Episode 384 - Huey Lewis
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck-ineers?
Marc:What the fuck, Nicks?
Marc:What the fuck's the bulls?
Marc:Alright.
Marc:I'm in a hotel room in New York City.
Marc:I gotta be honest with you.
Marc:I'm exhausted, but I did it.
Marc:I finally did it.
Marc:I've been here since Saturday night.
Marc:I was in Austin before that.
Marc:I haven't been home in over a week, it feels like.
Marc:And I didn't think it was gonna happen, but I'm sitting here...
Marc:Looking at a half-eaten corned beef sandwich from the Carnegie Deli.
Marc:You know, you go to New York, things you've done over and over again throughout your life that give meaning and consistency to your New York experience.
Marc:I didn't think it was going to happen.
Marc:And here I am, about a half hour away from leaving, and I'm shoving it in my face.
Marc:A mountain of meat.
Marc:I know a
Marc:Nope, everything's going to change.
Marc:Everything's changing after this.
Marc:Did I mention... I have to mention a lot of... Holy fuck!
Marc:My show is on tonight.
Marc:Everything we've worked for together, me and you guys, is on IFC this evening.
Marc:10 p.m.
Marc:Eastern and Western time.
Marc:I think 9 p.m.
Marc:in the central areas.
Marc:Marin on IFC premieres tonight.
Marc:I can't fucking believe it.
Marc:I really can't believe I ate this sandwich.
Marc:I mean, what am I, ridiculous?
Marc:I mean, when does it stop?
Marc:This is the sandwich that killed my people.
Marc:Don't emotionally avoid how excited you are about your show, Mark.
Marc:Don't do that.
Marc:I want to thank one of our listeners for helping us diagnose and fix the problem from the Vancouver episode.
Marc:There was a sound issue that was there in the recording that many people couldn't figure out.
Marc:The entire WTF team in Houston and on the Cape were trying to figure out
Marc:It's a bad joke.
Marc:NASA joke.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:We couldn't figure it out.
Marc:What the hell was wrong with it?
Marc:It had been recorded improperly, and we couldn't see it.
Marc:We couldn't tell until people couldn't listen to it on mono devices.
Marc:So this guy who goes by L, and his band is L Bell, you can check out their tunes at lbellmusic.com.
Marc:Help this out.
Marc:Fix the file.
Marc:We reposted it.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Rock on, my friend.
Marc:So you can check them out, and...
Marc:And, you know, give them some love because they salvaged an episode.
Marc:It's never happened before.
Marc:We couldn't crack it.
Marc:That guy figured it out.
Marc:Don't want to forget this.
Marc:With everything else going on, it will be in Milwaukee tomorrow night.
Marc:That's Saturday, the 4th, at the Pabst Theater.
Marc:Please come.
Marc:Please come.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I said that.
Marc:I'm getting used to this self-promotion thing.
Marc:Don't think I'm going to.
Marc:It's not going to always be like this.
Marc:I promise.
Marc:What a whirlwind this has been.
Marc:I want to thank you guys for being there for me, for putting up with my self-promotion, which I'm not great at.
Marc:Did I mention my book is out?
Marc:Did you see how I did that?
Marc:All right, my book came out.
Marc:And don't get the wrong idea.
Marc:I'm not happy.
Marc:I'm not content.
Marc:I'm excited.
Marc:But I haven't changed.
Marc:I'm just excited.
Marc:I don't know why I keep...
Marc:promising you guys that I'm not going to change.
Marc:Maybe I will change.
Marc:Jessica is here with me.
Marc:We had a lovely time.
Marc:That doesn't happen all the time on vacations.
Marc:But we did.
Marc:I got my work done.
Marc:We had nice dinners.
Marc:I think when I showed up with the corned beef sandwich and only potato chips for her, that was not a great moment for us.
Marc:But I think we're working through it.
Marc:Well, she is.
Marc:I feel pretty good about the sandwich.
Marc:I'm sure she'll enjoy her chips.
Marc:But let's get back to the important things.
Marc:Huey Lewis is on the show today.
Marc:I got the opportunity to interview Huey.
Marc:Someone says, you want to interview Huey?
Marc:I'm like, yeah, I'd love to talk to Huey Lewis.
Marc:That's got to be a life.
Marc:So we had a nice chat, which we'll get back to the garage for in just a second.
Marc:I did Howard Stern for the first time when I was in New York.
Marc:I didn't think that would ever happen for me.
Marc:And it's weird when you spend your life wondering what something would be like, if you were ever going to do that.
Marc:And the opportunity came up and you walk in.
Marc:It's interesting because he interviews people, I interview people.
Marc:He obviously invented it on some level.
Marc:He invented the modern interview.
Marc:So I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:I was very nervous.
Marc:I thought he was going to dig something up.
Marc:He was going to take me down.
Marc:Didn't know.
Marc:Got over there, and when they bring you into the studio, he's already talking to you.
Marc:Good trick.
Marc:Good trick.
Marc:Noted.
Marc:Though I kind of do that already.
Marc:Then the producer, Gary, throws the headphones on you with the microphone built in, and you're in conversation before your ass even hits the chair.
Marc:And we had a great talk.
Marc:I didn't know what he was going to hit me with.
Marc:I didn't know where we were going with anything.
Marc:But I was fortunate in that he didn't wear his sunglasses the day I was there so I could see his eyes.
Marc:He was very perky.
Marc:He was connected.
Marc:Like I was watching him on the monitor in the dressing room doing his ad reads.
Marc:I'm like, I get that.
Marc:That's a radio guy in there.
Marc:That's Howard Stern, but he's a radio guy.
Marc:He's just doing his ad reads, eating.
Marc:He's eating some melon.
Marc:Like that's Howard Stern eating melon.
Marc:Right there.
Marc:That's just a guy in there eating melon.
Marc:I can talk to a guy who does an ad read and eats melon.
Marc:I understand that.
Marc:Sounds of New York.
Marc:Sounds of New York.
Marc:I got right in there and right away he was like, so you're a jealous guy.
Marc:You're a jealous guy.
Marc:You're jealous.
Marc:You're angry.
Marc:You're angry at people.
Marc:I'm like, yeah.
Marc:Aren't you?
Marc:So we got right into that.
Marc:It was jealousy and anger.
Marc:He did some...
Marc:off-the-cuff psychoanalyzing of my anger issue based on something he read in my book about my father.
Marc:I'm like, I think you got it.
Marc:I think we fixed it.
Marc:But it was a thrill, and I had a great conversation.
Marc:I hung out with him an hour.
Marc:Great conversation.
Marc:Had a good time on Fallon, doing a lot of radio.
Marc:It's just been crazy, a whirlwind.
Marc:And I think it all went pretty well.
Marc:Thank you for being there.
Marc:Enjoy my show tonight.
Marc:Record Bill Maher's show.
Marc:Not going to say I'm going to be on it, but I'm going to be on it.
Marc:So that's good.
Marc:I'm competing against myself tonight in some markets, primarily the East Coast market.
Marc:But it was a window of opportunity.
Marc:I took it.
Marc:It tapes earlier.
Marc:I'm going to be home to watch my show and be glued to my computer to wait for people to say shitty things on Twitter.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:I'm going to switch that.
Marc:Today, I'm only going to look at the good things.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:All right, that's a promise.
Marc:You won't see me engaging with bad shit.
Marc:I'm not going to promise on anyone's grave because, you know, it's a wobbly promise.
Marc:But I think I can keep it.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Do you have a problem with those chips?
Marc:That was the only chips they had.
Marc:Are they no good?
Marc:Oh, they're pop chips?
Marc:That was the only thing they had at the place.
Marc:I went to the one place.
Marc:We'll get you some other chips later.
Marc:I'll buy you a whole sandwich of some kind.
Marc:Now let's talk to Huey.
What the fuck?
What the fuck?
What the fuck?
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Yeah, Mark.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:Huey Lewis.
Marc:How do you like that?
Marc:Hey.
Marc:You're still out there doing the work.
Marc:I am.
Marc:That's amazing, man.
Marc:Well, I'm young.
Marc:And you look well.
Guest:You know, I always say if there's not surprise in their voice when they say, you look good.
Guest:If somebody says, you look good, you know, they should say...
Guest:Wow, you look good.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:If they say that, they mean it.
Guest:Otherwise, they're just... Well, I haven't seen you in a while.
Marc:I mean, I don't know you, and I know you like most people know you.
Marc:I mean, you were everywhere for a while, and then people were like, what's he up to?
Marc:And you never stopped working.
Guest:true yeah well you know we're a band we're a band and we play yeah we play music the old-fashioned way yeah yeah yeah i mean how many like number one hits have you had oh gee you're embarrassing me come on man you're embarrassing am i no what yeah i don't know you actually don't know i mean uh i don't know a lot number one well i mean top 10 well top 10 i think there's a lot yeah yeah
Marc:But what I didn't really- You're embarrassing me.
Marc:Oh, you'll be all right.
Marc:You'll be all right.
Marc:But what I didn't realize was that when you grow up with listening to someone's music or being around for it, that you came at a certain time.
Marc:There was a time where you guys were popular.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And it was like post new wave, just post new wave.
Marc:And you kind of brought back that kind of like working man, integrity, a solid fucking rock and roll music.
Marc:And all of a sudden, you're everywhere for a little while.
Marc:But I didn't realize that you were hammering at it for years.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:And that you came up the real way.
Guest:You weren't some flash in the pan.
Guest:I think we all did, really.
Guest:Yeah, some people.
Guest:In those days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And really, just to address your earlier point, records and those things are a product of the times.
Guest:It's pop music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's not jazz here.
Guest:This is pop music.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So the times are important in that.
Guest:And it's funny because this is our 30th sports anniversary.
Guest:Of that record.
Guest:Tour.
Guest:Of that record.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And we're going to tour it and we're going to do some giveaway stuff and do a big deal of the 30th thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I realized like 30 years ago, what a different world.
Guest:It was completely radio driven.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was no Internet.
Guest:There was no jam band scene.
Guest:So if you wanted to exist as a band and make records, you had to have hit singles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so our record sports, which is now we're talking a lot about because it's this year and all.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is as I suddenly had this realization that it is a collection of singles.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because we knew we needed a hit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we didn't know which one was going to hit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we aimed every single track at the radio because radio was king.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's completely changed.
Marc:Okay, so the songs on that, The Heart of Rock and Roll, Heart and Soul, Bad is Bad, I Want a New Drug, Walking on a Thin Line, Finally Found a Home, If This Is It, You Crack Me Up, Honky Tonk Blues.
Marc:But that's a Hank Williams song.
Marc:But fucking I Want a New Drug?
Marc:Are you fucking kidding me?
Marc:That song was huge.
Marc:I mean, it's like I can hear it in my head.
Marc:That is a pop song.
Marc:That is the fucking signature of it.
Marc:But I mean, it took you a while to get there.
Marc:I mean, how did you, because I know you were a Bay Area guy for a while, but where'd you grow up and what was the journey, man?
Marc:I mean, where'd you grow up?
Guest:Well, I was born in New York City.
Guest:But moved to California when I was four.
Guest:The sandboxes weren't very good.
Marc:Dangerous.
Guest:They're dangerous sandboxes.
Guest:So we went to better sand.
Guest:But I grew up in Marin County, California.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:I had a very bohemian family.
Guest:Both my dad was a jazz drummer.
Guest:Doctor, but a jazz drummer by hobby and a piano player.
Guest:My mom was an artist and Polish and
Guest:and the first kind of a hippie and then and then then not just kind of hippie a real hippie and then so my dad sent me away to prep school convinced me that would be because your mom was too much of a hippie yeah like what does that mean like were they well she we were taking acid and with were they tied up with the uh with the the crew the bay area original acid very very well with yeah timothy lure when he visited the west coast yeah
Guest:Boom, you know, Ginsburg and all the beat poets and stuff.
Marc:So your folks were hanging out with them?
Guest:My mother was.
Guest:They split up my dad.
Guest:Because mom went off the reservation.
Guest:Because mom got to be, yeah.
Guest:Mom went left, big time.
Guest:Although my dad is just as crazy, to be honest.
Guest:But he didn't like the drug thing.
Marc:Right.
Guest:He thought cocktails were enough.
Guest:Sure, the old school.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So do you have recollection of Leary and that crew?
Guest:I remember one night I woke up in the morning.
Guest:It was like 3 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:It must have been midnight or 1 o'clock.
Guest:And I was... Let me get it approximately right.
Guest:I must have been...
Guest:15 or 14 maybe.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:What am I talking about?
Guest:I was probably 13.
Guest:Old enough to know though.
Guest:And I woke up and I walked out into the living room and there's Allen Ginsberg in the corner with finger symbols.
Guest:My mom would bring the no-name bar home occasionally.
Guest:Which was the Beatnik Barnes in Sausalito right next to the Tides bookstore and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:And Mingus.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were hanging out at your house?
Guest:John Handy.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Jazz musicians.
Marc:Just jamming and talking?
Marc:Well, no.
Guest:Just...
Guest:You know, drinking.
Marc:Doing what people do after the gig.
Marc:I think so.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was a kid.
Marc:But did it have any effect on you?
Marc:Was that one of those signposts where you're like, that's what I want to do?
Marc:No, not really.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:I guess I was young, so it wasn't.
Guest:really so that was in the late 50s yeah no this is kind of very 61 62 63 right right so it was all just happening the B thing was kind of arcing that's right and then the 60s thing hadn't taken off exactly
Marc:So it wasn't attractive to you.
Marc:Those guys were just dirty hippies?
Guest:You know, my musical taste went the other way as well.
Guest:I mean, that's why I listen to soul music all the time.
Guest:Because the hippie thing was like, you know, we were there.
Guest:We went to Fillmore all the time.
Guest:Saw all the bands.
Guest:Were your parents?
Guest:Well, my mom did.
Guest:Yeah, my mom would condone all this stuff at that point.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So she was just taking her kid.
Guest:And I'm at prep school.
Guest:And then I come back for the summertime.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And this explosion's happening, you know, in San Francisco.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's been summers like that.
Guest:And then back to prep school.
Guest:So you're wearing an outfit to go to school.
Guest:And then you come home to your mom who's like, loses a blazer.
Guest:We're going to the Fillmore.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Who'd you see?
Guest:Do you remember who you saw?
Guest:At the Fillmore?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Charles Lloyd Quintet, the great Southside, Charlie Musselwhite's Southside Sound System.
Guest:Musselwhite, yeah.
Guest:With Harvey Mandel and guitar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Charlie, now, you know, I'm a harmonica player.
Guest:He's up in the Bay Area still, right?
Guest:Yeah, right, and we're pals.
Guest:Well, we're not, but, you know, we're from the same place.
Guest:Was a harmonica-
Guest:neatest things is to call him a contemporary sure man i mean so harmonica was like your first instrument yeah yeah yeah my first and only really i mean i don't play anything but harmonica and and you can and you can hold you can you can run with the best of them well i don't know you know really who was it said is you know you got to have something to say sure sure if you and you only need the chops the
Guest:to say what you need to say.
Guest:So it depends on what it is that you want to say.
Guest:That's interesting, yeah.
Guest:And it's a different voice.
Guest:Like sound, harmonica is a reed instrument, so nobody sounds the same.
Guest:I mean, the sound comes from your cavity, comes from your body.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So it's, you know.
Marc:And once you learn how to bend those notes, Foy, then that's the big breakthrough with harmonica, where you just figure out how to pull your throat down so that you can bend it and move it.
Guest:Well, and actually go to certain notes that aren't on the scale.
Guest:oh right howard levy who's just an amazing harmonica player has figured out how to play all those overtones and stuff and he plays you know bop on a diatonic harmonica really oh he's tremendous i was i like uh like oh i'm a little walter guy and yeah and that stuff that's pretty well walter you know interesting thing about walters if you go back and listen to uh early little walter and and ben webster from the same period yeah that's who walter was listening to oh ben webster and
Guest:And Illinois Jaquette, the sax players.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You can always track it, can't you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and his genius was to turn it around and play blues position and play it through that distorted amp.
Guest:With that big old microphone.
Guest:Yeah, and get that crystal mic and get that saxophone.
Marc:Right, like on Roller Coaster.
Marc:Was that the name of that riff?
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:Was there ever a moment where you sat down like, I'm going to learn every lick on this motherfucker?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Almost all harmonica players can play Roller Coaster.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Marc:that's a that's a tough run though yeah i mean yeah it is well and of course it's not just playing it it's playing it with feel and it's how you play it well i think that's interesting what you said especially because of my realization as you know basically a garage guitar player is that it took me a long time to realize that it really is the feeling that you know you can your your expertise or your musicianship is just it's relative to what you can communicate through what your your instrument is or your voice or whatever
Guest:And there's foie gras and then there's hamburgers.
Marc:Yeah, hamburgers are always better.
Guest:No, not necessarily.
Marc:I like foie gras.
Guest:Occasionally.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But my point is that they're different.
Guest:The two things are different.
Guest:And there's pop music and there's serious virtuosic music.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So when you, okay, so you grew up in the Bay Area and once you, when did you get out of there?
Marc:Because it sounds like as exciting as it would have been for many people to grow up in the environment you were growing up in, it got a little tedious.
Marc:The Bay Area.
Marc:Well, yeah, and the hippie thing and, you know, that.
Guest:Well, no, we just, we listened to KDIA across the Bay, which was in all our little bands that we had in Marin County.
Guest:That's really the common thread of the news is that Johnny and Sean and Bill Gibson and Mario, we dug the funky stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it was kind of a rebelling against the... Hippie thing.
Marc:The hippie thing.
Marc:So it was basically R&B soul music.
Guest:And interestingly enough, KDIA...
Guest:in Oakland, is the one and only sister station of WDIA in Memphis.
Guest:And so, in some cases, like a Rance Allen record, which was on Truth Records, a gospel record, and they had Ain't No Need in Cryin'.
Guest:And they would... That...
Guest:in some cases, maybe only got added to those two stations because Memphis was right there next to Stacks.
Guest:See, Stacks, and Truth was part of Stacks.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So the first station to play any Stacks record was WDIA.
Guest:And then the second one was KDIA.
Guest:And we know songs that nobody else almost heard, you know?
Guest:Right.
Marc:And then there was a lot in the late- Johnny Taylor, a lot of Johnny Taylor stuff.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know?
Marc:And in the late 60s, it seems like, because you're talking about the early 60s, right?
Marc:In the late 60s, it seemed like Graham was starting to integrate that.
Marc:Like, you know, there was soul coming through the film more.
Marc:There was like, you know, stuff, it became more popular.
Guest:Interesting, man.
Guest:Well, that was Bill.
Guest:Bill saw the human being where they had all this different stuff.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Let's do that.
Marc:Did you ever come in contact with those bands, like the Dead and those guys?
Marc:I mean, were they around?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You mean, were they around?
Guest:Well, I mean, when you were a kid.
Guest:Well, I used to go see them.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I started playing harmonica right there with Pigpen.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you know him?
Guest:No, never met him.
Guest:Never met him.
Marc:But you saw him and you were like, that was sort of inspiring.
Guest:Oh, he was fantastic.
Guest:And then through him, I discovered Junior Wells, you know, and then went the other way and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:But yeah, it started kind of, they were right in our backyard.
Guest:They were older than we were.
Guest:In some cases, they were our brothers.
Guest:Mario, our bass player, his brother John was in the Quicksilver Messenger service.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we were like the sons.
Marc:Right, the older brothers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Johnny and Billy's band had Dan Shalek, who was Dave Shalek from the Sons of Chaplin's brother.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so it was, you know, in some cases our older siblings and in my case my mother favorite bands were the Grateful Dead and everything else.
Guest:So we had to find something that was our own.
Marc:So you were living on the hate around there?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:We were living on the Marine County.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:Yeah, nothing like the hate.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So was Pigpen a good player?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Killer.
Marc:It's hard to tell, because there's not a lot of it on the Dead Records.
Marc:I mean, he didn't live that long.
Marc:Oh, he was great, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, they were a great band.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They were real great.
Marc:They were.
Guest:Jerry was great.
Marc:He was, wasn't he?
Guest:Oh, he was great, man.
Guest:He was really great.
Marc:And it was a really unique sort of blending of sounds.
Marc:As time went on, I think they got kind of pigeonholed and they invented that jam band thing.
Marc:But boy, those early dead records and what they were doing was fucking sweet.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:They were the originals.
Guest:They were the first guys.
Guest:Think about it.
Guest:It was love, love me do.
Guest:You know, and then came the dead.
Guest:They started every tune with the feedback.
Guest:Remember that?
Marc:There would be minutes of that between songs.
Marc:Yeah, they'd break down in the middle of a concert and do Space Jam.
Marc:It was like a bathroom break.
Marc:The drums would just start, and you're like, oh, Christ.
Marc:And you just wait it out.
Marc:What are they going to go into?
Guest:And then they'd turn the whole audience onto acid.
Guest:That's always a good show business ploy.
Marc:Yeah, sure, man.
Marc:That'll work.
Marc:Yeah, maybe they'll remember the show.
Marc:Yeah, that might make it memorable.
Marc:Well, that was at the...
Marc:Where'd they do that?
Marc:That first one was down at that, like the dock workers union building down on Longshoreman's Hall.
Marc:Longshoreman's Hall.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Were you at that?
Guest:No.
Guest:Was your mom?
Guest:Let's see.
Guest:The first time I saw the dead, I'll tell you what, you know what's interesting?
Guest:What?
Guest:The first time I saw the dead was at Cafe Agogo in New York City.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I guess it might not have been the first time, but I was at prep school, and I was the only one who knew who they were.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Café Gogo held about 150 people, 200 people, right in the village.
Marc:So what, this would be like 64, 65?
Marc:Like 65, I think.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they were all dressed up and looking good and being the weird ones that they were?
Marc:Yeah, kind of.
Guest:But it was way different.
Guest:That's right, I had seen them.
Guest:I had seen them because they were sort of larger than, you know, like at the Fillmore they were with the light show and the big stage.
Guest:And now suddenly they're at Cafe I Go and I was like on top of them.
Marc:And it was strange.
Guest:A little twin reverb, Bobby Weir's playing through a little twin.
Marc:It's different.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So when you were in New York, you were out going to clubs when you were that young, like 14 or 15.
Marc:Did you ever tap into the New York scene?
Marc:Because there were sort of competing psychedelic scenes between the Warhol crew and the fucking West Coast crew.
Marc:Did you see those guys?
Guest:I was there a little earlier than that.
Guest:When I was at prep school, Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, we would go to Philadelphia for the folk scene was big.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:This is 63, 64, 65.
Guest:And in the East Coast, up 65 and finally 66.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the East Coast had, you know, Kerner Ray and Glover, Snaker, Dave Ray.
Guest:Tom Rush played at the second fret.
Guest:Von Ronk.
Marc:Bill Von Ronk.
Marc:Dave Von Ronk.
Marc:Dave Von Ronk, yeah.
Marc:Exactly, yep.
Marc:And they were doing that.
Guest:And that was the scene there, the folks.
Guest:What did you think of that business?
Guest:Well, I dug it, and I especially dug the bluesy stuff.
Marc:right you know uh john kerner man spider john kerner fantastic yeah yeah i don't know that guy oh he's fantastic wow and tony glover was a harmonica player uh really good man so when did your actual sort of musical journey start when did you lay it down and say fuck this i mean did you go to college and then bail or what
Marc:Yeah, I went to Cornell for five minutes over a two-year period.
Guest:That's some high... You must have been a smart motherfucker, man.
Guest:No, well, Cornell's a big deal.
Guest:Yeah, I suppose it is, yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah, it's a great school, actually, as it happens.
Guest:Would you go to study?
Guest:But not for harmonica.
Guest:If you want to study harmonica, you don't need to go to Cornell.
Guest:What did you go for?
Guest:Do you remember?
Guest:Yeah, I was in electrical engineering.
Guest:I had kind of a math aptitude as a kid.
Guest:I always had good grades in math.
Guest:I was a year young when I went to... I skipped second grade.
Guest:So I went to Lawrenceville prep school, my father suggested.
Guest:And after four years of prep school...
Guest:You know, my dad said, okay, well, as far as I can figure out, you can do whatever you want to do, but I got only one more decision, one more thing I'm going to make you do.
Guest:What's that?
Guest:Well, you're only 16.
Guest:You're a year young.
Guest:Take a year off and bum around Europe.
Guest:I said, but dad, I'm going to play ball and I'm going to do this.
Guest:He said, no, no, it's the last thing I'm going to make you do.
Guest:I think it's...
Guest:Most people don't know what they want to do in life.
Guest:If you take a year off in between before college, it might help you crystallize some stuff.
Guest:My mom said, hey, that's the first good idea your dad ever had.
Guest:Gave me a Bob Dylan record, said the poets love this guy.
Guest:And her boarder at the time was a guy called Billy Roberts who wrote Hey Joe and played harmonica.
Guest:He was a folk singer who had the harmonica stuff.
Marc:Your mom rented to the guy who wrote Hey Joe?
Marc:That's right.
Marc:god damn you're like some sort of like musical zealot you're just at the core of a lot of shit that's just old man you've been around and been in the business for a while this stuff happens but damn that that's one of the best songs ever it is a good song it is a good song i mean like it's very folky you know when you think about it and hendrix just ripped it open yeah just took it to another place yeah because that hendrix's version of that song is one of my favorite songs fantastic it's crazy what was that dude like
Guest:Not Hendrix.
Marc:The dude who wrote the Hey Joe.
Guest:Oh, he was a folk singer.
Guest:Very interesting guy.
Guest:Kind of very smart, but a little eccentric.
Guest:But he had all these harmonicas because he played them.
Guest:And he gave me a bunch of harmonicas.
Guest:So I hitchhiked across the country for my year off.
Guest:From Marin to?
Guest:From Marin to Boston.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went to visit my prep school guys who were at Harvard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And slept on their floor in Cambridge for about three weeks until I figured out how to get over to Europe without having to pay.
Guest:How'd you do that?
Guest:Well, I hung out at what was then Idlewild Airport.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because on my hitchhike across the country, a guy had explained to me that there was a way to do it.
Guest:And he explained to me how to do it.
Guest:You get the folder, you go in early.
Guest:In those days, there were no computers.
Guest:They weren't scanning anything.
Guest:They'd just write on it with a special pen.
Guest:And if you could dodge a thing, then you take a seat that isn't yours.
Guest:You write a certain seat number, a bad seat over the envelope.
Guest:On a boat?
Guest:Or a plane?
Guest:Plane, airplane.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:TWA.
Guest:All right.
Guest:And you write a middle seat over the wing.
Guest:That's the number you put.
Guest:And then you sit in a different bad seat.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just in case, she says, somebody else is in your seat.
Guest:You go, oh, I'm actually over there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I thought, sorry.
Guest:So that's your double check then.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And they weren't sold out.
Guest:These flights were not sold out in those days.
Guest:And he told me, he says, if you can get into the little...
Guest:waiting area which you do you go very early and make yourself inconspicuous yeah and then eventually they're going to count and the counts going to be off by one but they're not going to stop anything they're going to think they messed up and they're just going to fly and that was it that was it now when you when you went across country you certainly can't pull that shit off anymore huh no no can't do any of that stuff nor would you want to right would you want to hitchhike across the country but that's a sad thing isn't it
Marc:i suppose yeah i mean it's different i mean it's a different but like i i wonder it is sad it's sad in the way our parents look at our lives that are so complicated and say you guys too bad you know well it's just like there was a time like i don't i think i was always told not to hitchhike but there was a time i think there that window in the 60s right where the the country was changing and there was something new happening and there was a it it felt you know uh scary but somehow safe to do that i mean you trusted people
Marc:No, I agree.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:What was that?
Marc:Did you have any sort of pivotal experiences?
Marc:Because, I mean, America was still sort of, from place to place, a unique experience.
Guest:I had tons of them, tons of them, every ride.
Guest:I mean, I got picked up.
Guest:One guy had stolen a car.
Guest:He was obviously a felon of some sort.
Guest:He had two other guys hitchhiking, and he says, right, you got any money?
Guest:Well, I said, no, I don't have any money.
Guest:And I think I had $400, which is a lot of money.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Initial journey from Bakersfield.
Guest:I first went south to Southern California and stayed with a gal in La Jolla, a girlfriend of mine.
Guest:And then I took off across the country.
Guest:And at Bakersfield, I found this guy.
Guest:And we went all the way to Denver, and we siphoned gas at night because nobody had any money.
Guest:And I wasn't about to say, hey, wait, I'll pay.
Guest:So we would go out into the country, and you'd find these farmhouses at night, in the middle of the night.
Guest:And he'd wind down the road.
Guest:Open the guy's gas pump, fill the car, and take off, man, while they're running out the back door with a shotgun and stuff.
Guest:Good.
Guest:It was unbelievable.
Guest:Good first ride.
Guest:It was horrible.
Guest:All the way to Denver.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then what happened in Denver?
Guest:I don't remember that.
Guest:I remember hitchhiking out north.
Guest:I went north.
Guest:It was so cold in Ohio.
Guest:I mean, we're talking freezing cold in September.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, freezing, freezing cold hitchhiking out there.
Marc:So you get there, you get to Boston, you do the number, you get overseas, and then what happens?
Guest:Then I met another guy, Michael Jeffries, who's crazy.
Guest:He hitchhiked and traveled all the way from South Africa.
Guest:And I said, well, I'm here.
Guest:My dad's making me go.
Guest:I'm going to Europe.
Guest:He said, we'll go together.
Guest:I said, fine.
Guest:So together we hitchhiked all the way through France, down to North Africa, all the way to Marrakesh, where we went for three days and stayed for two months.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:In Marrakesh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did the hash thing?
Guest:Did the hash thing.
Guest:Played harmonica till my lips bled on the square.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And did people dig it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I got, you know, we stayed at a little youth joint, Mukta's Home for Wayward Boys and Girls, he called it.
Guest:And it was like a dirham.
Guest:And all you could eat was like a dirham, you know?
Guest:And then when I'd play on the square, I'd get three or four dirhams.
Guest:I'd be two dirhams to the upside.
Guest:So you just hung out?
Guest:I just hung out.
Marc:That's fucking beautiful, man.
Marc:Did you have the long hair?
Marc:Were you doing that?
Guest:I had the long hair.
Marc:Everything?
Guest:Yep.
Marc:The whole package.
Marc:Did you meet anybody in Marrakesh?
Marc:Was there any of the old beats hanging around?
Guest:You know, I didn't.
Guest:Every once in a while, I'd see somebody who was clearly British, but I didn't know enough to know who they were.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And I think I've read books.
Guest:I read the Clapton book, and I know Keith Richards and those guys, and Marrakesh.
Guest:But I think that predates me.
Guest:I was there in 60...
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they were there, I think, 62.
Marc:So you're getting your chops together.
Marc:You must be pretty much a wizard player by the time you get done with the tour, or with the hitchhiking thing.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, there was another crystallizing, you know, coming out of Morocco, and now I'm hitchhiking out of Morocco.
Guest:And there's me and my pal, Michael Jeffries, and we're hitchhiking out of Morocco, and we can't get a ride, because now we're in Spain.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And Spain was Franco's Spain in those days, and so it was very...
Guest:paranoid kind of a deal.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They wouldn't pick you up.
Guest:We have long hair and everything.
Guest:And now on the horizon, I see a 19... I'll make it up, but it's close.
Guest:1930 Chevrolet, something like that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And pulling an Airstream trailer.
Guest:Stops for us.
Guest:Dutchman called Jimmy Vandera.
Guest:The car had been used in Casablanca, the film.
Guest:And it was his, and he was driving it all the way back to Holland.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:And he says,
Guest:Go ahead, boys.
Guest:So we get in with him.
Guest:He liked to stop at every bar on the way and have one shot of that mentholated spirits, whatever they call it.
Guest:Absinthe?
Guest:Schlivovitza or whatever it was.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Or no, absinthe, whatever their gas was.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:It wasn't absinthe.
Marc:You're talking about schnapps or something?
Marc:I can't remember which one they do in Spain.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:They have one in every country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, wham, you know, and then he'd be hammered.
Guest:So at some point he drove off the road into a flooded field and the water came up above the floorboards.
Guest:We thought, oh, we're screwed here.
Guest:But no, he says, no problem.
Guest:And it's very hazy because we were hammered.
Guest:It's the middle of the night kind of thing.
Guest:He has a fire extinguisher, sprays the motor with a fire extinguisher.
Guest:Suddenly, gets back in, starts it up, and drives out of the pond onto the dike.
Guest:The car works.
Guest:He said, no, because it dries it out or something?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Drives out the distributor.
Guest:I don't know if he opened it.
Guest:I don't know what he did.
Guest:I can't barely remember.
Guest:But now we drive out.
Guest:But when we get to the border of Portugal, my passport is missing.
Guest:And it turns out that we know later that it got floated somehow out of my knapsacks on the ground in the back in the Airstream.
Guest:And it fell out of there somehow with a flood thing.
Guest:And so I had to go back to Seville and get a new passport.
Guest:And it's middle of the night.
Guest:I got $20 to my name at this point.
Guest:So I knock on the embassy.
Guest:I get there just before closing at 4.
Guest:The next night, they shut the door in my face.
Guest:I had to spend the weekend there, and I met these students, and they heard me play harmonica, and they said, I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll make a concert for you.
Guest:So they threw a concert in five days in Seville that was like a smash hit.
Guest:At their university, there were 3,000 people.
Guest:I played harp with this guy.
Guest:It's kind of a long story.
Guest:Who is the guy?
Guest:His name was Michael, and I can't remember his last name.
Guest:He was an Australian guy who they auditioned
Guest:for the auditioned guys, they said, we'll do it.
Guest:Because I knew all about San Francisco.
Guest:And that just captivated them, these students.
Guest:They couldn't believe that.
Guest:And I was really from San Francisco.
Guest:And I knew all these things.
Guest:And so once I'd done that concert,
Guest:Needless to say, the bug had been.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, it was just the two of you?
Guest:Yeah, the two of us.
Guest:And I think it was Los Nuevos Chempos was the opening act.
Guest:They were kind of a big band, and they were a professional outfit.
Guest:And we were doing like Sonny, Terry, Brownie, McGee stuff.
Guest:Sure, sure, right.
Guest:Key to the Highway.
Marc:Yeah, that kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it worked like a champ in this concert atmosphere.
Guest:And after the show, I had cards from these clubs and these little cafes and stuff.
Guest:And this one disco tech guy who was the big guy in town, he said, hey, come see me play Friday night.
Guest:We said, great, sure, we'll do it.
Guest:yeah so we go there friday night to the club and we were horrible it was like a and the other band was great string broke and it was the end of our that was it lasted one big night but that was that's when you got bit though that was when you're like this exactly this is this is my future i had a fabulous gig and then a terrible gig right three nights later so where do you go after that to get started
Guest:I went back to Cornell for five minutes over a two-year period and played in bands for the most part.
Guest:Yeah, and you dropped out.
Guest:Then I dropped out to go back to San Francisco where it was all happening.
Guest:It was 69 now.
Guest:So that's it.
Guest:It's blowing up.
Guest:And that's where you put the first band together?
Guest:No, then I went back and joined a little bluegrass outfit called the Hereford Heartstringers that expanded into this big bluegrass band with three of the members of Clover.
Guest:And Clover was a country rock band that had been, they'd made a little noise in the late 60s.
Guest:They were great.
Guest:And you were just playing harp or you were singing?
Guest:I was just playing harp for the most part.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Just playing harp.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although I was singing in my solo act.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But no, with Clover, I was just playing harp.
Guest:And that was your first real band?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, no, no.
Guest:I had bands.
Guest:I was played in bands in Cornell.
Guest:But they weren't recording.
Guest:And I actually sang, but no recording, right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So with Clover, they had made records already.
Guest:They'd lost their deal, but I joined and Sean Hopper joined, and then we...
Guest:We got it together.
Guest:We got signed by Phonogram and managed by Jake Rivera and Dave Robinson from Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe fame.
Marc:Nick was in here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's the greatest.
Marc:Great guy.
Marc:He's the greatest.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he's the greatest storyteller of all time, by the way.
Marc:yeah no we had a good time you know he's he's kind of funny because he's got an edge to him you know what i mean he's seen a lot of shit and he's you know but he's he's his new record's real sweet oh he's he's reinvented himself about 10 years ago and it's wonderful yeah yeah he's like just a guy with a guitar now you know huey says i don't rock anymore
Marc:and that's the guy that did you you had something i love him i knew the bride when she used to rock and roll yeah i i produced that for him that's a big song man we had a ball well we had a ball doing it i mean i used to rock pile i thought was a great oh they were great there's nothing like them nothing like them so all right so you get signed and you're not singing yet or you are
Guest:Yeah, I sang at Cornell.
Guest:When I joined Clover, Alex Call was the singer, so I didn't sing.
Guest:I played harmonica, and I'm just happy to join her, because they were a much more professional outfit.
Guest:But these guys that signed you were British?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so how did that work?
Guest:Oh, we flew to Britain and lived in Hedley Grange in the south of England.
Guest:For how long?
Guest:In Surrey, for two years, basically.
Guest:We were based in London for two years.
Guest:And you were trying to just knock it out there?
Guest:We toured with Thin Lizzy, toured with Leonard Skinner, toured with Graham Parker and the rumor, termed with- Skinnered?
Guest:Yeah, we did 29 dates.
Guest:How's Ronnie?
Guest:With all those, well, before, with the original Skinnered, man.
Marc:Right, it was Ronnie and Alan and Gary and Artemis.
Marc:Yep.
Guest:and uh billy billy powell and artemis was the sweetest man he would he would just you know he'd come out in the middle of our show because normally we'd be billed as support right you know yeah they wouldn't even have our name right so the and in britain there's a tradition of being tough on the opening act anyway right so they were they were ready to boo us off stage right and artemis would come on sometimes go hey these
Guest:guys are good yeah they were i thought they were a good band man oh they were great and like uh so so did you guys take off in london or no did it what happened no no we had us we had we made two records literally the clover records clover literally uh dave and jake signed us and almost the day we landed punk
Guest:hit you know Johnny Rotten spit in the face of the enemy reporter and the game was on I remember going to the to the roundhouse for the clashes if it wasn't their first gig it was really close yeah to their end and the place is packed and we're on the side of the stage and strummer is leaning out over the audience and
Guest:And he is covered in saliva.
Guest:It's dripping off him.
Guest:In the light, in the spotlight from the side, you can see he's head to toe, and he's spitting at the audience, and they're spitting back at him.
Guest:And he's leaning into him.
Guest:And imagine us.
Guest:We were going like, what is happening?
Guest:How is this good?
Guest:It was out.
Guest:It was way out.
Guest:But was the music good?
Guest:Well, you couldn't really hear it at that point.
Guest:Oh, right, right.
Guest:But we got it.
Guest:It wasn't about the music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It wasn't about... And that's where, frankly, that's kind of where I took my cue a little bit because I thought, hey, you know, I don't know about the... I don't dig the music necessarily.
Guest:I still like the same music I've always liked.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I like rhythm and blues music.
Guest:But I love their stance.
Guest:I love the fact that they were thumbing their nose at what was the industry, as it were, and all those stereotypes about what kind of voice you had to have and whether you needed to hit the chorus in 30 seconds or not.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Was there that moment, though, where you're like, well, what the fuck are we going to do?
Guest:i mean like if this is where it's going i suppose i i what they did is they they uh the jake and dave realized that they went oh my gosh our timing was a little tough the management yeah so what so they got mutt langer to work with us so we made two records wow that must have been early that must have been like right at the beginning of him he was a staff phonogram producer he was doing like 10 acts a year in england doing the boomtown rats the city boy and and in some of these cases writing all the music
Guest:Singing all the background parts.
Guest:I mean he was doing them just one right after another mutt was and he did us we had two weeks and you know and And we made a couple records with him Ostensibly for the American market right and so on but I you know which means I didn't sing although I was starting to sing a little bit with clover
Guest:You know, it was ostensibly we were going to make a big kind of a rock record for America.
Guest:And what was the music like?
Guest:I mean, I haven't listened to it.
Guest:Yeah, well, you kind of got to listen to it.
Guest:It's tough to describe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tough to describe.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think, I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Was it country-ish or folk-ish?
Guest:It was kind of a melange, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But Clover was an interesting band.
Guest:I mean, we were a little bit like the Zac Brown band, if you will.
Guest:in a way well you know and they're kind of interesting because they're they they they go across genres which i dig you know they got kind of hip-hop rhythms but they got fiddles on it or right right sure when that's what right that was clover's thing but it was it wasn't as defined as it should be necessarily i mean i don't know hey who knows who knows didn't have no edge to it to have an edge i don't know i yeah enough edge i don't know
Marc:What is Edge anyway?
Marc:Edge is, that's a good point.
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:What does it mean?
Guest:I hear some of that Bruce Hornsby stuff, that's edgy to me.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:When I hear big, you know, cool chords.
Marc:Right, you worked with him a lot.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:But those guys ended up hanging out and you took off in London?
Guest:Clover?
Guest:We broke up when John McPhee, our guitar player, joined the Doobie Brothers, basically.
Guest:And were they the guys who... Although that's not fair to John because we kind of dissolved.
Guest:We lost our record deal.
Guest:Management said it's over.
Guest:And we all went back to California with our tails between our legs.
Marc:But someone once told me that the news, which is wrong...
Marc:recorded Elvis Costello's first record.
Marc:It was the guy's from Clover.
Guest:No, it was Clover.
Guest:They include Sean Hopper, who's the keyboard player for the news.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Our keyboard player.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And John Chambote, who's no longer with us, our Clover's bass player.
Guest:Mickey Shine, Clover's at the time drummer, who's no longer with us.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And John McPhee, who plays with...
Guest:the doobie brothers right now that's the band that's the one that backed elvis those are the four people that backed and nick lo brought those guys together put them all together at a studio about this about this size uh-huh seriously yeah because yeah i mean nick talks about that about that oh it was magic man this guy i'll tell you sean hopper yeah i might be our keyboard our keyboard player yeah might be the first guy to realize how great elvis costello was
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I make this point.
Guest:I don't know that because he Elvis walked in off the street and got signed by the stiff record.
Guest:See, Jake and Dave started stiff records.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Elvis was their first find.
Guest:I guess he came in.
Guest:So they put him with with the Clover guys to rehearse.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And after the first rehearsal.
Guest:And Clover was very nonchalant about everything.
Guest:And we all had chips on our shoulders.
Guest:Or I didn't probably, but they did.
Guest:Maybe, I don't know.
Guest:They'd worked with a lot more people than I had.
Guest:And we all were kind of crusty.
Guest:But they rehearsed at our...
Guest:And I went to London because I was a harmonica player.
Guest:I didn't need to rehearse.
Guest:And I wasn't going to play on the record anyway.
Guest:Actually, Elvis asked me to play on a tune or two, but I took the two weeks and went to Amsterdam.
Guest:He had your priorities.
Guest:But the first night we came back,
Guest:And we're having dinner like we always used to do at the house.
Guest:And Sean Hopper, I said, so how'd it go today, guys?
Guest:And Sean goes, man, I tell you, this guy is amazing, man.
Guest:The lyrics are amazing.
Guest:It's really something.
Guest:And, you know, Sean might have been the first guy to know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah, he certainly became a monster of modern music, that guy.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And he wears it so well.
Guest:Isn't that nice?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Isn't that sweet when it happens?
Guest:I love that.
Marc:Yeah, he becomes respectable.
Marc:He ages appropriately with his music.
Marc:I do.
Marc:Do you know him?
Marc:He's a treasure.
Marc:Yeah, a little bit.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Who are your buddies in the business from back in the day that you still hang out with or talk to?
Guest:Well, I talk to Ray Benson a lot.
Guest:He's from Sleep the Wheel.
Guest:We went to rival prep schools together 40 years ago.
Marc:Really?
Marc:What about Boz Skaggs?
Marc:Do you know that guy?
Marc:I do know Boz a little bit.
Marc:Because he's from the Bay Area and Steve Miller too, but they're a little older than you.
Guest:Miller's mostly up in Oregon and Idaho now.
Marc:Yeah, they were a little older than you, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:God, Miller was a monster.
Marc:Fantastic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, so then when does the news come into play?
Marc:Well, right there.
Guest:We started when Clover broke up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We all went back to Marin County, and our local club asked me, did I, you know...
Guest:We used to have a thing called Monday Night Live.
Guest:Monday nights were always a good night for some reason.
Guest:So I said to them, look, give me your Monday night and I'll try and make something happen.
Guest:So we started this idea with a bunch of our pals and a place called a bunch of...
Guest:A bunch of, you know, crazy guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we started this whole thing called Monday Night Live.
Guest:Like it was a jam?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And comics and anything.
Guest:Just kind of an open mic thing.
Guest:And I kind of emceed it.
Guest:We had a house band.
Guest:Where was it?
Guest:The first one was at a place called Knightsbridge Club, and then we packed it out.
Guest:In SF?
Guest:No, in Marin County.
Guest:This is in San Edselmo.
Guest:And then we went to a place called Uncle Charlie's in Cordo Madero.
Guest:And then... Who were the comics?
Guest:A guy called Don Nagel, who was...
Guest:You know, I look back, the stuff was so politically incorrect, man.
Guest:You just couldn't even get next to it.
Guest:I don't know that guy.
Guest:You couldn't even get next to it.
Guest:We had Rickety Jones did one for a couple songs.
Guest:Anybody who was in town would fall by.
Guest:Van Morrison came by a couple times.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we had the house band.
Guest:We called it the Monday Night Live band.
Guest:And we had a Monday Night Live theme.
Guest:And then we did a bunch of songs on the QT that I sang.
Guest:And so then I got to thinking, this is cool.
Guest:Maybe I should do this, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And so what happened is we got offered some free studio time because one of the studio owners came to the show and couldn't get in.
Guest:And so then she came back, her name was Patty Gleason, Patton Patty Gleason, from different fur in San Francisco.
Guest:And they said, hey, do you want some free studio time?
Guest:I said, sure.
Guest:Well, of course.
Guest:Does Clover want free time, she said.
Guest:I said, Clover doesn't exist, but I'll take it.
Guest:So we cut for a joke.
Guest:We didn't have anything to cut.
Guest:We didn't have any material.
Guest:A disco version of Exodus called Exodisco.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was pretty funny, man.
Guest:And I had it in my pocket.
Guest:We spent two days doing it.
Guest:We had Pee Wee Ellis on it, played horn on it from James Brown, one of the great guys of all time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it was really a fun project.
Guest:And everybody, it was liberating because we were in the recording studio and we were doing something for the hell of it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No pressure.
Guest:So I get this recording of Exodisco.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:About two weeks later, I get a call from Nick Lowe, who's written a song from a title I had or whatever, and he says, look, I really want to pay you back for the song.
Guest:How about you fly over here and play harp on my record?
Guest:And by the way, Edmonds wants to cut Bad is Bad.
Guest:I said, fine.
Guest:So do it.
Guest:So we fly over there.
Guest:I arrive in London.
Guest:I go straight to the studio.
Guest:We cut Nick's tune.
Guest:We cut Bad is Bad.
Guest:And the session's over about 1 o'clock, 1 or 2, 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
Guest:We're done.
Guest:Well, the record company comes by.
Guest:They listen to the two songs, and they like it.
Guest:And they say, and now there's kind of an awkward silence with nothing going on.
Guest:I said, you guys want to hear something funny?
Guest:And they said, sure.
Guest:And I put on Exodisco.
Guest:Well, the record company loved it.
Guest:And so they said, hey, let's do it as a single.
Guest:I said, great.
Guest:They leave.
Guest:Jake, I said, what do I do?
Guest:He says, go in there tomorrow.
Guest:Tell him you want 13 points, 3,000 pounds.
Guest:Don't leave without the check.
Guest:I go in there, I come out of there with a 3,000 pound check.
Guest:I come back to the boys, I say, guys, I think we gotta go in here.
Guest:So with that, meanwhile, when I get back, but they wanted more vocal on it.
Guest:They wanted a little more, don't they always?
Guest:And so I was gonna give them a little more vocal, but when I go back to the studio, they've erased the master.
Guest:because the tones were on it.
Guest:Long story complex.
Guest:So I scream up and down, we're going to need five days.
Guest:We made a record deal with this.
Guest:We got to replicate it.
Guest:She says, no problem.
Guest:You can have the whole week.
Guest:So we cut three or four other tunes that we were working on.
Guest:And that demo is the demo that got assigned to Chrysalis.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So thanks to Nick Lowe and Exodisco for our
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:And bad as bad as your tune?
Marc:Bad as bad, yeah.
Marc:And Edmonds got it.
Marc:Well, how did Nick get that?
Marc:He'd heard that.
Marc:Clover used to do it, play it.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Clover used to play it.
Guest:We never recorded it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But Clover used to play it.
Guest:And I used to sing it, actually.
Marc:And did Edmonds get a hit with it?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:No.
Marc:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:What's a hit?
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Marc:England's different.
Guest:I don't know how it works over there.
Guest:It got play, I think.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know if it was a single or if it was just on his album.
Guest:You still in touch with that guy?
Guest:No, I don't know.
Guest:I think he's out here somewhere, isn't he?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I lost touch with Dave.
Guest:I never saw him all that much.
Guest:I talk to Nick occasionally.
Marc:Yeah, and Van Morrison, like, when he came up to play with you guys, that must have been mind-blowing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because he's sort of thematically an R&B guy in a way.
Marc:He's fantastic.
Marc:Unbelievable.
Guest:He's an original.
Guest:He's fantastic.
Marc:I came to him late in the game, and it's just like, you know, like, I just got into Astro Weeks within the last year or two.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And it's sort of like, where the fuck does that come from?
Guest:Well, really good.
Guest:It comes from, it's very interesting, you know, because it's cross-cultural.
Guest:I mean, he's Irish, and so he gets that R&B thing from a whole different standpoint.
Guest:It's fantastic.
Marc:It's fantastic.
Marc:So you signed with Chrysalis, and it's like, how many of the guys that you signed with are with you still?
Marc:Four of us are founding members.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:And how many dudes do you tour with on stage when you go out?
Guest:Well, we have girls periodically.
Guest:So we can be 11 or we can be nine or we can be six.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're doing everything's live in the moment.
Guest:Well, that's why I like 11 or nine because we're still paying people to play one note at a time.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:You know, trumpet player.
Guest:He needs a hotel room.
Guest:He's got to have per diems.
Marc:You got to pay him something.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Feed him.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Right.
Marc:So when he signed to Chrysalis, because the first album was a big fucking record.
Marc:I mean, it was huge.
Guest:No, first album was... The Huey Lewis in the news album.
Guest:Huey Lewis sold 25,000.
Guest:It would die to death.
Guest:So 25,000 copies.
Guest:So it wasn't until sports?
Guest:No, second record was Picture This, sold about 250,000 copies.
Guest:That's pretty good.
Guest:It was okay.
Guest:Had Do You Believe in Love.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And was gonna send us back for another... So they picked up our option for the third album.
Marc:Because they saw you growing.
Guest:Yeah, but the third album, which never would happen today, by the way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The first album didn't hit.
Guest:Forget it.
Guest:Fuck it, yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:On our third album, that's the one we produced ourselves.
Guest:We'd taken over the production.
Guest:We actually did it on the second album, too.
Guest:But we learned our craft a little better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we aimed every song for radio.
Guest:And that was sports.
Marc:And boy, howdy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And now in terms of like, so like that year, OK, that's 84 already.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that's... The record came out in 83, actually.
Guest:September of 83.
Marc:So, like, what was... Who else... Who were you competing with?
Marc:I'm trying to picture the musical landscape.
Marc:Bruce Springsteen, Lionel Richie, Madonna, Whitney Houston.
Marc:Oh, like, Springsteen, is that, like, around what record?
Marc:The River or something?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And Madonna was just starting out, basically.
Guest:Just starting out.
Marc:We did the MTV Awards together.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I famously stood up for her at a little press thing, famously.
Guest:Not famous at all, but...
Guest:But I remember because they were giving her... Because she had such an act.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and so... But I had... Yeah, we got... We bumped into each other a lot.
Marc:Prince, too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Prince, too.
Marc:He was just hitting, too?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that was a pretty interesting time because it was a wide open playing field.
Guest:In fact, maybe the greatest thing... You know, the most... The best cheese...
Guest:we ever got of anything.
Guest:We won a Grammy, but we were nominated for an Oscar.
Guest:But maybe the best cheese we ever got was on The Tonight Show once when Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:said, and Johnny Carson says, who are you listening to right now, Sammy?
Guest:And he says, well, Prince and Huey Lewis and the News.
Guest:Man, those cats knocked me out.
Guest:It was wonderful, man.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:Yeah, it was wonderful.
Guest:Completely unsolicited, just like right there.
Marc:Oh, that's fucking sweet.
Marc:Yeah, it was really sweet.
Marc:So how did it happen that you got the gig to do some of the soundtrack on Back to the Future?
Guest:uh well let's see uh zemeckis who you know directed it bob gale and steven spill we had a meeting they said they put it to me they said look we wrote this film and our lead character marty mcfly's favorite band would be huey lewis and the news so great want to write a song for the film i said well i'm not sure we know how to write a song for a film you know but we'll write how about we send you the next one we write
Guest:And he says, sure.
Guest:And the next one we wrote was Power Love for the most part.
Guest:That's the way I remember it.
Guest:He remembers it differently.
Guest:You know, we just reconnected.
Guest:He remembers that I sent him a different song.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he said, nah, and then I sent him Power Love.
Guest:But I don't know.
Guest:Yeah, but either way.
Guest:Either way, whatever.
Marc:We didn't write it for the film.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:So 84, 85, 83, 84, 85, that was like, you were huge.
Yeah.
Guest:yeah you know we did three forums yeah we did uh four oakland coliseums in 86 you know we did uh three uh in new york uh madison square gardens you know it must have been great it was great it was great it was nervous you know i was always nervous now i'm not nervous and i'm so much better creatively now the challenges are so creative you know
Guest:I mean, the one thing I've tried to do as I've gone on this thing is look at every choice based on is it creative or not?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Well, when you're younger, you're just holding on, you know?
Guest:When you're younger, you're just holding on.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's it.
Guest:You're treading water.
Guest:You're trying to keep your head above that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:And it was coming at you pretty hard.
Guest:I mean, and I was ready for it as well.
Guest:I mean, there was no spring chicken.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I knew I'd seen it to happen to other people, you know?
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:In the meantime.
Guest:So I was ready for it.
Guest:What you've seen, the rise and fall.
Guest:Yeah, as much as a guy can be ready for it, I was ready for it, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's still, when it's going on, it's still tough.
Guest:I always say, you know, the thing about anybody who does what I do or we do has got to like the attention a little bit or they wouldn't have done it to begin with.
Guest:Well, you're a showman, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But by the same token, it happens sometimes 100% of the time.
Guest:So most of the time, you're fine, light, enjoy it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Part of the time, you grin and bear it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And hopefully, there's a very small time when it drives you crazy.
Guest:In what way?
Guest:Well, you know, some guy comes up and goes, you're in an airport.
Guest:A guy walks up and puts his face four inches away and goes, what's your name?
Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You go, Huey Lewis, I told you!
Guest:I told you it's him!
Guest:Right?
Guest:That's the price of fame, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's okay, I guess.
Marc:Yeah, well, now you're lucky back.
Marc:Now people just grab you and they hold their iPhone up and take your picture.
Marc:Isn't that unbelievable?
Marc:Isn't that unbelievable?
Marc:I've held more strangers in the last two years.
Guest:Man, I tell you, that is hugely different.
Guest:Because in our day, it was autographs, autographs.
Marc:but no very few people had cameras yeah and now everybody they still do it to you right they got it again come over it boom take a picture unbelievable right you know what i did it to you know who i did to you'll appreciate this like i uh i was flying from uh where the hell was i flying i think i was flying in new york and i'm at the airport and i got i got upgraded to first class and yeah i'm not a rich guy and i see a dude standing there waiting by the ticket counter i'm like
Marc:Holy fuck, is that Buddy Guy?
Marc:That's got to be Buddy Guy.
Marc:And I kind of go over and I look over his shoulder at his ticket, you know, to see the name on it.
Marc:It's Buddy Guy.
Marc:And I'm like, damn, that's Buddy Guy.
Marc:And I'm boarding before Buddy Guy and it made me feel bad, you know.
Marc:And I didn't know what the hell.
Marc:He wasn't flying first class, right?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:He was with a ragtag band of some kind.
Marc:I said, I'm a huge fan.
Marc:He said, thanks, whatever.
Marc:So I sit down and the guy I'm sitting next to is his road manager.
Marc:And I said, I was just listening to hoodoo man blues.
Marc:I mean, how many people doing that today?
Marc:I was just listening to it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, uh, he gave me his pay.
Marc:He gave me a buddy guy pick the road manager did.
Marc:Excellent.
Marc:But then this is what I'm getting at is that, you know, I get off the plane and I go to, and I see buddy guys waiting at the baggage claim.
Marc:I got my bag.
Marc:I walk right by him and I go out to get a bus to my car and I'm like, fuck this.
Marc:I got to get a shot.
Marc:I'm going to be that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I walk up to buddy guy and I go, dude, can I take a picture with you?
Marc:He's like, go ahead.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And literally I just, I lean in and I take it.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Like, I don't give a fuck.
Marc:I mean, who the hell are you?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:You know what the thing is with that?
Guest:I find seriously, it's, it's all about how they ask.
Guest:If somebody says, look, I know this is uncool, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know it's uncool, but, um, I, I literally have your record or whatever, you know, in my, in my thing right now or, or whatever it is.
Guest:If you do it that way, it's, it's okay in a way.
Guest:It's all about how it's done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you ever play with him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's great, huh?
Guest:Fantastic.
Marc:That must have been a rush, man.
Guest:Yeah, we did.
Guest:We played a show just in Florida.
Guest:We went out with Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, and us.
Guest:It was slamming.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Was that a blues festival of some kind?
Marc:All right, so now, okay, so you're at the top of the world, and now you've done, like, how many fucking records have you done?
Marc:Like, eight or nine?
Marc:Nine records?
Marc:Us?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think ten.
Marc:Ten records.
Marc:Ten records.
Marc:Which isn't very many, man.
Marc:When you think about Merle Haggard, who's done probably 38.
Marc:But dude, to keep going and to keep surviving in the musical landscape, I mean, country's a different thing.
Marc:I mean, you're a pop guy and you're a rock guy.
Marc:I mean, those country guys, they can record in their sleep and there's going to be 100, 200,000 people going to want to buy it.
Guest:Well, that's a very good point right there.
Guest:And that is that as a pop writer, right?
Guest:I mean, it all matters.
Guest:It's all about the writing, obviously.
Guest:Everything's always about the writing.
Guest:Shows, as you know, it's always about the writing.
Guest:If the writing is good enough, anybody can do it.
Guest:And so you really want to write great material.
Guest:And as a pop writer, you're informed by your audience.
Guest:And when there is no audience, when the audience is fragmented to a zillion places,
Marc:where's the motivation?
Marc:How do you hold it together?
Marc:And also audiences get older.
Marc:They got different priorities.
Marc:You become a part of their history.
Marc:And I guess the struggle is, and I don't know what your point of view on it is, that you must have felt the arc
Marc:Of when you were starting.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, I guess the real choice becomes is, like, do you become a nostalgia act or do you continue to grow?
Marc:Right.
Marc:And where do you fall on that?
Guest:Oh, you continue to grow.
Guest:You have to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, because otherwise it's just not interesting enough.
Guest:But what's nice about being our age is that we have so much stuff that you can kind of...
Guest:rearrange it and revisit it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Kind of keeps it a little fresh.
Guest:And the other thing is that when you have, when you're at this age, you know, a couple new things go a long, long way because it's so refreshing.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So, I mean, we love playing live.
Guest:We love doing it.
Guest:I mean, it's just, it's really what we do.
Guest:You know, we're a real band in that sense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I love that.
Guest:I mean, today, you know, in most of these big mega acts, there's a lot of,
Guest:naughty bits going on what does that mean well there's samples and there's other people dude there's like partial karaoke in lots of cases i just saw the beach boys and it was tragic in a way i mean you know they were all there but you know nobody could hit those high notes so they got a guy tucked away in the back on a guitar who's singing the mike love notes you know well the fact is if they do if if they have a guy on guitar singing the notes that's better than just having them on tape yeah which which people do also
Marc:Yeah, I just can't get on board with that.
Marc:It drives me nuts.
Marc:And it seems like they're sold it, though, by promoters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, look, if you're playing at the Oakland Coliseum, it's not very good sound, surprise, not made for music.
Guest:It isn't going to sound good.
Guest:So if you put a live to track so that the track is right on the lips of the speakers...
Guest:See, when you have to mic something up, the mic hears, even no matter how close it is to an amp or anything, it hears the whole room as well.
Guest:So the sound gets wetter and worse.
Guest:So there's a technical reason, arguably, that you sample drums.
Guest:I mean, they've been doing it since the early 80s.
Guest:So it's nothing new.
Guest:No, I mean, I remember when I saw Springsteen, born in the USA.
Guest:He came out and went...
Guest:boom that first snare drum was just a lindrum at the lips of the speakers at the oakland stadium right i went wow they're triggering the drums and the trick the drum trigger was so bad that when he did single stroke rolls you hear because it was cutting out so right right right oh that's fucking but that was that that's how long they've been doing it though right and that's and max is a fucking machine you think that if you just told him what to do he would be able to do mac mac
Guest:In that case, Max was playing.
Guest:He just had pads.
Guest:They're not playing to click tracks.
Guest:Springsteen doesn't play to click.
Guest:I mean, I don't know if they play to click or not, but they don't have anything on samples, I guarantee you.
Guest:That's a real band really playing, which is great.
Guest:And I'm all for that.
Guest:That's wonderful.
Guest:But when you look at the mega acts around them, there's a lot of naughty bits.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, I mean, it's like, and I guess they can sort of rationalize that show business and, you know, I, here's another one.
Guest:I, you know, why have prerecorded music at these sporting events, the sound of a crowd, 50,000 people murmuring.
Guest:with a crack of a bat or a loud voice here, a vendor there, is an unbelievable sound that we never get to hear because we have that disco stuff going on all the time.
Guest:And with all due respect, and I think Beyonce's fantastic.
Guest:I really do, honest.
Guest:But the halftime show...
Guest:It's the solid gold dancers.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:It's not made for... Admittedly, you can't go play live out in the middle of a football field and have it sound any good.
Guest:So put the Stanford band out there.
Guest:Or put a big band.
Guest:That's what they're made for.
Guest:Let everything be acoustic.
Guest:Have a guy in the crowd with a little trumpet, a little horn section band.
Guest:Stuff like that.
Guest:Or a guy with a banjo, a real loud banjo.
Guest:Sure, bring it down to the human level.
Guest:The San Francisco 49ers used to have an orchestra.
Guest:They were a jazz band, 18-piece jazz band, with a ringer, the cable car ringer, Carl the cable car ringer.
Guest:That's 18 cats who got a paycheck on a Sunday, spreading the wealth a little bit.
Guest:Zoom.
Guest:Now it's just a tape recorder.
Marc:And the thing that I think the thing that gets lost is that like when you do see somebody really sing and that the sort of vulnerability of that exactly Is that like I don't even know that people know how to react to it anymore because their entire body It's overwhelming just to hear like the the real fluctuation of a voice or an instrument even missing a beat Well, it's not like that.
Guest:It's the if you I always say if you want to know whether something's lip synced or not don't watch and
Marc:yeah close your eyes and listen and if the voice doesn't move around a little bit if it doesn't right come in and then you know it's not live right and it's just so amazing when you see real live shit you know because that's what it's about and that's what makes the human connection you know everything's so goddamn mechanical now
Guest:I totally agree with that, but I don't think there's a right or wrong on that.
Guest:I really don't.
Guest:I mean, some people like the dance stuff that's just all electronic.
Marc:Sure, no, I get that.
Guest:That cold electronic dance stuff.
Marc:I can't stand it, but that doesn't mean I'm right.
Marc:Yeah, machine music is fine if that's what you're buying a ticket for, but I mean, if you're buying a ticket for someone to sing and play their fucking guitar, they should be singing and playing their fucking guitar.
Guest:Well, there's a technical reason.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Why you don't have live bands at the Super Bowl.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you can't mic that up and get it through the thing.
Guest:So, therefore, we do it live.
Guest:We fake it.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Marc:That's why we fake it.
Marc:But this happens in concerts as well.
Marc:I mean, that's what we're saying.
Guest:It happens everywhere.
Guest:In the award shows.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The Grammys used to be all live.
Guest:And then suddenly, they get sloppy in mics feedback.
Guest:And so, American Music Awards comes along and kicks their butt with live.
Guest:Now, the Grammys play catch up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They're all just TV shows.
Guest:Basically, they're TV shows.
Guest:Yep, that's it.
Marc:Can I say that, or am I going to be ostracized?
Marc:No, of course you can.
Marc:That's a terrible thing to say.
Guest:You're not going to be ostracized.
Guest:I'm not mad at the Grammy.
Marc:No, they're not.
Guest:Please, Grammy people.
Guest:I love the Grammys.
Guest:How many you got?
Guest:One.
Guest:Only one.
Guest:Would love another one.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So what's the new record?
Guest:What are you recording now?
Guest:What we're doing this now is a sports 30th anniversary record.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Which is going to be the original sports issued on CD.
Guest:And then it's going to have another CD with all the same songs in the same sequence, but live throughout the 80s, different parts of the world kind of thing.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So hard to rock and roll from Cleveland.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, want a new drug from Australia, that kind of thing.
Guest:So it's almost your own bootleg in a way.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And it's a package with other stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Total sports package.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, that's cool.
Marc:Do you ever think about a couple more questions?
Marc:Being a marketing executive?
Marc:No, it sounds good.
Marc:It sounds like you talk to one anyway.
Yeah.
Marc:It's good, man.
Marc:But we ever think about doing like I recently was listening to some blues radio show and I heard this song and I was like, what the fuck is that?
Marc:That sounds great.
Marc:And it was fucking Dion from Dion and the Belmont.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:you know playing straight up fucking original blues music right and it's like he's still you know doing what he loves and do it taking it to a different place you ever think about just sitting down and getting a harp out and maybe recording with muscle white or any of those cats or whatever the blues dude yeah that's interesting i you know hornsby always says that and you know we always joke like we'd make some blues record to take two days and make a blues record why not
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:What do you got to lose?
Guest:Well, I got a couple other things.
Guest:We got some new material we're working on, actually.
Guest:One song, one or two of which I think are really good.
Guest:And I also got a couple commercial ideas.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:You don't want to work too hard.
Guest:Too much ambition at too ripe an age is an ugly thing.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because if it were not to look desperate...
Guest:Well, yeah, a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I mean, you know, why do you see why?
Guest:You know why?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Come on, move over, you know.
Guest:Make room for somebody else.
Guest:Come on, old man.
Guest:You had your day.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah, we got to, what are these dinosaurs in the way for?
Guest:I just have to, that's why I got to make sure that all the choices are creative.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Deb Monk, who's the great actress, man.
Guest:That's what she told me.
Guest:She was the mama character when I did Chicago on Broadway.
Guest:I did the musical Chicago on Broadway.
Guest:And she told me three things I think about.
Guest:Number one, is it money?
Guest:Number two, is it a career move?
Guest:And number three, is it something that I really want to do creatively?
Guest:And nothing's money anymore.
Guest:The money's not as great.
Guest:And there aren't really any career moves.
Marc:But you're all right.
Marc:You're comfortable.
Marc:I'm fine.
Marc:I'm not complaining.
Marc:Now, what about acting, man?
Marc:I mean, I remember seeing you as one of the three dudes in Shortcuts, and you did a couple other things.
Marc:I mean, do you still want to do that?
Marc:I mean, you were good, man.
Guest:I love doing it when it's a good part.
Guest:Fortunately, I don't have to make my living as an actor.
Guest:So if it's creative and it's fun, I mean, I love it, man.
Guest:I think it's super creative for short periods of time.
Guest:How'd you get hooked up with Bob Altman, though?
Guest:He just called me, and he was a music fan.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's a music fan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yeah, and he was great.
Guest:And he drove me to Bakersfield to this location.
Guest:He said, why don't you come with me?
Guest:Which was like a three-hour drive, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And we, way up to the location.
Guest:And he, it was like a...
Guest:You know, it was a symposium.
Guest:I mean, he told me everything I needed to know.
Guest:That's what he intended to tell me.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Like, know the character.
Guest:Learn the character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Know the character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So well that you know the character better than anybody else.
Guest:Sometimes you can bounce ideas off other people just to see whether or not... But you'll know how they respond and all that stuff.
Guest:But basically, the choices are yours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got to remember that.
Guest:The choices are yours.
Guest:You're the actor.
Guest:You got to become the character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So take everything with a grain of salt.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And was he a good cat?
Guest:Oh, the greatest man.
Guest:Well, he was brilliant, you know.
Guest:Yeah, a great movie maker.
Guest:And he was so smart.
Guest:And he could block a scene with six people in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, there's...
Guest:A lot of people, hardly anybody can even do that anymore.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:In the amount of time that he could do it.
Guest:He could block a scene and say, you do this, you do that, you do that.
Guest:No, wait a minute.
Guest:You enter from here and then do your thing here.
Guest:And he'd block it all out.
Guest:And then he'd put his arm around each one of you and say, give you a little business.
Guest:If you only had one line, he'd say, okay, you know where the car is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You're concerned about, are we going to remember where the car is?
Guest:Right.
Guest:The parking place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you, you, you, you're, you know where the fishing spot is and you want to make, you know, it's fantastic.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And then he'd say action and, and he just take, and when he got it, he'd say move, move.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he, he'd encourage you to come watch the dailies.
Guest:And when you watch the dailies, you see the movie because it's so few takes of everything.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Fantastic.
Marc:What a wizard, man.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And now, one other thing.
Marc:So that, because this is an interesting thing, and it's a real issue, that the Ghostbusters lawsuit.
Marc:I can't talk about it.
Marc:I just can't talk about it.
Marc:I got in trouble last time for talking about it.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:I can't.
Marc:Well, in a general way, in terms of intellectual property and that stuff, it's crazy, right?
Guest:And I will think about writers, guys like you, comedy guys.
Guest:I mean, you write a great scene.
Guest:It goes viral.
Guest:It's this huge thing that people are saying.
Guest:And what did you make?
Marc:Nothing.
Marc:A few hours?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's ridiculous.
Marc:The worst part about it is it's like when, and this is for musicians too, is that if somebody grabs your bit, let's say you're trying to work out some shit and they put it up, it kills the bit.
Marc:Sometimes before it's even done.
Marc:Yeah, that's terrible.
Marc:And you can't, you know what I mean?
Marc:And the need to keep up with people's appetite for content as a human being is fucking impossible.
Guest:Well, we have a communication problem in this country.
Guest:We can't stop.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:We can stop now.
Guest:It was good talking to you, man.
Guest:The greatest.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Huey Lewis.
Marc:Real guy.
Marc:Real story.
Marc:Good talk.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Watch Marin on IFC tonight.
Marc:Buy the book.
Marc:Just finishing my corned beef.
Marc:Um...
Marc:What else can I tell you to do?
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:I'm going to be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin tomorrow night at the Pabst Theater.
Marc:Come out for that.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's been a big week.
Marc:I'm going to just end it like that.
Marc:Go to the website.
Marc:Do what you got to do.
Marc:Get a little JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I can handle this.
Marc:Okay.
Okay.
you