Unknown: Sklar told me a story a long time ago. Leland said he
had this bass rig that he set up when we did Billy Thorpe's album
from Australia, and it was 3500 watts. Wow. He said, I can
literally play a concert and make the first the first three
rows in the audience poop their pants involuntarily. The amount
of
vibration I can generate out of this. You remember the Oakland
earthquake in 1989
Yeah, so he had a switch on his base, toggle switch, like you
see on a telly. And he goes, I call this my producer's switch.
And he says, it does absolutely nothing. And he said, When he
gets in working for a client that he doesn't know and who he
knows doesn't know anything, he says, they'll say to him,
Leland, we're not happy with the sound of your bass. Can you get
a little more punch out of it? Oh, he goes, Sure. He flips the
switch. He plays the exact same thing, the exact same thing, and
then they go, that's terrific.
Welcome to a podcast about music and entertainment before it all
goes down the disposal. This is circling the drain.
Hey, welcome back into circling the drain. And, man, we're gonna
have fun today, I promise you. Johnny Bozeman, right here.
Johnny B you know Jay
Harper, yes. And are you intimating that we haven't had
fun up to this point?
We always have fun. It's been a really, I think you're right.
Secrets, I swear I'm not telling
that's why we have you here. We want to hear the
yes, we do. And we also have Jim McCarthy in there, and Jim is
the one that makes this thing run. Thank god yes. Thank you.
The technical cameras strategically placed. Yes, he
does.
Yes. Hands on the table. Yeah.
He's like, the government, yeah,
I wish, yeah, cameras and recording.
But folks, if you don't know the name Bill Cuomo, you should slap
yourself, because this guy has done everything. If you remember
the keyboard part to Oh Sherry, just before you know Steve Perry
goes into this man, he also Betty Davis Eyes and the I'm
just, I'm just scraping the surface. This guy has done so
much, and we really appreciate you joining us. Thank you guys.
We're gonna try to not circle the drain. Yeah. Well, yeah,
no circling the drain. No. I tell people, you know, they go,
oh, you should write a book. And I said, I'm, first off, I'm not
famous, so I'm one of those guys in the background kind of like
me and, yeah, like all of us. I got lucky. Yeah, lucky. I mean,
there's plenty of people floating around with talent that
don't get a break, right? That happens
a lot. We see a lot of them here in this town.
Boy, in this town? Yeah, I mean, that's why you can't make a
living playing live. No, you really can't in this town. I
mean, I joined a band here years ago, played out live for about
six, seven years. It was fun till the 40 songs got old. But
you know, you It got so bad when we had to play downtown, we'd
have to meet at Hunter oaks mall, take all the equipment out
of our cars, loaded in a van, yeah, then the van would drive
downtown. Then we take all our equipment out of the van, schlep
it, yeah, and the same thing back in reverse, back down to
the van, back to Hunter oaks Mall. So you're loading your
equipment like six times, and you're going, I made 50 bucks
tonight. Whoo, you know,
I've heard that has changed down there, like, that's a highly
coveted gig Broadway now.
Well, I mean, it still the pay isn't great, you know, it's
tips. Yeah, yeah. I got a friend of mine who's real talented guy,
and his wife says she can make $2,000 in tips. Yeah, she's good
looking gal. She knows how to work the bucket. Yeah, you know
what? I mean, she and it's cash. Cash is king until they pull it.
So I thought that was a great thing for her. You know
what brought you to Nashville? That's a good story, because you
came from LA, right? I was
there for 34 years, yeah. And I did sessions. And then after the
mid 80s, things started to change. Rap was getting big, and
my clientele were the kind of people that would are they had
already done the damage to the record, yeah. And then they
would give me the record and say, can you put some sense on
and fix it? You know, I couldn't. Yeah. I just couldn't
Yeah. And what ended up happening was I called a drummer
friend of mine, the guy who wrote osier with me, Craig. I
said, Craig, can you come in the studio and I'd like to. Some
drum parts on this thing. He's, ah, I'm moving to Nashville. Say
what, you know, there was silence, trying to figure
Nashville, but we'd had a bunch of people that migrated, yeah.
So I said, Okay, so I planted the seed. You know, I'd been out
here in 1980 and I did an album with Kim and Kenny Rogers, and
she had written all the songs on his Gideon album, yeah. So she
had me come in and play piano, and it was really interesting,
because Larry Butler produced it, right? And it was completely
opposite the way we worked in LA he had you there every day, 10
o'clock, you wait in the lobby, like in a doctor's office, yeah,
okay, come on in, you know, yeah, play this. Okay, go back
out there and wait. And you were there basically every day from
10 to nine or 10 at night, yeah, and you were on call, and as he
needed you, he brought you in, and he just paid you for the
whole time. But the whole album was done in three days, you
know, in LA three days, we might get a song. Yeah, it's a whole
different thing. So I I decided to to move here, and I had a
fishing trip booked with Vanessa, who was my girlfriend
at the time, and we're going to Owens Valley go trout fishing.
So new Owens River, I called up. I said, How would you feel about
going to Nashville. There was silence on the line, nothing.
And then I wait, and then I hear,
Well, I didn't tell her I had already bought the tickets. Oh,
I bought two round trip tickets on the worst airline, TWA lost
our baggage, going and coming. Oh, man, yeah. But we came here
for 10 days. We stayed in Brentwood, and we went all
around town, went northeast, Southwest, came back to the
South side of town, to Williamson County. And our real
estate agent was from the West Coast, so she knew it very well,
yeah. And she says, I got this house. It's been for sale for a
year. A year, she goes, I know you want to build a studio. I
mean, in Arrington, three and a quarter acre, two year old house
built by the resident. He was a electrician, beautiful home,
5500 square feet, included an 1100 square foot walkout
basement, which is where I ended up building my first studio. And
$229,000 Wow. So people from California came out and I went,
what this is a million and a half dollar house. I said, Not
here, yeah. I said it was on the market for over a year. In fact,
I didn't realize it. The gentleman who owned it was
transferred to Kansas City. So he put the house on the market.
He got transferred back. So the house was coming off the market
the Wednesday after the weekend that we saw when I bought it. He
was mad, you bought my house. Well, why didn't you take it off
the market? He goes, hell. This is was on the market for almost
a year and a half. I didn't think was going to sell. Wow.
And then you came, you know, so he softened up afterwards. But,
I mean, it was, it was beautiful. Home, four garages,
six bedrooms, five baths. I mean, this thing was 19 rooms.
Well, see, you started something. It seems like more
people are moving from
well, we got in on the early rush. And then, you know, in the
late 90s, I started getting calls going, Hey, I'm a guitar
player. I'm thinking of going to Nashville. I went, keep going,
don't go. Everybody here is a guitar player. Yeah, they are,
you know, and there's a lot of good ones here, boy, oh, you're
not so it. And then it turned out that the guy who played
rhythm guitar in Kim's band,
Josh Leo, you're talking Kim Karnes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've known her
since we were 25 we started out in the beginning. So, Oh, Josh
Leo, what a character. Yeah, he is. And so Josh was nice enough
to hire me, not knowing what the hell I was doing in country
music, yeah. And I played on, I don't know, four Alabama albums
and trace Adkins. And so I did a bunch of country music, and then
I fired myself. I mean, I it just wasn't what I did. Yeah?
You know, I I'm more in that pop genre and country is all about.
Do you remember the Tennessean issue, I don't know, years and
years ago, where they had on the front cover a bunch of belt
buckles, yeah? A bunch of hats, yeah? And then I said, Now, pick
the entertainer that belongs to these because everything was
about the sameness. Oh, it is come that way, yeah. And I, my
whole thing was, my record is not like your record is not like
your record, you know, right? And I really like the
individuality and the ability to experiment.
Well, that's one reason. I think that, speaking for myself.
That's one reason I loved the outlaw movement. Waylon
Jennings, those guys, because they broke that mold. Yeah, they
came up with their own sound. And you could tell who was who
you can't anymore.
No, it's tough. It's tough. And it had been that way for a
while, you know, and I thought not to take away from anything,
because. I mean, for example, working with Randy Owen in
Alabama, yeah, guy's a great singer. Yes, he is. And people
said, Ah, he's kind of a crabby guy. Said, No, you know, you get
to know him. He's just, he plays it close to the vest. He's like
Henley, Don Henley, right? He's not real outgoing with people he
doesn't know. And Josh pulled me aside and he said, Listen, this
is going to work a little differently than you're used to.
He said, You may think the band got the take, you know, and you
got the part, and that's the master, he said, but it's not
the master or the take until Randy gets the vocal he wants. I
thought about that for a minute, and I looked at Josh and I said,
you know, that's really not so strange, yeah, because evidently
what we played inspired him enough to get the vocal he
wanted. So we just go back and fix what we didn't get right if
we flubbed, you know? Yeah. And actually, it was pretty cool.
And I remember we did this song called Forever is as far as I'll
go, Yeah, remember it well, yeah, and Randy made me rehearse
that thing, and, oh, it had to be five or six different keys.
So we finally got the key. We did the track came out. Great.
I'm in Dallas at the airport, and I was out with Katie oslin,
and we were touring. And Randy in Alabama, in the airport, I
didn't see him. He spotted me, and he comes up, gives me a big
hug, and then he goes that, you know. And that's, that's Randy,
you know? And, yeah, he's just a really sweet guy, and a lot of
funny stories on that record, because when Jeff was alive, I
guess he was a cousin, and Randy raises prize bulls. I don't know
if he still does, but he does. Yeah, he's a big cattle guy, so
Jeff kept bugging him, and I want to get one of them there,
cows you got. Randy sold him. I mean, it was like a $10,000 bowl
and breeding, you know, wow. So we're in the studio, and I hear
the conversation, and Randy says, How's that? How's my bull
doing? He goes, Oh, he's good. What do you mean he was good?
Because I had him.
That was a great steak.
Yeah, mistake, it was funny stuff like that. And then Teddy,
you know, Teddy, they're all cousins. He was a nice guy,
Teddy. But they, they own the town of Fort Payne, virtually.
Oh, yeah, they do. They bought the old Chevy dealership, and
that was the warehouse for all their parts in the shop. They
kept all their stuff the road gear, you know, because Randy
sent me says, we go out and we make X dollars on a concert. We
make 2x in merch. Wow, that was before record companies got
their hands in it, yeah. And now it's, you
know, so did you ever participate in June jam with
them down in Fort?
Payne, no, that was huge. Yeah, that's a big deal, yeah,
what about dealing with Harold shed as producer? Never had to,
yeah? Oh, wow. Josh produced all the
did you did? Okay, yeah, I don't know how to deal with I mean,
working with Larry Butler was fine and dandy. I just it was
weird to me. Just a different rhythm of recording, just
foreign. Yeah, I would think, yeah, that's just not that. It
was good or bad. It's just that what I was raised on, it's like,
I don't know if I can, can I swear, I used to work for this
producer in LA George Tobin, and he had hit records. George was
not so much a musician. He was a salesman. He could sell
anything. So he said to me one day we were recording, he was
producing Kim Karnes on the, I think it was the romance dance
album, and she got her first Top 10 hit. More Love. Yeah. So we
were all done with a record. All the tracks are full on the 24
track, because it was tape at that time. And he says, Bill,
give me some of that classical shit up front. That was, you
know. I said, What do you mean classical, you know. And he
says, Well, you know, something classical kind of thing, okay. I
said, with George, all the tracks are full, you know, yeah.
Well, I said, Can we cut a leader in the tape? For people
who don't know leader tape is just like plastic or paper tape
that you don't record on. It's just at the head of the tape. So
you know where the tape starts. You make the cut, right? And in
this case, if I'd have gone over in that intro, I would have
erased somebody else's tracks. So, so there's a drum pickup on
the record. It was 123, and then it comes in, yeah. So I had to
be out by that drum pickup, yeah. So the engineer I was
working with at the time, Ryan had just started out, Ryan
Elliot, and he went on to do Tom Petty and Scott. Great engineer,
but he was sweating bullets. He doesn't want to be the guy that
erased Steely Dan, you know what I mean. So George would not cut
a leader in so we wouldn't accidentally erase so we had to
put grease pencil on the tape so you could see the little
squiggles going by as it's rolling around at 30 IPs. And
what we wound up doing was we made the grease come faster and
faster the squiggles so I'd know that it was coming. And then
we'd wind it to a start point that we set up, and I rehearsed
and I rehearsed and rehearsed. And you can hear on the intro
that I do at the end, I kind of bump up, bump up, bump. And I
hold that just long enough so that the drums come in right
under it, but you had to come
off that.
I had to come off that at that time. Yeah, wow. And he
otherwise,
you cut off the snare.
Yeah, that's so Ryan. I mean, we got it, and that was the worst
thing we could have done, because we validated his bad
method of doing it. And, and, of course, you know, everybody said
you can't put a 32nd intro on a song. Disc jockeys loved it
because they made a game out of talking, yeah? Kim Karns,
chicken blue, and I provided the background classical music. But
that's how I started off on this whole intro thing. Wow, that's
kind of how I got dubbed the intro guy, yeah.
Well, because that intro to Oh Sherry, I mean, that's classic,
they that. Now this is another thing. I did it at home. I had
an eight track, and so I put it together, and I brought it down
to the studio, and I said, How about this? Everybody goes, Oh,
this is good. Then I thought, Oh, great. But now I have to do
it all over again. Oh, man, because we didn't have USB
sticks, we didn't have, yeah, none of that, yeah. So it was, I
had to go in coal to do it again and recreate it. But it came
out. I mean, came out fine, but it's always that, you know, as
well as I do in demos, sometimes you hear somebody sing a demo,
and there's a magic about it, yes. And then when you go in to
cut the real one, you worry about losing it Yes, and not
recreating that. Feel, yeah, yeah. So that's, I don't know
how many tracks I did on that, Oh, really? How many takes? No,
no, just how many tracks I took,
because you have the effects built in. And that sounds like,
oh, Val probably, I mean,
yeah, they mixed it in, they mixed it in. But I had one, two,
think, three synths I used on that. I got a friend of mine in
town here who is a synth whiz, Jim danakar, and he was Michael
W Smith's conductor and orchestra leader for 25 years.
Yeah, this guy is, like, whiz bang when it comes to
synthesizers, yeah, but he's doing this thing called arcade
orchestra, which is all about the 80s, and he's recreating all
the sounds and the tracks with different singers for a live
show. Oh, wow, supposed to be quite a spectacular Yeah.
Listen, I love myself. Keep them 80s alive, baby.
My brother is a lifelong piano keyboard synthesizer player.
He's in a journey tribute band was and is kind of getting back
into a Bob Seger tribute band. But he and I on my podcast, we
we talk about music all the time. We have so much more in
common now than we ever did. But we go back and listen to all
those gateway music, like 1984 Yeah. And he's like, the one
thing I could never do is recreate the brass on aisle
weight from 1984 like, he's like, I could just never get
that sound that Eddie was able to get from, I guess the obi
eight or the, oh, yeah,
that's a very brassy instrument, yeah. And it's got a very
characteristic sound
to it. And I'm thinking, I'm like, Well, I had to meet Don
Landy having some sort of something to do with the post
production, and however they mixed it. And I said maybe it
was an EQ thing, because he's like, I have tried to get
replicated. It is so difficult.
You mentioned tribute bands because often the discussion
comes up with players about, is the band a tribute band? Now,
you know, like, journey, yeah,
yeah, Chicago,
we talked about that. We said, What does a band become a
tribute
of itself? Yeah? And tribute bands are big business. Yeah,
they are.
Well, you know, I interviewed Brady seals for a radio station
I work for, and he's in a tribute band. He's in a Tom
Petty tribute band. Oh, wow, yeah, lead singer, because he
can sound like Tom Petty, you know, used to be with little
Texas. So, yeah, the tribute band
just has to smoke a few jobs.
Now, Bill, you said you, you know, working with Larry Butler
was a different experience. You know, I worked for Jimmy Bowen
at MCA when I was there. Did you ever work with Bowen? I heard
that he was kind of a brought a different experience to
Nashville, that a lot of players here didn't really. Appreciate
so what was your experience?
Jimmy pulled us aside one day, and he says, Well, when I came
to Nashville, I showed her how to make a $50,000 record for
250,000
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. You know, we brought digital to
town, and a lot of folks were not hip to that. What was, what
was your what is your thought for analog versus digital? You
know, you talk about what you went through to create that
intro. I mean, with digital now, it wouldn't be that arduous.
No, it would not. It would not. I kept my console. I still have
my Trident console. So the big problem with digital, for me is
when you have a digital audio workstation, and you take all
those tracks up on the screen and you sum them into a two
track bus coming out of the computer. That's where the
crunch comes. If like for I run a very convoluted setup, so
everything I have goes through the console first, then it goes
through my converters to the computer, comes out of the
computer, through the converters, back through the
console. So and I set my console up to I take 16 tracks of it for
drums, bass, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, keys, vocals,
background vocals, reverbs, all in stereo, and then that all
comes through the two bus analog. So when I'm listening,
I'm listening to the console, and the difference in the sound
is pronounced, very pronounced. And then I have a set of high
octane burl converters. They're real expensive, but they sound
really good, and they're stereo. And I just run through those,
and I just spit out whatever format I need, if it's 2496 2488
whatever I need film might be 1648, you know, but, yeah, I
just got to switch on the burl, and then that just goes to
through the burl to a hard disk recorder, and I print out the
CDs as I need them for mastering. You know, you
record vocals and stereo as well. No, okay,
but I keep I just because everything's in stereo, if I
have effects on a vocal, right, right, if I have a pan or
anything like so I just leave the vocal tracks up, you know,
but they're mono, yeah, unless, you know, and but it seems to
work that way for me. I haven't been able. I almost sold the
console. I had a guy wanting to buy it, and then I had second
thoughts. I couldn't do it well, it has a sentimental value to me
too. I there was a store in LA for years called everything
audio, and it was a Hyatt, you know, store, and I went in there
to buy my gear. After my royalties came in, it's either
give them to the government or buy stuff that depreciates.
Yeah, buy stuff, yeah.
So I bought a 24 track, a two track, and I bought a board, and
I bought a bunch of outboard gear, and I was talking with the
guys, and we were laughing, and the gal came out of the office
to give me my receipt for the console, and I was like, Oh, who
are you? And she goes, I just wanted to see who owned that
laugh. And that's and that's my wife. Oh, wow. The console has a
little bit of a sentimentality to it for me.
Well, speaking of Semin being sentimental, one way we got to
know each other was through Phil Valentine, the guy I worked with
on the Phil Valentine show. Yes, a lot of people don't realize
that you guys worked on music together. Yeah. I mean, he told
me that he came here to pursue music. Well, both of us did,
actually, and we ended up in radio, yeah.
I mean, he, I helped him out on his film, on a song. Think it
was the spirit, yeah, I love that tune. So he had, I mean,
Phil would bring me tracks. He had everything all laid out. Oh,
yeah, you mean he's very oral McCarthy, you know, he's a very
organized, talented guy. Yeah, he was, and I was thrilled when
he did that little EP of Chadwick station. Yes, that I
got to do that with him. And we had it.
We had a ball. Well, it's funny, when he did Chadwick station, he
basically came up with these members that it's basically just
you guys.
Well, his kids, too. They all got him on the cover.
Yeah, they came up with these fictitious characters. Well, the
thing started taking off in Europe, and Phil started getting
interview requests from for this. Elvis Ken Kensington, I
think was the name of the and so it goes, it came to me. He goes,
What do I do? And I said, You act like Prince. You say, Alvis
is an artiste. He doesn't have time for interviews. No, you
know, just be that way. That's so interesting that you guys got
meat.
My wife was his banker. When she worked in banking. See, there
she was at the drive through. And he always came through in
that Miata that he Yeah, yes. I love that Miata. And so they got
to chatting, and she always helped him out the banking
stuff, yeah. And then I guess the topic came up of me
somewhere, and he put it in the back of his mind, I guess, yeah.
And next thing I know, I mean, he was so nice. To me. I mean,
you guys both were gracious and having me on, I mean, I remember
the time I went on the show with Beeb from the Little River Bay,
yes, and I was just sitting back, you know, just taking it
all in. It was his thing, you're right, and I didn't want to
intrude. And Phil goes in, grab a mic, pull, you know, up here.
Okay, you'll be sorry, but I'd be more than happy to do it.
Yeah, you did work with Little River Band. And, yeah, that was
a really. Martin got you that into that, didn't he? Let me
think, how did I get that job? It was through Sir George
Martin, yes, he got me the job I had done a film with George.
Think it was either Every Which Way But Loose, or one of those.
Yeah, he scored the film. And I get a call from George Martin.
Bill, would you like to come down to Montserrat for a week?
I'm wide open. I'm that book I crossed. There we go. I'm wide
open. I'm going to buck snort.
Can we go to Cleveland, please? Finally, so he flew me down. And
this is funny, back before airlines got so crazy, I had one
synthesizer my profit that I did Betty Davis with, yeah, and I
had it in a road case, and we bought it a seat, and I brought
it right on the airplane and strapped it in, laid it down, so
the case was under the seat, in front of me, in front of next
door there, and laying over the seat. And I strapped it in. And
all I had to do at the gate was open up the case, which I had
padlocked, plug it in, turn it on to show them it worked, and
they let me on the plane with it. And we had three flights to
get there. So I flew to Miami, then I had another flight, and
then we had to pick up a puddle jumper, a Twin Otter. Oh, that's
fun, because, yeah, because landing on Montserrat, it's a
small airstrip, yeah. And so we're, we're doing the circle
over the runway, and there's a Twin Otter on the edge of the
runway. You know, still smoking. It crashed, yeah, I don't think,
oh boy.
Seems a Buddy Holly come. Oh boy. You know,
I toured with seals and cross for a year, and they flew this
plane they bought from an ex president of Mexico, Convair 440
Oh, and that's the same one that Skinner,
yeah, and we flew up to I remember my first gig with them
was playing the Calaveras County frog jumping festival in
Northern California for real, and oh my god, so the plane. I
mean, any of the band members will tell you this, the plane
was white when we took off with the gold stripes on it. We
landed. It was black. Blew out 40 quarts of oil all over the
wings. So I remember we were on tour and we were in Vegas before
we came home, and dash cross and I went down to the hangar to see
how the plane was doing, because a manifold fell off one of the
engines and exhaust manifold that makes you feel good. Oh,
yeah. So dash says, How's it going? And he goes, Ah, it'll
get you there.
I still chat with dash on Facebook these days, a nice guy
and boy, what a hell of a mandolin player. Oh yeah, nicest
guy. I really enjoyed him. And Jimmy seals was funny. He he
had, he played sax on tequila, you know. And they, he said they
used to tour in the band on the road. There were six of them in
a Cadillac. And he said, we're playing in Texas. We have to
stop every once a while, get out of the car and fight. And they
get back in the car and continue on. But I remember the crazy
stuff growing up, because when I first started out, I was going
to college, and I got a call to play in some stupid lounge group
that a guy was putting together to open for Little Richard. So I
used to watch Little Richard play every night Caesar's
palette. Oh, wow. And this guy, he was, that was when in his
strange days, you know, the long cape and the makeup and the
lipstick and the, you know, he was pretty out there. I'm
beautiful, yeah. But man, he, I'd never seen a man hit a piano
with the force that Little Richard did. I mean, he bang
that thing, he'd break six, seven strings a night. Wow,
that's, I mean, on a Steinway B. That's hard to do because
they're a stiff action. It's like having guitar strings this
far above the neck. Yeah, it's, I don't know how he did it, but
that guy, but boy, what a rock and roller. Oh, he was,
it was the truth to watch him, and it freaked me out that he
lived here. I really didn't know for a long time. And then that
doesn't seem like you think Memphis, maybe, yes, you know,
but not here. Well, he's like, living in Lewisburg or
something. That was where he was living.
But he was that that was my early you know that? And Bobby V
was another one when I was a senior. Used. La, he asked me to
go to Sweden to be his music director. And I thought, oh,
Sign me up. And then I we were on the quarter system at that
time, so classes only went for 10 weeks, yeah, so none of my
teachers would let me out. Oh, gosh. So I thought, okay, when I
get out of college, I'm going to give myself a little time. So as
a math major, yeah, you know, in psychology of all things, people
said, well, how are you going to use that music? And I said,
Well, sick ass. People going to try to take, take my money away.
So, but that was funny, and I never thought about a career
music. I mean, I avoided it. Wow. I just, I don't know
musicians, to me, I didn't much care for Well, I mean, they just
thought about two things, yeah,
that's it. That's, you know, that's why they usually get in
music.
I tell you what, I tried. You gotta hear my first gig. This is
really funny. Do you remember you guys any good with one hit
wonders, some degree. Yeah, electric prunes. I had too much
to dream last night. Oh, is
a big remember that? Yeah, the song? Yeah. I wouldn't know the
name of the song, yeah.
So I'm, I mean, I, you know, I guess I'm kind of a
conservative, like I can see now looking back here, I was clean
cut in college. V neck sweaters, yeah, no beard, nothing, you
know, Mr. B and I was teaching piano, and one of my students
was an accordion player, and he wanted to make the transition
from accordion to piano. Well, he happened to be the brother of
Mark tool, and who was the bass player in the prunes. So they
had a fight with their guitar player and kicked him out, and
they had a weekend tour in Seattle and Portland, just two
gigs, yeah, so they said, you want to play? Sure. So they gave
me a Vox super continental Oregon and the big super B lamp,
you know, that goes up to 11 and, you know, yeah, they were
awful live. Well, they played so loud, you know, because we, I'll
never forget, we were playing in Portland in this big arena like
and it had concert seating on the floor, you know. And
everybody who came to see this the prunes in the 60s, they were
stoned, yeah. So they're sitting on the floor waiting for this
concert. And when this thing started, it was so loud, you
could just see them doing the creep. By the time the show was
done, they were all stuffed in the corner like ferrets, you
know.
Well, the sound systems were so bad, but I remember the poor
Beatles, man, yeah. I mean, they never really toured what like,
that's why I think it's not fair for people to compare the
Beatles and The stones, because the stones at least got to
experience new sound systems, yeah,
oh yeah. Trying to remember the name of the sound company,
Claire brothers, yeah, if you had them, you were good. Yeah.
Because your monitors, you could always hear everything in the
monitors, it was great. But if you didn't have those guys, it's
crap shoot. Yeah.
So Bill, what? What is your preference? Studio, work or live
performing?
Studio, studio, I, you know, I'm on the road, and you you play,
you know, if you're in an opening act, you play 3540
minutes, and then, as my friend Goldie used to say, the rest of
the time, you're waiting. Yes, you know, you're either in a
hotel, you know, or you're in a bus, you're in a plane, but
you're just waiting. And I don't like being away from home. I'm a
homeboy, yeah. So I understand, you know, I remember I got in
Dutch one time with Kim because I was building a house in the
National Forest in California, about 6570 miles out of the San
Fernando Valley where all the studios were. And I just wanted
to somebody said, Why are you doing that? And I said, I want
to wake up and not hear police helicopters and sirens and all
that crap. I wake up, I got national forest all around me. I
said, I'm protected by federal bureaucracy nobody will ever
build. And I ended up buying. This is funny. I talked some of
my friends into buying lots around me. There were four lots
available. They're all about three, four acres a piece. So I
bought my three and a half acres, and they bought theirs. I
said, it's a good investment. It was because I had to buy them
out. They all went back.
But I had the land up there. And
people loved coming up there. Kim would come up there. We'd
work. Steve Perry came up there. We wrote, that's where we wrote,
oh, Sherry up there, yeah. David Coverdale from White Snake. He
had to make an entrance. You know, he he landed in the the
main meadow on a big bell jet, Ranger helicopter. Yeah, yeah,
the kind that the news crews use, like Channel Five. Oh,
yeah. He lands there, comes in, makes his entrance.
Was, it was smoke and slow motion
with some girls traveled across
I remember when I was working on a starship record. We were doing
a song called it's not over till it's over. And I was doing
programming and playing, and Grace Slick was at the house,
and she was up in the dome portion of the house making tuna
sandwiches for everybody. Surreal. She was really neat.
But, I mean, they love to come up there because it was such a
stark contrast to LA, which is bumper to bumper, people and
cars, yeah, up there, it's just quiet, you know? That was nice.
I love living up there. I just hated the commute, yeah, you
know, it was wicked. And then as the Antelope Valley grew around
Edwards Air Force Base, and Palmdale and Lancaster grew.
Then the traffic began problem, and that was another thing
Vanessa and I talked about about, do we want to stay here?
I had 40 acres next to the devil's punch bowl, and I had
hired an architect to design us like a dome out of concrete,
because we were right next to the San Andreas Fault. So domes
made a lot of sense, and I was a bit of money into that. And
that's when we flew to Nashville to look around, and then I gave
this guy a deposit on the house, and went, Oh crap, I was gonna
pay for it. So luckily, we sold the 40 Acres. Yeah, you know,
came here, but I remember it was so different back then, when I
came here, the more, I mean, we both had no jobs. You know,
people were looking at us like you, you got, you ain't got a
job? Said, No. I said, but something, somebody's telling me
that this is the thing to do. I'm doing it. And Vanessa didn't
have a job. I mean, she left her everything, audio chat, wow. So
her two babes in the woods, you know, and the mortgage company,
I remember, couchy and Miller out of Kentucky, said, Well, can
you write us a letter of intent? I said, Well, sure. I said, I
intend to buy this house, and I intend to pay for it. And I
said, I have some friends here that'll that'll give me work,
you know? And I said, look at I said, I just gave you guys a
$75,000 down payment. Yeah? I said, That's chump change to you
guys, but to me, that's a lot of money, and I'm not going to walk
away from it, right? So I said, You'll get your check. Yeah,
trust me, yeah.
They're two famous words in the show business, trust me, yeah,
so, but I mean, that's the start. Was really interesting.
And I love the people here. That's what really attracted me
to Tennessee. And then I found is the longer we stayed, the
Tennesseans kept moving further further out, and the people from
New Jersey started moving Yes, and it just they kind of
tarnished it a little bit, yeah.
So sorry. You know, I'm from Connecticut, so
Well, that's the whole thing about because I was asking
another podcast, you know, the guy was talking about talk
radio, and he said, You know, there's no native Tennesseans.
And I said, when Has there ever been? I said, most of the people
that were in talk radio had come here from other areas. Yeah. I
mean, I'm from Kansas. That's where I originated from.
So see, you got more Tennessee in you than most of us. You
know? Yeah, I, you know, whenever I get mad and I lose my
patience, my wife goes your New York is showing
upstate New York, upstate, outside of Schenectady.
So you and Tully Kennedy have a lot in common. You know, Tully,
no, from Al Dean's band, the bass player, he's from upstate.
Ah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's a different, you know, California,
and when I came here, it's very much the same as Upstate New
York. The accent is different, but it's please, thank you.
Yes, sir, yeah. That's yeah. That is rural,
and it was appealing to me because, you know, I had a
neighbor when we first moved to Arrington, and we had two gravel
driveways for the upstairs and the downstairs, or the studio
was and John came by with his tractor. John Lane, I forget
this guy. And he scraped the driveway, scraped the driveway,
knocked on my door. So Bill says, I got your driveway fixed
for you, and I just barely met the guy. I said, Well, John,
what I owe you. And he says, Welcome to Tennessee. So a few
years later, we bought the lot next door, and I asked John to
come in and carve a road for me and gravel it. Yeah, so he did
it. He came up to my door with a bill, and he says, you know
Bill? He says, You never asked me how much I charge you. And I
said, Well, John, I said, I'm sure that it would be fair. So
give me the bill and I'll pay it, you know. And I love that
about a handshake and a word, which is so absent in my
business. Yes, you know, I mean, I've had to sue record companies
three times, wow, for what was written on paper that they would
not execute. And, I mean, I had a Sue Ford Motor Company. And J
Walter Thompson, I mean,
sounds like radio.
In radio, we don't have the horsepower to conduct a lawsuit.
No, we
don't, yeah,
but I mean, it's, well, it's the same thing. I mean, I think when
they stole o Sherry for their Taurus commercial, they figured,
hey, four songwriters. No, no. Ever get together and agree on
suing us? And besides, we got 300 lawyers sitting around.
It's a staring contest. Who blinks first? It's all it is.
Yeah, seven years they dragged it out. Oh yeah, seven years,
hoping that we just die or go away run out of money. And then
three Yeah, three weeks before court date, they settled. Yeah,
paying is what they should have paid seven years
ago because they don't want to go in
public. You know, I just
hate, well, Bill being from New York State originally. I mean,
in the last name, Cuomo, do you get asked or about the family
relation?
Yeah, you know, I'm always prepared to run, just in case
they're going to come after. I always do not no relation, no
relation. Yeah, that's a political family. Not my, not my
gumbo.
Well, politics has really gotten, oh, just kind of ugly in
the in the music business.
Yeah, it does. We were talking about this earlier, the fact
that, well, the arts in general, lean way left, yes. And I lean
center, center to center. Right. You don't really lean. I walk
upright,
like I told Phil one time, because he was talking about
that. You know that people, if you're in the middle, you're
gonna get run over. And I said, the way I look at it, because
I'm in the middle. I said, I think you guys on the far right
and the far left are in the ditch. We're still in the we're
still in the road, baby, yeah?
But you get, you get the ditches on both sides yelling at you,
yeah? You do. You know, that's the thing.
And I and that goes from ditch to bitch, you know, ditch the
bitch to ditch.
Yeah, bitches in the ditches.
It's crazy. It's gotten to where you can't honk your horn
anymore.
Oh, you can't here in Nashville on I'm 24 you can't you get shot
at.
Well, that's crazy in Tennessee, that that would happen. And I
heard about that. And people get shot at, yeah, the one guy who
honked at the guy in front of him who had cut him off, yeah,
guy gets out of the car and start shooting an AR 15 at him.
Oh, yeah. And I'm thinking, Come on, you. People have lost your
minds.
People have. I mean, it just seems like people have really
become crazy over the years.
Yeah, I mean, and the other thing is, you know everybody,
well, I have a concealed a lot of people have concealed.
Everybody doesn't realize the fact that if you introduce a
weapon into a situation, you better be prepared to use it,
yeah, because you've just raised the ante huge. And that's what
we were talking about earlier, about the Renee good thing. And
I thought, you know, these guys are all on edge. They've been
shot at, run over. They may not be right, but they're going
there for a mission to get the illegals out, right, all for
that which needs to be done. Yes, I agree, but they're a
little heavy handed sometimes, but then people come and poke
the bear, and it's like we're talking when you get pulled
over. I have my license and registration, insurance card,
their hands visible, because I know these guys. I watch op
live, and I see what these guys go through. Oh yeah, holy crap.
I mean, they never know they're going to get shot at. It could
be killed. I don't know
every day whether they're saying goodbye to their
loved right? No such thing as a routine traffic stop.
No, I remember in LA because I commuted such great distances
from the dome to the valley, I had three different cars because
I didn't want to put all them. I put 45,000 miles a year and
driving. So I'd have a little sports car, a pimp wagon, and
then my scout with a snowplow, because I needed that sometimes.
Yeah, I got pulled over. One time, I had a 924 Porsche Turbo.
That was a fun car. I was going to town. I had my drum machine
in the back. You could see it through that big window, you
know? And I got pulled over as soon as I got down the valley on
Interstate 14, Highway Patrol pulled me over. I was going
fast, and at that time we had the 55 mile an hour limit to
conserve gas, and that turbo would kick in right around 55
and the car want to keep going. Yeah. So he pulled me over. It
was a Japanese gentleman, really. I mean, cops are nice. I
gave my thing. And he says, You know, I pulled you over. I said,
Oh yeah. I said, I know. I said, I said, I knew immediately when
all the cars started doing this and falling back, that I stuck
out like a sore thumb, you know? And I said, I said, this thing,
I I try to keep a handle on it. And I said, you've seen my
record. I'm a largely Good boy. I don't get tickets, but you got
me, the worst thing you can do to a police officer is lie to
him that it insults their intelligence, because they've
heard every freaking excuse in the world. So I mean, I flat out
said, No, I was going over 60, you know. So anyway, we started
asking me about the drum computer, and we're talking and.
A low rider goes by while we're talking a Chevy. I mean, it was
just barely off the ground with six Latinos in it. You know, he
goes, Well, gotta go. And then the funniest part was he pulled
him over about three miles down the road. When I went by, wave
got a new friend. But, I mean, I was always courteous, and I got
let go most every time, yeah. And I think the only time I
didn't get let go was in Santa Monica, the motorcycle cops.
They do not say, okay, you can go. You can go with your paper,
yes, and your ticket, you know, but they will cut you know,
Slack. And the only ticket I got in Tennessee, and I've been here
since 89 I was down at Fort Payne with Alabama rehearsing,
and I was coming home, and I wanted to get home, and I had a
Ford Taurus SHO, and that little thing would get up and Boogie,
and that Yamaha v6 sounded so good, it's going about 85 Yeah,
come on north on 65 and boom, he got me my escort radar detector
went off, and that meant that he hit that instant on radar. Yes,
it basically said, you're getting a ticket. The cop pulls
me over, you know, he's a Tennessee State Trooper, and he
I rolled on the window and I got everything ready for him, and he
looks on the dash and he sees the Escort radar detector and
goes lot of money to pay for something that don't work. Oh,
it works. I said, Yeah, what often said, you're getting a
ticket. So we chat. I mean, he was nice, and we chatted a
while. I mean, hey, he got me. I was moving, and he was nice
enough to write me under 80. He said, I'll tell you what he
says. You know, he said, anything over 80 is considered
reckless driving and counts like a DUI. Yeah, you get a lot of
points. So he says, I'll write you under 80. I said, well,
thank you.
Yeah, that's very nice. Yeah, that happened to me in a turbo
Trans Am, oh, where the state trooper got me caught me at 133
Wow. You're real. I'm a hero.
Yeah, I had just gotten that car and one, it was south of New
Orleans. It was like four in the morning. I dropped a girl off
for a date. I'm on River Road. Nobody, nobody. And I'd never,
man, let me see what this thing can do, you know, yeah. And that
turbo charger kicked in, you know? It had the lights on the
hood that you could see, oh, yeah. And when that turbocharger
kicked in, threw me back in the seat, and I see sparks in my
rear view because I'm hitting the pavement, I slowed down.
Then I see headlights go the other way, and then I see him
behind me getting bigger and bigger. That speedometer only
went to 80. Oh, he told me he actually won. 39 is what he
clocked me at after I had already started slowing down.
Yeah, but yeah, he only put 80 on the ticket. And that was
nice. He did do a big Yeah. And told me all of that too. I was
like, 1920 years old. He told me, Son, if you'd seen as many
wrecks as I have where the engine was in the front seat,
you know you'd be, you'd be pulling people over to slow them
down. Yeah? So, yeah, I got lucky,
boy, you guys are, because when I was coming back from Florida
and with my wife, at the time, we were in a Trans Am, I don't
know how fast I was. I must have been doing 80, maybe a little
bit over 80. And sure enough, Alabama State because we crossed
over in Alabama, and Alabama State Trooper, I met him, and
sure enough, he, I mean, he got me big black gentleman was not
friendly at all. In fact, put me in the car with him and said,
We're going to Montgomery. Oh, going to court. And I said,
Whoa, okay. And you know, my wife was having to drive the
trans, am following us, and I'm thinking, God, the whole reason
we were speeding, I want to get home. And so, so luckily, there
was some woman that came by and she waved at him, and he
apparently knew her. And all of a sudden, he pulls over into
this church parking lot and he goes, I'm gonna let you go ahead
and pay this by mail. He said, But you better pay it, or you'll
never be allowed back in Alabama again. I said, Yes, sir,
Yeah, boy, you were lucky too. Yeah, I was lucky.
Must have had a rendezvous planned her son. I think he did.
He sure changed man.
She waved. Okay, we're gonna second thought.
Yeah, you go ahead. We'll pay this by mail.
That's great. I remember one time because I I tried to make
the commute fast, and I was going, there's a stretch of
road, Mount mo road and desert road, nothing, yeah, a lot of
Whoop de doos. And I was coming home, and I thought, I see what
this Porsche will do. I'll go 135 I see a car in my rear view
mirror. And it's gaining on me. I'm thinking, cop cars go that
fast. And then I thought, I'm going to jail. I'm going to
jail. So I slowed down about 120 no point really. Guy comes right
up, and then he gets alongside me, and it was my friend's dad,
who's a test pilot out at Edwards Air Force Base, Bill
Bryden, and he had one of those Magnum PI Ferraris. Oh, wow. He
waves and gone. I looked down at my speedometer. I'm 120 miles an
hour, and this guy is flying, wow. Wow. Used to be able to
open it up there. Oh, yeah, until the day I came into town,
and I came over the Whoopty doo, and there's a CHP and a big film
truck,
so I slowed down as best I could without looking like I was.
And the cop runs to his unit, his CHP, yeah, California high
patrol, and he pulls around behind me, and he's following
me, you know. And I know he's running a license checking I
just pull over and I have everything ready at the window,
because what you pull over for? I said, Well, you're going to
pull me over anyway. So I said, you know? He says, how fast are
you going? About 5055, and he said, Well, don't you know
you're supposed to slow down when there's a film crew there.
I said, Well, I'd have known there was a film crew there if
you were at the top of the hill signaling traffic like you were
supposed to do. You know, he looked at me, and he goes, I
scrape guys like you off the pavement all the time. I said, I
wasn't going that fast, but I said I had no idea that anybody
was there. Your car was parked behind the film truck. Can't
even see it. And you were talking to the director, and
just having a good old time. And I said, I'm coming down the
road, and I have no idea you're there, you know, I said, and
that's why they had you there was to direct traffic. Yeah, it
kind of looks, you can see the little brain processing. And he
goes, Well, just slow it down. Let me go. Wow. Well, because I
busted it. I mean, he was supposed to be doing that so
people would know that they were filming a commercial. Well,
yeah, you know, I mean, I was like five miles from the Little
Rock dam where the mafia dumped bodies. I mean, way out privacy.
I wanted to ask you too, because one of your early bands was
called Bonnaroo, oh yeah. And boy, that was, yeah, you would
have covered the but
I was, my name is not como. I wasn't in that.
No, that's funny. You found that yeah,
because we have the Bonnaroo festival, yeah.
Difference was the spelling yes one in, yes one end. And that
was an interesting thing. I was just starting to break into
session work after I got out of college, and I was doing a gig
with Mac Davis, who was, he was a nice guy. This the material,
some of it was good, but everything was in the same key,
so it got confusing sometimes, yeah, you know, because a lot of
the songs became the same, because they're the same chords,
yeah. And, but Mac was a great guy, and he had some great songs
too, yeah. So I was doing this TV show, yeah, which was super
great gig, yeah. And then I got a call from a bass player, I
think it was Bobby that called me about this band that they
were putting together on Warner Brothers, but it was a an
assembly band. In other words, it was the record company's
idea, yeah, to put this together, yeah. And Bruce cone
was going to manage us. And Bruce managed the dubies for 45
years, and he went on to do a winery, you know, Bruce cone
winery, and he's very successful guy, and we debate a lot because
he's real conservative. I was surprised. Yeah, he's he loves
everything that Trump does. So we Yeah, I said, No, Bruce. But
anyway, so we got together, and it was the drummer from the
Dubs, Michael hossek, who played on China Grove and all his great
records. Listen to the music. Yeah, I love that. Love that
Allison Catherine and me. Love that record. And the bass player
was Bobby lighting from seals and cross. Bobby was with them
as a trio. And the guitar player Jerry Weems, who played with
Ronnie Montrose and Edgar Winter screaming guitar player, a
singer and rhythm guitar player named Bobby Winkelman, who
played with Steve Miller and myself. And it was an
interesting thing, because the band was still forming. When we
were going into the studio, we had nailed down our guitar
players, so I had a friend of mine come in and play guitar on
a song that I wrote and sang and but we toured Europe. We did the
Warner Brothers music show, which, to me, was the most
amazing thing I ever saw a record company do, from the
president of Warner Brothers on down, the entire staff went six
bands, 12 and a half tons of gear, five countries. They
booked entire hotels. They set up a hospitality suite in every.
Hotel that we went to, wow. And it would have like, video
cassettes of all American movies, and they'd have orange
juice and donuts and stuff where the bands could hang out and
talk. And they broke it down into the Red Tour and the blue
tour, three bands, three bands, and it was Bonnaroo Graham
Central Station, Montrose Doobie Brothers, Tower of Power and
little feet. Oh my goodness. So I got to sit side stage and
watch every Oh, man. So that was a treat for me. It spoiled me
because I hate crowds, and I won't go to concerts because
it's just nuts, and people are too nuts. But watching little
feet play the rainbow Theater in London, and I was just my jaw
was on the floor, because you listened to him on record.
That's one thing. You listen to him live. Lowell, George and
Paul on guitar. Paul Barack, yeah, unbelievable. They got
five encores at the rainbow. Wow. And they'd have gotten five
more, they had to stop, and the Doobie Brothers had to follow
them, you know? And that's when Baxter was playing with them,
yeah. And I felt so bad for those guys, because it took them
an hour of playing before they got this that audience was so
rung out. Oh, man from and they were so, I mean, they closed
with all Atlanta, and
man, was that Sammy Hagar Montrose era? Yeah.
Was it? No, no, no. Well, wait, let me think yes, it was. It was
because Ronnie was playing, Sammy was singing, and then I'd
watch Graham Central Station. Oh, yeah, you know Larry Graham
and our bass player, Bobby, had to ask him. He says, because he
played nylon string bass and black nylon strings. And he
says, Well, how often do you have to change him? Larry says,
I never change him, so I take him off and put him in water and
boil them. Wow, boils him. What's him back on the bass?
Boy, that bass sound. I mean, he could,
oh, God, he was
well seasoned strings, yeah? I mean, I've
never heard of that regular round ones. I mean, they pick up
all your grease and dirt and everything. Yeah, you want to
change them, but these
just spoiled them. I'd never heard anything like that in my
life.
So, Bill, have you ever been part of film scores and or TV
music?
A little bit, a little bit. I Well, you had Footloose, didn't
you? Well, I had a song in there, yeah, but I did a my
first movie was an ABC movie the week, where it was called
Catherine with sissy SpaceX, yes, Henry Winkler, and they had
a limited budget, and the director comes up to me and he
says, Do you know, hiding the Seventh Symphony, not offhand. I
had this little arch string ensemble, and I ended up scoring
it out in pages. I wrote it all out. It was, I don't know how
many pages, yeah, you're doing this all the time, right? Yeah.
And that ran throughout the movie, and then we did sound a
likes for beach voice and stuff like that, because, I guess they
didn't have enough budget to get the licensing. So we just they
licensed the songs, and then we just duplicated the records as
close as we could. So that was fun. That was my first dabble
into it. And then I did a movie with Keith Olson, and Keith was
like, what a giant he was. He produced everybody from Stevie
Nicks to starship to, I mean, you name it. He's done it,
Springfield, Fleetwood Mac and so he hired me fairly often, and
we got this movie that was then, this is now that se Hinton
novel, yeah, and it was with Emilio Estevez and Morgan
Freeman, and there were a couple other majors in it, and he and I
did the music for that, which is a lot of fun, you know,
electronic stuff, you know, synth stuff, kind of like at
Beverly Hills, cop, very goodies sound, yeah, Harold valdemeyer
kind of stuff. And and then me, see, I worked, I did a couple
albums with Herb Alpert, and I did three or four songs on each
one where I arranged for him, and Herb was like, you know,
being on the A and M campus at that time, you know, when herb
would walk around, everybody go. But working with him, you know,
you realize he's a trumpet player first, and a good one.
And he's very, very keen on getting things right and doing
it right. So he asked me if I'd like to arrange a song. And I
said, Sure, and it was for Never Say, never again, the Bond film,
yeah. And Michael Massa wrote the song. Michael's a fantastic
writer, but as a piano player, he's not real conscious of band
timing. So I remember I went to play piano, and Michael sits
down at the piano. He hands me a pencil. He goes, here, you
arrange. So they go through some. Aches. And finally, Carlos
Vega, the drummer, comes to me, because Billy Boy. He says, You
got to get this guy off the piano. I said, Yeah, I know. And
I said, so I went up to Michael. I said, Michael. I said, your
time is all over the place, and the guys can't follow you. He
goes, Yeah, but I'm in a separate room. I said, Michael,
you're in their headphones because Yeah, but I'm in a
separate I said, well, they need to hear the piano, you know. And
he just couldn't. So finally went, I handed him the pencil
and sat down and played, yeah. So that's the way that worked
out. But that was fun and but Lonnie Hall, when she did the
vocal, she was so funny. We were in studio, a which is huge, and
she's just sitting in the middle there. She's got a stool. She's
right under the light, you know. And I brought out a bowl of
fruit, and I said, Is this okay? Miss all. We're just playing the
part. Yeah, she's playing the Jap to a tee. So, great gal, and
she and her were still together, which I'm tickled to see. I
think I'm gonna try to see him in March, see if he remembers
the antics that we had back then, because he was an abstract
guy. I mean, when he was in the studio, we were working on
something, and he said,
I need more blue sky, less trees,
trying to decode that. Yeah, no. But he he thought an abstract,
you know? Yeah. So okay, can do it, you know, yeah, because we
sat one day in the studio, he wanted to hear with the drum
machine. He wanted to hear the difference in the timing between
the downbeat of the bass drum and the downbeat of the snare.
Let's try it 12 milliseconds late or 13, you know. And we
went through, I spent 12 hours doing that one day. Wow. He was
the A of A and M. He could do it, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, but
he was a nice guy. He signed an album for me. I never asked for
it, but I, you know, I did that. And I'm trying to think of what
other I just worked on a movie, but it, I don't know what's
going to happen with it, because movies shopping have a less
success rate, lesser success rate than records. Oh, yeah, you
know, so I don't know. And they keep changing things around.
He's got family that wants to insert music, so they'll take a
piece of mine out and put a bad piece of music in. I told my guy
in LA, I said, I think I'm going to take my name out of the
credits. I don't want to be blamed for anything. But I did a
bunch of scoring for it was a lot of fun. Yeah, and I've got a
library now of string stuff, and it's, it's pretty amazing.
Well, you've also done a lot of work in gospel music too. I did,
you know,
I that was an interesting foray, because I was traumatized as a
child in Catholic
school. So, yeah, you too. You were not alone.
Well, I mean, you know, I went in the 50s, you know, and it was
upstate New York. I mean, the rulers were king, and they were
weapons. And I saw things happen that, you know, as a young kid.
I mean, I started school when I was four and a half, and I
remember one day we had those, remember the old desks that were
all in a row Yes, and they had the ink wells and yes? And so
our kindergarten class was basically class, walk through
the Holy garden class, lunchtime, nap time, walk
through the Holy garden class. Home. That was, that was the day
no recess to just go do what you want. It was very coordinated.
And I remember one time we were laying down for nap time, and my
friend Eddie was in the next row over, and we're laying down with
our heads on the desks, and we're giggling, uh oh, she
caught him. This is the pattern of my life. I usually slip out
and don't get caught. He got nailed. And she wraps that ruler
on the desk and goes, class. Everybody wake up, and she goes,
Eddie come up here. Calls in front of the class, and she
makes him get up on the chair and stand on the desk. She goes,
Eddie doesn't want to rest. Doesn't want to sleep. He wants
to giggle like a little girl, so he should look like a little
girl. And she puts a Catholic, one of those Catholic pleated
skirts on him, oh, man, and proceeds to have the entire
class laugh at him. And that that is burned in my brain,
because that day that's abusive. It is, it is. It's like breaking
the spirit of anything, right? Animal person, she broke his
spirit that day. I hated her for it. I was just so mad, and I
told my mom stuff like this, and she couldn't believe it, you
know, yeah, until I was sick with 104 fever and I threw up,
and they made me clean it up. And that was the day I left
Catholic school.
So when these nuns So, yeah, so
when I'm working with these Christian artists, and I work
with some famous ones, and I work with some not famous ones,
and they said, Well, what church do you go to? I said, church.
Said, sometimes I go. I don't normally. Yeah, I said, you
probably classify me as a heathen. But I said. The very
fact that I'm here tells you that I am a recovering Catholic.
It was, that's a great one, yeah, and I, but I got to work
with, I'll tell you, the guy who really impressed me, because the
Christian industry at that time had big people, and then I had
big fish and small pond people. And I got to work with Larnell
Harris. And larnell's career had been around. He had been
established for 18 years, and Benson records wanted to revive
his career with a little pop injection, so they hired Robert
and I to do it. And I remember he says, who'd you work with in
LA? And I told him, he goes, Steve Perry, Sam Cook just like
that. There's a lot of Sam Cooke and Steve Perry. I won't argue
there, yeah, and, but he was the kind of guy. I mean, I swear I
probably the only guy I was nervous around in that when I
hit record, because I had the 24 track then I better be set mic
levels, preamp levels, level to tape, because when he sang that
first time, he was like, Sinatra, that was it. Wow, you
know, yeah, you talked earlier about Bowen. That's a funny
story, too. With Sinatra, Bowen told us the story he was dating
his daughter, but he didn't tell Frank.
Yes, he's told that story to us, yeah.
So yeah, he was working on a song called,
if it was my way.
Anyway, the the microphone was crackling when Frank did his
vocal, and the engineer was like, freaking out. And Jimmy
had to be the one to tell Sinatra that that he'd have to
sing it again. And he's got his two goons with him in the
studio. So finally, this is great, typical bow, and he says
he's a smart guy, man, he says, Frankie says, I'm afraid we'll
have to do another that's just not the right take. And Sinatra
goes, the right take is the one I just sang. He says, Well, I'd
like you to put a little more force into it, a little more
aggressiveness into the wrong word of the song, right? And he
was aggressive. Sinatra was a little mad, but he did it. He
sang it. And then Jimmy said, he went and burned the lacquer. You
know, those days they'd send the lacquer over, and they
messengered the lacquer over to Sinatra. And he said, The next
day he got a studio call, no introduction as to who it was.
He picks up the phone, he goes, You were right. Click. That was
it. Wow. Just like that. And I went because he said, you know,
he was 25
years old, yeah, no, he was a young guy when he did all that
with Dean Martin Sammy Davis, Jr.
He, you know, he had quite a history, and that's, I mean, to
survive that and to succeed at that. Yeah.
Well, Bowen did produce strangers in the night for for
Sinatra. And everybody loves somebody, Dean Martin, yeah. So
yeah. And as you say, he was, like, in his 20s, incredible.
He had a great story about Sinatra, where he said he'd be
the kind of guy that in the studio if he had an orchestra in
there, and he said, you'd have several pieces, and he would
stop and go that second string. He said, That guy's a little
sharp. He said he was right.
Well, you know the story about that, don't you? He was working
with Sid in LA, yeah, and the guys weren't giving him what he
needed. They figured Jimmy Bowen's 25 he doesn't know what
he's doing. So Bowen sent him on a 10 because you have to take a
union 10 every hour. Yeah, right now I go out and talk about
their airplanes and stuff. So the string player that was
giving him the most grief, he thought, he went over and he
took one of the strings and de tuned it, and then he hustles
them back in because they had 210s and they had to make up
time. Yeah, it's okay, everybody, let's go. Gotta go.
Gotta make up time. Count it. Off. They go. And in the middle
of the take, Bowen stops him, yeah, and says, He points to the
violin player. Says, check your tuning. He says, I think one of
your strings is out of tune. Yeah, I just tuned this thing.
So he checks it, and it's out of tune. Rest of the day, Bowen
said those guys were like, Yes, sir. No, sir, Mr. Bowen, because
they figured, if he's got ears, like, yeah, he's smart. Yeah, it
was very smart. I mean, he's a sharp guy. And I remember we
were always trying to figure out why it sounded important. He
didn't have a wall. So we always, at the end of the song,
we'd rate for wait for Bowen to go and off, you know? Because
that's how we do it. You want to yell because to the wall, yeah,
you know. But he did, and he was smart the way he did sessions.
Beside the joke about the 50 and 250 he knew that if he kept his
players together. And got the band cohesive, he'd get a better
product, you know, he very much aware of that, so he'd have
lunch catered in, have fabulous lunches. Oh, wow. So we'd all
sit around and talk, and it was, I mean, it was really a good
idea and a good hang, yeah? And that's what he did. And I
thought, Man, this guy is smart. He knows how to produce a
record. He knows how to get results out of the players. So,
I mean, I did a bunch of work for him. Yeah, cool. Yeah. It
was fun. I mean, I I was lucky. I mean, I'm not a country guy,
but I played enough to get by.
What was like working with trace Adkins?
He it was his first record. Yeah? So he a nice guy, general
giant. Oh, he's cool, a voice that comes out of his boots,
yeah. I mean, I never talked to a guy that had such a baritone
well, and plus, he's the size of you and I together, yeah, yeah.
And he, I saw him. I hadn't seen him in years. And my mastering
guy, Brian, who worked with me in LA he lost his wife, young to
cancer, and she ran Gary bormans management in town, so she
managed trace and Lone Star, and she was contract queen. This
woman scary, I wish she was. And trace even said at the funeral.
He said she was like a rooster in a barnyard. I was petrified
of her, and I can see little Joanie, like, five foot one,
yeah, here's back it up, you know, because it was great. But
he was really nice. He was a very nice guy. And that's the
thing that impressed me about Nashville, in that the artists
there wasn't this, well, you get there and rehearse and I'll be
by later kind of thing, yeah, if we, if we were down in Fort
Payne rehearsing with Randy in the band, Randy sang for nine
hours, if we played for nine hours, yeah, that's the way it
was. And, man, you know, I never saw that was usually like, well,
you know, I'll be there later. You guys work it out.
I'm sure you not asking you to name names, but I'm sure you had
some pretty unpleasant experiences working with certain
artists too, right? Yeah, yeah, I can
imagine that unpleasant just a little harder to manage. I
produced with Kim, a duet with her and Barbra Streisand and
that was an interesting experience. I went over to
Barbara's house, and the weird thing was, you know, she's in
Beverly Hills, and she's got gardeners all around, you know,
and they're looking in the window, because Kim Karnes and
Barbara standing over the piano singing, and I'm looking, and
there's this Mexican outside the window. He's already clipped
ahead, but he just moving so he can look in the window, yeah?
And I thought I could never live like that. I mean, you know,
being like, in a fish tank. Oh, you know, but they're leaning
over singing, and I'm playing, I'm going, this is gonna be
great, yeah. And it wasn't, it was interesting. I mean, Kim
could come in here and tell you stories. There were seven
producers on that record,
like mercy, wow. Way too many cooks in the kitchen.
Yeah. And the politics, only one gentleman produced three signs,
wow. That was Maurice White from Earth, Wind and Fire, Wind and
Fire. And I didn't know Maurice, but I was walking down the halls
of A and m1 day, and he was coming the other way, and he
goes, Hey, Bill. I says, Well, hi Maurice. How are you? He
says, Well, I've learned one thing working with Barbara
Streisand. I said, What's that? He says, I never, ever want to
work with her again. And he was not a man to say anything. Yeah,
swear. He was very spiritual guy, and I love that band, so I
Oh, yeah, you know, I was just in awe. I even knew I was, you
know, coming down the hall, but he was trying. And I'm doing a
string session for her. I got 36 of the best string players,
yeah, and I got the charts all written out, and I'm sharing the
three hour date with Lee holridge, who's an amazing
arranger. So we split the time, and I get out there, and I'm
trying to get everybody right, and they know who I am, because
I play synth and I do string parts, and they hate me. So I
must have, I must have called on Jimmy Bowen's spirit, because I
didn't, hadn't met him yet, and Laura heard those stories. Yeah,
but I, I did a run through, and it was, oh, it was amazing. And
I finally said, after the run through, I said, you know? I
said, I know you people, some of you know, who I am, and I what I
do, and I play synthesizer, because this was at the time
when electronic instruments were starting to replace players.
Everybody was petrified they'd lose their job, kind of the same
fear we have with AI now, you know, yeah, and drum machines
were out, and drummers were getting nervous, you know, and
paying attention to following the clip. Better. And I said,
so. I said, You know what I do? But I said, I have to tell you,
I said, and this was the truth. I said, sitting in front of 36
of Hollywood's finest. I said, You will never, ever be
replaced, ever. Yeah, I got a standing O for that. And the
next take, wow, they knocked it out of the park. Cool, but it
was cool. But then So Barbara, right in the middle of all this,
yeah, Bill, I don't like the way I sang the word they, Oh Lord,
I'm thinking they only know how I feel that day. Okay, well,
Barbara, I said, we're in a different studio, different
mics, different engineer, different console. She was, I
don't care, that's his job. Tell him to do it. Whoa. Okay, so it
was a little bit of that, yeah, you know. And I'm not used to
that, yeah, hey, he's an engineer. So she changed it. But
then when she approached Kim, we had done the demo with her band,
and we all played, and Barbara loved it. So we're thinking,
okay, so we hired the same band we all played, she loved it. And
then I just took the string parts that I did on keyboards
and I wrote them out for a section, yeah, and everything
was fine. And then she says to me, and that's a ballad. Mind
you, a very slow ballad, and it's the same one that Kenny
Rogers Ronnie Millsap did make no mistake She's mine. Yeah,
make no mistake He's mine. So she says, Well, when it gets to
the bridge, I want to get that part. I said, Barbara said it's
a ballad. There's not going to be any yet that that that, well,
so we go down to Richard Perry's studio, and the one he built on
Pointer Sisters fame, and I hired Ray Kelly, who's top
cellist in town. I wrote out a cello part for him, and Barbara
wasn't there, so he had these big Yuri monitors. And so she
would call the studio, and I take the phone, and I'd hold up
the phone, and she'd listen to it, then she'd say, Okay, I want
this. I want that. And I did that, and I'll call back. So I
wrote another part out. I gave it to Ray. She calls back, I
want this and that five times. What's going on? Finally, Ray
Kelly, I mean, you know, string players are very quiet and
political in nature. And he says, What does what on earth
does this woman want? He says, You just wrote five great cello
parts, yeah. And I thought, coming from Ray, that was a
compliment. I I said, well, thanks. And I said, Welcome to
my world, because, you know, and then then we were doing vocals
at the village, another fine studio in Santa Monica, and she
couldn't hear herself. But she had the engineer have her voice
so loud in the phones that she couldn't hear, you know, it was
just her voice, yeah, powering everything, you know, yeah. And,
I mean, live, that woman is scary good, on how good she is.
So, I mean, it was, it was a learning experience for me,
because I don't tolerate prima donna as much. I don't have a
lot of patience for that. No, you know, we're there to make
music and make it the best we can make it. So don't be an ass.
Do you think some people just are naturally wired to F with
other people?
Yeah, you know, I think so maybe upbringing or something, you
know,
you know, I'm in a position where I can get away with this
and have act bad, have bad behavior. Yeah, I can be a diva,
yeah, you know. And it's like, I just want to see how far I can
push you before you break.
I don't know. I mean, I just, I had a that was my experience,
you know, the record, okay, from a psychology standpoint, Kim, we
got the record, you know? She's Barbara. Said to me, she goes,
Kim sings the first verse with just the band. Barbara comes in
on the second verse, 36 strings, an oboe, you know? Yeah,
addition. And Barbara said to me, she goes, it's not big
enough. Said, Barbara, you got the whole string section. She
says, That's not big enough. So she goes, double it. So I
doubled it. Now it's, you know, 72 strings.
And then she says, and she says, it's
still not big enough. Triple it. What she doesn't realize is, you
get, you get to a point where the doubling and tripling, it
starts to cancel out. It starts to sound smaller than bigger.
You know, it just with the same section. It didn't so now I got
108 strings, and it's not big. So Kim invites me over, and we
were sitting down to listen to the record. She's got the
record. She hands me the album. And of course, the album is just
Barbara's head shot on the front cover, of course. And Barbara
had told Kim, she goes, Oh, come on over. We're going to take
some publicity photos. So Kim says, I you know, I went over
kind of casually for blue jeans and whatnot. Yeah. Kim says,
when I get there, then I find out it's back cover shot. It,
and Barbara didn't tell me, so then she hands me the record,
and I'm looking at the 33 in the back. She goes, you see anything
funny I'm looking Barbara had the graphic designer die Kim's
eyes brown. Oh, wow, because there's only room for one blue
eyed singer on that. And I went, wow, there's a real deep insight
more into the psyche.
Yeah, when you're doubling and tripling, stuff like that, does
she know what you're doing while she's watching you? Does she
know the techno tech like
I think so. I mean, she just wanted it bigger, and I
understand that. But when we put the song on, yeah, she went to
mastering. This is really crazy when you listen to it, when the
second verse comes in, she had the mastering guy crank up the
level. So not only do 108 strings come in, the track gets
visibly and audibly louder.
Doesn't mean that's like for me sometimes just like, okay, maybe
I can push back a little bit here and test you, and maybe
I'll just do a little bit of a stereo pan to make it sound
bigger. Yeah. I mean, yeah, cross your mind. Yeah.
Did. Sklar told me a story a long time ago. Leland said he
had this bass rig that he set up when we did Billy Thorpe's album
from Australia, and it was 3500 watts. Wow. He said, I can
literally play a concert and make the first the first three
rows in the audience poop their pants involuntarily. The amount
of vibration I can generate out of this.
You remember the Oakland earthquake in 1989
he had a switch on his base,
toggle switch, like you see on a telly. And he goes, I call this
my producer's switch. And he says, it does absolutely
nothing. And he said, When he gets in working for a client
that he doesn't know and who he knows doesn't know anything, he
says, then they'll say to him, Leland, we're not happy with the
sound of your bass. Can you get a little more punch out of it?
Oh, he goes, Sure. He flips the switch. He plays the exact same
thing, exact same thing. And then they go, that's terrific.
And then I know for sure they're an asshole. It was a great
story, but that, you know, that happens a lot? Oh yes, that
power of suggestion.
Well, it's even like with audiences, you know, you'll have
somebody in a audience, in the club, and they'll come up to you
and say, you know, you're you guys playing too loud. Can you
turn it down? We'd always like, act like we were, yeah, yeah.
Didn't do anything. And they go, Yeah, perfect.
How many times have you guys been mixing a radio spot and
same client comes back? Music's just really too hot, yeah,
really too Oh, okay. And I'll literally just re render it with
just a smidge pulled down. I won't even move the mouse that
much. I'll just be like, Yeah, and I re render it and like,
how's that? Oh, that's great. Yeah, okay,
there's that, you know, there is that. But, you know, it's been
an interesting ride. I mean, because people said, if you
write a book, what would you call it? And I said, my
accidental life, yeah, because I never intended to do this. I
mean, it was not when I was five months old, my father died in a
plane crash. So he flew in World War Two on loan to England, when
America had a program to provide the British with pilots because
they were short, yeah, from all the fighting, and he made it
through the whole war, came back, started a flight school
upstate New York, and his buddy brought a plane back that he had
taken a student up in those days they were the sticks, no, yeah,
and he said it's feeling a little funny. So they both took
the plane up, and it went in straight in 1000 feet. Wow. So
that was that. So my mom married Lou, my stepdad, when I was
five, Lou played piano, and there my torture began. But, I
mean, he was, he was my teacher, yeah, so, you know, come out
Wednesday. I remember my lessons were on Saturday, and he'd say,
Billy, how's your bot coming? I said, it's coming along. Let me
hear it. Said, Well, I thought my lesson was Saturday, because
let me hear it now. So, but, I mean, that's funny how fate and
things work.
Well, you went to UCLA. How did you get from one coast to the
other?
Yeah, well, that's a that's a story in itself. My father
worked six nights a week in a jazz club with his two brothers.
They played, and he had a day job at the American local
locomotive club or factory, whatever it was, it's like a
club. And they closed, they closed their doors, and he said
he couldn't find a job, but really he wanted to. He says,
Well, we're going to go to Florida, okay, but we went to
California, where his family was. I don't think we were ever
going. Of Florida. Next thing I know, I'm a house full of crazy
Italians, you know, I'm half Irish paper so, you know, it was
crazy. Grandmother, grandfather, my uncle, my aunt, my father, my
mother, my sister, my brother, all in one house. Wow, one of
those big old Hollywood houses, you know, yeah, on DeLong pray.
And I was like, Is this my life? I'd have to climb out the window
and climb up a tree to have peace and quiet, yeah. So I
think then the seas were cast for me moving to the dome house
in the forest, because I've got, I don't like loud houses, you
know. It's just not me, you know. And that place was like a
man, a man. Wow. So we never left. Yeah, we never left. And I
remember when my mom and I drove up to New York for her sister's
90th and so we made the we made the drive. My mom was probably,
I don't know, 87 at the time, but really young she was eight.
I mean, young until the day she dropped so she told me, she
goes, you remember when we went to New York? We flew to New
York. I said, Oh yeah. I said, that was my first plane flight.
We went to visit. She goes. What I didn't tell you was, if your
father didn't get us a place away from there, I wasn't coming
back because she don't like it either. It's just too nuts. I
mean, there were nice there were nice folks and everything, but
it's just, it's hard to raise a family in that kind of
environment, you know, you got everybody shouting and yelling
and whatnot on top of one another. So that was, that's
how, but that's how I wound up in California. We stayed, you
know, and I thought, Well, okay, then we moved to the San
Fernando Valley, and then we moved out to the West Valley,
and at that time, there were no freeways. It was all orange
groves and farmland. So I watched it disappear over the
years. So when I came here and I saw this happening,
yeah, yeah, a lot of the same things happening, yeah?
Developers, yeah, they just, they're universal, yeah,
farmland, all this stuff's disappearing. Yeah.
I mean, you used to be able to buy farmland for nothing, yeah.
And nowadays, you know, like you said, is farmland right out
you're walking on gold.
Yeah, you are. Oh, man, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad, thanks.
We love it. I mean, I I really enjoyed the change, and I still
have Tennessee and friends, you know what? I mean, they just a
little farther. Our next door neighbor is great. Next door
neighbor's great gal, and we're part of their family farm. Yeah,
there's, she's got 20 or 30 acres, and then her brother's
got 90 behind us. And they were worried because it was her
daughter's place, yeah, and her daughter divorced, and so they
had to sell the house, so she goes. We were kind of worried
who was going to move in there, you know. But my wife loves
Piper. She's just the nicest gal, I mean. And they're just
really neat people, salt of the earth people. And they tell you
what they think, yes, you know. And I appreciate people like
that. I got I just love it. So I love my wife. Yeah, she's very
honest. Well, you got to be brutally,
well, I mean, if she's not going to tell you who
is, yeah, exactly, it's like, that's why I appreciate her,
you know, yeah, so, I mean, and the music thing here has been
really fun. And then the last, I mean, I started that label with
B, we did that for a long time. Then I did that musical audio
book with Jonathan, and then I did this film. But, you know, I
tell people I'm just semi retired, I, you know, I got
plenty to do, yeah? And I got stuff that I'd like to finish
writing. Well, yeah, just, I mean, just for myself. I mean,
I'm not. I have no illusions about selling records. You know
what? I mean, it's the music business today. Oh, it's totally
different than what it Yeah, and with this AI thing, I I really
feel bad for guys coming up trying to make a living, because
my friend from North Carolina or South Carolina, we were in a
first band together. We won the Dick Dale Battle of the Bands
back in 1964 I still got my little mini Oscar. Oh, Dick
Dale, yeah, they blind us up on flatbed trucks. Yeah. You know,
no sound system, nothing, just amps. And he says, I went to
this chat GBT, and I said, I need some lyrics for something
about the cross. He wanted you know a spiritual song, because
John does church music. And he said, and then I went to this AI
site, and I said, Write me a song using these lyrics and a
ballad. And he sent me the song, and it was scary. It was a girl
vocal, kind of like Dolly, you know, with a nice harmony part,
guitars and everything. And I went, Holy crap,
we're doomed. Yeah, we are doomed. We are doomed.
Yeah, don't Yeah. And I just read that Matthew McConaughey
trademark his name, really, yes, I saw that as well. Yeah,
because, and I think actors and people better do that that are
in the public light, because they'll have their likeness
used. Oh, yeah.
Ai, yeah. Well, McCarthy. Hey, if I'm not mistaken, has teamed
up with the 11 labs, one of the AI companies that Well, Michael
Caine is part of that, where he has licensed his voice Yes, for
AI, and McConaughey has done the same thing. Yeah, smart, yeah.
Things are changing, but I'm just glad Don't, don't ever
leave here, because we want you to stay.
Oh, good. I'm crazy. It gets Do you remember he made me think
about Nashville, on Josh's dates, on all those Alabama
albums and stuff. He hired Bernie ledden. Yeah, and Bernie,
I'd love to see him again. I haven't seen him since those
dates. Funniest man and a great multiplayer. I mean, he plays
everything, yeah, Banjo, yeah, Bernie could do anything. And he
said one day in the studio, he said, you know, Nashville has a
funny way of taking the edge off. I didn't quite get it. Now
I get it. Yeah, you know, it's like when Deborah made her turn
to just spread her wings a little bit. Yeah, I think there
was a little resistance. And I worked on that album that she
got to do with James Stroud, yes, but I always got the
feeling like they weren't going to put any effort into it. You
know? I just had that feeling, just because it was, like their
way of saying, don't get off the lane. Yes, stay in your lane.
Yeah. That's the only bad thing about the I noticed same thing
with Steve Earle when he when he went to Memphis to do Copperhead
road. I can tell that MCA just wasn't.
He had, he had, yeah, yeah, I am. I worked with Skinner when
Ed King was still alive. Oh, wow. And he it was a trip. I
mean, because when I first met him, it was we went to Memphis
to record, and Johnny Vanzant was singing leads. Yeah,
Johnny's great guy. I like Johnny, and he's sitting on the
couch drinking Jack Daniels. I'm thinking, really, then I met Ed,
and at this time, Ed had not sobered up, yeah, so it was, you
know, champagne, and you name it, in the morning, and he got
right in my face. I didn't met the guy in it. I want eighth
notes like this. No, eight notes, eight notes. Okay, you
got eighth notes? Yeah, Billy was in rehab, so they brought me
in to sub for Billy. Yeah, Billy's, he's great for that
band. I'm thinking, Oh, I'm not Billy. You know, that's not my
thing, but Right? I'll do the best. And I walked out of the
studio after doing all that, and I never really knew whether or
not he was happy with it. So I said, my wife said, Geez, I
don't know if they were happy or not. You know, I got called back
for a Christmas album. But anyway, Ed called me up because
we were friends on Facebook. Yeah, and he called me up says,
Hey, Ted, say Ed. And he says, want you and your wife to come
up and have dinner with me before I die. Oh, wow, yikes. I
don't know if at the time he thought he was gonna die, but I
think he was just saying figuratively, you know, yeah. So
we went up to his house, and he was on the lake, and him and
Sharon, I mean, amazing posters everywhere, of all the movies,
Sweet Home, Alabama was in, wow. I mean, this was his ticket to
paradise. Yeah, he even licensed the song for the road signs in
Alabama. He guys said, I get $5 a sign. Welcome to Alabama. Wow.
Welcome to Sweet Home Alabama. Wow. And, you know
what's become, the state song, basically, yeah, yeah.
But it was, it was a great time. I mean, Ed, you know, we're
talking about how crazy it got, because we used to open for
Skinner with Bonnaroo, yeah, you know. And Ronnie was so
different from Johnny and Donnie. I mean, he was
a terror. Oh, man, I don't see how any of those guys really
worked with him.
No. Ed said the thing that sent him away was one night Ronnie
got mad at something that Ed played, and he broke a beer
bottle and came at him with, Oh, yeah.
And Ed said that was it that same night, I think he cut up
Gary rosington's hand and said, You'll never play again. That's
abusive man. I couldn't imagine working with that. No.
And I mean, I heard stories from when the plane was running out
of gas. He was up in the cockpit beating on one of the pilots, I
can imagine, because he was pissed that they didn't get put
enough gas in the plane. That's why they're going down. Gosh,
so, you know, Insanity, yeah. And Ed was, I mean, such a nice
guy and funny. And I really liked where he sat in life. He
was not a hard liner right or left. He was a common sense guy,
right? You know? And he said, you know that incense and
peppermint, he never, I don't think he got proper credit for
writing that CO writing that that's not right.
Hey, that's easy business. Yes. I mean, I remember or
entertainment, when I came
up with that idea for Betty David's eyes, we were playing it
the old way, like on Jackie's album. And it was a real news
lane for us, yeah, and we were, we were playing this song, I
don't know how many hours in rehearsal hall. And I finally
just, I laid on the keys, and I just made this horrible rang,
you know, and everybody stopped and looked at me, and I'm a
typical New Yorker. I said, this sucks. This is terrible. And
then, of course, Val our producer goes, well, what do you
got? What do I got? Big mouth, so I just pulled up a patch on
the Prophet and I played the opening line of that song that
you hear, yeah. I said, How about this? He goes, Yeah, okay.
So we sent the band out for two, three hours, go play pinball,
eat whatever you want to do while Kim and I worked out the
song, because I had to rewrite it according to these changes,
right? But the thing that bothered me most was I made, I'm
sure Jackie and Donna millions, and I'm fine with that. That's
my gig. Yeah, I'm a studio guy, but a thank you would have been
nice, because I had to, I crossed that line. There's a
line between arranging and writing, right? And sometimes,
as an arranger, you cross over and rewrite things. And so I
wasn't looking for royalty. I thank you would have been been
nice. Yeah, I never even got that. And I thought that was the
only thing that kind of bugged me a little bit, yeah. I
thought, you know, it's like, all right. But years ago, when I
was doing demos with that little string ensemble, I played piano,
and I met this singer, and we found out that whenever she and
I worked together, the writer's song got placed, and we were
both about 25 that was Kim Carnes, wow. So we started
working a lot together, doing those demos, yeah, and we did
this one demo, and they sold it to share with my string
arrangement and everything on it, right, wow. Well, here's the
crazy part. They called me for the master date, and they had me
bring my string ensemble to play the parts that I played on the
demo with the string section. So it's kind of like a security
blanket for the Yeah, for the producer and arranger. Yeah, but
my first lesson I should have learned wiser. It said arranged
by Al Capps. Wow, you know, yeah, okay, but you know, I
mean, you guys, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. No,
that's a dream, and it's just the way it works. You could have
come up with could have come up with a slogan or something, oh
yeah, and then somebody would have said, you know, this is our
new app. Guy. He came up with the slogan. Wait a minute.
Johnny B said that on the show yesterday.
Well, Phil used to do that to me. He actually stole one of my
and he told me he was going to, oh yeah, he did. He told me, but
it was looters. He said, I got to come up with some name for
these people that loot and that mooch. And I said, looters. And
he goes, that's great, everybody. Use it. And he's
using he's almost steal it from you. And he did. That's fair,
though that's good, at least, he told me. But I really want to
thank you for coming on, sir.
Well, thank you. Thank you guys. It was fun. I really incriminate
myself too badly. I think
we, I think we do that every time we do the show.
Well, yeah, I was listening to, was it Shannon? Yeah, yeah, that
was she had some stories. Oh, she's great. But it opened my
eyes about radio and oh yeah, radio is a whole different game.
I didn't realize it was as brutal it is. It's very brutal.
I see why you guys are doing this. This is much more fun.
Yes, it is exactly, much more free form, unlimiting.
Well, these two guys are just great to work with. And silent
Jim, I
make it brutal. I bring the
brutality, but remind everybody how they can find us.
Yeah, absolutely. Of course, we're on all the social media
platforms, Facebook X YouTube channel, and our website is up
and running, circling the drain.net. You can find all the
episodes there. And of course, you can also grab some
merchandise. We've got those circling the drain, T shirts,
caps, yes, and caps are coming. And so yeah, check us out on the
website, circling the drain.net.
Thank you so much. And thank you, Bill Cuomo, once again,
thanks, guys. We'll be back once again with circling the drain.
Be here you.