Leo Sayer

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the barth Websites podcast. My
guest today was the one and only Meal Sah we
are good day approprim nice to be here. Bub. You
in Australia. Why astral h good question. Well, after I
had made my first record and silver Bird my first
album in I went straight to America on tour because

(00:34):
things were happening on a lot of a lot of
interest in America, and you know, we signed up with
Warner Brothers for the USA and Canada at that time,
and South America, I guess, and the rest of the
world was Chrysalis Records in England. Um. And after the
American tour which went fantastic, um, it was just a

(00:56):
huge success. Uh, there was a call for me to
come to US Astralia. So I came down to Australia.
And when I came, it was by this time and
a buzz had already really started. So I arrived in Melbourne,
I think it was arrived in Melbourne to absolute well,
it was like Beatlemania. You know, the airport was jammed

(01:18):
with people. There were people waving at the plane as
we came in from the observation deck of the airport.
And journalists were immediately, you know, beseeching me, and I
had lots of stupid questions asked at the airport, you know,
like why did you come to Australia, what do you
or even what do you think of Australia. Well he
hasn't even got it yet, you know, so it was crazy.

(01:42):
And but this tour was just amazing and I fell
in love with the place. And we had a a sponsor,
a wonderful guy called redg and Set who ran an
airline which is now defunct called and Set Airlines. And
Bob had his own private plane. So he said to me, Um,

(02:02):
do you want to what places would you like to
go to in Australia Because we'd had an incredibly successful
to us sold out everywhere, so he wanted to give
me a gift and he just said, look, I'll fly
you to six places you choose. Just put a pear
on the map and we can get there. There's air
there's air fields everywhere. So yeah, I went to the
famous airs Rock you know, which is now Ulura Uluru

(02:25):
as it's called the area you Laura, um. And we
went to Northern Cans and we went to Broom where
they shot the you know, Chariots of Fire movie, and
you see those guys, you know the Endless sands. That's
that's this incredible place. And we went down to Tasmania.
We we flew to all these places, and I made

(02:46):
myself a vow that one day I was going to
come and live in Australia. I don't know why I
made it, It was just an instinctive thought. But when
you see the beauty of this place and you feel
the space and you feel the you know you can
be lonely here and yet happy. How can I describe that?
It's it's it's it's solitude that you can reach in

(03:06):
this place. Um and and a little bit less bs
than the rest of the world, you know, they're a
bit less hype. So I kind of over the years,
I started coming back and coming back and coming back,
And when I finally moved in here in two thousand
and five with my lovely partner Donna Teller, who was

(03:26):
also a man my manager at the time as well. UM.
When we moved in, they asked me how many times
you have been to Australia then, you know, this is
the immigration standard question. I said forty five, which was
the absolute God's truth, you know. So so hey, it's
my it was my second hand home, you know. But
but let me say as well, I've always loved working

(03:47):
in exile. I mean when I lived in when I
lived in the States, in in California, and in briefly
in New York, made all those albums during the seventies. Yeah,
I felt really good at being away from home. My
father was a merchant seaman, so basically he sailed around
the world as a ship's engineer, and I suppose I

(04:10):
followed in his footsteps. I always loved traveling, and I
love being away from home. It pushed me more, you know,
And I think being here it pushes me to prove
myself all the time. Even though I'm seventy four in May,
I still feel I've got a lot to prove. Okay,
I've been to Australia a couple of times. I know
most of the people in the industry there, and they

(04:30):
talk about how far it is from everything. They are
thrilled when you actually go there, kind of like what
you're saying your first time in nine Oh. Yeah, absolutely,
but they also talk about the distance. It's certainly well
known in terms of bands Australia has the best live
bands because they're limited number of markets they have to

(04:50):
play all this time. But do you feel somewhat disconnected
from the business, from the news, from anything. No, No,
not at all. And I think that, you know, I mean,
look at here, we are talking on zoom and we're
able to reach the world from wherever we are. I
mean I follow Formula one, you know, Grand pre Racing,

(05:12):
and most of the journalists who work on that, um
that business was always centered around England, around Britain, rather
like my version of the music business was always centered
around Britain. You know, it had to be Britain first.
That was the where you know, you've got the best
equipment for the studio, and that was where you kind
of that was where you worked. If that was your

(05:33):
that was your field, your place. Now, all these guys
in Formula one, they all live in Spain, they all
live in Italy, they all live in Germany because they
don't need to be in in Britain to do their work.
So just like that, I mean, I think I've talked
to a few rock journalists who live in the Demonic
American rock journalists who live in Dominican Republic or Mexico,

(05:53):
you know, or Canada, because we now have linked the
world by technology. So I think you don't and I
think you know if you if you follow some of
the the news media to find out about what's happening
in the business. Like this morning, I was looking at
Mixed Magazine, and you know, they're they're blog and finding

(06:16):
out about some new studio gear that I'm interested in,
and I feel like, yeah, at that moment I'm reading
Mixed Magazine, I'm I'm in California, you know. So so
I I think the world has got small and got closer.
Air travel is easier as well, you know. I mean,
COVID's put a spike into a lot of what we do,
traveling wise and international wise. But I think that I

(06:40):
don't feel disconnected, and I wake up every morning feeling
at home. You know. Let's start at Formula one. They
were just in Melbourne, did you go no, no, no,
I'm I'm a bit off it at the moment, although
I talked to about six different friends who are down there,
you know, so I get the inside track, you know. So,
so yeah, and I over the years, I've just become

(07:02):
a little bit less of a racing guy and a
little bit more of a more of a chronicler. And
I mean, I'm writing my book at the moment, Bob.
So I'm one thousand, four hundred words into the book
and chasing my chronicling my life. And I've got a
vast amount of material here. I'm working on everyday research,
you know, research, research, research, find out what I was

(07:24):
doing on June the eleven. You know, You've got a
couple of things. Let me ask. Yeah, George Harrison was
famously into Formula one. He was a good friend. You
were into Formula one? But what was the appeal back then?
I think that we all grew up. You know. Look,
boys grow up to either want to be racing drivers

(07:44):
or fighter pilots. It's the fantasy when you're at school.
Maybe soccer players or American football players, or baseball players
or tennis players. But mostly I think boys, you know,
like that dare devil sport. You know that that that
devil may care kind of dangerous thing that you do.
You know. So I grew up with motor racing. I

(08:07):
used to follow Phil Hill and Sterling Moss. My father
raced motorcycles, so you know, just as a spare time
kind of thing until his mom, until my mom stopped
him because it was too dangerous. Um And I remember
him taking me to the Goodwood Race Course, which is
very famous now for historic events. Um And we went

(08:27):
there and Sterling Moss crashed and right in front of us,
and it was a crash that nearly finished his career.
And I it was just one of those moments when
I just I thought that the smell of the petrol,
you know, the whole kind of screeching of tires, the
whole dangerous excitement of it, I just found very compelling.

(08:48):
And you know the most beautiful part of that story
is that Sterling Moss became a friend many years later
because I met him through you know, Formula one. Of course,
now he knows I'm Leo say I'm not Jerry Sarah
any longer. Um And and we became pals and I
used to go to dinner with him all the time.
So it isn't incredible that you meet your heroes and

(09:10):
they become your friends. Okay, staying with Fromula one just
for another second. Yeah, why are you off it now?
And what do you think of the Netflix series? If
you've seen it? Can I say the word crap. Absolutely,
you can use if you want to. It's fucking crap. No. Um,
I just think it's all become a little bit less Vegas,
you know. Um. Of course, the Americans group, you know,

(09:36):
big group have taken it over, and of course they
want you know, you know, lots of lots of bodies
at the track, and they want to appeal to young
kids and girls and all of this stuff. But it's
not as pure as it used to be and the
rules are starting to get fudged around to kind of
make the best, uh, you know, the best result and

(09:57):
netflix the series. Although it's very well done, of course
you can't say it's not. Um. It tends to kind
of bring up kind of you know, it makes it
makes stories that aren't really true, you know, I don't know,
fictionalizes it and sort of dramatizes it. And I think
over dramatization, life's exciting enough, isn't it, Bob? You know,

(10:22):
do we need to have a dramatist kind of rescript everything?
I mean, it's it's a bit like when you watch
a biopic movie. I can't watch the Queen movie or
the Rod Stewart movie, whatever they are. You know, I
just can't watch them because you know, they're just kind
of you know, enhancing all the details to to cry
and try and create something that somebody who's just not

(10:44):
interested in the subject of, say Jim Morrison, will be
attracted to. But I mean, anybody following the life of
Jim Morrison, boy, that's exciting enough as it is, you know,
I mean, I agree totally. Let me just ask you one,
why dramatized Janice Joplin When Janice Jock it was Janis Joplin. Man. Well,
that's one of the things that we've lost. Of course,

(11:04):
when you went to go see these acts before YouTube, etcetera,
and you experienced it live, it was something transcended. They
cannot be replicated today. Just the final note on Formula one, Yeah,
I got into it. But the final result last year
with Verse stopping taking over Hamilton's in the rules, I'm
eating out dreadful. Well, that's that's what's kind of that's

(11:27):
what's led me to this position. I mean, I gotta say,
I mean, it's really a shame when you get your
best protagonists a bit a little bit like you know, um,
some fights are coming in in Muhammad Ali's Prime and
with four hands, you know, and you know, four arms,
and they let him box and he beats Ali of

(11:47):
course because he's got four arms. Um, and you're going
to call that legitimate, you know, it's the same thing. Really,
I mean, it's just I think it's kind of cheating. Personally,
I think that guy had that race one. He driven brilliantly.
His story is the story of the greatest of all time.
And I'm going to be controversial here and I'm saying,

(12:08):
is it because he's black? I don't know. I mean,
you know, it's a really it's a really difficult one
to get into. But they wanted the young, the Stapend
to win. They got for Stappen. I mean, the first
thing he did was put number one on his car,
which I think is kind of gratuitous, you know, to
say the least, because they all have their numbers and

(12:30):
their logos going with that. And of course you've got
the right if you win the championship to put number
one on your on your team, but on your car.
But I mean mostly those drivers, they don't race on
those kind of ego principles. And and here you've got
an ego guy. Well you know, well, we'll see what happens.
The best news of all with to close on Formula

(12:50):
one is the Ferrari now looked like they're they're wrapping
it up. So that's fantastic that the oldest team, the
most traditional team. UM it's too young, wonderful young drivers.
UM is doing what it says on the packet, and
I think that's beautiful. If the Red Car wins, I'll
be very happy. Okay, let's go back to what you

(13:10):
said being in exile. Now, let's just talk about recording music.
So do you find it's easier to do in isolation
and exile? Yeah, well, I I've developed a way of
making records completely by myself, and I'm very proud of it.
I'm It's taken me a while to get there. But

(13:32):
you know, if I go back, I started as all
I wanted to be as a painter, an artist. I
was into you know, people as various as as as
Marcel Duchamp and Mark Rothko and and and Henri Russo
and and Van Gogh. But I mean I wanted to

(13:52):
be a painter. I at school, I was great at art.
That was my great ability. I was a dyslexic kid,
so I leaned towards the creative side because I was
no good at the practical. My father was an engineer.
He was ashamed of me because I couldn't add put
two and two together. And I mean until I was nineteen,
I couldn't even tie my shoelaces. I didn't know what

(14:13):
left and right worth? Could you really not tie your shoelaces?
I really couldn't. I really couldn't. I was I was.
You know, I'd bulk at anything technical like that because
the laces would go in different positions. So my brain
told me, you know, left and right position, all this stuff.
I mean, I still can't play drums. I can't coordinate

(14:34):
one hand on the other, so going you know, having
those disabilities leads to incredible mind and creative abilities. You know.
So I could imagine things. I could I could see things.
I could work out perspective and distance in my head.
So I was born to be an artist. Now I

(14:55):
went to art school. Um, my parents argued with the
the art school uh burses when we got in, you know,
so to say, he said, I don't want him be
in a bohemian and get him a job in commercial arts.
So you know, I went into a commercial art course,
you know, to do that, which was very frustrating. But

(15:16):
I would bunk off all the time and go to
the life drawing classes and go to the art classes
and hang out with all the fine artists. You know.
So I was already a rebel in that time. But
I don't know. I I just had this creative brain.
I've always had that, and that that I mean, I
could sing. I sang in the church choir. I had

(15:38):
a wonderful priest who taught me to sing, so I
always had that in the background. And apparently I have
perfect pitch, so you know, that gave me the gift
of always been able to know what note I was
singing and tune into the sound of birds or whatever
in the background, you know, So I could find those things.
So when I actually got to the studio and I

(16:00):
did working, of course, nobody would let me near the
control desk and that they just put me on the microphone.
But I mean they were amazed that I could walk,
I could go out and have a sandwich and come
back and sing in exactly the same key as I
had left the room singing in you know. So I
had those gifts. I had those abilities and I was
a quick learner a good observer as well. So all

(16:22):
the years that say, from seventy four, seventy three, maybe
seventy two, all the way until um, I was working
with other writers and other producers and learning their craft
by just observing them. So now I've got to this
finite point where I can do the lot myself. And

(16:45):
so I believe, going back to the art theory, that
if Van Gogh and Picasso and all those guys didn't
need somebody in the room to do the blues and
the reds for them, why can't I do the lot?
If I call myself an artist, I should be to
make the whole thing, so I should be able to
learn the technology to make it. Slave to me absolutely, So,

(17:06):
you know, based on our discussions and preparations, it seems
like you're very technologically savvy intuitively, so I think I
think it's an intuitive thing. You know that I honestly
I read manuals and I don't know what the hell
I'm reading. And sometimes my engineer, live engineer, Damian Young,
great guy in Melbourne, sometimes has to do a screen

(17:28):
time thing with me, you know, with team viewer and
come onto the screen and sort out what I can't do.
Oh no, Leo, you do it like oh, I'm going,
Oh my god, what a klutz. But but we get there,
you know, because I'm determined, my determination, and I can't
believe I'm seventy four in May and I'm still this ambitious,
determined guy who's got to prove all these things to himself.

(17:50):
But that's how I am, That's how I'm built. Okay,
So how much equipment do you have in the studio?
How professional is it? It's pretty pro I mean I
work with a computer which is kind of highly boosted.
I've got a whole server system in here, about twenty
one terror bytes of memory, and it's a whole radio

(18:11):
system with backups. If the power goes off here, which
it often does because we're in the country, um, I've
got a twenty four hour backup, so everything just clicks
in and works. I've got accelerated Internet as well, which
which helps me stay on touch with it all. I
have a necessar desk, some beautiful mics. I've got a

(18:31):
new mic by a guy called Lowton who's built this
incredible mic which David Crosby as well uses, and Dave
Crosby's engineer was a guy that I knew, so I
quizzed him about mikes and he said, throughout your name,
throughout you annoymans, get this one. So I've got this
amazing mic that just makes my voice sound really sweet.
I've built a booth in my studio all on wheels

(18:54):
where I sing in. So i have a big open
space barn here. I'm speaking to you from one side
of the barn, and I'd say it's about a thousand
square feet and it's all open. But I've got these
things called clouds, which you know, basically give you acoustic
treatment over where the monitors are and everything. I use

(19:16):
Miller and Cries or monitors. I use Crane Song, which
is Dave Hill who created the Summit brand, and then
Crane's song. I use his mike PRIs which are fantastic.
And I've got a lot of expensive equipment, um incredible
electrostatic headphones and these these Planar Dan Clark Audio. I'll

(19:39):
give him a plug from California. And you know, I've
got all the toys, Tina Turner's old Newhiman microphone and
some beautiful A kg s. I've got all the toys
and I can basically, you know, start a project by
myself and not bother to call anybody, which is great
and that's what I love. Okay, So you have a

(20:00):
new record, Northern Songs, which are covers of Beatle records.
Did you play all the instruments, do everything yourself? Yeah? Everything?
So how did you do it? I mean with the Beatles,
I always imagined how I would treat those songs, being
very cheeky, you know. So it's a kind of it's
an interpretation first off. So you know when people hear it,

(20:21):
they won't hear direct covers, you know, they'll hear um
leo leo phid versions, you know. So we've changed the
beats and we've changed the field and all sorts of
things like that. So that's the first point. So I
heard these songs in my head, and I hear things
in my head sometimes from dreams as well. I've write
songs in dreams. And then I just I mean, I

(20:43):
have seven studio here, let's say, because basically I've designed
it so that if it's the winter, you can instantly
turn the it's it's hot here in five minutes. Big
radiator hydroponic system in here. Great air conditioning for the summer.
So I'll get up in the middle of the night,
straight from a dream or straight from some imagination, run

(21:05):
and immediately come in and just start working on something.
The fact that I'm not using another studio really helps
because everything is ready to go all the time. So
wherever you were last into a song, say working on
the base, if you leave it alone and you go
away for a few hours, you can come back and
just carry on. And I just hear all the lines

(21:27):
in my head. I've I can dissect all the parts
of a song in my memory and just work on
them and put it all together. Um, I've just got this,
found this ability. And I suppose the dyslexia has helped
in a way because I'm able to kind of really
dig into my imagination or my mind and and use

(21:49):
that for all my work. You know. So I start
with a basic template. I'll put down a drum beat
a keyboard. Go. Okay, just to be clear, you said earlier,
because you're slexic, you couldn't play the drums. So these
are electronic drums you're putting on the record. Everything is
played from a keyboard into the computer. So every note

(22:10):
relates to a keyboard. I don't really use pads. Some
people use pads, you know for drums and everything. I know,
I don't do that, and I tend to cut and
paste a lot of stuff, so I tend to I
have a vast sampler library, you know. My my, my,
my computer is relying on about eight terror bytes of memory,

(22:32):
slaving to it from various things and from various other
outboard uh memory units, you know. So I've got all
these samples, and somehow my head always manages to find
the right sounds and the right um, the right grooves
as it were, you know, on the drums, to to
give me the field. So I'll use lots of different

(22:52):
elements to get there. Sometimes some loops as well, so
I mean get back on the record. Is just the
drum loop that I found from some guys that work
with in Denmark, and he gave me a CD of
all of his drums, and bang, I'll put it all
together from there. Um just added some symbols in the
right places, you know. But I just love that feeling
of control. You know, you can do things yourself. It

(23:15):
is possible. You start off with the drums, told us
how you built the track from there. Yeah, build a
track basically, put down a keyboard. It's it's it can
be a tiss in process because you're writing a song
at the same time. So I'm I'm writing lyrics at

(23:38):
that moment um and and you know, working on a
vocal line. Um, I don't know, it's it's it's just
it just comes, and it comes fairly easily. I have
to say, it's hard to describe the process. I'm supposed
to do something soon for I think it's Mixed magazine actually,

(23:59):
um where they're going to look at my studio and
the way that I work, and and they said, they
don't know anybody who works like me. I mean maybe
Todd Rundgren did when he was doing his a cappella
record and a few things like that, but they don't
know anybody. Stevie Wonder of course does everything himself, and
Prince did as well. But at the same time, Prince
would bring in musicians to work with an engineers, he

(24:20):
would always have around. I have nobody. So I think
what I'm doing is pretty unique, you know. Okay, how
about acoustic instruments. Do you play guitar? Do you play
all these other No? But they're all available as samples now,
you know, I mean wonderful program called Native Instruments. UM.
Just to name one of them. They can give you
strummed guitars. So basically you can get a guitar which

(24:42):
will go ding ding ding ding ding. Now, you might
not like one of those beats, so immediately you go
onto the screen and cut that up and then get
it to work in the way that you want it
to work. I mean, when I'm working, I often start
off a song. I'll be completely in the wrong key,
so I'll have to move everything, so it becomes an
extraneous process, you know. Um, But that's that's okay. I

(25:06):
mean anything to get there. And I gotta tell you,
I mean Northern Songs. It's the second album that I've
made like this. So I made an album called Selfie, UM,
and I called it Selfie because I was doing it
all myself. UM and I that came out a couple
of years ago or so. UM. And they can be
a long process. I mean, I don't care how long

(25:27):
it takes. The Beatles projects started ten years ago, so um.
And I have an engineer, an amazing engineer that I
use for mixing and and also, you know we he
does the market mastering as well. He's called John Hudson
and he used to be an Olympic Studios who ran
Olympic Studios, a very famous studio in London. And he's

(25:50):
the guy who recorded that brought all the Bryan Adams songs.
You know, um he recorded Tina Turner, he recorded He's
got Grammys for Tina turn What's love got to do
with it? All those tracks? We don't need another hero.
John is probably one of the best mixing engineers in
the world and he started mixing me way back in UM.

(26:14):
And you know, when I was working with this guy
Alan Tani, we did more than I can say, and
Richard Road and a few other songs, and John was
the mixing engineer and I always got on well with John.
And one day I moved in here to as I say,
two thousand and five, and in two thousand and seven
I got a call out of the blue. Hey, it's
John no Going, what what are you doing? And I

(26:36):
noticed it was an Australian number, and of course his
wife is Australian. He said, well, I packed up the studio,
I got out of there, got fed up with it.
There are a few complications. I'm here in Australia, so
I said great. He said, look, I'm looking for a
studio to work in. I said, well, I know there's
a studio here called three or one Studios, which is
linked with Abbey Road. It's my studio down here, is

(26:56):
quite beautifully equipped and everything. And On is the genius
with SSL as well, you know, always has been one
of the best mixing engineers. I mean, I mean he
did he did the the the Live Aid song, you know,
and all of that stuff. You know, so he's he's
the genius with SSL. So when I told them John

(27:18):
Hudson was down, they said, oh, bring him down, bring
him down, and they gave us a room in there,
and with we only had computers in there and a
little mixing desk. But that's how the project started. Just
literally he was off the plane but a jet lag
and I played him these songs I was working on,
these Beatles songs. I played him Strawberry Fills, Forever Um

(27:40):
and Norwegian would eleanor Rigby with the Michael Jackson kind
of beat to it, and and he said, great, let's
let's mix them. He mixed them straight away, and those
are the mixes that are on the album there from
ten years ago. Okay, let's talk about the Beatles. When
did you first hear the Beatles. I think I think
give Us Love Me Do, which was the first really

(28:04):
real proper single that they made, and I was at school,
I must have been about fifteen sixteen something like that,
and this song came over, and I've got to say
I thought it was pretty cool because, um, I like
the way that the guy John Lennon was I'm just
checking the time I had thirty two minutes. Um, I

(28:26):
liked the way that the guy it was playing harmonica
because I was playing harmonica at the time and I
was playing, you know, I was just learning the harmonica,
and hey, this guy with the Beatles was playing the harmonica.
That's pretty cool. So that's what made me listen to it.
I mean, I was much more into Buddy Holly and
Elvis and and blues music basically, and folk music, you know,

(28:49):
Woody Guthrie and things like that. I hadn't quite discovered
Bob Dylan yet, which was going to be the big
one for me, but but yeah, I was. I was intrigued.
I loved Lonnie Donnie Gun and you know, and skiffle
and and pure music, you know, Sunny Terry and Brandon McGee,
all that stuff, and here comes this guy making this
pop song but he's playing a harmonica, so it's pretty cool.

(29:11):
I think that was the first time I noticed them.
So what was it like experiencing the Beatles in the UK?
We know ed Sullivan Beatlemania and the United States. What
was it like in the UK? Well, I think that
we were watching them develop, you know, and that was
what's interesting because they were based here and you see
them on the streets. I mean. I used to work

(29:33):
in the design studio when I was about eighteen and
left art school. Um and I was in a design
studio in London and John Lennon used to visit Yoko
ownA who had an apartment on the top. That was
when they were first dating. Um Well, she was in
the apartment with her then boyfriend, so John would come

(29:54):
and visit. Now, the the art gallery guy that Yoko
was with didn't like anybody smoking upstairs. John smoked like
a chimney, so he had to smoke down in the
yard where I had to smoke as well. Because basically
we had a lot of chemicals in the in the
art room, and you know, you couldn't smoke there. So

(30:16):
I would go down to the backyard and there's this
guy was turned up with the white suit and I
knew who he was, um, but I couldn't really sort
of say hey, Mr lenn and I just couldn't bring
myself to Oh I'm a big fan, you know, I
couldn't bring myself to do that. So I just said,
had I mate? And uh? And he said hello, mate, back,
you know, and we shared Siggi's together, and sometimes he'd
roll a joint and with our smoker joint together, and

(30:38):
you know, we were smoking companions and it's really kind
of funny because you know, you know, he said, what's
your name? I said Jerry, And I said, yeah, what's yours? Oh,
John John? And I think he kind of got a
kick out of the fact that I wasn't John Lennon
and him or beatling him, you know. So so we
we became hey, how are you today? Yeah, good mate?
What's up to? I'm just visiting Yoka up stairs. You know,

(31:01):
I'll be here for a few hours anyway, you know,
tell me what you're working on today. I'm doing a
cover for this band, you know, and he said yeah,
he said, I know a bit about music, you know,
and we'd we'd play this kind of decoy game where
you know, we just wouldn't admit who he was, which
was very cool. Years later, Okay, spin years forward, I'm

(31:24):
making my first album, silver Bird, Um and Adam Faith
who's managing me and producing it with David Courtney, my
co writer as well, but co producer with Adam. They
decide that we've got to go to Apple Studios. I mean,
Adam is a complete beat or nut, you know, so
we've got to go to not Abbey Road, sorry, so

(31:46):
to Savile Row the Beatles, the Apple Studios to master
the record. And there's this great guy there called Porky Peckham,
George Peckham, who's probably one of the great mastering engineers.
He was used to He's known as Porky and he
you'd always his ascetates back. I've got a couple of them,
and he'd always scratched Porky into that, you know, or
else a pig sign so that, you know, very collectible

(32:09):
items now they go from thousands hundreds of thousands. But anyway, Um,
we went down there to see to see George and
you know, get on with the master and you know.
And I was allowed to come along that day to
have a listen in. And I walked through the door
and this burly guy kind of well I thought he
was burly anyway, sort of pushes me out the way

(32:29):
as he's coming, rushing out the door, and then turns
around and apologize and said, I'm sorry, man coming just
a clash of two people coming in the same door.
And it's Lennon and he told me and said, oh
my god, it's you. He said it's my smoking buddy.
And I said, yeah, Leo and he said, yeah, I
know you're. Leo says, said you're you're down in the
cutting room today he said, He said, I'm so glad

(32:52):
things happened to you. He said, can we finally can
we finally face up? He said, I'm a beatle, you know.
I said I know. And he said, good to see you. Man.
He gave me a big hug and went on his way.
People rushing him out the door and come on, John,
come on, and he's saying shut up and turning around
to give me a hug. It was quite sweet. You

(33:14):
talk about how influential Bob Dylan was to you told
us that, Yeah, I think I think. You know, I
had a cousin, an older cousin. Um, I'd never experienced
Bob Dylan before, but I loved Woody Guthrie and you know, uh,
all these people that you know, Bob loved, you know,
the folk musicians. Um, I love what they were all doing,

(33:38):
rambling Jack Elliott, I'm I'm remembering all people like that
who were in Dylan's Psyche phil Oaks. You know, I
love what they were doing separately. And then my cousin,
my older cousin, went to stay with him in the Midlands,
in England, and he pulled out two records and he said,
because he had a record player and he was collecting stuff,

(33:58):
and I'd heard Bill Hailey and Elvis Presley with him,
you know, okay that was great, but I could hear
them anyway on the radio. And he he just bought
this record and it was Bob Dylan, the first Bob
Dylan record. So this is three well, I think sixty
two was the first one in America that was mostly
cover sixty two. Yeah, yeah, no, that's it's sixty two.

(34:19):
And so here's this record and I'm about fifteen sixteen
and something like that, maybe even younger. And he had
that record and he put it on and the voice
and the whole kind of I don't know almost the
anarchy of the whole thing. I mean, the guy couldn't
really sing great, but the voice was obviously put only

(34:41):
trying to sound like an old guy of sixty. Um.
But there's something gripping about it. And the songs, I mean,
fixing to die, Please see that my grave is kept clean,
the House of the Rising Sun. The songs were amazing,
and his songs as well, about you know about Woody Guthrie. UM.
So this this record just kind of stayed with me,

(35:03):
and I asked him if I could borrow it, and
he let me borrow it, and I take it back
and play it on Dad's radiogram, you know, those old
kind of systems that we had, and and listen to
it and listen to it, and it got into my bloodstream.
And then when the second record came out, which was
Free Wheeling, I was straight to the record store, you know,
using all my pocket money, all the money that I

(35:26):
I gained by getting paid for delivering church leaflets from
from the church, all that sort of stuff. You know,
I I um, I went and put all my hard
earned into buying that record. And it wasn't a disappointment.
He was even better because now he's writing more songs,
and or at least that you know, he's putting more

(35:47):
of his own songs on there, and he's got a
story to tell, and he's writting about Hattie Carroll and
people like that, and you know there's the protest songs.
Times were changing blind in the wind Man. This next
series of records that I had, every single one, brought
them all on the first day. I was absolutely totally
gluten and I thought, that's the man I want to be,

(36:10):
you know, when I finally grow up, that's who I'm
going to be. I'm going to get on the road.
Through him. I found Jack, Carol Akin and Alan Ginsberg
and you know all these great writers Steinberg, Steinbeck, you know,
John Steinbeck and Cannery Row. You know you're reading all
these things, Albert Camu, the outsiders. You know. I don't know,

(36:33):
I I just it opened up a whole world for me.
It opened up the world as well. That told me
that the spoken word, the poetry could be great as music.
You know, That's what it opened up for me. And
and I was trying to be a poet at the time,
you know, I was always writing down, you know, everything
that I thought of and trying to kind of wax

(36:54):
lyrical into these lines and on the page. And suddenly,
I don't know, some time later on, I think maybe
even when I was first working with David Courtney, come
right there. I would look at these old old lyric books,
these old poetry books, and David would say, hey, I've

(37:17):
got an idea for a tune, you know, and and
he'd be playing away, you know, dump dumped, the dump dumped,
and don't don't don't on a piano, and I go,
I'm a one man band, you know, so and that
would come straight off the lyric sheet, you know, or
the poetry sheet. So I was using what I've written
between twelve and sixteen. That's was the first album that

(37:41):
was all of my poetry from those days, the basis
of those songs, the basis of the lyrics. Let's go
back to the beginning. Where did you grow up? Shore
on My Sea a little town between Worthing and Brighton
in Sussex, right on the English Channel, fifty miles south
of London. Yeah, on the coast. How far from Brighton?

(38:01):
It was in between, I say, about seven miles from
Brighton and about six miles from Worthy. The whole Branton
Mods and Rockers thing. Was that amplified in the media
or was that real and something you were aware of? Oh?
That was truly real? Yeah, yeah, I mean we England
basically had had of you know, after the war, which

(38:24):
costs England all its economy, you know, because it puts
so much into it. Even though your Yanks came over
and helped us out, we still had to pay for
so much ourselves. So I mean I grew up when
when I was fourteen years old, I still had a
ration car really, so there was still rationing of some things.
You know. I grew up without sugar. I've never had

(38:46):
very much for sweet tooth, so I think I'm getting
one hour's I'm getting older. But we didn't have candy
bars and things like that, you know, so it was
all very basic, rough stuff, and our our politics became
very safe, you know, very authoritarian. This is where the
Conservative Party came in um and basically you know, trying

(39:09):
to tell everybody we're so lucky to be free from war. Uh,
that we must kind of be prepared to do it hard.
So you've got a youth that came up in the
in the fifties, i'd say, and then into the sixties
that was very disgruntled. You know. They didn't understand why

(39:30):
when all the American kids had drive ins and and
rock music and and you know, girls were allowed to
wear bikinis, we didn't have that, you know, so they
they kind of, I don't know, they felt that they
were left out, you know. I mean when Rock around
the Clock with Bill Haley came out in England, it

(39:51):
was this phenomenon, you know that all the kids would
go to the cinema to watch it. Now, wow, can
they really get away with that? You know, so everybody's
dancing and jiving. Nobody would dance and jive in a
in a concert or anything in England. You know. It
took a little while and visits by Bill Halian, Eddie
Cochrane and gene of Vincent before that happened. Um, and

(40:14):
that was into the sixties, you know, fifties, the fifties,
none of that happened. So the early sixties descent in
the youth was growing in England and I suppose the
Mods grew out of that. I mean I was on
mod um at school. Uh, and then the slightly older
guys would be the Rockers. They had all the motorbikes,

(40:35):
you know, the Mods took on the scooters just to
be different than than the rockers. And in Brighton, you know,
as the Mods came into being bands like the Small Faces,
the Kinks, um, you know, them playing the music that
the Mods liked, Um, the the there came a clash

(40:57):
of culture with use. You know. The rockers were teddy boys,
you know. They they kind of like live life, loud
and rough and very leathery, and the Mods were kind
of really stylish and bespoke, a little quieter spoken. I mean,
later we got skin heads out of Mods, but that's

(41:20):
a kind of different thing because that kind of almost
leads you to punk. But basically us Mods, I mean
we went to great tailors and had fabulous looking suits,
you know, in silky material and really cool shoes. We
wanted to look clean and bespoke, you know, rather than
the rockers who looked like they were covered in oil
from their motorbikes. So you had this clash going on,

(41:43):
and it all happened in Brighton, and the who I
suppose was the big mod band that I left out there,
and and and the who are kind of you know
with my talk about my generation describes it all. Really,
you know. I hope I die before I get old.
Did you have a scooter? No? No, I couldn't have
had one. I mean we had no money. That was
for rich mods. I had a bicycle. You're singing in church? Yeah,

(42:16):
Yet you want to be a fine artist. How do
you ultimately get into the music business? Happened really by accident.
I had a pretty good career as a graphic designer,
commercial artist, illustrator, even designed type typography. UM. I had
a pretty good career. I left art school after only
one year of a two year course. UM. I was

(42:39):
supposed to Uh, I was supposed to do longer and
I didn't, um I I. Um yeah. I cracked out
of that and got a job straight away. And all
of my friends at art school, UM were They was
still working around a very boring what I thought were

(43:01):
very boring graphics scores. Uh. And I had a job amazing.
I'll probably digress for a moment here, because I've worked
in a studio in Brighton. I had this gorgeous girl
that I fancied like mad in the studio who came
from Detroit and one day said her American boyfriend was
coming in to town. So she said, I'm going to

(43:24):
London and I said, what can I come with you?
And she said, yeah, I was looking for some companies,
so I'm thinking I'm in here. Of course I wasn't.
So we went up to the Strand Palace Hotel um
in Covent Garden and a big wooly head guy, tall
wooly head guy opened the door and immediately hustled her

(43:45):
into bedroom. I just sat on the sofa, I got
my harmonica out and started playing. And he stopped what
he was doing and rushed into the room, picked up
a guitar and started playing with me. And that was
Jimi Hendrix, who's just a little bit. What was Jimmy
Hendrix's girlfriend doing working with you in the art studio,

(44:07):
I don't know. She'd kind of come on some bad
times with the family and decided to move to England
and she was working very studios. She was pretty good,
good designer, good good illustrator as well, and we did
a couple of projects together, so you know, we got
on very well, and she just said, yeah, I used
to go with this guy as a rock as a
rock guitarist, but he had no money, so I gave up,

(44:27):
you know. But he was a good lover, so you know,
that was that was why she wanted to see him again.
And and so anyway, so me and James Marshall Hendrix
as he announced himself to me, or James Marshall, I
think he just called himself. Um, I didn't know who
he was, but we were we were playing. He's a
really good guitarists, great blues field and you know, and

(44:49):
we just play some blues together and he reckoned. I
could play the harmonica pretty good as well. And you know,
so we jammed away while she sat frustratedly sat by
the door until she dragged him back in the in
the bedroom. And then we we went back down to
to to Brighton, where we worked and where I was
living at the time, and she said cheerio, and I

(45:11):
didn't even get a kiss. And and and about four
weeks later, because he told me he'd come into London
on the invite to make a record by this guy
who was the bass player of the Animals who have
seen him play and all that, you know the story,
and so he made this record and I went to
my favorite records store in the in the in Brighton,

(45:33):
in the this area called the Lanes where she's just
walking streets and record shop called Fine Records. I remember
it so well because that's where I picked up most
of my material, you know. Um. I and there's this
massive poster on the on the on the wall, and
you know, and the record cover. I'm going, that's that guy,
and there he is, Jimi Hendrix. And about a week later,

(45:57):
I'm in London and I go with some friends to
a club called the Speakeasy because i've I've just done
the record cover for a group called Humble Pie, which
was Peter Frampton and and uh Steve Marriott from Faces
from the Small Faces and I think it was Greg Ridley,

(46:18):
the bass player. When I've done the you know, did
the cover and the photos of the cover, I kind
of got chatting to him and he gave me his
his we didn't have mobiles in those days, his home number,
and I phoned him and he said, oh, if you
in London, you know, let's hook up. And and then
he said to me said he you know, we all
go into the speakeasy. Do you want to come? And

(46:38):
so I said, yeah, yeah. So I went down there
and walking onto the stage, there's all these guitarists, They're
all the major guitarists are in the room at the time,
I'm going, wow, you know, that's Sarah Clapton over there,
that's Jeff Beck, and that's Steve how from Yes and
all these guys are there, you know, and I'm you know,
just constract. I think it's Harry Nilson who was doing

(46:59):
the Big U. But halfway through Harry's set, on walks
Jimmy and I'm in the front row, you know, and
I'm feeling kind of embarrassed. And I look up at
him and he recognized me, and he jumped off the
stage and gave me a hug. And all these guys,
I look at me, who's he And I just say, yeah,

(47:20):
I know him, Yeah, yeah. I remember Jeff Beck sidling
up to me and said, hey, do you know And
I told him the story. He said, you lucky bastard,
and that was it. You know. There you go, being
in the right place at the right time. Sorry, I
digressed and digressions digressions of the space of life. Don't
worry about it. I'm a famous digressor. You played the

(47:41):
Harmonic with Jimmy Hendrix. Ya. How do you ultimately start
a music career? I was, as I say, doing commercial art.
I was in London. Um, I took on a studio
in in Hammersmith and and you know, we rented it
big studio space, and I had a lot of artist friends,
mostly illustrators. You know. I should say that I did

(48:03):
some record covers in this time. I did uh, Bob
Marley covers, clubs, scar covers, yeah again for Humble Pie
and people like that. You know, a lot of Ireland
Records traffic a lot of those bands at the time,
you know, so I kind of and every now and then,
like with Greg, I'd get to meet some of the

(48:25):
guys in the band, you know. So, so I was
kind of close to that. But anyway, I booked this.
I had this huge studio and I had a lot
of artists who were working with me. And I wasn't
very good at collecting money. I've never been a good
businessman in my whole life, which comes to another part
of the story later. But uh, and I ran out

(48:46):
of money and I couldn't pay for the studio and
I couldn't pay the rent, and it was up to
me to do that. So I don't know, I just
kind of I left the keys on the doorset one
day and I just I left. I left it of
the guys left them a long note saying, you know,
if you really want to carry on with this place,
you've got to come up with the rent, and up

(49:07):
to you. You know. I think that they they caved
in and didn't bother when they found out how much
the rent was, you know, because they've been all there
on the cheap. They were just paying me, you know,
a smidge in to be in there. And I was
just gladly giving them a space because it was a
creative hub. And I got work out of it as well,
you know, some work. But as it was drying up,
you know, there was no option and no money, so

(49:30):
I had to leave and I packed up my flat.
I went back to my hometown. I had some friends
who had a houseboat. They lived on a houseboat um
on the River Raida, the river that went through Shoreham
and just near the sea the mouth of the river.
This is lovely houseboat. And I stayed on the houseboat
for a year. I had a nervous breakdown. Really I

(49:52):
I couldn't draw and paint any longer. My graphic abilities
just passed me by. But luckily, at the same time
as He's marvelous cusps in one's life happened a bunch
of friends came to see me on the houseboat. One
of them we lived on a houseboat a little bit
further way of the mate of mind from school, and
he was now long haired and planning guitar, and so

(50:16):
he said, oh, I've got a blues group. I said, oh,
that's great. I play harmonica, and so he said, yeah, well,
why don't get together for a jam next week, you know?
So we did and we started a band immediately, and
because I had its loud voice, I was the singer.
And we went from band to band to band to band,
and eventually a guitarist who I really liked working with,

(50:39):
who was top notch in the local musicians um, who
also wrote songs, came and lived on the houseboat with me.
He was he had the next the next room on
the boat, big old boat it was, and we started
writing songs together and we decided to go. We had
a band and we decided to go to an audition,

(50:59):
and we went to the audition. It was for the
you'd have heard of the Melody Maker of course in England,
the famous newspaper. So they had a battle of the
bands going on. So they did it as areas and
so southwest. I think we were called that area, which
was Kent and Surrey and Sussex um and we won.

(51:19):
We won our heat. But the thing was so badly
organized that in the end I think that they they
press gained a couple of bands from London and forgot
about our heat that winners, you know, and we got
to have pushed out. We never even went to the
final show. So frustrated with that, we saw another ad.

(51:40):
We saw an advertisement um in the local paper, the
Evening Arcuts, and it was saying, you know bands, bands, acts, artists, comedians, conjurers, whatever,
you know, a new talent agency is starting. There will
be a big audition at the Pavilion Theater on Saturday
that da da da da da dah. This is in.

(52:02):
And we turned up at the audition and we went
on stage, probably the last people to go on. There
were lots of bands, uh, no audience in the theater
you know, just all the bands watching each other, and
we went on last, and the guy was holding the
audition ran over and just said, you're it. And we
sang a song I remember called Gypsy Dancer that me

(52:23):
and Max Chetwynd, the guitarists, wrote together, and he stopped
us halfway through and just said start that again. And
we started again, and then he stopped us halfway through
and he said start there again. And I think he
was checking that we could play it, you know, and
he just turned around he said, I'm going to give
you a job straight away. I want to manage you.

(52:44):
Your voice is amazing, you know, And all of the
other people just sidled out the room and it was
left with us, and there we were, and Patches was
the name of the band, and I don't know started
getting talking to David's and he told me he didn't
really want to manage a band. It was just his
dad's idea. You know. His dad was fairly wealthy, and

(53:06):
his dad wanted him to do something legitimate. And he'd
played drums before for this guy called Adam Faith. It
was a pop singer. So one day he said, after
we'd tried a few different avenues, and David and I
had started writing songs together, me all based as I
said before, on those old lyric books, those old poetry books,
you know, putting my lyrics in there. And he had

(53:28):
these kind of beach boys kind of come Beatles kind
of pop uh melodies that I would put my acerbic
lyrics to, and and we had something. And I was
a ying and yang kind of thing. It was very interesting.
There was these kind of very almost sad autobiographical lyrics

(53:49):
going with these bright kind of um but very dramatic
kind of melodies. So we had something I think that
was quite unique. It was a bit like I suppose
Bernie Taupin and Elton John could be. Because again you're
meeting I suppose I had some eloquence to me, and
David was had this kind of pop musicality, you know,

(54:11):
which is very much Elson and Bernie, you know. Um. Anyway,
we went to see Adam and I thought he wasn't
very interested. I was left to sit in the car
while he and David pow world. And then he came
running out to the car and he said, right, I've
booked you in the studio tomorrow. That's it. Get the
band together. So I went straight back, got all the

(54:32):
guys together, said come on, we've got to get the van.
Mike the drummer, had to take a day off work
and get the van kind of filled up with petrol,
which was quite a job in those days because we
didn't have any money. Throw all the gear in the
back of the van and straight up to uh, straight
up to Olympic studios and yeah, and then we were

(54:54):
making a record. You know, we're not knowing what we
were doing. I think the drummer turned out to be
pretty app And in the next room the Who were recording,
and I don't think Daughtry was there or Towns was there,
but Entwhistle and Who and Moon were there, and Adam
called Mooney in during a break and he actually played

(55:14):
the drums on that first single while So and Meet
the drummer came in and listened to it. You know,
Keith wasn't there, but he's listening to a Playbank going yeah,
I did pretty well there. It was the same part,
but it was much better played, you know. So um,
I don't know, it's it's kind of it's funny when

(55:35):
you look back at those times. We really didn't know
what we were doing. I mean David and I. We
sang a song on the B I sang a song
on the B side that we've both written together. The
A side was David's song Living in America. I think
the folks in America they got it good in America.
Not my lyric, you know, but it was it was fun.

(55:59):
You know, here we were suddenly you're looking at another
career because Adam. You know, one of the powerful things
about Adam was that if he said something was going
to happen, he had the ability to make it happen.
He had incredible contacts in the in the in the business,

(56:20):
in the whole world of show business, and in the media.
You know, he could just open doors. Remember once with him,
just after Patches had been a single, Living in America
had been released, we strode up to Radio one. Radio
one was the big sort of you know, the big
real McCoy BBC. Radio one was was the biggest broadcast broadcaster,

(56:44):
biggest station. And on Sunday they used to read out
the charts. Everybody would tune in the whole country. The
audience ratings were off the wall, you know. So Alan
Freeman is upstairs halfway through the charts, when Adam turns
up with this young aick um and and his new
album and his new single sorry and meets the job's

(57:05):
worth at the door. We called him job's worth, it's
more than my jobs will to let you in here, Mr.
But but no they actually Adam faith and well, I'm
going up to see Alan Freeman and said, well, of course,
of course, go on up, so he knew where to go.
We walked straight in the red lighters on on the
door outside and his producer is kind of looking at

(57:26):
us rather alarmed, but we breathe in and Adams says,
take that rubbish off and put this on. This is
your next and that was it. We get our first airing,
you know, on on the Alan Freeman Show Sunday night
with the biggest audience in England watching. Okay, that's relieve

(57:46):
the fantastic. But then the record stiff, the record still stiff. Yeah,
I mean I think fifty copies. I think my mom
brought twenty. Um, yeah, fifty copies were sold. I think fifty.
It was on the Warner label, um, Warner Brothers label. Uh.
But but Adam wasn't daunted. I mean, the whole thing

(58:07):
was not happening, but he just said, let's go on
and make the album. So he'd met Richard Branson, you know,
the Virgin guy of course. Um, of course was just
I mean Richard just had a record store in those
days and a record label that he just started, and
he bought this crazy studio, this manor house with a
barn next to it in Oxfordshire called the Manor, and

(58:33):
lots of people recording up there, you know, Van Morrison,
the Grand Bond Organization. Uh. And he had an engineer,
Tom Newman there who was working on a little project
by this unknown guy called Mike Oldfield and it was
she ended up being called Tubular Bells, and that was
going on at the same time, and you know, Mike
was in the studio when we weren't in the studio,

(58:55):
and me and Patches were in the studio most days
and then Michael take over and do the Witching Hour
at night. We were all staying at the place. You know,
Michael was very friendly. Um, I didn't really understand his record.
It sounded very a bit silly to me at that stage,
but of course, you know, when it was finally finished,
it was awesome, you know, changed the world kind of

(59:16):
thing um. But you know, sometimes when the records being made,
you don't understand it. Likewise, Michael would kind of come
into our sessions and say, said, your band is not
very good, are they I say, yeah, I know, but
I mean we we're learning, you know, we're learning, and
Adam's going to sort it out. Well. About four or
five days in Adams sacked the band and broad in
session players. And this was awful for me because my

(59:39):
friends were leaving out the door and you know, and
I'm sitting there on my own with David. Of course,
David's my friend, but these are all new people. You know, Leo,
what are you doing? And I'm trying to be Leo
Sarah at the same time, because we've come up with
the name Leo. So Jerry has become Leo Sarah And
okay a little bit slower. Why not Jerry because I

(01:00:00):
as known as Jerry the harmonica player. I used to
sit in with bands with Georgie Fame and you know,
and I play with people like Ginger Baker and in
in in Alexis Corner's blues band, and I used to
see Bill Wyman a lot. I sat in with so
many bands, you know, Um, there were the you know,
in the rhythm and blues time. I once got up

(01:00:22):
with John Mayle. I played with Muddy Waters and a
folk club, you know, um, and everybody, oh, there's Jerry
the harmonica player. And I thought, oh god, I can't
be known as Jerry the harmonica player. And I was
and I was going into a new world, you know.
Here I was suddenly with this guy who was a
bloody pop star, you know, a huge star. I was
doing television series at the time, Adam Faith. Everybody knew

(01:00:45):
Adam Faith, and already there was an article in the
press about this Adam Faith that discovered this new talent.
And of course, a few weeks later, you know, the
Roger Daughtry album is released. So but that's a very
significant but that's later. Yeah, that's later. I'll get into
that later. And of course, you know what I was

(01:01:06):
gonna say is, eventually Daltry will be selling Leo Saya
as his coat, as his songwriter. You see. So that's
kind of relevant in a way to mention that. Now.
But I had all these people around me that were
really believing in me. So here we are at the Manor,
I've got all these session guys come in, they play amazing.
Suddenly the songs are soaring. Suddenly we're really doing well.

(01:01:27):
And then Adam Face just turned around and said, look,
I can't afford to do any more recording. Um, you know,
I just don't have the budget. So we stopped. And
then we were down in Brighton. I think I put
on a gig and and and Adam brought a guy
along called Keith Altham and very famous music writer and

(01:01:49):
publicists later publicists for the Beatles, the Stones, the Trogs,
Jimi Hendrix, of course famous for being the guy that
persuaded Hendrix to set light to his guitar. Um. Keith
came down to see the band. He was writing an
article about me in the New Musical Express and which

(01:02:11):
was a fabulous article, which again it was a little
bit of a thing to live up to. But he
saw the band and he said, look, Roger Daughtry, he
was looking after the who at the time. He said,
Rogers built a studio and he needs a guinea pick
to try it out. You're looking for a place to work.
Let me give Roger a call. So he gave Roger
a call and he came back and said, yeah, Roger says,

(01:02:32):
you guys come up to the studio, you don't have
to pay, you know, It's like you can have it
for free. He'd just be delighted to have someone try
out the room. So and you can stay next door.
There's a little pub called the Kicking Donkey, and you
can stay at the Kicking Donkey, which we did, and
we went up then started recording, and the second part
of silver Bird was made in that way without Adam

(01:02:55):
having to shell out any more money. And you know,
everything was kind of he's and breezy and and it
was lovely working at Roger's. And it was also great
spending time with this rock icon who turned out to
be the nicest guy, you know. I mean, there was
a connection you see, with Adam, which was very good
because Adam Faith and Roger Daltrey were born on the

(01:03:15):
same street in acting. You know, Adam a few years
older of course, so these guys will be had lots
to talk about. They talked the same language, they had
the same accent, you know, so that the connection was
a dream connection, you know. And then one day Roger
just turned around and said, look I love these songs.
You know, um, before you finish it all up. Have

(01:03:36):
you got any more songs that you haven't put on
the album? And and David and I said, well, yeah,
we've cut loads. You know, we're we're even writing for
the next album. He said, could you give me some
of the songs? And we said what, and he said, yeah,
I want to make a solo album. Roger Peter has
made a solo album. Big Townsend has made a solo album,
So I want to do one. I want to show

(01:03:58):
him he's not the only one who can go solo.
So he said yeah, right. So David and I looked
at the list of songs we had and we got
the tapes out, the old Grundig tapes that we've made
of these things, and yeah, we we decided we had
quite enough and we talked to Adam about the idea

(01:04:19):
and he said, it's great, it's a good idea. I'll
produce it Roger. Roger wanted Adam and David to produce it,
do it in the same style, and do it there
in the studio. So that's how they started off, and
they made the Daughtry album. Decided to hold up my album.
So my album is already a year old when the
Daughtry album came out, decided to hold it up because,

(01:04:42):
as Adams said, and Roger agreed, Look, you know you
can do more good for Leo by telling everybody about
this songwriter. He said, yeah, if it's a hit, everybody
will want to know anyway, and Giving It All Away
hit the top twenty I think on top forty or
something in America, went into the chart there and when
is the charts in England? The album went into the

(01:05:03):
charts in England. So everybody was talking about Roger Daltrey's
solo album when it came out, and and everybody was
talking about this song right, and so was Roger. And
every interview said, wait, do you meet this guy. He's fantastic,
what a talent, great voice as well. His songs are fantastic.
I just had to do them, you know this, This
was it. So I had Roger Daltrey, the lead singer

(01:05:28):
of the Who, probably the biggest band in the world
at that time, you know, as my publicist. Not Bad
Ain't That's how I found out about you. I bought
that album Giving It All Away one and bad That's
why I don't buy your record, absolutely really yeah, So
so that all kind of opened up the doors. And

(01:05:50):
then when we released my record, the reaction was fantastic.
So you could say it all happened overnight. I mean
he didn't, as he's can tell from the album being
held up a year the longest station took towards it.
You know, it wasn't all that simple, but when it
was released, it all happened so quick. You know. I
went on tour with Roxy Music supporting them. We want

(01:06:14):
to tour in England? Who put that bill together? Because
I don't see the music as being in the same spectrum,
well in a way, you know in England, Um, you
had let's take it. I always use that term rack jobbing,
you know, when every everybody's in the same I mean
we live in a rack jobbing world, now, don't we.
I mean your radio show would should not appeal to

(01:06:35):
someone doing heavy metal and vice versa. But in the
seventies in England, if everything went together, you know, there
was no categorization. Um, people wanted variety. You know, England
had grown up and think as well. And it's an
important thing to say this, we've grown up. All of

(01:06:55):
our American acts that came over came over in package
to us. So you know, you'd get Freddie and the
Dreamers on the same bill as Eddie Cochrane and Buddy Holly,
and you'd get Desert Connor, who was basically a crooner,
on the same bill as as Buddy Holly. You know,
Daz has got Buddy's last guitar. Um des sadly has died.

(01:07:16):
Now I think the guitars belonged to somebody else, but
you know, Buddy gave him the guitar. They were on
tour together and you'd get these package acts, you know,
so we saw everybody together. So I think England was
really into you know, a variety show kind of you know,
live thing very much. Comedians on with the Beatles were
always opened up by comedians, you know, and the Beatles

(01:07:39):
would open up for comedians or classic singers like Shirley Bassie,
you know, people like that. So our radio wasn't so
uh kind of programmed out to kind of think that
a novelty song would be played right next to Status
Quo or something like that, you know. And so I
think in the English audience is wanted to be surprised

(01:08:01):
on stage and we were. That bill was put together
by a chrysalists agency. We were with Chrysalis Records, and
the Chrysalists agency looked after Roxy music and me, so
they put they put it together. After after one show
where I wasn't getting really much reaction, I decided to
dress like the record cover, the Piero, the white face.

(01:08:24):
So we had the same team who had helped me
get that image together for the record cover. The back
of the record cover inspired by this amazing movie called
Les Enfante Parody, which I had loved as a as
an art student, where this guy, director Marcel Khan, had
got John Louis Baptiste, this amazing French actor, to portray

(01:08:48):
himself as the Piero, like Piero and and Harlequin, the
famous French stories in this movie made during the last
year of the German occupation of Paris of France, and
it's an amazing movie. Um, and I love this character
and when I I'm digressing again. But I'll give you

(01:09:10):
the background to how it no no keep going, I
keep going, and how that came about. Roger Daughtry had
a cousin, Graham Hughes, wonderful photographer who shot the Daughtry cover. UM,
and Roger suggested I went to see Graham, which I
did in London, and I went to a studio and
he'd just been doing a photo shoot, a fashion photo

(01:09:32):
shoot for Vogue magazine. And in the background, well, there
was a girl that remember the Rocky Horror Show. There
was a girl called Little Little Nell who was this
amazing actress and character in the Rocky Horror Show. She
was in the shoot. And that guy played Frank and
Furter Um he was in the current member his name

(01:09:54):
of the actor, you know. He was in the shoot
with these models, and in the background was a piero.
And Graham's straightaway. For those in America, we're talking about
a clown, a clown, yeah, but but the French piero
is different than the happens for those out of the loop.
Absolutely yeah, yeah, Well, if we talk about clowns, you've
got two different clowns. You've got three clowns. Really that

(01:10:16):
you've got Ill Paliarchi, okay, is the white faced, sad
narrator of most of those operas. Ill Paliarci is kind
of he's a fool, but as well, he's a wise fool.
In France, Piero is the moralizer, he's the teller, of
the story. Harlequin is the bad, mischievous guy in England.

(01:10:39):
You've got Coco, the clown as famous for all the circuits.
So he's just there to entertain the kids. He's a
guy with makeup on, basically, not much more than that.
Um but Piero is a very serious character. He'll tell
you a story and you you're inclined to believe him
because he's he's expressionless in his face and he usually

(01:11:00):
tells the story and mine ala Marcel Marcel. You know,
Marcel Marceau took on the Piero character and basically told
his story and mime. He was a mime artist. Um so,
so I loved Piero for this kind of blank faced
guy that you would listen to what he'd say. He

(01:11:20):
would the storyteller, and I was a storyteller. In my songs,
they were all about me, you know at that time,
they're all about my life. Um silver Bird and Just
a Boy are basically autobiographical albums. Yeah, they were all
Leo telling you his story. Okay, so you got to

(01:11:43):
the photo shoot and you see the Piero in the background. Yeah,
I see this picture, and Graham says, at the same moment,
So how do you see yourself then? Because he knows
all about me from roger Um And I said, like that,
I don't know. I just instantly reaction and point to
the piero and he said, great, that's Julian. He said,
he's from Belgium. He's a street clown and basically he's

(01:12:06):
here for a few days. Why don't I bring him
in tomorrow? And he said you could try on his
outfit and I went, well, okay, yeah, you know, it's
I mean, it's just a fad of company, isn't it.
You know. I wish I had my big mouth. But
and he's got this makeup girl called Kirsty Climo, who was, Ah,
she's one of the best theatrical makeup girls in the world.

(01:12:29):
And she was a friend of his, and he said,
I'm going to bring Kirsty. And I knew of Kirsty
already because of friends of mine who were actors, and
I went for Kirsty client he said, yeah, yeah, she's great,
I'll get her in. She can do the makeup. She
she knows how to do Piro because she'd done Pally
Archie for the opera, you know, so hey, come on,
you know, so I had her, and I had this

(01:12:50):
wonderful beautiful guy, Julian with his with his suit. The
only glitch was he was about six ft tall or so.
So basically most of them. You see the gatefold inside
cover if anybody's got that of Silver Bird, and you'll
see me kind of crouching down, and that's because the
trousers are pinned up, you know. You can't see the

(01:13:11):
pinning for the sort of like the bodice over the
top covering it, you know. But but that was it. Um,
and I was in his suit and they wouldn't let
me look in the mirror, okay, until it was all done.
Kirsty was about an hour putting the makeup together, and
Julian was kind of fussing with the suit and getting

(01:13:31):
it right, and they found me that somebody went out
and found some white dance shoes from Cabizio and they
put on me and Um, Kirstie had developed this black
bathing cap and cut with the little pointed bit in
the middle, you know, perfectly to fit. So all this
is I think they brought a hairstylist to make sure

(01:13:52):
that the hair was all pinned in because I had
a huge hair at that time, you know. So finally
Graham is all a jumping up and down. He says,
this is incredible. You look at me. I can't see myself.
All I can do is feel this awful white Lechner
panstick makeup all across my face, and I know my
hands are in gloves. I feel like my body has

(01:14:13):
been taken away somewhere. You know. It's like weird, weird,
weird weird, but it's exciting at the same time. And
I've literally metamorphosized. I mean, you're talking about Jerry becoming
Leo Sayah, he became Leo Saya at that moment, you see,
because there's no way that Jerry could ever be recognized again.

(01:14:34):
So I walk out. They right, Grahams has finished, and
I walk out, and I walk out in front of
this full length mirror, a whole huge, great, big mirrored
glass plane pain and I see myself and I just said, yes,
that's it. I can go on like this. And it

(01:14:56):
was just incredible that we did the photo shoot, and
you know, afterwards, took off the makeup and Cursty said,
he looked amazing. She said, when when you decide to
do it for real, I'll be there. I said, for real,
I thought we were just doing the photo and it
was clicking with me that I was, yeah, becoming somebody else.

(01:15:16):
So we did the first Roxy show and I was
just went on in jeans and nice shirt, you know,
all that stuff. Nobody really noticed. They all talked and
waited for Roxy to come on. You know, Brian Eno
had left the band, by the way, at that time,
he was the very much I suppose in a way,
Brian used to dress up in a similar kind of
over the top way. So the so the glam rock

(01:15:38):
crowd would like to come for him, you know, um,
but Roxy would being a bit more serious. Now. You know,
Brian was in a white tuxedo. They're all looking very sophisticated. Um.
And the second gig, I'm in my dressing room, I'm
making up and we're putting in the outfit. My wife,
Janice now has made the suit for me, um, and

(01:16:01):
she's a really good seamstress. So I had this fabulous
kind of satin silk suit with the little you know,
the three velcro stuck on bobbles, you know that you've
got on the front, the red spots for the cheeks.
The eyes were dramatically done, the black bathing cap in place,

(01:16:22):
well pinned, and the gloves on and the white shoes
and I walk out in front of the band and
there's this reaction from the audience. We're playing Sheffield City Hall.
I think it absolutely packed because Roxy are a big band.
You know, they don't know who LEAs Sarah is really.
But the moment I woke up, there's and someone shouted

(01:16:44):
he knows back and the I played five songs in silence.
There wasn't applause, there wasn't anything, and there wasn't a
murmur anybody. Nobody was talking in the room. Everybody was

(01:17:06):
just craning their eyes to see. And I didn't say
a word. I just sang five songs and with the
mime and the hands going all over the place, just
like you've seen in the videos. And then I said
thank you very much, and all of a sudden, the
place broke out into applause. All of Roxy music or
on the side of the stage watching this, by the way,

(01:17:27):
and the chance started. They started shouting Leo, Leo, Leo.
This is all on the first night of the clown.
It was just incredible. And they were still shouting Leo
when Roxy went on, so they weren't very happy with me,
but I carried on the tour. Brian actually thought it
was great. He kept coming up to me and saying,
fabulous image, fabulous image. So we we went on the

(01:17:50):
tour and we went, you know, we completed the tour
almost we gone into France. I think we played a
couple of gigs in France, we played some in Germany,
and then the management just turned around said you've got
to get him off the tour. He's getting too much applause.
And my record was rocketing up the charts. The show
must go on, and their record was not doing so well.
So yeah, but that was my That was how it started. Okay,

(01:18:12):
so you finished the tour with Roxy Music. What's the
next step. Well, we went on a tour. You know,
now we're now we're appearing as the Piero and everything's
going well. The records are hit, the album's are hit.
So I toured England and then we just got this
invite from already we were we were with Warner Brothers
in America, so we just got this invite from I

(01:18:35):
think it was I can't remember the agency, but to
come and do do the States and arrived in Los Angeles. Um,
we had all the makeup and the outfits of course
ready to go. And Terry O. Neil is my photographer
by this time. So the first thing we did was
go down to Santa Monica Pia and do lots of show,

(01:18:56):
lots of shots of the piero and and I think
that they used that as publicity because nobody knew what
I really who, what I really looked like, which was
quite interesting. In America, they'd never seen Leo Saya apart
from the record cover and and and of course the
piero on the back. And I went straight to Memphis

(01:19:21):
where we started playing in a club supporting jjkle. Um.
I can't remember what it was called the Mississippi something alright,
just outside Memphis. And again the reaction just started went
through the roof. You know, it's just incredible. Everybody's loving
this thing. J. J kle didn't know what to make

(01:19:42):
of me. He used to perform with hardly any lights on,
you know, and we had to bring in lights for
my show because he just didn't have enough. Um, but
it just went mad. We had a week in Memphis,
then it was a week in Boston. And then it
was just all over the country. We ended up going
to the bottom Line in New York um and hit

(01:20:03):
all the papers there. You know, the record started to
be a success. At the same time, Three Dog Night
have recorded The Show Must Go On and that's higher
up in the charts. Oh, they decided just not to
release my single, I think because the Three Dog Night
was version of The Show Must Go On, which still
annoys me, because they were singing we must let the

(01:20:23):
show go on, whereas the song is I won't let
the show go on, you know in the chorus, you know.
But there and they had circus clowns, you know, going
back to Cocoa the clown. You know, they've seen me
performing in in London. I think at Top of the
Pops they're probably on the same show and or else
watched it on the TV and thought, hey, let's cover
that song. So that's what they did, and you know, um, oh, well,

(01:20:48):
you know it's they just didn't quite get it, I
don't think. But it didn't matter. There was a hit,
you know, and that was the American tour. We just
everywhere we went. By the time we got to Los
Angeles and Robert Hillban was writing about us, and then
San Francisco where Ben Fong Torres was writing and rolling
Stone about me. You know, you couldn't climb any higher,

(01:21:10):
really it was. It was quite an incredible um. I
began a friendship with with with Ben actually at that time,
you know, which followed me all the way through my career.
So har does Long Talk Glasses end up becoming a
huge check While we were there on that first tour,
I think we recorded one man band. I do believe
that's Rykuda playing acoustic guitar on that Wow. Because Adam

(01:21:31):
tried to do some recording out there, didn't tell me
about it. Of course, this is typically what he'd do.
He just went into a studio, here's this song. I'll
play it to you and see what you can make
of it, you know. So so, but we eventually came
back and started recording the album. Uh, straight after that
American tour. The rest of four was spent in the studio,

(01:21:53):
I think mostly recording just a boy. So and I
Long Till Glasses were really me writing lyrics inspired by
my favorite movie, The gold Rush Charlie Chaplin. What a
great movie. Yeah, and you know the scene, the scene
where he goes into the bar and he's got to dance.

(01:22:14):
He's not really dressed for the part, but he kind
of pretends he is, you know, And and I thought
about me. I was thinking about me in America. I
was just I was shell shocked over the reaction in
America because everybody said, you know, why do you need
to dress as a clown? You can sing, You've got
all the you're really talent. I'm going yet, really, because
I was thinking, I'm never going to be as good

(01:22:35):
as my heroes, my American heroes, Otis Redding and Ah,
you know, Wilson Picket and even Bob Dylan and you
know all of the great American artists, Sam Cook, Wow,
you know Elvis. I just thought I was going to
be a bit player, you know, in the music scene.
But they kind of thought I was really special, and

(01:22:56):
they persuaded me, you know, take off the makeup, show
your real self. You're a good looking guy, you know,
come on, you can be a big star. So I
was kind of a bit embarrassed by all of this,
and I felt like the guy in the gold Rush
who goes into the bar. You know. I was traveling
down the road feeling hungry, and cold so or a
science saying food and drinks for everyone. Food and drinks

(01:23:18):
is like, you know, the American riches. You know, all
of this can be yours, girls partying, fast cars, clubs,
you know, best hotels, fame, um, groupies, you know. Um.
And and I didn't really know how to handle it,
you know, so I I was very shy. Um. So

(01:23:42):
the song is all about, you know, he says, Oh,
I can't dance, like I'm saying I can't sing, you know,
I'm not really no, I'm not that good. And and
the song kind of gets to a point where he
just says, oh, he's just so fed up with this
barracking going on from everybody, and he just turns out
and said, oh all right, okay, hang on, wait a minute,
and he says, you know I can dance, you know.

(01:24:04):
So in other words, it's America. You see, if you
believe you can do something, and you show the confidence,
then you can do something. You know, all you have
to do is bullshit everybody into saying you're brilliant, and
they all think it brilliant. So that's how it seemed
to me. It was an easy ticket. Um. And that's
what that song is about. It's about the metamorphosis to
where you can actually think, why not give people what

(01:24:26):
they want and stop being so petulant about it? You know. Okay,
So ultimately you break up with David Courtney and you
end up working with Richard Perry. How does that happen? Well,
Adam was always very crafty, he claimed. When we went
for the third album another year, which I'm very very
proud of. Um, he claimed that David wasn't interested in

(01:24:48):
working with me any longer because basically wanted to do
his own project, which actually was patently not true. I mean,
David wanted to do his home and album, but there
was always going to be time for that because I
wouldn't been away on a se x month American tour
very soon anyway, second tour, and David had plenty of
time to do that, you know. Um. And when I
phoned David well, I found he changed his number. But

(01:25:11):
Adam had set all this up, you know. He said
to David, you shouldn't be working with him. You're good
enough to do it on your own, you know. He
split us up basically, so I had a bass player
I was working with as a wonderful guy. It was
in you remember the band super Tramps. Well, Frank was
a founding member of super Tramp, but he left because
basically the band had no money. They weren't going anywhere.

(01:25:32):
So Frank had to get jobs as a as a
jobbing session musician, you know, and work with other bands
to to you know, to make a living. So he
turned up in one of my roadies houses, um staying
in a flat there, and there was a piano there
and Frank was always playing piano and I thought it
was great pianist. He was a bass player, and I

(01:25:54):
asked him to join my band, and he joined the band.
But it turned out he was really talented, and I was,
you know, I was frustrated with David. But I was
coming up with all these songs, um and ideas for songs,
and I'd start singing melodies to them, you know, and
I and I played some to Frank and he said, okay,

(01:26:15):
got onto the piano and started fleshing them out. You know.
So I had a new writer, and he was taking
my mellow melody, you know, my melody ideas and then
taking them further. And then eventually, of course he would
come up with some melody ideas but basically I was
much more in control. So even though I had lost David,
I was very happy because I could actually kind of

(01:26:37):
make the words fit the music, you know, because I
can imagine what the music was going to be. I
didn't have to wait for a for a songwriter to
give me a melody to sing to. So the whole
process became closer, you know. With Frank. So we made
this record another year and I thought was great, but
Adam was patently getting less interested in being my producer.

(01:27:00):
He brought in Russ Ballard. Russ Ballard was, oh god,
I can't remember all the bands Argent there you go
at that time. But in an earlier version, Russ was
Adams guitarist and on silver Bird. Going back to Silverbird,
he's the guy who plays the banjo on The Show

(01:27:21):
Must Go On and most of the guitars on that record.
Um So, Russ came in with Adam as co producer
and Russ is brilliant, great producer and a fantastic pianist.
You have no idea how a guitarist could be. I
think it was trained on piano. Um So, he's playing
piano on the album. Didn't play any guitar. Frank's playing

(01:27:42):
piano on the album as well, and we've got a
great bunch of in the band, some of the guys
that have been on the first album. We you know,
we we we made another year so quickly because Adam
he said, I just want to do it in two
weeks because I'm busy. So we made the whole album
start to finish in two weeks and no chance for
retakes and anything. So I kind of I suppose a

(01:28:04):
rough and ready approach, and the mix isn't perfect, but
we did get some great strings on there, and I
think it's one of my finest albums personally, So okay,
close that out. Um. For some reason, I think I
had wisdom tooth operation. I failed to make the American
tour so we couldn't promote it, and Adam I think

(01:28:26):
influence warners to kind of like go quiet on the
album dot spend much money. I think at this time
he was discovering that he could actually get them to
pay a lot of money out and put it in
his pocket and not give most of it to me.
So that was basically the most opera endi that he
discovered he could make money out of an artist you know,
so that's what he started to do. He's a bit
of a rogue like that. So um, so there we were.

(01:28:49):
We went to America to talk to producers because he
was wanted a new producer. I I wanted Jerry Wexler
or Ralph Warnaker. Those two were the guys that I liked,
or maybe even Tom Dowd. Although Tom Dowd's record of
Atlantic Crossing was a little bit too mainstream for me,
you know, I didn't although I'd heard, of course what

(01:29:11):
he'd done with A. Wretha and all of those, you know,
those great acts that the Allman Brothers and everything Tom
had done, you know. Um, but Adam just came back
and he went and did all the meetings, and he
came back and said, look, I don't nobody's interested, only
Richard Perry. When Richard Perry, Um, okay. Richard Perry is

(01:29:34):
a very glossy producer. You know, he makes very sophisticated records.
He makes records are almost a pedantic And the only
one I really like is the Neilson Schmilsen album Schmilsen
in the Night, you know, the orchestral one which is
which is glorious, which they made a movie off, you know,
and the video is fabulous, and I don't know something

(01:29:56):
about that record, and of course Harry's great talent, you know.
I thought that that was pretty good. But I didn't
like his record without Gulf Uncle, and I didn't like
his record with Barbara Streisand and Martha and Martha reeves
Na not very much. So I went in there kind
of thinking is this all there is? But Adam had

(01:30:17):
very carefully shoehorned me into working with Richard. Richard had
seen me apparently play at the Trouper Door when I
went there in and fell in love with the act
and just wanted to produce me. So he'd been badgering
Adam to get to get get me together with him.
So we met up and I didn't take to Richard

(01:30:40):
very well at first. He was a crazy guy. There
are a lot of drugs around. It wasn't my kind
of scene, you know. And I wanted to do my
own songs. I mean, that's all I did was I
was a singer songwriter. And he turned around me and said,
I don't completely hear I don't like your last album,

(01:31:00):
and I don't I don't hear you just as a songwriter.
In fact, I think your voice is the best quality
you've got. I went, what so he said, let's find
some covers. And I'm in this situation where I'm kind
of thinking this is I'm going to pack this all
up and go home. This isn't working. But we both

(01:31:21):
agreed that we like motown and soul music. So we
ended up going into the studio and cutting Tears of
a Clown Um Reflections the Supremes Um what becomes the
broken Hearted? I believe um. And it was a fantastic

(01:31:41):
session because he brought in the best musicians. Wow, the
a team, you know, I mean really Larry Carleton and
all this great Mike o'mardian on piano, Wow, you know,
Jeff Picaro on drums, Will he Weeks on bass. You know,
there's an incredible band. The vibe was great. All the
guys loved me, and I loved working with the band,

(01:32:03):
so you know, jamming with them was was a pleasure.
And then every now and then we just had to
serious up and do a song for Richard uh And
I think there was potential, you know, I saw the
potential like I saw that I could hold my own
with great musicians. You know, afterwards, I'm out drinking with
all the guys, and Willie's coming around to my house.
Come on, car let's just do some Hendricks. Let's jam,

(01:32:25):
you know, and I'm thinking ship. These guys are now
my friends. So the whole project kind of took me over,
as it were, and we started off. You know, I'm
semi happy because I want to do my own songs.
I keep playing songs are Richard when he keeps nah,
I don't see that. A bit too British, you know,
all that stuff. And one day we're jamming in the

(01:32:49):
studio in between takes for When I Need You, which
we've been working on, you know, to get this song
good by Albert Hammond and Carol Baya saga, lovely song.
Um And and I'm I don't know, I'm just having
fun because Jeff Picaro and I used to we lived
just around the corner. He was in Kirkwood Avenue and

(01:33:09):
I was on the corner of Kirkwood and Laurel, opposite
the County Store. You know that that spot, of course,
um and I was renting this house right on the corner,
and and he and I used to He used to
pass my house and he took his horn as he
came by in his corvette. And then I didn't drive
at the time. My driver, David would be ready driving me.

(01:33:31):
And we're traveling together, you know, pretty much in convoy
down the Melrose Avenue to Studio fifty five o five
on Melrose. Now now, now, um, what do you call it? Um? Uh?
What's that studio? Paramounts Now, Paramounts parking lot. Unfortunately it's

(01:33:52):
not a studio any longer. And and on the way,
you know, we'd listened to music and Jeff turned around
it to me and said, hey, did you hear that's
song today? I said, you want that? That one with
that high singer. I said, yes, things just like you.
Shame shame, shame by Shirley and Company. And I started
singing it in the studio and just playing the drums
and shame, shame, shame, shame on you because you can't

(01:34:15):
dance too, you know, with the falsetto, which I always
had this great falsetto from being a choir boy, you know.
And and we start jamming. Now the rest of guys
pick up on it. Dump dump the Ray Parker Jr.
Is playing guitar. Groovy guy groovy guy. He's playing this
incredible rhythm guitar and I start, you get acute way
of talking, and it's just a jam. It's going on

(01:34:38):
for about fifteen minutes, and I'm unknown to us. I mean,
you know, Richard, it was a change tapes moment in
the studio, track real to real. So you know you've
got to wait till the next tape is on. Line
it up and then you can carry on recording. But
Richard had kind of I was I was thinking, he's
letting us go a long time, you know, before he
come on, guys, let's go back to the track. He's

(01:35:02):
going on a long time before this this eventuality. And
of course in the studio, meanwhile, Howard Steele the engineers
telling me, He's saying, this is great. Get that tape off,
put a fresh one on, you know, start recording now
now now get this. Don't lose it. Don't lose it.
And we didn't know all this because in the end
he just turned around to us. Okay, guys, very nice,

(01:35:23):
but let's get on. We've got to cut this track today.
Come on, time as money, guys, you know, we carry
on with recording when I need you. About two weeks later,
he calls me up to his office and he's made
put it onto a cassette and this jam session. He said,
that is your hit, he said, on my life. I say,

(01:35:45):
it's one of the biggest things I've ever heard. That
is your hit. You know how we got to get
a chorus, We've got to finish this thing. But that,
he said, is a crossover hit. He said. And the
year before we've had Staying Alive, you know, the oh
no no jive talking, the bigs jive talking and you

(01:36:06):
know which a Reef Martine record produced, you know, with
the bags, and he said, that is your jive talking.
He said, that thing is gonna It's incredible. I can
really do something with this. So there was a guy
called Vinnie Pancier who was producer and co writer with
a lot of people work with Ringo Star on the

(01:36:29):
records that Richard did with Ringo Star and and we
called Richard called him in. He had a bad back.
I remember he had some major problem where I've got
to go and see my car practical Leo. You know
all this American stuff that I didn't admit. This little
British guy didn't understand the pedantry of it all. You know,

(01:36:51):
Richard's got to get his joints rolled just so you know,
And and everybody's got these, you know, the chair and
the studio is not right. I'm we have to take
a day off so I can go shopping for chairs.
These are the guys I'm working well. I just want
to get on with this fucking record that I've has,
costing me a fortune. So we have five minutes to work,

(01:37:12):
and we managed to kind of take it up to
another key and we have the chorus, put it on
the cassette, joined the two together and we've got a song.
So next thing that happens is, I don't know. There's
a call from Donald Fagan, who we both knew pretty well.
He's got a great band that's come down from New York,
but he's got a rights block. He's got nothing to record.

(01:37:34):
And Bill Schnay, his engineer who's sometimes engineered with us,
has got producers workshop his own boutique studio up there
with Chuck Rainey in town and Michael and Mardian and
Larry Carlton and Steve Gadd has come down with Chuck
Rainey from New York and he says, you've got this
band is incredible. Donald's got nothing to record today? Do

(01:37:57):
you want to come in? And Richard said, I think
I've got the tune for that. So we went in
and he brought it, brought in his reel to reel.
There were two machines going and they were spinning the
two two reels together and dubbing onto Steve Gad's drums
onto that. You know, I don't know how that worked,
but the band is all, you know, playing and I

(01:38:18):
don't know somehow out of it. We just Steve had
this incredible drag drag snare field which is famous for
you know, He's playing away um and Bills recording it
all and Richard's over the moon and and I'm singing
next door to to Steve, and Steve and I are
getting on like an absolute house on fire with all
the musicians, you know, and and we come out of it.

(01:38:42):
We've got you made me feel like dancing, And there's
still a little bit more time to go. So Richard says,
can we do another track? And Bill says, he, I
don't know, you know, what do you got? They play
how Much Love? And the guys just say yeah. Actually,
Richard t was was came down from New York and
he hears it and it said, I was complete, bang
out gospel tune, you know for for piano. Anyway, I've

(01:39:04):
written it with Barry Mann who wrote he Lost that
love and feeling, you know. So it was a fantastic
little tune. Um. So Richard's on piano, and yeah, we
got that done in an hour or half an hour.
So we came out of that studio with a three
hour session with two songs, two hits. So you have

(01:39:28):
this great success with Richard, you continue to work with Richard,
how do you break off with Richard? They didn't want
to do it any longer. I mean, he just he
wanted to move on. Also, he was very expensive. I
think that that was a you know a problem with
for Adam. Although we were getting great success all around
the world. That you know, when you've got records and

(01:39:49):
the producers taking twelve percent of the record as well,
that was his fee. You know, he would take a
long time to make records, a lot of editing. Uh,
It's just it's something that we couldn't sustain. I think
either side, he wanted to move on to other things
as well. You know, he had a chance to um

(01:40:11):
Make Records, also started his own label. I think he
started recording the Point of Sisters and he had his
own label. He had his He moved to two Planet Records. Yeah,
he moved. He put an office in Hollywood Sunset Boulevard,
and you know, he wanted to go in a different direction.
I think he wanted I think when maybe we couldn't

(01:40:32):
pay him enough, you know, so he wanted to kind
of like, you know, get people who would pay him more.
You know, he was very money oriented, Richard. And so
then you go back with David Courtney while I was
still in l A, you know, and I was now
enjoying living in l A. And you know, the lovely
thing about records is that you always kind of like
reap the success a year or two years after you've recorded.

(01:40:56):
So nineteen seventy nine, I'm still living off it. You know.
I've got a great last record we made, just called
Leo said, because nobody could think of a title. But
we've got Raining in my Heart on there and a
hit in the UK, I Can't Stop Loving You, a
song by this lovely guy, Billy Nichols that has really
been a big hit there. And so we had a

(01:41:18):
fine record, you know, to to live off. And I'm
touring and David turns up again. He's living in l A.
We're all talking again and becoming friends again. He comes
to a few shows. He says, look, I'd love to
produce you again. And I said, well, you know, you'll
have to square it with Adam. He said, no, Adam
thinks it's a good idea. And by this time David's

(01:41:40):
done quite a few records as a producer, and he's
very in with Duc Dunn and Steve Cropper and all
these guys. He knows all the guys I worked with
as well. He hadn't worked with Jeff Acaro. But I
brought Jeff in and Steve, Luca Thur and a few
guys from my sort of side in Michael Amardian as well,
you know, um uh and and we just we just

(01:42:05):
suddenly got recording. We went to Sunset Sound and recorded
here very quickly. U Umberto Gatica was the engineer who
famous Engineer later on was one of his first ever
records he cut. But he was amazing, and you know,
we had a fantastic team. I brought in Billy Payne

(01:42:25):
to play keyboards, who was who I loved working with
because I used to jam with him and Lowell George
all the time, you know, up in the canyons. And
so I asked Billy if he'd be like he said, yeah,
I love to man, you know. So David Lindley, we
brought him pedal steel guitar, you know, and so we

(01:42:46):
made a fantastic record. But I don't know why the
record company wasn't really, I mean, they know. I suppose
they'd spend a lot of money on the Richard Perry projects,
you know, because Richard was very demanding producer director type,
you know. Uh, and now David was a bit softer,
so I think a little bit less money got spent

(01:43:07):
pushing that in a um. I thought it was a
bloody good record really, So then you go to work
with Alan Tarney. How does that happen? Well, running out
of money and to live in America, you know, and
me and my wife Janice were kind of thinking we
can't keep this up, you know, it's just crazy. So
Chris Wright of Chris List Records plays me this song

(01:43:30):
by this guy Alan Tarni when I was visiting London.
He says, you should think about working with this guy,
and the song was we Don't Talk Anymore Cliff Richard,
and he says, you know, the great thing about this
guy he plays everything himself, just him and the drummer,
and it's got a unique way of working. And I'm
kind of At this time, I'd started to build my

(01:43:50):
own studio and I was going in this direction myself,
and I was thinking, oh, this is interesting, and he'd
really love to work with you. So I met with
Alan Tani and he had a couple of great songs
that we went straight into the studio and recorded R
G R G Jones Studio in Wimbledon, and they both
ended up on the record and we decided to make

(01:44:11):
an album from there. You know, we got on really great.
I loved his technique, just him and me in the room.
Trevor Spencer would then come in and play drums. One
of the last things after, you know, we worked off
one of Trevor's drum loops. At the time, technology was
in its infancy, but Alan was already mastering computers and

(01:44:32):
there was this crazy system where you could put in
one note at a time and it made a very
interesting kind of sound. Because we were all discovering sequencing
at the time. You know, there's this way of making
records lynn drum machines and and and sequences, you know,
working off computers. And while it was all very metronomic,

(01:44:53):
if you put human instruments to it, like guitars and
bass and vocals, he got a great kind of sweat
off it. I don't know how to describe it, but
it's it's a fascinating thing, you know, that humanity and
robots together, virtual AI, early AI, I think. And so
we made this record and right at the end of it,

(01:45:16):
we were we had an extra day of studio time
and we didn't know what to do with it. So
we sat around watching TV trying to think of ideas
we thought would do a cover. You know. First off,
we had a slowed down version of Don't Be Cruel,
Don't want to be a Tiger, you know, really slowed
down like that, you know, Um, no, treat me nice?

(01:45:39):
Was it Treat me Nice? And one of those anyway,
because Tigers played too rough whatever that song is, you know, um,
so oh, it wasn't going anywhere, you know, And we
were watching the TV and an ad came on for
the Greatest Hits of Bobby V and Bobby V made
an album when Buddy Hollyod died. They were both with

(01:45:59):
Coral Records, so the crickets. Coral didn't know what to
do with the crickets, who are incredibly talented themselves, so
they put Bobby V Meets the Crickets and made this
record six and the hit out of that record was
a song called more Than I Can Say. So, um,
there it was on the TV. Well, yeah, I loved

(01:46:21):
you more Than I Can See, and Alan and I
both looked at each other. We both loved that song
in our past, you know, and he said, let's do that.
So we went in about one o'clock. This one. We
actually had to rush to a record store to find
the original record, and those days you couldn't call up
anything on the internet. Of course, there wasn't an internet.

(01:46:44):
So we went to a record store and somebody found
a shrink rack copy behind the desk and had just
been reliving only only only just came out Greatest Shits
of Bobby V. And they're on it. Track eight or
so is more than I Can Say. So we spin it.
We kind of get the cords down and you know,
and we started working on it. We find the right
key for my voice. Um, and by midnight we've got

(01:47:08):
it mixed, finished, ready to go, all the vocals on it, everything,
and well it wasn't mixed. I mean, we still got
it mixed, but there it was a great use of
that extra day that we hadn't calculated. And I ad
on faith and everybody turned around and said, that is
your single, you know. So that became the first single,

(01:47:30):
more than I can say, the only song on there
that I didn't write, and there it was. It became
my comeback hit in America. So that to biget. How
do you end up working with the Reef? I've made
a Reef a few times in London and I really
liked him. I mean we had mutual friends with some
of the guys with the bigs and and he just
he was coming into London. I think a Reef was

(01:47:53):
trying to find something new, so he was linking up
with a lot of songwriters there and finding songs, you know, um,
and I think I think he just kind of I
was really into British talent at the time, and he
made a call. I got a call, and so Reef Martin.
I don't know if you'll know him, of course, I

(01:48:13):
know you, and he said, Um, I am in London
and I am staying at the Mayfair Hotel and I'd
like to meet up and I said, great, come over,
he said now. So I went straight over and he said, look,
I want to make a record with you. I love
living in a fantasy, love all your records with with Richard.

(01:48:33):
You know, Um, could we could we talk about a project?
And I said, great, Well, I'll get onto the record companies.
He said, I've already talked to them. And I said,
I'll get onto Adam. He said, I've already talked to him.
He said, we're starting now. He said, listen to these songs.
And so, you know, he played me a load of
songs and I played him a load of songs that
I had written, um, some with David Courtney that I

(01:48:55):
hadn't got round to recording yet. And he said, I
think we got an album. So we went to New
York started recording. Then we went to l A and
recorded some more. But this was a time when a
few nefarious things were going on with Adam. Unfortunately. Yeah.
It was, like I said, he was trying to sort

(01:49:16):
of get money out of the record company and money
wherever he could and for projects that he wanted to do,
and you know, it was not really there all the
time as the manager. I was hanging on to him
because I didn't know where else to go. Um And
when it came to we finished the record and I
was very proud of it. Barry Gibb wrote us a

(01:49:36):
song hard Stop Beating in Time, and there was a
lovely song by a bunch of guys in England called
have You Ever Been in Love? We had two major
signal singles on there. The title track was the song
David and I wrote David Courtney and I wrote yet
again called World Radio. So the album was called World Radio.
We took it to warn us and they said, look,

(01:49:57):
we don't have any budget for this. I said, but
I'm going to be on Solid Gold next week with
Dion Warwick, you know, co hosting, and I can, I can.
They want me to sing some of the songs. They said, yeah,
well good luck with that, but we don't have any
budget for a single. So I go on this show
and I sing these two songs and the audience goes mad.
TV goes mad. In America, everybody loves it and they

(01:50:20):
can't buy the single. What can you say it's like
it's a disaster, It's really it was a really sad moment.
Who do we blame? Do we blame Adam? Do we
blame the people who Warner Brothers? Well, one is, weren't
that easy to get on with at that time. I
mean I signed to Joe Smith. Joe Smith at this

(01:50:40):
time had gone. It was Mo Austin. I mean, Moe
Austin is the guy that in seven when I got
my Grammy, turned around to me at the Grammy party
afterwards and say, hey, Leo Seria or later, you're going
to win one of these things. So, I mean, he
didn't even know I had won a Grammy because it
was so you know, in in raptures over all the
Fleetwood mac Rumors Grammys at that time. So I had

(01:51:03):
a company that was a bit disengaged with me, you
know in America, and you know, and then when I
deliver something, they're just thinking of how much it's going
to cost to sell. You know. I don't think there
was a I don't think there was anybody really listening
to the record, you know what I mean. Okay, but
let's go back to Adam. Now, you believe Adam is

(01:51:24):
stealing from you. You ultimately sue Adam. What's going on there?
Well eventually, yeah, it was a little bit later that
I managed to extricate myself from all of that. And
I'm thinking, if I just pack up with Adam, I
won't get my properties, you know, I won't get my
my master's, I won't get all the things that I

(01:51:44):
should get. Because he had me on a power of
attorney agreement very early in my career, so I signed
away everything to him. He could do anything on my
behalf without me even ever to consult with me. You know.
So I had my publishing, we had the same accountant,
we had, he had my record rights, he had everything.

(01:52:07):
So to extricate myself from this guy had to be
done kind of carefully, you know. Um, And eventually I
think he just gave up. And you know, I I
got everything back, which was amazing. It's tough, but it
was I got everything back. Suddenly. I owned my whole catalog,
owned my all my songs. He just gave me the

(01:52:29):
publishing companies. Um, I I owned all the records. He
gave me the record company that I was signed to,
I mean production company, record company. You know that. Then
leases too, of course you know, you know has done
So I had all those companies. Um, I had all
those rights, and do you still own them? No? I
met a guy Hi, I still had a problem with

(01:52:51):
Chrysalis Records, where chrys Chrysalis Records in England had paid
out a very large sum in those days six and
fifty thousand, who enticed me to do another ten year
deal with them when ten years ran out in around Yeah,
so not in three I discovered, even though I extricated

(01:53:13):
myself from Adam that I think it was but I
was still signed to Christlis and under the terms of
the old deal, which meant I couldn't get anything back
from them. So I questioned this and I got a lawyer.
I found a manager in the end who got me
a lawyer who'd done a lot of great stuff for

(01:53:35):
else and John and he he managed to threaten um
Chris Lis Chris right quite heavily into giving up Um. Yeah,
those those rights, um and I got free of them.
But the guy who introduced me to the lawyer turned

(01:53:57):
out to be an even bigger crook than Adam was.
And he just said, Okay, now you've got all your
rights back, You're really free, get on with your record.
So I moved to the country in England. I was
off far away from London all of a sudden, living
in this beautiful cottage in seventy acres of land or so,

(01:54:19):
you know, with the studio there and everything all going
really well, planning my next record, writing my songs, not
kind of knowing exactly you know, who I was going
to work with, but basically getting on with it, you know.
And in the meanwhile, he was signing away all my
rights with a forged signature, back to Warners, back to

(01:54:44):
Chrysalis now with a label called the Hit Label, signing
away my publishing rights. It was an absolute mess. I
broke into its office one day because he changed the
locks on the keys my office actually, and found out
that he'd also managed to drum up about a hundred
and sixty thousand UM pounds on credit cards to take

(01:55:10):
his wife on holiday all over the world and do
things like that. So he was stealing money off me
with credit cards and yeah, and signing me to deals
that I couldn't get out of. So today, at this
late date, you own none of your publishing, none of
your master recordings. It was very interesting. We came to

(01:55:30):
you do remember a lovely guy called Bob Emma. Of course,
I'm sure. Yeah. Bob and Sue a lovely couple. I
don't know if Bob's still around, but Bob was a
beautiful cat and he was with Warner Brothers. Okay, so
he was one of the old school Warner Brothers guys
still there. Rusty Ratte and all those guys had long

(01:55:51):
long left, you know. Um and Mol Austin's there running
the show, and his son is there as well. Um
and Bob is still there, and I don't know. Donna
Tell a marvelous Donna Teller Pigionetti, my partner, Um, who
had seen me go through all this rip off. She
was with me now, the new lady in my life

(01:56:12):
as it were. It's starting to get involved in the management.
She's learning how to manage me, and she's learning how
to because we're in a ship, you know, we're we're
almost bankrupt. We had accountants telling us we should far
for bankruptcy and just give up the business and everything,
you know, and I'm thinking, no, I can't do that.
So she heard from somebody in the business that Bob

(01:56:35):
Emma was coming into London. So she managed to get
a meeting with him at the hotel. I don't know
how she did it, but Bob sat down with him
and she said, well you know Leo say, and he said,
I love Leo. And Sue was there as well, and
they said, oh we lovely or whatever happened to Leo. Well,
Leo signed back with your label. Really they didn't even know. Um.

(01:56:56):
And basically he gets no royalties. He's so his catalog
to you what. I can't believe Leo would ever do that.
He I saw a poster. Bob said, you know, he's
playing here in London. So they're in shock. And Bob
just says, look, Donna, I'm going to get his royalties back.
So and he did. He got a deal I couldn't

(01:57:19):
get out of Warners. I'm still with Warner in Australia
and still with Warner in America via Rhino. I'm not
very happy about it because they never do a damn thing. Um,
they never released anything. They're just you know, but they're
just holding onto me. They hold onto those those rights
over the last records. If I had enough money, i'd
be out of there. But I'd have to buy my

(01:57:41):
way out, you know, so um so. But we managed
to get royalties again. We got you know, suddenly, we
didn't get back royalties of course in the time that
Lynch had stolen them all. But this guy, Michael Lynch,
that's what that's what his name was, the crook who
forged my signature. But we managed to we managed to
kind of get that back, and then gradually, of course

(01:58:03):
we got um we got an arrangement with Universal as well,
where he'd sold the songs to them, and we got
back publishing rights for them. They sold Universal sold off
to another company anyway, who look after it now? And
you know, the royalties are all pretty intact and since then,
I mean, you know, the guys I've been approached with

(01:58:24):
Pride By, I was approached by Primary Wave, and I
was approached by quite a few people. I had a
very good friend down here, a wonderful music business lawyer here,
a friend who who went to Primary Wave and represented me,
and and now I share my catalog and royalties um

(01:58:44):
with Primary Wave, basically my earnings. Okay, just so I understand,
you don't own the records, you don't own the publishing,
but your writer's share and your royalties are now with
primary works. Yeah, split with me with still of about
my company. And did you get a good check to
do that? Very very nice? Thank you. Okay, I've probably

(01:59:06):
sworn to secrecy over the over the amount, but it's
it's made life a little bit easier. You know. We've
paid off the mortgage of the house and all this
sort of stuff. You know. Okay, So now financially, how
are you doing? Yeah? Very good, very good. Okay, yeah,
very good. I mean I'm not in the wealth category
that I should be in where, you know, along with
most of our contemporaries for what I've done, and I

(01:59:27):
suppose I can't really choose, you know, if I wanted to,
if I wanted to, say, play Glastonbury, I don't really
have the kind of people behind me who could push
that because I can't really afford to hire pr and
promotion teams. You know, I'd love to be able to,
but I work very independently because I work within my budget.

(01:59:50):
You know. So let's go Bakistan. What happened with your
first wife? We divorced. She got fed up with being
Mrs Sayer I think, and she was she was going
for a tough time, and you know, we we split.
That was it? And how was that for you? I
promised never to speak to her again. We promised to,
you know, to to not contact each other. What was

(02:00:11):
the basis, what was the inspiration for that? She wanted
to go back to her maiden name and have a
new life and not be Mrs Sarah any longer, you know,
because it's a tough thing for the women when you know,
we go to American or business meetings, you know, and
they say, hey, Leo, nice of me. I said, this
is Janey's my wife, and they say hi, Hi jan anyway, Leo,

(02:00:32):
and you know, you're just She's She was a very
intelligent girl, and she didn't like that, you know, she
didn't like that she couldn't get the respect. It's a
man's world, isn't it, you know, and still very much
yeah so so so she needed a change, and she'd
been incredibly supportive of me in the time we were together. Also,

(02:00:54):
you know, I must say that I had met Donna
at this time and also was those you know, lining
myself up for a new life, you know, with with
Donna teller Um, which happened by chance. I mean, Janis
and I were going through a bad period you know,
these things happen, you meet somebody else and there it went.
But I'm glad to say I'm still with Donna and

(02:01:15):
very faithful now, you know. And that's been thirty six
years or so we've been together. Okay, so you ever
want to have children or that was something? No, it
never came into the equation. I mean, Jannis didn't want
them when we were together, and we would rather travel
than spend the time to make babies. So that was
the choice. And I think, you know, leaving that behind

(02:01:36):
then and going into now. Um, I don't know. I've
always been this very unusual operator. I'm very much, you know,
an insular person working within myself. So I suppose really siblings.
I never even thought about it. You know. I'm lucky
that I've had women in my life have been very

(02:01:57):
supportive to my lifestyle. Um, but basically I think the
buck always stops with me, you know. That's so that's it. Okay,
let's go back. You're working with Richard than David Courtney
again and Alan Tarney. You have some success, you're working
with our reef. You realize you're being ripped off, like
the story you're telling with Warner brothers where they're not

(02:02:20):
going to commit even though you're on solid gold. What's
it like to all of a sudden realize you had
your time, but you're not the priority anymore. And it's
a really good question, but you know how this business works.
You know, one minute you're thinking about that, going oh God,
and you're talking to Janis and you said we've got
to go home. Then the next minute the phone rings

(02:02:41):
and you're on Midnight Special. What do you say? You know?
I mean, I'm a very g garious guy. Everybody seems
to like me. All the musicians that have worked with
still my best friends. I talked to rape Harker, I
talked to you all these guys all the time, and
we're all friends and we you know, I'm a guy
who just looks for the positives so very stupidly. I

(02:03:03):
wouldn't have put my books in order. I'd have just
cracked on. I mean, many other people, I think Bob
would have just stopped and said, right, you've got to
sort this out now. But I never did. I didn't
do until it was too late. And then when I
did sort things out and took on a different mindset
with it all, I think that I would by this
time had stated my case enough, you know, recording wise

(02:03:28):
and live wise, that I had a real legacy that
I could take a break from for a bit, you know,
and sort out the business side. But I think when
all that was going on, I was still kind of
like feeling that I was half proven, you know, and
there was still a lot of work to be done.
I mean, you're only as good as your records, you know,
and you're only as good as your last live show.

(02:03:50):
So I was feeling at that time that I still
had to stay on the case and do the job.
You know. Don't complain about these things. You're living. Well,
it's okay. So how do you feel about your legacy
at this moment in time? Proud of all of it,
even the mistakes. I like the whole way it fits together,
and I like being this kind of slightly obscure artist
as well. I mean, I'm not on everybody's lips, and

(02:04:13):
I'm not um, you know, I'm not headline in Glassberry
or Paying Maids and Square Gardens, where I think I
should be. Part of me thinks I should be. But
but I've still got a lot to you know, there's
still a lot of leeway for things to come, and
I kind of like that. I'm still hungry, I'm still ambitious.

(02:04:33):
I don't know why I'm seventy four in May. I mean,
I can't really be looking at another fifty years, So
what what where do you go from here? But I'm
having a ball at the moment. I'm really enjoying it.
I'm joining the legacy, writing my book and doing all
the research and finding out that I've I've done more
than I thought, you know, achieve more because I've always

(02:04:54):
been looking at the ball right, you know, in player
that at the moment rather than looking back very much.
Can you get a victory lap? Can you get a
manager or somebody involved who will get you on the
stage in Glastonbury, will get you one more time around
because you still have your voice and you have all
those hits? Well, who knows? Who knows? I mean the

(02:05:16):
only problem is that most people in this in this game,
at this moment, have such a vested interest in everything
that they do or want to have vested interests. I mean,
it's all about money now, you know, the business has changed.
So what's the manager going to do with Leo Saya?
He's going to want to make as much money before

(02:05:38):
the guy has a heart attack and kills over. He's
gonna want because he's used to getting it from young acts.
He's gonna want everything. He's gonna want total ownership. So
where do I go? Who do I go to? That's
not gonna suck me over, because that's the name of
the game. We funk people over. Now, that's what we do. Well,
it's a separate conversation, although your points are well taken.

(02:06:00):
So you don't have a manager today I do. I
have a manager in England and a manager in Australia
and they just get me work and look after the
business as it were, and Donna Teller oversees everything. Then
you have an agent. Who's your agent? Do you have
a worldwide agent? Not? Really? Not really? We um I
mean when we tour in England, we have an agent

(02:06:21):
there that puts all the gigs together and does a
very good job of that. He does a few other acts,
but he's not the biggest um. And I'll tell you
what I do have. I have an amazing lawyer, an
incredible accountants, both in England and in here, and I
split my business North and Southern Hemisphere. So basically, if

(02:06:43):
you like, when I play America, it will be with
the English band and the English team, and when I play,
say China, it will be China or Asia it will
be with the Australian team. So I have a band
in Australia and a band in England. And how many
gigs a year do you do and how many do
you want to do? Well, I'm just off to the UK.
We're finishing an Irish tour that first off that we

(02:07:07):
started in but got broken into because of COVID, when suddenly,
you know, you couldn't have more than two hundred people
um in a venue at one time, So we had
to scotch those rest of those gigs, postpone them, and
then I'm doing the rest of those and a few
more in Ireland in August, and then I'm doing a
thirty six day British tour um and that's going to

(02:07:30):
be from middle of September to November, and then hopefully,
with conversations going on with Primary Waive as well, at
the moment, I'll be coming to America next year. Well,
I certainly look forward to seeing you. Are you doing
these live gigs to stay alive or because you want
to do it. No, I'm doing it because I wanted
to it, and also it keeps me young. You know,

(02:07:52):
I've still got my hair and I've still got my voice,
and I think working really sort of is import into that.
I mean, we've we've all gone through a complete change
of life, haven't we. With the COVID times and everything
has changed. I mean, you know, every every reliable uh
let's say, everything that you could rely on was was

(02:08:17):
carted away, you know, so you had to kind of
change a little bit. I mean, I've been doing live
link ups with my band on Zoom just to keep
you know, us all kind of working together. I've been
making internet songs and releasing a lot of stuff on
Zoom I'm sorry. On on YouTube, I do a song

(02:08:37):
called white how did We get here? All about the pandemic,
you know, because everybody's trying to blame everybody else. You
can see that one if you like. It's on YouTube.
And then I did a song from Melbourne because when
that city did the hardest lockdown that anybody had known, um,
you know, it was kind of completely decimated. And Melbourne

(02:08:57):
is my playtown. I live in near Sydne, me but
Melbourne is the place where all the gigs are. And
so I was kind of like writing a sympathetic song there,
you know, almost a rap that was actually and now
I'm just writing a song at the moment for the
Ukraine UM, which is basically on the angle of what
are we going to do with all the refugees, which

(02:09:19):
is an important question. So it's done like footsteps, like
a walk. It's called take a walk with Me. So
you take somebody through a song which is, you know,
a very classic kind of UM styled song UM, and
you're inviting someone to leave the city that's falling apart
but below them and saying you're always going to look

(02:09:42):
after them, never let them down. And I don't know
where to place the song, but I'll probably just make
a YouTube of it and put it out there and
be nice if someone from UNICEF or someone picked it
up and used it. But we'll see. I mean, I
work in a vacuum, Bob. I'm a very unusual guy.
I work. I'm like you know, m yeah, I'm like
vank gosh, I I work on this staff. I mean,

(02:10:07):
I actually hope that my legacy is bigger when I'm
dead than it is when I'm alive. Well, you're very optimistic,
still working. We didn't plumb a lot of topics, like
your relationships with all of these musicians and stars. But
I admire your optimism and the fact that you still

(02:10:27):
you know, especially in light of the story you've told
about when you leased the Big Space and then it
devastated you and you had a nervous breakdown. Have you
ever been close to that feeling again? Was that one
and done? I don't know if you've heard of a
show called Big Brother, absolutely absolutely awful. I after chasing
a record deal a band about two thousand and five

(02:10:51):
or six, I um, I was invited to go on
Big Brother in England celebrity brig Brother, and I went
on there and they I just left England at the time,
and I think I said some things about leaving England
so glad to get out of here, so happy to
go to Australia, and they really seized on all of
that and gave me a rotten hard time. And I
ended up breaking out of there because I experienced incredible

(02:11:15):
claustrophobia and the fact that when you go in there,
they take your watch away from you, you know, they
take your your your They don't give you any pens
to write down with anything with. I was suddenly in
a creative vacuum, and I can't honestly say that. Many
of my fellow contestants were the most inspiring people to

(02:11:35):
be with as well, so they just gave me a
hard time. So I did half the show in mine,
which I thought was quite fun to do. So I
was just doing hand signals, you know. The rest of
it I wrote, and my breath on glass panes. Some
of it I actually found a little piece of metal
and revealed all the cameras to everybody by taking panels out.

(02:11:57):
I went to war with the show basically, and I
found doing that. You know, I'm such a rebel. I
just I can't do anything like anybody else does. I
have to do it my own way. I'm born with
this gene of having to invent myself and and do that.

(02:12:17):
So I would actually say, I mean, my feeling is
that I'm a true artist, and you know sometimes that
people say that's very big headed or something you know,
to say, But I know all the criteria that an
artist needs to have, and it's not a reliance on corporates, companies,
other people even it's basically it all comes from me.

(02:12:41):
Everything I do is part of this vivid imagination that
was born with that I've always had. I can dream
songs into being. I can create things from a blank
sheet of paper. Um So I just have to follow that,
and that's that's that's my skill set. My skill set
is to trust myself, to listen to myself and to

(02:13:04):
follow myself. And most of the people in my life
now appreciate that and let me do it, and let me.
Let me make a mistake. If I make a mistake,
let me do something glorious. If I do it glorious.
But they know the only way to get something good
out of me is to let me do it. I

(02:13:24):
designed my own show. Um I I do everything. I'm
an autobiographer. I'm writing my book completely by myself. Nobody's helping.
I'm doing all the research by myself. It's been a
monstrous task. And to find stuff that I didn't even

(02:13:44):
know about. It's a revelation as well, you know. So
I don't know. I think I'm I think probably when
that book comes out and people hopefully get to read it,
if I can find the right publisher, and maybe even
we can make a biopic of it. I think I've
got to love a story to tell and the fact
if I'm a little bit obscure and a little bit

(02:14:06):
off the radar because of them, may I mean I'm
not living I'm not with Live Nation, I'm not with
Sony Records or anybody like that. You know, Um, I'm
very much off the radar um. But if people want
to discover me, they'll find something I think that is
very different and very unique. Well, certainly your conversation with

(02:14:28):
me today has been different, unique and intriguing. Leo. I
want to thank you for taking all this time with me.
Thank you, Bob. And I've always been a big admirer
of you, and I love the I love the column
and and the blog, and you're one of the good guys.
So it's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.
Till next time. This is Barbed Worth Sex

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Host

Bob Lefsetz

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