Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / David Paich

Transcript

David Paich · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin, Cheryl Lyn's Got to Be Real, Steely Dan's Black Friday,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Toto's Georgie Porgi all some of the most monster keyboard
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: piano grooves of all time, and they all have at
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: least one man in common. That's prolific musician and songwriter
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: David Page. David honed his chops early growing up in
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: la where he worked under the tutelage of his father,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Marty Pache, an esteem composer who worked with artists like
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: mel Tormat, Ray Charles, and even Ella Fitzgerald. While in
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: college at USC, David started playing keyboard professionally and touring
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: with Sonny and cher From there, he went on to
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: co write and play on Boss Gags multi platinum album
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Silk Degrees. He also worked extensively with Quincy Jones, playing
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: up multiple iconic albums including Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bad.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: All throughout his work as a session musician, David also
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: served as Toto's principal songwriter and wrote chart topping hits
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: like Rosanna, Hold the Line, and, of course, most famously, Africa.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: On today's episode, I talked to David Page about what
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: it was like to be such an accomplished player at
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: such a young age. He shares crazy stories about working
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: with Michael Jackson and Quincy on Thriller and how he
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: came up with the intro to Michael Jackson's Human Nature,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: probably the greatest keyboard riff of all time. David also
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: plays part some some of the best songs he's written
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and talks about how they came to be. This is
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Mitchman.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Here's my conversation with David Page. A few weeks ago,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I was on a run and Cheryl Lyn's got to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Be Real came all. I was on my run and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's the perfect groove, Like the keyboard
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: is the perfect ground. Was like, I gotta go home
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: and learn that. So I went home trying to messing around,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: and She's like, who played on this? I had no idea.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I looked it up and it was you. Yeah. I
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: was like, what the fuck? It was me?
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Me and Ray Parker helped me put the rhythm section together.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: We got Gadson and a guy that just moved out
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: from Detroit and played on the Emotions record named David Shields,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: and that was like the last record he did was
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: like got to Be Real kind of thing. But that
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: was a great rhythm section, and uh we cut that
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: and uh it's one of my favorite R and B
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: things that I've ever done, you know what I mean?
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Do you mind playing just the I'll show you.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: The song started this way with me coming in with
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: a riff and Cheryl started singing a little bit, and
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: then David Foster came in and we were I was
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: in Sunset sound and he came in and played a
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: little B section for me. You know, but a riff was.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Right, the greatest groove.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I heard a Mariah Carey song. It sounds
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: like it sounds just about like got to be Real.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: She's got a song out where they just came out
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: right after that. Really it sounded like got to be Real. Yeah,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: same changes, no, no, no, man like it's all good.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Your dad was a producer on that, right, I was
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: co producer.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: We co produced that together. He kind of discovered her,
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean. It's nineteen seventy eight, nineteen
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: seventy eight, you're right, and you're called in by your dad.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: My dad made a call to someone at Sony, which
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: was CBS at the time, and so I just heard
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: this girl. He had a friend that worked Butler, I
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: forget what his first name was, the jazz department at Sony,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: and my dad called him and said, I just heard
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: this girl on the Gong Show, Cherylnn. And he says, well,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: funny enough, we're trying to do an album with her
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: right now, some cuts with her, and so they gave
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: it to my dad. My dad, I was had come
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: off with Silk Degrees with bos Skaggs, so my dad said, well,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: if I team up with David, let's co produce this thing.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: So we ended up co producing her first album, you.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Know, and David Foster is a part of that.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: He is a part of that. He came in just
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: for a second. I was at Sunset Sound and Foster
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: just came over to hear what we were doing, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I said, I'm working on the song. Got to be real,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: so you know, he went and I went and he did.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: You know. You know, so when you're called in to
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: work on a song like that or I mean, obviously this,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you're a bigger part of this project in general, But
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: when you're working on a song like that, how did
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: that riff come to be? Like how did well.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: I heard it was kind of influenced by the emotions
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: to the song called Best of My Love. Yes, and
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I heard don and I like that beat, but I
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: always like putting the hump in it, you know, you know?
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: And I dansting on drums, you know what I mean.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: He just killed it, you know what I mean.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And at the same time, after I found that out,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: I was looking at the year seventy eight, and I
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: realized at the same time that that record is huge.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: You're putting out Toto's first.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, first album. And consequently Cheryl sang on Georgie.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Porgie Porgie, which I never knew that was her.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was her. She just came in because we
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: weren't going to do put the song on, because I
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: get to the part I'd just say it Georgie Pogi
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: put and it was just like whitebread, you know what
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: I mean. And Cheryllynn heard it and she goes, well,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: let me sing that, and she goes Georgie Polgy put
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: kiss the Girls and we crossed over under the R
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: and B market had sold like a million copies.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Man, So do you remember writing that song Georgie?
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was listening to a lot of dance music.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: I was listening to a lot of Verry White because
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: he had started his stuff with piano, and I was
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: listening to Quincy Jones on I Want You album with
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Marvin Gaye, and because my friend, uh leon Ware was
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: a friend of my dad's and I had written something
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: with leon Ware, and I was very influenced by that
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: album and that Chuck Rainey and Gadson on and those
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: guys beautiful sound I Want You, you know what I mean.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: And it was very much that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: H m hm hm.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: I it was kind of very white thing. Remember very white?
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Did you know? It's kind of came out of that era,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: This is your first album with Toto. Now you're accomplished.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about it. But you mean, you've played on
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: so many records throughout the seventies. How are you thinking
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: about writing this song? You have that wonderful piece, You
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: maybe have that second part, that Bury White rind and piece.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: How you put it together? The lyrics.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: That's just because I've learned to get the form of
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: a song right, to have a verse, a B section,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: and a chorus and then kind of an maybe an
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: instrumental or a bridge, and I'm not a big fan
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: of bridges. I used to like verse chorus instrumental and
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: take it out, no bridge for you bridge because people,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: well they kind of throw bridges away. I like the
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Beatles and Elton and these guys. When they write a bridge,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: it's like it lifts the song, which is what a
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: bridge should do to be, you know what I mean?
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, at what point would you take
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: a song like that to the rest of the group.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Right as soon as we start gotting our deal, and
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: I've been playing this a little bit song a little
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: bit with Jeff. We would go and do sessions together
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: and on the breaks when everybody else was out of
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: the room, I'd started playing these things and Jeff was
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: getting to the group. So we rehearsed a lot of
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: our album on other people's records, you know what I mean,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: playing just jamming on them when there's brakes or no
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: one's in the room or whatever. You know. So when
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I got to the record, I had like two or
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: three things already cooking, you know what I mean.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: How did you guys get your deal?
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Interesting? We never had to perform live to get our
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: deal with like the only group and the only group
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: that got to produce itself. We had people named Don Ellis,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: vice president of CBS, and a guy named Terry Powell.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: And after we'd done the Boss Skaggs record So Degrees,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: there was a lot of spotlight on us because we
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: were the rhythm section for that whole record. And then
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: we came in and went out on the road with
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: him too, and toured with Boss and so CBS was like, well,
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: why did you guys form a band? And we had
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: already been planning this whole thing since high school to
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: put our band back together high school band. So we
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: were like, oh, good, idea, you guys. We just we
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: started working on demos then, and I did miss Son
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: for a demo, which was Boss skag Song, a song
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: I wrote for Boz. And we just did some demos
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: and I started writing more, you know, getting into my writing,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: and it just happened.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: And because you guys were so adept in the studio,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: they were totally comfortable letting you guys, just.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: As they were letting us do whatever we wanted to do.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: You know, you know, what does it feel like to
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: be you in nineteen seventy eight? I mean Georgia Porgy's
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: on the radio.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Hold the lines on the radio. Yes, yeah, it was
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: great to be on the radio. First time we heard
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: ourselves on the radio. We we all called each other
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: so fast in the radio. I was at my sister's
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: apartment and I heard this thing piano I heard and
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: I said, that sounds really familiar, said, it sounds like me.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: It actually sounds like me playing. Oh fuck, that's our record.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: It's on the radio. And every we were all calling
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: the radio stations requesting it and ship like that like teenagers,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: And it did it feel different with it actually being
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: your group, Yes, your song versus.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: And we were like, we were like screaming kids, you
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: know what I mean. Oh my god, I can't believe it.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: We were tried calling each other and all the lines
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: were busy because we were all calling each other.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Calling each other, calling the radio.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: That's right, all calling all of our friends request the song.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean. Because back to then, if
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: you have people called in enough, they'd added to the station.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: You know what station?
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Were you guys first getting played on kJ R UP
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: in Seattle. There was a guy named Steve West who
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: was a friend of our managers because our managers had
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: managed Chicago and RUFUS amazing, that's what they had, and
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: so they knew program directors all around the United States.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So this guy they hopped on it, and as soon
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: as a p one which is the top radio stations
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: or p ones, as soon as he went on it,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: it broke and everybody went on it, you know, and
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: then we ended up going double plattinum the record.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Obviously, if you listen to that first record, it's pretty
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: clear you got as are fluent musically, like you can
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: play anything. I was always curious if on the label
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: side or manager side, was there ever any like, well,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: guys that hold the line feels very different from Georgie Porge.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. They were like, there's a lot of the comments
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: where there's no thread. You guys don't have a sound.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: What is your sound? We can't tell you if you're
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: an R and B group or you're a rock and
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: roll group or adult contemporary group. What are you? We
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: just said, this is it, this is what we are.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: We do all this stuff.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I mean, because to your point,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Georgie Porgie feels like a song that would have like
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean the way they group things back then,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: that would have been like a song would have been
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: a huge hit on black radio, the line there's no
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: way that would have ever played on you know.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Totally right, you know what I mean. It was all
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: thought of like that, you know, But that's why we
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: want to be different. We wanted to just do what
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: a good music of any kind, any genre.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: You know, when you guys started going out on that record,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: what were you noticing about your audience? Was it growing
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: over time?
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: It was? It was a little bit. You know, we
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: had we wait until we had again the double platinum
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: album before we went out and started touring a little bit.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: That was uncommon then too. I mean that's a common
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: occurrence now that someone has this huge album or huge
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: song and then has to go figure out how to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: go do a lot. That's right, That's right. Less common then, yeah.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Less common then. Yeah, you had to kind of work
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: your way up and make an audience. But the thing happened.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: It broke in Europe. Now we didn't know what Europe
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: was all about. Europe In Amsterdam, there was a guy
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: named big Al who was the DJ there and he
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: broke I think hold the line there at Amsterdam and
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Europe just went nuts, like beatle crazy nuts over this stuff.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: So when we did a promotional tour there, they took
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: us around to all the clubs where they were playing
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: their music and it was just like it was great,
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean. There was just so many
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: people screaming and everything like that. But he broke our record,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: and then we started getting offers for gigs with good
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: money back then to come in and play shows, you know,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: to headline and should O were in Europe and stuff.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: So Europe has just been a big cash cow and
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: a great long, multi generational audience for us since then.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: And they never even you cannot have a hit record
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: for a long time, and they're still becoming to your
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: concerts and stuff like that, very loyal fans and great
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: music audiences over Europe.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: You had your your like an incredible career as a
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: as a studio guy at the time. Were you thinking
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: for sure that first record was going to be what
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: it was that would have.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: The people were planning on it.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: We were.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: We always had confidence in ourselves. It's some one thing total.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Did we knew what we could do if we got
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: the chance, you know what I mean?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: So you guys were ready to become the main show.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we were shooting for the big time the
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: whole time.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: So tell me a bit about growing up. What were
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: you for some encounters.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I grew up in Resita till I was five and
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: my father. I remember my father playing piano. He had
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: a piano room there. You did all his writing, and
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I'm in we were hearing the Blues in the Night
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: in there, my mom and then told me, you know,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Blues in the Night. He had done a version with
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Elephantz Cheryl and mel Tourmee, And so that was the
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: first song that I picked out on a piano. My
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: dad heard me picking it out, so he said, you
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: need to know how to play that. Then I started
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: taking piano lessons and stuff. That's who you knew that
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: I had some kind of gift, you know.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And you were a kid kid at that.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like five five, okay, But I didn't
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: start studying piano until I was eight because I got
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: into drums. My dad was using a drummer named Shelley Mann.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Shelley Mann just did a whole bunch of things with
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Bill Evans, and he did all the Mansini stuff. He
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: had to Shelley the Man and the Manhole his club.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: But I used to sit next to him and just
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: watch him play drums, and that's all I could think
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: about twenty four hours a day was drums.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: And then I started getting more serious about a piano
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: when my dad said, you know, if you have to
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: get your technique together, you're not going to be able
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: to make it. So I got a warning. I got
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: a wake up call early, and by the time I
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: was twelve, I started studying classical music. My dad put
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: me with a classical teacher and I started, you know,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: going through all the literature and stuff like that.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Were you into it at that time? Get into the
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: class No?
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, no, but I do. I wanted to be a
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: professional musician. So I was like, whatever it takes, this
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: is the world I'm going down.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Fine, even it feels like it's taking you further away
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: from even if it's like it's hard and it has
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with rock and jazz, you know, but
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I knew that.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: My dad said, Oscar Peterson study classical. All these guys
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: study classical, you know, so if you want to play
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: like Oscar, you better spend the time, you know.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of times kids want to
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: buck their parents or you know, my dad was a
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: played football and so I wanted nothing to do with football,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: you know, professional. He did play professionally for a bit
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and got injured.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: But ooh man, I'm a big NFL nut.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Everyone is, and I'm not, just honestly because because it
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: was just too prosibly like everything was.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Like, oh yeah, I bet, I bet you were just.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Smothered with that shit. Within I was just like, you know,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I want to go. I want to go do music
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: or whatever. I mean, what do you think it is
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: about your relationship with your dad that allowed you to
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: connect with them with what he does professionally?
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Well, because I love music and I was a very
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: quiet kid, and you had to be quiet in those days.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: You couldn't talk at all when the music studio with
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: my dad. There's no talking log with musicians or anything
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: like that. You have to be. It was a deaf mute,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean. So me and my dad
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: got along real great, and he showed me how to
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: do things, you know, and we watched football and baseball
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: together and stuff. But he was always working. So the
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: first job I had, Joseph Williams and I talk about
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: this all the time because my dad was peers with
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: John Williams. They were good friends, Joseph. When I talk
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: about our first jobs as students to them were sharpening
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: his pencils and making sure they didn't run out over racers.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: That's your job. You sit in a room all day long,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: not say a word, and just hear you hear on
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: sharpening pencils in the room, like all day long.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: That's what we did. And finally started I start singing
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a few things. My dad goes, can sing me a
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: line here for this, and I'd sing a line in
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: an arrangement and he'd use it, you know what I mean.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: He was composing arranging.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: He was composing and arranging for the fifth dimension. He
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: did up, up and a way for them, you know.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: He did the produced and arrange the way we were
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: for Barbara Streissan and all these big orchestral things. You know.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: So and I got to help him on those arrangements.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: You know, once you got to a certain level, would
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: he show you how he approached Yes, those things.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I got them. And he'd a master's degree
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: in music composition, so he knew how to teach me.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: But he'd never stopped writing. He was a writing machine
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: like John Williams. Same thing, the writing machine, you know
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: all they do. You just see him writing pencil to paper,
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: you know. And it's amazing what those guys can that
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: neew because of their classical training, how that would translate
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: to orchestra, you know, when you just have a piano.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Guys now because they can play a synthem, they can
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: play a string sound, they can play a flute sound,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: you can hear. Oh that'll work, you know what I mean.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Where back then they just had pianos, you know, you
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: have samplers and all that stuff. You know. So my
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: dad taught me. Literally, I was as apprentice for twenty years.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: You know, gosh, it was great.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Did he have any like maxims or things he would
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: always return to and things he'd always tell you, like
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: things had lots of rules.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably like your dad had some rules.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good about that.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad was like, you know, hey, the melody,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: the singer is the most important part. Make sure you
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: can hear the melody, the singer, the singers, the whole thing,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: the singer and the song, you know, and you're you're
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: just servicing the singer, you know, and he worked with
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: just great singers, you know, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis, Jesse Belvin, Ella,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Sarah vaugh Ray, Charles, I mean everyone insane.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, at what point did you realize that talent level
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: of talent your dad was working with.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't until we would start. We would start going
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: to shows at the Greek Theater and Sammy Davis would
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: be there or somebody like that, and they'd introduce my dad,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: put a spotlight on him in the audience, and I went, wow,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: my dad would stand up, everybody applauding for him, you know,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: And once I heard that, that's pretty cool, amazing. Yeah,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: just be a kid in your and everybody respects your dad.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: That's all they got. All the adults who worked for
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: my dad were super nice to me. They treated me
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: like I was an adult. And they were all dressed
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: so cool. They're just like all the dressing guys came from,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: like Ellington's band, the way those guys would gold cuff
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: links and loose ties and hats on and lots of
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: jewelry and all this stuff, you know. Where I was like,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I was looking at my school teachers like this is
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: boring right here. You know. I'd go with my dad's
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: guys and they're all dressed shark and they're super nice
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: and smoking cigarettes, doing shit, you know. So it was
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: a cool existence. It was like the jazz area. Jazz
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: area was still there. My dad was still making jazz
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: records with singers at the time, so I got to
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: see that crossover when I was a kid.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: We have to pause for a quick break, and then
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: we'll come back with more of my conversation with David Page.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: We're back with more from David Page. You told me
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: when you were before I started recording, that you were
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: fourteen when when you met Quincy Jones for.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: The first song was fourteen. When I met Quincy, my
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: dad was working on a one to Quincy's solo's album,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: and I forget the name of the album, but the
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: song was called The Anderson Files and it was a
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Sean Conry movie that had come out. Quincy had done
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: the music for well. Quincy used to throw my dad
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: have my dad ghost for him ghost arrange, and my
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: dad did a couple of charts for him, and I
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: got to help my dad with those charts, sing a
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: couple of lines to him. You know, and so I
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: went to Quincy's house and I think it was Benning
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: at Canyon at the time. I think you lived there
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: at bel Air and anyway met him, and you know,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: I've I ended up working for him later on the
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Thriller album and James Ingram and Patty Austin stuff like that.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: So it was he's been we've been family members. Quincy
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: with us first since I was a kid, you know.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: So crazy. So you're a kid and you're immersed in
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: this world of jazz through your father, through just your
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: interest too, and you're learning and oscopias and z heroes,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: you're picking up classical music, trying to get ready, and
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: then the seventies hit and you started doing some incredible
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: sessions like really young.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The first hit record I did was Seals and
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Croft's Diamond Girl. Okay, that was a very that was
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: one of the first sessions. But that was the first
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: hit record I had. And once I had that, the
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: word got around and I started getting calls for sessions.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: I heard a story about you being at USC that
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: was me.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: That was that was during that time, and you got
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: a call from Jackson Brown, Jackson Brown, and it was
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: so funny because it was like USC at the time.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: In the dorm I was in, which is an all
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: boy dorm, it was like animal house, you know what
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: I mean. I mean there were guys showing movies, throwing
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: parties and shit, and and there was only fifth phone
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: at the time. No one had cell phones. It was
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: a payphone in the hallway. And the guy knocks on
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: my door and I'm in the room doing something I
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: forget and he says, there's a guy named Jackson Brown
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: on the phone for you. Don't hang up on it.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: When I got in the hallway and he goes like,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: where the hell are you at. It sounds, you know,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: because people are screaming and doing all kinds of shit,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: And he says, we want you to come down and
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: play on his for every Man record down at Sunset
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: and I played on a song called these Days where
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Jackson there's.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Incredible signature songs that he wrote when he was a kid.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: And yeah, Nico did, and yeah that John Hayney was
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: there at Sunset Sound, you know, wow. And it was
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: cool when you.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Turn up when you're coming from then, you know, coming
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: on and you're driving them down to the studio.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: No switch. I was like at my jacket, my jeans
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: and on it. It's like where I used to just
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: stay in my clothes, you know what I mean?
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: How often would you walk into a session like that
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: and have to play on something you wannt too? And
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: two quite a bit.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: I started weeding out those sessions though whenever I wasn't
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: a great reader. I'm not a great reader. There's guys
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: that sight read and that's their job what they do.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: A guy I learned from Mike Lange, who was one
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: of the best. He did all Jerry Goldsmith stuff. So
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: I would just started to go to how much reading
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: is involved? I'd have to ask because my dad told
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: me to do that, because he would have to do
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: the same thing. John Williams was the guy you'd call
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: if you want sight read stuff. And my dad would
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: just play new sessions with jazz guys where the reading
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: wasn't too terribly hard, you.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Know, right.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: So I got a reputation for playing and being a
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: rock and roll player and an R and B player.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: I started working at Motown when I was eighteen, with
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Motown out in the West coast called mo West, and
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: so we did all these orchestral dates with rhythm section
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: two drummers and everything. It was live music doing stuff.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: We did some stuff for Thelmy Houston and Diana Ross
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: and some of the Jacksons.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: You know, gosh man, I mean, obviously you've got the
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: talent and everything, but what luck to was it feels
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: like the seventies really, like to your point of now
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: there's Mo West, It's like the business really seemed to
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: be coming out.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: It really did. I mean it was thriving the session
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: industry and songwriters and doing all this kind of stuff.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: I hadn't hit as a songwriter yet, but that led
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: up to Jeff introduced me to bos Skaggs, who because
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Jeff and I Boss had been producing a guitarist that
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: was with the Allman Brothers named Lesdudeck and they needed
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: an organ player. So I played Hammond pretty good and
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: we went out and we did that album with Boss producing,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: and Boss liked how he played, so he asked me
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: if I wanted to maybe co write an album. He
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: was looking for co writer. He'd never co written with anybody,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: and so I said hell yeah, and we sat down.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: I think it was on this piano up at Santa Barbara.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: My dad had a ranch up there. We stayed there
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: for two weeks. I wrote, like most of the stuff
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: on Silk Degrees album on piano, you know, and that
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: album just took off. That album was like a Pinnacle
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: you know, Watershed album low down. I mean yeah, Lito, Lito,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: you know, unbelievable.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Man. How were the Steely Dan sessions?
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Steely Dance says were fun? Okay? Uh, Donal and Walter
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: characters and Jeff idolized them. Jeff was in Steely Dan
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: for a while, you know, he was a drummer, so
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: they heard about us. They wanted to start using session
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: players instead of their band. So, uh, somehow we got
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: a call. Jeff knew their guitar player, Danny Diaz, and
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: they called Jeff and they were looking for a piano
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: keyboard player. They could play other keyboards. So they called
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: me and I was on clavinet. It was on the
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Pretzel Logic album. It was a song called night by
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Night that I played on and I was playing. All
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I had to do was keep time on the clavnet
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: because I was Billy pressed and out of Space had
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: come out and I was all over the clavinet. That
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: was my act. You know, give me a wa wall
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: pedal and clavinet and I'll kill it, you know what
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: I mean. So I did that. Then they did an
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: album after that was Katie Lied with Chef played on
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: the Whole Thing. I played on Black Friday. That was
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: me and Michael Halbardy and playing keyboards, and I played
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: on Doctor Wu on that album on Katie Lin. But
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: they were fun because Donald was so neurotic and anxious.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: He'd be pacing back and forth singing the guide vocal,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: but the lyrics were so interesting. We were just like, man,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: dig it's deep. You know. You had to concentrate, like,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: don't start listening to them singing, because you'll fuck up,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And now in hindsight, people kind of regard Steely
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Dan and those sessions and the work that was done
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: as like kind of like that's almost biblical, I can't
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: touch it.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: That is.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Did they have that reputation at the time when you.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Were They didn't. They didn't. They were kind of on
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: the dark side and low key, and people didn't know
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: about him.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: People.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Steely Dan wasn't a big no nip they had Ricky
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Don't Lose That number was the one song that they did,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: but it was other than that. They were kind of eclectic,
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean, And they were doing different
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: kinds of stuff, jazzy kind of stuff back then, and
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: people they weren't mainstream, you know, the record companies didn't
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: know what to do with them at all until Irving
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Asoff said I know what to do with him, and
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: he signed him, got Warner Brothers to sign him, you
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: know what I mean, out of away from ABC Dunhill, you.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Know, man, Yeah, when did your interest in songwriting start.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: To I've always been in. I started in high school
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: when Elton John first came out with his first record.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to be Elton John. I mean that
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: was my hero, had glasses on, short hair and performed
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: rock and roll at the piano and stuff. So I
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: just started writing songs, copying his kind of songs. And
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: also I had known my dad did a lot of
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: work with Jimmy Webb. I learned that's the guy started copying,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, first emulating his trying to try and to
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: emulate him before.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: He get intoubt in it's Jimmy Webb.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Jimmy Webb. And I was doing to play like
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: and play like him and right like him before I
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: made the Elton John connection. It was it was my apprenticeship,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: That's what I was like going to school and you
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: were like doing.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: I was doing. Here's the trip, Okay, I was. Me
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: and Jeff and David Hungate were Sunny and SHARE's rhythm
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: section on the road. When I got out of high school.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: The first gig I had was touring with them, okay
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: on the road and they were They had the Sunny
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: and Share Show. At the time. They were the biggest
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: thing in the United States. They were working, getting like
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: one hundred grand a night. So me and Jeff I joined.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Jeff had already been with him for six months. He
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: left high school early, and so my dad said, Okay,
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: he's going to college next year. Now, how are we
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: going to deal with that? And the and the stunning
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: and Share people said, we will fly him in to
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: go to his classes when we're not playing and shit
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: like that, and so they flew me in. I was
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: going to USC a couple of days a week. I
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: was visiting a bunch of classes, but I go to
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: you US see, I would do an Ironside's date and
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I would fly back to Las Vegas to conduct for
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Sonny and Share.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Wow, that was a trip. I imagine you probably didn't
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: care about going to us, was it?
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: I just had to do it. I had to do it,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: fill out my grades and pass.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: What was it like? Angham was Sonny and Share at
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: that time?
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: I mean he was kind of her fall guy, you
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: know what I mean. She would make jokes and he
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: was the little short Italian guy. But they were selling
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: out these huge arenas. We met all these promoters, all
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: the big Elton John promoters, all the big agents and
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: everything like that. Because they were big time. They had
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: their own jet. We were traveling on huge Get this
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: chu Hefner's Playboy jet was the jet that we traveled with,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: like Bunny Stewardess's okay, And I was just out of
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: high school. We were all just out of high school,
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: and we were just like you gotta be frigging like
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: it's off the scale. We're in shock. We were kind
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: of in shock, like what do we do? Of course, Jeff,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Jeff is an old hand. Jeff was like drummers man.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: I was putting the moves on everybody, you.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Know what I mean, A newbie, I was new meat man.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: I was just like yes, Bam.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: You know, when did you first meet the Pacaro brothers?
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, because Jeff, when I was when I was
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: fourteen and a half fifteen, you know, and I met
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: a Mike and Steve was playing always playing different instruments.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: He was playing a French shorn, he played a cello,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: and Mike was playing started to play. Mike played some drums,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: and then Mike started playing study bass. And Mike was
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: a great bass player. He was our high school bass
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: player and he was great.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: When did you meet Steve Luke? At there?
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Andy Leads, Steve's little younger brother, was hanging out with
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Steve Ricaro and Steve Lucather and Mike Landau. They were
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: all friends. So I was starting my band and I
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: was looking at like Dean Parks and Louis Shelton and
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Larry Carlton, and Andy says, you need to check out
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: these guitar players that are with Steve Riccaro's band. And
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: so I went to Taft High School, which is right
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: down there with Winetka in Ventura, and I walked in
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: and I heard this somebody playing like Jimmy Hendricks. I
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: thought the band was on a break and they put
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: a record on and they were playing Hendricks And I
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: walked in there and Lucather was on stage and Landaut.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Landau was real short. He was a real short guy.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: And Lucather had on a monkey mask, okay, a rubber mask,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: and I couldn't see I couldn't see him that well
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: because it was kind of smoky, and I was in
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: the back of the thing. But I'm I'm looking at
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: because guys look like he's been imprisoned or something like that.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: And I get closer and I realized he's he was
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: doing like leaping in the air like Pete Townsend, sliding
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: on his knees, playing Johnny B. Good, singing it with
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: a monkey with a with a monkey mask. Gone, that
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: was just Lucather, crazy guy, you know what I mean.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Just he was silly, silly crazy, Okay, and he still
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: is silly crazy. But that's how I met him. And
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: I was looking at John Mike Landau, and I thought
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Landau had a stratocaster, and I like stratocasters, so I said,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: I think maybe the little guy that plays like Hendrick's
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: And Lucather says, no, man that he says, the other
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: guy's a star. We need to star in our band,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: and Jeff of course said, that's our guy right there.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: So Jeff picked him and I said, I don't have
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: a problem with that, but he was new and he
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: was just shredding the whole time. I said, yeah, but
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: he's got to play like on our records. And Luca says,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: he'll learn. We'll put him next to Carlton and Louis Sheldon.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: He'll he'll learn fast. And he did very quick study,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: you know. And then you hear him play on Georgie
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Porgy and you hear him play on her first album.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: You know, he was already seasoned, you know what I
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: mean by seventy eight, you know.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: In a way like real fortuitous. You guys got him
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: because he did. It's so funny, like by the time
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: you guys are really starting to take off, it's like,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: you know, the Van Halen's of the world are out there,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: right and you know this really kind of heavy guitar
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: sound is popular. Yeah, and you guys have Steve to
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: kind of bringing.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Out to Steve was friends with all the heavy metal players.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: It was him and Eddie were best friends, okay immediately,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: and we're to when any passed, you know, wow, So
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Eddie van Haill was always hanging out Luca her Luca
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: that had all the hammering ship that Eddie was doing
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: down and uh and it was uh, it was fun
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: time because you had to have a gun slinger guitar player.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: We had the guy who was Lucather. You know, he
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: was just shredding. You would rip all these guys. He
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: had more chops than any guitar player in town. I mean,
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Larry Carlton, all these guys. Lucather was like Maha Vishnu
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: John John kind of chops. That's what these guys had.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Chops in high school. Wow, you know, unbelievable.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: It's amazing all the talent that you guys had. You
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: guys to this day are able to still remain friends.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: But but I mean, because there's a world where you
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: or or Steve or Lucather could have just been like,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: you know, I want to do my thing.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: You know really well, we weren't. No one everybody was.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: The bands were the thing at the time. They say,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: there's a saying now, back in the day when I
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: was growing up, everybody was in bands. Now they're singers. Now,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: it's all about singing. And I think it's great that
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: everybody's singing now. I wish I wish I'd studied singing.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: My dad didn't want me to be a singer because
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: he thought I would end up in a piano lounge
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: being a singer, piano player. Entertainer and that was the
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: worst word at the time. My dad said, you don't
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: want to become an entertainer. You want to be a musician, really,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: And so I missed out on singing lessons and stuff,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: but which I ended up taking later on, and stuff
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: like what I was gonna.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Ask about the band, like did you guys think of yourselves?
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Obviously you guys are like incredible musicians, but they did
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: any of you guys think of yourselves as singer?
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Luca there could sing a little bit. He could sing
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: like Georgie Porgy saying I'll be over you won't hold
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: you back. But and I could sing barely to just
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: get some of my songs out.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: But we found this that you guys would like trade
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: off singing, like you know, be Steve if you look
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: at their into you andto.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Well, that was the whole idea I used as a
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: model the Beatles. I like the Beatles because you never
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: got tired. It wasn't one guy singing a solo outcrid.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: I don't care who the artist is. A whole album
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: of them, I get a little bored. I like Fleetwood
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Mac and I like the Beatles because they had various
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: diversity and their singing, you know, and so that's what
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do with our band. We did it
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: on the first album. Those guys never sung. I never sung,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: I mean really on an album before. And we all
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: sang on the first album.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: And then you guys have a sing on Bobby Kimball.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: We had to get a singer because they were kept going, well,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: who's your singer? They really before they signed the paper,
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: they want to know do you have a singer? And
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: a band that I had been co produced called Essus
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Fools had a singer named Bobby Kimball, and they broke up,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: and I said, let's try this guy out. And he
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: came in and I played hole the line and he
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: just grabbed the lyrics and we started ripping to hold
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: the line and it sounded the first time we played
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: it, it sounded like the record with him singing and us playing.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: So everybody's looking around the room, We're looking at each
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: other like we're a band. We're a band. We knew
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: we were a band. You know.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: We have to take another quick break and then we'll
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: be back with more from my conversation with David Page.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Here's the rest of my conversation with David Page. Let's
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: jump ahead to you reconnect with Quincy to do thriller.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Do you know was it Michael was a Quincy? Was
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: it the boat? How did you guys end up getting.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: Up getting in? Because I had Steve ricarl had been
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: doing programming synthesizers for David Foster and Greg Phillip Gains
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: at all Quincy's people. I wasn't in that club yet.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: So Steve, what are you doing? He goes, I'm doing
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: a Quincy Jones day. I said, you know what, I
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: want to go do a Quincy Jones date. So I'm
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: gonna go. I'm gonna be your assistant, and I want
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: to carry a piece of gear in to get in
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: to the the door. So I got the party. So
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: I got in the door. I think they were doing
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Donna Summers. I think it was State of.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: The Native Independence.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: That was Steve. Steve Riccaro did that, and I was
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: kind of playing for him because he would be the
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: major programmer. But I could play really pretty well. So
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: set up the stuff, set up the sounds, and sweteen
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: would say, Steve, play something, and Steve would say, well,
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: that's David's here to Dave play something. And I started playing,
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: and Quincy would walk in the room and go, wow,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: that's nice. What are you doing? Can you stay? Can
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: you hang out a little bit? And I'm sure. And
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: ever since then I do the Donna summers James Ingram
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: and uh then I got called him thriller, you know
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: what I mean? Because I was part of Quincy's club.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: And so State of Quincy later said, and I mean,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: you know, you can demeuror if you want. But Quincy
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: later said that the Billy Jean bassline was a rip
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: of that State of Independence programming, that thing that you
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and really.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know you said that, Yeah, could have been.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: That could have been you know, boom boom boom boom
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: boom boom boom.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: That was that.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Now that I think about it, it is. I'm gonna tell
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Steve that today.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because let me know what he says.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Because we brought all of our synthesizers down there. I mean,
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: there was a room full of synthesizers, and Steve was
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: doing that live. It was it had the drum machine,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: it had all the sense pumping and basically the whole
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: record was done with Steve Riccaro doing synthesizers on his
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: micro composer.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: So you guys basically play on human nature. You guys
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: do a number of you plan a number of different
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: things on thriller, but human Nature really is like it's like,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: that's yeah, Toto. Essentially, are you mad at a Steve
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: when he takes a song like human Nation?
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Hell? No, no, because the total would have never done
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: that totally.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: No, I don't.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: They may have, but Steve, we were we were off
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: the road and Quincy was looking for songs, and so
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: I sent I don't know what I sent in, but
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: I sent in a cassette and had on the back
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: of my cassette spend They had the super scope tape
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: machines that when they'd get to the end, it would
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: start playing the other side of the cassette automatically, and
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: so it jumped to the other side and played Steve
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Bricaro's demo for him, and he was like, why why
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: tell him that is human nature? And Quincy dug it
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: and she played it for Michael and they were just
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: like they cut it. You know, wow, that was like
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: the left last song that went on the record.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: You don't how did you because I want to talk
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: about this. I'm curious how you and Steve found how
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: to coexist in terms of as keyboard players send to play.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: You would come up with something and say, Dave, I
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: need your I need some magic on this. I need
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: you to I need an intro, like you said on
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Human Nature. I've got the chords, but I need an intro.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: So I think those are the chords you played me
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: for the intro, and I from Jimmy Seals. I had
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: been used to doing fingerpicking guitar parts and in translating
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: of the piano, so I could do you know, I
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: would cross hands and do so. I did a little
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Jimmy Seals kind of thing for Human Nature and that went.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: And that's the answer to Human Nature that I came
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: up with.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: That is one of the coolest. That is one of
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: the coolest.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: And song and every time that comes up, it goes
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: into that part.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean, It's so beautiful. What was
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: it like being in the studio with Michael if Michael.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: Michael was great in the studio. He was a perfectionist
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: and he just believed in you painting. He came up
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: to me, here is a typical Michael Jackson thing you'd see.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: I want you to think of Michael angela painting Assistine chapel.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: You have a total blank canvas. And if you need
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: a choir, you need this, orchestra, you need whatever you need,
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: just do it. Just come up and think with it. Now.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: This wasn't during Thriller though. This was after Thriller. Michael
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: continued working with me, but working with Michael. I got
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: in there one day and I was working on Billy Jean,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: which I did and ended up using my parts, none
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: of my parts, but I did it with Michael, and
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: he would listen to what you're playing, and he kind
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: of let a couple of little mistakes go by, and
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I stopped him and I said, Michael, listen, I'm a
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: perfectionist and I want to make sure that all this
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: stuff is perfect when we put it on there. So
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: in the interim he liked the fact that I wanted
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: perfection on his record, and he called me in and say,
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: I want I want you to come in and listen
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: to my vocal that I'm doing and tell me if
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: it's tell me if it's good. And it kind of
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: got me in trouble with Quincy a little bit because
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Quincy was there and he goes, Quincy goes, Michael, is
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: that what do you think? And he goes ask David
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Page what he thinks on the human nature vocal and
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: I'm like, uhh, Quincy just gave me the look, gave
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: me the look like oh really you know what I mean?
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: And I was like, oh man, you know, so we
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: got that straightened out and uh. And then Michael was
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: great to work with anybody that worked with him. He
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: was just like Jeff did beat Jeff. They came to
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Jeff and all they had was these drum cases that
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: went do do Do Do Do?
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Do? Do? Do?
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Do Do Do do? And and they were singing the
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: line I think in there. And then Steve and Jeff
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: played all the instruments on Steve Luke and that played bass,
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: played rhythm guitar, Eddie did the solo, and Jeff played
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: the drums on it.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: You know, look wanted to do the solo.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: How did it end up that he was lucky to
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: play on He was happy to play. Yeah, And then
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: they said they were trying to get Ed van Halen,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: which was Luke's friend. Luke's like, right on, you know.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: D didn't want to do it at first because they
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: have van Halen had a no session band role. You
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: can't play in other people's records. So Eddie called him
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: and said, this is Quincy Jones. He goes, yeah, sure,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: and he hung up on him. Okay, Ed, you know
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: what I mean, And I said, no, really seriously, you know.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: So they he sent a tape in and they flew
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: it in I don't know where. He just soloed and
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: they just took a piece of it dropped it in lin.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Wow. Total four. You guys spent a lot of time
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: in the studio.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we spent a lot of time all the time.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: So that's another year, man, where it's like if seventy
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: eight your first records coming out, all these big hits
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: and you got Sheryl Lyn's record out at the same time.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: This is like you got total four thriller.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: All the all the burners are on, you know, unbelievable.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you got four records behind Youah, a bunch of hits.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we're doing sessions and touring and doing
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: our total records at the time, you know, so it
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: was just kind of a revolving door at the recording
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: studios Sunset Sound. We'd see guys that are working on it, Thriller,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: What are you doing, I'm working with Quincy today. Well
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: we'll be there in a little bit.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, how did Sunset Sound become your home?
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Which is one of the great studios.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: It was one of the great studios, and you know,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: we could basically work everywhere. I mean, we did Thriller
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: at Westlake, the whole thing. You know. We did Toto's
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: rec first record at Studio fifty five, which was it
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: ended up becoming Richard Perry's studio. But we just liked
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Sunset Sound as a record recording place. And that was
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: during the Hydra record we started working at Sunset Sound
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: again cool and we loved playing there. We loved that
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: that was a real progressive music. We were trying to
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: push ahead. Well, now that we had been had a
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: hit album, we kind of wanted to play some serious
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: concert stuff here. You don't get into the way we
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: would sound if we went out live and I just
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: playing pop. Georgie Porgy and god, the.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: First record is like, let's let's craft a record.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Let's craft the record, let's find an audience. So we
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: did a whole of a lot of different kinds of
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: things to find out. I know that there's got to
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: be a single in there somewhere, you know, And surely enough,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: the record company grabbed all of the line, you know,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: you know, little did I know? You know?
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah? But then Hydro was like, let's Hydra was more more.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: We were listening to Genesis the time, you know what
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, Peter Gabriel and these progressive English groups that
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: were doing just blowing our minds, you know, So we
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: wanted to get more progressive and more musical, you know,
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: because we're all just making music basically for ourselves and
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: our friend musicians, so we could get together and smoke
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: a little bit and and listen to music, you know,
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: and and we wanted to have something interesting to play him,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: you know, because everybody else was bringing in all this
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: stuff that they're they're doing, and it was like, you know,
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: real real musical stuff, you know.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, did you guys went into Prince at all? Because
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: I know he was hunkered down at Sunset Sound.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Ran into Prince one time, and he was down there
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: before we were down there. During we were down there,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: I didn't run into him. I think Jeff ran into
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: him one time, but he was down there with James
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Newton Howard working on his first album. Ray Parker, who's
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: my neighbor down the stirt, down down the hill, bad man,
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: and he's like my best friend. We grew up together,
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: we both He came out from Detroit when he was
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: nineteen and I started working when I was eighteen and nineteen.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: So we have been friends since we've been really young.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: So Prince saw Ray Parkers had a studio in his house,
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: and Prince said, I want that. So Ray built Prince's
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: first studio. Really yeah, So Ray set Prince up and
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: then I heard later on that Prince really liked Luca.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: There is a guitar player, and I just I've gained
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: so much respect for him lately. Hearing Hill he plays
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: guitar and the shows of acoustic work, and he's just
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: he was a real talent.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: You know, man, you guys were around some of the coolest,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: greatest the era of music. You guys existed because the
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: point again the left, like the what remained of the
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: jazz great. It's like said Oscar Peterson came to your
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: house to work on to check out synthesizers.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: He did because the Roland, the guy who invented a
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: bunch of rolling stuff, was living at my house. Okay,
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Foster called me up and said, I got a guy
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: from Canada and Ralph bike for Roland. Do you guys
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: interested in this? We said, send them over and he
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: would just build stuff for us. And so he became
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: friends with Oscar because Oscar's Canadian too, so he brought
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Oscar Peterson over. We're like I called James Duton Howard.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: So you got to get over here right now. Man,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: this is gonna get serious here. You know. Of course
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't have any I didn't take any pictures during
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: the time, and I don't have any pictures from it.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Did he play on this piano?
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: No, I have a piano downstairs. Oscar played on because
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: a nine foot ball with st ten. He looks at
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: my piano. It was nice box.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable, man, How did you guys change as people before
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: having those hits and having the hit? I mean, did
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: at any point? Did it get competitive? But not amongst
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: you guys, but with other groups? Did you feel like
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: we want hits. So did you feel like you want
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: to compete on the live?
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, what was What's so funny because after,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: like years later, I talked to some people the Recession guys,
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Danny Korchmeyer, Danny Cooch, a, Waddie Walke Tell, and they
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: told me we were so pissed off at you guys
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: when he came out with all the line They go,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: that's a goddamn do wop song and we should have
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: played that. We should have played the solo on that record,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: not Lucather and everything like that, because look at it
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: played like a Brian May kind of Queen's you know,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: he shredded it, you know, and they were gonna play
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: like Doom Do Doom Do Do Do Do Do Do
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: Do Do do? They wanted to treat it like about
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: you guys, and that you could do that, but then
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: have Luke at there do like a Brian John. We
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: were mashing up genres, you know.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: At the time, it's the coolest thing about you guys.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, And later on we'd be Luke, we kind
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: of were competitive with the songwriting he bring in this
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: and I'd be like I still today can't write. He
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: writes every time he breaks up with somebody, he would
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: write a great ballad, a love ballad, and he just
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: he's great pills and he sings it and he sings
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: him too. You know, how did you guys work that out?
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: But I mean, there's so many people in the group
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: who could sing the song, someone who could write the song.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: We would listen to the best songs in yours. Anybody
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: has a song, bring it in and we'll listen to it. Now,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: just listen to whose voice it's that. And so each
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: of us would try. You know, everybody tried to sing Africa.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: They just couldn't spit all the words out. And I
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: was I ended up singing the song that I wrote.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: You know, you'd written it a little easier to you know.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: So, as usual, the band says to me, next time
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: you're going to write a number one single, make sure
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: that you're not the singer on it. Make sure our
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: lead singer sings the whole thing. And I'm like, guys,
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: I didn't know.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: You guys really not know Africa would be.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: No no idea really, no idea really. That was the
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: last song that was eleventh hour song that we had
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: the whole album done, and we just start experimenting with well,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: here's maybe a song that and they used to say
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: it was a joke, Dave, save this for your solo record,
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: which there was none, you know what I mean, and
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: or or maybe for the next album. This is a
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: good song. No, no, this stor our sense of humor,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: just fucking with me, you know. So we start experimenting
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: with it around, making a loop. We we knew we
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: had time because we'd already done our album. So we
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: got in the studio and made a loop, a drum
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: loop with any Castro and Jeffercarl and then I put
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: on a C. S eighty thing and we started building
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: it little by little and just everybody was making their
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: own parts up, and it just came came to being,
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: you know, and we were like, well, okay, this is
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: the last cut. It's kind of different kind of world music.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: And then they called from New York. Sony called it
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: says they're playing it in a disco, a big disco.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: It's a big hit in New York. Africa is and
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: this started going around the United States. People start picking
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: it up, and it just gained momentium.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: So cool, you guys have these incredible pop songs. We're
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: talking about Africa, Rosanna, songs like that, and then the
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: solos that you're playing. How did you pull back? Because
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I mean I would love to hear like an eight
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: minute so yeah, of you? I mean, how did you
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: guys try yourself?
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: Times we played Rosanna? We jammed on the end there?
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Did you you just hear the little.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: You hear a little short one?
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Hear the short? I want to?
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: We said, well, we're going to keep it short this time, guys,
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean, keep the endiing there, you
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: know what I mean, get it all in. But that
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: was that went longer. That fade out probably in another
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: two minutes, you know what I mean, We just faded
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: it out. You know.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: Love to hear that? Yeah, loved me too. I don't
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: know how you guys did it, as like there's not
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: many groups who could be as musically inclined as you guys.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: And also but also we like kind of know, like, okay,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: we got to do the short version.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: That's the reason we just decided instead of forming a group.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: We got offers to form our out of our high
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: school band to sign a deal, and we turned it
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: down because we said we want to go in and
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: learn how to make records so that we don't come
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: out we don't learn on our first record. We're just
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: barely learning how to make records here. So we each
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: went off our different directions and we did a lot
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: of sessions and gained all this knowledge, so we were
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: ready to We were like co producing ourselves by the
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: band members, by their just their experience.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: Did you learn about a lot about songwriting playing on
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: other people's songs?
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Yeahs I learned a lot about what I didn't want
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: to do because I kept I would try and make
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: them a little more of my songs. I try and
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: re arrange them when using my changes. But everybody else
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: wanted to use these jazzy cords tho. It's like, and
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: I was going for the everybody else. That's what Foster had,
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Graydon and those guys were always that the earth wind
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: and fire. Yeah they were. Everybody was trying to be
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: earth winded fire at the time, Okay, and so was I.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: So we all were yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, that's
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: kind of earth windy right there. Do you know what
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: I mean?
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Domins and Russ Joan Bias last, Oh, yeah, you can.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: Know about that record that I knew the producer. I'd
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: worked with him, the guy named David Krushenbaum, and he
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: hired me and we all great thing that I got
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: to play with Joe Sample. Joe Sample and me played
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: together on that. I played piano and he played roxy
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: chord I think or electric piano, Roxy court and had
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: Larry Carlton, Dean Parks, Jim Gordon on drums and I
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: just got to play on that record, and uh, it
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: was fun. Joan Bias was great. We just I had
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: done a midnight special with her with our band. She
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: ended up using our band for backup band on Midnight Special.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: But a funny story about Steely Dan Walter Becker heard
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: the Diamonds and Rust album and saw that Larry Carleton
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: had arranged it, and that's why he called Carlton to
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: arrange the World Scam album because he said, if he
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: they can make Joan Biaz sound this good, they're gonna
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: be able to arrange our stuff. And that was that
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: was the deal. They That was the album that they
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: got turned on too. Larry Carleton.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: I mean that's the song Joan Bias says, that's her
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: best song.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was great.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: It was moved.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: She was like the Dylan's counterpart.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was moved to Colin and tell her
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: this is incredible, you know, I mean.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: What a god. We could talk for another two hours.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: I don't want to. I wanted to go through the
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: room and just ask about everything you got.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: Let me show you downstairs real quick.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: I'll be awesome and maybe we'll do it again.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, I think we should do it again. Yeah.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Cool. Thanks so much to David Page for inviting us
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: into his home and playing for us. You can hear
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: all of our favorite Toto songs and other stuff Davids
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: played on on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: is Ben Tollway. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
• 54:47
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• 55:05
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• 55:08
  Speaker 1: by any Beats. I'm justin Richmond.