Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Don Was

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Don Was · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:08
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Don Was remembers the exact moment music changed him.
0:15
Speaker 1: He was fourteen running errands with his mom when Joe
0:17
Speaker 1: Henderson's Mode for Joe came on the car radio. Joe's
0:21
Speaker 1: Tenor Sacks taught Don an important lesson you'll hear about
0:24
Speaker 1: later in this episode. It also cemented his love of music,
0:28
Speaker 1: which was everywhere in Detroit in the nineteen sixties, from
0:31
Speaker 1: Motown to the Stooges to George Clinton in Parliament Funkadelic.
0:36
Speaker 1: It's no surprise the city as musically diverse as Detroit
0:39
Speaker 1: turned out someone like Don Was, who's worked across generations
0:43
Speaker 1: and genres for decades now. He led the avant garde
0:46
Speaker 1: new wavy band Was Not Was produced career defining albums
0:50
Speaker 1: for the B fifty twos and Bonnie Rate, including her
0:52
Speaker 1: biggest hit, Something to Talk About. He's also worked with
0:55
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan and as a Rolling Stones go to producer.
0:58
Speaker 1: For the last decade, he's worked as a president of
1:01
Speaker 1: Blue Note Records, reviving the same legendary jazz label that
1:04
Speaker 1: issued Mode for Joe way back in nineteen sixty six.
1:08
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin caught up with Don Was to talk about
1:10
Speaker 1: his wide ranging career and why his latest gig, playing
1:13
Speaker 1: Base for the Grateful Dead's Bob Were is a single
1:15
Speaker 1: best thing he's ever done. This is broken record liner
1:22
Speaker 1: notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick
1:30
Speaker 1: Rubin and Don was who. We start with Detroit. You're
1:33
Speaker 1: from Detroit, Yeah, sure, yeah. I was born in Detroit
1:37
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two, which meant I was a teenager
1:40
Speaker 1: there in the nineteen sixties, which was a really great
1:43
Speaker 1: time to be in Detroit. You know, the Stooges played
1:47
Speaker 1: at my high school. Wow, Bob Seger played at my
1:51
Speaker 1: high school, George Clinton, and they were just called the
1:56
Speaker 1: Parliaments then, right, and there was a five piece vocal
1:59
Speaker 1: group and they came to lip sync. God just want
2:01
Speaker 1: to testify at at my junior high school at Asaka.
2:06
Speaker 1: So there was incredible music and there was an incredible
2:10
Speaker 1: atmosphere in the city. You know. After World War Two,
2:13
Speaker 1: people from all over the world started heading up there
2:15
Speaker 1: to get jobs and auto factories, and they brought their
2:18
Speaker 1: cultures with them and they all kind It was like
2:21
Speaker 1: going to you know, a great bazaar. Every day. You
2:25
Speaker 1: could hear all kinds of music and meet all kinds
2:27
Speaker 1: of people beautiful. There was something about coming from Detroit
2:30
Speaker 1: back then that there was no point in putting on
2:34
Speaker 1: any errors. You know, it's a very honest city because
2:37
Speaker 1: everyone's state was tied to the success of the auto business.
2:41
Speaker 1: My parents were both teachers, and if auto sales were down,
2:46
Speaker 1: the families and move away to find other jobs, and
2:48
Speaker 1: they'd lay off teachers, and they'd lay off barbers, and
2:50
Speaker 1: they'd lay off waitresses, and so there was really no
2:54
Speaker 1: point in like Lisa and Mercedes, to impress people because
2:58
Speaker 1: everyone knew we were all in the same boat. And
3:01
Speaker 1: that was that was something very special about Detroit in
3:04
Speaker 1: that era. And I think the music reflects that if
3:07
Speaker 1: you listen to the people who came out of there.
3:10
Speaker 1: To me, the godfather of Detroit music is John Lee Hooker,
3:15
Speaker 1: and that's just brutally honest, incredibly raw stuff without affectation. Incredible, lucky,
3:24
Speaker 1: lucky that you found yourself there. It's amazing how the universe,
3:28
Speaker 1: the universe plays a role in all of this. It's incredible.
3:32
Speaker 1: What was the world in Detroit? Like, paint a picture
3:36
Speaker 1: of your childhood in Detroit. Well, I see it in
3:39
Speaker 1: black and white, probably because we were watching black and
3:41
Speaker 1: white TV, but I don't see it bright and colorful.
3:47
Speaker 1: There was a grit to the place, but a warmth. Man.
3:51
Speaker 1: The people are really nice, man. Really, it's Midwestern and
3:57
Speaker 1: it's got that Cone Brothers kind of elevolence, but its
4:02
Speaker 1: urban and and sophisticated, so it's it's it's not a
4:06
Speaker 1: farm town. There's a pretty hiptown. And the culture was
4:11
Speaker 1: great to music was unbelievable, man, not just in rock
4:15
Speaker 1: and roll, you know, certainly when it was about the
4:17
Speaker 1: R and B that came out of there, but like
4:20
Speaker 1: just on the Blue Note roster, for example, there's a
4:24
Speaker 1: really an ordinate number of musicians from Detroit who ended
4:28
Speaker 1: up recording for Blue Note. It's an incredible jazz scene.
4:33
Speaker 1: I feel like there are other industrial places that don't
4:35
Speaker 1: have that legacy. Is what do you think is specific
4:38
Speaker 1: about what was going on in Detroit particularly that created this.
4:43
Speaker 1: I think it's the combination of no bullshit and having
4:48
Speaker 1: an incredible number of jobs in one period of time
4:51
Speaker 1: that that drew people from all over the world. But
4:53
Speaker 1: it's just it's just some weird phenomenon. It was a
4:56
Speaker 1: booming scene, man. How long did you stay in Detroit?
5:00
Speaker 1: A long time? Man? I was there till I was
5:02
Speaker 1: in my thirties. Wow. Yes, I left in the nineteen
5:06
Speaker 1: eighty six. So I started making records there. I loved.
5:10
Speaker 1: I loved recording studios. David was my buddy, my partner.
5:15
Speaker 1: His parents were both voiceover actors, and so they remember
5:19
Speaker 1: them taking us to a place called the United Sound,
5:21
Speaker 1: which is the studio where John Lee Hooker cut Boogie
5:24
Speaker 1: Chilling and George Clinton had it locked out from the
5:28
Speaker 1: late seventies early eighties and it still standard by the while,
5:32
Speaker 1: And so they took us down there maybe when we
5:34
Speaker 1: were twelve, to watch and records and commercials or something.
5:38
Speaker 1: And I walked into that big room and saw them
5:40
Speaker 1: mic stands everywhere in the cables hanging in all the
5:43
Speaker 1: year and it just looked like I wanted to spend
5:47
Speaker 1: the rest of my life in Edinburgh, Man. So that
5:50
Speaker 1: got me going. When I was in my early twenties,
5:53
Speaker 1: there's something called the Recording Institute of America which had
5:57
Speaker 1: started like almost like trade school, six week class and
6:01
Speaker 1: recording engineering, and they franchised it out in Detroit, and
6:05
Speaker 1: the class itself, it wasn't looking back on it. They
6:09
Speaker 1: taught EQ wrong. They didn't even know how equalizers are,
6:17
Speaker 1: so the curriculum needed work. But it got me in
6:20
Speaker 1: that room at United Sound, and then from there I
6:23
Speaker 1: was able to come a guy, really, I don't know
6:26
Speaker 1: any other way to put it, a guy named Jack
6:29
Speaker 1: Tan who owned a little Hrax studio on top of
6:31
Speaker 1: a warehouse. He needed an engineer, and I told him
6:35
Speaker 1: I was a graduate May and I got in there.
6:39
Speaker 1: I was able to experiment. Then later got into a
6:42
Speaker 1: west Lake room called the Sound Suite. SOU and D
6:46
Speaker 1: s U I. T. E. Were Aretha recorder and Bob
6:50
Speaker 1: Segre made records and there it was kind of jumping
6:53
Speaker 1: and they let me go in at midnight and just
6:55
Speaker 1: start making making any kind of records I could At
6:59
Speaker 1: that point, were you making purely your ound stuff or
7:03
Speaker 1: we did you already start producing other people? Now that
7:06
Speaker 1: it was there was not Watch Stuff was really the
7:08
Speaker 1: first actual record we made that that came out, and
7:12
Speaker 1: that was we were just trying to create a little
7:15
Speaker 1: little microcosm of the music we grew up with. You
7:18
Speaker 1: can hear on our first record we had Wayne Cramer
7:20
Speaker 1: from the MC five playing guitar. We had Marcus Bellgrave,
7:25
Speaker 1: great jazz trumpeter who at the time was playing to
7:27
Speaker 1: Charles Mingus. He played trumpet on Larry Fritangelo from George
7:33
Speaker 1: Clinton's organization. It was playing percussion, and it was meant
7:37
Speaker 1: to amalgamate all those sounds and to create the vibe
7:42
Speaker 1: of that period in Detroit and what we grew up
7:45
Speaker 1: listening to. And I didn't know what I was doing, man,
7:47
Speaker 1: it was we were just doing anything we could. We
7:50
Speaker 1: had no money to work with, so that's a really
7:52
Speaker 1: great thing. When you have no bread to work with,
7:55
Speaker 1: you have to rely on creativity. You can't just hire
7:58
Speaker 1: David Campbell to come write some strings to fill up
8:00
Speaker 1: the bridge and make it rise. You gotta like find
8:04
Speaker 1: rusty nails and grind them together and put them in
8:07
Speaker 1: pitch and a harmonizer. So it was. It was a
8:10
Speaker 1: great period along for that period in the way where
8:13
Speaker 1: we were. It was an uphill battle. It's a twenty
8:17
Speaker 1: four tracks studio. There were always two tracks that weren't working.
8:21
Speaker 1: Two that's great and some and somehow we came up
8:25
Speaker 1: with an album and a guy named Michael Zulka. I
8:27
Speaker 1: don't know if you ever ran in Michael. He owned
8:29
Speaker 1: a copy called See Records The Coconuts. Yeah, yeah, So
8:34
Speaker 1: he gave us a deal. I think also, who else
8:37
Speaker 1: was on the label the Contortions Maybe the Contortions, Yeah, yeah,
8:41
Speaker 1: James White and the Blacks, Christina, the waitresses, the Kid
8:45
Speaker 1: Creole and Cody Mundy were They were the foundational artists
8:52
Speaker 1: at the label. I got an email from Michael Zulka
8:55
Speaker 1: the other day, so wow, yeah, now he's wonderful. I
8:58
Speaker 1: stay in touch with him, and he was a Medici man.
9:02
Speaker 1: He was great. He just encouraged us to be as
9:05
Speaker 1: different as we could be. My favorite story with him
9:09
Speaker 1: we were recording in Detroit. He was sending us money
9:12
Speaker 1: in little and drabs and he said, I want you
9:16
Speaker 1: to send me rough mixes every night of what you're doing.
9:21
Speaker 1: These are like my babies. Well at that time you
9:24
Speaker 1: can just like burn files and email them. It meant.
9:28
Speaker 1: And I was working all night to ten in the morning.
9:31
Speaker 1: I had to stay up to runoffs in real time,
9:34
Speaker 1: make a cassette and go to FedEx myself and drop
9:38
Speaker 1: it off for him so he could listen to it
9:40
Speaker 1: the next day. And it got really tires of that,
9:43
Speaker 1: you know, for so so we said said, let's let's
9:49
Speaker 1: put an end to this, right, So we programmed all
9:51
Speaker 1: these sequencers we had laying around with the volume down,
9:55
Speaker 1: so we couldn't hear what we were doing. We didn't
9:57
Speaker 1: know what sounds were attached or what we We're just
9:59
Speaker 1: banged down him. And then I said to David was,
10:02
Speaker 1: I said, just go out there and yell something man
10:05
Speaker 1: and uh. And the sax player Dave McMurray, went out
10:08
Speaker 1: there with him and started playing. But they were just
10:11
Speaker 1: they weren't hearing the music. They were just playing stuff.
10:14
Speaker 1: And he yelled something about hello Dad, I'm in jail.
10:17
Speaker 1: Was about two minutes long. We put it on a cassette.
10:21
Speaker 1: We brought the brought the sound back up. It was.
10:24
Speaker 1: It was written, recorded and mixed simultaneously, and we FedEx
10:32
Speaker 1: that to him. We thought that would We figured he'd
10:35
Speaker 1: call and say, all right, you don't have to send
10:37
Speaker 1: us anymore stuff every day. No, of course, not at
10:42
Speaker 1: ten in the morning. The next stayed up. I wanted
10:45
Speaker 1: to hear his reaction, right, And of course he called
10:47
Speaker 1: up and he said it's the most wonderful thing you've
10:49
Speaker 1: ever done, and he was probably right. It turned out
10:54
Speaker 1: it's been in like eight different movies and the summoned
10:58
Speaker 1: in an animation or toured in animation festivals for years,
11:03
Speaker 1: and it was a It was a great lesson in
11:07
Speaker 1: not overthinking stuff and dropping self consciousness and just having
11:12
Speaker 1: the confidence to go out there and do anything. And
11:17
Speaker 1: it's also testimony to Michael's taste that he heard that
11:22
Speaker 1: and recognized the honesty of the thing. Yeah, it's amazing
11:25
Speaker 1: how these things work. What motivated you just move from
11:29
Speaker 1: being an artist to being a producer. I never saw
11:32
Speaker 1: them as disconnected. I'm old, but I'm not old enough.
11:37
Speaker 1: I remember the Beatles using this, using the studio as
11:42
Speaker 1: a musical texture, so to me that they were all
11:45
Speaker 1: one and the same, it was just it was another instrument.
11:48
Speaker 1: And I still see it that way. Well, what was
11:51
Speaker 1: the first thing you produced that way? It wasn't your group? Well,
11:55
Speaker 1: I did some odd things for Michael. I've produced his wife,
11:58
Speaker 1: a singer named Christina, and then there were some English
12:02
Speaker 1: groups that it was that was our first album. We
12:04
Speaker 1: we did all right over in England and then we
12:07
Speaker 1: started getting a coached by people. But the first big
12:10
Speaker 1: artist to call me was Carly Simon and she really
12:15
Speaker 1: went out on a limb. I think Frank Philippetti had
12:18
Speaker 1: had worked on some of her stuff, and she was
12:20
Speaker 1: looking for younger people to come in and infuse some
12:24
Speaker 1: new blood. And she took a real chance on me.
12:27
Speaker 1: And what was the experience like for you? Oh? Man,
12:30
Speaker 1: it's Carly Simon. I used to I used to stare
12:35
Speaker 1: at the cover of playing possum, right, you know, And
12:37
Speaker 1: now here I am in her house, eating dinner with her.
12:40
Speaker 1: It blew my mind. And she was she was lovely.
12:45
Speaker 1: I was going to a rough period then, as in
12:47
Speaker 1: the middle of a divorce, and she helped me get
12:50
Speaker 1: an apartment in New York. She actually went to the
12:54
Speaker 1: tenants committee, and at that time, Carly Simon where she's
12:58
Speaker 1: like the queen of New York, right, So of course
13:00
Speaker 1: they wouldn't. I didn't even have a credit card. But
13:02
Speaker 1: she came in and vouched for me, and I got
13:06
Speaker 1: an apartment and she was wonderful. Man. I learned a
13:09
Speaker 1: lot from working with her too. And we're still living
13:11
Speaker 1: in So this is when you were still living in
13:13
Speaker 1: Detroit and then you moved to New York. I moved
13:16
Speaker 1: to New York while I was making a Carley Simon record.
13:19
Speaker 1: I got a divorce and moved to New York. And
13:21
Speaker 1: then it was an adjustment. In fact, I don't think
13:23
Speaker 1: I ever really found my groove in New York. I
13:26
Speaker 1: was struggling. I was doing the same thing I was
13:29
Speaker 1: doing in Detroit, approaching the records the same, but they
13:32
Speaker 1: weren't getting over. We weren't getting any hits. Then I
13:36
Speaker 1: had this one experience, and this was a life changer.
13:41
Speaker 1: I got hired to produce a band for Virgin Records
13:44
Speaker 1: in the UK. And my wife was the A and
13:47
Speaker 1: R at Virgin in the UK. That's not met her,
13:51
Speaker 1: so she was somehow involved in hooking me up at
13:53
Speaker 1: the spank called Award Brothers three brothers from Barnesley, which
13:57
Speaker 1: is kind of like being from Iowa. And they had
14:00
Speaker 1: a little church where they made these great four track demos,
14:04
Speaker 1: great guitar basin drums, and then a bidding war started
14:08
Speaker 1: over them. And now there's all this pressure. Now you
14:11
Speaker 1: can't go to Barnesley to make a record with these guys.
14:13
Speaker 1: We got to bring them to New York and do
14:14
Speaker 1: it right. So they've never even been in New York,
14:16
Speaker 1: so they get plunked down in the middle and it
14:19
Speaker 1: didn't go well. And then and our guy came in
14:22
Speaker 1: from England and didn't like what he heard, and he
14:25
Speaker 1: pulled the band out. Man. He took him home and
14:28
Speaker 1: didn't call me. I came to the studio the next
14:29
Speaker 1: day and they were on a plane going back. I
14:32
Speaker 1: didn't hear from them for a month. It was harsh.
14:36
Speaker 1: And then they called me in a month. They said, well,
14:38
Speaker 1: we're going to do some overdubs here. You can. We're
14:41
Speaker 1: not gonna pay for it, but if you if you want,
14:43
Speaker 1: you can fly over on your own dime and pay
14:47
Speaker 1: for a hotel, but you can still work on the record.
14:50
Speaker 1: And I had nothing going so I thought, all right,
14:52
Speaker 1: I'll go. So I went over and I did overdubs
14:54
Speaker 1: with him for two weeks and it's okay, you're back
14:57
Speaker 1: in our good graces now. Then I didn't hear from
14:59
Speaker 1: them for a month. Then when they called me said
15:02
Speaker 1: we're going to start mixing on this date in uh
15:06
Speaker 1: Like it was a residential studio in England somewhere again.
15:09
Speaker 1: You can fly over on your own dime if you want,
15:11
Speaker 1: and you can be present if you want. So I
15:13
Speaker 1: flew over and it was not going well. It was
15:16
Speaker 1: not the right guy to mix the song. He was
15:17
Speaker 1: a good engineer, but he wasn't the right guy, and
15:20
Speaker 1: they kept talking about and our guy. I was saying,
15:24
Speaker 1: it's got a sound like Don Henley, and it sounded nothing.
15:27
Speaker 1: There was nothing on any track that sounded like Don's record.
15:31
Speaker 1: But finally I said, all right, let me go to
15:33
Speaker 1: LA and I'll mixed with let me mix the single
15:38
Speaker 1: with Greg Ladanni, who engineered Don Henley's records. From the mix,
15:42
Speaker 1: So fly back to New York. I'm going to pick
15:44
Speaker 1: up my wife. We're going to look at apartments and
15:47
Speaker 1: in LA while we're there, So I take a taxi in,
15:51
Speaker 1: we get we get in the cab at midnight on
15:53
Speaker 1: a Friday. I got the two two two intrials under
15:57
Speaker 1: my arm for the mix, and we get up to
15:59
Speaker 1: the ticket count there and she says, wait, we're the tapes.
16:03
Speaker 1: And I left him in the trunk of a New
16:05
Speaker 1: York taxicab at midnight on a Friday night. And thankfully
16:09
Speaker 1: I kept the receipt and I had the medallion number.
16:11
Speaker 1: But nothing was going to happen till Monday, and Greg
16:15
Speaker 1: Ladonney was waiting for me on Saturday. So I didn't
16:20
Speaker 1: know what to do. Man. I actually I lied to
16:22
Speaker 1: people and I said I got mugged at what's the
16:25
Speaker 1: bus terminal called her, It's a transit authority. So I
16:30
Speaker 1: got mugged at the and I called. I called Michael
16:36
Speaker 1: Brauer and Media Sound, who they were good friends, and
16:40
Speaker 1: that I need I needs to help me with this.
16:42
Speaker 1: And we found a reel that had everything but the
16:46
Speaker 1: drums on it, so we had that flown over and
16:50
Speaker 1: um and Steve Ferronia came in and I said, you
16:54
Speaker 1: got to it's a band of brothers. You got to
16:56
Speaker 1: play exactly what he played, and I gave him a
16:58
Speaker 1: cassette of it, and he learned the part and he
17:00
Speaker 1: overdubbed it and they all did it for free, and
17:02
Speaker 1: I was able to get on a plane Saturday night,
17:05
Speaker 1: and Gregor Donnie says, fine, we'll do it Sunday instead.
17:08
Speaker 1: So I go to the complex that was y Yeah.
17:13
Speaker 1: So I go over there to meet greg and he says,
17:15
Speaker 1: all right, well, I'll have a seat in the lounge.
17:16
Speaker 1: It will take you know, take you know, eight hours
17:21
Speaker 1: or something to mix it. And I'm sitting there. I
17:23
Speaker 1: got my walkman and I remember Peter Gabriel's album, so
17:27
Speaker 1: I had just come out right. I'm playing the song
17:29
Speaker 1: Don't give Up over and over and crying. I'm just
17:33
Speaker 1: sitting there with the walkman on crying like I thought
17:37
Speaker 1: I bottomed out. And while I'm sitting in that lounge
17:40
Speaker 1: because I was working there on Sunday instead of Saturday
17:44
Speaker 1: when there was a different artist in the other room,
17:46
Speaker 1: Bonnie Rate came into the lounge and that's how I
17:48
Speaker 1: met Bonnie. And meeting and meet and Bonnie Rate changed
17:52
Speaker 1: my whole life. So it's a good lesson, man, And
17:56
Speaker 1: how you know you can when you think everything's going wrong,
18:01
Speaker 1: maybe it's really going right. Yeah, I never know. We
18:05
Speaker 1: never know, and the brakes really never come from where
18:09
Speaker 1: you expect them to come. It's always someone you met
18:12
Speaker 1: along the way to do the thing. That's the one
18:16
Speaker 1: who's going to change your life. So so I'll moved
18:19
Speaker 1: out to LA and started recording with Bonnie Ray. How
18:23
Speaker 1: long did you work with Bonnie? Well, we did four albums,
18:27
Speaker 1: but that album Nika Time was the first one we
18:30
Speaker 1: did and that that changed you know that wanted a
18:34
Speaker 1: Grammy for album album. I think it one like five
18:37
Speaker 1: Grammys or something. Man, I really went from being a
18:41
Speaker 1: pariah to having work. I feel like I'm still riding
18:46
Speaker 1: the like the wind from Bonnie Ray still in my
18:53
Speaker 1: in my sales. Yeah, You've done a lot of good
18:55
Speaker 1: work in between, though, I'll say thank you, appreciate, but
19:01
Speaker 1: it was a very special working with her Man. She's
19:04
Speaker 1: just such a great artist. We'll be back with Rick
19:07
Speaker 1: Rubin and Don Was. After a quick break, we're back
19:14
Speaker 1: with more from Don Was. Do you think that there's
19:17
Speaker 1: something special that happens when you work with an artist
19:21
Speaker 1: the first time that's different than when you work with
19:25
Speaker 1: them over and over again. Yeah. I mean, I think
19:29
Speaker 1: when you do anything for the first time, you know
19:32
Speaker 1: you have I think creating and recreating a two very
19:37
Speaker 1: different neurological processes. So the first time, it's all creation
19:44
Speaker 1: because you have no routine, you have no anything, You're
19:48
Speaker 1: you're just building a dynamic and method of working together.
19:54
Speaker 1: Then to go back then, especially if it's been really successful,
19:57
Speaker 1: to go back to that same method and try to
19:59
Speaker 1: do it again now. We actually, I think the second
20:02
Speaker 1: record we made after the one after Nicked Time, I
20:05
Speaker 1: think that's a better album. It actually had more hits
20:08
Speaker 1: and sold more records. Yeah, and it had that song
20:12
Speaker 1: I Can't Make You Love Me on that Wow. But
20:14
Speaker 1: we were aware at the time that we had to overcome,
20:18
Speaker 1: but we were aware of the phenomenon that we were
20:20
Speaker 1: going back to recreate a methodology, for lack of a
20:24
Speaker 1: better term, a pattern that was set on something previous
20:30
Speaker 1: that had just caught some kind of crazy wind and spread. Yeah.
20:39
Speaker 1: I think more often than not, when you catch that wind,
20:42
Speaker 1: the healthiest thing to do is to just start from
20:46
Speaker 1: scratch on the next one. Is opposed to try instead
20:50
Speaker 1: of trying to part to it? Well, you can't. You know.
20:53
Speaker 1: One of those things that I've learned lately. I've been
20:55
Speaker 1: playing live more than ever in my life. I've been
20:59
Speaker 1: playing with Were you did a wonderful show? Oh you
21:04
Speaker 1: did well? I didn't know that I pay in Kawaii.
21:08
Speaker 1: Oh right, that was a wild night. Yeah, that's fantastic.
21:14
Speaker 1: That's a good one. Yeah. Well, playing with Bobby, first
21:17
Speaker 1: of all, you can never play the same set twice.
21:20
Speaker 1: And you can, I mean, like ever, you can never
21:24
Speaker 1: put the same list together twice. We have one hundred
21:26
Speaker 1: twenty songs to draw from, and we really don't repeat
21:30
Speaker 1: anything for four nights, but they're always put together in
21:33
Speaker 1: a different combination. And on top of that, we never
21:37
Speaker 1: ever ever play it the same way twice. There might
21:41
Speaker 1: it's got some loose form to it, but you don't
21:43
Speaker 1: know what thing is going to get stretched out. I
21:47
Speaker 1: don't know what the drummer is going to play a
21:49
Speaker 1: different beat, so it doesn't there's no point in playing
21:52
Speaker 1: the same thing I played last night, because everything's gonna
21:55
Speaker 1: be different. So the one thing I've really learned about
21:58
Speaker 1: him is that any thing but trying to repeat what
22:02
Speaker 1: you did the previous night is probably going to get
22:04
Speaker 1: you somewhere. But you also learn not to not to
22:07
Speaker 1: worry too much about it, and I just go out
22:10
Speaker 1: there and play. It's a hard thing to learn. It
22:13
Speaker 1: was one of the attractions that taking the gig. I
22:17
Speaker 1: was interested obviously in playing with them and playing those songs,
22:22
Speaker 1: but what I was really interested in was expanding fearlessness.
22:29
Speaker 1: I wanted to self consciousness is the enemy of really
22:34
Speaker 1: everything right, and I just wanted to get better at
22:39
Speaker 1: going out there, not knowing what I was going to
22:41
Speaker 1: do in front of twenty five hundred people and just
22:43
Speaker 1: start playing. And it's been. It's been great for that,
22:46
Speaker 1: but it it obviously has implications and everything that you
22:51
Speaker 1: do in life and in making records. I think that's
22:53
Speaker 1: been I don't stay up, threatening over what's going to
22:56
Speaker 1: happen the next day. I used to get. I mean,
22:58
Speaker 1: I still get nervous before every session. And it doesn't
23:01
Speaker 1: matter if it's Bob Dylan coming in or it's from
23:03
Speaker 1: nineteen year old kid making a first album, because you
23:07
Speaker 1: really don't know where that magic thing is going to
23:12
Speaker 1: come from. We all know how we can make an
23:14
Speaker 1: okay record in our sleep, but okay is your enemy. Man,
23:18
Speaker 1: just being good is your enemy. How are you going
23:21
Speaker 1: to get that? How are you going to make it great?
23:24
Speaker 1: Something lightning? It's got to hit the room. Yeah, it's
23:27
Speaker 1: completely out of our control. Totally out of control, right,
23:31
Speaker 1: So that that's terrified. I understand why. You know why
23:37
Speaker 1: a lot of musicians end up on heroin and stuff,
23:39
Speaker 1: you know, because having to live with that is a
23:42
Speaker 1: tough thing. It's out of our control. So how do
23:45
Speaker 1: you going to deal with that? I used to get,
23:47
Speaker 1: Really I feel that my stomach before every session, Like,
23:51
Speaker 1: where's the magic going to come from? Today? I don't know?
23:54
Speaker 1: But it always comes to varying degrees. Something good always happens.
23:58
Speaker 1: You have to, but you got to open your self
24:00
Speaker 1: up to that. Anyone's got to be open to the
24:02
Speaker 1: same and you got to make sure to takes role
24:05
Speaker 1: and when when when it hits Yeah, and be patient,
24:08
Speaker 1: you know, like that's another big part. It's like just
24:10
Speaker 1: gotta wait for it time. It's like fishing, you know,
24:12
Speaker 1: you gotta wait for it to well, that's exactly. It's
24:14
Speaker 1: very much like the surfing, you know, like going out,
24:16
Speaker 1: you gotta wait for the wave. You're gonna get one
24:20
Speaker 1: and it's going to be exhilarating when you catch it. Yeah,
24:24
Speaker 1: but you don't exactly know what shape it's going to be.
24:26
Speaker 1: You don't exactly know when it's gonna come. Never, never,
24:29
Speaker 1: Every session is different. How do you deal with it same?
24:32
Speaker 1: It's like I'm always I always have anxiety before, especially
24:37
Speaker 1: before the first session of any project, because I really
24:40
Speaker 1: that then I really have no idea what's going to happen.
24:43
Speaker 1: Usually after we've started, there's something reveals itself as to
24:48
Speaker 1: it's going to be one of these you know it's
24:50
Speaker 1: going to be in this ballpark, and then at least
24:54
Speaker 1: I still don't know what it's really going to be.
24:56
Speaker 1: But at least I'm calm about it because it's not
24:58
Speaker 1: just a blank page. Do you know what I'm saying
25:00
Speaker 1: it's there's some at least there's a frame that I
25:05
Speaker 1: can see, there's where it's going to be contained, and
25:09
Speaker 1: that's helpful. Yeah, no, exactly, And it sounds like from
25:12
Speaker 1: your experience with Weir, it's almost more like a jazz
25:14
Speaker 1: approach in terms of playing free. It's totally like a
25:19
Speaker 1: jazz approach, except the modes and scales are a little
25:22
Speaker 1: bit different. And even then he listened a lot to
25:25
Speaker 1: McCoy tyner, Love McCoy tyner, and he'll he'll do things
25:30
Speaker 1: like we've we've referenced Coltrane records as far as to
25:33
Speaker 1: try to shape the nature of our improvisation. And I
25:37
Speaker 1: had to really try to come up with a way
25:40
Speaker 1: to play bass. I'll tell you the story. I was
25:42
Speaker 1: producing John Mayer in twenty eleven and John got me
25:47
Speaker 1: really into the Grateful Bed again. I'd seen him play
25:50
Speaker 1: in the late sixties, but I hadn't really been like
25:52
Speaker 1: a deadhead or anything. And John was a fanatic for him.
25:56
Speaker 1: Every time we got in the car, it was the
25:58
Speaker 1: Grateful Bead channel, and he could identify the year that
26:02
Speaker 1: the concert was even if it wasn't on the screen.
26:04
Speaker 1: He really knew their plan so I started listening again
26:08
Speaker 1: and started appreciating what they were doing. And then I ran.
26:12
Speaker 1: I'd known Bob since the early nineties, but ran into
26:16
Speaker 1: him somewhere and he started talking and he was looking
26:20
Speaker 1: for something new to do, and how were they going
26:23
Speaker 1: to move forward? As it's a band that Bobby and
26:28
Speaker 1: Mickey Hart came over to my office at Blue Note
26:30
Speaker 1: in the Capitol Tower and John was working downstairs, and
26:33
Speaker 1: I said, man, you'd better come up here. You won't
26:37
Speaker 1: believe was in my office. And that led to the
26:40
Speaker 1: two of us going up to Bob's studio and San
26:42
Speaker 1: Raphael and that was how Dead and Company started. And
26:45
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I would have elected been
26:47
Speaker 1: the bass player and Dead and Company. And I did play,
26:50
Speaker 1: but John, there's about a two month lag. And John
26:54
Speaker 1: stopped his album and went home and shedded Grateful Dead
26:57
Speaker 1: songs and I did, so we got up. I didn't
27:00
Speaker 1: really know the songs, and I made him sound when
27:04
Speaker 1: I played, it sounded like a bar band doing Grateful
27:07
Speaker 1: Dead signs. Know it was the guys, but it worked
27:11
Speaker 1: out great with John, but I didn't know how to do.
27:14
Speaker 1: What Phil did that really baffled me. He's I think
27:17
Speaker 1: he's a really unique musician, and I don't know where
27:21
Speaker 1: he's coming from me. It's a unique voice that belongs
27:23
Speaker 1: to him, and I can't figure out what he's doing
27:26
Speaker 1: or imitate him. So I was not the right guy
27:29
Speaker 1: for that. But then Bob called me about two years later,
27:31
Speaker 1: he said, let's start a trio. I said, I had
27:33
Speaker 1: a dream. We started a trio. Beautiful and you play
27:36
Speaker 1: acoustic bass. So I started. You know, this time, I thought, well,
27:39
Speaker 1: I'm really gonna shed man, I'm really gonna practice these
27:42
Speaker 1: songs and I'll be ready. And I was ready, but
27:44
Speaker 1: I was. I started, I was playing a whole lot
27:46
Speaker 1: of notes. And then once we started playing together, I
27:49
Speaker 1: realized that he wanted something different. It wasn't It wasn't.
27:53
Speaker 1: He wasn't saying play like Phil. He was saying, I
27:57
Speaker 1: want to I want you to play with what I'm singing.
28:00
Speaker 1: Play play the play the lyrics, play the song, don't
28:03
Speaker 1: worry about the chords, don't worry about a bunch of notes.
28:05
Speaker 1: I want to be able to phrase, and I need
28:07
Speaker 1: you to support me. So then it became a whole
28:10
Speaker 1: different challenge. Not how do I play like Phil? It
28:13
Speaker 1: became how do I stay the fuck out of the
28:16
Speaker 1: way of his phrasing and still be supportive. What's the
28:19
Speaker 1: what are the fewest notes I can play that will
28:22
Speaker 1: still provide support, but that won't inhibit his guitar playing
28:26
Speaker 1: or singing. And that was the challenge, and it is
28:30
Speaker 1: every night, because every night's different. He phrases something, He
28:34
Speaker 1: phrased the song completely differently. Every night he approaches it fresh.
28:38
Speaker 1: It's like, what's the next line, Where's he going to sing?
28:42
Speaker 1: Where don't you need to play? So no, but that forces,
28:47
Speaker 1: it forces an interactive nature of performance and focus that
28:53
Speaker 1: if you were playing your same part every night wouldn't
28:56
Speaker 1: be there. It's like we know a lot of we
28:58
Speaker 1: know a lot of rock bands that essentially go on
29:01
Speaker 1: autopilot when they play live, and it sounds like this
29:05
Speaker 1: every night. You're in this moment and much are I
29:10
Speaker 1: like jazz again? It's also you know what else, It's
29:13
Speaker 1: like it's like meditation. Yeah, because we played for three
29:17
Speaker 1: hours every night, and really, if if I take my
29:23
Speaker 1: eye off the ball, I'm gonna get hit in the head. Yeah,
29:25
Speaker 1: the whole time. I've got to be like inside, and
29:30
Speaker 1: I come off those shows like flying. So exhilarated from it.
29:35
Speaker 1: So great, that's so great. That's the best, it's the best.
29:39
Speaker 1: It's actually the best thing I've ever been involved with
29:42
Speaker 1: in my life, playing with Bobby Industry beautiful. We'll be
29:46
Speaker 1: right back with Don was after a break. We're back
29:52
Speaker 1: with the rest of Rick's conversation with Don was, let's
29:56
Speaker 1: talk about about jazz, and let's talk about Blue Note.
29:59
Speaker 1: So how did Blue Note? How did Blue Note come
30:01
Speaker 1: into your life? Blue No, Well, in nineteen sixty six,
30:07
Speaker 1: I was fourteen years old and I was riding around
30:11
Speaker 1: running errands with my mom in Detroit, and I was
30:15
Speaker 1: being grumpy. You know, I don't want to be with
30:17
Speaker 1: my mom. I wanted to be out at the mall,
30:20
Speaker 1: hanging out with my friends. I was a pain in
30:23
Speaker 1: the ass. So she left me in the car with
30:25
Speaker 1: the keys I could play with the radio. She running
30:27
Speaker 1: to do something. I started messing with the dial, and
30:30
Speaker 1: on weekends, the local R and B station WCHB, which
30:35
Speaker 1: simulcast the local jazz station WCHD, and I landed on
30:42
Speaker 1: the station. I didn't know anything about it, but I
30:43
Speaker 1: landed on the station and there I came in just
30:46
Speaker 1: as the saxophone solo of a song that I later
30:49
Speaker 1: learned was called Mode for Joe by Joe Henderson. The
30:52
Speaker 1: saxophone solo was beginning and I could hear like about notes,
30:57
Speaker 1: and it wasn't about instruments. It was a guy talking
30:59
Speaker 1: to me and he was anguished, man, and so was
31:03
Speaker 1: I because I stuck driving around with my mom, so
31:07
Speaker 1: I totally related to By About twenty seconds later, the
31:11
Speaker 1: drummer Joe Chambers. So by the way, we just resigned
31:14
Speaker 1: to blue note. He was making a new album for us.
31:16
Speaker 1: As we speak, Joe Chamber starts kicking him with this groove,
31:21
Speaker 1: and Joe Henderson kind of falls into place, and then
31:24
Speaker 1: he starts swinging and he's mollified by the groove. And
31:29
Speaker 1: the statement that came through to me from listening to
31:31
Speaker 1: that music, although not necessarily in these words, was down
31:36
Speaker 1: you got to groove in the face of adversity. And
31:39
Speaker 1: sure enough, man, when my mom came back to the car,
31:42
Speaker 1: I was a nice kid again. I was happy, and
31:44
Speaker 1: this music spoke to me and changed my frame of
31:49
Speaker 1: mind one hundred eighty degrees, that's fourteen. I didn't know
31:51
Speaker 1: what hit me, but I did know that I liked
31:53
Speaker 1: the music a lot. And so it was on the
31:56
Speaker 1: broadcast on the FM all the time, and back then
31:59
Speaker 1: he had to go audio way to listen to after
32:02
Speaker 1: you had to buy a special radio. So so I
32:06
Speaker 1: got a AMFM portable radio and started listening to the
32:10
Speaker 1: jazz station. And I found that a lot of the
32:13
Speaker 1: music I liked was coming from this one little label
32:15
Speaker 1: out of New York called Blue Note Records, and I
32:18
Speaker 1: wanted to know more about him, and I started collecting
32:21
Speaker 1: the record started looking at him. You know, there's no internet,
32:24
Speaker 1: you couldn't just look at all the covers. So my
32:26
Speaker 1: friends are not. We just get on buses and go
32:28
Speaker 1: record store to record store. And back in those days,
32:32
Speaker 1: every record store was you know, it was like a
32:35
Speaker 1: mom and pop store, and the stock reflected the taste
32:39
Speaker 1: of the owner, and so you tried different ones at
32:42
Speaker 1: different stores. And I remember once calling around and find
32:46
Speaker 1: out that there's a copy of Larry Young's album called
32:49
Speaker 1: Unity Blue Note Classic, that there was one on the
32:53
Speaker 1: east side of Detroit, And we wrote a bus for
32:55
Speaker 1: forty five minutes. Didn't even buy it. We just wanted
32:57
Speaker 1: to look at it. We need the liner notes and
33:00
Speaker 1: maybe you could count the owner of the store into
33:03
Speaker 1: breaking the plastic seal and playing some of it for you.
33:06
Speaker 1: So I was just enthralled not only by the music
33:10
Speaker 1: and the message behind the music, but by the whole
33:14
Speaker 1: vibe of it. Man. It had the great black and
33:16
Speaker 1: white photos of these musicians sitting and smoke and wearing
33:20
Speaker 1: cool clothes, and I just wanted to be part of that.
33:24
Speaker 1: I wanted to be in that room. And the album
33:26
Speaker 1: covers themselves all designed by a guy named Reid Miles,
33:29
Speaker 1: who really changed the language graphic design. You can see
33:34
Speaker 1: his influence everywhere now. But those covers just made such
33:37
Speaker 1: a strong individual statement. The whole culture around Blue Note
33:42
Speaker 1: was appealing to me, and I followed the company my
33:45
Speaker 1: whole life, right up until twenty eleven, when I was
33:49
Speaker 1: again that same record talk about other records leading the
33:52
Speaker 1: situations I was producing John Mayer. We had one night
33:55
Speaker 1: off and I read that a singer named Gregory Porter
33:58
Speaker 1: was appearing up at a club you Harlem called Smoke.
34:02
Speaker 1: So on my night off, I went up there and
34:06
Speaker 1: it was just the greatest show I'd seen in years. Man.
34:09
Speaker 1: I sat to three sets, eating ribs and drinking coffee,
34:14
Speaker 1: and the next morning I had breakfast with a guy
34:17
Speaker 1: named Dan McCarroll. I don't know if you know that.
34:19
Speaker 1: He used to be a drummer, played with Sheryl Crowe
34:21
Speaker 1: and Lloyd Cole and emotions and somehow one of the
34:25
Speaker 1: best guys ever and he worked his way up and
34:29
Speaker 1: at that moment he was president of Capitol Records. So
34:33
Speaker 1: we're just having breakfast. We're old friends. And right at
34:37
Speaker 1: the end of the breakfast, I said to Dan, said,
34:39
Speaker 1: is Blue Note's still part of Capital, because if it is,
34:42
Speaker 1: you should sign this guy. But I saw last night
34:45
Speaker 1: and he said, But as it turns out, unbeknownst to me,
34:50
Speaker 1: Bruce Lundball, who'd run the label for thirty years, was
34:52
Speaker 1: sick and he couldn't carry on, and they weren't quite
34:55
Speaker 1: sure what they were going to do to keep the
34:57
Speaker 1: ethos alive. There was some talk about turn it into
35:00
Speaker 1: a website that sold catalog and blue T shirts. Was
35:04
Speaker 1: to plan down most uncomfortable with it. And I came
35:07
Speaker 1: in with an idea on the day that they were
35:10
Speaker 1: looking for an idea, and you offered me the job
35:13
Speaker 1: right there in this little diner in New York City.
35:15
Speaker 1: I said, you should sign them. Amazing, So so I
35:20
Speaker 1: never aspired to work at a record company. In fact,
35:25
Speaker 1: I never my whole my whole life was kind of
35:28
Speaker 1: devoted to avoiding having a job if I just didn't
35:32
Speaker 1: have to. I never thought about playing or making records,
35:34
Speaker 1: just being a job as long as I have to
35:36
Speaker 1: get a job. I was okay, I was fifty eight.
35:39
Speaker 1: I almost made it irresistible offer, so I couldn't say
35:44
Speaker 1: no to that. I walked around for an hour, thought
35:46
Speaker 1: about it, and it was like, what the fuck it?
35:48
Speaker 1: And did you sign Gregoryporter? Those first call? Yeah, first call,
35:54
Speaker 1: great choice, thank you and h and then the second guy.
35:59
Speaker 1: I ended up on an airplane with the lawyer named
36:03
Speaker 1: Kenny Hurts, who I've known for years, and he represented
36:05
Speaker 1: Wayne Short. I said, Wayne ever want to be on
36:08
Speaker 1: Blue Note again? And that was that was the second signing. Amazing,
36:14
Speaker 1: So it's really worked out. I love it. I love
36:18
Speaker 1: doing it. I love being a part of maintaining the
36:24
Speaker 1: legacy of the company and extending it. There's nothing, which
36:29
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know you've experienced time and time again,
36:32
Speaker 1: there's nothing quite like a feeling of finding a young
36:36
Speaker 1: artist and saying come with us, and you see something
36:40
Speaker 1: build off of that and you've enabled them to grow
36:44
Speaker 1: and to have their music. It's it's just a it's
36:47
Speaker 1: a wonderful experience. Absolutely. Tell me, what do you know
36:51
Speaker 1: about the beginnings of Blue Note? When was it founded?
36:54
Speaker 1: What's the story of from the beginning? Founded in nineteen
36:57
Speaker 1: thirty nine by two German immigrants, Alfred Lyon and Francis Wolf,
37:02
Speaker 1: who were getting away from Hitler and they came over here.
37:06
Speaker 1: They were totally enamored of Black American music and just
37:09
Speaker 1: started hanging out listening to it. They were in a
37:12
Speaker 1: like a jazz club, not a bar, but like a
37:15
Speaker 1: like chess club. They joined a club and they would
37:20
Speaker 1: talk about records and all that, and then their way
37:23
Speaker 1: in was to start recording some of the musicians they loved.
37:27
Speaker 1: So the first record was released in nineteen thirty nine
37:30
Speaker 1: is a Mead Lux Lewis and Albert Ammas. And they
37:34
Speaker 1: just kept going and it seems that if there was
37:37
Speaker 1: a pattern there, it was that they signed artists who
37:41
Speaker 1: had strong fundamentals, knew the history of the music that
37:45
Speaker 1: came before them, had had a gift. But we're looking
37:49
Speaker 1: to push the threshold of what was then contemporary music
37:54
Speaker 1: and go one step beyond, do something new and reflect
37:58
Speaker 1: the times that they lived in. So I jumped in
38:01
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight. They could have signed anybody in bebop.
38:04
Speaker 1: They signed Thelonious Monk, who was definitely left the center.
38:09
Speaker 1: Of course, we listened to Monk. Now it sounds you've
38:13
Speaker 1: become such a part of the vocabulary. You don't think
38:15
Speaker 1: of it as radical music. But it was totally radical
38:18
Speaker 1: when he created it, and he changed the face of composition.
38:21
Speaker 1: He changed in the nature of the way people voice chords.
38:24
Speaker 1: I mean, he's just had such an influence on generations
38:26
Speaker 1: to come. But they took a chance on him and
38:28
Speaker 1: repeated that again five or six years later when they
38:31
Speaker 1: put Art Blakey and Horace Silver together to form the
38:35
Speaker 1: Jazz Messengers, and and that became the birth of hard bop,
38:41
Speaker 1: which again revolutionized music. He jumped into the sixties where
38:45
Speaker 1: I came on board as a fan, and they had
38:47
Speaker 1: Herbie Hancock and Wayne short Of doing all these incredible
38:51
Speaker 1: modal things, but they had Ornett Comer and Eric Dolphy
38:56
Speaker 1: and Cecil Taylor, and even the most commercial I have
39:00
Speaker 1: a label was probably Jimmy Smith, the organ player. But
39:03
Speaker 1: what he was doing with the D three, even though
39:06
Speaker 1: you could dance to it and had a group that
39:08
Speaker 1: was radical and revolutionary. No one had done that but
39:12
Speaker 1: a B three before they played bass with this hand
39:15
Speaker 1: and foot and combination, like that's incredible, but Jimmy Smith
39:18
Speaker 1: did so that seemed to be the legacy. That's the
39:21
Speaker 1: real essence of the label, and we try to continue
39:25
Speaker 1: that today. When my first day on the gig, Robert
39:29
Speaker 1: Glasper came in to play rough mixes of Black Radio,
39:32
Speaker 1: which I just remembered being totally transported when I heard that,
39:36
Speaker 1: because I'd never heard anyone put hip hop and jazz
39:41
Speaker 1: together the way he did on that record. People have
39:44
Speaker 1: done me to Roy Hargrove did incredible things ten years earlier,
39:48
Speaker 1: but no one had done it quite like the way
39:49
Speaker 1: Robert was doing it, And I just remember being totally
39:53
Speaker 1: tripped out listening to it. And now that was, you know,
39:58
Speaker 1: that was maybe nine years ago or something like that. Credible. Now,
40:00
Speaker 1: if you go to a student concert at any college,
40:05
Speaker 1: someone's going to get up and say, we'd like to
40:07
Speaker 1: do Robert Glassper song now Afro Blue, which of course
40:10
Speaker 1: there's an old Mongo Santa Maria song the Coltrane, but
40:14
Speaker 1: everyone knows Robert's arrangement and he's now become a permanent
40:18
Speaker 1: part of the jazz vocabulary. So the goal is to
40:22
Speaker 1: keep doing that. Amazing. How often do you see someone
40:27
Speaker 1: who can fit in that lineage? Seems like they're few
40:30
Speaker 1: and far between. Yeah, they are few and far between.
40:33
Speaker 1: Now you don't see some of that often, but you know, recently,
40:38
Speaker 1: I actually asked my sons, my youngest kid, Solomon, he's
40:41
Speaker 1: bass players twenty he's going to be twenty four this year,
40:44
Speaker 1: and I said, who in your generation is like the
40:47
Speaker 1: Miles Davis, you know? And he didn't hesitate me. He said,
40:50
Speaker 1: there's a vibes player out of Chicago named Joel Ross.
40:53
Speaker 1: To check him out. So we started watching the videos
40:56
Speaker 1: and he's awesome, man. So I called him up and
40:59
Speaker 1: he'd already had an album recorded, you know. He was
41:02
Speaker 1: He was really sharp, he really on the case. The
41:05
Speaker 1: more I hung with him, I realized that he was
41:07
Speaker 1: quite well known and he's the leader among the musicians
41:11
Speaker 1: of his generation. And I can see that when people
41:14
Speaker 1: play in his band, they played differently. He elevates the
41:19
Speaker 1: playing just bout being with them. But when whenever, wherever
41:22
Speaker 1: he goes to play, it changes, which reminds me of Miles.
41:26
Speaker 1: It reminds me of Charles Lloyd, the same thing. So
41:29
Speaker 1: we signed him and he put out a record about
41:31
Speaker 1: a year ago and he's really blossoming. And now we
41:34
Speaker 1: just signed the guy who plays saxophone with him, Emmanuel Wilkins.
41:37
Speaker 1: Such a record coming out. Both Joel and Emmanuel new
41:40
Speaker 1: records coming. So they're there. Uh, you know, people are
41:43
Speaker 1: out there. You just have to keep listening and stay open. Yeah.
41:48
Speaker 1: It sounds like the same like being in the studio.
41:50
Speaker 1: Just the patience, you know, that's it. That's exactly like that.
41:54
Speaker 1: And I think that a lot of the things I
41:56
Speaker 1: learned in the studio and also learned as an artist
42:00
Speaker 1: who ended up being produced by other people. I think
42:02
Speaker 1: that's been that's been really helpful. I don't I don't
42:08
Speaker 1: rule with an iron fist. I do the opposite. I'll
42:11
Speaker 1: try to sign people whose instincts I trust. Yeah. Absolutely.
42:16
Speaker 1: How did your relationship with the Stones begin? They called
42:19
Speaker 1: me in ninety two. They just signed a Virgin Records,
42:22
Speaker 1: and Virgin Records is trying to get them to use
42:24
Speaker 1: a producer. And you know, I was on the heels
42:30
Speaker 1: of I'll just be fifty twos Bonnie Rate stuff, and
42:33
Speaker 1: they suggested I meet with them, so I went to
42:36
Speaker 1: New York City. They were right after Bill Wyman left
42:39
Speaker 1: the band and they were auditioning based new bass players.
42:43
Speaker 1: I went to sir, and you gotta understand. I saw
42:46
Speaker 1: them play for the first time in nineteen sixty four,
42:49
Speaker 1: bought the first album, bought every album subsequently, went to
42:53
Speaker 1: every tour subsequently, and now here I was in a
42:56
Speaker 1: room watching them play the greatest hits audition and a
42:59
Speaker 1: bass player and there's nobody else in the room. I
43:02
Speaker 1: just couldn't believe it. So then Mick and Keith come
43:05
Speaker 1: over and they sit down next to me. I hadn't
43:08
Speaker 1: met Keith before, but I'd met Mick before, and they
43:11
Speaker 1: both started talking at the same time, and it was
43:17
Speaker 1: like like watching a tennis match, and my head's going
43:20
Speaker 1: back and forth which guy that I listened to, and
43:22
Speaker 1: they did not yield to the other guy for it
43:25
Speaker 1: felt like an eternity. But it's probably a good three
43:28
Speaker 1: minutes right, probably yet probably still to this day it
43:32
Speaker 1: thinks I haven't changed that much. But Keith was basically
43:37
Speaker 1: giving me, you know, all the reasons that they didn't
43:40
Speaker 1: need a producer. I don't need some fucking guy to
43:42
Speaker 1: tell me how to play guitar. And Mick wanted the producer,
43:46
Speaker 1: but he had he had his read so they were
43:48
Speaker 1: both talking at the same time, and then they both
43:51
Speaker 1: stopped at the same time and Keith said, you share,
43:54
Speaker 1: you want to be the meat in this sandwich. And
43:59
Speaker 1: I thought, oh man, they're never gonna hire me. But
44:01
Speaker 1: I got a great story to tell my grandchildren. So
44:04
Speaker 1: I split that day thinking I was never going to
44:06
Speaker 1: see him again. And then and then Keith telled me
44:09
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks later, and we figured out what
44:12
Speaker 1: they did need and what they don't need. He doesn't
44:14
Speaker 1: need someone to tell him how to play guitar, so
44:18
Speaker 1: I don't have to do that. But there are there
44:19
Speaker 1: are other things where having an objective third party helps.
44:24
Speaker 1: So it's been really nice that it's been. It's those
44:27
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, so it's twenty seven years, and they've
44:32
Speaker 1: been good friends. They're really good friends and really generous guys,
44:37
Speaker 1: and they are the best rock and roll band ever
44:40
Speaker 1: I think, you know. And I just every time we
44:43
Speaker 1: go in to make a record and I get to
44:44
Speaker 1: sit in that little circle with them playing live I
44:48
Speaker 1: can't believe how good they are. And I've gotten to
44:50
Speaker 1: play with them too, which is nice. There's been times
44:52
Speaker 1: that darl Jones hasn't been able to be at a
44:54
Speaker 1: rehearsal or session. When you when you play bass with them,
44:58
Speaker 1: you become a where that the conversation, the musical conversation
45:03
Speaker 1: that's going on, there's zero tension in it. It's quite jocular.
45:07
Speaker 1: They're having so much fun, and it's kind of like
45:10
Speaker 1: you know when when you go to a baseball game,
45:13
Speaker 1: before the inning starts, there'll be several balls out in
45:16
Speaker 1: the field and they're just tossing it around, warming up
45:18
Speaker 1: before the inning starts. So that's kind of like what
45:22
Speaker 1: they do to each other. They throw each other these
45:24
Speaker 1: really nice softballs, these beautiful pitches that just land right
45:27
Speaker 1: in the glove, and that they're just flying around and
45:30
Speaker 1: Charlie will play something that makes Keith play something, that
45:34
Speaker 1: I'll make Nick play something something, that I'll make Ronnie
45:38
Speaker 1: play something, and they're so quick and there's so much
45:41
Speaker 1: listening and it's so improvised and it's so much fun. Man,
45:45
Speaker 1: they have a ball when they play. It's great. Tell
45:49
Speaker 1: me about tell me about the show in nineteen sixty four.
45:51
Speaker 1: What was it like seeing them back then? I didn't
45:54
Speaker 1: know anything about it, man, No one knew who they
45:56
Speaker 1: were in nineteen It's like February nineteen sixty four, March,
46:00
Speaker 1: the Beatles had just been on Ed Sullivan, so everyone
46:03
Speaker 1: was totally into this whole notion of English groups coming
46:08
Speaker 1: over and here's another Beatles kind of group. And they
46:11
Speaker 1: played the Olympia Stadium in Detroit, which is a hockey arena,
46:15
Speaker 1: and there were maybe three hundred people in a place
46:17
Speaker 1: that held eighteen thousand. But a couple of weeks later
46:22
Speaker 1: they were you know, they're on Ed Sullivan and then
46:24
Speaker 1: they were huge. How would you say your relationship to
46:27
Speaker 1: music has changed from the time you were a kid,
46:30
Speaker 1: from the time that you were in your mom's car
46:34
Speaker 1: and you heard that saxophone yep. How was your relationship
46:38
Speaker 1: to music changed to today? Well, there's made me just
46:42
Speaker 1: a little bit of awareness of the backbone behind you
46:48
Speaker 1: what you see pathy. The impact is still exactly the same,
46:52
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of research about, like the neurological
46:56
Speaker 1: implications in music that the part of the brain that
46:59
Speaker 1: processes these is there originally so you could communicate with babies.
47:06
Speaker 1: It's the pre language communication. And so like a mother
47:09
Speaker 1: CRUs to a baby, Oh look at the baby. Last music.
47:14
Speaker 1: Those are intervals, and those intervals are repeated and disparate
47:17
Speaker 1: cultures all over the world the same thing. It soothes
47:20
Speaker 1: a baby. But once you learn to speak, you know,
47:23
Speaker 1: by the time you're three years old, maybe close that
47:27
Speaker 1: area of the braindown. We close down nineteen of twenty
47:30
Speaker 1: active synopses by the time we're twelve or something like that,
47:33
Speaker 1: because we can't have them all open, and we keep
47:36
Speaker 1: open the synoptic pathways that we use, and we keep
47:40
Speaker 1: the music one open. Well why is that? I think
47:43
Speaker 1: it's because conversational language, no matter how particulate deep you
47:49
Speaker 1: get with it, it still fails to convey the full
47:52
Speaker 1: depth of our inner emotional lives. That's why we have art,
47:56
Speaker 1: you know, because you have to convert these emotions to
47:59
Speaker 1: another medium in order to communicate that to somebody. And
48:04
Speaker 1: great art is made by someone who's is willing to
48:08
Speaker 1: dig deep inside and take something even that it makes
48:13
Speaker 1: them really uncomfortable and really you know, tears them up,
48:18
Speaker 1: and bring that out in some way and share that
48:22
Speaker 1: with other people so that when they receive it. It
48:25
Speaker 1: puts them in touch with their lives. So anything that
48:29
Speaker 1: brings you some understanding of what's going on inside of you,
48:32
Speaker 1: anything that even just brings you comfort for three minutes,
48:36
Speaker 1: that's an amazing thing to offer to people. So I
48:42
Speaker 1: just know that even before I was making music, I
48:46
Speaker 1: was impacted by music and it sued my soul and
48:49
Speaker 1: made life bearable. And it's nothing has changed, and that's that.
48:56
Speaker 1: I just have a little bit of insight into how
48:59
Speaker 1: you can at that from the artist to the listener.
49:03
Speaker 1: It's still all magic and all it's a big fucking mystery. Yeah,
49:08
Speaker 1: we're so lucky that we get to feel that on
49:11
Speaker 1: a regular basis. I feel super fortunate, I really do. Man,
49:16
Speaker 1: it's a great way to spend your life. You can
49:22
Speaker 1: hear all of our favorite Dona Was related tracks on
49:24
Speaker 1: a playlist we created for this episode at Broken Record
49:27
Speaker 1: podcast dot com, and be sure to check out our
49:29
Speaker 1: YouTube channel, where you can find all of our past
49:31
Speaker 1: episodes and also some great bonus material. You can subscribe
49:35
Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast. Broken Record
49:40
Speaker 1: is produced with help from Jason Gambrell, Mel LaBelle Leo Rose,
49:43
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. Our theme
49:48
Speaker 1: music is by Kenny Beats. Thanks for listening. I'm justin Richmond.