Eric Andersen

Eric Andersen was a folkie in Greenwich Village in the sixties, recorded the classic album "Blue River' in the seventies, and is still touring and recording to this day. Eric's still got something to say, he believes music can make a difference, and this is his story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is legendary singer songwriter Eric Anderson. Eric,
you have a new song, Danger Lane. Tell us about it.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I think it pretty much speaks for itself. It's about
school shootings, mass shootings. Our quator with David Amram last
May and we did it in one take.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
And you live in the Netherlands. You talk about David Amram,
who still lives I think near Woodstock. How did you
actually do it?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Went into a studio, he started a piano and I
got the on booth and I just read the lyric.
I read the narrative and he played piano.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
And this was where.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Shelter Shelter Island Studio in New York.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I see, and you are doing some promotion on this.
How you getting the word out?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I put it on Facebook and nobody looked at it.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
You put it a Facebook and nobody looked at it.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
As what you said, maybe twenty people.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
So what are you doing to get people to look
at it?

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, the guy I work with, the guy not the
guy who does the visuals Rent and Fisheries in Toronto,
he's like this very young wizard. I gave him the images,
he put it together, and he's putting some stuff on
TikTok and putting some teasers up like one Verse to

(01:47):
try to get some interests. I mean it's growing. I mean,
it's like we've had about three hundred hits in about
thirteen days. But I mean it's not a thing you
can say you like, you know, like somebody's dog or
somebody's anniversary or somebody's birthday. Yeah, I like this. I
like that. You know, you don't you don't. You don't
watch a video about mass shootings and school shootings and

(02:08):
say I like it. So I don't know if people
know how to respond, but if they watch it, they don't,
they don't respond.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, it's very impact though. What inspired you to weigh
in on this now?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Well, I'm probably one of the only artists who are
doing it and weighing in on these kinds of things.
I mean, I'm I'm doing a thing like this. I'm
working on a thing about militias private armies in America. Yeah,
I'm working on a bunch of things that I guess
nobody you know, things that are only in the news
or newspapers or television. You know, things like that. Artists don't.

(02:45):
It's too much to wrap your heads around. You can't.
I mean it's not topical in the normal sense where
you write a topical song and then the next day
something else happens. You know, when people first started writing
topical songs in the village, people that fill up folks
or tom packs and those people. I mean, if something happened,

(03:05):
you had to wait till Walter Cronkite come on and
the next night for a half hour newscast or something,
or get some people got the New York Times maybe,
and you could write a protest song about a specific event. Now, man, all,
I mean, this ship has hit the fan. I mean
it's twenty four hour, twenty four to seven news c

(03:26):
and I mean it's just it's NonStop. So for a writer,
how do you put your where do you grab something
and say, I'm going to write a protest song. So
these songs that I'm doing on they're not really protest songs.
They are more like descriptions of diseases, long term descriptions,
you know, They're not dealing with an event at the moment.

(03:47):
And of course, since we recorded this in May, many
many mass shootings have happened, and many school shootings happened.
I think there's over one hundred and seventy now since
the New Year, there's been one hundred and seven many
mass shootings when it's over three or four people in
the United States.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
And to what did we Does music today have power
to make change?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
You tell me, well, the biggest challenge is being heard
relevant of the content of the music. Tell me more
about the private militias.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Just getting back to dangerlund just say it's on YouTube.
I'm from I was from Buffalo, New York, and we
rolled into town the day after the want there was
a shooting at the top supermarket, like about, you know,
four blocks away from where I was doing a gig.

(04:45):
And we've been driving around doing some shows and I
went over there actually to pick up an honorary doctorate
and we got some gigs around that we played. And
it was the first time I went to the States, right,
I felt this palpable, like something could happen to anybody.
It wasn't like going this was last spring. It wasn't

(05:07):
the feeling where you could you know, these things happened
to somebody else, like somebody died or something happened to them,
but it's not going to happen to me. But this
time when I went over, I had, you know, man,
the stuff could just happened to you know, I just
it was in the air, something I ever felt before
coming to the States. And then we rolled into town.

(05:29):
Man the day after this thing at the tops happened,
and then the EVOLVEDI thing, so last thing. So we
put some of this stuff together and made a video.
And that's what I'm doing. I'm making videos. And since then,
how many look what's happened. It's like, it's a no
brainer write a song about this. I mean, it's going

(05:50):
to be happening next week, the week after that. You know,
it's not a people, it's not a thing people on
Facebook or Instagram. I really want to see who wants
to hear about this stuff. I mean so, but anyway,
somebody's got to take a look at it. And so
it was me. So I was the one that got tapped.

(06:13):
I was the shoulder that got tapped on. The militia
thing is along the same lines, you know, using images
and talking about being summoned by you know, like a
leader who snaps his fingers and everybody's ready to go,
uh little private armies. So it's a it's a it's

(06:36):
a work about that. So we're we're working on this. Now.
I've already done, I've already uh recorded the track. We
just have to make the video with this this guy Brandan,
he's got the images I sent and so so we're
doing that. We're putting these kind of things together. But

(06:57):
I don't know if anybody's going to look at it
and want to see it, they're interested, who knows. But
it's something I just show you I had to do.
And but I don't think I don't know any artists
that are the Dare Delvin of these the matters. So

(07:17):
we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Okay, you have it quite a perspective, having been in
music and being very aware sixty plus years ago what
changed in America?

Speaker 2 (07:36):
You're asking me, I'm asking you, what do you think.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
I think it was when the Baby boomers, after the
sixties were over, became very focused on money, and then
when Reagan legitimized greed, they sort of lost all of
their sixties values. That's the key element in my book.
And then committing quality after that, Well.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
It's a complex question. The stuff that. I think it
just became more evident after the sixties. This stuff was
always going on since Melan Carnegie Rock of this stuff's
always been going on. I think people in the sixties,
you know, they had this maybe they had this hope.

(08:24):
You know. I was, I mean I was in the
first handful of songwriters looking at this stuff, you know,
in the village. I mean, it gave birth to what
the so called singer songwriter movement, you know, and those
people maybe might have seven people, five people writing writing

(08:45):
about five hundred thousand things. Now you've got five hundred
thousand singer songwriters and it's hard to even write about five.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Things that well well put.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
So you get this, you get this dream of the sixties,
and you think things are going to happen, and then
you find out that the good guy's lost. You know.
But it was a beautiful idea, but it just didn't fly.
And you know, it just it goes on and it

(09:17):
goes on and it goes on. You know, it's not
the country. Well, first of all, America is many countries.
There's a lot of different kinds. There's a lot of
America's happening in one country, and they're always amen, and
getting trying to get everybody to agree on anything is

(09:38):
very difficult. I mean, the Italians don't agree on anything,
and they're just one people. In America, you get a
country of immigrants, and every wave of immigrants hated the
next wave, every wave of immigrants that came. I don't
know if you ever read Cheos Without Money by Michael Golden.

(09:58):
It's a brilliant book about the Lowers Side, about how
people lived in their neighborhood cages. It's an absolutely incredible book.
And every time I knew, you know, if you if
you went around the corner, you went to the wrong block,
they kicked the ship out of you. And I mean
the Italians get you. If they didn't, then the Irish
would get you. And I mean, and the whole thing

(10:19):
was built up where you when you got to America,
you dropped everything at the door. You know, you drop
the language, you dropped the culture, you dropped You're going
to you know, Lucy, you're going to be an American.
Don't talk Italian, don't talk about this, don't talk about it.
You're going to learn to be an American. And that's
the way that was where things took a left turn.

(10:40):
So a lot of beautiful cultural stuff just got thrown
by the you know, cast aside because people wanted their
kids to conform and to belong and to be part
of the big, big dream. So, you know, so the
splintering and all this and strange false consensus of what

(11:02):
it is to be this or be that. It was
a dangerous thing. It was a big weapon. It was
a club, you know, promulgated by Hollywood, you know, white
fences and keep mothers at the door with aprons, and
you know, it's and no one can, no one could
possibly not all people could fit into this thing. So

(11:25):
I don't know, I don't know if the sixties something
happened afterwards. There is always this way. That's a tough
it's a tough question.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Well, you were born in forty three, so you're really
a child in the fifties. What were the fifties like?
You were ten years older than I am. Were they
as straight liced and repressed and mindless as they're depicted.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Well, you had to have something to compare it to.
I mean, you didn't. You can just walk around in
your saddleshiares and say hmm no, but I had an
ankling something was a little wrong. I mean, of course
I did, you know, that's so I gravitated to things.
I mean, when I was thirteen, I went to see
Elvis Presley, and my parents took me to see Miles

(12:10):
Davis when I was like fifteen, So I mean I
got to see some stuff. But you know, you knew something,
something was in the air. And I think it was
just through reading and through films and stuff that I
realized there was another world out there that had nothing
to do with what I was looking at. And that's
the world I wanted to find. And that's the world
I wanted to see, and that's the world I wanted

(12:31):
to live in. And that's why people jumped ship and
they you know, that was the that was the thing
that informed the sixties. Some people were braver than others.
Some people, you know, cut a new path coming from
the Beats, you know, the Beat. The beat things started

(12:53):
it in the village and in San Francisco and the hippies,
you know, the beats were like the Beats were like hippies,
but hippies didn't read books. But it was a movement
and uh literary movement and that and people at least

(13:13):
I've got I picked up on it, and I think
people like Bob, you know, Dylan and lou Reid and
people like that picked up on it. A few people.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
So growing up in the Buffalo area, what'd your father
do for a living?

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Well, my father was He was a metal metallurgical engineer
who went to Case Western Reserve and he dealt with
nuclear energy projects. I don't know how specific you want
to got.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
As specific as you do, well.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
I don't know. He uh, he worked with it. He
worked with a metal called zirconium. Zirconium was a metal,
and he worked with people that work with nuclear energy
and nuclear reactors, submarines, all kinds of things that dealt
with nuclear reactors. Zirconium was this metal that was a

(14:09):
coat around uranium. It was like it was like a
shaft something went around it and so the uranium would
heat up and it was surrounded by water. And nuclear
energy is basically steam, you know, like that makes electricity.
That's all it is. Really, So you got it. You've

(14:31):
got nuclear nuclear energy, nuclear rods, and you've got water
and a mixed steam. But the problem is the uranium
it oxidizes, it rusts, so Zirconium was an element of
metal that allowed the electrons to pass through to you know,
create a nuclear fission, and but it wouldn't rust. So

(14:58):
the zirconium allowed the activity to go on without having
the nuclear rods rusting or oxidizing. And in between those
things were carbon rods that would absorb electrons that could
make because you know, splitting atoms, the electrons went flying
all over the place looking for other atoms to split.

(15:19):
So they had carb they had carbon rods. It's very simple, actually,
and then you had carbon rods in the next two
They could absorb electrons and therefore you could control the heat,
how hot you wanted it, and so did an explode
like a nuclear bomb. So that's the kind of thing
he was into, what he was involved with.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
So in the late fifties and early sixties, although we
had fear of the H and A bombs, this was
really cutting edge stuff. But by the late seventies there
was a reaction the China syndrome. What'd your father think
about all that?

Speaker 2 (15:58):
About what China?

Speaker 1 (16:00):
The people who suddenly were against nuclear power.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Well, I mean these are things they probably read about
in the newspapers. There were protest marches and whatnot. It
didn't affect him directly. Nobody laid siege to the company
or surrounded the surrounded them where they had to build
a motor around it or something like that. They you know,
they carried on business, and they still do today to
some degree. I mean, there's people like my father that

(16:30):
are working in France, you know, Germany, all over the
all over the world, and in China and rush everywhere,
and anybody who deals with nuclear energy deals with this.
But protest wise, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
I mean, did you ever argue with your father about
nuclear energy? Were you against nuclear power?

Speaker 2 (16:50):
My parents were Republicans, so I didn't. I didn't have
any kind of I didn't take any kind of stance
on this at all. In fact, I wasn't really aware
of the of these movements, which is kind of an
insular value of being in a suburb. I guess, you know,
you get insulated from all this.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
So how many kids in the family?

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Whose family?

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Your family growing up?

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Well, there was a there was a mother, father, and
two brothers.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
So where are you in the hierarchy of the three kids.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Well, well, there are two brothers, me and another brother.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Okay, are you the older or the younger.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
And the young I mean I'm the older.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Why what kind of kid were you growing up? Were
you like a member of the group? Were you outside
of group? We're the leader?

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Well, man, I was on the student council, I was
vice president of a class one year, and then I
lost interests in all that stuff. And I, like I said,
I was, I was in a lot of extra curricular reading.
But I did. I work in a restaurant, and I
worked in a record store make money to buy records.
I uh played some sports. I played tennis. I was

(18:12):
on a football team for a while and played baseball.
You know, the usual stuff, whatever kid does.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
So you were aware at the birth of rock and roll?
What was that like?

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Well, it was pretty earth shattering, you know. I mean
I my parents been listening to people like Raynoble, My
father like rayn Noble, Elbowdi you know, the very thought
of you those I don't know how familiar with this stuff.
You know, Benny Goodman, these kind of big band, big
bands used to play this, you know. I mean he

(18:47):
he when he went to when he went to high school.
One weekend, count Basie played by high school in Cleveland
and the other weekend, Duke Ellington played, so he was
he was very exposed to big band music and America.
You love music. Rock and roll was this was the way.
It was the vehicle that taught us how to learn

(19:08):
three chords on a guitar. See, we all started with
rock and roll. And Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers
came to my high school to play. I saw them.
I saw I always performed at the Memorial auDA tourium
and a goal suit. So it was and I've learned
to start playing guitar, and you know, I was. I

(19:30):
had a few I had a couple of folk groups,
had a rock group. You know, but every kid does that,
I think in the fifties.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
So what was it like seeing Elvis and Buddy Holly.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Well, you were, you knew you were in the presence
of it. I mean I didn't get to see Duke
Ellington in person. I didn't get to see Gwen Miller,
I didn't get to see Benny Good. They were all
on records. I mean I never got to see but
they were great. You know, you know, you were in
the present and stead of a great musical explosion. It
was like it was like being parachuted into a volcano.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Okay, you graduate from high school, you go to college.
What was college like?

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Well, I was in pre med. I'd been working at
a cancer institute in Buffalo Roswell Park for a couple
of years, and under the auspices of this Hungarian doctor
who lived next door to me, we became friends and
you got me interested in research. So I was going
to I was interested in becoming a research scientist. And

(20:46):
so I was in the pre med and college. But
then I started getting too music and more and more,
and I started reading stuff that wasn't part of the curriculum.
And then I was in a motorcycle fraternity, which I
quit very soon, and it wasn't in it for very long.

(21:08):
When they they were rushing Jewish kids and they when
they they said, come to the kitchen, I want to
want to show our ovens that I just packed a
bag and I booked out. Either I never went back again,
but I still kept a motorcycle. So we were doing
things like jumping freights. It was Lake Geneva was a

(21:30):
Hobart Colleges and lake and the freight trains would go
by and we were jumping freights. And then came the
unfortunate day when a few of us went and ripped
up the president's lawn with their motorcycles and fucked up
the shrubs and just just really didn't care. So I

(21:50):
was expelled, expelled, A few of us were expelled, and
it's funny just to conclude this story, a year ago
I got an email from the dean of the college.
But parents before I say, when I got expelled by
I went direpidly to San Francisco because I wanted to.
I wanted to meet the beats or see the beat scene.

(22:12):
So I had a plan. But a year ago I
got this email saying they wanted to give me an
honorary doctorate at this college, and I thought it was
a hoax. I said, they got to be fucking crazy.
So my wife, who is a doctor, she is a
PhD actually, and she's a scientist. She said, maybe read

(22:33):
this again, and the guy wrote me again. He said,
you know, we want to give you this PhD. And
the guy turned out to be great, this deane, he
just turned out to be amazing. But he really said,
we want to give you this PhD in Humanities and
literature because you were the most accomplished dropout the school
has ever seen in two hundred year history of its

(22:54):
two hundred year history. So I went there and I
I got uh work cap and gown, and I got
a scroll and my wife and our biggest fear was within,
you know, hidden within the scroll would be some kind
of invoice or bill for like a gardening bill of
like eighty thousand dollars or something for what we did

(23:16):
to the to the to the loan of the president.
But people remembered it, and I mean they're still talking
about him who was extraordined. I mean, winning the lottery,
all the lotteries would be probably greater the chances than
me getting this in this college was this is Hobart College.
It's a private school in Geneva, New York. And ingam.

(23:40):
My wife said, you know, we tell people on some
she sings in my group when we play we play,
she says, you know what what took She was a
little kind of mock irritated. She says, what took me
like five years to get a PhD in the Netherlands,
took you five minutes. She didn't like that. Sorry, but

(24:03):
she's a good sport. So we did some shows and
that's where That's where I rolled into town after the
tops massacre the supermarket, and that's when the Boss started
rolling on these these new kinds of topical works. I'm
doing these videos.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
I'm doing okay. So A what did your parents say
when you got expelled? And B how did you literally
decide and get to San Francisco?

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Well? I hitched out after college. I mean I just
I talked. I mean they love music, so they understood
to some degree. But when I talked to them, I
would always say, promise them, yeah, I'm going to go
back to school. You know. They said, were you going
to go back? You ever going to Yeah? I said, yeah,
I'm going to go back. This went on for years.

(24:51):
I think I had two records out and I was
still telling you I was going to go back to college.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
So what you hitch site? Did you have any money?
You landed in San Francisco? What happens?

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Not? Really? I saved a little well. I had a
little folk group. We did a Woodn't anything. There was
a guy named Harry Altman. Harry Altman ran the Town Casino,
which was which was the club. It was like the
guy I'm trying to think of a comparison in New York.

(25:23):
I mean it was a supper club that had like
people like Sinatra, Dean Martin, all these people. He was
friends with all these people. So I had this idea
and I went up to I says, you know, I'd
like to do like a hoot and anything like because
I figured I could make some money to go to
the coast. So I had a little group and he
was very receptive because you see, I've heard about this

(25:44):
folk music stuff. Yeah, nanny, hmmm, Well we could give
it a we could give it a whirl. And and
the place we were doing it was in the Glen Casino,
which is near where I lived, you know, in the
suburbs and Snyder. And then the Union got wind of
it and I had to get out of the union

(26:06):
and join the union. But I couldn't play. I couldn't
read me well, I had studied piano, but I couldn't
read music enough to play guitar on a session in Buffalo,
New York with jazz guys or anything like that. But
they were trying to figure out a way to make
the money, get me to pay for the union, but
not have me do any work for the union. So

(26:27):
I had that pan a couple hundred bucks, got in
the union. Harry Oltman was happy about that. And I
mean for years they came around to the clubs I
played in the States, collecting dues. A guy in a
trench call like Peter falkould come and wait til the
end of the show and want twenty bucks and give

(26:48):
me like a like a receipt this stuff when I mean,
I want to and I mean it was crazy because
I I you know, but we so we did this thing.
It was a huge success. Harry Oltman couldn't believe it.
And we had this packed house and I made a
few hundred bucks, took my guitar and I hitchhiked west,

(27:10):
got rise and met my friend in California and we
went up to went up and got a place in
Stinton Beach in Marin County. This is like nineteen sixty three.
And then I went down to the Coffee Gallery and
North Beach, which is kind of the Italian equivalent village

(27:30):
Greenwage Village, San Francisco. And I got a gig at
the Coffee Gallery and I was playing there a couple
of nights a week. Gino Valente. You know, come on, people,
Let's get together. He wrote that song about peace, you know,
Gino Valente h.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Of course he was also beating quick Silver passengers.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, he was. His name is Chet. He had another
Chet something right. Anyway, he wrote a song about peace
and walked around dealing dope with a boweying k I've
strapped to his thigh walk in the streets. And then
Janet Shopping played another couple of nights, so we were
all we had this little thing going at the Coffee
Gery and that's where TODM. Paxson found me and he

(28:12):
invited me to New York and that's how I got
into the singer songwriter sing So.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Before we get to New York. You were there when
the bead poets were the thing, before it broke through,
before all the hippies ultimately came. Sixty five, sixty six,
sixty seven. What was it like and did you have
access to fur Ling Getty and all these other people?

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Well, yes, and no, I mean I was there. I
met a poet named David Meltzer, and he's a published
poet and he's written he wrote a book about the beats.
He's he was very much into the scene with Michael
McClure and those people, Philip Whalen and he was working

(28:58):
at the City Lights Bookstarting through David, I met Farle
and Getty and then then Alan gins were going to
come in from Cambodia from Vietnam. He floated into town
in all white, looking like he was an Indian guru,
and I met him and met McClure, and uh. Of course,

(29:21):
Alan gainsber was very much against the Vietnam War. He
was over there and he saw all the stuff that
was going on before it escalated. So and David, David
and I had a little group called the Snoops County
Camp Followers, which is like a little folk group that
included my wife, Debbie Green, who was a singer. And
she owned a club called the Cabal out there and Berkeley.

(29:45):
The Cabal is a club. This is a kind of
a tangent tangent tangent gentle uh interview. But she had
a club that you know, like Lightning Hopkins auld play
and Doc Watson, you know, Clarence A Actually Lenny Bruce,
you know, they would play her club. It was kind
of modeled up to the Club forty seven became later

(30:09):
became an item and went to New York.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
But well, okay, what point did you start playing original material?

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Well, I was doing. I was doing. I was doing
original material starting in San Francisco. I was trying stuff out.
I mean, I wanted to be a writer. That that
was that I knew.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
How'd you meet Tom Paxton And how did he convince
you to come to New York?

Speaker 2 (30:33):
He was playing at the Cabal where Debbie had this club,
and then he she brought him over to the Coffee Gallery.
You heard me play, and he liked my act and
he invited me to New York and said, here, stay
in my house. He gave me the keys. So I
went there, and Debbie and I went there and we
lived in his house. He was in England for a while,
and then I met Phil Oaks and Phil Phil took

(30:55):
me around the streets. I met Davon Rock, I met Dylan,
bob On Everybody, Patrick Sky, Buffy, Saint Marie, and and
then I got a deal with Vanguard Records.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Okay, before you get there, you hitchhiked to California. How
do you get from California to New York.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
I flew to my parents' house in Buffalo. I stayed
there for a couple of months to detox kind of.
And then I went to New York and to Paxson's place.
But when I was in, when I was at my house,
all this stuff's in bios and stuff. Actually, But when
I got to my my parents' house, it was nice
because I could sit at the dining room table and

(31:37):
I really started writing songs. Uh. I wrote a song
called come on My bed Side there I remember, so
it was a it was kind of a beautiful, very
innocent time. And then I got, I think, uh, somehow
I got to ride to New York and and then
it all began.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
Now, Debbie was with you the whole time.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, she flew she flew in and then joined me
in New York.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Okay, so you're now in Tom Paxton's apartment. You're there
with Debbie. You don't really know anybody.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
What happens, Well, phil Oaks took me around to meet
a lot of people film and uh, and then and Dylan,
you know, he introduced me to some people. I think
he introduced me to Jack Elliott. And but you know,
Bob was making you know, he was doing tours and
making some good money. He was you know, he was

(32:33):
doing sol tourists driving around. I mean, I think when
I hit when I hit this, when I hit the set,
I think he'd had three records out, you know, but
he'd becoming down and plants testing stuff, and you know,
in the clubs, which is great, and hang out and
it was all about writers and writing and uh, this
little this little group that thought could change the world.

(32:56):
I mean, we're talking about four or five songwriters of
this kind of this kind of you know, people like
Bob and David Blue and phil Oaks. It was just
this a little handful. And there were guys who played
over the night out, people like the great Fred Neil
was like it was my favorite of all of them,
but he and Tim Harden and people at least at Kendrick.

(33:19):
These people played in the night Out. There's a whole
thing over there, you know. And people like Lou Reed
I never met. He was over on the East Side
doing stuff, playing different things, clubs and stuff. So phil Oaks,
phil Oaks will come on. You're saying, saying, Bob, how

(33:40):
are we going to do this? This is nineteen sixty
four and it's now twenty twenty three.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
How are we going to Well, we're going, as I say,
we started this, we started with your new record. As
I say, I'm willing to jump back to twenty twenty three.
If there's something specific you want to mention.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
I don't know. I don't know. I'm just wondering. It's
a there's a lot of a lot of a lot
of territory. But anyway, Yeah, So it was an exciting
time and I think the highlight for me of being
in the village was I had signed with Vanguard Records
and had recorded, but I didn't the record didn't come

(34:20):
up for ages. It seemed like an eternity. It's like
being a kid trying to watch in the clock one
as you know one is French French lessons going to
be over, and like the hour never ends. And it
was like this. I waited like a year and a
half or something to the till the Bloody record came out,
the first album, and it seemed like an eternity. And

(34:41):
I was living on the Lower East Side, cooking for junkies,
you know, on East tenth Street. So finally the one
thing that was really good was it people in the village.
I got to know all the club owners, like from
the Gate Art to Lougovin. People are like people that

(35:01):
the village vanguard, the jazz places and I and the
people like the gas light and clubs like that on
Gurtish Folks City. I had done one gig because Robert
Shelton in the New York Times got me a gig
at Folks City, and then kind of nothing happened. It
was a good gig. Me and John Lee Hooker did
a gig, but then nothing happens. I'm sitting around cooking

(35:22):
for chunkies, trying to do some gardening and for people,
and going to these clubs at night. And then I
lived up at Broadside Magazine. I don't know if you've
heard of that. That broad of course topical songwriting. So
I lived up there. But the most important thing is
that people were playing for a week at venues. You

(35:44):
know light it happens, you know Mississippi, John Hurt, Doc Watson,
Clarence Ashley, all these people devon round fill everybody did
we go in to a club and play for a
week all over America. Miles Davids, John Coltrane, mingus we

(36:05):
play the game for a week. So I could get
down there and I'd sit at their knees at these
people's knees. And this was my PhD in music. I mean,
and sit there every single night and hear Lightning Hopkins
and it blew my mind. And I don't think many
people can say that. So, I mean, that's where I

(36:25):
really learned, how about touch space music? You know, though
I didn't apply everything I learned right away, because I
can tell by all the scratch marks on my guitar.
I was really overplaying sometimes it was a loud song.
I gotta play loud, you know, and it doesn't. And
I later I found out it really didn't work that
way because it's all about space.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
You said you were cooking for junkies. What were you
literally doing cooking for junkies?

Speaker 2 (36:51):
I was like living on a West t debian e.
Were lived on West tenth Street. These guys lived on
Ice Street. And I'd get down and go to the markets,
the vegelable marketing stuff, had a kid to the place,
go and cook launch for Then they'd be they'd be
knotted out in the living room and I'd go and
take plates to them food.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
And they paid you for this.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
They paid me, Yeah, they paid me. I mean, I
don't know how much. Thirty bucks a week or something.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
And what was Debbie doing.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Debbie was going between here and Boston. I mean there
in Boston, you know she was. She had her things,
she had. We got kicked out of this place, said
a German landlord. Was on Eastown Street. He took me
out in the back and set me out of set
me down on a milk carton. He said, I got
to talk to you. I said, yes, what's wrong the rent? No? No,

(37:44):
he said, are you married to that girl? And I
said no. He said, you know, I didn't think so.
And I'm gonna I'm going to evict you from this place.
Evict me for what he said, because you and her
are the reason Adam and iQue got thrown out of
the garden of beating. Pack your bags be out of

(38:08):
here in a week. I mean, you couldn't make this
ship up. But these are the kinds of things that
were happening. I mean, you never knew everything. It's like
a piano fell out of a tree and hitch on
the head. You don't have any You never prepared for
these things.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
How'd you get your record deal?

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Well? I think Tom Paxston called Robert Shelton at the
New York Times, and Robert Shelton came down to Tom's
house and I played him some songs. I was sitting
in a chair, he was sitting on the bed, and
he liked what he heard and he wrote a thing.

(38:52):
He wrote. He got arranged for a gig at the
Curtius Folks City, and he wrote a thing about me
in the New York Times that I was the antidote
to the Beatles. Because Robert Shelton was a writer who
a brilliant guy. He believed that after Elvis in the
fifties and the rock and roll, the next big thing

(39:14):
should be the singer songwriters, the phil oaks Is and
the Bob Dylans, and that should be the big thing
in American culture. Is musically, the Beatles were immortal ono
me to him. And the ironic thing is that the
Beatles manager became my manager, Brian Epston. That was the
whole twist. And the headline of this article is the

(39:36):
Antidote to the Beatles. So there you go. I mean,
like I said, it's like the piano's falling out of
the trees. So he called Robert Shelton, called Maynard Solomon
and manutt Solomon came down. He said on the bed,
and I said on the terror, and I sang them
songs and we went and he got me a deal

(39:58):
and that was it. I mean, almost too easy, you know,
it was almost too easy. It was ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
Okay, while you're cooking for junkies waiting for the album
to come out, are you playing out live? No?

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Like I said, I couldn't get any work waiting for
this record to come out. I'm sitting around doing nothing.
I'm just going to hear people playing clubs.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
So what happens when the record does come out?

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Nothing happened right away, but you know, suddenly there, you know,
people were interested in it because it got really good reviews.
And so I started playing gigs, you know, for a week,
like like like Miles did, and like Hofkins did, and
all these all my heroes. So you go to you'd
go play a gig in Cleveland, you go play a
gig in Chicago, you go play a gig in Montreal,

(40:52):
you go play a gig in Toronto, you go play
a gig in Atlanta, and it's like you could you
could live there. You knew the restaurants, you knew where
the movie theaters, you could start a family. I mean,
it was just you basically moved into a town. You
became this sort of weird Dennison of a city. It
was incredible, you know. And you know then, so the

(41:15):
people like me who could see Light Hopkins played for
a week or Mississippi John like multiple times in a
year to see these guys play. People were lucky if
they could even see him play at a college concert
somewhere for one night. I mean, the stuff I saw,
and it doesn't exist anymore, it doesn't skip chains Son House.

(41:38):
All these people I saw, they're gone. Nobody ever got
to see him, I mean except the people who paid
to come, you know, to come to the gigs. But
I got into free so I could just sit there
all week. And I think I was the only songwriter
who was doing that. I didn't. I don't remember seeing
any pack Center dum Von Rock or Feliks or It

(42:00):
was only me there catching all these blues acts and
jazz acts and you know, and the great folk act
like Clarence Ashley, Gene Ritchie and uh Reverend Gary Davis,
people like that. I mean, it was phenomenal because then
I didn't have a record collection I didn't have. I
didn't have blues records or anything, and it was just phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
How did you hook up with Epstein?

Speaker 2 (42:29):
I was playing a gig down at the Steve Paul
scene and Bob Bobby Columbia was my drummer. Bobby, you know,
he started blood spotting Terrace later on. Bobby. I don't
know how the hell I met Bobby Colombia, but he
but he was my drummer and I had a little band.
Gabby played some piano and he's somehow knew brianis and

(42:52):
he just I don't know his brother knew him or something,
and he brought Brian down. I didn't know if you
know he was there, Brian was. Brian came down to
the gate. We played, you know, like another gig for
a week. Brian came down for every single night, and
I didn't know he was there for like five nights.
But I just there was this guy sitting there in
the middle. There was always this one person sitting at

(43:13):
the at the table there. And then finally I met
him and we went to Bobby's. He wanted he said,
can I manage you? You know, I'd love to do that.
I said, sure, he said, Oh, I mean this is
the guy who really trusted. I mean, we loved him
right away. We were just shattered when he died. It
was like it's really horrible, really horrible, because he had

(43:35):
this thing. He just said, look, just do what you do.
Just don't call me. Remember there's six hours difference, five
hours differences during England and London and New York. Don't
call me at night because I'm trying to sleep, because
I didn't think about the time difference, you know. So
but he said, look, just do what you do and
if it's okay with you, I'll try to put you
in very special places. If you approve of it, I

(43:56):
agree with it. And that was the only managerial thing
was said.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
So you make a number of albums for Vanguard, ultimately six.
It supports your touring in these varying cities. But can
you feel the momentum building or.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
What was it like? Well, I don't know. Show business
ever was my thing, you know, as my record sales
will a test. I mean I've never been. I think
my main interest is writing, always exploring my mindset is
I was just I was in a dugout canoe somewhere

(44:36):
at the Amazon River and I just was paddling upstream
to see what I could find. So, I mean, I
was always interested in the writing. And then of course
you document the stuff and make records and you experiment
with music and you fool around and stuff. But I
guess the momentum was building. Yeah, things were happening, but
I didn't. I can't tell you anything about how much

(44:59):
I thought about it.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
I'd you end up on Warner Brothers.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Oh, this friend of Philokes is uh Andy Wickham signed me?
And was that a good experience or bad experience? Well,
I think they gave me too much freedom, O the way.
One album I made in Nashville that was pretty good
and some good well they all had good songs. But

(45:26):
the other one in LA was kind of it was
kind of a big band extravaganza, and I didn't think
it worked at all. I think there were some really
good songs in it, but it didn't really do that well.
And even Eve Babbis did the cover you know her
of course recently died. Yes, we were friends, and she
did she did a cover and uh and uh the

(45:50):
record didn't do very well. So Mo Austin said, look,
I'm going to release you and hey, you can have
the tapes, okay. And I'm living in Venice, and you know,
I mean I have no sense of business at all.
I mean I think I think my dog has more
sense of business than I do. But I and then

(46:13):
Clive Davis came along and signed me from from Columbia Records.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Can you be a little bit more specific? How did
you connect with Clive Davis?

Speaker 2 (46:24):
I think, I think again it was like through Bobby
Bobby Columbia. Again, it was both of these things happened
through Bobby.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
So you switched to Colombia and you make Blue River,
which is considered to be legendary and has some impact.
Did you feel that on the inside.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Yeah, I mean I knew there was a special, something
very special happened. I mean because it was kind of
taped together in a way. I mean, forgive the pun,
but because I did some of the stuff. I did
one track with Roy Halley and San Francisco. I did
one track New York at Columbia Studios. I did two
tracks at Wally Hyder's in LA I did the rest

(47:07):
the other five tracks in Nashville, and somehow the guy
put it together. It sounded like it was all done.
I don't know how it happened. This was like something
that this is mono from having or something. I don't
know how it happened. And then there you go. You
got a thing that's like more than some of its parts.
I mean, the sum is greater than the you know,

(47:28):
than the parts.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Gestalt And how did you end up moving from Columbia
day Arista.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Well, my second album for Columbia got lost, I think
on purpose, because when I was making the album, Clive
got fired. People all over Columbia Records was crawling with
FBI people. There's like pay all accusations and drugs, and

(48:00):
I mean the whole place was exploding. Clive had you know,
Clyde was on the streets. And the people that Clive
picked for me, who worked with me, they weren't into
I don't think they were so interested in losing their gigs.
They are very ambitious at Sony or Columbia, and I
think they held on to their jobs. Nobody wanted to

(48:20):
finish this album and it just got dropped. So we
finished it in Nashville. We finished it, and then I
got a call in New York from somebody from and naturally, oops,
we got to tell sorry, we think your album got lost. Well,
of course nothing gets lost. And years later a woman

(48:41):
named Amy Herriton started this research around the world at Columbia,
I mean searching all the vaults from Tokyo to Paris, London, Berlin,
everywhere there was vaults Columbia, they or you know CBS records.
They searched us in and they turned it out, turned
up and they were in Nashville because a truck came

(49:06):
up with no identification went into the vaults on fifty
first Street. A lot of the tapes of Columbia are
like where IBM keeps stuff, and it's in a mountain
up and near Woodstock, like a mountain. What's it called.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
There's a name, Iron Mountain.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Yeah. So they got all but anyway, some stuff was put.
So they dumped all these tapes all over the floor
in the middle of the night with no signing and
no signing out, no nothing. Somebody just ran in from
a truck dumped the ta They saw them. Somebody saw them,
but nobody knew who they were. Dumped the tapes and

(49:47):
the next day a guy who worked there was carrying
a whole armful of tapes that went over his head,
walked around the corner, slipped on the tapes that are
ond the floor, broke his vertebrand, his back and he's
been out of work ever since. Wow, and that's how
the tapes are found. So you go to.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
Arista just when Clive Davis starts that company. You make
a couple of albums there. The record copany doesn't even
have that many records, he puts out. Patty Smith puts
out Eric Carmon, did you feel you got the proper
attention you made the right records there?

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Well, he was just starting up. I mean, you know
you make records, you don't. I mean, I don't know
if they were right. They felt that, you know, they
feel right when you're doing it, but that doesn't mean
in hindsight they were right.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
So ultimately you end up moving to Norway. How does
that happen?

Speaker 2 (50:44):
You meet somebody you know, like journalists? Well, I don't
know about you, but sometimes a journalist will say, well,
why did you, why did you? Why are you in
the Netherlands? You say a woman and there's never a
follow up. Course it's incredible in your case, I don't know,
I can't predict.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
So where'd you meet this woman. I think I met
her in I met her in Norway and you were
there working.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Yeah, I met her return of concert, I met her.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
And what had happened between you and Debbie at this point?

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Oh, deb and Debbie and I had been separated for
twenty years, but we still got together making Did you
ever see the movie the song.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Poet, not the whole thing?

Speaker 2 (51:34):
No? Well, if you watch the whole Thaniel, you understand more.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Okay, And that's something you'd rather not speak about.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Well, I mean you know that's already on record. No,
I mean you know it's there the story, okayage journalist. Man,
it's I'm the one living the life and doing the art.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
So okay, So you had you had a daughter? Was
that a big responsibility? And what she up to today?

Speaker 2 (52:06):
She's a singer, and she's a yoga practitioner, and she
lives in Hawaii. She has a couple of kids, and
she's studying medicine. She's taking courses in medicine, and she's
become a quite serious about it.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
And what kind of relationship do you have with her?

Speaker 2 (52:35):
I don't know, you know, Bob, I don't know. I mean,
these questions are I think I don't want to talk
about my private life and my relationships. I don't ask
you about yours.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Well you could, but we don't have to go there.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
So was it about I mean, I'm very close. I
love her very much. We're very close. She's a great,
very talented girl. She's on this album, this tribute album.
She sings a song. You can hear what she does.
If you have an album, I don't know if you do.
Somebody one too.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
It's on streaming services. So was it a big decision
to move to Norway? Because Norway is not the I've
been there a couple of times, but it's not the
epicenter of the music business.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Yeah, but say, I never really felt I was in
the music business, so that that didn't even I was
mainly in the writing business in my so I didn't
think about that. And I wanted to go to Europe.
I wanted to poke around and see things in Europe
and spend some time in Europe. So Norway is a

(53:38):
good place to, you know, to move around from any place,
any place in Europe's could you have you just have
a place. It's always a good place to leave and
go to from Europe, you know, And I'd read a
lot of I think a lot of the is my

(53:59):
early inspirations of stuff were European. I think, you know
Rambo Bolt of the poets I read and Russian writers
I never got to rush with. I can't go, No,
they just napped this guy from the Wall Street RAI
very unsafe place to go. But yeah, so I got

(54:24):
to see Europe and I got to see things that
I wanted to see. But I mean New York was
always you know, I think it's always in your soul.
I mean you I was thinking about New York City,
you know, the walking down the street, and it's the
same as it was ten years ago, fifteen years ago,
twenty years ago, thirty, The rhythm of the streets, the pace,

(54:45):
the walking, I mean, it's it's just always the same.
That's the thing about New York that I love. It
just will never change. As long as there's street lights
and as long as there's you know, traffic, the pace,
the walking pace, it's like it epitomizes New York and

(55:06):
that stays with me. And I guess, I guess you
really are in New York. Or if you think about
how the Yankees did me, you go to sleep at
night in this chair?

Speaker 1 (55:16):
How often do you get to New York.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
I'm going on a couple of weeks. I'm recording, finishing
an album that I started a few weeks. I'm doing
some shows. I'm doing one out at mccabs. Maybe I'll
see you there, right, And.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
How about financially? You move to you know, Oslo or
wherever you were in Norway? How does it work financially?
Do you have enough money from the music business where
you're playing gigs?

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Well, I mean you get royalties, you play good. I
mean the royalties aren't so great now and then it's
so good. They kind of drastically fell. I mean, even
with Bob Dylan singing my song on three records, it's
still that he ain't making me any money. But yeah,

(56:12):
I mean there's enough. You play, you get some royalties.
You know, there's enough, and you can survive money. I've
never I don't think about it too much. So what
was it like?

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Living in Norway is supposed to living in the US.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Safer. It's safer. They got to they have a healthcare sist.
Nobody's walking around with guns. I mean, you know, man,
in like fourteenth States, you can walk around with guns
concealed or or not concealed without a permit handguns. How

(56:56):
do you feel about that?

Speaker 1 (56:58):
I feel pretty bad. And uh, you know, the world
situation in light of what's going on not only in
Hungry but China and Israel, and then you have Trump,
it's it's a scary time. Something I've never experienced in
my lifetime.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Yeah, it's it's the hour of the autocrats. It's uh,
it's like something you didn't think, what ever happened? I mean,
but it is happening. I mean, Holland has a right
wing government. I mean it's not anything nobody's walking around
doing saying it Kyle Hitler or anything like that. I mean,

(57:39):
but it's a right wing government. It's very pro business.
They're not really into helping anybody. They're into taking stuff
away if they can. It's not it's not as bad
as the States. I mean the States. The States are
the paradigm of oh, you can't all, you don't get

(58:01):
or can't cut.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Can you amplify that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
I'm saying the States they're they're the paradom. You know,
They're the ones representing a country, social system, cultures of
all the things you can't get and are not protected
or not covered. I mean like health care, healthcare, education.

(58:24):
I mean, it's a country that doesn't realize that healthcare
and education are the main ingredients in the recipe for
the future. For a country, you have to have healthy
people who are educated and know things to carry out
to carry the torch. But it's always been an elite,
you know, with it's an elitist. I mean, it's not

(58:48):
quite as elitist as England. You know, where the minute,
the minute of the second you open your mouth, they
know what class you're coming from. You know, just by
the first word you say. They can pinpoint you. You know,
just just by the sound of the words you use,
like somebody from Brooklyn or somebody from Queens. There's somebody
from you know, in England, there's there's a there's a

(59:09):
whole hierarchy of language, of elocution. So I don't know,
Norway's nice. I mean Europe's nice. It's a europe is people.
They complain about the taxes, but people are driving tesla's
around here. People are driving, I mean, you know, it's

(59:30):
people are many people are doing fine, but of course
there are some people who aren't. But that's true of everywhere.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
So you had a number of kids in Oslo. What
are they up to?

Speaker 2 (59:43):
One's a singer, she's on the album named Signa. You
can hear her on the Spotify. One's a painter. That
there's a photographer, and the other one's a school teacher.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
And how old are they?

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Man? Now, I got to think they range from thirty
five to an early late twenties.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
And so the mother of those children was an artist herself. Yeah,
of some renowned correct.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Yep, she is. She's she's a famous painter and artist
in Norway and scount Avia, Sweden and Denmark somewhat too.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
And how did it end with her? Such you met
a new woman and you're now living in the Netherlands.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Read my book Bomb read my book.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
So how long you been living in the Netherlands.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
I've been here about twenty years. I mean I met
I met my wife in Switzerland anger and she we
joke and sometimes on stage. She's the one who said
it took her five years to get her pH d.
She says, well, what are you doing here in Switzerland?
I said, well, I'm here to count my money. And

(01:01:14):
she she tells people, well, and it took him a
very long time because it was all in coins. It
was all in coins. I'm writing, I'm writing a song
about this now actually yeah. But and she's a musician
and she sings, and she made an album herself called
Fallen angel and we were in Riterda and we gave

(01:01:37):
a copy to Bob to do them. Three months later
an album came out called Fallen Angels. Now, I wonder
if there's any connection.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
When it was the last time you connected with Bob.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Well, I don't know. He he must like me, because
you know, they were great giving me the you know,
for the song for this tribute album, you know, give
me all the I mean, they just they just handled
it over on a silver platter, him and his manager.
They were wonderful in terms of well, I was doing
this album about there's I think there's a part of

(01:02:13):
my life you don't know much about. But I made
a few albums about writers about Heinriz Bull, the writer,
the Nobil Prize German writer Lord Byron and Albert Camu
three albums of writers. They were done in Germany and
I was doing stuff on Camu and I know the

(01:02:33):
Jefs sent stuff to doing about the stuff I was
doing with that the you know, the lyrics. I didn't
ask him to do it. I didn't even it wasn't
intended for him, but I was thinking Jesus is going
to show up in his next record or something. So
I mean, I haven't but I haven't been. I have
been in touch with it. I haven't been in touch
with them in a while. Actually, well, I mean we went. Yeah,

(01:02:56):
it's been a while. But he's great to talk to
because he loves and he loves Literturney. He loves them.
He's very curious. The good beauty of him is he's
very curious about stuff. So I mean, I feel a
kinship with him.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
When you were in Norway, you formed a group with
Rick Danko of the band and a local musician. How
did that come together?

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
I saw Rick in New York and Rick said, hey, man,
come and sing on the show. I sang on a show.
It was with the Room full of Blues, him in
the room full of blues. Yeah, of course, And I
sang on a show and he said, hey, come up
to Woodstock, Let's write some stuff, let's do something. And
so I went up to Woodstock for a few days.

(01:03:48):
I didn't even bring a spare pair of underwear. And
I ended up there for two weeks, maybe more three weeks.
I went, his wife got me underwear, got me shirts.
I went and I bought a jacket. I mean, I
just I was just going up for a couple of days.
And then we started working together. And then I knew
this guy Yonis fell in North Norway and I had

(01:04:13):
done some over some this album stages that you know, dismissing.
It was an album that got lost in Columbia and
it got found. I told you it got found. I
don't know or maybe you know this. And after they

(01:04:34):
searched all over the place, that showed up on the
floor of a tapefault. So we did some bonus tracks
for the CD, and Rick arranged the gig for me,
and Rick played on it, and Jonas came in from
Norway and sang a little. Willie Nile did some singing.

(01:04:56):
I think Garth Hudson was a jumped. Anyway, we went
up to Woodstock and Rick arranged his gig. He got
an amp and he got Mike's and stuff at this
little place and what was it called the Woodstock the
Cafe Tinker Street Cafe, very famous place. So he did
this gig and Jonas had been drinking beer all day,

(01:05:16):
sitting in the audience. I'm playing singing, Rick's playing bass, saying,
and we did the song called Blue River, and Jonas
just jumps up and starts singing a third part, and
the whole place just exploded. It was like the Beatles
or something. I don't know, it was like, and the
whole roof just splintered. So we said, hey, wait a minute.

(01:05:39):
Mick Ronson was there too. Mick was playing some slide
and the whole place just everybody went whoa, all of us,
including us. So we started this little group and made
a couple of records and people loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
Well, I think it's on the first record. You have
a definitive version of that song Twilight from the band.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
Yeah, that's fixt time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
So during this period when you leave the state you
live in Norway, live in Netherlands, you're obviously searching, going
to Europe, learning things, studying. Did you always view yourself
as a musician, recording artist or did you think that
part of your life was done and then you would return.

(01:06:28):
What was going through your mind?

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
You know, I got to tell you something, thinking is
the Antichrist of art. I don't think about those things.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Okay, there seems to be somewhat of a renaissance now
you talk about the tribute to album. We have the
news song danger Land. Is this conscious like, Okay, I
want to get back in the game, get some attention.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
I don't think that way, Bun. Maybe I'll tell you.
I'll give you a little clue. When it comes to writing,
I don't even know. I don't even know what I'm doing.
I mean, I think I'm probably like an idiots avants.
The songs just basically visit me and I just sit
with a pen and I just I'm a scenographer. I

(01:07:16):
just take it down. They're already there. They just come
through me and I write them down. I don't think
about it. I don't plan it, I don't craft it out,
I don't. It just goes through my fingers and I
write it down. There's like visitations or something. They come
from the air. And I think that's about pretty much

(01:07:38):
sums up for everything that in terms of how I operate.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
How did the tribute album come together?

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
This guy had this idea he wanted to do it,
and so we contacted people and I had ideas about
who could do what songs? Have you heard it?

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
I had an idea who could do what? And and
there were people were very cooperative and nice and they
recorded the songs and I think they I think I
did a pretty good job eight with an R and
the thing because they liked what they they wanted to
do the songs. We had a couple, you know something

(01:08:21):
you know I was hoping to get, you know, we
were thinking about Jackson Brown and UH and James Taylor
on a song that James and I had worked on
once years ago and this was before the pandemic and
then he was going on tour this kind of thing
and Jackson, I don't know, it just got nothing. Ever

(01:08:42):
came to marry Go Shay was going to do something.
You know, she got money for the record and she
had this song that she wanted that song, another song,
but she ended up not doing it. So I mean,
maybe there's some kind of like you got to have
a certain star pouper, Maybe you have to be of
a certain kind of echelons thing to say, Oh, Paul mccartti,

(01:09:03):
you be on my record, and like if you've had
three number one hits, they might say yes. So you know,
there might be a subtext or a hidden story of
this thing. You know what I'm saying to get people
to be to do your songs.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Oh, it's a whole political thing. And I think you
have a pretty good angle on it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
I mean I wrote like Graham, I wrote Graham on
Nash and he just said no.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
Well, at least, you know, a lot of times, a
lot of times you can't even hear from people. You know,
they figure if you don't hear from them, that means no.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Well, you know whatever. But I mean the people who
did it, I think they put their hearts and souls
onto it, and I think they did a beautiful, beautiful
and Bob was Dylan was the first to get on board.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
So Joni Mitchell credits you with learning about open tunings.
How did you start experimenting with open tunings?

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
You're in these blues guys down in the village, you know,
like like like Fred McDowell, he's he plays slide guitar.
Booka White does tunings, you know. I you know, I
got interested in tunings. And so I was at her
house in Detroit, she was living there with her husband,

(01:10:23):
and she did just fed up with doing normal to me,
she hated it playing c's and acts and she's And
I understood it because it's you know, tunings are more trancy,
they're more there's a fluidity to them. You know, it's
more shall I say, more Arabic, because it's more, it's

(01:10:50):
less defined in terms of like chords using straight chords.
And she so taught her I think etuning E or
T and she tuning and she loved it. And I
think she told me she went on. She's probably made.
She made about one hundred and two tunings. One night

(01:11:11):
on the phone. She played me was the place she
played me about fourteen tunings she did. I mean I
was just sitting and she even played the tunings of
Keith Richards Uses. It probably got from her, you know,
she got you got it from her, So she did.
It was phenomenal what she did. She took off. It

(01:11:32):
took off. And I mean if she hadn't learned it
from me, she would have learned it from somebody else.
But I think maybe I saved her a little time now.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Needless to say, Joni Mitchell, not only being a great artist,
has gotten a great amount of acclaim anybody from that era,
who you feel needs recognition or music needs to be
heard today, who's fallen off the radar to a degree
besides myself, besides yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
Beside as myself, Well, I mean, you know, we're in
the danger zone now. I mean a lot of people
aren't alonger with us. I'm trying to think, like, like,
what do you can be? Could you make it? Could

(01:12:20):
you be a little clearer about.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
That when you say, well, you know Tim hard in
a couple of his songs, if I were a carpenter,
a couple of things are remembered, but he's fading into
UH history. You know, you talk about Mississippi, Fred McDowell.
These are people if you live through the era, you're
aware of, but younger generations are not aware of a
lot of these UH performers.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
Well, they all had their own music, you know. They
are things that speak to them that you know, that
express what they're feeling. And that's just that's how things
have been since you know Mozart before However, that said Mozart,
some of these things that leak through the ages, you know,
like especially in the classical world and to some extent

(01:13:06):
in the jazz world. I've been listening to a lot
to Oscar Peterson lately, you know, and uh Canadian guy
from Montreal phenomenal. But I'm I think, you know, I
like people like Fred Neil. He's probably the greatest white
singer there ever was, you know, outside of like George
Jones and like Sinatra and Mat Papado to or somebody

(01:13:31):
like that, those people, you know, but bred Neil was great.
I think Tim Harden is great. He wrote these beautiful songs.
All the blues people, you know, I think they're always pertinent,
They're always significant, and they'll never go away. And like

(01:13:52):
the jazz people, I mean, you know, Miles will always
be with us, called Trane, you know, all these people
will be with us. So I mean I'm a funny
guy to ask, because I've listened to all this old
you know. I listened to Fat Swaller, and I listened
to you know, real Father Heinz, And I mean I
listened to all this stuff all the time. So I mean,

(01:14:13):
I'm not of this world. I'm not of this time zone.
But I mean there's a lot of people that you know,
probably deserve to be heard more.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
Of, you know, And Thirsty Boots ended up being covered
by many artists Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, etcetera. Was that
just serendipitous that all of a sudden you found out
they were recording your songs? Or do you know how
they ended.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
Up doing it? No idea, They just did it. I
had no idea one day you turned on the radio
or something. There it is you never know in advance.
And the thing with the Dylan thing was very strange.
I mean, al Cooper kind of inted at something. He said, yeah,

(01:14:57):
I think he did this. Somebody thought it sounded too
much like you, al Cooper. You told me this once
years ago. I never gave it any thought. But then
he recorded like for It was on a one version,
a record day version, one was on another portraits, another
support one, an album, another version. And then when I

(01:15:20):
talked to Jeff Rosen and as manager, he came up
with another version that was completely beautiful, that was just
sitting there and gave it to us and we put
Tony Garnier out of you know, the basse player from
his band, Tony, and it came out beautifully. Everybody loved it.
But I don't you don't know. I mean, it's Judy.

(01:15:42):
I didn't know about her I didn't know. Sometimes I
hear about a recording I never knew about from Australia,
from like Fancois Hardie. I didn't know she had recorded Violenceadahn.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
I mean, yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
You think I live in an igloo or something in
a bubble, but probably I do, But I don't. I
don't really, I'm not always aware of the recordings.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
Now, you mentioned we're discussing that people who need more
attention didn't get it. You mentioned yourself. So how do
you feel about your place in the firmament in history
and to what degree do you want more recognition?

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
Well, I think I never had a hit record, you know.
So I think if I'll tell you one thing, if
you have a hit record, you can play state fairs. Now,
you can play corporate parties. Maybe, I mean you can
play you know, I mean having you only need one

(01:16:46):
hit record, and I mean you can. And if people
will follow they like that, they might if they look
into your work, they might like other parts of your work,
like in the case of Lou Read for example. You know,
but with not having a hit it's kind of it's
kind of heavy. It's like heavy lifting, you know, to
try to get your stuff out there, and I accept that.

(01:17:07):
I realized it's true. You can't do what can you do?
So or even if you have somebody else get a
hit of your song, that can help too. And I
think I think the Blues Project had a hit on
Violence of John. I think it was a top ten
hit something like that. But I mean a little bit

(01:17:27):
of it rubs off I was supposed. But so you
just go and carry on and you do what you
what you got into doing it for, and that's the writing.
And you just soldier on and you know whatever may
be will be, because I mean, I'm not going to
sit down and try to write a pop hit. I
would not. I never know how to do it in
the first place.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
Did you ever get any pressure from Clive Davis to
try to write a hit?

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
No, Clive never said a word. You just let me
do what I wanted to do. It was great. We
were surprised. We invited me. We flew over for his
birthday party. He turned ninety years old. He had this
big party at Chipriani's in New York and Wall Street.

(01:18:13):
So we ang and I fly over and we're saying,
all right, we'll probably end up under a balcony or
something or by a pillar. So we walk in and
I'm not performing or anything. And we walk into the
place and somebody comes with a little name tag, and
we were at the door. They wouldn't let Stevie vanzanin.

(01:18:34):
They wouldn't let him into the party because he didn't
have any ID, and I mean, and so I'm standing
there not even knowing him, arguing with the guy at
the door, saying, wait a minute, he's you know, such
and such and so and so, and they finally let
him in, so we got him. But so anyway, somebody
comes with a name tag in a suit and we

(01:18:56):
rushes through this huge place with all these round tables. Man,
and we go right to the front of the stage.
Put us down, and we're sitting down, and like Judy
Cowns is on the right, Alicia Keys is on the left,
Patti Smith is in front, art Guardfuncle and Robert de Niro.

(01:19:17):
This is the table we're sitting at. And we're thinking,
oh shit, man, we're going to probably end up, you know,
eating peanut but or sandwiches or something by some pillar.
But how nice it is of Clive to advise us.
They Clive, he put us right. You know, with all
these beautiful people. John Warwick is over the next table,
and Barry Manilow and you know the people that he

(01:19:37):
worked with. So it was a beautiful night. It was
very a wonderful thing, and I talked to Clive a
little bit. There was a great wonderful thing to do.
But you never know, I mean, how you stand in
this world where how your music affects people or what
it does to people. You basically don't have a clue.
I mean, they're like orphans that they go off on

(01:19:58):
their own and they live in their own lives. You
don't know what they will mean or what they do
mean to other people. You have, no, you don't have
a clue. You go, You're in your world and you
keep doing and doing more of what you did.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
And how much are you touring these days?

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
Well, I would like to tour more, I think, but
I'm touring not too much, very little. I'm doing some
dates in the spring. We're doing the Winery, We're doing
the Cage, doing a show in Arizona, Musical Instrument Museum,
Strange Eclectic dates, a date in Boston. Yeah, some are

(01:20:40):
sprinkling on the East coast. Not too much though, but
ten dates. I ain't going to get rich during concerts.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
How do you feel about so many of your contemporaries passing?

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
Where do you begin? I mean, well, not too good.
I mean I feel I mean people I knew, like
like Lou Reid was my best friend in New York.
Laurie kept Laurie is you know, she says, uh, you know,

(01:21:23):
it's it's okay to feel said, but don't be sad.
You know she's a She's a Buddhist too. I mean,
he was a tight she guy. But I mean Lou,
I was very close to Townsman sand we wrote together.
And I was close to you know, Rick Tanko, we
worked together. I mean, these are people that meant a
lot to me, and they knew my kids, so as

(01:21:48):
you know, and the list goes on. So you do
feel kind of in one way, you feel kind of isolated.
You feel you feel kind of left. I mean, I
wonder where you begin to realize that the question is
and why are they? Did they did they die? Or
why did they pass into the other world or the
other side. The real question is why are we still here?

(01:22:09):
Then you got to grapple with that. I and I
think sometimes you walk around and think, well, man, you
know you feel okay, you might be the eyes for Towns.
You might be the eyes for Lou, or you might
be the eyes for these or Phi looks. You know,
he was my brother, Fred Neil. He should be very
close people to me, and so you feel why am I?

(01:22:31):
You know, you feel kind of like the last man standing.
And Joni, who's the godmother my daughter. We almost lost her.
She fell on the floor, you know, was on the
floor for two days. Nobody found her, so you know,
and she'll probably be at the gig in La because
she always comes to the show. But I don't know.
It's a strange, strange thing to see these beautiful, wonderful, talented, funny,

(01:22:59):
great people who you were very close to. But you
know they live on within you too, They live on inside.
Sometimes when I'm writing, a line will come up or something,
Oh yeah, towns or run don't remind me of Lou
or something remind me of speaking of Lou. I had
the impression you were the Lou read of interviewers.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
Okay, I'm pretty familiar with Lou Reed's career. I didn't
know him personally. I've heard from LORII. But what exactly
does that mean?

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
Well, Taylor Swift called me and she told me that
you were like the lou Read of interviewers. No, I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
Well that's obviously a joke. But okay, so.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
Anyway, but but I mean these people, you know, you
they you know, you just carry them with you. They're
inside you know. But it is a bizarre thing. I'm
trying to think that there's there's many more too, the
ones whose names you don't know. You know Debbie also,
we lost her. Debbie figured very big in my life.

(01:23:59):
We worked a lot on the music and she's in
the film. She's She does a great She narrates a
lot of the film. Do what do we do?

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
You come to play your own death?

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
Well, I don't think. I don't. I don't think about
it that much and I don't really it doesn't really,
it doesn't really bother me. I H. I think you
reach a certain point when you know you're in the
danger zone with you know, with things like hell, things
that are going on. Fortunately I'm okay. But I think

(01:24:37):
you think about it and you know, you get your head,
you get yourself prepared for it. You have to be
a little you can't get attached to it though, But
you have to see it's a thing that's it's gonna
it's gonna happen. It's gonna come like I just turned
the big eight. Oh you know that was a number
for years. Oh yeah, people turn eighty you know her
people people you know, people get pensions or people. I

(01:25:02):
don't get a pension, but I mean, and then one
day you are eighty years old, that number has visited you.

Speaker 1 (01:25:10):
You know, is there anything you want to accomplish or
do before you leave this mortal claw?

Speaker 2 (01:25:21):
Well, I'm working. You know, I'm a great believer that
you don't really leave the You don't leave the planet
until you finish what you were intended or what you
were meant to do. Until you've finished your work. And
when you've finished those things, then you're ready to let
go with a body. You know. I'm working. I've got
an episodic novel I've been working on for years. I

(01:25:42):
would love to see it, see that into the light
of day. And I've got this memoir thing I've been
working on. I would love it to be able to
walk into the sun. But it all takes time. And
I'm working on this album now that I started and
I got to finish their stamp thing. It's like it's
like the cross on my back. I got this burden

(01:26:03):
I've got to carry to Calvary or something. So we're
going to try to finish. It's the spring and have
it out in the fall. To I thing called Dance
and Love and Death and another another writer toose Leonard Cohen.
You know Leonard left so these I didn't know Crosby
that well, I mean I know, but you know these.

(01:26:24):
This is what happens. I mean, you reach this danger
zone and this is but a lot of people they
left way before their time, you know, way before they
There's a new book Lou Reed put out. You should
get it. It's called The Art of the Straight Line.
It's really beautiful. I'm reading it now. LORI put it
together and it's really a sensational it's a really a
great book. Hel Willners in it, and uh and Ramanta

(01:26:51):
Ramuncho Mata from in Paris season. He does a great
chapter and now it's wonderful to read. It's very refreshing
and lu jumps off the page. He's right comes alive.
Have you heard about it?

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
Of course? So what's an average day like for you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:13):
Well, I get up and I walk the dog and
I start writing.

Speaker 1 (01:27:18):
So you're working as hard as you ever were.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
Yeah, I've writ a lot of new songs for this record.
Plus I'm doing these video I'm doing these projects, these
sort of topical songs that nobody wants to look at
her face or even think about. But I'm going to
do it anyway because in the end they're going to
see that it mattered.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Why do you think doing topical song sixty years ago
was at the forefront of artistic culture and now it's
way in the background.

Speaker 2 (01:27:56):
Well, topical songs. See these things? I don't know. I
sent you the rain falls down in Amsterdam, did you
hear it? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
Yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):
About fascism and Nazis and how these things. This was
I wrote right after the wall fell down. They they're precient.
They're like, they're not the protest songs. They're not really
topical songs. We're using that as a term of convenience,
but I mean it's these are these are more like
I say, like from a medical journalistic if you go
to the Meal clinic site, you know that you read

(01:28:26):
a description of a disease, you get a disease say
about mass shootings. It's not going to change. It's never
going to change. It's just going to get worse if
the bodies are going to pile up. And this thing,
this song, this lays it all out. And it's from
the point of view of a shooter, which is unique.

(01:28:48):
It's not like singing about something or what's a bad
thing to do? Shoot, you know. This is actually about
a kid who goes and shoots some shoots up his class,
you know. So, I mean it's these perspectives are very interesting,
you know. It's almost cinemagraph h h. Cinemagraphic, and they

(01:29:09):
approach in some ways, but it's not descriptive. It's actually active.
So it's I think they're important, these things, these songs,
and nobody's doing it. No artists are reacting. They just
it's just newspapers and television. That's it. And it's vers
so sorry, and like at the end of danger landswers,

(01:29:31):
you know, prayers and our prayers are with you, you know,
our thoughts and prayer prayers are cheap in danger Land,
you know, and you always hear it the same old
ship over and over again, and it's like, come on,
a government is supposed to a government is supposed to protect,
you know, keep your keep its people safe. All right,

(01:29:55):
there's criminals. They're gonna go kill them. You can't stop
criminals they go, But you just take their toys away.
They can't have these toys. They can be criminal all
they want, but don't let them have these these weapons.
Read the Washington Post. Read what a read? What an eight?

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):
Yeah yeah, I saw that post yesterday.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
See what a book? See what a bully can do
to a kid? You know? I mean, so these this
is this, these songs are important, but nobody knows it yet.
Nobody knows.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
Well, we're getting the word out here. But also, why
do you believe there can be no change?

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
Well, I read the Times. I must be a there
must be some kind of newsprint massacres because I get
the New York Times delivered to my door every day
in the Netherlands, and I read the article about that.
Do you get the New York Times? Absolutely well, I'll

(01:30:56):
send you a link to this thing if you didn't
catch it. About to republic kends, who are going to
empower the ones that can make or break anything? They
say the same old talking points, nothing can be done.
It's the most extraordinary comments they made about it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:10):
I read the article.

Speaker 2 (01:31:11):
Yeah, so you're asking me, can things change? What do
you think when you read that?

Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
Well, I view it. Listen, public protests driven by younger
people helped stop the Vietnam War, and I certainly remember that.
I thought that when the Supreme Court struck down abortion rights,

(01:31:38):
people would be rioting in the streets. They were not.
So I think back to what was happening in Vietnam. Well,
half the public was affected because of the draft. So
my question becomes in my mind, what is the trigger
point where people react. We saw this in Israel. There

(01:31:58):
was a trigger point. It was not anticipated. No one
felt that they would get into power and do this,
and the public said no, Moss. We certainly know there
are plenty of trigger points on the right. Is there
a trigger point on the left? As I say, I
thought there was. Things are going in the wrong direction,

(01:32:20):
even if I mean, one can't predict the future. But
the Republicans presently control the House of Representatives. They passed
the debt ceiling limits under Trump when there was a
lot of spending. They won't do it under Biden. They
won't even put forth a budget. How long can this

(01:32:43):
go on? Before people react and at this point, yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (01:32:49):
Remember Israel is a country. It's more homogeneous. America is
not really a homogeneous is not a homogeneous country like
Italy Israel. I know, Israel's come from all over Europe
and other people. After the diaspora. Diaspora, however you have
pronounced that. I mean they are many, many came back return.
It's still through the cultural and the religion there's more homogeneous,

(01:33:15):
you know, the Orthodox alternate notwithstanding or Italy or French,
you know, you got this sort of or the Dutch people.
America is a different story. And I'll tell you this counting,
it's not going to end in like several lifetimes as
far as we know, because the way the thing was
set up Israel, they don't have states. They don't have

(01:33:38):
an Alabama, they don't have a Massachusetts, they don't have
a South Dakota. It's set up so you've got to
go through a lot of hoops and a lot of
ringers to get things to stop, especially taking because it's
not just not selling assault weapons. You got to do

(01:33:59):
what Australia is. You've got to turn the weapons in
and pay, you know, pay people to turn their weapons
and they've got more webs than people. It's just and
it's it's going on and on and on. So I mean,
it's become it's like palpable. It's the danger in the
States is and the Republicans are whoever they those people are,

(01:34:21):
they're not. No one's going to change this. There's going
to be more than what there's been one hundred and
seventy mass shootings. I said before, since the New Year.
It's March thirtieth now, it's these things are going to espect.
More of these guns are being sold. It's a good
business to be in selling guns, you know, the handgun

(01:34:41):
thing with no licenses, right, They don't even need to
get a lesson. They don't have to go learn how
to shoot, go to get a certificate from a shooting
club that you know how to use a weapon, and
you can carry it around to a bar, into a
high school, into a college behind your back, your belt.
So I don't know how this is going to play,

(01:35:03):
you know, but you read the article. That was the
scariest thing I ever read. Because there's no support, there's
no backing up. They just want to live. They want
to unleash it more. They want to what's the word
on leash or they want to lessen the restrictions, right.

Speaker 1 (01:35:21):
I mean some of the stuff is absolutely head turning,
like getting in Arkansas, getting rid of protections for child workers.
I am a pessimist, but I must throw in here.
We grew up the concept that marijuana would be legal.
People talked about it, we laughed about it. But it's

(01:35:42):
true gays can get married. So as much as I'm
a pessimist, things can change. The other thing is, we
grew up with all these people fighting for their nations
and we'd say, man, that's not where I'm at. You
look at some of these countries like Hungry, like Ukraine.

(01:36:03):
In the reverse, you realize at some point maybe you
have to. I'm an old guy, but you have to
sacrifice your life for some This is the other thing
that you're talking about in your art. You're standing for
something that's a concept that has been lost to say.
I'm gonna put everything on the line, irrelevant of what

(01:36:27):
goes on.

Speaker 2 (01:36:28):
I'm putting things on the line, and you got to
start with one person, start somewhere. Also, remember game marriage,
marijuana doesn't have This thing chizzled into the Constitution called
the Second Amendment and the second Second Amendment. By the way,
it was where Robert Palmer hit me into this. You know,

(01:36:49):
the writer from the name.

Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
Robert Palmer, the writer New York Times nowseason.

Speaker 2 (01:36:52):
Palmer, it's you know him and his daughter in mine
went to Sarah Lawrence together. They were very best friends,
and Palmer was very close friend of mine. He said,
you know, the Second Amendment, and I it turned out
to be totally, patently true. The Second Amendment was not about, well,
the British are going to come, let's all get our

(01:37:13):
guns out to protect ourselves. It was put in by
Southern states only for white slave owners to have enough AMMO,
have enough guns to prevent uprisings. That's all the Second
Amendent was ever about. And it was nothing more or
nothing less, nothing to do but the British are coming,

(01:37:36):
or this is kind of nothing like that. It was
only about protecting against slave uprisings. And I mean, think
about that and that and that tacit understanding that built
in thing. People aren't You don't need a pistol to

(01:38:00):
shoot a deer for food. You don't need an assault
rifle to shoot a deer to eat food. So they
changed the narrative to saying well, government's bad. They're going
to come and fuck us over, not only take our
guns away, but they're going to tax us. They're gonna this,
they're going to that. So they switched from deer to government.

(01:38:21):
They switched the whole rationale at the NRA. So you know,
the and this thing, it's going to be the second amount.
That's a tough rock to pry loose in this thing,
which is different than the gay marriage, are different than
the marijuana things. Those are cultural. Those things cultural evolutions

(01:38:41):
that happen, and that's good. It's off of the good.
I mean, William Browse was talking about decriminalizing pot like
in the forties. But I mean it's it's just a
very difficult and a very dangerous and I mean I
don't like to be alarmists, but what's going on. It's

(01:39:03):
a very very dangerous thing. And the young people that
should be changing the rules are the ones pulling the
triggers killing everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:39:09):
Wow, that's pretty dynamic. So needless to say, as you
said earlier, the pace is accelerating. So what will be
the effect of the pace accelerating.

Speaker 2 (01:39:23):
Well, there'll be more people killed, There'll be more shootings,
more mass shootings, more suicides, young people at home in
their homes. I mean guns, I guess after the thing
I wrote. Guns are kind of unavoidable to discuss this
at this point, especially it's right in your face in
the newspaper, on TV all the time as we speak.

(01:39:45):
Something's probably happened. But young people having guns. It's the
leading cause of death with young people. Teenagers are guns.

Speaker 1 (01:39:57):
Yeah, I saw that report. But let's just assume for
the sake of discussion that there won't be laws preventing this.
What's going to happen. Do you think everybody's going to
get a gun? What's going to happen in schools? What
do you think will be the reaction to this action?

Speaker 2 (01:40:16):
Well, the reaction from the right is that teachers should
be armed. Maybe students should be armed to protect themselves
for somebody's going to come and kill them. That have
more guns is the answer to guns in places where
there could be a mass gatherings, where there could be
some kind of a threat. But look, man, these things

(01:40:38):
have in MYO the video, I mean, it's this little
film art piece thing. It's not hard, it's just a film.
I mean, there's McDonald's. There's restaurants, there's gas stations. I mean,
if you're on the road, man, you pull into a
gas station two in the morning, there's some pretty weird
people standing around the pumps. And man, some of these
people got guns. And you're just going to get a

(01:41:01):
cant a Snickers bar, you know, And it's I, I
don't know, I don't know, but mark my mark my
words out of this thing. Yeah, keep tune in and
kick tuned in to my my, my little movies.

Speaker 1 (01:41:22):
On that note, Eric, I think we're going to put
a stop to it. You're a very aer udite, intelligent man.
Great to get the history. You can obviously wrestle with
the issues. Thanks so much for taking the time with
my audience. Good night, Okay, till next time. This is

(01:41:42):
Bob Left Sets