Elliott Murphy

Elliott Murphy was one of the new Dylans of 1973, along with his friend Bruce Springsteen. But despite being on three major labels, Murphy never broke through in the States. However, Elliott was big in France, so he moved there in 1989 and has been living the life of the independent troubadour ever since, making records and touring to acclaim all over Europe. Listen to the story of how one man was spit out of the machine but found a way to survive by doing it himself.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back and Bob Left Step Podcast. My
guest today is singer songwriter author Elliott Murfy. Elliot, good
to have you on the podcast. Good to be here, Bob,
to see you again on this side of the ocean here. Yeah,
well that's my first question. You live in Paris, but
when we were setting this up, you said, we're going

(00:29):
to be in the US. Why are you in the States.
I just had a two week break and this is
literally my first flight out of France and since the
COVID started, and I had a two week break, and
my wife as well, so we decided to come here
and see friends and family. And we're in Brooklyn, where
my father grew up, and I'm staying a block away
from a thing called the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is

(00:52):
where my father worked during World War Two. So everything
has become full full circle here. Okay, why did you
move to Paris? To begin with? In what year did
you move? I moved France permanently in UH nineteen nine,
but it was kind of a transitional event. I played
my first show in Paris in nineteen seventy nine, and

(01:14):
by that time, my career in America was kind of
on the down Sling and uh, I did this show
in Paris, my first show ever. I thought it was
going to be in a little club with a couple
hundred people. Have turned out to be like a fifteen
hundred people. I did six encourse. They knew all the
words to my songs, and I said, WHOA, I might

(01:35):
have a second act in this business. And in the
ten years between nineteen seventy nine and nineteen eighty nine,
my career totally shifted to Europe. When I was touring
in Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, not so much the UK. I'm
that rare example of American artists who didn't enter into
Europe through the u K. And by nine it was

(01:57):
just time to move. Is your wife of American? Her Parisian?
My wife is a hundred percent she's French. I mean,
I don't know if she'd call herself Parisian. She calls
me Parisian now because she said, all I do is
complained about Paris, like all the rest of the Parisians.
So how did you meet your wife? Well, you're gonna
hear my side of the story. Sometimes you'll hear her

(02:18):
I was on tour bomb in three in France, in
a city called Cone, which is in Normandy, very near
the Normandy beaches there where they where d date took place.
And my wife is an actress and she was touring
with a little acting troop and I was on tour there,
and of course in a town like that, there's one

(02:38):
restaurant that's open late, and I ended up in there
and she was in there with her with her acting colleagues,
and we started talking and we had we did a
couple of dates. Then I went back to America and
I did not see her, are communicating with her for
six years. And when I moved back to France. When

(03:00):
I moved to France in nineteen eighty nine, I looked
for and I found her through France at that time
had an amazing little thing in every house with a
telephone called the minitel, where you could find phone numbers
and even book flights and things like that was right
way ahead of its time, and I found her on
that and we've been together ever since. And we have

(03:23):
a son, gas Bar who's thirty one years old. So
moving to France had nothing to do with her. You
moved completely independently. I certainly did like French women that
was but you know, that was not a problem. But
you know, the European I my first trip to Europe,

(03:43):
just to go back a little further, was Ine and
I came to Europe, you know, a long haired hippie. Uh.
San Francisco was kind of over, but Amsterdam was still
in its heyday, and uh I played on the streets.
I started to write a lot of songs. Whatever creative
juices I had in me just on froze and started flowing.

(04:07):
And that was I wrote a lot of the songs
during that trip that I actually used on my first album,
Acquid Show, a few years later. So I liked Europe
right away. I liked the lifestyle. I like the sense
of history all around me. Uh I came from, you know,
a very difficult family situation. My father had passed away

(04:28):
when on sixteen on Long Island. So I was happy
to get away from all that, and Europe was it
was the new world for me. Okay, let's focus in
a little bit. Certainly, France recently had an election. Lapine
is the right wing candidate. Her father was a candidate
before her, and it was always a fringe thing. Even

(04:49):
though McCrone won handily. What is going on with the
politics in France. Well, first you gotta understanding it. The
election shin system is totally different from America. They don't
have this electoral college. It's a very centralized government. It's
not a federal system with different states. And they have

(05:12):
two runs. They have the first run. Almost anyone who
can get five mayors in France to sign their sign
off on them can run for presidents. So you go
for your first vote and there might be twelve candidates
running all over the spectrum, all over the political spectrum,
and then the two win if none of them get
the two winners from that runoff, and the two winners

(05:35):
were Macron, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Penn, who was
the daughter of the her father ran against had also
run for president for many years. So I mean, just
speaking personally, I am just so happy Macron one because
we're big supporters of him. He's a forward looking president.

(05:57):
He's he seems to be neither left nor right. He
just and he's young and it's great to see a
young face there. But to what degree is their right
wing incursion in France? Because her percentage of the vote
has been going up, it has been going up and
when her father, Jean Lepin ran, he ran against Jacques
Sharek and he only got twenty of the boat, but

(06:20):
she got much more than that. You know, Bob, It's
a lot of the same issues as here, fear of immigration.
You know, there's a lot of immigration coming into France
from from Africa and from and from the East of Europe,
and it's the same fear factor that uh that is
going on in America, you know. And and I think

(06:43):
when things change as fast as society is changing, people
are looking for simple answers, and unfortunately they get those
answers from people like Leapin. Over the years, there's been
a lot of anti Semitic attacks Muslim issues. To what
degree is that something that penetrate society or we just
reading about that from a distance In the US, well,

(07:04):
the major event was, of course the terrorist attack Batta Clone,
which is a a concert venue there that an American
band was playing. I forgot their name, we're playing, and
you know, over a hundred people were killed and were
shut down during that attack. So that was that really

(07:25):
galvanized France in a lot of ways. And there has
been some anti Semitic attacks as well, uh not, Uh,
I mean I think I think it's really France is
Mike is, this is a reflection of what's happening in
America at the at the same level, it's a little

(07:46):
more educated of a country. I could say higher education
is free in France. If you want to go to
the university, you can go. I I also, I always
think the problem in America's higher education just became too expensive.
A lot of people can't afford to go to college,
so they get their education from reality TV. But it's

(08:08):
a little commer in France, and it is here. Um,
I don't know. I think and on the talk shows
is much different than in America. You know, there it
tends to be less headline news, breaking news. It tends
to be more you get five different people talking about
what's going on. So what's the difference between France and America?

(08:31):
Those are some specifics, but generally tell us some more
what the differences. It's a very very old country, you know,
they've been around forever France. There was France before there
was an Italy, before there was a Germany, before there
was in Spain. I mean, they've just been around forever.
They are the cultural epicenter of Europe, you know, for centuries,

(08:56):
and I think that sense of history. You know, every
French person walks a little bit of pride, I guess
about that. And there's this fear that this new wave
of immigration, they're losing their identity as as French people.
A lot of Americans go to France and they think
that they're rude, you know, but I think it's more

(09:19):
they're very polite and you have to say, you know,
when you walk into buy bread, you have to say
bonjeur before you ask for the bread. And you know,
the first time I came to New York with my wife,
I think I walked into a gap to buy some
clothes and the sales girl come over to me and
she says, hey, how you guys doing today, Great to
see you. And my wife turns me and just do

(09:41):
you know her? God? So they're they're different in that way. Uh,
they are more Uh, their lifestyle is more regimented. You know,
they eat meals at a certain time. They don't eat
between meals very much. U. Even though they're not a

(10:01):
religious country, there's supposed to be a separation of state
and religion. They have more religious holidays than you could
count about. All I can say is they have certainly
been very good to me and recognizing me. And they
actually have a history of recognizing a lot of American
uh talent that is not as recognized in their own country.

(10:24):
I mean, for example, a director like John Cassavetti's He's
huge in France, you know, And there was a point
you could watch a John Cassavetti's movie in some theater
in Paris and the unit of the week, you know, uh.
And in my case, you know, they really have supported that.
That was the beginning of me kind of being able

(10:46):
to work as a as a musician, as a singer
and a songwriter. But if I remember correctly, you yourself
do not speak French fluently. Now I speak French. I
mean I can hold a conversation, I can go to
dinner conversations. If I have to write in French and
there's a lot of accents and things you got to

(11:07):
do like that, I need my wife's help, but I
can certainly my French has described as almost fluently. Okay,
pretty good. So let's just broaden the conversation a little bit.
What is the view of France and the EU. I
was talking to Bob Geldoff, and he said that the
UK was the buffer between France and Germany, and as

(11:29):
a result of Brexit, you know, the whole issue was
in question. What's the French viewpoint on Brexit, the EU, etcetera.
Or is it just calm and this is just hogwash?
We'll all due respect to Bucks or who I love. Uh,
I would say the UK was more the thorn in

(11:52):
the side of the EU than the buffer between you know,
the EU began between Germany and France. I think it
was a treaty for Cole or something like that. That
was the first step in creating the EU. Energy between
France and England didn't join until much later. Uh, I think,

(12:12):
and it is it is. I don't know why England left.
All my English friends don't know why they left. They
don't know what's gonna happening with the Northern Ireland, you know,
is part of England the UK. Southern Ireland is still
in the EU and there's a border there. They don't
know how they're going to handle that. I don't know.

(12:33):
I just think the English, you know, they wanted to
keep driving on the right, whatever side of the road
they drive on. They were never gonna give up their
pound for the euro uh, you know, and they were
a little there an island. They're an island, Okay, needless
just say there's a war going on in Ukraine. To

(12:54):
what degree is that a major issue in France. Anybody's
been to Europe knows that these countries are not that
far away, So to what do we use it impacting?
And in part of conversation in France to put it
in context, the distance between Paris and Kiev, Kiev is
the same as the distance between New York and Dallas, Texas.

(13:15):
So it's it's very close. Uh. We have a lot
of refugees coming in from the Ukraine into France, and
you know, I think I think it's a big Everyone's
very fearful. They don't know quite what to do, you know,
how to how to keep a lid on this without
it just turning into something, you know, monumental. Ah. I'm

(13:40):
not sure what's going to happen at this point, but
it is a major issue in France and in Germany especially,
they're very close. Is there any fear that this will
I mean the fear on an individual level that while
this could spread and effect us directly, I think the
fear is that if either by mistake are on purpose,

(14:03):
any NATO country was attacked in any way, you know,
a drone gone off course into Poland or something like that,
that I think by the agreement, the NATO agreement, if
one members attacked, the others have to defend it. I
think that's a big fear. Uh. And I think they
don't really well of course I don't know, but they

(14:26):
don't really know what Putin's motives are, how far does
he want to go? You know? But I think what
the reason the Ukraine has really hit home is because
they look like Europeans. When you watch those scenes, they
look like they're dressed like the rest of the Europeans.
Those cities look like European cities. I mean, there were
a few countries within the old USSR, which I think

(14:49):
Chechna and a couple of others which but they didn't
really have They didn't identify with them as much as
with the Ukraine. And you know who knows they certainly
you know, as I said in my last show, which
I did in Paris a couple of months ago, I said,
you know, I really enjoyed the five minutes between the
pandemic and World War three. Okay, one more political question.

(15:14):
You know, we read about strikes in France. Unions have
been busted in the United States are making a little
bit of a comeback. Is this ultimately good for workers
or is this just something that is constantly putting a
stop in regular society both. I would say the syndicates,
which is what they call the unions in France, are powerful. Uh.

(15:39):
France never went through the violent labor movement that America did. Uh.
You know in those early days of when they were
really when they bring in the Pinkerton's I mean and
shoot down the strikers. France never really went through that.
It evolved, and I think it's evolved in a good
way where there's a power sharing between the two. Uh.

(16:03):
But if you're a touring musician like me and that
the strikes there's a trained strike, it's really a pain
in the ass, let me tell you. But they do
protect the workers. Sometimes. You feel in France that when
you go into a store, you're more into that store
to help the worker work than to buy something. You know,

(16:24):
it's a different mentality, but you know, the motto of
France is egality, fraternity and I think they take that
to heart in a certain way. And of course, if
you're in Europe France, supposedly everybody's on vacation in August,
and they say they observe. It's unlike America, where they

(16:47):
work seven days a week and everybody's available. What is
it really like you're there. It's changed. The American work
life has really changed. People don't take a month off
in August anymore. I mean they take more than in America,
and that's for sure. They don't take two hour lunches
with two bottles of wine anymore either, you know. Uh
to this to the shame of the French, the second

(17:10):
biggest market from McDonald's outside of America is France. So
you can see, uh no, it's very it's very much.
You know, there's Paris and there's France, and that's important
to remember. Those are two different things. You know. It's
kind of like New York and a lot of the
rest of America. You know, Paris is a very international

(17:31):
city and it changes as the world changes. The rest
of France is a little slower. Oh yeah, let's switch
to your music career. At this point, do you have
an age and do you have a manager or do
you do it all yourself or what do you do
or not do personally? I do some of it myself,
but I do have an agent in usually each country

(17:55):
who manages, who finds the shows and organizes them. In France,
I went in Spain, Italy, Germany. Uh. So I don't
do it all myself in terms of touring. Uh. And
that's possible. You can really, you can't do that. You know,
when I started out, how far you want to go back?

(18:17):
But go back to the beginning. It's a long winding road.
You know. I did my first album in nineteen seventy
three on on Polydor, which I've heard you talk about
what Polydor was like in the seventies, And of course
I owned that album and I bought it because you know,
the press was unbelievable. It was unbelievable, and it kind

(18:39):
of shot me out of the counton in a way
that I've been able to stay up, stay up in
the air ever since. But that album, Acqua Show, which
came out on Polydor, got tremendous critical acclaim and you know,
Rolling Stone proclaimed me and Bruce Springsteen the new Bob Dylan's.
Our albums were reviewed together and Uh, and it was tremendous.

(19:02):
You know, I really went overnight from you know, kind
of living on food stamps to uh staying at the
Beverly Hills Hotel. Ah, but it was an interesting time,
as you know. You know, I feel very fortunate that
I came about in this golden age of music. I mean,
we really did showcases in New York with my band,

(19:27):
knocked on doors of record companies. Half the time you
were ludden, you could give someone your demo. That's what
we did at Polydor. In fact, we walked into Polydor,
we had just come from w Warner Brothers, and we
were we got a kind of positive reaction there, but
we were told they had to send it out to
the West Coast and see what they thought. But we
knocked on the Lord Polydor and we asked their receptions

(19:49):
as that's what we wanted us with my brother Matthew Uh,
who's had an amazing career as a tour manager. He
works for Steve Martin now and the Seven says how
can I help you? And I said, is there anyone
who can listen to our demo? And she calls someone
and someone from A and R KM out brought us back,
listened to our demo, said listen, can you guys do

(20:10):
an audition at Bill's Musical Instrument Rental. If there's anyone
listening here from the old days, they will remember that name.
Two days later we did that audition in front of
Peter Siegel, who was the head of A and R there.
He said, you got a deal, We got a lawyer. Uh,
we got a contract. And to show you how innocent

(20:33):
we were, Bob, when I got the check for the advance,
I had no bank account. I had to go to
Polydor's bank and cash the check. And it wasn't that
much anyway, but well, do you remember how much it was?
It was ten thou and you took that in cash.
That's a lot of cash. Would you do with it?
Ten tho much? It's only about this thick actually, well

(20:55):
we don't have video, but he showing about this about
an inch. Well. I gave some of it to the
guys in the band who helped me get to that point.
But Polydori didn't want to sign the rest of the
guys in the band. They just wanted me and my
brother Matthew, because I thought we had the hair. They
thought we looked like the new Allman Brothers or something.
And then they sent us out to l A to

(21:17):
record our album and I recorded started to do an
album with producer named Thomas Jefferson Kay, who was no
longer with us, but me and him did not see
eye to eye. How did that even happen? Which part?
How did you get hooked up with Thomas and Jefferson Kay.
Thomas and Jefferson Ka had just had a hit with

(21:37):
loud and Wainwright called Dead Skunk in the Middle of
the Road, and Louden was also in that new Bob
Dylan category. So I think Peter Siegel, who was the
head of A and R, he thought it was It
was an obvious move. And Thomas Tommy Kay heard us
play in New York and he liked it, and he
brought us out to l A. And we did one

(21:59):
day in the studio, but he was heading much too
much in a country direction for me and I wanted
to sound like Blonde Blonde Our Highway sixty one or
something like that, our exile on Main Street. So something
happened that trip. It was after the first day in
the studio we were sitting in was it the Rainbow

(22:20):
I think the Rainbow was that still exists absolutely, and
it's not much different. And we're sitting there and I'm saying,
what am I gonna do. I'm gonna call the record
company and tell them this is not working out. I'm
a nobody, you know. I just got signed. And I
put my arm up like this. It was like those
banquet kind of seating. Maybe those are still there, absolutely,

(22:40):
and I bumped into someone behind me. It was Bob
Dillan Okay, I swear I bumped into his shoulder. I
turned for out an excuse me. He was sitting at
a star studded table with Joni Mitchell and Jack Nicholson,
and and that just I don't know, it was like
an epiphany, you know. I said, wow, okay, I'm gonna

(23:02):
call them. We did. When Bob left, we did try
and follow him in his car, but he lost us
pretty pretty I think he might have been with Bobby
Neworth that I can't stay for say for sure. And
I called up Polydor and I said, listen, this is
not working. We came back to New York and Peter
Siegel himself decided he would produce the album. Put together

(23:22):
a great team of musicians. Gene Parsons from The Birds
was the drummer. We had Frank Owens on the keyboards,
who played on Highway sixty one on that album. Uh.
We recorded at the record Plant. And this was also
at the time the New York glam scene was happening,
you know, so the New York Dolls were also recording
at the record Plan. You know. They were down on

(23:44):
the first floor and it was like a Mardi Gras.
I mean it was just wild, you know, them all
their girlfriends and boy, it was just packed with people.
We were up on the tenth floor in the other
studio B and it was like a church, you know,
I mean, totally quiet and serious. But we made Acquisher.
Peter Siegel produced it. It came out and bam. Polydor

(24:07):
didn't know what it hit them, really because they had
never had an album like this that got so much
pressed so quickly, and they try their best, but before
you get there, were you ultimately happy with the album
that came out. I was very happy with the album
came out with Acquisher. Pollin Or puts it up. They

(24:32):
don't know what hit them. Keep going, they don't know
what hit them. You know, I'm in before I know it,
I'm in Rolling Stone, I'm in Newsweek because you know,
there were two or three angles the press picked up.
One was the new Bob Dylan thing. The other was
the literary as Scott Fitzgerald thing. But the other was
the suburban rock. You know that I was complaining about

(24:53):
the suburbs and songs like white metal, class blues, hometown.
And there was an article in Newsweek with me and
Billy Joel called a pain in the Suburbs, you know
about our music. I got my picture, not Billy. So
I went on on tour, open for the Kinks, open
for Jefferson Starship, but Polydor just could not bring it home.

(25:17):
At this time, I lou Reid came into the picture.
Now I got to go back a little. Uh. When
I was first knocking on doors in New York to
get a deal at Mercury, there was a man named
Paul Nelson. He was head of A and R at Mercury,
also a rock writer, the same Paul Nelson, Right, that's
the rock he's passed away in unfortunately, but he signed

(25:41):
the New York Dolls. He had gone to school with
Bob Dylan in Minneapolis. In the short time Bob was
at university there and him and he became kind of
a mentor to me. Although Mercury offered me a deal
for five thousand dollars, so even less than Polydor's terrible deal.
So uh, Paul Nelson at that time that Mercury was

(26:03):
putting out an album of live, a live Velvet Underground album.
It was called Live nineteen nine. I owned that record
double album absolutely well. If you open it up, I
wrote the liner notes. Haven't looked at it for a while,
but I'm sure I knew that when I looked at it.
Paul asked me if I would write liner notes for that,
and I love the Velvet Underground Loaded. It was one

(26:24):
of my all time favorite albums still is. And I
was riding home on the Long Expressway and I wrote
those liner notes. And the next time I came into
the city, my mother who lived in the city, and
that was the number that Paul Nelson had. I guess
he had asked lou Read if these notes were okay
with him, and lou Reid called my mother. I showed

(26:44):
up at her apartment and she said, it is very nice.
Little Read called you. We had a long conversation because
He's from Freeport, Long Island and I was from Baldwin,
right next to each other anyway, And I'll never forget.
My mother passed away a few years ago at ninety too,
but she still remembered that conversation because the last word
she said to Lou, she said, Lou, my son will

(27:07):
be very happy you called. And LU said why and
she said, because he's a big admirer of yours, and
LU said, isn't everybody. So then I got to know
Lou a little bit, and every time I do a
show in New York, Lou would come down. We got
to be friends, and he said, Elliott, you gotta get

(27:29):
off Polydor, you gotta get on our c A, because
he was on our CIA at the time. And I
started working with Lose manager Dennis Katz. Did you have
a manager? Before that? I was with Leeber and Cribs,
Steve Leeb and David Cribs because they had the Dolls
and they were very involved in that that New York

(27:49):
glam scene which came out of the Mercer Arts Center,
which was eventually fell down by the way to find
that whole scene of the New York bands, the Dolls
me Patty's Smith. The biggest group that came out of
it was Kiss. They came out of that. So I
left liber and Crebs. At that point, I went with
Dennis Katz. He got our c A to pay Polydora

(28:12):
a hundred and fifty thousand just for my contract, plus
some money for me a four album deal. Now at
this time Clive Davis, who had also come to some
of my shows in New York and Uh, I was
very friendly with a guy named Bob Phiden who has
passed away, but he worked with Clive and Clive was

(28:34):
just starting Arista and Clive also order UH. He also
offered me a deal, but Lucid, no, you gotta go
with our CIA. Lady. When I'm gonna produce you, you're
gonna go to our c A. They love me there,
So I went with our CIA. I've always wondered if
that was you know, in anyone's career, you have these crossroads.

(28:54):
You wonder if you took the right move. But I
followed loose advice of course. Us Two years later, Lou
left our c A and went with Arista himself, but
Lou didn't lu Didn ended up not producing that album
because he had some problems with the law. In fact,
I think fake prescriptions or something out in Long Island.

(29:18):
Uh So I went out to l A and I
worked with Paul Rothschild, who was the Doors producer, and
I did my my second album with him in l A.
That's when I really got to know the Beverly Hills.
I mean, I knew Paul Rothschild. He was a man
who believed in his opinion. I wouldn't quite call him

(29:40):
easy going. How was that experience and were you happy
with the results. I love Paul's musical side. You know,
he really didn't know his music. He came out of
that New York folks scene. Uh. You know, he produced
the first Paul Butterfield blues Man album, not to mention

(30:01):
Janice Joplin and of course all those classic Doors. Um.
He was a bit of a diva as a producer.
And the head of ann R for r C at
that time was a guy named Mike Bernerker. Now, Mike
had been a staff producer at Colombia and produced people
by Barbara Streisand and he was convinced any solo act

(30:24):
had to have a strong ballot. And you know, they
got into a screaming argument about that and at Electra
Studios where I was, where we recorded that album. But
I was happy with that album. Has a Man. We
had Jim Gordon on the drums. Did you know at
the time that he was insane? We didn't not know.

(30:45):
He was the sweetest. He was a teddy bear of
a guy. I'm in a big teddy bear, but he
was the sweetest guy. And he went on, I mean,
everybody knows the story, schizophrenic, he killed his mother. I
think he's still in a psyche metric hospital. But for me,
two years before that, I had seen him playing with

(31:06):
Eric Clapton and Derek and the Dominoes, and I thought
this drummer had the most swing of any drummer I
had ever seen in my heard in my life. We
had him, We had Richard t who had come from
Paul Simon. We had sunny Land with a great slide player.
We had Steve brou Paul Roch had just brought up
a bunch of musicians from New Orleans who went on

(31:28):
to be in Toto. The lead singer was Bobby Kimball.
Bobby Kimball. Bobby Kimball sang background on that album with me.
But yes, I am happy with that. I wish our
cia had not interfered as much with the order of
the songs, and we kind of have to remix some
things that they thought were too rock and roll for them.

(31:49):
But take a sip of water here. And I loved
l A and I loved l A. And I got
to hang out with Glenn Fry for a while, who
was a very guy. Well, just slow down a little bit.
How did you meet Glenn Fry? I met Glenn Fry.
My wife was friends with a woman named Sandy Gibson, publicist. Yeah,

(32:12):
and Sandy knew everybody, and she took us to some
parties and Glenn was there. And that Ned Doheny was
the guitar player on that album, and that was involved
in that credit. I loved you know that the music
coming out of l A at the time. Jackson Brown
of course, and uh. And I was a big fan

(32:32):
of the Eagles, although the East Coast rock establishment did
not give them an easy time. But I love the Eagles,
So that was that was the experience there. But that
that album UH again got great critical reception, not quite
as great as Zach was show. I had a big
supporter and Robert Hillburn, big critic for the Los Angeles Times,

(32:54):
arguably the most in the country, arguably, yes, most important,
most powerful. I mean he would rate a couple of
songs as his best on that album, as the best
singles of the year. Uh. And then for the next time,
I went back to New York and worked with Dennis
Katzs brother, Steve Katz, who came from Blood, Sweat and Tears,
because Steve had produced Lou Reed as well Sally Can't Dance,

(33:17):
which till his dying day, Lou hated that album, but
I can tell you when he made it, he loved
that album. But I don't know why he disowned it
almost but he loved it well when I know. Uh.
So we worked with Steve Katz, recorded an Electric Ladies Studios.
Billy Joel played on a couple of cuts, but still

(33:40):
it just didn't break. It just didn't break. It's the
same question, were you happy with the end broducts. There's
a couple of songs on that album, Diamonds by the
Yard Isadora's Dancers. I would not change the thing. I
was very happy with the end result and the song
Billy Joel played on called Deco dance still one of

(34:00):
my all time favorites. Uh, but I was. I was
not happy with Our c A at that point with
my career. Then, in a complete reversal, Libra Cribs started
barking at my door again and told me that if
I came back to them, maybe they could get me
on Columbia where they had Errol Smith, who was the
person who was interested in you. Because they were quite

(34:22):
different characters. Although they're still with us Libre or Cribs
and what was their pitch, they were quite different characters.
I started out with Cribs in the early days. The
first time I was with Libring Cribs, but he seemed
to be more involved with Errol Smith. That was really
his baby. He really discovered them Steve. Then I got

(34:42):
more involved with Steven. Steve was a long Island guy
like me, and Steve talked Colombia into paying Our c
A another hundred and fifty thousand dollars to buy that contract,
plus some money from me. And I was also very
close with Arma Anden. I don't know if that name

(35:04):
rings a bell. He was the vice president up there
at the time, working with Bruce lun Voll. The guys
I worked with at Colombia. You know Bill Freston. I
don't know if you know Bill. Bill first Tom's brother,
Tom Freston's brother. They sent me to England to do
Just a Story from America, which was my fourth major

(35:26):
label album there, and I worked with an engineer named
Jeffrey Robin Cable, Robin Jeffrey Cable, who would came from
Trident Studios. That was a family worked with. He had
been the engineer in a lot of Elton John albums
and things. And I had Phil Collins on the drums
and I'm I never forget wing Phil. In between sessions

(35:49):
he Genesis. Peter Gabriel had just left Genesis, and I said,
what are you guys gonna do now? And he said,
you know, we've had auditioned so many singers. I'm so discussed.
Stood I might just sing myself and that's what he
did and the rest is history. So that album came out,
Just a Story from America, and of course for the

(36:09):
fourth time. Were you happy with that? I was very
happy with that album. Like okay, you know, Bob, I
made a lot of bad business decisions back then, and
I had some personal problems, you know, I had some
demons I had to deal with, like almost everybody in
the seventies. But musically I feel I made the right decisions,

(36:30):
you know, and the fact that all those albums are
still almost available, still have lived on they're all still
not Spotify and everywhere else, you know. So I was
happy with that result. But I was really happy about
when there was one track on just a Story from
America called Anastasia, which became kind of a minor hit

(36:50):
in France. Uh. And that's what brought me to France
the first time to do like a promo tour, and
I realized there was interest there and that kind of
started lit the fires the reason I am there today.
So I'm very happy in terms of that. What I'm
not happy about it is it's very difficult to get

(37:11):
royalty statements out of these companies. Okay, one step at
one time, the album comes out, it's a regional hit
in France. What is your experience with Columbia, what happens
going forward with the label and the manager the liber
Crebs philosophy in my opinion back then, and they were

(37:31):
both former agents. I think Steve was the head of
the music department, William Morris, uh, you know, to give
them credit, they did a thing called Beatlemania, right, they
got sued after they lost a lot of the profits.
But yeah, but they were really ahead of their times
with that. I mean now they're attribute Broadway type shows
all over the world. You know. Everybody put down Beatlemania,

(37:55):
including the clash in the song, you know. But they
were both agents, and their philosophy was to break baby
acts like me. It's to call me a baby act.
Was to open for bigger acts. And I did a
long tour with E. L. O open for Elo, a
lot of dates, opening for Hall and Oates, Billy Joe,

(38:18):
and you know, when you're opening for someone like Electric
Light Orchestra who I Love Loved Uh, and you're dinner
in an arena and you've got thirty minutes and the
people are still walking in and you get half the
lights and half the sound, I don't think you make
much of an impact. Now. My buddy Bruce Springsteen, he
was smarter than me, and I think at a very

(38:40):
early point he said, I don't want to do these
opening acts anymore. He was opening for Chicago, I think
for a while. I saw him just yesterday and we
were talking about all the acts we had opened for
back in the day. I think he said he had
opened for Black Oak, Arkansas. And I saw Bruce the
first time when he is at Maxis Kansas City. I

(39:02):
think he was opening for Bob Marley or something like that. Anyway,
he made a decision he was not doing that. He
would rather play the small clubs on his own. But
I went along with the liber Creb's philosophy. But it
was very disheartening, you know, you just really never felt
you were making an impact. I should have gone out

(39:23):
probably on a solo acoustic tour, you know. Uh. So
that kind of all ended, and then there was a
lot of internal struggle going on at Columbia, my feeling
Walter yet Nikoff and Bruce Lonvoll and Lieber and Crebs,
and you know, I was kind of a collateral damage

(39:45):
of that. And in ninety eight I found myself without
a label. Really I left Liebre Crebs. Uh. I thought
I was gonna do it all on my own, and
that was literally impossible. And it was really one of
the lowest points in my life. My brother at the

(40:07):
time was working at as the tour manager for Talking Heads,
and I was broke. I was broke and they needed
to move some equipment gear and I was driving a truck,
you know, to make a hundred bucks to move on amplifier,
and I remember I fell asleep at the wheel. I
almost on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I just pulled off

(40:31):
to the side of the road. Tears came out of
my eyes. You know, how did I get to this
point in my career? And then I kind of slowly
but surely picked myself up, uh you know, stopped all
my bad habits. Okay, wait, wait, let's not paper over that.
You talk about your demons which were the hindrance to

(40:52):
the success of your career, Go a little deeper. What
were those demons? I mean, you're a very calm on
the ball guy. What were you like back then and
what were the demons? Well? I think, like you know,
I hate to come off as one of those uh
sobriety changed my life kind of artists, but you know
it was the old story of cocaine and alcohol. Really

(41:15):
that was it. And that the way that really impact
in my career was I think that came more of
my priority than then the music, you know, the the lifestyle,
rather than the making them making the music my priority.

(41:36):
Although I did manage to make albums that have stood
the test of time, and I'm very great for that,
you know. But I dropped those demons, and I I
really started from the bottom again. Wait, wait, just a
couple of things really slow. How did you drop those demons? Well,
I went to the usual twelve step programs. Usually there's like,
you know you're at the bottom, there's a moment of awakening.

(42:00):
Tell me about that moment of awakening before you went
to the twelve step program. Okay, uh, you can't read
about this in my memoir. Just to start from America,
if I can put in a pitch that is available
on Amazon, both in an audiobook and in a paperback.
It has also been published in Spanish and French versions. Okay, Bob,

(42:22):
this is what happened. It was five, I guess, and
and I was. It was about ten o'clock in the morning.
I had been up all the night before. You know,
I was stoned. I was chugging vodka. I was dropping
value m I was looking for anything on the shag
carpet that resembled cocaine. And I was just basically saying, God,

(42:49):
don't let me die. At this moment, you know, and
this voice, it wasn't a voice in any other worldly sense,
but I just got this message that this is what
you do, and this is what you'll continue to do.
And uh. And I had to catch a flight that
afternoon to go out to Milwaukee to work with Jerry

(43:11):
Harrison from the Talking Heads. And Jerry had been in
my band and he had recorded night Lights with many
of the tracks on that and he had taken an
interest in my career and he wanted me to record
out in Milwaukee with them. And I caught a plane
that afternoon. I got to Milwaukee. I discovered some people

(43:32):
you know who who were recovering from drugs and alcohol
and I hooked up with them. And that was thirty
seven years ago. Okay, part of the twelve step processes,
you have to make amends. What was your experience there

(43:55):
going back to all these people to make amends that
you can remember. I didn't have to make any amends
to any labels that I remember. I was hoping I
might receive some, but you know, maybe maybe I think
with some of the musicians I worked with, I had

(44:15):
a band and when I left to go to London
to do just Store of America. I really didn't even
let the band know what I was doing. You know.
There were some things like that, uh, family, family things.
But you know they say the biggest a men, you
have to make it to yourself. And I guess that
for me that was the most important. You know. I

(44:37):
really had an incredible opportunity in the for my music,
and I did not respect it enough in those days.
I remember once I was having in my heyday with
Eric Anderson. You know Eric, I've met him, I seen him. Yeah,
famous folk singer, still alive living in another expatriate America,

(45:01):
right right, Scandinavia. And uh we were sitting there with
with Bob finding a couple of people, and Eric said
to me, you know, Elliott, you gotta pay your dues.
And I said, Eric, I'd rather collect the dudes, you know.
So that was my attitude. I've changed, Bob. Okay, just

(45:23):
a couple of clean up things. Do you still go
to meetings? Oh? I do? Yeah, yeah, I do? How frequently? Well,
there's there's lots of them in Paris, I mean since
the COVID you know, it's all on zoom right well
as we are today. But yeah, I gotta have a
lot of friends there. And when I used to go
to meetings in New York, the great thing was that

(45:43):
all the people I used to get high with were
in the meetings. You know, that's funny. Okay, you mentioned
a couple of times royalties. Let's drill down there right
for a second. So there's record royalties and publishing royalties.
Let's start with record royalties. Needless to say, one would
think you were in the whole at these labels. Did

(46:04):
they charge your royalty account these hundred and fifty k
that the other labels paid to get you off? What's
going on? There's what's going on and what was supposed
to go on. I mean, as I understood the situation
when r c A paid Polydor hunt thousand, that was
supposed to leave me with a clean slate at Polydor,

(46:25):
and I was supposed to start getting paid royalties from
Record one because that basically what Polydor was saying they
had invested. Same with our CIA. Uh with Colombia. It
was more complicated because I was signed to Columbia through
a production company that Libra Crepsa and I think it's

(46:45):
called Contemporary Communications. Now, after many years of struggle and
with the help of my dear friend Kenny my Salue.
You know Kenny my Salue, No I know the name.
I don't know, but he is an attorney's with Alan
Groupman firm and he is if we got a minute,

(47:07):
so Kenny buy Salas. When I was playing in St.
Louis opening for E l O. Uh, he was in
a punk band and he liked my music and he
came to my hotel room to meet me. And my
brother was the tour manager and he said, no, you
can't disturb Elliott. But I came to the door, saw him.
I liked him, and we chatted for a while. And

(47:28):
he has gone on to be just a real mover
and a shaker, and I mean his clients are Lady Gaga,
Puff Daddy. I mean, just incredible guy. And so he
has helped me try to get some royalty statements out
of them. But it's complicated because now our c A
is part of Sony, So those two r c A

(47:48):
albums and uh so that's the situation of that publishing side.
It's easy. Before we leave that A, do you even
get statements irrelevant of getting paid? And if you ever
got opinion royalties, I get statements. Now I got a
statement from Sony. Uh. I used to get statements from Polydor.

(48:10):
They stopped with Polydor. I was always like, you know,
twenty five dollars in the red or something. You know,
it never seemed to increase that. Uh So I've never
received any record royalties from either of those companies in
uh forty years now, Kenny been working with you. Is

(48:34):
there any income in the future or you in arrears?
What do you project going forward? Well, what I hope
is that there always this movement on artists being able
to reclaim their albums after a certain number of years. Unfortunately,
the one Copyright Act which which impacts that, it was

(48:56):
for albums recorded after and all my four major label
albums were recorded before that, so they're kind of in limbo.
But I'm hoping you know, it's not really for me, Bob,
It's for my my son just at some point to
establish who owns those albums. And you know, when you know,

(49:19):
when Chevrolet decides to use drive All Night as their
theme song for the new commercial, that somebody will be
there to collect some royalties. So tell me about the
publishing song. Publishing side is much easier because from the
very beginning. Everyone used to tell me, hold onto your publishing,
Hold onto your publishing, and I did for the most part.

(49:40):
I mean, I have my two R C A albums.
I had to give half to their publishing company, which
then turned into Warner Chapel, but they I get royalty
statements from them and and all the rest. I own
all my publishing. So and I'm in France, the equivalent
of of as Captain b M I is called Sassam.

(50:02):
Maybe you've heard of that. And uh, they're they're really
very good society. And I have healthcare through them. I
have a lot of things through them. So the publishing
side has been pretty pretty good, okay. And is their
income in addition to the benefits is their income from
from publishing? You get your health care, you get other benefits,

(50:23):
oh yeah, and I get yeah. And also in Europe,
when you play shows, a portion of the ticket sales
goes to the to the publisher of the songs that
are played, and after each show you got to fill
out a form to say what shows, what songs you performed.
That's not the same in America. America, it is much
more a winner take all. You know, it's uh, it's

(50:47):
a feaster famine situation. But in Europe they tend to
take more care with with the artists in the middle
and songwriters in the middle. So I do get. I
do get. For many years, Sasam has treated me very well.
You mentioned your son when we talked previously. You said
your son, although raised in France, went to college in America.

(51:09):
Tell me a little bit more about him and what's
he's what he's up to today. Gas Bar Murphy is
my son. He's thirty one years old and he went
to He grew up in France. He speaks English like me,
speaks French like his mother. Uh. He got a guitar
when he was twelve years old and just fell in
love with a kind of similar same story with me.

(51:31):
And he got into production very early, you know, like
it was using pro tools when I first came out.
He went to soon he purchased which is a State
University of New York school in Purchase in Westchester County
where they have a marvelous UH studio production program. So

(51:51):
he came to the US. He went to four years
that got his degree. UH. During that time he did
some amazing things. Uh. He had to do like an
apprentice thing during one summer. So I asked Bruce if
he knew a studio he could work at or something
like that, and Bruce Sprinstein said, well, he can come
on the road with me. So gas Bar went on

(52:13):
the road with Bruce Springsteen and the Eastreet Band for
a couple of months. That was wonderful. My brother at
the time was working for a bank called Incubus. He
went on the road with Incubus for a little while
as well, and he did a long internship with a
very well known mixer named Tony Maserati. You may have

(52:34):
heard of him. Wonderful guy. You know, he's from Beyonce
on down. He's done everybody and gaspar worked with him
for for quite a while and now he's back in
Paris and he's got his own studio and he's he's
he's been pretty successful, you know, as a as a
producer and a mixer. When he has time, he will

(52:57):
work with me. He produced my last you know, five albums,
and we have a new single coming out on May
twenty which is called Hope in Your Eyes that will
be out on all the Spotify and all the platforms. Okay,
a couple of questions there you're from New York. Well
you're living in Paris. He goes to Sunny Purchase. Did
you get in state rates? He did not. Okay, so

(53:19):
you paid through those good taxpayer good Night's left wing
not working yet? Yeah? Yeah. The second thing for an
artist like you who has never gotten record royalties anyway,
what's your view on streaming helping? Hurting? Agnostic? You know,
for me, bum it's been a godsend. You know, I'm

(53:42):
the not just streating, but the whole Internet has teared
down the wall between me and my fans that I
used to have to go through a major label to
get to. But for digital distribution, I'm with a company
called Believe. If you've heard of them. They started in France, US,
but now they're they're a major player all over the world.

(54:03):
They get my albums out everywhere. Uh. I'm pretty active
on social media and those who A lot of people
are upset about the money from streaming, but I have
to remind them, you know, back in the day, radio
didn't play pay anything, nothing, just just to the publishers,

(54:23):
but nothing to the Uh So I'm okay with streaming. Okay,
let's go back to the moment. We're falling asleep at
the wheel and you're at your low thing. You thought
about doing yourself? How do you rebuild your career at
that point? What do you actually do? What I had
to do was learn how to record albums on a

(54:44):
very smaller budget than I was used to. Let's start
before that. Did you ever contemplate giving up and going straight?
I did in the mid eighties, Well, going straight, I
don't know. In the mid eighties, it was really a
tough time and I was just getting sober, and I
got a job at a law firm, a music law

(55:07):
firm called Prior, Cashman, Sherman and Flynn. They were on
Park Avenue in New York, and I worked for a
litigator named Don Zacharin, great guy. In his famous case
was about the song Feelings and Feelings, and that there
was a French writer, interestingly enough, who said he had
written the song and sent it so anyway, so I'm

(55:29):
sitting there in this office and there was another music
business attorney and after a couple of weeks there, he
came over me. He said, listen, a lot of people
are coming here into my office and they're saying that
this legal secretary looks like this singer songwriterer Elliott Murphy,
is that you? And I said, yeah, it is. And

(55:51):
he said, well, what are you doing here? And I said, well,
you know, it's kind of tough times in the music business.
I needed a job. And I I said, I'm you know,
I'm actually thinking of becoming a lawyer, because during this
time I went back to college, I got my degree,
and I was really thinking about becoming a lawyer. And

(56:12):
he just looked at me and said, don't do it now, Bob.
I think you're you got some legal background there. I
got a similar story. But this is about you. You know.
My father always said, you know, get a law degree.
It's good background. Never was good background until Napster hit.
But I certainly never wanted to practice law and didn't

(56:32):
practice that much. That experience working at the law from
I worked there for two years was marvelous because, as
I said, the week I got there, if anyone can remember,
they switched from typewriters to computers. So I was sent
to for two weeks. I was learned how to use
a computer and word processing. I did all my work

(56:53):
there to get my degree. I went back to a
school called Empire State University, which is turning mostly adult educational.
I got my AM bachelor's degree there. They had a
telex remember telex, of course I used to arrange all
They'd let me go to Europe every once in a
while a couple of weeks on a tour. I did

(57:14):
all my touring through telex. So and what was most
important I learned that, you know, two lawyers can be
fighting about something and creating reams and reams of paper,
but at the end of the day, a judge is
going to write two lines and say who wins. So
it was really an eye opening experience. How did you do?

(57:35):
The music kept pulling me back. It was just too
much was going on. I had an album that came
out that was nominated for New York Music Award. I
don't think those exist anymore. I was getting more and
more offers to come to Europe to play. Um uh.
I was you know people today called at least over there,

(57:56):
they called me a pioneer in terms of independent artists.
Because when I went to Europe for the first time
in seventy nine, I saw that people licensed their albums
two smaller labels all that you know, you'd have one
in France when in Spain one in Scat and everyone. Uh.
I had never heard of that concept before, and they said,

(58:17):
all you gotta do is gather for me to make
the product and then you can license it. And so
we started licensing, you know, and I started to get
a really good relation with about five or six companies
over there. When you say we who's week, it was
with my brother. My brother and I had a girlfriend
at the time named Kathleen Smith, and she was also
involved a little bit. Just to be clear, your brother

(58:38):
was originally in your band before he was a road manager. Yes,
my brother Matthew. He played bass on Acqua Show. Uh
and then uh, right before the second album he had
a car accident. Really couldn't play the bass anymore. I
had to keep moving forward. Uh. It was kind of
a heartbreaking time. He has gone on to be he

(59:01):
He started work with all those New York bands like
Robert Gordon Talking Heads B fifty two has worked with
the Rhythmics for a long time now. He has the
dream to our manager job because he's worked for Steve
Martin for the last twelve years. Steve Martin and Martin
short and just great guys and he loves working with them.

(59:22):
I think he's done better than he might have done
as my base. Okay, so you're done with Columbia, You're
done with libre cribs. You're picking up a hundred dollars
here and there. You decide you want to go independent?

(59:43):
How do you actually do it? How do you actually
make your next record? How does it come together? Well?
I was also playing. I was doing kind of a
house band at a club Quilled Tramps in New York
with David Johansson was there from the New York Dolls,
and I would play there every wednes Day night. Every
Wednesday night. It rained. Anyway, I kept writing songs. I

(01:00:05):
got some time at the Record Plan because I've done
two albums there and they let me. They gave me
a little time. We recorded six tracks to make an EP.
Got the mastered by my friend Greg Calbayo, was a
mastering engineer in New York who you know, really gave
me a great deal. And then we had to figure out, well,

(01:00:29):
then what do you do? How do you make the records?
So there was actually a pressing plant in Midtown Manhattan,
and we I finally saw how records are made. You know,
it's amazing. You go in there. They'd have these machines
that look like they're making pancakes or wildfles. They take
this little round piece of plastic, put it in the middle,
two labels on either side. Next thing you know, it

(01:00:51):
was all run by Eastern European ladies. And so we
started pressing albums. Affairs was the name of that albums,
my first independent release. Now, although my brother was working
with me, he was also on tour a lot with
the bands. I had mentioned what year are we in?
Were in about? And crazy Eddie does that ring about?

(01:01:13):
Of course, the electronics prices are insane, right as I say, well,
they were all They also sold vinyl, they sold records.
They were big and they were they were so they
had sold like a hundred of my albums and they
had ordered more. But my brother was out of town.
So I took the phone call and I brought the
albums down there myself, and I walked in Southern manager

(01:01:34):
and I said, you ordered the Elliott Murphy albums. He
said yes, he said, aren't you Elliot Murphy. He said yes,
he said, and you delivered the albums yourself. I said yes,
He said why, I said, well, you know, after four
albums with the majors. Now I like total artistic control.

(01:01:55):
So so that was my experience and I just really
learned the whole business, you know, making little publishing deals,
making licensing deals all over. It was. It was really
an education. I don't think that business model exists anymore.
So it's these businesses all require money. Where did you

(01:02:16):
get the money to pay for the records and the
little like paying the reduced rate to Calby, etcetera. Touring?
That was all from touring. So it was all your money. Yeah,
that was all our money. Yeah, I think it was
all my money. Yeah. I think my brother contributed as well.
We would go off on tour for a couple of
months in Europe, our month because I didn't start working

(01:02:38):
at the law firm until a little later. When you
say to go on the road, it was you alone
playing acoustic or other band members or what. No, we
would have a band. I had a band with Ernie
Brooks who was from the Modern Lovers, Jonathan Richmond's ban m.
My piano player was Richard Soul who then was in
the Patty Smooth Smith group. But I pretty much always

(01:02:59):
had a and and at that time in Europe, if
you were really willing to do the travel and it
wasn't easy, you know, but festivals paid well. Uh it
wasn't uh saturated with American acts you know over there
like it is now. And Uh, okay, so that record

(01:03:19):
comes out, how many copies can you sell? We could sell.
I don't know how many of that record, but I
think between what we sold and between what the licensees sold,
you know, it might have sold fifty thousand. That's a
lot of records. That's a lot of records hip, but
it's a lot of territories. So if you're selling ten
thousand in France and then you're selling you know, seven

(01:03:42):
thousand in Italy and seven you know, and I think
in America we sold about that. So when it's all
said and done, because collecting is a whole another different
thing from selling, did you make any money selling the
records and then collecting from your distributors? That is a
whole different thing, you know. I remember we had one
distributor in Texas a word us money and man, I

(01:04:03):
just used to have to call them every day and
try and shame them into you know, I need the
money to make the next album, and uh yeah, that's it.
So that cycle ns. Tell me about what goes on
before you start to work for the law from you
make another record. We made a couple of records there
I made as Steve Katz was working at Mercury. I

(01:04:27):
think by that time he gave me some studio time.
We made another album out called Murph the Surf, which
did very well in Italy of all places. UH had
a song called The Full of Saigon did very well
over in Europe. But it was tough, you know, it
was tough. Touring was tough. It was long driving and

(01:04:48):
a lot of vans, and I was discouraged. And I
think that's what I kind of thought, Well, maybe I
should kind of quite well on my head here and
head to the law firm. Let's go back to the
very beginning. Let's start with something awkwad show. When the
press came out that was the name of the album.
Was the whole story about your relative running the Akway show?
Was that your idea? Who were they saying, well, this

(01:05:11):
is an angle, let's work this well. Going back even further,
my father, who was Elliott Murphy Sor, I'm a junior UH,
and he was the son of an Irish immigrant who
was a Blacksmith in Brooklyn. My father he started a
show called The Aqua Show on the site of the
ninety nine World's Fair, although it was in the fifties

(01:05:34):
when he had it, and it was like with a
certain kind of spectacle doesn't even exist today. It was
eight thousand seats outdoor theater. There was a huge Olympic
sized pool. There were clown divers jumping off everything. There
was a revolving stage, and there were some credible bands.

(01:05:56):
There was Duke Ellington play there for while. There was
Cap Halloway who played there. Some iconic comedians like Jackie Mason,
you know, performed there. And and my father was the producer.
He owned the show. You know. I learned the greatest
lesson from him about show business. He said, no matter
how good the show is, if it rains, nobody comes.

(01:06:20):
And that's really true. Now, my father, we lost him.
He died young. I was sixteen, and by that time
he had he had gone from the Aqua Show. He
had a restaurant called the Sky Club out in Garden City.
It was very politically connected. Bobby Kennedy came there, Nelson Rockefeller,
I mean, all the the the big names of that

(01:06:44):
political era and he had that restaurant and then he
had a heart attack at the age of Uh. It
just traumatized me and the whole family. You know, it
was really a bad time to go. There was not
much to fall back on. Uh any thoughts of going
on to college or anything. At that point, we're squashed. Luckily,

(01:07:07):
you know that I still held onto the music. I
started playing the guitar since twelve, and that really got
me through. Well, since we're mentioning this, So you grew
up on the island or in the city. No. I
grew up in Garden City, Long Island, which is right
in the middle. It's where Charles Lindbergh took off from
to go to Paris, although his reputation has been heard

(01:07:30):
amished in recent years. Okay, you go to school, good student,
bad student, terrible student, terrible student. You know, when I
was twelve, they couldn't understand why I was not doing
well at school, and they told my mother he needs
something to channel his energies. I guess I was kind
of a hyperactive kid, and they suggested I learned a

(01:07:53):
musical instrument. So with my mother, I went to a
Quickly's music center and knew Park, and we started playing
studying the guitar together. And by when I picked up
that guitar, my school work out worse, let me tell you.
And I I just fell in love with the guitar
and it's an instrument, and I I witnessed all those

(01:08:14):
life changing events for musicians of my group. In my generation.
I saw Elvis Presley and Ed Sullivan, you know. And
my grandfather was from Tupelo, Mississippi, the same town as Elvis,
so I really had a connection there. So the Beatles
on TV. At my father's restaurant, he sometimes would have

(01:08:35):
college mixers and there'd be the Rondettes singing. I think
the Loving Spoonful played there. So yeah, that's I was
a terrible student, you know. It wasn't until I went
back to school to college in the eighties, you know.
I'm luckily I made it out of high school. Actually,

(01:08:55):
And was your brother older or younger? My brother was younger.
And were you a popular kid outsider? What were you like? Well?
I was voted best dressed? Whoa you know, but that
was I was maybe the first of my class to
start wearing bell bottoms and Tom Jones shirts. If you
remember what those man I also have an older sister, Michelle.

(01:09:18):
Uh she's the one who gave me In nineteen sixty
year sixteen one, she went to see Bob Dylan play
at Princeton and the next Christmas she gave me his
first album as a Christmas present. And I love that album.
And my favorite song was Housel Rising Sun. So when

(01:09:41):
a few years later the Animals had a hit with it,
I already knew it, uh so, but it was really
you know, if it wasn't for the guitar, I don't
know what would have happened to me. Really, it's really
kept me afloat. And did you play in bands in
high school? Bob? Not only did I play in bands?
I won the nineteen six the six New York State
Battle of the Bands in high school? Tell us that story? Okay?

(01:10:05):
Well that was I had a band called the Rapscallions,
and we used to do There was a studio recording
studio in Hempstead which was right next to Garden City,
and that's where the Shangri Laws recorded Walking in the Sand.
There was a producer named Shadow Morton, remember him? Of course?
I think the d Fudge too, did Genesee and Society's child,

(01:10:28):
great track, great track, and we'd go over there and
kind of listen and stuff. Anyway, I had this band
called the Rep skuy Ands, and we had a very
talented and pretty girl who was our lead singer, and
we would do songs like that walking in the sand, remember,
walking in the same all that stuff, and and we

(01:10:51):
won the Long Island Battle of the Bands in Eisenhower
Park out there, and then we went up to west
Chester and when the New York State Battle of the Bands,
we got Blazers and a hundred dollars savings certificate, and
we were supposed to march in the Thanksgiving Day parade.
But none of the parents of anyone, all the other

(01:11:11):
kids wanted their kids to go on into music. You know,
Garden City was a very conservative, upper middle class kind
of town, and you know, that was not the route
that their parents were looking for him, whereas me, it
was always the road I wanted to take. So your
father dies, how is your family paying the bills? We're not,

(01:11:32):
We're not. He at the restaurant was in a bad
state that it went bankrupt. My mother, who was really
at I mean she was only thirty nine when he
passed away. She had her that generation she had and
my sister I think when she was nineteen. You know,
they started families early. Uh. With my father, she had

(01:11:55):
gone to the White House and danced with Eisenhower. You know,
my father was My father was that old style Republicans
if you remember them, Nelson Rockefeller Republicans. Rockefeller who was
the senator from Connecticut. Uh, began with the douvil Anyway,
my father was that kind of Republican, you know. I

(01:12:15):
mean I never heard him say a racist or Marcus
whole life. He just didn't like the Union's telling him
what to do in his restaurant. He didn't like paying
a lot of taxes. But aside from that, Uh so
my mother who had gone from you know, my father
used to organize a lot of charity shows and people
like Perry Como would saying or Mike Todd was that

(01:12:38):
one with Liz Taylor when they were married. And uh,
my mother went from that lifestyle to really starting over again,
and she ended up working at Tiffany in New York. Okay,
you win the Battle of the bands? Were you also
playing bar Mitzvah's Sweet sixteens and making a living as

(01:12:58):
a musician, making a living, making some money, making some money.
I mean, we mostly played at the bar joints that
we're on Hempstead Turnpike. There's a couple of colleges that
were there. There's Hofstra University, there's a Delphi, the CW Post,
so that were there were college mixers we would play at.
But you know, it was tough, but it was a

(01:13:20):
great education. You do five or success a night. You
had to just know hundreds of songs. Uh, And that's
what basically I did until a and then I took
this trip which I mentioned before, to Europe in n Okay.
But how do you become one thing about your songs
to this day? Is there very literate? Where did that?

(01:13:43):
What was the generation of that couple of things come
into play with that? First of all in the sixties,
in the late sixties, It's hard to imagine, but it
seemed like all the different cultural elements were coming together.
There was cinema and there was music. I mean, you
look on the cover of Sergeant Sergeant Pepper there, it's

(01:14:05):
full of writers, you know, it's that that collage of
all those faces. It's Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde
and everybody else. So I was very influenced by those writers.
I always was attracted to the writers in the nineteen twenties,
especially if Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby took place on
Long Island. You know, we used to get stoned and

(01:14:28):
drive up past those mansions which still existed on the
North Shore and Long Island and dream and uh uh.
And then there was the beat generation. You know, there
was Jack Carolak. I mean, if you wanted to be
in in the right place culturally in the late sixties,
you had to have an awareness of all that. You know,

(01:14:50):
you had to know who Allen Ginsburg was and Howell
is his poem and uh And at the same time
there were incredible films happening. So I think I came
out of that, but I don't know. I'm a reader.
I still am a reader, you know, I like fiction today.
I tend to read more biography than fiction because you
just want to see how other people got through this life.

(01:15:13):
And I have written a few books. Yeah, I was
going to get to that, but let's continue the narrative.
So you go to Europe, and what is your intention
that was? When you know, going to Europe you could
get a flight very cheap, you could live very cheap.
But what was your theoretical agenda or was there nothing
like I'm just gonna go and see what happened, or
we're going for inspiration. My sister was a pan Am

(01:15:35):
stewardess legendary. I think there's been TV shows made about
so because because of that, she got a family discount,
and I think I got a flight to answer to
them for pennies, you know, just for nothing. And uh,
I just really wanted to get away from Long Island.

(01:15:55):
And I had a friend who had gotten there earlier
and just said, you've got to come to Europe. Everything's
happened there in Amsterdam. And and so I went over
with him and a couple of other guys and we
went to Amsterdam, and we went to Paris, and then
we went to Rome, which is really where I spent
most of my time in and I was He had

(01:16:16):
a guitar and I was playing in front of restaurants
and we passed the hat. And his brother, if you
follow this, was living with an American actor named Farley Granger.
Now Farley Granger was in Strangers on a Train, the
Alfred Hetchcock movie, and he had become quite a big
star in Europe, kind of in the Clint Eastwood Mold,

(01:16:37):
you know before. And Farley Granger said to me, listen,
if you want to make some money, you should get
yourself out to Chinni Chita, which is a big studio,
because Felini is making a film and he's he's hiring extras,
and you gotta look, you know, maybe he'd hire you.
So my brother and I went out to Chinnichita and

(01:16:59):
I don't know how we talked away in there, but
we did. And we went into a room. The door opened,
and Federico Folini looked in that, you know, by Benny
shut the door, and we got hired to work for Felini.
He was filming Roma, his film Roma. And although I

(01:17:19):
was really just an extra, you know, but everybody was
an extra in that film. And and at one point
Felini stood right next to me because they did the
clapper on my face and he said, young boy, stand here.
I was a young boy then. So it was an
amazing And if you watch Roma today, you can see

(01:17:41):
me in it, you know, I mean it not too long,
but you can see me in that. So to fast forward, Bob,
and this is amazing. I was telling this story about
working with Felini when I was playing at a gig
in a little club in trust Savery in Rome, and
after the show someone said, listen, I have Leny's address
if you want to write to him. So I wrote

(01:18:04):
to him and I wrote said how that experience was just,
you know, life changing, and I've told talked about it
all the time, and I sent him a c D.
And when I got back to Paris, I'm fast forwarding
now well into the nineties. When I got back to Paris,
there was a letter in my mailbox from Federico Fley.

(01:18:25):
I still have it. It's on my wall, written in English,
many mistakes, words crossed, and he said, thank you so
much for your music and kind words. Elliott. He said,
unfortunately ages weaken my memory and I don't remember exactly
what you did in my film, but all the critics
tell me it was marvelous and that he wished me

(01:18:48):
good luck. And really just a few months after that
he passed away. How long did you actually work on
I think it was like a week. So all this
time you're writing music and then tell me the evolution
of coming back and starting in the band world. Yeah,

(01:19:10):
I'm starting to write songs. I'm starting to write a
white middle class blues. I think that was a song
I wrote over there, Last of the rock Stars, because
when we came, when I came to Europan nine, I
think that it was Janis Joplin had died and Jimmy
Hendricks had died, and Jim Morrison, and it was like,

(01:19:32):
you know, who was going to be left to play?
Which is a line of rock and roll is here
to stay, but who will be left to play? And
I started writing that and then I came back and I, uh,
we started to put a band together with my brother
and started to play that. It was, as I said,
a business model which doesn't exist anymore. You could play

(01:19:54):
all over New York. There was Max's Kansas City, there
was the mercer Artis and It's Kenny's Cast the Ways,
and they were all kind of bands, especially the New
York Dolls that were Patti Smith. And it was before CBGBs.
I was never a CBGBs guy. Uh, that was a

(01:20:14):
different thing. And we started to play, put the band together.
I kept writing until I had, you know, ten of
twelve songs, and then we knocked on Polydorus door. And
here I am a little point of information. How did
you record those songs for the demo? And where and
who paid for it? I think my mother. I don't
remember exactly, but I know there was some point with

(01:20:38):
my father's life insurance. Maybe we got a couple of
thousand dollars each each kid or something. And when I think,
with that money, me and my brother bought some musical
equipment and we went to a demo studio in Port Washington,
Long Island, and that's where we recorded those songs the demo.

(01:20:59):
Now you mentioned and a number of artists from Mooie
to David, Joe Hansen to Springsteen. And from previous conversation,
I know that when Springsteen came to Paris he invited
you up on stage. To what degree do you still
have contact with anybody from that seventies scene and how

(01:21:19):
much and what are they up to. I saw Bruce yesterday,
so I have pretty close contact with him. We had
my wife and I had lunch at dinner with him
out of his house in New Jersey. And so Bruce says, uh,
And he is just the most generous. I mean, as
you mentioned, he's brought me up on stage many times,

(01:21:39):
and the last time he was playing the stad de France,
which is an eighty thousand seat uh you know, stadium
in Paris, and he he brought me and my son
gaspar up on stage with him. We were backstage and
Bruce said, you want to come up and play? I said, yeah,
what do you want me to play? Said? How about

(01:22:00):
Born to Run? And I said, whoa. I said that
is a difficult song and it is. It's like a
symphony that song. And my son was there and he
said I know it, Dad, and Bruce said you know it?
He said yeah. He said, okay, then you come up
to So there we were in front of eighty thousand people,
my son, gas Bar and Bruce Springsteen the Street Band,

(01:22:22):
and what can I say? It was magic? It was
who else from that era? A little bit? David Johansson
stay in touch with him a little bit. Uh. I'm
trying to think many of them are. I was. Sometimes
I tell my son about the people I met back
then and he can't believe it. You know, It's like

(01:22:44):
I I met Shakespeare. My second album, I asked David
Bowie to produce it. He was on our c A
as well, and he invited me down to Electric Ladies
studios and he couldn't produce it because he was going
out on her. But when I told my son I've
met I mean, but who from the seventies? Wow, there's

(01:23:06):
been a lot of a lot of them are not
still with us? Okay, well, let's change the question. Because
you've met all these people, you know, as Letterman used
to call brush with greatness. Tell me you know you
have the experience with Bowie, any other experiences where they
were very memorable, either the person delivered or if you
want to the person disappointed you. I'm trying to think.

(01:23:27):
I think I've I've been very, very fortunate in that
most of the people I met uh icons, rock icons.
You know, I had enough of an end that I
wasn't bothering them. Let's say, I mean I met Mick
Jagger a couple of times, and you know he's always

(01:23:48):
charming and smart and that. Who have I had a
bad experience? I don't, I don't know. I can't lea say. Okay,
somewhere along this line, you become a writer, You write
record reviews, the other stuff. What was the inspiration? How
did that happen? After I was dropped by Columbia seventy

(01:24:12):
eight or so. So I was right seventy nine or something.
I was walking down fifty seventh Street and I ran
into Yon Winner from Rolling Stone. I had known John
because we had done a couple of TV shows together
at some point because Rolling Rolling Stone and me kind
of started at the same time. And he asked me

(01:24:33):
what I was up to, and I told him I
was writing some short stories and he said he'd like
to read them. So, uh, he liked it and he
said you should expand this and were published in Rolling Stone.
So that was really my first published work. It was
a short story in Rolling Stone that was published in
called Cold and Electric, and Jan said, you know, you

(01:24:55):
should expand this story into a novel because there's never
really been a novel written. It was a story of
a rock star who would climb the rock mountain and
falling off the other side. You know. It was not autobiographical,
but it certainly about a world I knew. So he
encouraged me to write that as a novel, which I did.
Then Rolling Stone tried to find a co publisher, and

(01:25:18):
at this time there were no books about rock and roll.
I mean, there were no biographies. There was nothing, and
they kept getting back the same feedback from from publishers,
which was, you know, the people who like this music,
they don't read books. That was really, you know, the
common wisdom. That's changed now, thank god. But I did

(01:25:42):
turn it into a novel and I found a publisher
in France. It was published in French, it was published
in UH, in Spanish and in German. So since that time,
I've written I think five novels, a couple of collections
of short stories, and then last year I wrote my memoir,
Just a Story from America. Okay, let's get to today.

(01:26:05):
How far in advance do you plan? I mean, are
you booked for four or is it six months in advance?
To what degree is your life and career planned out
in advance? Well, there's pre COVID and post before covid um,
I would be planned out pretty much a year in advance.

(01:26:26):
I say. There's a club in Paris I play called
the New Morning, which is very similar to like what
the bottom Line was in New York or the Roxy
in l A. I played there two nights every March,
which is my birthday. For twenty five years, uh I

(01:26:47):
did a tour of Spain. Every January ten to fifteen
shows for twenty five years as well. And there are
other places that I went back to regularly. Now we're
just picking up the pieces again and trying to figure out,
you know, where to go. I think my my agent
in Spain went out of business because of COVID. There

(01:27:09):
was not much France. They really supported the culture and
help keep companies going on a bigger Looking at that bigger, Bob,
I have to tell you, like most of us, we
go through life. We make it's chaos. We make the
best decision we can based upon the information we have.
But when I was writing my memoir and I got
through with it, it seemed like this had all been

(01:27:30):
a perfectly perfectly planned out from A to B, and
this is where I end up. Finally, after nearly a
fifty year career talking to Bob left, it's okay, let's
talk pre COVID, because everything you know, as you say,
has been changed. How many gigs a year do you
want to do? How many did you do, and how
many you want to I used to do close to

(01:27:52):
a hundred hundred gigs a year, and now maybe three
or four years ago I cut down a little, maybe
sixty shows here, so that that's what I feel comfortable with,
you know, and you work both with him without a band.
How do you decide that? Well, nowadays I work always
with my guitarists. Olivier to Rome was a French guitarist

(01:28:12):
and we've been together for twenty six years. I also
worked with an Australian violinist named Melissa Cox. Uh. They
both played on my last couple of albums, and sometimes
with a drummer and sometimes if it's a festival and
we expand. But now the basic format is a trio.
How and when do you decide to make an album?

(01:28:32):
That's interesting because Bruce and I were talking about that
because some of my generation they just stopped making albums.
Most Billy Joel has stopped making albums, you know, for decades, decades. Uh,
Bruce keeps making albums, and I keep making albums because

(01:28:53):
that was really the art form that we came into
this with an album, you know, and it's hard to
remember now, but there was really a point in music
history where an album became an art form, you know,
before that was all singles and everything else, as you know,
and so that for me, the I mean the road

(01:29:13):
has always been. You write the songs, then you want
to record the songs. Then you want to make an
album that in some way those group of songs fits together.
Then you want to take those songs on the road
and play them for people, and that usually sparks new songs,
and then it just begins over and over again. Well
do you sit down and say I need to write

(01:29:34):
songs or you just inspired in the shower? How do
the songs get written? I have to tell you hotel
rooms are very good for writing songs. I think I've
written some of my best material in hotel rooms on
the road. When you're really you know, you're so connected
to the music through sound checks and through the shows

(01:29:54):
I write. I used to write the words of music
together they seem to come together very quickly. But now
I often will write the words and then the music
will come. Okay, you're running your business yourself. Let's just
talk pre COVID because everything has been screwed up. Do
you need to go on the road to earn a living?
Is it lucrative or you're just keeping your head above water?

(01:30:17):
What are the numbers looking? Well, I've been fortunate in
that for an artist, and my dimension, France and Europe
is a very good place to live. Number One, you
don't have to worry about healthcare. You have healthcare. Everybody
I know in New York is paying a thousand dollars
a month or something for healthcare. You have healthcare there.
I recently had a cataract operation. I paid zero for that.

(01:30:40):
You know, all kinds of things. So you have that,
you have benefits. I get a pension now because I
am officially retired, you know, from the French government, and
also some from from social security here. So I think
I've done better than keep my head above water. I

(01:31:00):
have a nice apartment in Paris that I own. Uh.
You know, managed to put my son through college. That
was really my perhaps my greatest achievement. Uh. I was
talking about that with Bruce yesterday, and he's in a
whole other world, but I'm talking about my career. And
he said to me, You've managed to make a living

(01:31:23):
music and that's incredible. And I gotta agree with them,
you know, I gotta agree with or is my pal
Billy Joel why my note? He inducted me into the
Long Island Music Hall of Fame a couple of years ago.
He once said to me, He said, you know, we
picked a good job. Okay, how long do you plan
to do this? Do you drop or you see sunset?

(01:31:46):
Nobody quits? I think nobody quits. Who can doing that?
I mean, there's there are physical things you have to
deal with. I have pretty bad tonight. It's in my ears,
ears ringing, which is just almost every musician I know
my age gets hearing problems of some sort or another. Uh.

(01:32:09):
I try to stay in good shape. You've got to
be in good shape if you want to go out
there on the road. Ah. I remember just a few
years ago, my brother was working with Blondie and I
went up to see him in Brussels and I went
down to work out in the gym in the hotel

(01:32:31):
in the morning, and there were three or three members
of and they said to me, you know, twenty years
ago we'd all still be up in the room getting loaded,
and now we're down at the gym. So you know,
nobody quits. I don't plan on quitting, you know. And
just to be clear, you are or not a fringe citizen.

(01:32:52):
I am you are, I am both. So if we
look back at this story, certainly other people who were
in the scene in the seventies with you had higher
profiles in you know, I don't want to define success,
but their reach was further. They might have made more

(01:33:12):
money that might have been through it. How do you
feel how they made it to such elevated heights and
you didn't make it to those elevated heights. Tough question
sometimes can be a painful question. Uh. When I listened
back to the music I created in those years, sometimes
I don't know why it didn't reach a wider public.

(01:33:33):
I think every artist wants to reach as a wider
public as possible. Ah. Jumping from label to label, it's
not the best career move. Not having continuous management as
I as I have never had, it's not the best
career move either. H. But as you know, in this business,

(01:33:57):
we tend to look up. We tend to look at
all those who are doing better than us, but everyone's well,
I gotta look down, and I got to think of
all those really great musicians I know who had to stop,
who can't make a living, can't make music, have to
do another job or something like that. So in that way,
I'm probably in that same as Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel.

(01:34:25):
You know someone who's been able to make a living
from my music from for nearly fifty years, and uh,
I have to be grateful. Okay, we've been talking with
Elliott Murphy. I got a lot more questions, but I'm
that very insightful note. I think we're gonna call it
to a close for today. Elliott, thanks so much for
taking the time and telling you. Scot my pleasure. Until

(01:34:48):
next time. This is Bob left Sex