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Highlights and extended interviews from 91.5 Jazz and More's morning show.
0:00:00
Welcome to the Morning Groove podcast. This is John Nashin. You can find us anytime you like at themorninggroove.transistor.fm My guest today is a young lady who is a singer, is a director, is a writer, is a producer, composer, and an interesting person that's living currently in Los Angeles but is kind of back and forth from the desert to LA and back and it's Marnene Lynn Fields.
0:00:26
Hello.
0:00:27
Hello.
0:00:28
Thank you for having me.
0:00:29
And how are you today?
0:00:30
I'm doing absolutely great. I've had a wonderful trip up here. I've been doing a series of interviews and I'm thrilled to be on your show. Well, that's great. Give the audience some background on you.
0:00:42
Tell them about yourself.
0:00:43
Okay. Well, I'm an entertainment industry veteran of 46 years. I was a champion gymnast back in college and landed a full scholarship in gymnastics back in the mid-70s and they weren't giving gymnastics scholarships to women back then. And a few years into that I was discovered by Hollywood and I became one of the top Hollywood stunt women in the world in the 70s and 80s, a pioneering stuntwoman. But I was very serious about acting and so when Hollywood discovered me I actually went into stunt acting and landed a lot of roles, much smaller than Angelina Jolie. And since that time I've transitioned into a character actress and after a bad car accident could no longer do stunts and that's when I got in touch with my childhood dream to become a singer, a famous singer and songwriter and scriptwriter. Well, that's very interesting. So you went from gymnastics to getting blown up. Yes. Well, high falls. Because of the gymnastics, I was a Hollywood original fall girl and I did a lot of high falls, high dives, fight scenes and yes there were some explosions and being blown up also.
0:02:06
I've never quite understood the motivation to being a stunt person.
0:02:11
No, I really just wanted to act and I kept the day job of the stunt work because it got me readings and got me stunt acting jobs and my career took off. I was chosen to do the backward jump with a half twist punched off the moving train by Clint Eastwood in The Gauntlet. My career just overnight and for 15 years the phone rang off the hook and I was in real demand because of the gymnastics talent.
0:02:41
That's great. Did you study acting?
0:02:43
Yes. I studied acting in college and once I became an actress in Hollywood. I was with two of the biggest celebrity acting coaches. One was Jeff Kory, who is Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Paul Newman, Robert Redford. He was their acting coach. And then I also was with him three years, and I also college three years, theater arts minor, and then Victor French of Highway to Heaven and Little House on the Prairie with Michael Landon. I was with him three years. So I am a very well-trained character, actress, director, scriptwriter, composer, very educated all the way around the board, and I've written a book, The Elusive Craft of Acting, an actress preparation process that's got five stars and doing very well on Amazon.
0:03:40
Oh, that's great. I didn't know you were an author as well.
0:03:43
Yes, I should. Well, I've got, there's two books about my life and career that I'll be publishing in 2023 around fall and Christmas holiday, Rolling with the Punches with a Hollywood Fall Girl. After my car accident I had a beautiful religious healing by Jesus Christ and religious awakening. And TBN's Trilogy Publishing has picked up my autobiography, Cartwheels and Halos, A True Marnie Linfield Story. And it talks about my car accident and being healed by God. And that's my greatest work along with my film I'm doing right now for the mentally ill who are homeless and saving a mother. Were you also trained for music? Yes. What I did, I've been to a lot of different music schools. I've studied voice. I've studied keyboards. I don't consider myself to be a musician, even though Wikipedia lists me as one. I'm a composer. I've studied pop composition at Cal State Northridge and also Berkeley School of Music. I've studied music theory and lyric writing. Pat Patterson, one of the top lyric writers, I've taken courses from him. My love is music more than acting or anything. I love to sing and so I've got a lot of music coming forward and already have won some awards for my music and singing. Oh, that's great. What always amazed me is composers like Gamelan Huff and those guys that were so prolific
0:05:23
and they wrote so many hit records and so many beautiful songs. But I think the most amazing composer that I've studied and played music with is Stephen Sondheim.
0:05:46
Oh, yes, absolutely.
0:05:47
I mean, here's a man that was so prolific that he wrote 10 Broadway shows in the 70s alone.
0:05:54
Amazing.
0:05:54
You know, you know what his first job was. He was 16, and he was the lyricist on West Side Story.
0:06:01
Oh my God. Oh, I'm going to... That is amazing. At 16.
0:06:07
Well, and one of the beautiful things about Sondheim is he was able to make a name as a composer as well, besides just a lyricist, so his later shows, the music fits the words. And the words fit the music all at once.
0:06:22
Well, that's what I think happens, is that I had, during my car accident, I said I'm going to be a famous singer now that I can't do this action stuff anymore. I sat on my bed and I learned 150 top 40 songs. And then I found what God does is God gives you the gift of melody if you are singing everyone. My voice was originally Pat Benatar style and my vocalist I loved was Ann Wilson of Heart. Well, then Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey came on the scene and they were like nothing I'd ever heard. I would sit down to write and I would have to get up and sing all their songs. I do have an alto tonal register very similar to Whitney Houston. I'm not as great as her or as great as Mariah Carey. I'm under their greatness, but I do sing a lot of their songs. Well, that's great.
0:07:22
Yeah, and we just lost one of my favorite singers recently. It's Tina Turner. Oh, I know.
0:07:28
One of my favorites also. And besides the fact of her vocal ability, her musicality, but her struggle. I know. And what she overcame to have a career as Tina Turner. Absolutely amazing and her physical talent and the passion and just just well my my fascination growing up was African-American female vocalists and I loved them all of them and I would I would I was very very shy with the gymnastics and didn't talk much. I would just practice in my room wondering what it was like to be Diana Ross for one day. You know, how? And so then I fell in love with your song written by Elton John. And I wanted to be a piano based songwriter and in all my gymnastics routines I performed piano music. Well in 2012 a man from England approached me to record one of his songs and I chose Shadows and Steward Epps of early Elton John and Led Zeppelin fame produced my first single. And if they only knew, I sang every Elton John song every day. And so it was really great to have that.
0:08:59
One thing came to my mind now. I know that the serious study of piano is a very singular and lonely thing. Was gymnastics as lonely?
0:09:11
This is very true and this describes my life you just hit my life on the head because I was a song leader in high school and they would all be out since 15 years old I was in these talent shows doing floor exercise routines and I had all the corporate like talent on the balance beam and floor exercise I didn't have her talent on uneven bars and the vault but I was always alone and I was always practicing and that goes for everything. And then especially after the car accident and the surgeries, there were 12 years that I struggled just walking in and bleeding to death and going back in and having these surgeries and becoming a singer. And so it's an ideal situation for me to be a writer, be a composer and all that because I work very well alone. But I don't see it as lonely. I guess I don't know any other way. And I do need to tell you though because you're the head of this Henderson Symphony Orchestra and the percussionist, that in sixth grade I got to school late and they were passing out the instruments. And so I was really short and I got the giant string bass. And so I was in concerts, I would roll it in a red wagon back and forth to school, fall off the wagon, I'd put it back on. I was in a Christmas concert and we did, just hear those sleigh bells ring-a-ling, ying ting ting-a-ling. And I'm like, bum bum.
0:10:43
That was my only part.
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I did bum bum with the bass and two little strums and so I really admire and respect what you've done with your music.
0:10:54
See, when I started as a musician in elementary school, it was back in the era where the band director would size you up and go, let's see, tall, okay, and I'm going, well, I'm a drummer,
0:11:05
he said, no, you're going to play baritone sax. Did you learn baritone sax? Oh my God, do you play it today still? No. Oh. And they also made me play tuba because they knew I wanted to play timpani so I can learn the low frequency pitches. So do you do any composing? I do some, yeah. You're around the best musicians in Las Vegas. Thank you. Mostly I'll do some arranging and orchestrating for people. That's
0:11:32
wonderful. You know and I do work as a music copyist for music prep, all computer, you know.
0:11:38
Yeah.
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And what's really funny about that is people don't understand that we charge the same fees as we used to when we copied by hand, because it takes just as long.
0:11:49
It does. And I was reading, Stephen King said his words go down one bloody word at a time. Well the notes, I composed my first, all my arrangements on, and you will laugh, on Band in a Box. And I'm a Band in a Box expert. I've learned all of it since 2004. And it goes down one note at a time. And with my melody, you know, like, and then I'll add the chords. But I write the lyrics and I make sure they're structured correctly, where the rhymes are in the right place and the titles are in the chorus and everywhere they're supposed to be. And there's form. Yes and their form and then I hear the melody it magically is I'm and I've got about 25 songs original songs pop blues soft rock and a few religious ones ready to go and then I then will add the chords. Some people write, but I do it and lay in all the melody notes, then I do my chords, then I record my vocals in the studio to those backing tracks, and now I'm hiring live musicians to do the music part.
0:13:07
When I'm writing, I usually start with a chord pattern that I like, and then I'll improvise
0:13:12
a melody until I find one I like. And I've heard so many composers do it that way and I think that's just great.
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I grew up in a house with a grandfather that was a musician and a very prolific composer and he would just sit at the dining room table and compose.
0:13:31
And what instrument?
0:13:33
Percussion.
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Oh my God! See I can't believe anyone from percussion is able to compose like that. That is amazing.
0:13:42
Well, everyone needs to learn music theory.
0:13:45
Yes, yes. You must know music theory first.
0:13:49
But I always tell young students, no matter what instrument you want to play, you must learn piano because the whole orchestra is there in those 88 keys. That's right.
0:13:59
It's that easy.
0:14:00
And I do I know all my left-hand chords all of them But I can't get the right hand melody, but I can do the right hand chords, too So I can really perform with anyone But I'll sit there hours on end Punching out the melody that I hear and I do want to mention that I do all of this with you know I sing I dare to sing Whitney Houston Mariah Carey hard even some Streisand in an alto register. And I'm severely hearing impaired. But I'm not going to stop because music's for everyone.
0:14:36
Exactly. Any sort of impairment doesn't stop people.
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It shouldn't.
0:14:41
You know, I mean, people that are sight impaired, Stevie Wonder, look what he did.
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I know. Oh my God, yes.
0:14:47
In fact, if we're talking about this, there was a singer who was blind named Tom Sullivan years ago. And he came on the Tonight Show and here's this dude that can't see sitting on a stool with a guitar singing, I Can See Clearly. And he was laughing while he sang it. It's amazing. Jose Feliciano is another. And I've played actually parties for hearing impaired people.
0:15:17
Oh, that's wonderful.
0:15:18
Where the dance floor was vibrating with the music.
0:15:21
I hear better than that. I lost all the hearing in the left ear at 18, but they just found it's 10%. So they're able to put a device in the left ear for the first time. I haven't heard anything since 18 in the left ear. Then in 2000, I lost half of the right ear and now it's down to 30% and I have my new devices coming and I can hear myself sing and I'm hearing the water drip at the kitchen sink and the doorbell ring and the doorbell is so beautiful.
0:15:53
Oh, I remember my mother had a degenerative bone disease in her hearing system and the first time she got hearing aids she just we walked out of the place where she was fitted and she stopped and cried for about five minutes
0:16:10
yeah because she was hearing birds and things oh yes yeah no it's it's um it's remarkable and since I was 18 at the house clinic they have not made any advances in sensory neural hearing someone has come up with cutting the arm open and putting an ear
0:16:29
in the nerves of the arm. You've maybe saw it. Well I would imagine if they can find another place on your body with nerves that are working then they can do that because it's all a connection with your brain. That's right. And there's less
0:16:44
and less mystery involved in all this. Yes, then that would be just imagine the people that would hear after all this.
0:16:53
And we were talking before we started about a movie that you put together, that you're making a directorial debut in a very important movie.
0:17:01
Yes, I am.
0:17:02
Tell us about it.
0:17:04
And I'm making my directorial debut after 46 years in front of the camera and I want Clint Eastwood proud of me. That's one of the things. My mom, she had a tumor removed from her stomach and they brought her back to life pumping her heart. After that was removed, she was not herself again. I had rented her a room in a house and one day the man took her and dropped her off on the side of the freeway and I went to take her groceries like I was always doing. He says he dropped her at the side of the freeway. Well come to find out my mom had developed a viral schizophrenia along with dementia, Alzheimer's and a brain lymphoma. And so throughout the movie and the movie is A Beautiful Mind, Elephant Man, and The Sixth Sense. It's a very spiritual movie because my mom was found two weeks after my holy baptism. And one of the promises of baptism is your family will be reunited. And so it's her story. And if you have a traumatic incident happen between three and five years old, and she lost both her parents and her sister at three years old. You can develop schizophrenia so it was kind of like always there but she didn't know who I was. She was missing nine years and I had filed a missing persons report the day she turned up missing. Well nine years later they and now she's hitchhiked from Ventura, California to Oregon and then from Oregon to Seattle. Wow. And so she's found in nine years later in Seattle, Washington and they were able to match her markings on her body. She had very unique markings. So I receive a call saying they found a KP Diswain and I just had a feeling it was her. My brother said, don't go get her. Well, it was her and I brought her home to safety. I cared for her for 13 years and I'm so glad I did. She was so precious and the sweetest person you've ever met and to have this kind of disability and not have any of her brain functioning, not able to know to take medication and not able and to live. When they found her, her hair was down to here and she had basically lived in a gutter for years. She was full of lice and she had this brain lymphoma now, had grown into the size of a man's wallet on her forehead.
0:19:44
But this all explains your ability to survive.
0:19:47
Yes.
0:19:48
Because this woman was a survivor.
0:19:51
She was a survivor, like you can't believe under these circumstances. That is an excellent, excellent point. A third of the movie takes place in a psychiatric hospital after she was found. And they sliced this thing and all the surgeries she went through. She also was found with breast cancer. She survived. It's the most beautiful mother-daughter love story you've ever seen. We have a GoFundMe on GoFundMe who's going to take care of me. I'm right now, a third of the movie's been filmed, and we're looking for co-executive producers and investors, and they will all have a, you know, they'll be entitled to residuals, they'll have a profit share, and then the investments are safeguarded, and we're trying to turn it in. It's going to be submitted to Academy Award qualifying film festival.
0:20:49
Very good.
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And it's the most wonderful and exciting films. It's just wonderful.
0:20:55
Okay. Do you have a website?
0:20:57
I have Marnene Fields, M-A-R-N-E-E-N-F-I-E-L-D-E-S on the IMDB, and that is the best place to always find me. And I'm on Wikipedia.
0:21:10
And you're on all the social media?
0:21:11
Well, I do. I'm on Marnie Lynn Fields on Facebook and I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram. But every time someone goes to the IMDb page, I'm in the top. I've been in the top 15,000 of talent in the world on the IMDb as a SAG actress and former Hollywood stuntwoman. And I think they go there. It raises my score. And I'm always trying. I'm about 25,000 right now and with the film I could really raise where I'm now in that top IMDB after 46 years.
0:21:47
So now you've done so many things. Everyone has a goal that they haven't achieved.
0:21:52
Do you have one? Well, you know, I would like a house. I would like to... I had a couple condos through the years and due to circumstances after my mom was found, I got rid of the condo after she died and I was on my way prior to finding her to move to Las Vegas to get a chance to sing. I wanted a blues dinner show where I could do some of those old blues songs because I've sang and they opened the whole Restaurant and I wanted that Just just a dinner show where I could sing, you know even if it was one day a week for an hour or two and So that fell through because then I took care of my mom then after my mom died I was on my way back to Las Vegas to have that happen and I was in Las Vegas a couple years and then COVID hit so Because it's my favorite thing to just sit there at the microphone and be at my weather of my songs But also any song I would love to have and doesn't have to be the biggest house because with the film I want to do something for the mentally ill who are homeless and their families in my mother's name. So I would say that's my main goal. In a house I could live in until I retire.
0:23:22
That's good goals to have. I only have one business goal. I want a Grammy nomination. I don't even want the award.
0:23:29
That would be fabulous.
0:23:31
I just want to be nominated.
0:23:34
Yes, well you've earned it and you should be. So with the right song, absolutely. Are you a member of the Grammy?
0:23:42
No, I was.
0:23:43
Were you a voting member?
0:23:45
For a while.
0:23:46
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I tried to get on the Grammys a couple years ago, and I had all the credits. So many people getting in. I wanted a voting membership, but my credits were different because I've produced my thing. Right. and nothing's gone mainstream yet. And my release, My Love, that's on YouTube and everywhere, it really should be made. It's won four Best Pop Song of the Year awards, and it should be heard. But several of my songs, people feel. And with the new ones coming, I'm hoping.
0:24:20
What people don't often realize is that when they're listening to music, the person that wrote that music views that piece of music like a child. That's one of their children.
0:24:33
Yes. Yes. And the years it takes. It took me two years to record that song. And I did get Kelly Clarkson's Sound Engineer and Gold Record recipient Steve Valenzuela on Greatest Hits Volume 1. He's produced several. He's no longer producing. So I'm looking, you know, for the new ones. But yeah, there's a couple, even Shadows. I mean, Shadows is amazing and it should be heard.
0:25:04
So do you have a YouTube channel?
0:25:06
Yes, I'm all over YouTube and Amazon. The music is everywhere.
0:25:11
Well, that's great.
0:25:13
Yeah.
0:25:14
Now, if there was one thing outside of all the things we've talked about that you could achieve, what would that be?
0:25:21
Well, I would like a life partner. I would like a really good life partner that believes in me. That's something that I've never really found in life. I hate to make it personal when everything's about business, but I'm in my 60s now. I like that, of course, if there was an Academy Award nomination for the film, if I could do something on a huge scale for the mentally ill who are homeless and their families, this would be phenomenal. My autobiography, Cartwell's and Halo's, a true Marnie Linfield story to bring people to Christianity and Christ, which TBN is saying with the book you could have your own ministry with that. I never dreamed, I never thought I could have that. Well speaking from personal experience, I met the right life partner very late in life and I hope that for you as well. Thank you very much. Because it's wonderful. That's fabulous. It's someone that just is supportive. Someone supportive. And empowering. Yes. Which is a wonderful thing and again you're available at Marnene Fields at IMDB. Yes it is, thank you. And it's M-A-R-N-E-E-N Fields.
0:26:52
And you're also on YouTube.
0:26:53
Yes.
0:26:55
And the next time we talk to you, you're going to be an Oscar winner.
0:26:58
Wouldn't that be fabulous? Or even just a nominee, like you're saying. That would be fabulous. Nominations are fine. And the GoFundMe for who's going to take care of me. No donations too small. And we want the best cinematographer. We need the licensing fees, the insurance permits, everything. And thank you so much. I'm so thankful to be here today.
0:27:20
And thank you for coming in.
0:27:21
Thanks.
0:27:22
And thank you for listening and coming to visit us at the Morning Groove podcast. Again, we're at themorninggroove.transistor.fm. And this is John Nashum with my guest Marnie Lynn Fields. Well, we'll see you next time. Have a great day. Have a great day.
0:27:37
Bye-bye.
Transcribed with Cockatoo