was all over the
7:25
place, but I certain I Love You Two's first album when I was twelve
7:29
years old. That was one of the first albums I got really obsessed with.
7:31
And my older brother gets his driver's license at the age of sixteen and
7:35
I'm thirteen, and he invites me to go to the Dead Kennedy's concert with
7:40
him. I've never been to a concert in my life. I mean,
7:42
this is a hardcore punk band from San Francisco. I was into that album
7:46
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. That was the album of theirs that I knew
7:49
really well. And with some trepidation, I said, sure, you know,
7:54
I'll come with you to the Dead Kennedy show. I was probably you
7:57
know, five feet two inches tall, you know, you know, young,
8:01
never been to a concert, and it was just one of the most
8:07
incredible, intense experiences of my life up to that point, for sure,
8:11
and really still to this day. I mean, he was in the mosh
8:18
pit with all the big kids, you know, from let's say sixteen to
8:22
twenty five year olds or something, and I was probably the youngest person at
8:26
the show and the smallest person at the show. And I was standing towards
8:28
the back and just sensory overload from the band and the wildness on stage and
8:35
of the mosh pit. And then suddenly I start to smell like I couldn't
8:43
even really identify it. It's a smell that I know now is burning hair.
8:46
Little did I know it was my own hair. And somebody had thrown
8:50
a lighted pack of matches from this like stairwell that runs up the back of
8:54
the whiskey, and it had landed on my head and my hair caught on
8:58
fire. So I literally was on fire at the Dead Kennedys. The people
9:03
around me started backing away freaking out. I knocked the I just swatted at
9:07
the top of my head and I saw that. The reason I knew was
9:09
a pack of matches fell on the floor and I saw what it was and
9:13
I stamped it out, and uh, you know, as soon as I
9:16
knew, I wasn't too hurt. I mean, my head was a little
9:18
burned, but nothing that like required nine one one or anything. Yeah,
9:22
So what could have what could have happened? But it could have It could
9:26
have been a very bad It could have been my last concept. There would
9:30
beyond the pines, there would be no place, there'd be no secret stars,
9:33
the greatest underdog rock and roll era, There'd be no there'd be no
9:37
I wouldn't have my children wouldn't exist. Yeah, it could have been a
9:41
very bad const experience for me. Um. But instead it really was just
9:46
you know, I have many years later and I'll try not to get emotional
9:50
talking about this. I'm kind of an emotional guy, and this this is
9:52
the kind of thing that gets me emotional. But for my fiftieth birthday,
9:56
my older brother found a photograph from that show, a famous photograph from that
10:03
from the Dead Kennedy's concert we were at, and had it blown up and
10:07
framed, and I have it hanging on the wall in my office. Yeah,
10:11
so I have a picture from that show. Uh, and it's just
10:16
nuts. From that point on, you you're in now there's that's the moment
10:20
you're like, I am a fan of this music, rock and roll.
10:24
This the literal infigurative baptism by fire, That's what it was. And I
10:30
was, you know, I've been all in ever since, you know,
10:33
forty years of just increasingly intense obsession with so many bands and songwriters across all
10:41
different genres, but but really mainly rock and all of the various things that
10:46
that came about from like nineteen fifty four to the present. I'm not like
10:50
a huge blues or jazz or or or orchestral classical music guy. It really
10:56
is more contemporary music. And uh yeah, it's just you know, I'm
11:00
at least as obsessed with it as I am with with film. It's so
11:03
true. Once you experience that high from whether it's a concert or for me
11:07
it was listening to an album, it was Van Halen's fifty fifty, and
11:11
you're chasing that high from that point on, and that's that's a great high.
11:16
That's that's a lot better than drugs or alcohol. Yeah, rock and
11:20
roll is a good high. I agree. I agree. For me,
11:24
I've never really found the downside. It's possible because I don't wear air plugs
11:28
when I go to shows. It's possible. It'll only cost me on the
11:31
hearing end of the spectrum as I get. But for otherwise, no downside
11:35
that I could see. Yeah, so what inspired you to write this book?
11:39
Well, it was two things. Really. The pandemic gave me a
11:46
lot of time to reflect, and I had the idea for this book six
11:48
weeks into lockdown, So you know, mid March we're all locked down,
11:54
right, And as a film producer, I knew that for the foresee future
12:00
I was not going to be able to go away and produce a movie or
12:03
even sell anything to you know, I couldn't really do my job for quite
12:07
a while, like a lot of people in the country, and like a
12:11
lot of people who couldn't work. During that time, I was starting to
12:15
get anxious two three four weeks into it, and I was also listening to
12:20
a lot of music. And so the other thing that happened was my obsession
12:26
with Robert Pollard and his band guided by voices who you know, I'm sure
12:31
we'll talk about because he's Chapter nine of the book had just reached a fever
12:35
pitch. I had been a fan from their breakout album in nineteen ninety four
12:41
bee thousand, and it'd seen them live during those years, but I had
12:46
sort of forgotten about them in the mid two thousands, like a lot of
12:50
people, and then rediscovered them in like twenty seventeen when he formed with a
12:54
new lineup. They've made like fourteen albums together now. Anyway, I was
13:00
just getting super super into him and them and realizing how vast his body of
13:05
work was, and I just started to think, like, how is this
13:09
guy not widely considered like one of the greats of all time? It was
13:13
just obvious to me that he was. And I thought, is there you
13:16
know who else is like that? You know, are there other? And
13:20
I started to make a list of like who are the who are some of
13:22
the songwriters and bands who I think are among the greatest of all time,
13:26
but who aren't widely regarded as such. And then I woke up in the
13:31
middle of the night and I thought, has anybody written a book about that?
13:35
Like about sort of underdog artists, underappreciated songwriters and bands who deserves sort
13:39
of more attention or success than they've had, and I, you know,
13:45
just did a quick Google search and I couldn't find anything like it. The
13:48
closest thing, too, it was a book I already had read and loved
13:52
called Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azared, huge you know rock
13:58
critic and writer, and that's, you know, his biggest book. He
14:01
wrote about thirteen artists in that book, and they were all from a kind
14:05
of certain underground punk DIY scene of the eighties, and some of them got
14:11
bigger in the nineties, but it was sort of about a whole music scene
14:15
that book, and my book's different than that, you know. When I
14:18
had this idea, I thought, oh, that's just a relevant comp from
14:22
my book because it was successful, and fans of the artists in that book
14:28
like it was a hit book, So I knew that I was onto something.
14:31
I knew that my idea to write about the ten greatest you know,
14:35
bands and songwriters of the rock era who people don't already know, or who
14:39
didn't have any big hits, weren't played on the radio, or maybe they
14:43
had one one medium sized hit but no big hits. I thought, I
14:48
got to write this you know, I couldn't shake the idea. And I'm
14:52
like, I'll never get another chance. When is there going to be another
14:54
pandemic? Or I could wait till I'm retired, but that's too late,
14:58
you know. So it was sort of a carpe dm thing, like I
15:00
got to start doing research and saying, you know, I wasn't sure at
15:03
first that it was going to be ten. I thought maybe I'd write about
15:05
twelve or thirteen artists in tribute to Asaad or you know, one thing led
15:11
to another, and I, um, and you know, but I and
15:15
I you know, I wasn't even sure I was going to finish it until
15:18
I got at least half way into it and really figured out what it was.
15:22
And then and then I was just loving it. Um. You know,
15:24
it's hard work, but I was. I was like, oh god,
15:28
this is going to take me a long time, and and it did.
15:30
It took me two and a half years on and off. So before
15:33
we get to the artists who make the book, can you talk about the
15:35
five main criteria you used to choose the artists. Yeah, that was something
15:39
that you know, simultaneous to figuring out what artists I wanted to write about,
15:46
I thought, well, how do I you know, I made a
15:48
list that had about somewhere between thirty and fifty bands on it. I can't
15:52
Okay, that's what I was going to ask you. Yeah, how many
15:54
were left off? Which ones are left off? Yeah? I didn't.
15:58
I didn't say my original list, but I know who a lot of the
16:03
other artists were who I almost chose to write about. And I was trying
16:07
to figure out a way to narrow it down, really, and the way
16:10
I narrowed it down was to come up with the following criteria. They had
16:15
to be artists I truly love, not where I love their body of work,
16:19
not just a single album, not just you know. It wasn't something
16:25
that I loved back in high school but don't love anymore. It had to
16:27
be like an artist that's really one of my favorites, full stop, even
16:33
though they're not the Beatles or the Who or Rim or any number of huge
16:37
you know, I'm a big Prince fan. I'm a big I'm a big
16:40
fan of lots of huge, successful artists, but there are a lot of
16:44
lesser known artists that I love just as much. And so that was one
16:48
I had to truly love them. They had to be artists who only play
16:51
smaller venues unless they're playing at festivals or opening for a bigger band or something
16:56
when they're on their own, when they're the headlining act. They had to
17:00
be you know, they played clubs. They either never had songs on the
17:03
radio or never any big hits. You know, they could have one moderate
17:10
hit, but no big hits. Any band that had a platinum album or
17:14
a number or a top ten hit was too big for the book. That
17:18
was that allowed me to narrow it down a little bit. And then what
17:21
else, Oh, I actually left out in a weird way, the most
17:26
important one that enabled me to narrow it down the most which was I had
17:32
to know either through some research which helped me narrow it down, or just
17:37
off the top of my head that they had a great story. Because part
17:40
of this for me was marrying my love of storytelling, which is one of
17:45
the reasons I produced films, to my love of music. And that's really
17:48
what writing a music book is. It's it's it's music and storytelling combined.
17:53
And there are plenty of really talented artists whose stories are you know, everybody's
17:57
story is interesting to one degree or another. But the artists I wrote about
18:02
have really interesting stories in ways that I'm sure we'll cover, you know,
18:06
as we start to talk about them. I mean, you know, I
18:08
mean two of the artists I wrote about cross Paths with Charles Manson. Yeah,
18:14
that's pretty weird. And I didn't even know that. I didn't know
18:17
that when I started, Like, I don't think I knew it in either
18:21
artists case. And I think, you know, we'll be talking about both
18:23
of these artists and what their intersection was with the Manson family. Yeah,
18:29
the arc of their careers or the particular maybe the if it's a particular member
18:33
of the band. They do have these stories that are some of them are
18:37
tragic, some of them have good endings. Yeah, he's one of them.
18:41
Jeffrey Dahmer. When he was a kid, one of the artists I
18:42
wrote about. I didn't know that when I you know, I knew other
18:45
things about him. But as I started to dig into his story, I'm
18:48
like, what he was in the band. They were in band in elementary
18:52
school together. This is Joe Henry I'm talking about now his chapter or I
18:56
don't know seven in the book. You know, he was friends with Jeffrey
18:59
Dahmer when he was a kid. How weird is that? Yeah, you
19:02
know, And there's a lot of other interesting things about his story. That's
19:04
one of many interesting you know. He he He's married to Madonna's sister.
19:10
He was in a play with Madonna in high school. But one of the
19:12
ten artists to make the book is a band that I remember hearing about.
19:17
I think it was in oh six, because this is when they had the
19:19
concert. They had a tribute concert to Arthur Lee of Love. Robert Plant
19:23
was going to be there, and this is Sack my radio days, and
19:26
I remember the thing came across on on our daily music information sheet and I
19:33
said Love, you know, Arthur Lee. But I'm thinking if Robert Plants
19:37
there, you know, And then they named the other artists there, I'm
19:40
like, it's got to be good. But I'm ashamed to say I didn't
19:41
really invest any time into it. And FM rock radio never played this band,
19:48
at least during my time. But there might have been that one song
19:51
what seven and seven is? Seven and seven is you wouldn't have heard growing
19:56
up, and I didn't either. In the sixties. It was a modest
19:57
hit. The one thing you might have. You know you're younger than I
20:03
am. But I was a teenager in the eighties and there was a band
20:06
that covered the first song on Love's third album, Forever Changes. The song
20:11
Alone Again or that got played on the radio a fair amount. But it
20:15
wasn't even Love's version that was getting played on the radio. Was some band.
20:18
I actually can't even remember what band it was. I I mentioned it
20:23
in the book, but I forget I forget who they were getting rockets.
20:26
No, No, it was an LA band. I think it was a
20:30
local LA band, and they did a good cover of it. And that
20:33
was the only love song I ever heard on the radio. What's great about
20:36
this too? You have a playlist. You set up each chapter with a
20:38
playlist to start. Yes, and all the artists that I asked you about
20:45
in this episode, everybody can find your playlist. I just put it onto
20:51
so people gonna listen to it. When did you first discover Love? When
20:53
was the first time you heard him? Okay, so this is to me,
20:56
it's a great story because it's just so nerdy. I mean, it's
21:00
just so music nerdy, and it's exactly the way you know, I find
21:03
my way to a lot of these artists. In fact, Wow, it's
21:07
amazing how many in the book. Now that I think about it, I
21:08
probably found my way to them. In a similar way, I'm a big
21:12
fan of a UK songwriter named Lloyd Cole. Have you ever heard of Lloyd
21:17
Cole and the Commotions. No, he was also on my short list for
21:22
this book, and if there's ever a Secret Stars Too, for sure he
21:26
will be in it. He's an all time favorite of mine. He's a
21:30
I always I used to think he was a Scottish songwriter, but he really
21:33
grew up right on the bubble of like northern England and Scotland. He's not
21:36
technically Scottish, but a lot of the other guys in The Commotions were,
21:40
so he's They were kind of a Scottish band, kind of not anyway.
21:42
He has a fantastic song on his first album, Rattlesnakes, which is considered
21:48
a classic by a lot of people. It's one of my favorite albums of
21:51
the eighties, honestly. Lloyd Cole in The Commotions Rattlesnakes, their first album.
21:53
The last song on it is called are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?
21:57
And in it there's a line where he says listening to Arthur Lee Records,
22:03
letting your friends know you feel guilty about their cynicism and the rest of their
22:07
generation. He just throws tosses out the name Arthur Lee Records, and I'm
22:12
like, I've never heard of Arthur Lee Records. And you look up there
22:15
are no Arthur Lee records. There's one Arthur Lee's solo album, and I'm
22:18
like, what is he talking about? Who is Arthur Lee? Well,
22:22
there was no Internet in nineteen eighty four, so I literally just had to
22:25
start asking around other music nerd friends of mine, you know, older people,
22:30
have you ever heard of Arthur Lee? Who's Arthur Lee? And I
22:33
found out he was the singer songwriter of the band Love, which was the
22:37
first integrated rock band sort of Booker T and the MG's was an integrated band,
22:42
but they were really the house band for stacks. They did have a
22:45
hit with the instrumental green Onions, but they weren't Like and they did have
22:48
an album out off the success of the hit green Onions. But like,
22:52
Love was a rock band the way you think of a rock band. They
22:56
put out albums, they played shows, They have, you know, lyrics
23:00
to their songs that you know that they were not a house band for anyone
23:03
else. They were their own thing LA band. And when I heard basically
23:10
once I found out about them, I found I heard their album Forever Changes,
23:15
their third album, was sort of the album they were famous for and
23:18
that some people considered among the greatest albums of all time. Library of Congress
23:22
has it on their list, right, Library of Congress, There we go.
23:25
It turns out if you look at almost any list from the twentieth century
23:30
of the greatest rock albums of all time, it'll be there, Rolling Stones
23:34
five hundred Greatest Albums of all Time from like I think it was the year
23:37
two thousand and three. The first one they did, Forever Changes, is
23:41
like, you know, one hundred and fifty on the list. It's way
23:44
up there, you know, any and in the UK it's much bigger than
23:48
it is here. Any list of the greatest albums of all time in any
23:52
UK music magazine will include Loves Forever Changes. So they are bigger there and
23:56
better known in the UK than they are here. But they never had any
24:02
They had one top forty hit here minor hit called well two, but really
24:08
like not huge hits at all. One was a cover of a Burt backrock
24:12
song called My Little Red Book, which is fantastic. Their version of it
24:15
is so much better than his. And then a song called seven and seven
24:19
is, which I was actually surprised was their biggest hit here because it's very
24:27
punk. It sounds like a really agro early punk song, really early punk
24:32
song, because it was like, you know, nineteen sixty six. They
24:33
were way ahead of the curve, and I just fell in love with all
24:37
of it. Their first three albums, which are the three with the original
24:42
lineup, and then really he recorded several great albums as Love after that,
24:48
but not as great as those three. The fourth album and last one for
24:52
Electra is also really good, called for Sale, which was a little inside
24:56
joke. Arthur had a love for Sale, like even though he's billed it
25:00
FU this was an LA band, right is yes? LA band? Sixties?
25:07
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanted to start the book in the
25:10
sixties. I wanted to kind of grow This is actually I'm glad you just
25:15
said sixties, because it's important to say the book is chronological. I start
25:18
in the sixties with my favorite overlooked rock band of the sixties, which for
25:25
me in the UK or US or Australia or anywhere. I chose Love and
25:30
and I think it really is because they're the most important for sure. Objectively,
25:36
I argue in my book they are the most important band from the sixties
25:40
that most people don't know. You know, why is that? Well,
25:44
the first song Jimmy Hendricks ever played guitar on was written by Arthur Lee and
25:48
it was recorded by a female artist before Love existed, even when Arthur was
25:53
a teenager. He wrote a song when he was nineteen that was recorded by
25:56
Anita Billings. No, that was his girl. That was right at the
26:00
time. I can't remember the name of the artists who recorded it, but
26:04
she recorded in Arthur Lee song that Jimmy Hendricks was the guitarist on when he
26:07
wasn't even calling himself Jimmy Hendricks yet. He and Arthur met each other then
26:11
and remained friends for the rest of Jimmy's life. And I tracked that friendship
26:17
through the whole through the whole chapter. As you know, So Arthur Lee
26:22
starts an integrated rock band, and wouldn't you know, so does Jimmy Hendrix.
26:26
So Jimmie Hendrickson, Sly and the Family Stone were the first famous integrated
26:30
rock bands or in the case of Sly and the Family, Stone R and
26:33
B soul. But you know, Jimmy Hendricks learned a lot from Arthur Lee.
26:37
That's all I can tell you. Arthur loves guitar player Johnny eccles used
26:42
to play the guitar behind his head. So Jimmy Hendricks was around before the
26:48
Jimmy Hendrix experience. There was love, That's all I can say. So
26:51
that's one reason. Another reason is, you know, the Rolling Stones were
26:56
huge fans of Arthur Lees. Yeah, tell me about this. They pay
26:59
homage to in the song She's a Rainbow how So Yes, So She's a
27:03
Rainbow, which came out a year after Love Broke Up. They were the
27:07
original lineup of Love Broke Up. Arthur was still making albums as Love at
27:11
the time. The chorus of that song is you know from the big commercial
27:15
that it was used in a few years ago during the pandemic, that song.
27:21
You know a lot of people didn't even know the Rolling Stones song She's
27:23
a Rainbow, But but it became a huge, well known song of theirs
27:27
during the pandemic because it was on a national commercial that ran constantly and the
27:33
chorus of it is she comes in colors. Everywhere she comes, her hair,
27:37
she's like a rainbow. Well, Love has a great song, one
27:41
of their best songs, called she Comes in Colors, And there is no
27:44
way in fact, I know for sure. The one of the members of
27:48
the Rolling Stones acknowledged that they were a huge fan of that Love album and
27:52
listen to it all the time. Sid Barrett of Pink Floyd was a huge
27:55
fan of that album and listen to listen to it all the time. Joe
27:59
Boyd, who produced the first two Pink Floyd singles, he said that Sid
28:04
Barrett told him how influential the first Love album was on the pain the early
28:10
Pink Floyd sound. He told Joe that personally, and Joe told me that
28:15
when I was interviewing him for a different chapter in the book. Because Joe
28:18
Boyd worked with two of the artists in my book. He worked with Nick
28:25
Drake chapter two of my book. He produced all the Nick Drake albums,
28:29
and he also worked with Robin Hitchcock, who's chapter or in my book.
28:33
So yeah, and anyway, and and yeah, so I learned that from
28:37
him. I didn't even know. So, I mean, that's pretty influenced,
28:41
influenced Jimmy Hendrix, the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, you know,
28:45
and like nobody knows this band. Well, so why then, why is
28:49
it that Love didn't go on to become the Doors or the Stones or Hendrix.
28:56
Well, I in my research I discovered the big reason was, and
29:00
certainly this was well known among other people who have written about Love, the
29:07
idea that one of Arthur Lee's big problems was he didn't like to tour.
29:12
He only played shows up and down the coast of California, a lot of
29:17
San Francisco, La shows where he had a rabid fan base, and he
29:22
had a little He would go to New York occasionally and play some shows in
29:26
like New York and New Jersey, and so there was a little following there.
29:29
He was not willing. He was very nervous being of mixed race himself
29:34
and being in a sort of mixed race band, about touring the South,
29:37
even though Jimmy Hendricks would do it a couple of years later successfully, he
29:41
was just he was nervous about that. And what I learned in my research
29:45
that did not appear anywhere else. In my research. There's no other book
29:49
about Love or article that you'll ever find. When I interviewed Johnny eccles,
29:53
who's still alive, who was the guitarist of Love, the guitarist on their
29:56
first three albums, their classic albums. He was friends with Arthur from high
30:02
school from before high school because they lived two doors down from each other in
30:06
LA and they had both been born in Memphis, and their mothers knew each
30:08
other. And all that he revealed to me for the first time. He
30:11
had never revealed it in an interview. I have no idea why he told
30:15
me that Arthur was diagnosed as bipolar. In his teens, he shot out
30:19
a friend's eye by accident with a BB gun. He meant to shoot him
30:23
with a BB gun, he didn't mean to shoot out his eye. And
30:26
he was diagnosed as bipolar and went on medication, and was on bipolar medication
30:32
while he was in you know, recording, writing and recording all of his
30:36
incredible songs. A lot of amazing songwriters are bipolar. Jimmie Hendricks has the
30:40
famous song Manic Depression. Manic depression is what they called it back when Hendricks
30:44
wrote that song, but now technically it's called bipolar disorder now. It used
30:49
to be helped manic depression. Yeah, so that's the other answer to your
30:53
question. He struggled with bipolar, which led him to various kinds of drug
31:00
and alcohol addiction. He would shut himself away in his house for weeks at
31:03
a time. He just I think he didn't tour because he was bipolar.
31:07
He was very uncomfortable being out in he was either super super comfortable. By
31:11
the way, the way manic depression works, when you have manic episodes,
31:15
you could be around other people, you can get up on stage and perform,
31:18
you can, you know, write a whole album's worth of songs in
31:22
a weekend. But when you're depressed, you know you you're depressed, and
31:26
you shut yourself away you and you can't be around other people. And I
31:32
think that's really why they didn't become bigger. I think ed crippling bipolar.
31:36
Wow, this is hands down my favorite of the ten artists that you cover
31:38
in this book. I loved down my favorite in Arthurly. He died six
31:44
Yes, yes, he died in O six of leukemia. Sadly before ever
31:48
I before I ever got to see him after serving some time in prison.
31:52
I mean, you know, there's so much to the story I could I
31:53
could get into but but let me rather than doing that, let me thank
31:59
you for saying that that that you that sort of this was a band you
32:01
didn't know that you discovered from the book that you now love. That was
32:06
the purpose for me of writing the book. My number one goal, aside
32:10
from telling entertaining stories in each case and you know, make you know,
32:15
trying it was trying to shine a light on these artists and hopefully make them
32:21
more popular than they are, hopefully a bigger part of the kind of pantheon
32:27
the last that stands the test of time. Some of these artists have already
32:31
stood the test of time. You know, Nick Drake got big in the
32:35
nineties in a way that he never was in the seventies and eighties. Big
32:37
Star Chapter three in the book. You know, nobody knew about them until
32:43
well, you know, well, yeah, well they're my second on the
32:45
list Big Stars second for me. Sure. Yeah. It's like going into
32:51
a record store and the record store owners they'll play they'll play music that they
32:54
love and they want the people to hear it. And it's like you walk
32:58
into a record store, you know, who's this that I'm listening to and
33:00
then you ask the owner, this is so and so, and then you're
33:02
like, man, I like these guys. That's what it feels like reading
33:05
this book. Well, that is the highest compliment you could have paid me,
33:10
because that was death. First of all, I was. I spent
33:13
more time in record stores growing up than almost anyone I know, and I
33:17
miss them terribly. I still go occasionally, even if I'm not going to,
33:22
like just to walk around, you know, because I just love that.
33:24
And again, occasionally they will be playing something that I don't know,
33:27
and I'll go ask and and and that's how I discovered a lot of great
33:30
music. And that's what I want this book to be for for for music
33:34
fans. You know, if if you're a music fan, you already know
33:38
you don't need to read another book about the Beatles or David Bowie or Prince
33:42
or you already know you know the Rolling Stones or you know, we could
33:45
go on and on. There's maybe a hundred artists that are that everyone knows
33:49
they know their music, and I don't. I didn't feel like I needed
33:52
to write a book about any of those, but to you know, to
33:54
turn music fans onto music that I think they'll like as much as their favorite
33:59
arts is fun for me. I mean that was a big part of it
34:02
for me. The book down Rock Podcast. We'll be back after this.
34:08
Matt Berenson is the author of Secret Stars, The Greatest Underdogs of the Rock
34:13
and Roll Era. Know that to make the book is Big Star so much
34:15
promise, so much talent, yet so much tragedy. When did you first
34:20
find out about Big Star? Similar to that Lloyd Cull in the Commotion song
34:24
are You Ready to be Heartbroken? That reference to Arthur Lee the Bengals their
34:30
biggest hit album in the eighties that had I was going to say, it's
34:32
the same one that has Prince's Manic Monday and Walk Like an Egyptian. I
34:37
believe that same album has a cover of Big Stars September Girls, Okay,
34:43
and it was my favorite song on that Bengals record. I liked, I
34:46
loved the Prince song, I loved you know. And they also had a
34:50
lot of originals, their own originals on that album. So I heard the
34:53
song September Girls, which I still think is one of the best power pop
34:58
songs ever written. It's top ten for me, and power pop is a
35:00
large category of music obviously, and I'm I am planting my flag that that's
35:06
a top ten power pop song of all time up there with you know,
35:09
Cheap Tricks Surrender, and I you know, I could probably name the other
35:14
eight that would be in my top ten. And I was like, Alex
35:17
Chilton, who's that? You know? Because it's said in the liner notes
35:21
written by Alex Chilton that led me on a search, led me to Big
35:24
Star. It was very hard to even find the Big Star albums at the
35:30
time. I actually didn't own them all and there are only three until they
35:34
were reissued by Rykodisc in the early nineties, and I just that's when I
35:39
got obsessed with them. By the way, after the Bengals covered September Girls,
35:46
the Replacements, who were one of my favorite bands of the eighties,
35:50
had a song called Alex Chilton that was the single off their album Please to
35:53
Meet Me, which a lot of people think is the best Replacements album.
35:58
So they had a whole tribute to Alex Chilton on there, and I had
36:01
already known about him because of the song September Girls, and I'm like,
36:05
why do all my favorite bands like this guy? Which is something I discovered
36:09
in writing this book and in the artists I chose. It's not a coincidence.
36:15
It's a happy accident that the artists I chose all are revered by other
36:22
more successful bands and artists. It's almost like they're your favorite songwriter's favorite songwriter,
36:29
you know what I mean. And so Alex Chilton was one of the
36:32
two songwriters a Big Star. The other one was Chris Bell. They made
36:36
the first album together and then Alex Chris was not on the second two big
36:42
Star albums, although he kind of was, and a lot of people don't
36:45
don't know it. And both of them vocalist guitarists. Yes, both vocalist
36:49
guitarists and songwriters. So that's how I found out about them. They're a
36:52
Memphis band from the seventies. Unbelievable story. Alex Chilton, at the age
37:00
of sixteen, was chosen to be the lead singer of the band The Boxtops,
37:06
and their first single, The Letter, was the second biggest song of
37:09
nineteen sixty seven. It not only was a number one hit, it was
37:14
a number one hit for eight consecutive weeks and was the second biggest song of
37:19
that entire year in the United States. In nineteen sixty seven in the United
37:23
States, The Letter by the Boxtops, which Alex Chilton is the singer on.
37:28
He didn't write it, He's the singer on it. Dan Penn wrote
37:30
it. Alex Chilton by the time I think, right around the age of
37:36
seventeen, when the song blew up, the Boxtops were opening for the Beach
37:40
Boys and stadiums in front of twenty thousand people. One of the incredible things
37:45
I learned about Alex Chilton in the process of this, as he became friends
37:49
with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. He went to stay with them out
37:52
in LA after the Boxtops tours end, and one night when he was over
37:55
at Dennis Wilson's house, the Manson family came over to party and he met
38:00
Charles Manson in a bunch of you know, the people who would later wind
38:02
up in prison for the horrific you know murders. Wow, only artist in
38:07
my book to cross Paths one of many artists that came and went that through
38:13
that house, Dennis's house. Yeah young still yeah, and look Arthur Lee
38:19
cross Paths with Bobby Bosle from the Manson family, who's still alive and in
38:22
prison. For killing for not the Sharon Tate murders and the and and the
38:28
famous Manson murders. He killed one of them. The members of the Manson
38:31
family killed one of the uh and and his and is in prison for for
38:36
a separate murder before the bigger murders were were committed. And he was in
38:40
Arthur Lee's band for a couple weeks, but he was un He was kicked
38:44
out of the band for being unreliable. Yeah, go figure, go figure.
38:50
Yeah so so yeah, so anyway, Alex Chilton leaves the Box Tops,
38:54
thinks he's gonna go solo, moves to New York, had already had
38:59
a child, left his wife, moved to New York. So you know
39:04
this guy. By the time he was twenty one years old, was a
39:07
rock star, married and divorced with a child, and had started to write
39:10
songs on his own. Chris Bell and Andy Hummel, who went to college
39:16
together in Memphis, were starting a band and Chris knew that Alex was no
39:22
longer into the Box Tops and went to chase him down to start a band
39:25
together. And they met in New York and they played each other their songs
39:29
and Alex was really impressed by the songs that Chris played him, and Alex
39:34
played Chris songs that blew him away, and they met up in Memphis and
39:38
decided to start a band together. And they were halfway through recording the first
39:44
album before they had even picked the name of the band. And they called
39:46
themselves Big Star because there was a grocery store across the street from the studio
39:51
in Memphis called Big Star Groceries. And the end of this story ties into
39:57
that grocery store. Yes, yes, it does. So the tragedy of
40:02
Big Star. There's so many tragic things about Big Star. I mean,
40:06
one is that they sold you know, they made three of the greatest albums
40:10
of all time. If you look on any list of the greatest albums of
40:14
all time, it will have at least one Big Star album on it,
40:16
if not all three. And yet a lot of people don't know these records.
40:21
So tragically it led to you know, fighting within the band and Chris
40:24
leaving the band early, and you know, they just didn't get discovered till
40:29
later, and didn't really have much, you know, if any success,
40:32
certainly no success while the band was together. The other tragedy was Chris Bell
40:37
struggled with depression. He recorded one solo album, or really it was a
40:42
bunch of songs over time that was eventually put together as an album. But
40:47
when he was twenty seven years old, like so many famous rock stars,
40:52
he died. He was back home, living with his parents, struggling with
40:57
depression, working at work at a grocery store bagging groceries, and drove into
41:04
a light pole. He was speeding, I guess smashed into a light pole
41:08
which fell on his car and killed him on the way home. So he
41:13
never he never knew that he was just about Like in the eighties, big
41:16
stars started to get a lot of attention and every band was talking about them
41:21
and writing about them. The biggest big star fans there are is Rim.
41:24
I mean, they're the biggest covers a big star songs. Everybody covers big
41:29
star songs. Elliot Smith, who I write about in the book, does
41:31
a great cover of the song thirteen. But boy Mike Mills Rim did their
41:37
induction ceremony not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, because you won't
41:42
find big Star in the Rock and Hall Hall of Fame where they belong.
41:44
Because they influenced so many artists they're one of the most influential bands. In
41:47
this case, Big Star didn't make it the number one reason because I try
41:52
to explore in each chapter of the book, one of the things I try
41:54
to explore is why they didn't make it bigger, you know, because I
41:59
make the case for they should have been bigger, So then I have to
42:01
explain why they weren't right. And and in Big Star's case, the biggest
42:06
reason was things kept getting screwed up with the distribution of their albums, their
42:10
record deals. You know. At first they had to deal with Stacks,
42:15
who had to deal with Atlantic, and they thought, wow, our records
42:17
going to be in record stores around the country. We've got But then the
42:21
guy who made the deal with Stacks got fired from Atlantic and or Colombia,
42:28
and and so then the deal with Stacks got canceled, and Stacks didn't have
42:31
very good distribution themselves, so people who were reading great reviews of the Big
42:36
Star album couldn't even find it in the store. Yeah, they had to
42:39
call Arden Records, who had made the deal with Stacks and where the Arden
42:45
Studios is where they recorded their music in Memphis, to like get them to
42:51
make like mail order albums, So, I mean their first album might have
42:55
been a hit if it had been promoted properly and distributed properly, and then
43:00
things they might have there might have been a very different outcome for the band.
43:05
The book Done Rock Podcasts will be back after this. There are more
43:09
than a few artists on this list who battled depression. Did you find that
43:14
to be consistent in the ten artists you write about? Did you find any
43:16
other similarities in the ten artists that stood out to you there? I would
43:22
say four of the ten artists there was definitely depression for sure. Arthur Lee
43:28
and his case manic depression or bipolar disorder, Nick Drake definitely struggled with depression.
43:32
Chris Bell and Big Star, and then Elliot Smith ultimately committed suicide.
43:37
Who's, um, you know, probably the most successful artist I wrote about.
43:43
And you know, I can't you know, I don't know if well,
43:45
you know, end up talking about him or not, but he,
43:49
yeah, just briefly talk about Elliott Smith. Sure, sure, So he's
43:52
the other one who struggled with real depression. You know his story, he
43:59
and and he's just you know, like a Beatles level songwriter, an unbelievably
44:04
talented songwriter who's also I would say maybe even the second most influential artist in
44:08
the book. Almost any important artist in the last five to ten years points
44:15
to Elliot Smith is like the biggest influence on their work. I mean,
44:17
Phoebe Bridgers and and Adrian Lanker from Big Thief, and a lot of current
44:22
artists now are like, oh, he's he was the guy. He was
44:25
the guy for me who lit my flame kind of and he um, you
44:30
know, he's a guy I discovered from the movie good Will Hunting. I
44:35
don't know if you you know know the Matt the Matt Damon ben Affleck movie.
44:37
Almost all the songs in that are Elliot smith songs. Oh. Gus
44:42
van Zant was living in Portland at the time, and Elliot Smith was a
44:45
kind of local celebrity songwriter in Portland, had a couple albums out, and
44:50
Gus van Zant went to see him play and met him and said, you
44:53
know, I'd really like to use some of your songs from your upcoming album
44:57
in my movie. I think it's a beautiful album. His album there Or,
45:00
which I think is one of the great albums of the nineties, really
45:01
one of my absolutely records of the nineties. They're like five songs from that
45:07
album and good Will Hunting, and then he also wrote an original song for
45:10
Goodwill Hunting that he was Oscar nominated for, called Miss Misery. So you'd
45:15
think that would almost make him too big to be a secret star. But
45:19
he never had a hit, He never had a gold album. You know
45:22
you you didn't. You had never heard his music before. I mean,
45:24
you know you weren't. You didn't know him before reading my book. A
45:28
lot of people have maybe heard his name, but don't don't know about him.
45:32
Gus van Zandt deserves a lot of credit for what he did in Goodwill.
45:37
I mean, the movie's great, but part of what's great about it
45:40
is he chose this secret star, this person he knew was a really special
45:45
artist that no one knew about yet, much like the character, Yes,
45:51
exactly, and essentially, you know, it's like Walt Wall Elliott Smith's songs
45:55
that movie, and then Paul Thomas Anderson did the same thing in Magnolia with
45:59
a Man's music, and I compare Elliot Smith and Amy Man. There actually
46:05
have a lot of things in common that I talk about in the book but
46:10
it was Elliot Smith was one of the first artists who was used that way
46:14
in a movie, although I guess really the first movie to do that was
46:16
The Graduate with Simon and Garfunkel's music. That's the first one I can think
46:22
of that sort of you know, Simon and Garfunkel, they had already become
46:25
famous just before The Graduate came out, but The Graduate sort of made them
46:30
huge and use their music to great effect. So mental illness is one of
46:35
the things that some of the artists had in common, but not all of
46:37
them. I mean, six of the ten artists know. But I would
46:40
say the one thing that's true of all of them is that they had some
46:45
kind of trauma or something in their lives, whether it was mental illness or
46:52
something else that made them turn inward and become an artist in the first place.
46:55
I think most really really talented artists have something. If you dig deep
47:01
enough, he'll find something. Even the one artist, Joe Henry, denied
47:06
he had anything like that. This is the one who was friends with Jeffrey
47:09
Dahmer and in elementary school. Not that that's traumatic. I mean, Jeffrey
47:13
Dahmer wasn't a serial killer yet, it's interesting. You know, I asked
47:16
Joe Henry this question of do you think an artist needs to be you know
47:21
that all artists are tortured in some way or have something that makes them turn
47:24
inward, And he categorically denied that. He thinks the tortured artist idea that
47:30
artists who do struggle with really serious issues that it actually gets in the way
47:34
of the work rather than making the work better. But I don't know that
47:39
he denied that there was something that made him turn inward, but he sort
47:43
of denied that. In his case, I mean, he's very close with
47:45
his brother. He had very loving family, super close with his mom and
47:50
dad, you know, very you know, good upbringing, stable upbringing,
47:54
didn't grow up in poverty, nothing like that. His father was a senior
47:59
executive in Detroit for an auto company. But he also told me that he
48:05
had a profound stutter as a child. He was super shy. They moved
48:08
around a lot before they settled in Detroit, so so he had a hard
48:12
time making friends. So I mean that sounds to me like, you know,
48:15
you understand why he turned inward and started to just get obsessed with records
48:21
at an even earlier age than I did and got you know, obsessed with
48:23
becoming a talented musician and so so what they all have in common, and
48:30
they all have their own story and different thing. And except in the case
48:32
of you know, where I would say mental illness was the thing. In
48:36
the case of four of the artists, the other six had different things that
48:39
made them kind of turn inward and become artists. And that's something that was
48:45
interesting for me to discover. So let's finish with one more. Because it
48:49
is Robert Pollard and guided by voices, we cannot leave them out because you're
48:52
wearing the shirt right now, so I would be in trouble if we didn't
48:57
mention him. Yeah, absolutely cannot leave them now because as I told you
49:00
earlier that that that was really the artist that inspired the book and made me
49:06
start to create a list, and he's he's the ultimate secret star in a
49:09
way for me. So so. But but go ahead, and yeah,
49:14
you you list some of the sometimes downright astonishing things about the self described scientist
49:21
robot boy and pop zeus. Can you share some of your favorites. I
49:27
could see that he could have had a career as an athlete. That's one
49:31
really cool. There are so many. I mean, his story is as
49:37
interesting at least. I'm not going to say he's the most interesting story in
49:39
the book, but he is. He is one of the best rock and
49:44
roll stories. I mean, he's up there with anybody's story. I mean,
49:47
this is a guy who taught math to fourth graders for fourteen years from
49:54
the age of twenty two to thirty six before he got a record deal.
50:00
You know. So so just for that's ancient in rock and roll years,
50:04
in rock and roll years, right, nobody knew who he was really till
50:07
he was thirty seven. I didn't hear of him till he was thirty seven,
50:12
and that's pretty late, and a lot of people didn't know that's how
50:15
old he was. But then when you went to see them live, you
50:15
were kind of like, that guy doesn't look like a twenty five year old,
50:20
Like that's interesting, and then you'd start to read articles. So one
50:22
of the amazing things about him is he was a math teacher for fourteen years
50:28
before anybody discovered him. He was a math teacher for four years before he
50:34
recorded his first DPECE, so nobody even could have discovered him for let's say
50:37
five years. The first guy who by Voices album was in nineteen eighty seven.
50:42
Nobody knew of them. He was selling them out of his trunk.
50:44
I mean, he didn't have a record deal, so he made his first
50:47
five albums before he was even signed to a little indie label on his fifth
50:52
album, Propeller. But just in terms of all the amazing things about him,
50:57
I mean, this is a guy who has recorded thirty seven or thirty
51:00
eight, depending on how you count albums as Guided by Voices, and probably
51:06
as many EPs with totally independent you know, with another couple of hundred songs
51:12
on them. He's recorded another seventy five albums not as Guided by Voices,
51:17
twenty five as himself, as Robert Pollard, fifteen with the band called the
51:22
Circus Devils, five of a band called Boston Spaceships. So for fans,
51:28
it's a bottomless pit of just incredible music. I mean's not all of it's
51:32
great, you know, not every Guided by Voices record is great. But
51:37
he's written and recorded and released more songs than any other songwriter in history,
51:43
over three thousand. That over three thousand that are available right now for streaming,
51:49
um, you know, and that doesn't even count. Maybe another five
51:52
hundred that aren't available for streaming, that are just b sides to singles that
51:55
have just never been added to streaming, some of which I've never heard,
52:00
which is painful for me. I'm very eager to hear that. So among
52:04
the extraordinary things about him are most albums and most songs of any artist ever.
52:08
Triple varsity athlete in high school who pitched a no hitter in college,
52:15
you know, and so yeah, you know, his dad wanted him to
52:17
be a professional athlete and said, quit this stupid music shit. And you
52:22
know, his wife wanted him to quit his well now ex wife, his
52:27
first wife who we fell in love with in college and had two children with.
52:31
She really wanted him to quit music around the time he was recording his
52:36
fifth album, and he promised her, if nothing happens with this album,
52:38
I'll quit. And the fifth album was the one propeller where he got a
52:43
little record deal and started to do a little bit of touring, you know.
52:47
But it was really the seventh album, B thousand, that got him
52:51
a bigger record deal with Matador, and then the album's B thousand and Alien
52:54
Lanes both sold one hundred and fifty thousand copies, which actually made him an
52:59
indie rock household name. He still had no hits. He's never had a
53:02
hit. That's another incredible thing about this guy. He's got one hundred and
53:05
ten albums, never had a hit, but had songs that came close.
53:10
He had a song called hold On Hope off the album Do the Collapse that
53:15
was almost a hit, and a song called Glad Girls off the album is
53:19
Selasian Drills that was almost a hit. You know that like got played on
53:22
the radio, but just didn't didn't make it, even though they're great pop
53:25
songs, and he's you know, he's kind of an you know, indie
53:28
rock really he's great with melody, incredible melodies, incredible choruses. But he's
53:34
still active today, still active. Yeah, so he's okay. So he's
53:38
one of the good good endings, very happy ending. He's one of only
53:43
two artists in the book who's still going. He's sixty five years old.
53:47
He put out one of my two or three favorite albums so far this year
53:51
called La La Land, Guided by Voices, La La Land. I wouldn't
53:54
tell anyone that that's the first album of his you should listen to, but
53:59
if it was the first album you listened to. I think any rock fan
54:02
could listen to that album and go, oh, this is good? You
54:06
know, is it great? I think he's got much greater albums. But
54:10
La La Land is very good. It's a very good rock album and actually
54:15
easier to get into than some of his other albums. Maybe, But and
54:17
yeah, he's got another album coming out next month. And then the band
54:21
Drive By Truckers that Jason Isabel started in who you probably heard of them.
54:27
Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley actually founded that band. Jason Isbel became the third
54:31
songwriter in that band in the two thousands. You know. They have like
54:35
fifteen albums out and are still recording and touring and are amazing. They're the
54:38
last chapter in my book. Well, we've only covered just a little bit
54:43
of this book. There are ten artists in all. So people can get
54:47
the book great reviews on Amazon. It's out now through Amazon all the usual
54:52
places and where can people find you online? Matt on Instagram at Matt Barnson
54:57
producer and I also write a sub stack called Matt Brenson's Newsletter for Music Obsessives.
55:05
Um, you know I was going to call it, I was going
55:07
to tie it to the book by calling its you know, Secret Stars newsletter
55:12
or I don't know Secret Stars. But I decided that I didn't want all
55:16
that. I didn't want to only write about artists like that in my newsletter.
55:21
Although, as it turns out, about eighty percent of my newsletters or
55:23
about artists like the ones I chose for Secret Stars. But you know,
55:27
I've written about the clash, I've written about a lot of you know,
55:30
a bigger artists on my newsletter as well. But yes, that's where I
55:36
can be found. Matt, thanks so much. This was great. I
55:38
loved having this discussion. And I could do a whole episode on just just
55:43
the films that you've been involved, and we could talk movies for hours.
55:46
Well, thank you, Eric, and yeah, I'd be happy to do
55:50
that anytime you ever want to talk to movies. We could do a separate,
55:52
separate podcast about about movies. It's a crazy business, but rock and
55:57
roll in movies, boy, they work very well together. Yes, indeed
56:00
they do. There's nothing more fun than marrying music to film than when you're
56:05
in post looking at your film and there's a scene that's not working, and
56:08
then you find a song or a piece of score that works and suddenly the
56:13
scene is working the way you know it should, but it wasn't because it
56:16
had the wrong music with it. It's amazing how much difference, you know,
56:21
having the right music of the wrong music in a scene. Absolutely,
56:23
And we got to thank Alan Barry too, because he's the one who hooked
56:27
this up. You know, how do you know? Alan? I'm so
56:29
well. Alan and I have a film together. He made a fantastic documentary.
56:32
This gives me a chance. It hasn't been made yet, but this
56:36
is a perfect way to end it. I guess. He made a documentary
56:40
called dead Man's Line about a very unusual hostage crisis in Indianapolis in the seventies
56:47
that became one of the first local crime events that became a nationwide news story,
56:54
almost like oj being followed in the Bronco or something. This was sort
56:59
of like that disgruntled guy took a bank vice president hostage with something called a
57:05
dead man's line, a wire around his neck that was connected to a loaded
57:08
shotgun, and paraded him down the streets of like right in downtown Indianapolis,
57:14
stole a police car, drove him back to his apartment, and then held
57:17
him hostage for three days in his apartment, and his apartment was wired with
57:22
explosives, so the swap guys couldn't. I mean, it's a really intense,
57:28
amazing story that's out now that documentary's out. The documentary is available on
57:32
YouTube. You can find it on YouTube, I'm pretty sure. And we
57:37
got the rights to adapt it as a film. And by we, there's
57:40
a writer director named Robin Bissell, who directed the Sam Rockwell Taraji Henson movie
57:45
I mentioned earlier, The Best of Enemies. He's going to be writing and
57:49
directing this film. We do have an actor attached to play the hostage taker.
57:53
I can't tell you who it is though. That's has not been announced,
57:57
but hopefully I'll be making that movie in twenty twenty. All right,
58:00
Matt, thanks man. This was great. Thank you, Eric much appreciated.
58:02
This is fun. That's it. It's in the books.