Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Ageless Wonders: The Evolution Of Legacy Artists [Episode 266]

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Ageless Wonders: The Evolution Of Legacy Artists [Episode 266] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On this episode of Booked on Rock, how enduring icons
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: like Springsteen, the Beatles, the Stones, Pink Floyd stay on
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: top in an ever changing music game. Why rock Stars
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Never Retire? Find out next We're totally bumped rock and roll.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'll leave you. You're reading Little Hands says
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: it's time to rock and roll, rock bad, roll out.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I totally booked. Welcome back to the book Down Rock podcast.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I'm Eric Sanitch. David Hepworth is on the podcast. He's
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the author of the book Hope I Get Old Before
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I Die? Why rock Stars Never Retire. Welcome to the podcast.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: David, thanks for having me.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: To understand where we are today with these rockers that
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: are still rocking into their seventies and eighties. For some,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: we have to go back to Saturday July thirteenth, nineteen
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: eighty five, Live aid right. Why is that date so important?
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Well, you got to start a story somewhere, and you've
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: got to finish it somewhere. I obviously the best definition
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: of the story is as a beginning of an end.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Didn't you decide what the beginning of the middle and
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the end is. I feel very close to live a
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: because obviously that's coming up for its fortieth anniversary very soon,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: and I was one of the BBC presenters, one of
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: the presenters of the BBC's coverage of Live A. So
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I was there kind of thing which is always interesting
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: to look back on. But I suppose as I looked
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: back on the years since, I realized that on on
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: that date in nineteen eighty five, when Paul McCartney gone
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: up to close the London end of the show by
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: singing let It Be, we all looked at him and thought, well,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: there he is, the venerable old old figure. There he is,
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  Speaker 2: has come down from Mount Rushmore to give it one
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  Speaker 2: more go round, you know, and then he'll presumably retire.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Of course, what I realized looking back was he wasn't
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  Speaker 2: old at all. He was forty three, yeah, you know,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: and nowadays forty three people are barely starting at the age,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: and that certainly applied to him, you know. So for
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: people like Paul McCartney, the kind of second half of
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: their career, if you if you like, was kind of
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: just starting there. And it's still it's still going on
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: to this day, which is something that nobody envisaged. And
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: so I wanted to write a book, you know, loads
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: of people have written books about how people become rock stars.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: You know, there's very there's lots of variations on that
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: kind of creation myth, you know, the early years and
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: the achieving hits and fame and so forth. And I
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: just thought'd be interesting to write about their middle years
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: and their older years and how they adapted, you know,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: to the passage of time, and what it says about
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: them and also what it says about us, which is
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: often the thing that interests me most about musicians and
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: kind of rock fame, if you like, it's as much
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: the creation of ours, the fans, as it is a
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: creation of them. You know, they've they've simply responded to
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: continuing public demand and continue to do it, you know.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: So I was just intrigued at how they these figures
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  Speaker 2: who they're your fantasy friends that you acquire at the
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: age of about fourteen, and they look down on you
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: from their posters on your bedroom walls, and then you know,
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  Speaker 2: sixty years later, they're still there. They're still part of
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: your life in a way that nothing else is. You know,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: everything else has gone and change. You know, you're kind
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: of don't you don't retain your same relationship with a
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: sporting team, or that you don't retain the same relationship
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: with movie stars but you do with rock stars, and
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: that really interests me.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Psychological thing makes you feel young or brings you back
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  Speaker 1: to those years where you remember what it felt like
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  Speaker 1: to be young and carefree and have.
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  Speaker 2: I suppose so, you know, I think I think it's
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Bono that said that. You know that when they when
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: bands get together to tour, you know, and bends have
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: been together for a long time and the show starts,
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  Speaker 2: the audience get fifty percent of their value just from
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  Speaker 2: seeing you there, just from seeing there they are those
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  Speaker 2: old pals of mine still and oh look they're still friends,
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  Speaker 2: and we feel that. I think obviously this applies particularly
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: with bands. I mean, as bands are kind of they're
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: not just musical aggregations, they're kind of gangs. Their their
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: you know, their schoolboys associations continued into add adult life,
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  Speaker 2: and so it warms our heart to see them together,
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  Speaker 2: you know, when people see Micking Keith still together after
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: all this time. Huge amount of the bill is just sentimental.
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  Speaker 1: Very much, very much. As a huge Van Halen fan,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: when Dave and Eddie got together again and O seven,
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  Speaker 1: it was that to see them hugging at the press conference,
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  Speaker 1: whether it was genuine or not, we felt it was
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: so there was that emotional we Actually last night I
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: was just watching YouTube, just searching around, and it's suggesting things,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, sure enough, there's an ACDC
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: clip from twenty twenty four, and most of the comments
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: were in fact. I remember one of them was, it's
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: bringing a tear to my eye to see Brian Johnson
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  Speaker 1: back and so happy and with Angus.
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  Speaker 2: It's so strange that, you know, I suppose the association
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: with his music has always been sentimental, but it's clear
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: that it's sentimental when you get into the six season.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Seventies and eighties, yep.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: You talked about how Live aid being televised was a
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  Speaker 1: huge thing too, because that exposed it to an audience
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  Speaker 1: that was maybe an audience that would never even pay
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  Speaker 1: much attention, but it was there in front of them.
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  Speaker 1: And I remember I was twelve, thirteen years old. It
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  Speaker 1: was everywhere, I mean, ABC, MTV, all the news outlets
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  Speaker 1: were covering it. As you said, you were there, so
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  Speaker 1: you know, So, how did people see these artists before
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Live aid and how did it change?
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  Speaker 2: Well? I think I always think prior to Live AID
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  Speaker 2: that the people who went to shows, went to big shows,
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  Speaker 2: were a very particular group of people. They were kind
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  Speaker 2: of long haired guys in greatcoats who queued up all
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: night outside venues to get tickets or sent off checks,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: post orders and so forth. And then post Live Aid,
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  Speaker 2: what seemed to me to happen was that, and a huge,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: huge part of it in the UK was the fan
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: that the sun shone, which is not something you take
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  Speaker 2: for granted in London. And consequently the pictures, the images
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  Speaker 2: from Wembley were very appealing. And also everybody was doing
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: three songs or four songs. They weren't doing their new album,
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  Speaker 2: they were doing the greatest hits. And so there were
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: millions of casual TV viewers that day who came in
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  Speaker 2: from you know, mowing the lawn or going the shopping
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  Speaker 2: or picking up the kids and looked at Queen doing
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: you know, we other Champions or the Who or whatever
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  Speaker 2: and thought, you know, I fancy that. I quite fancied
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  Speaker 2: that kind of experience. It looks really nice, it looked
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  Speaker 2: really appealing, and so it can't be a coincidence that,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: you know, in nineteen eighty five, was. Yeah. I think
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  Speaker 2: it was the year that Bruce Springsteen did his first
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: outdoor show, and it was very much kind of nervous
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  Speaker 2: toe the water. You know. He did it in Ireland.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: He did it as far away from the United States
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  Speaker 2: as possible as these things are always done. He played
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: at slain Castle in Ireland, and he talks about it
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: in his autobiography and that he'd been kind of pretty
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: much railroad into doing it because he never wanted to
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: play outdoor. And he came off halftime in the interval
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: and said to John Landos manager, and he said, I
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: just can't do this. This is terrible. John Landau pretty
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: much said, well, you're gonna have to get used to it,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: and so he did. And so the whole scaling up
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  Speaker 2: of live entertainment I think dates back to live aids.
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  Speaker 2: You know, that's the point at which it became no
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  Speaker 2: longer arenas, it became stadiums. It became no longer ten
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: thousand people, it became eighty thousand people and big screens.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that's the beginning of what I regard
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  Speaker 2: as the era we're still in now, which is the
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  Speaker 2: age of spectacle, which is I think when people go
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  Speaker 2: big outdoors shows in the unseen Taylor Swift nowadays or whoever.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think they're encountering it as a musical thing particularly.
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  Speaker 2: I think it's a spectacle thing. I think it's a
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  Speaker 2: social thing. It's that you have to be there, you
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  Speaker 2: have to be part of the large, the large demonstration there.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think anybody comes away from these kind of
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  Speaker 2: shows going you know, I really like the Middle eight
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  Speaker 2: on the third number, and you know, they just don't
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  Speaker 2: in direct that way. What they do is say, I
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: love the bit where they flew up in the air
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  Speaker 2: while the wiz Bangers went off, you know, and those
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  Speaker 2: shows have it increasingly ever a long period. It's time.
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  Speaker 1: I think the Beatles at Shake kind of that was,
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  Speaker 1: but there were no cameras to film the.
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  Speaker 2: Horse, but nobody could hear it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was like a spectacle, but.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you couldn't say much. Whereas what they've done
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  Speaker 2: now is they adapted completely to the you know, to
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  Speaker 2: the scale of the thing. And I think Live A
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  Speaker 2: was kind of beginning of that. Queen were the most
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  Speaker 2: successful act of the day in the UK certainly, and
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  Speaker 2: that was because they kind of used the audience as
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  Speaker 2: part of the spectacle. You know, you will sway back
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  Speaker 2: and forth, you will clap your hands in this fashion
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  Speaker 2: because you know you'll you'll like the idea of doing that,
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  Speaker 2: and they'll look good on the television. So, you know,
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  Speaker 2: I think that's the beginning of the age of spectacle.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Is Live Aid in nineteen eighty five, and of course it
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: continues to this day. I had thought it would have
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: been all over with COVID. I thought, you know, we're
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: going to see no more large gatherings of huge numbers
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: of people, not for a while. Shows how wrong I was.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, if you may have answered my question
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: that because you said Freddie Mercury, there couldn't have been
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: a better person to usher in the new age at
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Live Aid better than Freddy. And there were some great performances,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: obviously Bowie and you two, but Ready was the guy.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I think they were one of the few groups who
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: had really understood what an opportunity it was, you know,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: because what Bob God, if someone's doing it. He wanted
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: what he regarded as the older acts Queen Elton, John
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: David Bowing, the who Paul McCarney, because only if he
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: got those would American TV want them, you know, because
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: they wouldn't want, I don't know, spend their ballet or
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: show day or whatever. And I think they came with
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: varying degrees of preparation, but I think Queen had really prepared.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: They'd gone away, you know, for a couple of days.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: They taint a rehearsal all day. They'd done her and
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: they worked out a SAP, which is a pared down
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: version of their greatest hits, and so what they're presented
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: was effectively a live a live commercial for Queen. You know,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: this is this is that you may have forgotten about
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: this lot. You know, here are all the hits, here's one,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: here's another one, and so forth. And they came out
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: at the right time of the day when the audience
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: were primed but not tired, which is an important thing.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: And also the audience, don't forget, a very different audience,
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: a unique audience in that they were not dominated by
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: fans of one particular act, which normally is the case.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: They were people who come along because they were quite
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: happy to see Nick Kershaw, Len Zeppelin, whatever and everything
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: in between. So they were very forgiving audience, you know,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: and they're very much on the performance side. They wanted
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: it to work, and so you mentioned you too, You
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: too assumed when they left the stage that day, they
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: assumed their career was over. They thought they'd just done
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: the worst possible thing. The bono had wandered off the
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: stage down into the crowd with no very clear idea.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: He was right to it, because they cut a song
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: from the set because of it.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: We couldn't see him. The band could not see it, right,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: You imagine what that was like. You know, what are
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: we still playing? You know?
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: How do you follow his cue? What are we doing next?
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and they kind of reassembled in the dressing room
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: and they barely spoke to each other, you know. And
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: then but of course, thanks to television, it kind of
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: came over as something sort of heroic, oddly enough, and
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know why that should be, but it just does.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: And that worked for them in a huge way. So
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: they were one of the acts who really gained out
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: of the day.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Definitely booked on rock podcasts. Will be back after this, right,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: that's it. I'm gonna be right outside those doors the
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: next time I have to come in here. I'm cracking skulls.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: I became a Springsteen fan going back to Bruce again.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: I became a fan when I heard the box set
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: live seventy five to eighty five. I told the story
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: before I borrowed it from my brother in law. My
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: sister's husband had it. I borrowed it for about, I
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: don't know, four years, five years. Finally said do you
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: still have that? I think I do. I listened to
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: it once a week.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: I do it.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: But anyway, that's how I became such a hardcore fan
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: of Bruce. And you do bring this box set up
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: in the book. It's this particular box set that plays
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: a big role in transforming artists like Bruce into what
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: we now call heritage acts. So talk about why that
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: box set is so important.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that you should borrow it from your
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: brother in law, who, oh, I'm assuming was older than you. Yes, yes,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I'm probably better paid than you at the time, very much. So. Yeah,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: So consequently he could afford to go and buy a
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: box set. You know the New York Times on the
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: day it came out, you know, it was a huge,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: huge deal. Tower Records on Broadway opened earlier at eight
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: o'clock or whatever, and all these trucks arrived, piled it high.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: All the people in the queue, they're all people in
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: their thirties and forties. They're not teenagers, you know, because
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: they can afford to do it, you know. And there
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: was it's quite interesting New York Times as interviews people
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: about why they're buying it, and what they're talking about
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: is they all felt some kind of duty to buy it.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: You know, this is the kind of important thing. You know,
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: I felt to do this, you know, I've always been
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: a fan or whatever, and it was duty rather than
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: rather than enthusiasm. And that was very interested in this
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: because I think this is the point at which people
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: start thinking that these performers are artists of substance, you know,
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: and substance becomes hugely an important part of the way
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: that they're sold. And it's just it's an interesting thing
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: because the box septicularly, it's sold like crazy for like
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: a week and then fell off a cli if really fast,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: you know, as the as the old record business adage
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: has it. It shipped gold and returned platinum, you know,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: but it achieved that that objective of fixing Bruce Springsteen
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: as this kind of great American artist, there's great American icon,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: you know, which his position he's still he's still manages
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: to occupied to this day. Although interestingly enough, how many
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: hits has he had since those days, I don't know.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: It's probably not that many, you know, I don't feel it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Seris to Philadelphia may have come after.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Right, right, that was mid nineties.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So Bruce Wingston goes on stage today anywhere in
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: the world, what people want to hear largely other songs
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: from the earlier part of his career. It doesn't matter
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: how long the career is, forty fifty years. Most of
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: what we want to want to hear tends to come
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: from the early bit of it, right through Born in
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: the USA. Yeah, that probably is it. You know, that's
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: cover versions and all that kind of thing. People like that.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: And listen, I'm not knocking Bruce Spangstein because Bruce springstea
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: has managed to sustain people's interest in him. And I
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: think this is because it's all about the band in
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: an old way. I came to a conclusion this may
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: be controversial. I came to a conclusion a few years ago.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: And you know, I've interviewed Bruce Springsteen loads of times.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: I've seen him loads of times. What makes Bruce Springsteen
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: interesting is Bruce Springsteen within the context of that band.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: He's the guy who when he was unknown, So go
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: about seventy one, seventy two, he says it's going to
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: be Bruce Springsteen and the East Street Band. Now, imagine
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: how much ego it took to do that when nobody
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: had heard of you. I'm going to pretend it's James
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Brown of the Famous Flames, even though nobody's heard of me.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Doesn't matter. I will grow into that part. And so
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: when people going to see him nowadays, what they're seeing
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: is him with the old Gang. There's the Gang, and
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: so many of his songs and his kind of reference
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: points are about the story of him and the band.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: You know, when Clarence dies, he's replaced with somebody who
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: kind of his younger version of Clarence, his nephew. Yeah,
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: it's just the way it works. I've seen him on
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: his own and I think, well, there's fine, but it's
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: just not as exciting. It's him with his old pals.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: That's the story. And so what Bruce springs he does
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: on stage is he enacts his own autobiography musically, he
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: does it, does it brilliantly. Well. He's a genius and
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: that kind of thing, because he understands far better than
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: anybody else in rock and roll the importance of having
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: a show that tells the story. He's always understood that nobody.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: I'm staggered at how his competitors don't seem to have
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: noticed that this is what he does, because I don't
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: think anybody else even tries to do it, you know
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: what I mean. Well, he did it when he was unknown,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: and how much more powerful is it now when he's had,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: you know, fifty years of being fantastically well known, you know.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: So it's it's the great narrative arc in his shows.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: And so when people go nowadays, they're thinking, well, are
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: we coming to the close of the show. I don't
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: want to miss the close of the show. It's a
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: show that's been going on all those years, all our lives.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: It's a very powerful thing, very very powerful.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: His setlerts are very much I think like The Grateful Dead,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: where he mixes it up. Let's move on to Grateful
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Dead because this is an interesting chapter in the book
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: about you know, here's a band who you would never
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: have thought would have an ice cream you know, name
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: after him, and it become that logo is just it's
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: so recognizable. Talk about the ice cream, the Cherry Garcia
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: ice cream and the importance and it is how it
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: exposed them to a bigger audience.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Well, it just appealed to me, you know, the idea
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: that you know, I'm kind of old enough to remember
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: that The Grateful Dead is kind of when they were
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: great outsiders, you know, right, you know, you know, it's
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: like when Frank Zamples had about the mothers of invention.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: We look like the kind of band that if we
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: move next in next door to you, your lawn would die,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: well the gravel. They were kind of a bit like that.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: When they first appeared in Britain. It was what He's
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: going all about, you know, and and the Dark Star
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: and they're just they're the strangeness. But something happened to them,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: you know, in the late nineties. They became kind of cuddly.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: They became warm and embraceable to a wide variety of people,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: and that had many different manifestations and the adoption of
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: the the of Ben and Jerry decided to launch the
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Cherry Garcia flavor of ice cream just seemed like the perfect, perfect,
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: you know, totem of this because and they did this
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: as a result of some Deadhead writing to them and saying,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: have you thought about doing flavor called cherry Garcia? Because
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: everything in the Grateful Dead put the name on cells.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: And that's really interesting because the great heroes of the
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: counter culture, and I'm an admirer of the gravel Dough
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: great heroes of the counterculture also became the kind of
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: leading lights of kind of merchandized culture, of internet fanlists,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: of you know, contacting your people, having your community, monetizing
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: your fame as much as you possibly can, keeping the
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: money to yourself and not sharing it with Warner Brothers
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: or whoever, you know, all those things that we've come
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: to recognize as as things kind of bands have to
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: do to stay together nowadays. They were sort of the
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: first people to do this, which I think is is
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: very very interesting. But in the process they became warm
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: and cuddling, didn't they, you know? So were they? You know,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: I think they were honored at the Candidate Center. Weren't
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: they a few years fixed? You know, if you'd asked somebody,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: you know, in nineteen seventy three, do you think there
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: will ever be a time when, you know, the members
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: of the growth dead will be honored by a president
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: or whatever it get out of it, it'll be stupid,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean. And because the world kind
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: of came round at that point of view, you know.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: And a lot of what the grateful did grateful those
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: appeal is they just kind of keep doing it, don't they.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: And I think I was reading it the other day
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: that Bob Weir is that's that's talk of Bob Weir,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: and well, the two drummers are still alive, aren't they
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: making your heart? And I think that's talking, you know,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: And a lot of that is just keep doing it.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: And if you keep doing it, eventually, well this happened
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: to Grate years ago, but eventually it happens to all
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: musical acts. If you keep going long enough, you're a legend.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: You wake up one morning and you're a legend, and
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: you're a legend in the eyes of a bunch of
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: people who don't remember you the first time. Because that's
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: the thing that happens. It gets transferred to generation to generation,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: and so you know, I know, you know, my kids,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: are there anybody who's who they who they don't remember appearing,
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: but was just there. They ain't legend, Willie Nelson legend,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Tom Jones legend, and that's you know, and there used
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: to be used to be the case that people liked
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: the hot new thing and didn't like the old thing. Well, actually,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: if anything that's completely turned on its head, they like
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: the old thing because he feel better about the old thing,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: because there's a perception that anything old is somehow more
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: authentic than whatever's been invented last week. And there are
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: you know, there are loads of examples of this, you know.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Bob Dylan. Yeah, I've been looking at Bob Dylan since,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: you know, in nineteen sixty three, and I look at
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: him now and I think I know no more now
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: than I knew back then, because your mystique is just endless,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: you know. Now, Is it possible for artists who come
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: along in the age of social media, in the contemporary panopticon,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: you know, well, you know everything. Is it possible for
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: anybody to have a to have misdeem?
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: That was a question I was going to ask in
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: the Internet era and the social media era that we're in.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know it'll be you know, only time will tell,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: and I won't be there. But I can't help thinking
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: that when I look at Bob Dylan, you know, he
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: seems like the best possible example of the power of
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: following the old advice never apologize, never explain. And I
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: think one of the most dismaying things about contemporary music
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: stars is their tendency to apologize for absolutely everything. So
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: whatever is the latest scandal, and there will always be
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: when there is not a week goes by when there is,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: fans of Take can do the Internet to express how
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: cross they are about this, that and the other, and
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: it's all just nonsense. But the musicians will tend to
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: abloge on it. You know. We have reached the stage,
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: of course, where the Rolling Stones no longer perform Brown Sugar.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: I think I'm right side. I think the last tour,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: then do it.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Because oh, yes, you're right. I remember this.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: I think I think Mike had said, no, we can't
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: do it right and and Keith made some reference to
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: it about the sisters or something, you know them. But
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: I I just I sort of think, you know, when
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I look at the Rolling Stones, if the Rolling Stones
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: are not not in some level offending somebody, what's the
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: point of the Rolling Stone?
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: For Guns n' Roses was the greatest hit or box
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: there or something, but they removed I used to love
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: her the song I used to love her, but I
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: had to kill her. It's I think that was the one.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: But point being, yeah, it's they're in a sense apologizing
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: saying sorry we wrote that. We won't we're going to pretend.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Like you well, yeah, yeah, it's y, you know, but
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: if it's.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: If it's art, you know, it's like watching an old
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: movie where somebody's in black face. I mean, we we
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: get that that's not right, but that's what represented the
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: culture that we were at at the time from an
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: artistic standpoint.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Well, also when you and also it always interests me that,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: you know, if you go back into blues and jazz,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: the amount of violence in those songs, you know, people
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: don't don't say anything about because oh that's kind of
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: quaint and old.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Booked on rock podcasts will be back after this. The
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Steel Wheels tour is what you bring up in the
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: book too, How big that was?
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Well, that was that that was the first kind of
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: the first New Age tour. Really, you know, that was
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: the first tour to be where the promotion to was
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Michael Cole, Canadian who who kind of revolutionized the scaling
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: of tours, you know, and he basically said to them, well, look,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: you know how much money you've been getting out of
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: tours in the past. I can pretty much double it,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: you know. And how are you going to do that. Well,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: we're going to charge moreph tickets because people were paying
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: more for tickets, and we're going to sell a lot
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: of merchandise, and we're going to bring in corporate sponsors
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: in a way that you've never done it before, and
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: we're going to run it more like you know, Major
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: League sports. And this they did very successfully because the
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: first thing that it was build an enormous set, you know,
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: with kind of walkways and ladders, you know, because you
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: have to do something as you increase the scale of
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: the thing, you have to increase the scale of what
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: people are getting, what people are seeing, you know, you
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: have to give them somebody to look at, you know.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: So it's a little bit of the old theatrical joke
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: about you know, I came out whistling the set. That's
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: what happened with that tour. So every tour that's taken
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: place since it's pretty much been in the you know,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: in the footsteps of steel wheels, you know, and it's
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: still going on to this day. How much can we
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: charge slightly more than we charged least time? How much
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: is everybody else charging? Okay, well we'll peg it round
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: about that level. And of course the profile of the
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: people going has changed so much. I think I talk
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: about this and the book. The first time I saw
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Bruce Pringsteen was nineteen eighty at Madison Square Garden Thanksgiving,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: and he would have been thirty my memory of some
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: try and think about this in my memory looking around
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Madison Square Garden, I don't think there would have been
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: anybody then that night who was over the age of forty.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: I just and they would have been very much at
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: the elder end, Whereas nowadays you got to do anything.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: You know, the starting age is eight and the older
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: ages eighty and more. You know. And the tickets for
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: these shows you used to obtain them by going and
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: queuing up outside the box office all night, or sending
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: off your check or your cash or whatever. Well, nowadays
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: it's it's an internet. It's all about speedy internet connections,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: credit cards, isn't it. So it's it's bound to be
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: the profile of going and people going is bound to
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: be different, you know, so if teenagers go nowadays, they
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: very often go with their parents. Now that really changes
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: the nature. You know, I never did that. It wasn't
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: you know, the idea of anybody's parents going with them
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: to pop music show in the sixties would have been
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: utterly inconceivable. And also you've got these these interesting dynamics
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: that it becomes a competitive thing between parents. You know, Oh,
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Sonta's parents, she's got tickets for telor come, but you
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: can't take us. It's a challenge to every red blood
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: and father that my credit cards as good as anybody else's. Yeah,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: there's a competitive element, no doubt about it. You know.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: This was last year. I was going to see a
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Red Sox game with my nephew. He's twenty and all
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: he wanted to listen to. On the way there was
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: rap Kanye and Kendrick Lamar, you know, and I said,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: do you or any of your friends listen to rock? Eh?
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: The only name he brought up. He goes, yeah, I
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: have one friend listens to Pink Floyd. I said, okay,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: I'll take that. What is it about Pink Floyd? Like,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: at what point did they become you know, as you
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: point out the book more famous than the members of
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: the band themselves.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean they they're a wonderful example of
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: the great truth, which is that the most valuable thing
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: any band has is not the song catalog, all the lineup,
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: it's the name in the end, it's the name, you know.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: And there's a classic case of this with Pink Floyd,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: which is that Roger Waters, you know, pretty much left
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: the group expecting them to pretty much stop. You know
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: that I'm the main the main singer, I'm the main songwriter,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: and you know, this is all over if I'm going
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: over here, because he found that the other members of
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: the group were not going to stop at all. They
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: were going to keep going, and so he assumed that
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: fans would still flock to see him, and they didn't, really,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: you know, very hardcore fans did. But he still has
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: to kind of I don't know what he'd done on
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: his last talk, but it wasn't that long ago that
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: he was billing himself as the genius behind Pink Floyd
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: on the posters, you know, which is pretty sad state
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: of affairs if you had to do that, really. And also,
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: the beautiful thing about Pink Floyd I always thought was
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: that they were kind of anonymous. You know, when people
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: think of Pink Floyd, they'd end have a very strong
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: visual image. If you have a visual image of Bink Floyd,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: it tends to be either the covers of Dark Side
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: of the Moon or whatever, or it's some light show
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: in the distance, some kind of psychedelic colored meebe pulsing,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: you know, with these four or five figures in shadows
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: at the front. And those four or five figures could
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: be anybody really, you know, it's not like you have
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: a visual image of the Rolling Stones. It's Mick and Keith.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: I have a visual image of Pink Floyd. It was
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: never Dave Gilmour and Roger Waters. It just wasn't that
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: at all. Therefore, people would be quite happy to go
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: along and see a lineup of the Bink Floyd that
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: didn't necessarily, you know, contain all their favorites, as long
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: as it delivered the kind of Pink Floyd experience, you know.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: And you know, they were definitely a beneficiary of that,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: you know, and they were always internationally successful, kind of
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: before a lot of British groups were. You know, it
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: always to strike me that they were more they were
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: more popular in France or South America or whatever than
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: they were in the UK. But they are also an
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: extraordinary example of the fact that you know bands who
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: are formed amongst a bunch of teenagers, you know, and
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: they rehearsing scout uts and they played the church hall
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: and whatever, and they spend life in the back of
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: a van for a while, even in their sixties and seventies.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: They very often bear grudges still to this day that
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: don't go away, you know. And the kind of feuding
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: between Roger Waters and Dave Gilmore is an absolute classic
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: case of that still goes on. You know. They had
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: they had some exchanges over over social media a few
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: years ago that I and many other people just naturally
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: assumed would end up in the court of law, but
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: never did because they obviously think, oh, that's just the
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: way we carry on. That's the way we carried on
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: since we were eighteen, you know, right, And it almost
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: fascinates me. You've got you've got teenage relationships carried on
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: into the seventies and eighties.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how they got together for Live eight Still, it's
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing. That was in four I think, right was four? Yeah, yeah,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: But then you find out later, like Gilmore said, and
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Richard Wright and Nick Mason were like, yeah, it wasn't
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: really the greatest experience having to be up there with
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Roger and deal with them again. And you think, man,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: couldn't you at least just kind of hug it outd
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: and say, oh, look what we did together. But it no, no,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: it's not not gonna happen.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: No, no, you know, Somewhere at the bank of their
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: mind is the memory of what somebody said after a
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: giggainst in eighty two that you don't know about, you
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: never will know about, you know what I mean. There's
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: a there's a really good book came out a few
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: years ago and written my Dan Zaynes about Tom Petty.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you ever read it. And Dan
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Zaynes with a member of the group called Del Fogo.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, I've had him on. Okay, yes, one zines,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I think, are you.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: There's a book about Tom Petty. And he spent clearly
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: spends a lot of time with them, with the Tom
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: Petty and the band, and so he reports all the
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: all the things said after gigs, and there's this one
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: there's one particular occasion whether they're on the boss and
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: there's some bust up and I think it's Stan Lynch
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: and Mike Campbell or whatever, and he says, and I
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: never liked your wife. And you thought there's no coming
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: back for it. There is now Listen, in every band,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: every band, there has been an incident that it's never
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: been recorded, but that has been. It's bound to have been,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: you think about it. They're living in each other's pockets
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: under massive pressure. Bad times, good times. He goes egos
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: to sensitivitis, public attention, money, all the equally. Of course
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: that's bad to happen.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Why is he on the cover of Rolling and we're not?
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, absolutely.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Or we we did take a picture for Rolling Stone,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: but for some reason we're not on it.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: They didn't use its us out of it.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: I love the one with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: literally over spilled milk where one of the wives your
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: girlfriends dropped milk and Joe Perry or Steven Tyler or
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: whatever he said, pick that up. And the other guys
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: don't talk to my wife that way.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Quite fair enough, you know what I mean. But so
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: you know it's the kind.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Of Nacy Wilson over I was one of their boyfriends.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Didn't like the other's children. The way they're acting it.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: You're bound, that's about it. Listen. It hammens in every
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: you know, it hammers to everybody. We're nine bounds. But
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: they've got you know, they are locked together through eternity,
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: which is it's a difficult it's a difficult thing. You know,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: most of us never have to deal with it. They do.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: I got to Bill Hyman. Bill Wyman told me that
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: after the Steel Wheels tour, I think they had been
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: a long time deciding about whether to go on tour
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: because Mick and Keith been doing cello records of falling
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: out one of them, and so Bill Wyman said, at
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: the end of the tour, he said, that's my last
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: tour because I can't deal with this uncertainty. And so
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: two years later he gets a phone call. We started rehating,
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: you know, in a few weeks time. Are you ready,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: he says, No, I told you I was leaving, and
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: meet Jack said, thought you were joking. Wow, And I thought,
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: I thought, this is a little fantastic story. Because the
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Rolling Stones, you can't resign from the Rolling Stones. There's
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: no h R department that you can go and see
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: is there you can't go. It's like, when did you
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: first decide, you know, where would you like to be
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: in the next two years? You know it doesn't exist.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: You just you're signed up. It's like being a member
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: of the royal family. You know you're born into it
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: enough and it's assumed you will be there for even Moore.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: And so he said no, I told you, and they
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: just didn't believe him. And that's partly because there is
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: no way of sending in your notice in the Rolling Stones.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: There's no way of having accounting and saying well, thank
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: you very much for your service. It always interests me
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: about bounds in my experience, they never talk about the
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: important things. Ever, they keep off the subject. They talk
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: about tonight's gig, the record they're making, whatever and everything else.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Just can we can deal with that? At some point
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: they kick it down the road, you know, which maybe,
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: which is maybe where they're still going.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the story of him with Charlie Watts, you call
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: them the drummer. Well, Charlie knocked him out.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Dr drummer. But you say I got a load of
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: I'm sure that's exaggerates the story. But I have a
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: lot of sympathy with drummers because I think drummers. I
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: think the drummers the most important member of the group.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: I think the drummer is the person you can't replace,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: you know, Ringo, John Bonham, Charlie Watts, you know Levi
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: on Hell Can't be Done, Can't be done, you might
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: get a verticmas better. Drummer's not the point, not the
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: point at all. It's the drummer for that band, right.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: So true. I actually was listening to Lonely at the
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Top from Mick, his solo song. It's a great song,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: but boy, what if Charlie was on this, You know
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: what if he saved that for the Stones. Today you
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: can't help but think that.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: It's the fingerprint of the group. Old fashioned groups was
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: the drummer because the drummer played in the same certain way,
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: because the drummer was built into something way. They could
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: no more change the way they played than change the
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: way they walk. And to the sound of the group
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: colaced around the drummer. And then there are loads of
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: examples of.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: This book on rock podcasts. We'll be back after this.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Look, we're gonna take all.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about MTV's Unplugged, because that's important too, because
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: I still look back in that and I think boy,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: MTV catered towards the teen twenty something audience, but it worked,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and you got these artists like Eric Clapton in his
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: forties really just bringing in huge numbers as far as
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: watch and then who would buy the album.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: It was weird really because it's it's it's a television construct,
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: isn't he. The idea of the idea is you're gonna
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: you're gonna all sit on stools and you're gonna play
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: acoustic guitars, and the cameras are going to be very
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: near to you, and you're going to do tell your
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: old songs, but because you're going to do them acoustically,
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: they're going to have less kind of visceral attack to them,
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: and they'll all end up sounding vaguely poignant, which will
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: suit the vibe of the show, you know, and people
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: led to people tried to change the format. Bruce Brings It,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: didn't do it unplowed. He did it with a bat
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: because he wanted to do it with his new band,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: not very successfully. But Eric Clapton is the kind of
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: classic case. You know that that version of Laylor, which
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: he didn't really he didn't want it on the album.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: He didn't think it worked, and I can kind of
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: understand why, but that became that became the biggest hit
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: of his entire career because it came along at a
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: time of CD sales and you know, a massively expanded market.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: And then of course it had the terrible tragic incident
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: of Eric Clapton's son dying and appalling accidents in New York.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: And then you know the song Tears in Heaven, you know,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: which was actually lyrics written but not by Eric Clapton
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: but by Will Jennings, you know, and that became an
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: important part of it. And so there was a sense
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: that as people get older, they've got me Keavla say this,
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: not wanting able to take this the wrong way, but
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: people kind of they the fans warmed. The sense that
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: people have gone through tragedy, do you know, losses, illnesses,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: divorces and so forth. It binds them with the fans.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Once they get beyond forties and fifties, you know, everybody's
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: paint is scratched a bit, you know, people like that.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: And this is why I talk about this whole thing
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: about everybody comes back as a legend, you know. And
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: the Glastonory Festival in Somerset in the UK, which is,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: you know, Europe's biggest festival, and it's televised and so forth,
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: they have a Sunday afternoon slot which they now call
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: the legend slot, you know, where they get the most
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: unlikely people come along. You know, any younger audience completely
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: embraces them because they are a kind of grizzle obil
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: trooper who's got a few miles on the clock. People
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: like that idea. Well, one of the people, one of
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: the people, it seems to me whether he intended to
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: on art, who had such a successful late career as
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: a legend was Johnny Cash, which I always date to
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: the first of those Deaf American or American Recordings albums
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: made with Rick Rubin that came out. The cover picture
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: was Don't Buy a Guy. I know English photographer Andy Girl,
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: and I don't even recall that picture where he's a
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: saint on a railway line Australia and he's wearing some
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: kind of I don't know what you call it, a
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: duster coat or whatever flares out behind him like Robert
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Mitcham and whatever. That film was The Vengeful Priest or whatever, right, so,
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: and I always think Johnny Cash after that, I made
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: about another six albums, I think, and they were all
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: trying to be albums that lived up to that photograph,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: you know, and they did. You know, everything you did
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: later on struck everybody as kind of gothic and profound.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: That was you can't do that when you're read twenties.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: You can do it when you're in sixties and seventies.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: People really warm to the idea.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: We booked on rock podcasts, We'll be back after this.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: All his life he looked away in the future, in
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: the horizon, never his mind.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: On where he was. Another one we're going to get
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: to we haven't yet. The Beatles, And like you say,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: who's bigger than the Beatles? The Beatles, at least at
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: one point that became just like you say with Johnny Cash.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: At some point it seemed like in the mid nineties,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: once we got that anthology series, suddenly the Beatles become
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: bigger than the Beatles. Like a lot of these Beatles
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: experts that I have on the show will say, the
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Beatles weren't always this larger than life thing. There was
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: a point there where there was interest that was lost
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: in them, and it's point they became this huge draw.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: How and when did that happen? Do you think it
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: was mid nineties with the am.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: I think there's many stages to it, actually, and I've
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: written about this in more than one book. John Lennon
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: dies in nineteen eighty and that brings about a whole
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: resurgence of you know, people's feeling about John Lennon and
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: about the Beatles, and it's only in the early eighties.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: This is a good indication of this that some bright
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: spark at EMI Recording studios in Abbey Road says, why
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: do we call the studios Abbey Road? You know, prior
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: to that nobly thought of it. We used to drive
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: past that all the time in the seventies and never
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: thought about it at all. Nowadays you can't get down
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: Aby Road for young people having the pictures taken on
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: the zebra crossing. So, you know, the eighties was one thing.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: But then in the nineties you have the coincidence of
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: the Anthology series of reissues, and in Britain that coincided
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: with britpop, with the Oasis and Blur and Pulp and
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: many others and The interesting thing about all these bands
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: was that they were all huge fans of the Beatles,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: and there were fans of the Kinks and the Who
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: and the Rolling Stones. They were fans of an earlier
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: form of British pop music which they promised to kind
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: of continue the work of. So that was one thing.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: The other thing was anthology. And I think it's remarkable
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: because George Martin, i think two years before then, had
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: been interviewed in the Times and one of the questions
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: they put to him was is there anything left in
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: the vaults by the Beatles? And he said, no, I've
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: been through all the vaults and there's nothing. There's nothing
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: at all. Two years later there were three double CDs.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Because the difference was some bright spark realized post Bob
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Dylan's biograph and the bootleg series and all those things
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: that you could sell people fragments. You could sell stuff
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: as archaeology rather than polished, finished stuff. You know, there
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: was a different audience of polish, finish stuff. There was
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: a new audience who wanted the archaeology, wanted to hear
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: the fragments, wanted to hear the bits of studio chats,
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: wanted to feel they were there in some way because
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: they were responding to it as history. You know, with
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: all the excitement of history. It'll never be like that
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: for me because it was my teenage years. You know,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: I remember these things as live things happening when I
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, So you got that kind of interest.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: And CD was a technology that enabled that to be
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: kind of monetized, as they say, and subsequently that kind
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: of ran into the twenty first century where you know,
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: you got you know, desktop recording machinery and an endless
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: access to kind of outtakes bits of video you could
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, the Beatles became a thing you could play
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: with forever more. Really, they'll just continue to give you
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: the bits and you can assemble the Beatles in a
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: way that appeals most to you. And I think also
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: as that era has receded from direct memory, it increasingly
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: seems the fact that they did what they did seems
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: increasingly miraculous, just absolutely extraor in a way that it
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: didn't at the time. It just you know, one of
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: the things, one of one of my hobby horses is,
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: you know, people talk about pop music now days and
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: moving really quickly. No, it doesn't it moves really slowly nowadays.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: It moved really quickly in the sixties. Boy, that's how
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: come the Beatles went from Love Me Doo to Strawberry
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Feels Forever in four years.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Amazing?
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, but it would have been quicker than
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: that probably. You know, you can't imagine the velocity of
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: change in the ninety sixties unimaginable, whereas nowadays. And here's
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: the thing that people often say to me is that
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: if you listen to a band from now and you
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: listen to a band from ten years ago, there's no difference, right. Yeah.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: The creative ambition with the Beatles, what they do such.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: I think as a technology as well. Yeah, you know,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: it's a combination of genius. Is not the thing you are.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: It's a thing that happens, and it happens under certain
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: circumstances when there's four persons that is, get together with
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: George Martin in Abbey Roads at that time when Taper's
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: just kind of come along, and then you know, four track,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: eight track whatever, and if you want an orchestra and
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: get you on and the daftor's idea you possibly have
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: will entertain that nobody's going to say to your Nay,
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: you can't do that. You have the Beatles and you're
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: right in your own check at the time, you know,
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: so we'll never see that again. Also, the business is
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: innately conservative now, you know, it doesn't want to move
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: too far ahead of the public. Nobody thought about that
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty six, sixty seven, because whatever you heard,
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: you know, if you don't in the class at years
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: only sixty five or say, is the it's the great
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: year of the single, you know, satisfaction and get off
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: my cloud knock on would help. Like a rolling stone.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Whatever Beach Boys record came out without you, you were
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: hearing something every week that was completely unlike anything you'd
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: ever heard before, every week, every single week. When the
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: Kings came along and did see my friends, he thought,
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: my god, what was that. That's made a record like
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: that before? When Righteous Brothers, you've lost that loving feeling.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Haven't been a record like that before, haven't been a
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: record remotely like that before. And that was the sixties,
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: the speed of change, and even in the seventies there
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: was considerable speed of change, but then it slowed down,
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: and it still slows this day. So it still feels
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: to me as if you know, pop music is moving
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: forward with the handbrake fully on because it doesn't suit
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: the business for it to move too fast.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: We talked about the Internet earlier, the universe zero effect.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: What is that and how does it argue for the
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: internet's benefit to order artists.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a classic case of this. Only last week
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: I pulled out a record that I had had since
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty and had never played. And this is a
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: record on Brian ENO's in an ambient series called by
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: called Laragi. He's an American, a record called Day of Radiance.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: And I just happened to play it.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Oh god, this is fantastic.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: It's really good instrumental record. I thought, I wonder, I wonder.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: What happened to him.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Of course, nowadays I can go straight onto the internet. Fine,
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: oh he's still with us, he's eighty two. And then
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: I can look at all the records, and then I'm
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: going on Spotify and I can see I could listen
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: to twenty five of his records. And this is something
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: completely unknown. Twenty five of his records are still there
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: to this day. That didn't happen in the world before
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: the Internet. Let me tell you, if you had a
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: record coming out, It came out, it was there for
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: six months, then it disappeared, totally disappeared. I will be
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: completely forgotten nowadays, and you cannot argue about whether it's
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: a blessing or a curse. Nothing is forgotten, nothing at all.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: It's all there forever. More so, people are constantly discovering
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: elements of the past. You know, my children, grandchildren, whatever,
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: they have access to a far wide arrange of music
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: that I've had access to. What they do not have
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: is any sense of the chronology of that music, no
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: sense at all. They wouldn't know whether Elvis Presley came
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: before Radiohead. These wouldn't know. It's just all there, all
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: the time. And so it turned out to be I
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: think a huge benefit. Ax complained about getting paid, you know,
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: David Crosby, David Crosby no longer with us, but you know,
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: David Crosby in his later years used to, you know,
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: rant on about how bitter he was about the fact
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: that you couldn't make any money out of records. And
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: I used to think, well, all right, David, I kind
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: of understand that, but you're still famous, David. Nobody's forgotten you,
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? That didn't apply to early
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: generations of musicians. You know. I go and see Ben
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: sidron not long ago, Ben sidron Usamber Steve Miller's Bound
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: a keyboll Player I always used to quite like, and
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: you know, got some of his early albums. I wouldn't
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: say it were Ronnie Scott's in London last year, I
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: think it was. And then afterwards I looked on Spotify.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: I think he's got forty five albums. They're all still there,
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: and I'm sorry, if you're an eighty year old musician,
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: isn't that a good thing? You can turn around and go,
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: that's my life's work. There, it all is. You know,
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: it hasn't disappeared. You don't have to go and find it,
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: And so I think more people are going to want
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: to see you alive.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: And you're charging more money as everybody is, and don't
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: blame them for that, you know. And here's the other
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: big change that I was applied in the years covered
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: by the book. You know, it used to be that
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: an album, to buy an album was more expensive than
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: to buy a ticket to go and see somebody. Well,
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: that has been the case since nineteen eighty probably you
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: know now you can have the music for free, but
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: it's five hundred dollars to go and see them. You know,
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: it's a different thing. But the Internet has made everybody's
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: musical career longer and will continue to do so. Because
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: you can be the most obscure group in the world.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: Your fans can find you nowadays. They didn't used to
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: be able to. It was utterly impossible. You didn't know
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: whether you were dead or alive. When Jim Morrison died
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: in Paris in nineteen seventy one, do you know how
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: long it took the news to get to London? Two weeks?
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, that is crazy. That is crazy.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: It had to be, you know, because it took it
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: took it took a while to reach California. Yeah. And
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: and then somebody in London they had heard a rumor
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: that he died. They Melody Maker printed, we've heard a
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: rumor that he died, but we can't get that. A
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: week later we confirmed it via California. Now, when Amy
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Weinerhouse died, I knew long before the announcement on social media.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: You know. Now, I'm not saying it's good or bad,
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: but that's the world you live in. You know, so
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: musical careers are way longer because of the Internet.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: Podcasts will be back after this.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: Well we're waiting.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: You mentioned, Steve, I'm going to be interviewing an author
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: or a fantastic book on Boss Gaggs.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, Jude Warner is a very good book. But
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: he was a guy who disappeared in the eighties and
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: came back, which is at leads to my question because
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: this Joe Elliot of def Leppard was asked once, did
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: you ever think about intentionally breaking the band up, going
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: away for a while and then coming back for dramatic purposes,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: you know, to draw more attention. He says, no, We're
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: just we're never going to go away. We're going to
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: keep going until we stop, until we're all gone. There
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: are artists who do go away and come back, and
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: like the Guns of Roses, it's a big deal. So
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know, is that.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: Something you know? Do you think the thing about the
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: Rolling the Stones is they kept going.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: They kept going. They never went away and came back.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: They nearly went away, and they would have gone away
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: if any of them were that if making had a
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: solo success.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Of course, Yeah, that's what he wanted in the mid.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: Eighties there, you know, any of them would.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: He was pissed off he was keeping songs for his
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: solo album. He's like, why aren't you using this for arms.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: The you know, and that, And that's the great The
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: thing about bands is that they eventually realize that they're
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: worth far more together than they will ever be worth separately.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: Even in the case of like Phil Collins, who had
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of success in it on his own, probably
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: not more than Genesis really, you know. And so there
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: is a lot to be said for keeping plugging away,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: you know, because reunion albums it's very difficult to live
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: up to people's expectations, I think, really, and there are
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: cases of bands right about in the book, bands who
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: never brought it off. Really, it's like the Birds broke
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: up and then re you know, reformed about two years
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: later in a very underwhelming fashion. Whereas if the Birds
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: had just kept going, you know, I mean, they could
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: have done you know, they could have had members leaving
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: joining whatever, it wouldn't have mattered. I think continuity is
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: a good thing. I think it's I think it's a
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: powerful thing for bands, you know. I'd speak to quite
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: as you probably do. I speak to quite a few
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: musicians and there in their seventies, you know, And this
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: might be people that you talked to in their forties,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: and their attitude now is so different. Their attitude is
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: grateful in the seventies. I'm deeply grateful anybody cares, you know,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: that I can fill a room and people come along,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: you know. And there might have been a time when
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: I was dissatisfied with that, but it's not now, not
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: at all.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: So you have to do what they love and make
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: a living. Still, they didn't have to go on the
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: same job, you know, painting houses or whatever they got
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: to do to scrap together enough money to survive.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: Well. I remember asking ron would about this years ago,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: that he'd gone to our college, and when he told
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: his mother, who was leaving to join in whatever bandy
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: was joined at the time, she said, oh, you know,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: why don't you stay at college? You get qualification and
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: all that. And he was talking to me in his fifties.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: I suppose about the people he knew who'd left school
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: and got the qualifications. I said, what they're doing now?
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: He said, they all got earlier retirements, right, got made
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: redundant or whatever. Well, you getting made redundant from the
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Rolling Stones, you know, as Bill Wyman discovered.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well and the key is publishing. Get a good
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: publishing deal.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, well yeah, don't don't, don't give it away.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: You know, author Robin Platts I had on to talk
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: about a book on the zombies and they signed this
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: deal when they first started. It was so rare that
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: they were leasing their music to the to the record company.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: Really, so they've still got it, They've still got those rights.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that that was so rare because usually they take
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: advantage of these guys when they're sure seventeen years old.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: Well, I was talking only the other day. I never
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: met I never twenty ten before Justin Hayward Blues.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: So Justin Hayward used to sing with Marty White. I
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: used to play with Martin Wild in the UK and
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: he was like sixteen seventeen and he was playing down
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: the bill somewhere on the east coast of Britton, I
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: can't remember where, and top of the bill was Lonnie Donaghan.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: Loney Donaghan was a big name of skiffle in the Beatles. Yeaste, yeah,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: talk about and Justin Hayward was introduced to Loneie Donegan
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: by Martin Wilde who said to him, this lad's really
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: talented and he can write songs. And so Lonnie Donegan said,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: why don't you sign to my publishing company. And he
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: said to Martin Wilde, should I do this? Martin wild said, no,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: don't do it, but he did so. Consequently, Knights in
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: White Satin and all those things still owned by Lonnie
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: Donagan's publish.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, oh oh my, who was I was it? The
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: animals too? What was the one where they just threw
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: the names on there because they went out of room?
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: Well, the animal guy, the animals, I think the story
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: about the animals. His House of the Rising Sun is
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: obviously a traditional song, but it was traditional arranged Alan Price,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: who was the keyboard player. So consequently whatever revenue came
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: from that, which must be a lot over a long
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: period of time, all went to one member. Yes, that's
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: the story, because he played the arranged the fantastic keyboard.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: So you know. So. But but bands nowadays, you hope,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: are wiser, and there's seem to be. The certainly seems
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: to be cause you know Radiohead and you two and
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: not there not their spring chickens, you know, r e
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: m all these bands who shared the publishing, they appeared
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: to have avoided falling out with each other. A.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Billy Squire's the Story's got all this publishing. So
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: why doesn't Police Squire tours? He doesn't need to if
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: he wants to, he could. Yeah, booked on rock podcasts.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: Will be back after this.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: During our brief indormasion, let's take a flying crip from
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: Milanda Fantasy to everyday life.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: We'll winding down just a few more questions. Actually, it's
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: really a combination question here, because I'm wondering where you
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: think will go now twenty thirty years now, when these
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: artists are gone? How can these legacy artists sustain? And
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: I combine that with this idea that Kiss has for
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: an avatar show. So you know, what are bands going
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: to do? You got these like as you say, you
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: got these companies that specialize in managing the affairs of
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: these late acts. Where are we going from here? Well?
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: I think it's very difficult to predict because you people say, oh,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: the Beatles and you know, Motown and Bob Dylan and whatever,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: they'll always be played, They'll always be popular. They might
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: there might be but I recently read a fantastic two
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: part biography by a guy called Gary Giddings, an American writer,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: which I hardhly recommend that you deal with music books
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: on your podcast. This is a brilliant music book, two
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: part music book about some not rock and roll at all,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: but somebody who was for most of the twentieth century
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: America's biggest musical sensation and is now largely forgotten. Bing
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: Crosby who talks about being Crosby nowadays? Who plays Bing Crosby.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Record, that's it's Christmas unless it's Christmas one record.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: Louis Alstrong, who talks about you know, so you have
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: no guarantee you know that these things will continue. They
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: may do, they may not, They may be forgotten for
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: twenty years and then and then come back. I think
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: it's interesting that things like you know, the Bob Dylan film,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: Timothy shallow May and the Elton John film, and there's
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: a Springsteen films that are being made, and they're going
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: to make four separate films of other Beatles, and so
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: all these artists are being prepared for a future entertaining
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: people who don't know who they are, you know, So
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: they're going to be recreated for those people, and that's
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: just the way it's going to be. As far as
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: the kind of Kiss, type of kind of spooky late
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: tech Disneyland reinvention is a very successful case of this
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: in London has been for the last few years, which
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: is the Abba Show Voyage. I've heard a lot about that,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: which is enormously popular and I think maybe just about
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: to go into profit because it costs so much money
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: to develop it. And I often sit there and try
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: to think of another act that you could do that
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: treatment with, and I've failed to come up with us.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: There's something about Abba. It's four people, it's two girls,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: two blops. You know. Also, they're still alive. There's something
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: about the character of the music. Maybe Chass might work
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: because they're cartoons, you know, in the first place.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: We're not going to see a Bob Dylan avatar.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: No. But also another point with Kiss is do they
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: have the same residual affection that Abba have. I'm not
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: sure they do, you know what I mean. Everybody knows
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: what Abba sounds like. Everybody likes Abba on some level.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: Not the same thing with Kiss, not the same thing
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: at all, you know. So I think there's going to
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: be a lot of there'll be a lot of money
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: spent in trying to prove this either right or wrong.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: They had a lot of money maybe wasted well.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: So it really depends on the artist, and it's gonna
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: be some It's gonna be up to some creative people
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: to see how they can present because we know that
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: the music itself, if you can get it to people
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: in future generations, a lot of them are just they're
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: gonna love it. The question is how are you gonna
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: get it to them? Like, how are you gonna present
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: it to them? What kind of packages are gonna rin?
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's also certain kinds of certain kinds
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: of music. If we get towards the end, I'll leave
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: you this final point. All pop music ends up sounding poignant.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: Pop music plus time sounds poignant. Abbot. No better case
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: of this than Abba all Abba songs now fifty years
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: later sound vaguely sad and wistful. And that's what we
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: like about them, you know, And I think the same
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: thing would apply to I don't know, elo similar music.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: You know, people feel the same way about that kind
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: of music. Pet Shot Boys, the Oddest Things, the bee Gees,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: you know, that kind of works. I'm not sure about
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: rock bands myself. Actually, may I may be proved wrong.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: It's up in the air.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see. It'll be interesting within the next ten
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: twenty years. We'll see. Hope I get old before I die?
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Why rock stars never retire. It is out now and
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: you can find it wherever books are sold. Look for
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: it in your nearest bookstore as well. And you can
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: always find your nearest bookstore at booked on rock dot
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: com and David. Actually, last night you may have noticed
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: I friended you, signed up for you on Instagram, Facebook
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: and X so people can find you at all three.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: Right, do you have a website, Andy, Yeah, just David
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: hempwoo dot com.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so I'll put the links up on the
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: show notes. People can reach out to you.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: Hi, Kevin, David.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Fascinating conversation. And let's see what
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: happens in the year twenty We'll have you come back
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: twenty thirty five, twenty.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: Five, we'll see where' righty may slow.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll have your avatar on if we need to.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: Thanks David, all right, nice to talk to you. Cheers.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: M m hmm. That's it. It's in the box