Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Tony Levin

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Tony Levin · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Bassis Extraordinary Tony Levin. Tony, you
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: have a new album. Tell us about it?
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Well, I will, and first of all, thanks for having
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: me on. Great to speak to you and great to
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: have a chance to talk about my album. I'm a
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: bass player. It's called Bringing It Down to the Bass,
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: kind of fitting title, and I've been working on it
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: for years. And the reason I've been working on it
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: for years is I have this big problem, which is
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: a wonderful problem. I love playing on the road and
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I get a lot of chance to tour with King
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Crimson and Peter Gabriel and stick Man and Leven Brothers.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: So because of that, I keep getting going on the
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: album and that's stopping. But this year I resolved to
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: take a few months and finish it up, get some
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: great drummers on. It's some of my great musician friends,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: and I got to finish. It'll be out September thirteenth.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Tell me more about the album itself.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Largely instrumental. Sometimes I'm moved to do a vocal, but
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: usually it's in a comedic way. I either either speak
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: a poem or there's one track I decided to, Hey,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: what if I did a vocal song with a chorus
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: of me singing only using the names of drummers I
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: played in played with Excuse me. I spent the whole
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: of the Lockdown year doing that because I didn't have
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: a whole lot else to do. So there's that piece
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: called on the Drums, which just has drummers names for
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: the lyrics. And on most of the pieces I try,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I started them out with trying to find a bass
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: groove or a bass sound, or a technique like a
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: fingernail playing or funk fingers. This way, I played the
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: bass and I began the composition with that. Then I
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: spent some time finishing it the composition, and then then
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: things got good because I turned it over to some
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: of the great players I know to join me on
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: the album.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, when you say you turned it over to players,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: you sent him the tracks and said do what you
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: want to. Yeah.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: My way of doing this is to pick the right
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: player and not have to tell him what to play,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: because he's the guy I wanted on and especially with drummers.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: The drummers I know, the excellent drummers, they don't love
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: being told what to play, and there's no need if
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: you want that drummer. So each each piece, as I
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: got really the sense of it, and I finished my
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: bass part, I thought, well, of the many great drummers
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: I know, who would be the guy I would want
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: on this? Maybe it was Steve Gadd, my old friend,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: or Mono Kach whom I tour with with Peter Gabriel
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: and any others. Vinnie Keludo and I chose that player,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: and luckily they all said yes, and I sent them
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: the files.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about doing this during lockdown? Were the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: songs written during lockdown? Or it was type of thing
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: where you were accumulating stuff for years and you finally
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: laid it down.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: A good question, and the answer is all of the above.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: What the one I took the whole of the lockdown
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: here was that were really quirky? One where I used
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: the names of I just had pieces of paper all
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: over the place with names of drummers that might not
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: rhyme with each other, but that might go together in
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: a certain section. Some of these pieces I wrote quite
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: a while ago. There's one poem about just chatman stick
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: as an instrument I play and there's one with me
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: reciting this poem about John Lennon and playing the Chapman Stick.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: And there are others that I composed as recently as
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: two months ago.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're in the studio. What do you actually
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: lay down on it's not tape anymore, on the hard
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: drive or the solid state drive before you send it
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: to someone? How much is there?
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: These are really great questions. I appreciate it, and they're
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: making me think about how we do it. It turns out
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: it varies a whole lot. There's one one or two
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: pieces that I just did the bass to a click track,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: so there's a tempo, and then I sent it to
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: the drummer, and then I sent that after he did it,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: I sent that to the other players. However, there's somewhere
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: I did every part except for the drums, because the
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Chapman Stick can also play guitar parts, and then I
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: began thinking about what guitar player to have really play
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: what I envisioned and likewise, so a wide variety of
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: ways to do it, and I probably over the few
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: years I've been working on this, I probably did all
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: of those varieties.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, do you ever call somebody you don't know, or
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: everybody who's on the record you have a pre existing
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: relationship with.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: In this case, I know all of the folks. Yeah,
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: and I know they're playing very well. I know I
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: know them. Maybe we've been on the road together, but
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: I know they're playing, and that's why I chose them
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: for the particular song.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned three different drummers, my new Gad Calayuta.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: What's the difference as a bass player between those drummers?
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: All right, how many hours do we have have because
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: we'll see, Yeah, we bass players and drummers really spend
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: our time together, are learning or then enjoying each other's
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: feel and the slight differences that nobody else knows between us. So,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: by the way, there are much many more drummers than
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: that Mike Portnoy played on the album. Pat Mascellato, Jeremy Stacey,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: and Jerrey Maratta. Uh yeah, some guys, some of the
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: I'll only speak about the really excellent players. Each of
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: them has their own feel really different than other players. Ideally,
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: each of them is going to play within the time
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: parameters we have, in other words, that are going to
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: speed up or slow down. Most of the guys that
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I work with do not do that. So within those
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: parameters or rules, there's a lot of space for playing
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: on top of the beat or behind the beat, and
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: how you phrase things and how how Some drummers will
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: will make the whole kit sound like one instrument, but
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: others h Manu, Vinni Caliro will, Steve gadd also will
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: articulate some of the the element of the drum kit
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: more than others, so it feels not like a drum kit.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: It feels like better really kind of like a drum
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: kit that it is alive. And let me just tell
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: a short story. I toured with Peter Gabriel when he
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: did a joint tour with Sting in twenty sixteen, and
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: the two bands alternated songs, but I stayed on stage
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: because I love being on stage during Stings stuff. And
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: I was standing or sitting right in front of Vinnie
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Caludo playing drums, So there I was sitting on his
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: riser through all of the Stink pieces. It was a
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: great thrill for me and actually a learning learning experience
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: because that's when I realized how much subtle phrasing he's
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: doing within the part that he's playing.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask a really dumb question about to ask
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it anyway. What's the difference between Jerry Murrada and Rick Murata.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Well, Rick's a little older. I began playing with Rick
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: way back when I was a studio musician, and he
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: he is a great drummer. But he kind of moved
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: on even beyond studio playing and moved to Los Angeles
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: and became a writer for TV stuff and very successful
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: at that and a very good producer. His younger brother Jerry,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: maybe not so young anymore, but still to me, the
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: baby in the family, the younger Jerry. I toured with
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: a great deal I think the first Peter Gabriel tour. No,
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: the second one needed a drummer. The first drummer drummer
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: the first tour didn't want to do it anymore, and
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Peter asked me who we should use, and I said, well,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: my good friend Rick Murrauda would be great for that.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: And Rick was busy and suggested his younger brother, Jerry Murta. Hence,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I asked Peter to use Jerry in the band and
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: it worked out really well for a number of tours
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: in a number of years. And by the way, they
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: play with a field that's similar but quite different. I
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: don't think I'll waste everybody's time by analyzing everything about it.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: But I can tell hearing a record of them, which
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: one it is.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Okay. You know, in this world, people are always saying,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: you know, this person's the best, that person's the best,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: certainly in terms of you know, guitarists, but also bassis
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and drummers. Is that something you can even apply to
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: these people? Or at this level, everybody's great and their
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: sound is a little bit different.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's about the sound or about the level.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: It's about who's making that decision. So I know about
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: my One thing I know about is bass playing. Another
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: thing I know about is myself. And I don't tend
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: towards having favorites of anything or thinking that anything is
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: the best, except a football team or something that's provably
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: the best. So with the arts, with painters, with writers,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: with musicians, with drummers, I'm capable of really thoroughly enjoying
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: bass players. I hear, for instance, many of the bass players,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: and I'm not moved to pick a favorite or even
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: begin to think who's the best. I don't think there's
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: any such thing among us musicians.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Now you know, everything's totally findable online. So you're in
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: your late seventies, most people they want to get off
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the road. What do you like so much about being
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: on the road.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: That's very simple. It's the two hours or three hours
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: a night that I get to play the music that
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: I love to play. That's why as a child I
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: decided to be a bass player, hoping i'd get to
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: play good music with good players. How lucky I am
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: that I do that. Yes, the other twenty two hours
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: a day have got more difficult, and as you get older,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: they're still a little more difficult, and especially not because
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: of age, but the last few years travel We all
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: know travel has become hard or more fraught. But those
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: do those two hours make up for it more than that.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Those two hours are priceless, and we are I know
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: at this age, how lucky I am. How lucky anyone
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: is who can not only play the music they really
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: like and get an audience that enjoys that music to
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: come and it and share the music with them, but
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: actually do it professionally and actually make a living from it.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Very special, very lucky.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Some superstar bands what they do when they go on tour,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: they'll base in Atlanta Chicago, and they'll take it jet
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: to every date, so they stay in the same bed. Now,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: when you tour with Peter Gabriel, how do you do it?
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: The last few tours there was Yes, there was a
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: private jet, which involves a whole lot of interesting factors,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: like doing what we call a runner off stage. I
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: would prefer to meet my many friends who came to
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: the show in a hospitality room, hang out and use
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: that wonderful energy you have when you come off stage
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: because something very special has happened. I would prefer to
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: stay in town. That's not what the band does. We
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: don't run off stage, but we walk off stage. But
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: then we put a robe over ourselves and jump into
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: a van and go to the nearest airport fly either
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: to a hub, as you said some bands do that,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: or to the next city, so we wake up in
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: the next city that we're going to play in, which
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: has big advantages to it. Of course, if it was
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: up to me, I would stay in the town, but
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: I believe me, I do plenty of other kinds of
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: tours with Stickmen Jief. Sometimes we go looking for the
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: hotel after the show. We haven't even had time to
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: check in, and sometimes we leave very early in the
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: morning for a long drive to the next town. So
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: we have private jet is way better than that. I
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: would add that being a professional musician, some of the
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: job and some of the life is being adaptable to
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: those two situations where you're at the top of the
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: world and everybody's excited about you, and you're at the
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: bottom of the world. I have lots of experience in
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: my career, including recently, when suddenly the bottom falls out
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: and you're sitting in the corner of an airport waiting
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: for someone to pick you up. We didn't show up,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: and suddenly you realize you don't know where your hotel
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: room is, or what you're going to do for dinner,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: or you don't have any money of that currency. Those
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: things happen all the time to us.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, you play on stage for a couple of hours,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: that's a very intense experience. You really want to talk
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: to people after the show?
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Actually, good question in some situations, Yes, in the hospitality
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: room without too many people. Yes. What are we do
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: in smaller bands now, which is most of the bands
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: I play in what we call merch the selling of
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: CDs and tour. T shirts is a necessary part of
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: the tour because all the expenses went up. The gas
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: went up, hotels went way up, but the price were
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: paid by the club didn't go up. Okay, that's no problem.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Well that's a bit of a problem. But if we
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: sell enough CDs and merch, if we come out the
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: same at the end of the day, and so to
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: enhance that, we'll have a table out in the entrance
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: way and we'll go out there at some point. Myself,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: I like to grab a sip of wine first to
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: kind of finish off the music part of the But
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: then yeah, we go out to sign and sometimes if
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: we have to take pictures with people wearing a mask
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: is an issue for me. I try to be safe
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: and not pass on germs one night to another, and
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: certainly don't shake hands and pass on germs in that way.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot to it. It's a little bit fraud,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: but there's something we do, okay, So that do I
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: love that. No, I do it, and I'm okay with it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: But what I would rather do is have finished the
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: couple classes of wine and then go into a backstage
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: room that has maybe ten friends or family or even
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: fifteen or twenty, but not fifty.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's say you're running an arena tour, not that
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: it really matters in this case. You play for two hours,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: you're done at eleven o'clock. How long until you can
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: fall asleep?
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: These are good questions me a long time, but I've
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: I've used I've learned to use that time in ways
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: that work for me. I keep a road diary online
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: with lots of photos I take during the day, so
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: when I finally get whenever it is I get to
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: that hotel room, I will work for an hour or
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: two on Photoshop a lot, downloading the pictures, seeing what
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I've got, maybe writing a little redal diary about it,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: and hopefully when I wake up in the morning, I'm
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: I have it in shape to upload the right pictures.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: So I, frankly I enjoyed that. I really love that
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: the web. One thing about the web is that I
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: found out in the nineties I was early to have
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: a web page, and it seemed that it took down
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: some of the barrier between our artists and the audience,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: and it allowed fans who happen to see it to
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: see an experience, not only what's backstage, but actually how
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: they look to us on stage and allowed them to
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: get it, how important they are to us who perform.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: So it's worth the because I enjoy it. It's worth
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: an hour or two after the show. When I get
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: back to the hotel room and let me just say this,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: we're going to talk I hope a little about the
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Beat tour that's coming up starting. Oh believe we were
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: getting there a bus tour. The band is traveling by bus,
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: and that's that's a whole different thing. So when you
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: say hit the bed, you're hitting the bus. And some
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: guys just can't sleep on the bus. I sort of can.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: But those two hours, at least two hours, I'll be
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: doing photoshop, either in the lounge room depends on how
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: loud the music is there, how much it distracts me,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: or I'll crawl into my bunk and with my laptop.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I know people who've been you know,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: household names have been on tour for a year straight
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: and it took them a year to recover. Now you know,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: everything's changing. People say, you know, all the scientific studies
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: say you really do need eight hours of sleep. There's
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a badge of honor sleeping little. But the nature of
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the game. Are you always trying to catch up on
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: sleep or if you've done this long enough to figure
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: out how to get enough shut eye?
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Good question for me. It's not about sleep. Maybe for
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: some people it is, I think for singers. I've heard
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Paul Simon Wentz told me not too long ago, too
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: many years ago, that he needs twelve hours of sleep
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: for his voice to be okay on tour. Me I
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: don't have that problem, and I'm one of those people
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: who can't sleep more than six hours. Maybe I read
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: the article you were talking about, but what I never
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: read is, Okay, I don't sleep eight hours. How do
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: I get to sleep eight hours? Drinking a sip of
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: milk before bed won't do it. So I just never
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: sleep more than six And if some night on the
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: road I only get four hours, that's not really a problem.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: I don't do all nighters the way I used to
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: be able to do. That's for sure.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Well they do say in the articles is some people
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: just don't need that much sleep. It's not the majority,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: but that's one of you.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: What if you need it but you can't do it,
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: the body wakes up.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: That's a whole another thing. Okay, you talk about alcohol.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: You've been doing this for decades. What has your history
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: been with drugs and alcohol?
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Wow, getting right to the deep stuff. I never was
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: a drug guy. I can I drink moderately. I think
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I think there was a tour or two where I
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: was not happy for various reasons, and I drank more
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: than moderately. Didn't get drunk every night or anything like that.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's no fun in my answers about drugs
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: and alcohol. And in fact, I haven't been in many
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: bands where the other guys were doing drugs and alcohol.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: I don't want to go through every individual on every tour.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: I've got really a lot of tours, but generally the ones,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: you know what, fans of King Crimson probably realized that
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: the band is playing such difficult music that we're we
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: just wouldn't be capable of playing that show if we
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: were less than one hundred percent. In fact, that's a
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: band that needs days off between shows and needs to
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: have there to be rested, because any mental laps will
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: mess up the whole rest of the band's The pieces
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: are not in four to four, so if somebody gets
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: off an eighth note, there's no way for any anyone
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: else does say one through three, four years where you are?
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: And the secret to me seems to be for us
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: all to stay rested.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Now today many people are follically challenged shave their heads. Well,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you had a shaved head and a mustache,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: you know, decades and decades ago. My question is to
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: what degree when you're out and about are you recognized?
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Good question? Again, it varies if I'm playing in the town,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: if I'm playing with Peter Gabriel or King Crimson in
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: the town, I'm likely to get recognized a bit walking
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: around in the streets. If I'm not playing there, I
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: never get once in a while, but very rare for
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: me to be recognized. There was once I was a
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: customs going into Italy and not yeah customs, and the
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: guy wanted to go through all my stuff, even I had, Hey,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: what do you call it? A bar of shaving? Not cream,
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: but it's all soap bar and he wanted to cut
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: it in half. I thought, I don't mind that that
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: that's pretty extreme. And then I heard him, he speaking Italian,
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: and I heard him say there's something to his associate,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: and he mentioned pink Floyd, and I realized that he
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: was just enjoying being spending some time with one of
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: the guys who would have recorded with Pink Floyd. He
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: didn't hear me, He didn't know that. I heard him
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: say that I.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Know someone who was a photographer for Led Zeppelin, and
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: don't forget this before digital And he said, I've been
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: around the world and seen nothing. So you've been around
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: the world. You know, you're writing, taking pictures. You the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: type of person. Oh, I'm in Prague. There's somewhere I
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: want to go in Prague. Many people you know, this
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: is a classic line in rock and roll. You know,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Hello Cleveland, and there in Chicago, they got no idea
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: where they are. What kind of guy are you?
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: It's all true. I try, when I used to try
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: harder than I try now. It depends on the schedule,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: but generally there is no time. Sometimes there's no time
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: to see even a street downtown. You just go right
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: to the venue. You do your sound check, you do
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: your setup for the show, you have dinner backstage, you
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: play your show, and then you either go somewhere else.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: So you go to hotel at midnight and you wake
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: up at eight o'clock and leave eight am and leave
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: for somewhere else. Yeah, that happens a lot. Of course.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: I have, as you said, been I had it a
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: long time, and I've made the rounds a lot, and
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: sooner or later I'll have a day off in most
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: places and try to enjoy it. Do I have the
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: initiative and energy to go to museums and things like that? No,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: I'm not that guy. I wish I was, but I'm not.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: So if you have a day off, what do you do?
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: A lot of times I have friends. I'll meet him
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: for a meal or hang out. Sometimes I'll go to
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: a club and hear another band that's a treat and
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: inn a rarity. And sometimes it really depends where it is.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: If it's Italy, I'm going to go out for as
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: many meals as i can, and I'm going to meet
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: friends because I've been there a lot and have a
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: lot of friends. And if it's someplace I haven't been,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: I'll hopefully the hotel is downtown and I'll just take
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: a walk and really spend hours walking around and taking photos.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I have found in my travels, which are not as
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: extensive as yours, that the places where people don't speak English.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I find those exotic places are the most interesting, you know,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: whether it be Bogata, Brazil, India. What are the couple
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: of fascinating places you've been to?
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Oh hard to think back on, you know. I've been
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: a lot of places I have been, not to Bogata
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: and not to India, actually almost to India. My friend
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Shankar asked me to do a tour with him once
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: quite a while ago. Uh, and I just didn't feel
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: comfortable about the fact that I didn't have a visa.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: He said, oh, we'll get you that when you get here.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: And I didn't have an itinerary. He said, oh, we'll
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: do that when you get here, and I said, you
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: know what, that's just too deep, a diving into a
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: deep pool that I don't want to take a chance on.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: So it didn't. I can't remember one place that stands out,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: but I've had a lot of great times and a
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: lot of great places, especially maybe especially as a photographer.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: So for instance, in La Paz, when I'm on the
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: tram that people get around on because it's so hilly
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: and it's the altitude is extremely high, then I could
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: get amazing photos to me of the tram coming the
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: other way with a lady in it with that kind
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: of very distinctive hat that they wear in Bolivia that
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: looks like old fashioned, but that's the way they go
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: around on the streets. So stuff like that I get
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: a big kick out of. And by the way, when
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: I have a chance to share those photos on the
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: road diary or once every decade putting out a photo book,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: I really enjoy the chance to share with others, with fans,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: especially what it's like behind the scenes on tour.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: So how'd you get into photography?
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: I don't remember. It was so long the earth was cooling.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: There was this stuff called film, and there was no digital.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I don't know, But I do know from
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: the time. I know from thinking back on my photos
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: that from the time I joined King Crimson, which is
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one, I was pretty intent on documenting, really
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: for myself, documenting what was going on. I know that
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: because the first show we played was in Bath in
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: a club called Moles in nineteen eighty one, and I
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: set up a tripod with a foot pedal, an analog
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: foot pedal to choose air into a trigger that would
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: trigger the pick, and I wanted very much to get
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: a picture of the first note that I played with
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: King Crimson in that context, and I did so. By
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: that time, the early eighties, I was pretty intently into it.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Let me just say another story about the same almost
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: the same year. One regret I have about the John
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Lennon Yoko Ono albums that I did very quickly was
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: I had my camera with me. Of course, that was
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: in late nineteen eighty and on a break in the
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: control room, John and Yoko were listening to playback and
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I came in with my camera and I said to John,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: do you mind if I take a photo? And he said, well, yes,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I'd rather you didn't. I do mind, And that was fine.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: But I'm kicking myself. That was nineteen eighty I'm still
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: kicking myself because the professional photographer would have taken the
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: picture and then asked, and I'm sure he wouldn't have
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: booted me off the session for doing that. He would
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: have just said, please don't do that, and I would
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: have that one picture that I don't have from that
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: very special experience.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, but anyone who has met famous names and is
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: meeting them as opposed to on the meet and greet level. No,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: there are certain rules and you don't violate those rules.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure that's why you asked first.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but boy, I wish I had that picture.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: And many people, if writing is only secondary to public speaking,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: is their greatest fear. You know, you're right your blog,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: which is very readable and articulate. Was this easy for
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: you or how did you decide to do that?
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: First of all, I did start what's called a web
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: blog before there was that word blog early nineties. I
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: fell into having a website and I thought I'll just
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: write about what it's like backstage. I have any very
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: easy time writing a lot. I have carry journals like
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: a lot of people do. Sometimes it lends itself to poetry.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's just a log of what happened that day.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: So very happy to share it with people actually talking
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: this kind of of this kind of adventure. I'm not
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: so good at it, as you can tell, because I
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: stumbled on the words and I don't dislike it. But
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: I'm very comfortable as a writer.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: You know, what people don't realize is a lot of
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: times household name musicians and you're one of them. They
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: know certain fans because they come to certain gigs I
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: don't want to, you know, encourage people, but do you
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: know your super fans?
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: I know a lot of them. I'm not great with
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: names of friends and everybody, so I'm not always aware
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: of their names, but I know a lot of them,
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: and by look, I know just about all of them
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: to look at them. And one thing that's changed all
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: that for me is Adrian Blu and Pat Maslato and
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: I have a yearly music camp where we share almost
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: a week in the Catskill Mountains actually near where I live,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: with fans or anybody who wants to sign up for it,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: all of whom are musicians at some level, but very
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: few are professional musicians. There are people who do other
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: things and are fans of King Crimson. And the first
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: year I went to that with the reluctance because I'll
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: tell you why. I don't mind being around fans, but
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: I don't like being in the position where I'm the
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: guy who knows the stuff, where I'm going to be
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: giving a bass class about how to play the bass.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: I just don't lend myself to that, and so I
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: thought I'll do it, but I'm not sure this is
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: going to work out well. What happened is and I
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: got to have meals with them and talk to these
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: maybe fifty people who and learned their journey, something about
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: their journey, what brought them there, and what they love
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: about music and what they play. I was captivated by that,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: and we just finished doing our twelfth year of that.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: So a lot of the campers, by the way we
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: call them the campers, a lot of these people are
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: the same people. I know them very well. Twelve years
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: of spending four or five days together every summer and
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: by the way, jamming and making music together. So that
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: kind of put me more connected not only with them,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: but with understanding the mindset of the people who just
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: are mad fans of King Crimson or Peter Gabriel, but
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: really have their own story which is just as valid
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: as my own.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I remember when the first King Crimson album came out
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy I could have been sixty nine, had a
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: gatefold cover, had a sort of a green to the cover,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: and you know the first song some by Greg Lake
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: courd to the Crimson King. What was your experience discovering
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: King Crimson.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Very different than yours? In nineteen eighty I had played
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: on Robert I met Robert Fripp on Peter Gabriel's first
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: solo album in seventy six, when Peter left Genesis. By
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: the way, I did not know of Genesis when I
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: met Peter Gabriel and played on his album, and I
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: met Robert Fripp. We toured together with Peter, and then
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Robert at some point after that asked me to play
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: on his album called Exposure. So I was very familiar
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: with his music, but I did not listen to King Crimson.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Didn't even know the band when Robert said, I'm thinking
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: of forming this other band, not King Crimson, but what
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: do you say you come to Let's just play together
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: and see how it works out. With Bill Rufford and
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Adrian belou Later, maybe decades later, I found out that
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: really I was being auditioned and they had other bass
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: players come in also. But so I came into that
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: not knowing anything about King Crimson, not knowing none of
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: us knew that we would later name that combo King
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Crimson because it seemed appropriate to Robert. So I had
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: no history at all. In fact, if I remember correctly,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: at that audition slash let's get together and play. They said, well,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: let's play Red, and I said, well, I'm a few
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: bars something like I'm a few bars to me because
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know it. And I was at that stage
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: of my youth pretty quick at learning stuff, so probably
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: they were impressed with how quickly I learned red. But
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: that first year or two of touring we did, we
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: steadfastly refused to do any Crimson classic material from before
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: that incarnation. Later, when we did some, that is when
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: I listened to King Crimson and that's when I learned that,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: and that's when I was introduced to the iconic parts
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: of Greg Lake and John Wetton and became a fan
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: of them much later.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: So tell me about the Bead Tour.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, Adrian Blue had this idea I can't quite speak
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: for him, but quite a few years ago of doing
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: the music of the eighties of King Crimson and finding
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: not doing it with the King Crimson members but other guys. However,
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: he brought me on board. And it took years. You know,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: the COVID came along, and when you have players who
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: are in different bands, their bands take precedence the schedule
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: of their bands and the tours. So it took quite
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: a while until we could finally zero in on September thirteenth,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: September twelfth, I think twenty twenty four as the time
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: to start it. Steve I is going to play guitar,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: and he's going to play something like the parts of
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Robert Fripp, probably differently, I hope differently. But he's challenged
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: by that and quite quite well known that he's publicized
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: that he's practicing a lot to do that. And Danny Carey,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: a wonderful drummer, the drummer and tool, has signed on
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: to do it, and myself, So I'm excited to be
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: revisiting that music, but also I think a little more
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: excited about hearing I haven't heard yet, but we haven't
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: hearsed yet where Steve I and Danny Carey will take it,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: where in what ways it'll be different, And I will
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: be sure to join them in the adventure of taking
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: this great material in other places if that's what happens.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know, when Robert was still on tour, Adrian
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: was not in the act, and now you're going out
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: playing Robert's music, not that it wasn't collaborative with Adrian
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: sons Robert. Has anybody been in contact with Robert got
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: his take.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: On this, Yes, not me. I wouldn't even have thought
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: of that. I am I'm the bass player. I just yeah,
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: I'll show up, I'll play bass. But yes, Adrian contact
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: in him. Robert is one hundred percent in favor of
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: the tour and he gave it. Robert gave it the name.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Why don't you call it the Beat tour? Beat is
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: the name of one of the albums we did, one
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: of the three albums we did in the eighties.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: And what material will it actually will be all that material,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: any new material, any material outside that decade when you
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: work together.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: At this point, because we haven't been together in the
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: studio and we're close to going together, it'll just be
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: any day now. I don't know exactly, but Adrian sent
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: me a list of pretty much all of the music
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: of all those albums. We can't do all of that
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: in one show. We'll choose among those, and my hope
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: is that we will also vary it on different nights,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: because I have the feeling a lot of fans will
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: be coming to more than one show. Would be nice
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: if they're not all exactly the same show.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, who knew Steve I.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Adrian? So as many questions will that's taken me outside
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: my experience. I had not played with Steve. I still
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: have not played with Steve Vibe, but I'm going to
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: play with him sixty five shows in the next few months,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: and that's going to be great. I'm looking forward to it.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: I've heard him. He's great with Danny Carrey the drummer.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: I have played with him a little bit because he
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: sat in with King Crimson for a few shows in
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: a multi drummer situation. But it's it's all going to
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: be very exciting, and it's all going to be for
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: as you can tell from my talking about it. It's
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: going to be classic material but a bit new, fresh
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: and wild, and we don't know what's going to happen,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: and that's pretty exciting.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you've been talking to Adrian about this or
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: agents working on it for years now it's finally happening.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Sixty five shows A lot of shows.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: I did notice that.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: And then you're talking about the economics or such. It's
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: not like playing arenas. You're playing smaller venues and you're
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: going on a bus. Are you saying I love this
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: music so much, I want to play it, or I
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: love hanging with these guys, or I'm not doing anything
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: else these three months. You now, how much of a
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: hurdle is it? Or do you kind of commit yourself
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: and then say, holy fuck? What did I get myself into?
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: All of that can happen? A tour like this has
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: to be booked way in advance, you know, at least
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: a year in advance, so you have to get the
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: venues in the right size. And in the case of
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: this tour, sales were so good that they revised their
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: thoughts about what size venues and sometimes we were playing
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: the same area twice. That's all in the hands of management,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: not me. But yes, I had to commit to it
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: one hundred percent about a year ago, and I wage,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: as I always do when I'm a call to do
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: something musically, it sounded great. Maybe I'm trying to how
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: can I summarize digging deep into my personality in my
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: sense of what made my mouth water about it was
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: these other guys that are really great players that haven't
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: played with and so the two together the eighties music.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: By the way, I didn't bother to stay playing with
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Adrian Blue is great. I love it. Been doing it
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: a little every year for ever since the eighties. Can't
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: get enough of that. That's great, but the whole package
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: as a whole made my mouth water, made me want
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: to do it musically. Then the typical musician thing, Okay,
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: we'll work that out, someone else will work it out.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know, so yes, it could be. As you mentioned,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: I'm on the bus thinking what did I get myself into,
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: because that's a lot of days on the bus. But
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: probably it'll be fine. I know they're really good guys,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: and almost undoubtedly the music will will overcompensate for anything
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: that's less than perfect. When I played with Chuck Mangoni
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: and jazz in the sixties, when I was living in Rochester,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: he had an expression of the kind of the eleventh
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: Commandment is thou shalt never really groove. It's kind of
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: jazz player's way of thinking about digging and touring because
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: there's so many things that can get in a way
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: of an ideal jazz performance where you really need to
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: be free to improvise the way you want. And that's
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: some groove not true in rock and these stories I
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: can groove, but yes, there are many things that can
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: make it less than ideal, and almost always the music
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: compensates for that.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, there have been records that have actually literally been
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: made on the road, made in hotel rooms. Certain people
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: go back to the hotel room practice. Certainly Frip himself
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: does that. Oh yeah, to what degree do you find
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: being on the road and I realize every situation is different.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Is their camaraderie and contact with the other people on
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: the road and at times musical collaboration, experimentation all stage.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, a lot of good times. I think in
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: my experience, the bands that don't get along great just
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: don't stay together long. So all the bands I've been
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: a long time, there's great camaraderie. There's a lot of
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: hanging out and a lot of joking. Even even King
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Crimson is a very serious band, has been on stage
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: and the music is very intense. But even while we're
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: on stage, if you really could see that the little
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: communications among the guys that we're having fun and joking
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: with each other, even about our mistakes. Robert Robert, especially
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Robert Fripp, who's used to seem very serious to audiences.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: In the last few years they've on Facebook, they've seen
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: behind the other side of him, which is what I've
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: seen for years the kids around a lot. We'll get
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: off stage and he'll look at me and he'll say, yes,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: when in doubt, play CE sharp because he'll have heard
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: that I came in when I was supposed to play
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: an E. I came in with a C sharp and
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: he doesn't rate me for it. He said, oh yeah,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: I went in doubt play C sharp. And once I
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: got a note when I in the nineties, I got
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: a note under my door at a hotel from Robert saying,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: you have the rare opportunity to lend me money. And
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: who signed Robert Fripp? I think I said saved that
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: it's one of the only things I have that he signed. Sorry,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: I went off on that. To play together off stage
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: is something we just don't have the opportunity to do
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: very much well at all in the bands that I
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: tour with. I know some bands that set up a stage.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: If they're playing an arena, they set up a stage.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Bon Jovi did this, This set up a stage backstage
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: to jam before the show, after the show, to have
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: fun and play other stuff. That's just not a possibility
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: in the tours I do. If it's a big one
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: like Peter Gabriel's, the crew immediately is on stage tearing
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: down the stage right the second after you stop. And yes,
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: you could go to if you had the energy, you
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: could go to a club somewhere in jam with other players.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And maybe I used to do that a little bit
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: a long long time ago, but not anymore.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: So you have this summer camp. Did you go to
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: camp as a kid? I?
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, I forgot until you asked that I did. I
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: went to classical I was a classical player and I
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: went to one or two years at the University of
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: mass in Amherst, Mass. Yeah, and it was influential on me,
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: but only in a classical way, and later I stopped
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: playing classical. But it was kind of cool, very different
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: than this kind of camp with adults. I say adults,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: but this year there was a eight year old drummer
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: who was amazing. Came with his parents.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, you grew up in Brookline and outside of Boston.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: What'd your parents do for a living?
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Wow, you've researched me a lot. I appreciate that.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Well, I spent a lot of time in Brookline. Anyway,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: we really have a friend who grew up absolutely.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: My mother was the head of the children's department at
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: a Boston public library, first at a branch, then then
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: at the main branch, and then the overall library. So
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: we read a lot. My brother and I had a
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: lot of children's books. My father was an engineer, a
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: radio engineer at first at WHDH, which later became also
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: a TV station, and I grew up visiting the station
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: a lot and seeing what radio is like behind the scenes.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: That was fun. And they both my older brother, Pete
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: was a French horn player at first and then became
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: a pianist, and he went to Juilliard for classical and
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: I went to the Eastman School for classical. So my
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: parents did what they felt was the traditional thing of
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: educating us musically, first playing piano and then picking our
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: own instruments. And then they were kind of daunted when
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: first Pete and then I became professional musicians. That wasn't
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: what they had in mind at all, but that's the
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: way it went, and they were quite supportive of it.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, so when did you start piano lessons?
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: I don't remember that, good question. Let me think I
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: probably I was playing bass at twelve years old, so
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: probably from nine years old I played piano and then
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: I know this as an adult when my parents were
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: quite old, I asked them if they remembered if I
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: said anything about why I chose to play the bass,
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: because I don't know what I did. And they said, no,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: you just said you liked it. They actually had asked
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: me that I liked the bass. And that sounds like
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: a pointless story, but think about how many years later
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: I'm seventy eight now and I still just like playing
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: the bass, and I just want to play good music.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: So I'm glad I didn't think with that part of
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: my brain that had a plan, And I'm glad I
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: didn't say, well, I want to be this or I
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: want to do this. I wanted to play the bass,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: and I'm very lucky that I am still doing that.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, and a lot of Jewish families in
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: the era, they made you take piano lessons, and most people,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: you know, had mixed feelings about that. When you started
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: with music, we're saying, oh, this is my thing. Oh
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: my parents are making me do this.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: They had urged me to practice. What kid wants to practice, well,
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: one in a hundred kids wants to practice. I didn't
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: want to practice, but I did, and I liked it.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I liked being able to play better the piano, and
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: then once I was playing the bass, they didn't have
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: to ask me to practice. I just did practice. And
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: you're right, it was a tradition to educate it. And
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: before had I been born ten years earlier, the tradition
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: was to take up violin. I was kind of I
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: don't know why, but in the Eastern Europe that's what
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: you did. And I'm glad I didn't have to become
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: a violinist because it would have been ten years to
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: master it instead of or sorry, twenty years instead of
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: ten years the master of that instrument, and I wouldn't
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: be able to play rock and roll the way I do.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you know, I'm a little younger than you,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: and I remember hearing the show tunes and our parents
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: takings to young people's concerts. Prior to playing the piano.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Was there music in the house and what kind of
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: music was that.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: I'm very much a product of my older brother three
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: years old, or the records that he got or the
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: records that I grew up with because he could afford them. Yeah,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: my dad brought home music too. There was there was
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: a lot of music being played and we had. We
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: were pretty early to have a Hi Fi and and
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: even a TV that I think I remember my dad
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: building it out of components to have a TV in
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: the early fifties. So it's a musical household somewhat. And yeah,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: plenty of culture in Boston and in Brookline. Take I
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: was taken to see concerts almost all well, there was
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: no rock and roll, but I was taken to classical
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: concerts and grew to love that music.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't have any brothers. I have two sisters.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: What's it like having an older brother? Did you always
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: worship him and get along? Did you fight what was
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: going on there?
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: In our case, we never fought. And I don't think
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: I worshiped Pete, but I just quietly followed him.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: He learned at an early age to take all the
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: gigs because they might lead to something else. There might
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: be a really good player. He was a jazz player before.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: I think of Pete as a jazz player, classically trained,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: a jazz player who plays rock, and I think of
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: myself as a rock player who plays jazz. In that
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't really live the life, live the
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: base parts of jazz, and I hear that when I play,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: I play it, I think pretty well, but not as
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: well as I would if that was my whole musical life.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: But anyway, Yeah, I learned from him many things, but
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: including take the gig. You might meet a really good
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: drummer and then you'll get to play with him. Other
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: things like that and those. A few years ago we
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: decided to form a band for the first time, quite
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: only a few years ago, to form a band and
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: to play the style of music that he first listened to.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: So we grew up with in the fifties, which was cool.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: I guess you'd call it the cool jazz. And the
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: bass player Julius Watkins was the French horn player. That's
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: why Pete was getting those records because he was a
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: French horn player, and Oscar Peterford was the bass player,
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: great bass player. So really, in my later years I
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: realized that I grew up listening to Oscar Petterford, whose
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: choice of notes and whose taste and whose six think
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: solos were pretty exceptional, and I didn't think about it
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: at the time. It's only now that when I look
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: back and I think that in a deep way, I
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: tried to become that bass player. But playing rock, in
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: other words, trying to. I wasn't thinking I'll be like Oscar,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: but I do try to find the right notes and
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: the right feel and the right sound, and not not
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: do any more than not be flashy necessarily unless it's
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: called for. And yeah, so I was greatly influenced by
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: my brother's records.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, talking about you and your brother at a young age,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: you go to school. What kind of student were you?
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Did you have friends? Did you play sports? We always
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: one step remove what we you like.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm never asked that I have to think a
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: minutecause it was a long time ago. I enjoyed school.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: The Brookline Public schools were pretty good, so I got
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: a decent education, not as good as I wish I had,
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: but pretty good. And I was in a band, in
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: an orchestra and a chorus the whole time, as soon
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: as there was a chance to be in those, and
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: some of those did out of town concerts. So in
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: a way, I was on the road as a thirteen
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: year old a little bit, and that prepared me for
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: being on the road when I was in the music
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: school and college or university, and not prepared me for
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: being on the road even more it. There's a piece
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: on my new album called road Dogs, and it was
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: intended as an instrumental, and it wasn't instrumental, and I
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: just was singing along with it, and I went road
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: Dogs with that kind of voice of road Dogs, and
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: I decided, well, I'll leave that in there and I'll
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: write some other lyrics to fit that, because even though
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: that it wasn't intended to be about that, I and
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: the guys I work with are indeed road dogs.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: So if I was growing up in Brooklyn in the fifties,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: brookline excuse me in the fifties, say oh yeah, Tony,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: he's the music guy.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: I was, indeed one of the music guys I was.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: When the Beatles came around, kids came up to me,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: are they any good? Tony? I didn't know what to say,
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: because I, you know, i'd heard them, but I didn't
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: judge that about you know, like you know, I had
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: nothing to do with classical so I didn't judge. Later
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: I would have, you know, years later, I say they're
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: very good. Indeed, there there's more to them than just
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: a pop band. But I do remember being asked that,
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: and I was not the only person in that in
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: that UH world, you know who was spending his time
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: practicing in the in the band room, and I picked
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: up tuba in those years. I didn't have a tuba
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: at home, but it was sort of normal for for
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: a bass player to be a tuba player, and the
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: and the school, the high school had one. I had
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: a few of them for us to play, and I
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: actually formed a love for playing in concert bands, which
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: I carried with me later into UH into I think
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: I end. I'm trying to think. When I stopped playing
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: the tuba, they wouldn't let me play it at Eastman
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: at is where they wanted you to have only one
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: instrument that you that you focused on. But then when
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: I played Peter Gabriel's first album, I I talked to
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: him and let me play tuba on one piece and
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: subsequently on the road. So we had a tuba on
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: the road.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Okay. I heard from somebody who's a road guys were
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: from you work with you that you played the White
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: House in JFK's era.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, what's to say about that? Oh? Yeah, that's right. Yes,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra took us on the road.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: I was was it early in the early sixties. I'm
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: guessing sixty two, but I could look it up for sure.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: And we played in two places, at Carnegie Hall in
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: New York and on the White House lawn President Kennedy.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: Kennedy came out and gave a speech before the show,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: saying that he was too busy to stay for it,
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: but that he promising he would keep his window open
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: from his study. I'm not sure he actually did that,
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: but somewhere I have a tape of the speech, and
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: it's it's times have change, because he really gave speeches
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: very well and eloquently, saying how precious it was to
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: have our youth educated in music. And that's not the
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: kind of thing you would lately you would hear from
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: the White House. I think, so we're pretty special.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Where were you and Kennedy was shot.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: I was in high school and I was heading for
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: work at the library, Boston Public Library, where I worked
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: in the music department, doing whatever I could. Yeah, and
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: when John John Kennedy, when John Lennon was shot, I
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: was in my New York City apartment developing photos. That's
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: what I did all night because I didn't have a
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: darkroom that was dark during the day, so I'd stay
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: up late and the phone rang and it was I
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: can tell this story now without choking up, but for
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: many years I couldn't. It was a newspaper saying, not
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: that he had been killed, but it hadn't been shot
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: and was injured, and did I have a quote for them?
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: I don't remember. I think it was a Rochester newspaper,
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: and I was shocked and puzzled by how they had
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: my phone number, and doubly shocked, and then I said
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: I don't know and hung up. And then another newspaper
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: called shortly afterward, was asking for a quote saying that
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: he had died. I, like everybody, I was traumatized by that,
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: and I think for about ten years after that, if
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: anyone asked me anything about the John Lennon sessions, I
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: just would say, that's not something I can talk about.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: And then I think I released a book called Beyond
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: the Bass Cleft, with short stories of different situations I've
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: been in as a musician through my life, and it
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: had the John Lennon Yokohona sessions, and the editor said,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: correctly to me, you really have to address this. You're
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: just kind of dodging the reality that everybody knows. And
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: that's when I finally, ten years later, came to emotionally
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: came to grips with it well.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Jack Douglas, producer of Double Fantasy, he said, you know,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: the deal was, if anybody finds out the record's over,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: totally a secret. How did you end up on Double Fantasy?
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: It was Jack who I assume it was Jack who
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: told John that I was a good bass player and
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: worth head having the John's first words to me where
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: they say they tell me you're good, just don't play
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: too many notes. And I smiled and laughed. I smiled
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: because that's such a New York in your face attitude,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: which I was fine. I was a New Yorker at
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: the time that I'm very comfortable with that, and I knew,
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: but he didn't know that I wouldn't play too many notes.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: It's just not the kind of bass player I am.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: And I kind of understood that he was directly addressing
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: the fact that somebody told him I'm good. That could
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: mean I'm a real flashy player who's going to do
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: just horrible things on his song. So I had a
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: smile and I said, don't worry, I won't play too
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: many notes, and we got along musically really great. We
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: got along fine in every way. But I could tell
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: he was very happy with the bass parts I played.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: And that's a nice feeling. When John Lennon's happy, he
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: doesn't have to gush about it. But I could just
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: sense that he liked it a lot. There was something else,
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, secret sessions.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: They told me not to tell anyone. I believe someone
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: told me not to even tell my wife where I
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: was working. I only lived across town and listen to this.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: The second day after I was told that, I took
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: a taxi over from the East Side to the west Side.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: I believe it was a hit factory forty eighth Street
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: between eighth and ninth, and I asked to get off on.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: I just said to the taxi, just take me to
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: ninth and forty eighth and he said, oh, that's near
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: where John Lennon's recording And I thought, yeah, secrets as
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: the cab drive and I'm not even going to the studio.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: And the taxi driver knows he had heard it on
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: the radio.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: By the way, that morning, were you starstruck when you
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: met John Lennon.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: I can't say that. I was no I was pleased
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: to be part of it. Maybe it's just not the
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: way I'm made up that I get starstruck from people.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: And also I had worked with other famous musicians, so
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: I think I just I haven't analyzed why it is.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: I didn't get starstruck, as you can tell. I just
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: think I entered situations on a musical level, and that's
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: about the music. And I hoped that I would like him,
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: that he would be nice and likewise with Yoko, and
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: that worked out fine. But in a way, it was
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: the music that that it was all centered on to me,
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: and that's just kind of the way I work.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Well, you a lot of times they lay down the
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: drums in the bass and you disappear. How long did
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: you work on the Double Fantasy sessions and to what
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: degree were the songs pre written or work down in
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: the studio?
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: They were the whole whole length of it was only
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: two weeks, and then they made a second album out
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: of outtakes that were Yeah, they weren't finished that In
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: the case of that album, we did the full rhythm
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: track rhythm section together. There were no overdubs. You could
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: fix a part if you made a mistake, but there
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: wasn't much of that. John would simp lay his song
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: and sing it to you, and I would think, goodness,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: there's there are thousands of bass players who could do
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: a great job on this. How lucky am I that
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: I'm the one who's here? And that was kind of
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: the extent of all. Okay, Having put that thought aside,
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: I just had the happy ride of hearing a new
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: song and playing a wonderful song, and we alternated songs
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: with Yoko's songs, would do John's, and Yoko would be
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: in the control room with Sean, young Sean and kind
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: of helping, just coordinate the control room with John. Then
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: we would do a Yoko song and John would be
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: the tea boy. He'd be in the control room take
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: looking at Sean and bringing out tea for Yoko, which
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: was sweet. Her songs were a lot more problematic to
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: do because she doesn't play the instrument. She had had
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: an arranger come in and do charts, but the charts
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: weren't really didn't tell you much about how you should
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: do it, so hers work became a a search to
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: find the groove that she wanted, to find the tempo
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: that would work, and to find where we're going with
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: this piece, and then we would get that, and then
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: we're back to John and all there. He placed this
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: big guitar, he sings and it's all there for you.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: It couldn't be easier. So it was an interesting experience.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: None of it was difficult, but it was unusual, and
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: that we alternated between two writers.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: And hey, are you ever starstruck with anybody, whether a musician, politician, scientist, whatever.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: Good question. I can't remember being start what I would
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: call starstruck. No, it doesn't mean that I feel I'm
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: equal to these these really special people. It's just kind
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: of not not in my makeup so much.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: We've been doing this a long time. But if you
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: go back seventies eighties when you were called for a session,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: did you ever feel somewhat uptight? You know, I don't
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: want to make the exact equivalent stage fright, but it's
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: sort of the same thing. You know, the band wrote
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: a song. You know they've been on there at stage
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: a million times with Ronnie Hawkins and Dylan, yet they're
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: still uptight when they hit the stage. When you'd be
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: called to work with an act, would you say another day,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: I've got this or it would be party. You had
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: spilkiss say, well, you know, I got to get it right.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: I think I'm thinking of a couple times in my
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: concert life that I was nervous. Once, when I was
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: a kid, I played a tuba concerto with the high
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: school band and I didn't a factor in that your
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: mouth gets dry when you're nervous. And we did one
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: away out of town concert and a piece I had
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: played before. But we got to the cadenza and my
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: mouth was just dry as a bone. I couldn't even
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: play the tuba, let alone go to the high note.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: Excuse me, a high note on the tuba. And so
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: I was very nervous, and it grew on itself as
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: nervous as well will the more I realized, oh, I'm nervous,
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: and that's making my mouth dry. So there was that,
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: and then way many years later, I played with Paul
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: Simon Jimmy Carter's inauguration week. It was in a theater
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: and full theater, and Jimmy Carter was at the front
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: of the balcony with his wife and looking down and smiling,
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: big famous smile and a lot of teeth, and I
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: looked up and I'm behind Paul and I'm not the
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: lead guy at all, and I thought, I'm nervous. This
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: is this is really special, and I'm a little nervous.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: And I thought, that's great, that's pretty cool that I'm nervous.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: I thought this, and a few times I've been nervous
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: since then, since the Oh, I just thought of another one.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: I'll borri you with. But a few times I've got nervous, I.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Think bors What was the other time, Yeah, with.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: That same orchestra that played the White House when I
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: was older, I was playing a concerto with them, the
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: Kusavisky Bass Concerto at the Boston University Theater, and I
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: wore cuff links a thing back then. I was dressed
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: up and I wore cuff links, which I had never
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: worn at a rehearsal. And the piece, I think is
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: in B minor. But when there's an e, which happens
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: a lot when you're in the KYB minor, my wrist
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: was at the shoulder of the bass, shall I put
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: it that way? And the cufflink when I did vibrato,
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: the cufflink was banging against the shoulder of the bass,
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: making a let's call. It a machine gun sound, much
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: louder than what I was playing, much louder than the orchestra,
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: and the audience couldn't help but be aware of that.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: And as I got nervous about it and about the
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: upcoming ease the note e that I knew there were
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: plenty of them coming, it got faster, as vibrato will
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: do when you're nervous.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: So that.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: Was a great example to me of when I didn't
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: embrace it, and it kind of got out of hand,
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: and it was a dreadful performance for me, and I'm
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: sure the audience was scratching their head about why I
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: played the machine gun notes along with the concerto.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, so your brother is buying these jazz records. Rock
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: starts sometime in the early fifties. You know, I turn
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a rocket eighty eight rock around the clock. Then comes Elvis.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: At what point did you become infected with rock?
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Interesting question? Not then? Not even in high school when
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: the Beatle I mentioned the Beatles coming around around, I
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: wasn't too interested. I listened a little bit, went to
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: music school, started playing a little jazz, Still not interested
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: in rock. I think I might have taken an ad
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: out in Rochester when I was twenty looking for a
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: rock band. I had never been in a rock band,
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: and the Beatles had got more sophisticated, and I was
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: kind of interested in it, So it really was. I think.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: I was out of school and went to New York
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: City and was a session player when I started playing. Well,
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: I did a lot of kinds of music as a
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: studio player in New York, and I became kind of
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: attached to the rock stuff and trying to get the
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: right sound for rock and trying to change my sound
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: something you never did in classical never did in jazz,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: but you could do with an electric bass. I never
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: thought until now about the what's the first rock I
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: listened to or enjoyed? But it was pretty late in
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: my formative years.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, how about you. You're coming of age and Top
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: forty and there was great Top forty radio in Boston.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: Were you even listening to it?
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: No? No, I was immersed in classical music at that time.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, at the time, were you playing a double bass?
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: And at what point did you play the electric bass?
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, I played double bass only, and we called it
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: double bass, and since then you call it spring bass
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: or acoustic bass. And graduated high school, got into the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: Easton School of Music, played in the Rochester Philharmonic, and
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: I was very lucky that Steve Gadd, a great drummer,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: was in school with me, was my classmate, and he
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: didn't have any bass players who wanted to do gigs.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: We were all classical geeks, but I was a classical
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: geek with a little bit of a streak of playing jazz.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: I had played a little jazz, and Steve somewhat. We
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: began to work a lot with gap Maan Joni and
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: then with Chuck Mangoni, and then with both of them
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: a lot, like I mean, two gigs a day, six
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: and a half hours a day, playing a lot, and
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: he sort of mentored me in a quiet way, letting
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: me learn how to play the feel of jazz, which
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: I really wasn't good at at all. I was a
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: classical guy, very interesting, and we put the time. We
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: put the beat in a different place in jazz, or
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: many different places, but a different place than classical, which
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: just puts it right smack in the middle of where
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: it could be. And yeah, so that was an education
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: for me. And then soon after a few years after that,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: when I started playing rock, and when I came to
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: New York, I had to adjust that to playing on
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: the beat or behind the beat to play rock.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, going to the Eastman's School of Music in Rochester.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Your older brother had gone to Juilliard. Was there any
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: doubt that you would go to music college? Why not
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: that it's not a great place, but why Rochester.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: I don't really remember why that school. But I had
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: never had doubts. Once I was in high school, I
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: had no doubt that I was going to play bass
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: in whatever way I could making a living for it
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: would from it would be a bonus. But that wasn't
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: in my thoughts the way it isn't in any sixteen
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: year old thoughts. I knew I was going to play bass,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: and that's what I did. And probably I seem to
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: remember applying to a few schools. I didn't really I
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: didn't apply to Juilliard. I could have, but I didn't
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: because my brother had gone there, and I thought I'll
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: go off in my own direction. And maybe the Eastman
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: School was a very good school for sure, and maybe
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: the yes says I think back. They accepted me kind
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: of early, and they said, if you let us know
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: right away, you can come here and you'll get a scholarship.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Whereas if I started looking into other schools. I think
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: I applied to one in London, the Royal Royal Academy
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: or something like that, but I never heard back from them,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: and I accepted the Eastman offer.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, another dumb question. Double bass, acoustic bass, whatever referring
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: to it, has no frets. How do you decide and
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: learn where to put your fingers and out of play?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: Wow? Well, I think my first teacher said this is
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: ten years. It's going to take you ten years, but
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: be glad you don't play the violin that will take
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: twenty years. You learn it by practicing your hand position
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: and putting it in the right hand, sorry, and putting
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: it in the right place, and you practice a lot,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: a great deal. It's way harder than having threats. And
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: the day that I switched to an instrument with frets
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: was an interesting day for me because I missed having
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: no frets. And later I found what's called a fretless bass,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: an electric bass that's fretless, and was very comfortable with that.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: I think it's more interesting to find bass players or
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: guitar players who learned with frets and then make the
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: switch to that fretless base. That must be very hard.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, you go to Rochester for six hours away from Boston.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: It's a cosmopolitan city, but kind of in the middle
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: of nowhere. Good experience, bad experience.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: Well, I love the musical scene in Rochester. I was
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: too young to know what the scene is in Boston. Frankly,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: there was the Berkeley School, but it was not even
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: a legitimate school yet when I was there, And there
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: were jazz clubs, but I couldn't get in them as
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: a kid. So when I went to Rochester, it's really
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: a mecca of really very good players, the cats of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: jazz players I'm talking about. There is a cultural affinity
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: for orchestra also, of course, because of George Eastman and
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: the Eastman School of Music. But I liked hanging out
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: with those jazz players and I learned a lot from them.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: And it was intimidating, yes, being a a kid and
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: a new player to jazz and going to clubs and
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: trying to sit in when you're not really sure what
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: the songs are and things like that. So I went
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: through that. An interesting thing that happened. I couldn't hear
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: myself particularly with the acoustic bass with the double bass,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: and so I got an electric one. Ampeg made one
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: called the Baby Bass. Maybe they still make it, I
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: don't know, but it didn't sound like much, but it
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: was you've got an app and you could hear it.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: And I wasn't loving that. When I went to hear
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: a band in Rochester that came into town. Jackie and
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Roy was the jazz band and Andy Musson was the
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: bass player, and he was playing a Fender bass, which
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: I had not heard of. Can you believe that I
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: had never heard of a Fender base? And the kid
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: I was, I want to to go up to Andy
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: after the show. I know him now. He lives in
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: the New York area like I do. I guess he's
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: always lived in the New York area. Yeah, And I said,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: what's that you're playing? Where do I get one of those?
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: And this is interesting? He told me, Okay, go to
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: New York, go to Dan R. Strong's music guitar store
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: in the village. But he said, this is important. Don't
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: get a new one, get a used one. Those are
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: the words he used because the expression vintage guitar or
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: vintage bass didn't exist at the time, a used one
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: was cheaper than a new one, and I did go
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: to New York exactly. I took the train downs exactly
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: he said to do, and the prices were exactly what
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: he said. A new one at that time, we're talking
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: mid sixties, a new Fender base was about two hundred
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: twenty dollars, and a used one, by which I mean
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: a nineteen fifties had their precision, it was one hundred
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: eighty dollars. It was cheaper, so I got one. I
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: brought it back on the train to Rochester and I
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: played that only that bass for many, many years. Interesting,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: how the times have changed.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: You still have that bass?
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: I do not. I lost it in the fire. Sadly,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: I lost a lot of my basses in a fire
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: in my barn in the mid nineties. By that time,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: to be fair, I had stopped playing it, or I
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: would have had with me on the road where I was.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: But still I wish I had it. Of course, I've
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: had a lot of basses in my life, and I
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: really came to appreciate and value them much more after
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: I had lost some in that fire, and I switched
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: in the late seventies early eighties, I switched to music
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: Man bases designed by the way by Leo Fender, which
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: were similar and similar in feel, but had more versatility
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: and had more of the sound that we wanted at
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: that time. We wanted more lows, more low end, and
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: maybe sometimes more highs on rock records. Then the Fender
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: precision could give me. The engineer could compensate, but it
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: seemed like a better deal to walk in with the
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: sound that's going to be appropriate for the piece. Then.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: Ever since, I've primarily played a music Man bassis.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: So what caused the fire and what did you lose
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: in the fire? Oh?
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: What caused the fire was it became winter and I
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: had foolishly left papers on top of the heater in
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: my garage. It was a barn kind of garage, and
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: so the whole place started on fire, and I lost
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: all my bases and amps. I have forgotten what but
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of not a lot, six let's say, six
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: really good basses and four or five amps. It's a
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: shame to lose them. I have one bass which I
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: could show you, but it won't come across an audio
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: which survived it. It got half burnt. It was a
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: base that was cream colored, light cream colored, and it
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: turned amber in color, and part of it turned to charcoal,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: and I sent it very carefully back to Ernie Ball
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: music Man with a note with a note that was
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: it out of warranty, could fix it was a joking note,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: and they injected epoxy into the burnt part. And interestingly,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: I still play that bass a lot. I don't take
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: it on the road because it would break if it
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: fell down. But it lost all its moisture, so it
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: changed and it's a little more thumpy and a little
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: less sustained in a way that's really cool and really
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: has its own I love basses that have their own sound,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: really most of them do. And part of part of
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: my joy in this album bringing it down to the
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: bass was was expressing how much I like the particular
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: bass on each track. I wrote a little essay or
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: poem about each bass, and I took a portrait of it,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: not in a studio, but out in the in the world,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: in a place that seemed appropriate. And it was important
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: to me with this album to have a booklet that
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: had room for all of those photos of the basses.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know the guitars, you know, let's assume it's
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: a new guitar. Guitars have them set up. They might
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: change the pickups, the actions, et cetera. If you were
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: to get a new bass from the fact factory, maybe
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: in this case they make it to your specs, but
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know. But generally speaking, you get a new bass,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: what would you change to make it the way you
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: like it?
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: Good question is this has to do with the way
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: the person is, the musician is here's the way I am.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: If it sounds great, then I get it. I want
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: that bass and I like it, and I don't change
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: it at all. If it doesn't sound great, I don't
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: really want that bass. I don't want to. Well, that's
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: kind of the end of the story. I don't want it.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: I never was one who's who has the expertise to
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: make a bass that doesn't sound good sound good. I mean,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: I can play the bass and change it a little
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: bit with how I play it, But I'm not a
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: bass redesigner, and I don't want to be. Why should I,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: Because there's basses that sound great when I pick them up.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: In fact, I gotta love what the basses give to me.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: I was very aware of this. Is I did this
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: album so some basses just have a rock sound. You
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: just play half of the rock sound. Songs are in
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: the kivs right, So sometimes I'm just playing eighth notes
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: on an E and it sounds really cool and really great,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: and I really appreciate you appreciate the bass gave that
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: to me. I didn't. It was not my fingers doing that.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: It's just a gift from my friend, that bass. And
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: you can bet that I play that bass a lot
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: if it has that to give me. In a similar way,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: I play the NS electric upright. Need Steinberger designed that
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: quite a while ago, and it sounds like very much
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: like a double what we call it a double bass,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: but not exactly like it, but it has such a big,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: full round sound that if it's a ballot. This happened
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: years ago. Peter Gabriel had a ballad and I took
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: out that bass and I played a low G, just
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: a G a long note, and Peter was like, oh, yes,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: that's what I want, and the engineer was, oh, that's great.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: If there was a producer, he was and there they're saying, well, man, Tony,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: you're great. And I am very happily taking credit for
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: this instrument that gave me that. And by the way,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: ever since, whenever Peter does a ballad, he wants that
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: bass on it, and I'm more than happy to do that,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: to be the guy that plays that bass. So I
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: really appreciate how instruments are each different. And luckily, through
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: the year, you know, one way or another, through the years,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: I've got a bunch of them. I could possibly get
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: more in the future, but I have enough basses. Each
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: sounds its own way in a very subtle way. The
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: bass players would understand and would hear the difference, and
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: they give me what I need, and I try to
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: return the favor by making good music on them.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: How many basses do you presently own?
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know exactly, but I recently did something I
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: had never done. I assembled them all in one room
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: and took a picture and made a jigsaw puzzle lot
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: of it. In the title of the jigsaw puzzle is
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: too many basses question mark. I don't know why I
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: did that. I was just moved to do that. It was,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: frankly a lot of work, and I think I had
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: about about sixteen or eighteen you know why, I don't
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: know exactly, because it wasn't enough to fill up the room.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: And my good friend Scott Potito is a bass player
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: and a bass collector, and I borrowed twenty of his basses.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: So in the end I had a room full of bases.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: I forgot to exactly account how many were mine.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: So let's say, for whatever reason you want a new bass,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: music Man will just send you something and you'll say
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: yes or no. Well, you go to the factory and
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: play five. How does it work?
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: Well, in the old days I would go to the factory,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: but not anymore. Music man comes out. They're very Ernie
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: Ball music may. When Ernie Ball bought the music Man
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: Company from Leo Fender and Company, they didn't It's unusual.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: They didn't change it and lose what was special about it.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: They made tiny changes that made it more versatile. And
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: so through the years, I'm the guy who was playing
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: them and endorsing them before that, and I can appreciate
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: that they never lost that. I don't know what, and
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: I could never figure out what, but that magic that
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: was special about that base. So once in a while,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: when they make an improvement, would they consider improvement? They'll
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: ask me if I want one, and sometimes I don't,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: And sometimes if they'll say, well, this is really you're
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: going to like this, Frank. You know what this happened
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: about four years ago. They redesigned all of the elements
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: to make it lighter weight, the five string, and they
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: told me about it and I said, that's great, but
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: I don't need it lighter weight, and they said, it's
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: really a lot lighter weight. And at some point I
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: don't remember where, I got to pick one up and
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: it was like, wow, it's a lot lighter but it
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: sounds the same and it hasn't lost anything. And I
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: decided to try one out. And I then realized that
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: the two hours I talked about the show, that's not
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: a problem. But the six hours of rehearsing I do
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: every day in some periods, boy, it's great having a
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: light instrument. So once again I'm grateful to them for
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: convincing me and talking me into trying at this lighter
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: weight base, which became my default base to use because
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: if only because it's so friendly to rehearse with.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: So you're not changing the pickups, what about strings?
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: No, I use the strings to come on it. I'm
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: lazy about changing them. I'm not a technical guy. A
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: when I'm lucky and it's a big enough tour that
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: I have a bass tech. His name is Mikaelai Russolto.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: He's an Italian guy that comes out with me for
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: many years, since about nineteen ninety when it's that kind
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: of band, and glad to have him. And I believe
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: he changes the strings and doesn't tell me. Probably he's
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: swearing back there saying, oh, he hasn't changed this since
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: the last tour, but I don't feel the need to
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: do it when I'm recording. Yeah, I leave the bass
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: set up the way it is. Let me say, it's
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: obvious to plat bass players and guitar players. You can
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: change the sound a lot with your fingers, with how
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: you play, where you pluck the string, and other things
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: in the tone controls. So it's not like I never
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: changed the sound of the bass. What I do a
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: lot is put dampers under the strings. Music Man's original
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: basses had dampers built in with a screw that were
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: under the strings, and that was I think a Leo
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: Fender idea, and then they took him off for a
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: bunch of years and then they brought it back. But
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: I always carry dampening material like foam rubber and things
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: like that on the road with me.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Did you finish school at Eastman? I did.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: I have a bachelor's degree that I haven't found a
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: way to apply yet. But it's only been forty or fifty.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: Years, so you graduate from college. What's the vision, right,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not a vision guy.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: I wish I was. I had the same ethic that
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: I had when I left high school, which is, oh,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: I'm going to play the bass and I'm going to
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: meet some good players and play some good music. But
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: now I'm playing jazz. I had a curious path after
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: I left Rochester. The Buddy Rich band needed a bass player,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: and the manager of that band knew me and asked
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: if I wanted to do it, which in those days
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: meant leaving you don't have an apartment and go on
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: the road with this is permanently on the road. So
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: I took a deep breath and I thought, that's for me.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do it. And I got rid of
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: my apartment and my furniture and all that stuff, and
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: I said goodbye to everybody in Rochester, drove in my
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: station wagon where I had my little bit of clothing
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: and things, to Boston, where I found out that I
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: showed up at the gig and they said that Buddy
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: had changed his mind and talked the bass player into
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: staying and I had no gig, and that was not
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: my happiest night, but it was sort of yeah, you
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: want to be in the music business, okay. So then
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: I gave some quick thought to a going back to Rochester,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: where I had said goodbye and got rid of everything
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: I had b staying with my folks in Boston being
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: a I don't know what a twenty four to twenty
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: five year old guy going back home or c turning
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: around and going to New York City. And I chose, see,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: I might never have had the gumption to go to
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: the Big Pond, but I did and stayed with a friend,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: a school friend, because I couldn't afford a place in
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: New York. And fast forward a year year and a
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: half and I was doing okay as a studio musician
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: and the Buddy Rich came to town. The Buddy Rich
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: band came to town and needed a bass player for
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: two or three nights in a club and then recording
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: the album The Roar of seventy four. So I know
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: this now we're talking nineteen seventy four, and they called
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: me to do that, and I did that, and each
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: night after the show, Buddy would tell the manager, Oh,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: this guy's okay, ask him if I'll go on the
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: road with us, and each night I said no thanks.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: I tried that. Buddy had no memory of that incident,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: and I wasn't about to tell him. So I got
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: to play with I got to play in that band.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: But my leaving Rochester was under strange circumstances. I might
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: never have let left. I don't know. So I'm not
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: the guy that you questioned about who has the vision.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: to New York be a studio musician, and then I'm
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: going to meet Peter Gabriel and go on the road.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to be a road musician for the
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: rest of my life.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: So that two years what first, you stayed with your friend,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: what happens in those two years?
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: Stayed with a lot of friends. And then later my
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: brother lived in Danbury, Connecticut, and I stayed with him
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: because you can't just show up in New York and
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: gig and make enough money. And gradually I met the
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: let's see, I joined I joined a few bands. One
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: interesting one was called AH the Attack of the Green
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: Slime Beast. Perhaps you never heard of that band because
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: we only ever did one gig that was with three
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: members of the Mothers of Invention. So it was a
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: very creative and interesting band. But as bands will do,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: we rehearsed a lot and at somebody's cabin in Greenwood Lake,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: and then we did the one gig, interesting gig by
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: the way, where Meredith Monks Dance Troupe was doing improvised
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: dance while we improvised on stage, and they had their
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: bodies painted red and they were wearing kind of diaper
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: kind of things. And one of the those dancers, who
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: was a young aspiring actor named Danny DeVito. So yeah,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: later when I saw him, when he became well known
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: and I saw him on TV, I said, I know
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: that guy from that one gig we did in Philadelphia
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: without AH the Attack of the Green Slime Beast. Wonderful times.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: So I was in a few bands like that, and
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: I fell into what we called rehearsal bands that would
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: go into a studio at eleven at night when the
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: studio had no more sessions going on, and play into
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: the night, mostly to give horn players a chance to play,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: to really play. The successful horn players in New York
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: would do sessions all day, jingles and pop songs. Kind
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: of want to play that. They want to play jazz,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: so that's why they went into music. And from being
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: in a rehearsal band called White Elephant, I met a
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: lot of great players, did a couple of albums of that,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: and sooner or later those later. It took a while,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: but some of those players that I knew from the
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: band got me on sessions and I met other people
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: and came what you call the studio player in those days.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: There was such a thing later that that profession kind
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: of went away because there weren't enough sessions being done
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: in New York to provide a living to somebody. And
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: I liked studio playing and I liked being that, but
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: I felt unfulfilled. And when I had the chance to
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: go on the road, which meant not being a session player,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: I jumped at that.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, In LA in that era, there were the a players,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: usually one person who might be getting double or triple scale,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: doing two or three sessions a day, and then there
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: were a couple of other people, but really there were
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: you know, one or two people who played when you
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: were playing sessions as a bass player, at what level
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: were you and who were the other bass players, if any?
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: New York were were very different seeing in LA and
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: most of the records that I knew about were not
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: those the ones we've seen in the movie the famous
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: this is going to be a hit record. Some of
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: them were that way, but most of them were not.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: They were just more just a huge volume of records
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: being made and coming out, and they were the players
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: were equal. Nobody was getting No one that I know
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: was getting double scale for anything. And in fact, we
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: all had the same answering service. Would you call It
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: was called radio registry who just had a list of
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: bass players in The contractor would give him maybe eight
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: names of bass players, he didn't care who showed up,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: and they would they the answering company would call, go
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: down the list, and if you didn't answer the phone,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: they would go to And there were no cell phones,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: by the way, There were phones in every studio and
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: sometimes a direct phone to this radio registry, and if
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: you didn't answer, they just greet the second guy. So
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: the contractor and the arranger didn't really know who's going
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: to come to this session. So it was really very
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: different than the much more refined thing that had going
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: on in LA, where they really cared and they really
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: had people who were going to construct, hopefully a hit record,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: whereas we New York, at least in the circles that
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: I was in, we were reading charts and doing just
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: regular records and sometimes film. There's also a lot of
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: film in LA, but not so much in New York.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you said you were doing that, and then
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: you got invited to go on the road. What was
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: the first act you went on the road with.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: I was going spending weekends on the road with Gary Burton,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: a jazz wonderful jazz, a vibraphone player, and with Herbie Man.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: Herbie for years had different band every weekend, but I
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: played with him for years, and mostly he intentionally did
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: weekend shows. We'd go out for the weekend and let
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: the guys get back to New York to do their
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: sessions during the week. That wasn't so important to me,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: but it was okay, So I did that probably for
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: a few years. I also played with This is really
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: digging into my memory. I don't think about this very
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: often Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary was a
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: solo act, and later I did the same with Judy
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: Call a lot of weekends, maybe a few others that
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: I'm forgetting, So weekends were spent out on the road.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: But the big change for me was when producer Bob
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: Ezrin asked me to play at this session for a
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: young guy, Peter Gabriel, whom I didn't know, and I
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: went up to Toronto and met Peter and met Robert
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: Fripp and I played on his album. And when he
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: asked me to go on the road, that wasn't for
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: a weekend. That was for a real tour, a rock tour,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: and I was all one hundred percent into doing that
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: because playing this music live is why I went into music.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: I don't mind recording, but I love playing live and
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: having the audience be part of the whole thing that's
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: going on. So that was the beginning of the end
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: of my career as a studio player, but happily beginning
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: of my career as a road player.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: How'd you know Israel? I don't know how I.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: First know him. That was not the first album he
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: asked me to play on. I'll ask him how we met,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: I don't remember. I had played at that time on
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: Lou Reed's Berlin album and on a number of Alice
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: Cooper records. Those are the only ones I remember doing
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: with Bob, and he just he thought of me. Bless him.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: He thought, this studio guy, he's a rock player. He
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: wants to be playing distorted bass and that stuff. And
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: he was right, and he heard that, and I happily
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: went along.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: At what point did you develop your look of the
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: mustache and the shaved head.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: I'm squeamish about the expression developed my look because that
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: wasn't the way it came about, But I guess it's sort.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Of how did it come up?
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one summer it was hot, it was really hot,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: and I said, heck with this, I'm cutting off my hair.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: And I did it regularly that summer, and for a
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: few years, as soon as it got cold at Chili
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: in September, I would grow both hair and beard through
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: the winter. I was certainly not concerned with how I looked.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: I looked pretty pretty strange both ways. At that time,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: which is a long time ago, it was unusual to
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: be bald. I can describe it in this way. People
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: of people on the street who just couldn't help but
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: say something, would say, hey, you'll referring to yul Brenner.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: Later they would say hey, Kojak. Not much later, maybe
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: you're half six months a year. And again these are
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: people I don't care, but people without a filter. And
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: that's fine. You just have to say something to a
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: bald guy. Kids would point, you know, kids, oh look, daddy,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: that guy got no hair. So it was very unusual.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: It was interesting that I was that way. Then maybe
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: there were some other rock players without hair. I don't
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: really know, but not that many years later it became
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: quite common because guys, you know, for a number of reasons,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: but one of them is guys realizing they have no
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: more hair on top, might as well cut the whole
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: thing off. And and for me, after a couple of
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: years of the beard, uh, I would say a little
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: bit of vanity crept in. And so many people told me, hey,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: you look good without the hair, and hey, you don't
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: look so great with the beard and the semi hair,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: and I just kept shaving. So that was it. I
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: don't really remember where the mustache came in.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: Do you ever change your look now? Do you ever
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: say hey, I'm sick of this. I want to go incognitum,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: let my hair grow, shave my mustache.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: I can't do it so much I used to. I
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: used to change be way into changing the look with
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: different hair lengths. I've had shoulder length hair. I never
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: had a lot of hair on top. But I had
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: shoulder length hair and full beard. But it can't change
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: it much. I think the I think once in a
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: while I'll grow a little more of a beard or
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: what do you call it, a vandyke, But pretty much
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: I don't. And it's not because I wouldn't like to.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: It's just a I don't have the materials anymore. Through
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: the hair is not growing, and I will say that
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: I die my mustache, of course, because it would be
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: almost invisible if I didn't.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, few technical questions. Traditional p bass four strings? Why
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: four y five y six?
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: Wow? I think the four decision was made maybe in
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds. My dogs have entered the house. By
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: the way, I think the decision for four strings was made.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: What we call the upright bass was developed. I'm not
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: sure the history of that. I only played four strings.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: I guess in classical we had an extender for the
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: low east ring that would bring it down to a
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: low sea, a little device, mechanical device on the top
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: that you could have your base adjusted to have that,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: and it was necessary for some symphonies, but not for
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: most of them. And then when I moved to Fender base,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: it only had four strings. Later, much later, when music banned,
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: there were five strings, but I wasn't interested in trying them.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: It's funny when I think about myself, I guess I'm
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: a combination of being very open to new ideas like
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: the Chapman stick and the funk fingers and things that
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: are really weird, and in a way being not adventurous
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: at all and not trying a five string based because
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: I just wasn't interested. But when Ernie Ball music man
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: said we got a five string, and I think, I said, well,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: does the E sound the same? Because the other five
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: strings I've played, the E doesn't sound the same. And
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: the E is my life, that's where I live, that's
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: what I want. I want that E to have that power.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: And they said it does and it did, so boom.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: I played five string and pretty much only five string
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: for quite a while. Of course, at my home studio
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: I have the four strings, which have their own sound,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: and I use them plenty. And by the way, on
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: the upcoming beat the tour, I will do what I
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: did in the eighties. I'll play that bass with the
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: four strings and in the same bass, with the same sound.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: It'll be great. As for other the six strings I've
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: never tried to this day, and I don't know why
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: I haven't tried it. It just hasn't fallen into my hands.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: I do play the Chapman sticks, which mine has twelve strings,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: so I can handle more strings. But on all of
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: these really what I'm looking for is to be able
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: to do a versatile and worthwhile and meaningful bass sound
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: on the low notes. And if it's got high stuff,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: that's good, that's a bonus. But it's those low notes
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: that matter to me. When I first heard of the
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: Chaplain stick, when I first tried it, I found it
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: very different than the bass and really suitable for the
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: progressive rock stuff I was doing, the odd of the
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: ordinary of stuff I was doing in the early eighties
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: with King Crimson, and also down low. It had not
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: the big, fat sound that I always wanted, and not
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: the powerful sound, but a lot of articulation so suddenly
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: I could play very fast, very low, and I thought, well,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: there were some certain situations where I'm going to want that,
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: and those situations are going to bring out this instrument,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: but only in those For years, I only brought it
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: out in those situations.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, I certainly remember going to see shows all of
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: a sudden the Chapman stick appearing to me. It seemed
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: like it's sort of heat and it's not as popular now.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: For those who don't know, tell us exactly what the
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: Chapman stick is.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, Emma Chapman in about I'm guessing nineteen seventy five
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: invented it and it's or finished inventing his instrument and
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: released it. That's designed to be played with a hammer
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: on or a tapping technique. So you don't fret the
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: note the way you do on a bass or guitar
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: with your left hand and plunk plucket. You don't do that.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: You just touch the fret with your left hand or
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: your right hand and the note comes out, which involves,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: of course the strings being set up very low action,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: so you don't have to really hammer on. I call
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: that hammeron playing, but it isn't. You can just touch
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: it and amme it at the same time developed an
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: instrument vertical, not at the same angle as a guitar
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: that hooks in your belt hook sorry, it hooks into
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: your belt so you can play it in a vertical way.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: And his instrument had five bass strings and five guitar
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: strings on the same neck with a stereo output. So
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: for the first time I had heard of of any instrument,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: it had two outputs that are completely two different instruments.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: And if that wasn't unusual enough, the hammer on and
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: the stereo output, Emmett decided to have the guitar strings
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: be tuned in forth and the bass strings tuned in
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: fifths and backwards. So you have a very unusual instrument
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: outside of the norm. And it's kind of easy to
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: pick in a way. It's easy to pick it up
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: and play it because you don't have to have that
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: fretting and plucking. You just touch a note and there's
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: your note put in a way for some especially for
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: some of us, it's kind of hard to get used to.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: So I jumped on it early for the reason that
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: I used to play the I still do play the
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: bass with a hammer on technique, and I thought I
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: got to try this instrument. It's designed to be played
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: that way and by the way. Eventually there became a
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: twelve string instrument and that's what I play now. And
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: a few years ago, quite a few ten fifteen years ago,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: I decided to form a group called stick Men, where
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: we only played the Chapman stick, two of us and
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: a drummer, Pat Macelado. And then after a few years
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: the other stick players replaced by Marcus reuter Or, a
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: great touch guitar player, who he played the Chapman stick,
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: and then he developed his own instrument called the touch guitar,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: which is played the same way but has kind of
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: different elements to it.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: So my perception is is it's not as popular as
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: it was in the seventies. Is that correct or incorrect.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: I'm not the guy who would know. I could write
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: an uncomfortable email to stick enterprises and ask them, but
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: I have no idea. I know, once in a while
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: I hear other players, and I'm always impressed with the
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: things they do that I couldn't do, And maybe if
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: I practiced, I could. It's kind of a Wild West
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: instrument in that you can develop your own technique, you
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: can have your hands wherever you want. So players are
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: always finding things to do that the rest of us
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: didn't think of. And that's a wild thing about the instrument.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: But how many people are buying it and how many
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: people are playing it is really not something I know about.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: So when would you use it with someone else's music?
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: Easy to talk about, Peter. I go show up at
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: Peter gabriel session, which I did about a year and
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: a half ago for what became the Io album, And
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: I have in my trunk of basses a fretless and
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: that NS electric upright, and a five string and a
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: four string and a vintage four string, and I have
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: the Chapman stick. And he plays the piece, and I
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: don't think the musical part of my brain becomes quickly
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: attached to whatever he's playing and singing, whether he's doing
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: it live or playing a recording of what he's got
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: down so far, And I become a fan of that
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: piece of music. I'm saying with Peter Gabriel it would
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: be the same somebody else. I become a fan of that,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: and I kind of start fashioning in my musical brain
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: what sound might be good for it, and if it
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: could be.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: Very low.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: Okay, the stick. Hey, the stick does that. Or it
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: could be chords way up high in a way that
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: the stick does well. Or it could be a big
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: fat sound that the NS electric upright gives me. Or
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: it could be a heavy rock sound that my music
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: man four string might be good. So I don't think
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: about it, but I kind of get a sense of
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: what sound would be good, and then I look around
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: at the instruments I have, and maybe I think, well,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: this bass would be good, but only if I put
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: foam rubber under the strings or something like that to
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: make it more dampened than shorter notes. And that's how
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: I choose what to play. And by the way, Peter
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: might hear it and say I think I'd like the
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: upright on that, and case I make a quick switch.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: But it's a musical decision. Sorry for the long answer
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: to your short question. Not an intellectual decision or not
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: based on history. I just kind of go by what
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: it feels like would be the right instrument for that
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: particular piece.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: What about Jock Opustorius.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: Obviously a great player For those who don't know, he
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: was maybe the most famously great jazz fretless bass player
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: of all time. I met him a couple of times,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: and my brother played with him a lot. I'll tell
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: you an interesting thing about his playing and mine intersecting
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: in a funny way. I heard about him when he
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: came out with a solo album and I heard it
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: and I thought it was great, but not really kind of.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: It was very technical and almost phenomenally technical, and I
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: wasn't interested in that. It was pretty musical, and I
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: liked that, okay. And then two things happened. I found
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: myself on a session. I don't usually play solos, but
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: I was on a session one day in a studio
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: and there was a bass solo and I said, you
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: know what, I'll overdub it. So the other guys went
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: out and into the control room and I'm playing a
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: rare jazz bass and I see Jacko coming in to
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: the control horrum and I thought, you couldn't script this
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: better than this. You know, not a nightmare, but this
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: is really awkward. I can barely play this file. And
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: now Jacko was listening to me. So there was that.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: But also when he played on Joni Mitchell's Hegira record,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: that was a whole different thing for me. His playing
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: was so sublime that I didn't want to hear myself
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: play the Fretless anymore. So I put away the Fretless
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: and for ten years I didn't play the Fretless at all.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: I thought I'll never play it again, because, yeah, I
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: think I already expressed it well, but I couldn't. He
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: was playing the way I dreamed I might be able
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: to play. And I don't mean fast, just the right
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: notes and the right sound and impeccably in tune and
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: phrasing that's just doesn't get in the way of the piece,
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: but on its own, the phrasing is magical. So I
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: just couldn't hear myself doing that. And yeah, after a
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: whole long time, someone asked me to play Fretless and
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: I had, frankly to tell you the truth. I had forgotten.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: I've forgotten how I felt hearing Hajira, and so I said, okay,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: I'll try. I'll play Fretless again. And I've later a
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: great deal since, and I've got over that hump of
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: not comparing myself in any way to Jacko was playing any.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: Other bass players who you look up to or think
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: are great and either have recognition or deserve recognition.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: I think names don't come to mind. But I am
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: influenced by a whole lot of bass players, a whole lot.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: And from the beginning I mentioned Oscar Petiford back when
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: I was ten years old, So I in a way,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: I think we bass players, not just me. When we
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: listen to any music, we're sort of aware on some level.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: We're aware of what the bass player is doing and
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: if it works, and if it doesn't work. It could
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: even be even some record I'm not talking about live
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: or in the here's something and jeez, names aren't coming
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: to mind, but the base is just doing exactly the
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: right thing, and I'll think, oh yeah, and I'll try
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: and obviously I'll try and incorporate that into my musical
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: sense of what might work, or I'll here in some
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: way it could be sonically that the bass and drums
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: don't work together or something like that, and I'll think, well,
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: I don't want to do that. So I'm being influenced
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: all the time, and I think a lot of bass
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: players are by a lot of players, And the only
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: thing that's changed in the last few years is the
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: young players who are there on YouTube for us to
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: hear doing things that I could never do. And I
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: will never do also influence me. And I decided in
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: that lockdown year, when I had time to I wasn't
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: doing so many records, and I had time to listen
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: a lot. I decided to look at them as more
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: my teachers than where do I fit into what's being
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: going on now? And in some cases I would if
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: it's a video and I can see the person's finger
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: and it's a woman player, and that's great. Now I
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: can see how they held their wrists or something like that,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: or their fingers the palm of their hand to dampen
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: the notes, and I'll try and learn from that.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, you work with Peter Gabriel on the Flour solo album,
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: you meet Frip, you go on the road with Frip.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: It's his act, not yours. That two ends.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: Then what you mean the first Peter Gabriel tour, No,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: the way you said it.
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, After you cut the Peter Gabriel album, the one
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: with Salisbury Hill, et cetera, do you then go on
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: the road with Peter or then go on the road
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: with Frip.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: Both. Peter took that album on the road and Robert
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: was one of the two guitar players Steve Hunter was
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: the other and Robert, in his inimitable way, he was
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: in the in the wings. He didn't want to be
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: seen and he didn't want Peter to introduce him as
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: Robert Fripp. Dusty Rhodes on guitar was what Peter would
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: say every night, and the whole audience knew that it
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: was Robert and they were looking in the wings anyway. Yeah,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: so we did a wonderful tour, not an ideal tour.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: There was a problem with the sound that the band
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: was just too loud on stage and there was no
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: way the sound engineer could get us to turn down.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: I say us, but frankly, it wasn't me. It was
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: the guitars and drums. It was too loud for the venues.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: So it was less than an ideal tour. But Peter
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: was fantastic, and you know, he pretty quickly went into
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: starting thinking about the next album and the next tour,
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: and I was one hundred percent in for everything he's
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: done since then.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess my question is, you know a lot
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: of these are not traditional bands, and you make a record,
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: you go on the road, and then you got nothing booked.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know somebody played on Elton's you Know
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: Final tour. As soon as that tour ended, he was
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: out with somebody else. Okay, so once she played that
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: first album, the first tour has just been endless. Or
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: you ever said, where's my next gig?
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: Well, freelance anything. We all say when's my next gig?
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: Where is it? It happens to us all at any
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: stage of success, unless you're well, I think everybody, there's
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: times when you don't have enough gigs. This is why
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: my brother taught me, take all the gigs. You're going
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: to need them. One day, you're gonna want them. I
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: think I don't remember exactly what happened the year that
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: Peter Gabriel's first tour ended, and I knew I wanted
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: to do more of that, but I was able to
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: do some stuff, and I think maybe it took me
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: a decade or two to realize that it would be
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: good to have my own music coming out so that
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: I could form my own band and in a small way,
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: to something to fill in the times between the big tours.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: And that's what we have all learned that I was
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: slow to figure that out, and I've done that ever since.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: So eleven brothers the jazz band with my brother. We
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: can book that on short notice and go do some shows.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: Stickman can group book at rock clubs moderately, short notice,
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: maybe six months eight months out. Who're a band like
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: King Crimson needs to be over a year out.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, do you have a manager or do you do
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: this all yourself?
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: I don't have a manager, and I don't really do
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: it myself. I get these calls I'm laughing. Just the
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: idea of having a manager, Yeah, that would be a
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: good idea, But I'm not that kind of player. I
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: just and myself, and people regularly find me and ask
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: me to do play on their records and record from
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: my home studio where I'm talking to you from, and
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: that's really great. I missed it in the early two
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: thousands when I started doing that and less and less
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: studio playing in person in the studio. I was unhappy
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: about it, of course, because I missed the experience of
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: all being together in the studio. But now that it's
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: become ninety percent more than ninety percent of the sessions
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: everybody does, I've kind of learned tricks and ways to
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: deal with it and get good music out of it.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: And I really enjoy that. When I'm home, I get
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: to do that. Similarly, if I play on someone's album,
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 2: I play on a lot of albums, and if they
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: ask me to tour with them, if the music is
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: right and if I'm free, then then I can do
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: that and be glad that I'm free to do that.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's say you're going on the road with not
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: one of your traditional acts. How do you decide what
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: to charge?
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm terrible at that. Ooh, I don't know what
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: to say about that. It's not something I do if
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: it's not something I'm good at and not something I
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: want to deal with. So I deal with it because
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: I have to. Sometimes we ask to be paid what
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: the other guys are getting. There's that trick, and it's
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: kind of silly that amongst the musicians who are backing
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 2: someone up, it's pretty rare that we even discuss it.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: It ought to be the first thing we talk about.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: But I'm guessing, as you can probably tell from listening
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: to me talk that this about because most of us,
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: like me, went into it for the music and they
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: just kind of shy away from the business side of it.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, Back in the earlier days after you work with
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel and you still have holes in your system.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: Your rep is not as big as it is now.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: To what degree did you network and try to find opportunities?
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: And to what degree did you sit there and wait
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: for the phone to ring.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: I never networked. I sit there and I don't sit
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: there and wait for the phone to ring. I work
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: on my solo albums and I and I call guys
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: and ask them to jam. And you know, I do
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: the other kind of music that we all do, but
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: I do not. I don't know how to what would
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: you call how to fish for work? I just don't
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: know how to do that. And by the way, and
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: by the way, at every you're talk to me about
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: me like I'm extremely busy, and I am. As we
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: talked today, I have a huge amount of touring coming up,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: but then actually have a little something in January and
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: then I might I don't know. It could be months
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: or even six months before I get anything good, in
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: which case I'll finish the second another album.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: So let's say, I mean I know how to contact you.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: Most people do not. But assuming they can get to you,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: will you basically take any gig?
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. I want to hear the music.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: It's become easy from the internet used to be more complicated.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: But what was the It wasn't Facebook. There was a
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: MySpace that was it where they could play me the
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: demo and everybody could find me. That was kind of cool.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know why it went away, but yeah, it's
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: not only that it wants to be good music, but
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: I want to hear that I have something to offer
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: for that music. I'll take an extreme example. Let's say
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: it's disco. If you today, Bob, you send me a
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: disco track, and maybe I could technically do it, and
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: maybe it's a really good disco track, but I have
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: you know, the demo bass part would be fine, better
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: than what I could do, or as good as what
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: I could do. So I have nothing to offer to
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: that track. So I would say with respect, I was
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: saying sorry, not for me. And and a guy comes
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: to mind, what's his name, really good h Nick di Virgilio,
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: very excellent singer and drummer. And sometimes I play on
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: his records progressive rock, wonderful stuff and one once in
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: a while, I mean, he'll have me play on a track.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: And a couple of years ago he sent me one
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: where he had played the bass, and I listened. Usually
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: I only give one listen to the bass part that's there,
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: and then I want to hear it without it. But
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: I kept listening to it, and the bass part was great.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: He's a friend that I've worked with him a lot.
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: But I had I had a writer him. I said, I,
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: All the best I could do is do exactly what
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: you did. Did. I couldn't even improve on the sound.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: So let's uh, you know, right on right on that
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: track that the bass player said, you got it, you
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: did it really well.
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: So how'd you end up working with Paul Simon?
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: I think because of the great engineer and producer Phil Ramone.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: He had used me in the same rhythm section on
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: a number of sessions, and because he was doing Paul.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: My memory is not perfect of this, but I'm guessing
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: I certainly didn't know Paul himself, and Phil was the producer,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: So it was Phil who brought in Steve Gadd and
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: myself Richard t on piano, Eric Gale on guitar. We
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: were sort of a rhythm section that had done a
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: lot of records together, and the experience of working with Paul,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: of course was super special and remained that way for
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: the few years that I worked with him, both live
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: and in the studio.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: So what was it like being in the movie One
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: Trick Pony? That was?
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: That was not thrilling to me. I didn't I didn't
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: really want to be an actor, but there I was
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: the bass player in the band, in the real band,
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: and trying to play the part of being the bass
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: player in the pretend band. Yeah, it was. I only
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: had a few lines, so it wasn't saying the lines.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 2: It was a lot of hanging around in Cleveland and
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: having makeup put on and taken off and put on
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: again and taken off to be to look like a
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: band in a club, which is sort of what I
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: look like to begin with. And I couldn't even use
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: my name because, uh, for some reason, Paul had called
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: himself Jonah Levin. That was the name of the lead character, Paul,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 2: and so I couldn't be Tony Levin. That would be confusing,
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 2: even though we're only talking script because nobody says, hey, Jonah,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: how you doing, It's not not necessarily in the dialogue.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: So my name I got a big kick. My name
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: was John de Bautista, John the Baptist.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's a scene in that movie. You were driving
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: in the van, you're playing dead rock stars. I remember
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: seeing that movie when it came out and said, oh,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: I know who's alive and dead? How come they don't know?
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: I played that in mind as that I can't you know, remember,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: can you tell me anything about that scene?
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, Paul had written it with his sense of humor
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: and irony. You know Paul, what Paul's like as a writer.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: And the guys in the band could learn it. But
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: but they didn't know what they were talking about because
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: Richard T and Eric Gale and Steve Gad they didn't
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: know any of those bands. They don't listen to. I
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 2: don't know who it was at Fleetwood Mac now it
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: was yeah, the plane going down? It was Plenty. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: they didn't They just didn't know. So they're reading that
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: and the director who didn't realize that, Bob Young, very
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: good director, who was in the band with us somehow.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: So okay, let's do it again, and this time you
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: guys just ad lib, just make up names of bands
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: that died. We couldn't do it. These are not actors
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: and these are not guys a verse in the history
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: of rock and roll. So yeah, it was awkward. Well
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: you told me, Just tell you one more thing. There
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: was for some reason, there was a thing about Tim Harden,
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: Uh a joke. I think the scene ended with somebody
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 2: saying Tim Harden and someone else saying scripted saying, oh,
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: he's not dead, he just hasn't had a record out
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 2: in a while or something like that, and the lawyers
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: later said, you got to reshoot that scene. And then
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: Tim Harden died, right, Yeah, so there was that about
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: that scene.
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, now you talk about some legendary people. You worked with,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: John Lennon, Peter Gabriel. What was it like working in
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: the studio with Paul Simon.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: Terrific I did a lot over a long period of time,
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: and Paul would well, of course, the songs are so great,
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: they're really special. But he his process seemed to be
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: an internal one and that he was going to search
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: for the right field for that piece until it was right,
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: and until it was right, it just wasn't going to
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: He wasn't going to be happy, it wasn't going to work.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: It could take a month or it could take an hour.
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: So typically he would play the piece. Sometimes it had
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: all the lyrics, but if not, he would just hum it,
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: and he would go over to Richard t the great,
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: great keyboard player, usually on the Fender Roads, always on
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: the Fender Roads, and play it as a duo until
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: he was happy with Richard's part, which took about thirty seconds,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: because Richard always played great stuff, and then Paul would
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: come over to me, or to Steve Gadd the drummer,
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: maybe to Eric the guitar player, but usually Eric could
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: kind of cop what Paul was doing on guitar, and
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: Paul would come over to me and sing the melody,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: but he would also kind of hum or sing imply
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: a bass part. And it was fascinating to me that
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: it was a very melodic not surprising there, and more
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: melodic than I would normally play. And I would start
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: to play something like what he's doing, but also I'm
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: the bass player and I need to ground it, and
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: so the end product would be something. Pretty quickly we'd
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: find something we're both happy with that's more melodic than
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: I generally play. After a while playing with Paul, I
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: became a more melodic player. I became more likely to
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 2: go up high and play a chord way up high
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: than I was before that. So I was very influenced
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: by that experience, and you can imagine I treasure it
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: a lot. But also he let me play the low
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: notes and the simple parts. You know. A great example
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 2: is Fifty Ways Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, an
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: amazing song lyrically, even I love the irony and the
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: not just the chorus, the famous part, but the first
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: verse starts in a wonderful way. But in the beginning
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: I'm playing high and playing chords can be a melodic
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: bass thing. But then the when the chorus starts, I'm
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: just playing quarter notes down low in a gospel kind
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 2: of way, just the way, very very simple, And I
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: love the contrast between those two. And it reminds me
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: if I hear that, it reminds me how much I
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 2: learned from Paul melodically about what I can do on
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: bass to.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: What degree you talk about getting the feel right. But
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: when he got in the student, were the songs finished
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: and just tweaking them or would he change them in
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: the studio.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: Both Sometimes it was finished, done deal, and sometimes he
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: had no lyrics. Sometimes I think one song called have
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: a Good Time, Maybe it was he said his son
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 2: had just said something that morning to me, and they
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: all had a good time, and that was the song
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: was going to be about that, and he he I
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: don't remember how long we worked on it could be days,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: could be one day, I don't know. But once we
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: had the track in a way that made him happy.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: The next morning he came in with the finish lyrics.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: He had written them that night. I happened to come
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: in early and I heard him singing a song that
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: sounded like it took a year to write. So that's
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: what I meant about, when things were right for him,
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 2: that he could he could complete the song.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: So let's say you're working with him for months once again,
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: how do you decide to charge? You make it a union? Raid?
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: Do they make you an offer beforehand? How does that
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: even work?
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: I think back in those first of all, I don't
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: I'm squeamish about all that. I don't pay much attention
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 2: to it. But back in those days, it was called
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: the there was a union scale. Maybe some of the
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 2: other guys made what's called double scale on that session.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: I don't really know, but I was getting paid by
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: the hour, not tremendous pay, not terrible pay. I wasn't
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: really thinking about it then, and I don't remember. I'm
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: gonna guess I know. When I started in New York,
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: a double sorry a session, a three hour record session
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: paid sixty dollars or something like that. So maybe it
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: went up to one hundred and eighty dollars or something
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 2: like that, but for a three hour session, and those
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: would have been six hour sessions.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: Now you're literally classically trained. A lot of rock bass
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: go the and then you have Paul McCartney, who was
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: famous for Melody on the base, certainly untrained. What is
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: your view on McCartney's base play.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fantastic, fantastic stuff that influenced all of us, but
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: me included for sure. Even though you know the training,
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: it really has nothing to do with it. When I
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: came to I'll tell you a little thing about that,
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: the training. I was a classical musician. So when I
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 2: came to New York and started doing sessions, when there
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 2: was a chart and an arranger who would write out
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: every note to play, I would play every note the
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: way he wrote it, the way a classical player would.
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: Even when I I'm not proud of this, but if
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: I saw and just knew that it was not the
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: note that was wanted. I would still play it because
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: that's what classic I'm not. It's silly, but that's what
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: classical players do. Literally, if a fly poops on the page,
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 2: you're going to play that note. And you just pointed
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: the page, all it's there. Okay. So I did that
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: for a minute and New York minute. I did that
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: for I don't know X number of months before I
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: realized that what I want to do is figure out
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: what the arranger wants and play that in spite of
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: what he wrote. I actually don't remember what your question was,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: but it started me off on thing about reading Bob McCartney. Yeah, okay,
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: So I didn't really in my early session years have
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 2: a style of playing. I was doing what I thought
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: was wanted on that on those on that particular record. However,
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 2: I was influenced, given the chance to plitt, to make
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: up my own part, which I often wasn't. I was
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: influenced by Paul Mark McCartney to do a great deal
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: not only the choice of notes, which are very fantastic,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 2: you know, beyond description fantastic, but the sound he was playing,
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: famously ah Hoffner, which sounded very different than than the
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 2: Fender base that we all were playing on. All the
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: records made in New York in those days. Nobody had
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: a Hoffner or Gibson, and if you did and walked
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: into a session, a normal session, the engineer would never
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 2: use you again. The producer, they wouldn't like the sound
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: you had. So I wasn't allowed the latitude of sound
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: that Paul really made use of in a great way.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: And I'm also going to add d Murray, the unheralded
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: wonderful bass player with Elton John on his early records,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: also played in a wonderfully melodic way, and that influenced
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: me a lot.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's say someone makes contact with you, you're
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: out with the bead, you're out with whomever, and you
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: can't do it. Who do you tell them to call?
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: Very very funny question. That has happened in the last
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: couple of days. A few times I've got emails about
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 2: doing a track, because that's I do. Get those emails,
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: and I had to say next year I could do it.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: It is not a thing at all in the industry
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: where I live that a bass player would be asked
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: to recommend another bass player just doesn't happen, so nobody
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: they're not if I can't do it, they're not really
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: interested in who I like. They're going to get another
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: bass player they like, or that the drummer like. That's
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: not an even better idea.
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: Okay. So traditionally, a session player, a band member gets
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: paid by the hour or the gig, other than the
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: records you've put out yourself. Do you have royalty interests
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: in any of these records?
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: Some there's publishing. If you had publishing is big, if
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 2: you had something to do with writing the piece, as
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 2: I do in King Crimson, the bands that I'm a
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: remember of, and if you were a band splitting the royalties,
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 2: there's that. Of course that's great. If you're a quote
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: session man playing being paid by the hour, then I
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: wish I was. I don't wish, but I'm not an
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 2: expert at this. But in general you're just paid by
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: the hour. There is no royalty factor. However, in the
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 2: last few years that's changed a bit. There's a big
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 2: fund of money from record labels. I guess that's divided
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 2: up somehow in a complicated way among all the people
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 2: who did all the sessions, and so there is that payment.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: And then there's another thing that's different. In Europe, there's
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: an organization that keeps careful track. I don't know that
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: there's one in the US. If there is, I guess
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 2: I ought to find it keeps careful track of who
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: played on all records and gives them some royalties from it.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: So European recordings, yes, there's some extra payments. I don't
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: know anything about how that works or what the percent is.
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: Forgetting the money that you've put away. Are the royalty
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: interests you have over your fifty odd your career significant
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: such that you could live on them, or they can
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: basically pay for dinner.
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, somewhere in between, but a little closer to the
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: dinner thing. And caveat is that I haven't counted it
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: up and done that math. I've been too busy playing.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 2: And I like the joke, but with a little bit
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: of serious, a ring of truth to it that we
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: musicians are very smart in that we've chosen a career
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: where we have to keep working until they pull the
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: instrument out of our our frozen hands and we can't
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: play anymore. And it was a good decision for I think.
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: For all of us, and how many times, you've been married.
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 2: Twice?
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: And how old were you when we got married the
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: first time?
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 2: First of all, I'm baffled why you or anybody would
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: want to know this. I can tell you the important one,
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: The now one has been eighteen years.
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: Okay. Then let me ask you. Let me ask a
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: couple of questions a different way. How long were you
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: married the first time?
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 2: First? More important, I'm gonna trump you with it. The
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: current one is twenty eight years, nine eighteen years, and
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 2: that's the more important one. So I was married for
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: ten years, from nineteen sixty six to seventy six.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we were relatively young when you first got married.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: Why didn't those numbers weren't correct? By the way, it
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 2: wasn't sixty six, it was seventy nineteen seventy in nineteen eighty.
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, Why did you choose to get married at that time?
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: I'm baffled by that question. I have no worthwhile.
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: Well something, you know the reason I'm asking this. And
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: there's a human you're a road musician. I remember Metallica.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: We're all married. They went on the road that came on,
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: they all got divorces. I mean, you know, it's not
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: easy to sustain a relationship when you're a road musician.
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: I've talked to certain people. They say, oh, thank god
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: he goes on the road, he drives me nuts when
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: he's home. It all works. So I guess I'm asking.
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: Sometimes people want to get married because the musician wants
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: an anchor, or the person at home says, hey, you know,
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: I want a commitment. Other times, irrelevant of how the
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: relationship started, the fact that one person's on the road
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: one person is not ends the relationship.
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 2: Good point, and yeah, now I understand the the issue
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 2: behind the question. It's a very good question. I think
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 2: how many years it last, it doesn't matter. It was
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: always difficult, always has stress on a relationship to have
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: one person gone all the time. And there's also in
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: the old days, in my case, when tours were longer,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 2: when they were eight weeks, ten weeks, twelve weeks, and
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: then two weeks at home, and then more they're not
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: quite that long usually anymore. This upcoming one is, but
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: that exacerbates that factor. Then you're really not a person
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 2: at home, and then when you come home there's a
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 2: period of adjustment. It's just a different world. No matter
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 2: how ground did a person you are. Animals and kids
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 2: help a lot because they don't care that you are
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: on the road. But no matter how grounded you are,
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 2: you've had a life where you or your band is
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: the center of attention of everybody. You meet, every worker,
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: every day, every not just fans, but people working us.
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: It's all about you, and interviews and all that all
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 2: about you. And then you go home and it's you know, literally,
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 2: people walk up to you on the street and you
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 2: start to reach for a pen to sign our autographs
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: and you're just a home. You're nobody, thank goodness. So
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 2: there's that, and that add that to a relationship. It is,
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 2: of course to strain, and it was harder in the
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 2: even harder in the old days when we didn't have
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 2: cell phones, when you had to make phone calls from
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: hotel rooms, which were very notoriously expensive, really expensive one
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 2: hundred dollars phone calls, and if you started to have
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 2: some issues and want to have a fight or a
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 2: long talk, it was it was more than you could
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: afford from being out. So that in that one case,
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: there's a couple ways that being on the road got
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 2: a lot easier. The other's GPS because we used to
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 2: be lost a lot of time and no phone to
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: be able to call and ask directions. Okay, so yeah,
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: I got more mature. We all got more mature as
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 2: we got older, and hopefully and in my case for sure,
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 2: found a partner who understand what understands from the beginning,
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: what's involved with somebody who's not around all the time,
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: and hopefully found ways to connect emotionally and meaningfully while
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: you're apart. That's a big part of it. But at
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: the end, I'm going to just say that I'm no
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 2: expert at this. I'm just saying what little comes to
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 2: mind in my case about it.
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, you've been on the road and been married, not
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: been married. You know, traditionally people took advantage of the
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: so called peroks of the road, certainly pre cell phone
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: camera and you know, I've been out there myself. I've seen,
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: you know, people who were married and they're taking advantage.
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to say anything code of the road,
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: so to speak. Was this a lifestyle the people you
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: went out with partook of if that's the word or
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: that you partake or just the acts you were out with,
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: that just wasn't a thing.
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 2: No, never toured with that kind of act. I know
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 2: that they're out there, and that kind of rock and
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 2: roll lifestyle is out there, and I've bumped into it
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: sometimes and seen other bands that are like that. The
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: never anything like that in the band's I tour with.
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: And do you have any children?
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, My wonderful daughter is thirty nine now living in
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles and writes and directs horror movies.
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: And if she off the payroll, I don't know what that.
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: Means, off the payroll.
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: Do you support her?
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 2: No? No, I don't. Oh that's funny. She's thirty nine.
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: I think, Hey, listen, I know people in their seventies.
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, she'll support a valid question. Yep. I'm looking forward
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 2: to only a few years from now when I'm known
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: as the guy who's her father.
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: Let's hope. So you start working with Peter Gabriel in
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: seventy six. The album comes out in seventy seven. The
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: first Album's Got a Push, does have Salisbury Hill. Second album,
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: Irrelevant of Quality, does not have the same commercial impact.
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: Atlantic won't put out the third album That's on Mercury,
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: which is really the best of that realogy. Then he
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: shifts to Geffen. Has a certain amount of Action has
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: a double live album, then all of a sudden, SO
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: comes out and it's gigantic, but sledshammer, et cetera. From
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: the inside. What did this look like? It was like
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: you were in the wilderness. Was it like you were
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: in the wilderness and didn't care. Was it like you
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: knew it was only a matter of time? What was
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: it like?
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: I was never good at knowing what's going to be
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: a successful record or not, and I don't. Plus I
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 2: don't pay attention to it. Plus it doesn't really matter
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 2: to be the bass player on those records or be
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: the bass player on the tour. So it's not that
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 2: it didn't care about it, but I didn't care enough
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 2: about it to be involved in it. I only vaguely
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 2: knew that that stuff was going on. And I'm you know,
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 2: I still get to play on the new material and
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 2: I still get to tour, and that's a win win win.
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: Well, let's say that album specifically, although usually the rhythm
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: section is early he records, so which then us which
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: you know, gigantic. When you're playing on those songs, you say,
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: wait a second, this is something special.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 2: Not the case. No, Peter's Peter's songs almost always had
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 2: or some of the songs had that element of, oh,
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 2: this could be you notice that this could be a
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: radio play record, not a hit. I'm not the guy
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 2: to predict that, but oh this is this could be
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 2: very popular, and one way or another, Peter would sabotage
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 2: that part of that song. So he always did that.
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 2: He just has it built into him that that the
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: song would get longer and longer, and then eventually that
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: first part would be gone, or the second, the core,
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 2: whatever it was, the hook, what you might call the hook.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: Who knows why. I never asked them why, just I
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: saw a lot of them come and go, or we
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: recorded them, and then they weren't there on the final album.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 2: And it was an exception when Sledgehammer came out. I thought,
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 2: and I'm not really the expert at the history this,
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 2: but I believe that we had finished the recording of
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 2: the album and Peter, in its quirky way, said let's
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: do a song for the next album. And Manukach was
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 2: literally packing up to go back to Paris, and he
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 2: set up again and we played one or two takes
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 2: on what would became Sledgehammer, and I think that wasn't
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 2: meant for the record, and I think the label heard
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 2: it and insisted that he put it on the record.
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 2: So even that one, the Tony Levin opinion, as Peter
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 2: would have sabotaged it in some way. It may had
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 2: a five minute introduction to the hook or something like
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 2: that had he had the chance. But he didn't have
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: the chance.
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: And in terms of recording Peter's music, to what degree
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: is it finished when you show up, or to what
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: degrees it worked out in the studio.
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: It's a very long process with Peter. I'm used to it.
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 2: It takes a long process and can go on for years.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 2: You can keep coming back and playing the same songs,
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 2: or it could be done. I don't know there and
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 2: I leave and I don't know is it done this
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 2: record or will I be in the next decade playing it?
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 2: And I just take a pretty deep breath. And that's
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: the way it is. And it lies within Peter's sensibility,
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: and I'm not the one who's there day to day
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 2: to find out how it's going.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: So in the last thirty years or so, Peter has
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: been less active than he was in the previous fifteen
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: or twenty. So you have to book a schedule. What
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: do you do if Peter calls.
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an element in my life because without question,
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 2: I want to without question, he's the first priority. I
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: want to be available for Peter's stuff. And if he
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 2: just book was the kind of person or act or
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 2: had the kind of management that he decides a way
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 2: ahead of time, life would be easy. In fact, the
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: two things are coupled that he's my top priority, even
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 2: over King Crimson, and he's the last one to decide
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: decides because these things need if it's an arena tour,
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 2: it needs to be booked way ahead of time, but
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: he still decides a little bit on the late side,
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 2: which makes it very hard, especially did when I was
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 2: actively touring with Peter and with King Crimson. In fact,
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: when email was invented, the first thing I was early
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 2: to hear about it, well, when it became I don't
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 2: know about invented, but when it became popularly used, and
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 2: I used it to connect the management of King Crimson
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 2: with the management of Peter Gabriel so they could talk
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: from different countries about the next where I was going
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: to be in October, because otherwise, with phones and time differences,
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 2: it was very hard to work out, so that, Yes,
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: that's been an element in my life for a long time,
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: and it is now. I haven't heard anything about Peter
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 2: doing any touring next year, and it's too late to
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 2: book the spring or the summer. But when hopes, I
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 2: haven't heard any thing, you think being in the band,
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: I would know, but I don't, And like any fan,
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 2: I hope there's stuff and I will hold off as
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 2: long as I can, and then maybe i'll I'll try
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 2: to contact him and say, are you sure you're not
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 2: going to do anything. It's a common Oh, here's Tony
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 2: reaching out to say, next September, I have a thing,
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 2: what do you think might you be doing something? And
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: often I don't get a definitive answer, but we work
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 2: it out, and it almost always has worked out that
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 2: I'm on the tours.
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: Generally speaking, you know, you work with a lot of people.
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: Do they only make contact when they want work or
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: do you maintain like regular contact like Peter could years
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: go by, we don't hear from them or easy checking
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: in or you checking in a regular basis.
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 2: It's different with everybody. Peter's an old friend. We don't
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 2: chat often when we're not working together, but the lines
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 2: are open and we see each other when we can.
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 2: And Robert Fripp's an old friend and I've worked with
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 2: him a long time, and I have an open invitation
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 2: to visit him at his house in England, and I
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: think I took him up on that one time, but
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 2: it's a little awkward to have the time to do that,
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 2: so I haven't done it lately, but the good friends.
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 2: So it varies a lot with different people. When I'm
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 2: going to be in La soon rehearsing for a long time,
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 2: and I will indeed have a few breakfasts and dinners
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: if I can with some recording artists who I've become
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 2: friends with and who I've worked with.
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: And to what degree do you think about legacy.
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 2: I don't think about that. I'm lucky, as if you
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 2: heard me say a few times, I'm so lucky to
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 2: be doing what I'm doing and to be able to
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 2: have done a career of it, and I have visions
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 2: of being able to do it into the future, indefinitely
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 2: crazy visions, and so that's enough for me. I'm lucky
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 2: about that.
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: So the world has changed because no music disappears with
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: the Internet and streaming services, whereas in the old days.
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: You know, old records might disappear. If you're eighty eight
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: and everybody else's passed and there's a club and there
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: are going to be fifty people there, are you going
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: to show up and play.
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 2: When you say everybody has passed him and everyone in
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 2: the band.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is you are a musician
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: to a great degree. Other people are calling for you
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: to play in their bands. Some of these you're always
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: in the band, like Peter Gabriel, but it's not like
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: he's working every year. What I'm trying to say is,
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: certainly in the old days when the records were unavailable,
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: there's some people say I'm not going to do it anymore.
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: There are other people who stayed on as long as
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: someone was willing to pay them. They were out there.
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 2: Of the ladder. But it's not correct to say as
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 2: long as someone's willing to pay, as long as there's
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 2: good music to be made. Like all my friends who
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 2: are musicians, with one exception, like all of them, we're
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 2: going to do it. If we're able to bend the
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 2: knees and have to walk to that walk onto stage,
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 2: and the music is good, we're going to do it.
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 2: The one exception is Bill Rufford, my band made in
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 2: King Crimson in the eighties, who not bizarrely because it's
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 2: a normal human thing, but he decided to retire from
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 2: touring and from playing music. And it's totally unusual in
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: my genre, in their genre I live in, and among musicians,
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 2: he's the only guy I know who did that or
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 2: would do that, and bless him is his decision to make,
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 2: and it's kind of to people who are a professor,
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 2: it's a normal decision, but us musicians, we musicians tend
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 2: to want to do it until they pull the instrument
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 2: out of our fingers or we can't bend our fingers anymore.
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: And to what did we Let's assume you're on a
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: you know, a family trip. Can you go without playing
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: the instrument for a week, or you're the type of
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: person who says me and I got to play it
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 1: and when you're home, how much do you practice?
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 2: I don't practice is very much. I ought to practice more.
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 2: In some years I practiced more than others. A couple
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 2: of years ago, I started taking base lessons online. I've
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 2: got a great kick out of that, and I learned
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 2: a lot. I'm fine not playing for really any amount
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 2: of time. It's what I do, and work will come
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 2: in or work on my own music, and then when
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 2: I come back I have learned through the years. I've learned, Okay,
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 2: if I've been two weeks without playing, then it's going
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 2: to be three days or something like that of playing
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 2: before I have it back. And since I'm on the subject,
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 2: the biggest technical thing about coming back is playing jazz.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 2: When I haven't been playing jazz for some reason, the
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 2: technical thing of my fingers is very different. So I
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 2: could be playing my butt off for six months with
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 2: King Crimson and I come back and go out on
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 2: the road with my brother playing jazz, and I need
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 2: a week a full week of playing every day before that,
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 2: or I just don't sound good. So the switch from
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 2: rock to jazz is a profound one. But the switch
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 2: from not playing at all to rock is only a
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 2: few days for me, and to play jazz again it
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 2: would be a whole week.
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: Speaking of fingers, what's this funk fingers thing?
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 2: On the SO album in nineteen eighty five, on one
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 2: track called Big Time, I ask Jerry Marauder, the drummer,
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 2: if he would drum on the bass strings while I
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 2: fingered the left hand. While I'm saying this, I'm showing
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 2: you the funk fingers. So that piece, Big Time came
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 2: out fine. And then the year after, we were touring
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 2: with Peter Gabriel in nineteen eighty six, and I found
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 2: that I couldn't play the darn part. I held one
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 2: drumstick in my right hand. I'm trying to play that,
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 2: and I was practicing all the time, maybe obnoxiously, and
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 2: one day Peter Gabriel walked by me at soundcheck and
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 2: looked at me and said, when you put two drumsticks
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 2: on your fingers. So Peter, in that moment, invented what
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 2: I later called funk fingers. I had my bass tech,
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 2: Andy Moore, make them up and we did a lot
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 2: of experimenting with stretch velcrow and dipping them in rubber
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 2: so they didn't break the strings, so they had some
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 2: rubber factor to them, and I played them ever since.
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 2: Not a great deal, but I played them on one
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 2: track on my new album, and I played them I
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 2: don't know the odds, maybe one out of fifteen tracks
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 2: that I do for other people.
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they're like five or six for those you
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: can't see the zudio, only they have a little finger attachment.
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: Then it looks like, you know, a piece of plastic.
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: What actually is it?
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 2: It's a drumstick. These last sometimes they're red, these new ones,
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 2: but usually they're drumstick colored. And the end is dipped
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 2: in very weird stuff called tool handle dip, really weird
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 2: stuff that you just dip something in it, for instance
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 2: a hammer handle, and it comes out as rubber as
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: soon as you take it away from the can as dry.
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 2: And that's weird, but that's I found that to be
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 2: the perfect product for the end, to make it so
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: it doesn't actually break the bass strings. I did a
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 2: lot of experimenting. If it was the string, the sticks
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 2: are too heavy, they break the strings. If they were
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 2: too light, they bounce in a way that you can't control.
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 2: If the stretched velcrow was too tight, my fingers turned purple.
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 2: If it was too loose, the sticks would go flying
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 2: into the audience, which they have done a lot. And
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 2: when I got it right, which is stretching adjustable vel crow,
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 2: when I got it right, I got a guy to
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 2: make a whole bunch of them. My hope was in
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 2: the beginning, which would have been in the late eighties
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 2: that a lot of bass players would just get them.
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 2: I think I sawd them for ten dollars online somehow,
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 2: I don't remember through what mechanism. So I hoped a
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 2: lot of players would use them and play them, and
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 2: that didn't turn out to be the case. I'm sure
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 2: a few guys, a few guys, a few bass players
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 2: have them, and I hope they're using them, and I
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 2: use them quite a bit.
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: And what's the difference between and your feelings about pick
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: versus fingers.
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 2: I've never been. I wasn't. I didn't come up playing pick,
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 2: so I'm not very good at it. Sometimes if that's
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 2: the sound that I hear for that piece, then I'm
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 2: going to play with a pick and hope that I
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 2: can work it out. That happens sometimes lately not so much.
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 2: I think thinking back to Don't Give Up, Peter Gabriel's thing,
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 2: I think on the record, I did play it with
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 2: a pick. It just seemed like the right piece, the
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 2: right sound for that. But as soon as I got
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 2: playing live, I found a way with thinkers to make
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 2: it feel good. By the way the song Don't Give Up,
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 2: I had mentioned my daughter being thirty nine, so in
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five. There she was with me two months
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 2: old in the studio in England and her mother and
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 2: I had packed diapers into the base case because naively
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 2: I thought, well diapers, England doesn't know how to do diapers,
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 2: so we had pampers in the base case and on
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 2: that piece. Don't give up. When I was looking around
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 2: the last part of the piece. It has a different feel,
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 2: different groove, which frankly we did later after we had
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 2: the first part of it, and I was looking around
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 2: for some dampening material and I saw those diapers and
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 2: I put a diaper a pamper under the strings the
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 2: sound which Peter Gabriel quickly named the super Nappy bass sound.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 2: And I have to smile when I think about my
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 2: daughter Maggie now hearing that piece and knowing it goes
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 2: back to the very beginning of her life that she
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 2: was connected with dad on the road and dad recording
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 2: with Peter Gabriel.
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 1: And tell me about taking bas lessons online.
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Scott's base less and I recommend them. They're great,
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 2: and I take a peek at them once in a while.
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 2: And I decided a few years ago, while I was
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 2: touring with King Crimson and the other guys were practicing
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 2: in the other rooms. I was taking actually beginner, not beginner,
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 2: but basic the basics of bass playing, like how to
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 2: hit the how to pluck the string and things like that.
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 2: So I'm in my dressing room playing one note at
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 2: a time on the same note for five minutes, just
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 2: one note with one finger, and then I go on
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 2: stage and play King Crimson concert, which is pretty complicated,
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 2: and I appreciated the irony of that, but also I learned.
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 2: And the fact is I confronted the fact that I
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 2: was trained as an upright player, which is a different
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 2: technique than the electric bass, and when I switched to
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 2: having frets, there were no teachers to show me, Oh,
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 2: here's the way you do that. So I just did
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 2: it whatever way I did it, not necessarily the best way.
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 2: And it's good to finally be aware of some of
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 2: the options, of technic technical options of how you can
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 2: do that. Okay, so this is youtubeh No, Yes, some
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 2: of the clips are on YouTube.
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, okay, Just so I know for people who are interested,
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: this is lessons that you pay for and you watch videos.
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: What exactly is it?
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 2: Either one you can see Scott's based lessons. He's an
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 2: excellent teacher, more than anybody I've met. He understands the
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 2: technique behind playing this simple instrument in the electric bass
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 2: and so yes, you can see clips on YouTube. But
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: I contacted the website and what I don't know how
• 2:22:30
  Speaker 2: you call I subscribed to a series of twelve lessons,
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 2: I think twelve hour long lessons.
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: Does Scott know you're taking his lessons?
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 2: I haven't spoken indirectly, but I've spoken to one of
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 2: his co teachers who does know. But I did buy it.
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be given it.
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: Tony. I want to thank you so much for talking
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: to me and my audience. Amazing thing is seen you
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: on stage in a video a million time, and you
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: have sort of a dark persona, which as a regular
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: person that's not the case whatsoever. Kind of shocking. You've
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: been very open and honest. I want to thank you
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: again for talking with me.
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Maybe you just caught me on
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 2: a good day when the dark persona is not there.
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know, but I appreciate your expertise and the
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 2: wisdom behind your questions. I really do appreciate that.
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: So thank you for having me okay, you know he's
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: got a new album. You definitely want to see the
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: beat on the road. In any event, that's been Tony
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 1: Levin with Bob left sets. Till next time. Thanks,