Michael Shrieve

Michael Shrieve was the drummer on the first five Santana albums, you know him from the Woodstock movie! Michael goes deep into all of those records, as well as his work with Stomu Yamashta, Automatic Man and more!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is drummer Michael Schreen. Michael, tell us
about your new album, Drums of Compassion.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Drums of Compassion is the record that's been an interesting
journey for me, literally taking me over twenty years to
get it out. It began with the idea a question
I asked myself after coming home at two in the
morning here in Seattle, when I used to go listen
to all kinds of music and family was asleep and

(00:45):
I'd come home and want to chill out, but I
would listen to music like choral music or you know,
it wasn't heavy music. And then it occurred to me,
what kind of music could I make that I would
want to listen to personally at two two thirty in
the morning as a drummer. How would I approach that?

(01:08):
And that's the question that started on the path.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
We'll continue the story.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay, So I had a setup that I learned from
percussion master, Japanese percussion master stonemul Yumashta, who I had
the pleasure of working with in the seventies. Stone was
somebody that I looked up to as a percussionist and
as a kind of a force actually the way he

(01:36):
would approach his career, and he had a setup that
was like sixteen toms in a semi circle. We did
a project with him called Go with Al Damiola and
Klaus Schultz and Pat Thrall and Steve Winwood, and so

(01:56):
his setup was this beautiful setup where you could you
could kind of run around the stage and play the drums,
and I was very influenced by him. It even goes
further back. So I thought, I want this to be
a kind of record where drums are going to have
to be featured, but it's not going to be backbeats

(02:18):
and it's not going to be like groove heavy. I
want the drums to speak in a different way, in
a different language than they usually usually are, at least
in the States. I called upon a friend of mine,
a synthesizer sound designer from Seattle named Jeff Grinky, and

(02:40):
we began the project together. So it was very spacey,
and I went into a studio we rehearsed and went
into a studio called Bob Lang which is in northern Settle,
Richmond Beach. And that's a whole story about that studio

(03:00):
where he'd bob for years, dug into the side of
the mountain of a hill, literally and I thought it
would be great because it had like thirty foot ceilings.
So we did recording there and it was too much.
There was too much ambient reverb on the drums. And
at that point then we went to London Bridge Studios,

(03:21):
which is a very well known Seattle studio where Pearl
Jam recorded their first album ten there and tons of
other records, so that became the drums and the synthesizer tracks.
At a certain point I kept listening to I thought
it sounded too new age, and I started adding other

(03:44):
percussionists as they came into town, like Ayerto Morierra, who
famous for playing with Chick Corea, and Miles Davis and
Jack D. Jennette, also Miles Davis zuk Heir who s Tablamster.
And I started layering these percussionists onto the tracks and

(04:08):
then just grew it and grew it and grew it,
and I just lived with it forever. But there was
a skip forward eighteen twenty years. I kept wondering, why
am I not putting this sucker out? You know, I
really love it, but what's going on with me, And
when I changed insurance companies, they offered me to see

(04:31):
a psychoanalysis for free for six months, and I said sure,
and I went and I recorded every session on my phone,
and then this issue came up, What's going on with
me with this recording? Why is it that? What is
it that's happening with myself that I'm not putting it out?

(04:53):
Is it procrastination? Is it fear of what people will think.
Let's get to the bottom of it, because I really
love it, and I just talked it through myself and
I came up with the I realized. I came to
the realization that I really love this record, and it's
almost like the world doesn't really need another record, you know.

(05:16):
I mean, he's like, who gives a fuck? You know?
And and I've put other records out in the past.
I've done a lot of solo work and stuff like that,
and most of it's left of center. Most of the
stuff my contemporaries don't care for that I do. They're
kind enough to say they don't like it, but they
don't say anything. And so all along I'm following my

(05:38):
own muse. But what I came to this realization is
I like this record too much. It's okay if I
don't put it out. I like it and I want
to keep it that way. I don't want to just
put it out and nobody gives a shit, or you know,
people say, oh, Michael, here he goes again. He lost
his lower chakras, you know. And and then once I

(06:01):
realized that that was the reason it wasn't being put out, Bob,
then I felt free to put it out. And I said,
this is what you gotta do. You put it out,
and it doesn't matter what other people think. In fact,
this is the way you should make music. You should
make the music that you love and that you dig
deep enough inside yourself to bring out. And that's what

(06:25):
you put out. And you don't do it with expectations
of people loving it or adoring you. And so finally,
you know, I was tweaking it until the last hour
of when I needed to let it go for deadline
for the release. And now it's out and I'm perfectly

(06:46):
happy with everything about it, from the packaging to the artwork,
to the musicians, the mixes. And so that's the story
of Drums and Compassion. Also, I should say that they're
interesting thing because when I started the record, it was
a period. I remember that the Dalai Lama was talking

(07:06):
about the human kind is coming into a period where
what we need is more compassion, and I thought, well,
Baba Olatunji, Michael Olatunji, the great African drummer who put
out in the sixties a record called Drums of Passion,

(07:31):
and in fact, Santana on their first album, recorded a
piece of music from that record called Jingo Loba, and
so I thought I'd play off of that and I'd
go I'd call it Drums of Compassion, honoring Olatunji and
also honoring what the Dhalai Lama said. And it turns

(07:53):
out that I was able to have Olatunji give the
opening incantation on the recording, which was done in another
recording session with a group I was involved with, called
a Praxis Pool, with all the original Santana guys aside
from Carlos, and they decided not to use this incantation,

(08:15):
and that's how the record starts out, Drums of Compassion.
So it's been a long road and it feels really
good to finally have it out and I can move
on to other things.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
So for those who haven't heard it yet, how can
you describe it? And what should they think when they're
pulling it up online.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Well, they don't have to think anything better if they don't.
For me, it's a The desire anyway, was to be
transportive and that the music really takes you somewhere you
can get inside it and just let it be. Just
let it be, you know, just let it watch over you. Also,

(08:59):
I have a lot of material, but I ended up
only using like thirty five thirty seven minutes worth of
music because to me, an album, just because you can
have seventy five minutes on it doesn't mean you should.
And that I always thought the listening experiences when we

(09:20):
came up in the sixties and seventies were just the
right amount of time because it was A and a
B side of vinyl, and the maximum recording time you
should have on each side would be twenty minutes, so
that the sonically it would sound better because the grooves
are wider, preferably eighteen minutes aside, so I thought, I

(09:45):
want to make this. I mean, it's hard enough to
get anybody to listen to anything anyway, much less an
album nowadays, and I'm very aware of that, and so
I thought, make it, you know, make it thirty five
minutes long, so it doesn't take up so much time,
but it could still take you on a journey. I mean,
it's not a buffet all you can eat, it's a
fine meal.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Okay, you had all these anxieties before you put the
album out, you came to an inner belief. Now the
album is out, other people are scrutinizing it or not
listening at all. So what's that experience been.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Like, Well, it's been very rewarding people who are saying
some really beautiful things about it that it seems it's
paid off that I went to where I went to
myself to bring this music. Had some you know, kind
words from people that I really respect, and so that

(10:45):
feels good. I mean, there was somebody that said something
online last week about I got this record and it's
just horrible.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
And.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Okay, come on, come on, you know, so I engaged
with the guy, not that I care, but I'm curious.
I said, so, what were you expecting, because obviously you
were expecting something else. He said, well, yeah, you know
the stuff you used to do with Carlos, and you
know Santana for and this that, And I said, of course,
that's why you didn't like it, because you're expecting me

(11:18):
to live in the past, and my job is to
move forward. And I recommended some other records of mine
that he might like better.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Okay, you went to for psychoanalysis because you had that
benefit from insurance. You learned about why you weren't releasing
the record. What else did you.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Learn, mean aside from this, mean in the psychoanalysis, Yeah,
that's private, bob, Okay, no, no, no, I it was
what I found was that I had been to psychoanalysis before,
but more like couples, a couple of psychoanalysis, and that
never seemed to work out, you know, and so it

(12:00):
didn't didn't make me feel positive about you know, you know.
But anyway, I found this to be a really wonderful
experience that you couldn't shut me up, you know, and
I just kept talking and talking that I'd listened during
the week to the recordings, and I found what I've

(12:23):
what I learned is that it can be very helpful
to be engaged in psychoanalysis, if for nothing else, to
just be talking and have someone to talk to and
in a safe space and they throw ideas back at you,
and you so, I mean, I haven't gone back to
any After that, I felt like, ah, I kind of

(12:43):
got what I wanted with this record. But I must
say also that I wasn't living in anxiety about this record.
It was just like, why the hell am I not
putting this thing out? You know, I'm making all the
other kinds of music in this but this one seems
to be a different issue for me. And so once

(13:04):
I realized that I loved it so much, I didn't
want anybody to say anything negative about it. Then it
was like, who gives a shit, this is what I love.
Put it out there so you can move on to
other stuff.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
How'd you end up in Seattle?

Speaker 2 (13:18):
My ex wife is from here. We had our first kid.
We met in New York City. I lived there through
the through the eighties. Interesting time to be in New York.
And then we moved to the Bay Area, where I'm from,
and we had our first son, Sam, and thought that

(13:40):
she thought to move up to the Northwest would be
a good place to start raising a family.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
So you grew up in the Bay Area. What was
it like in Seattle? What's it like now?

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Well, Seattle's a wonderful city. The music scene I found
because I was very would very much go out at
night and look at stuff, look at bands, and I'm
I'm also very curious about more avant garde stuff, whether
it's dance or theater or and so I would go

(14:15):
and explore that sort of thing. In Seattle. I've always
been attracted to people like, you know, different, not mainstream artists,
so so it was great, you know. I mean, it
never felt quite like home to me. And I think
that I realized that while driving through the Bay Area
a couple of years ago. It's the topography. It's actually

(14:38):
the trees and the and the hills and the you know,
it's it's eucalyptus trees and oak trees, where up here
it's pine trees. And it's this, that and the other.
It's a wonderful place. I'm considering, you know, moving somewhere else,
but I don't know where in the hell they go anymore.
With the way everything is going, it might be better

(15:01):
just to stay put.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
You talk about your flues, kid, how many kids do
you have?

Speaker 2 (15:12):
I have two?

Speaker 1 (15:13):
What are they up to?

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well? My oldest is graduate of Berkeley School of music
and is in La producing and writing pop material. In fact,
he's the girl that just won I guess it's American Idol.
I think it's American Idol or the Voice. He wrote

(15:38):
that and they put that as a single, so you
know he's into that scene and starting to do well.
My youngest son is a real estate agent here in Seattle.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
And you talk about getting divorced. You have a relationship.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Now, yes, I do, happily married for fifteen years.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
So how'd you meet her?

Speaker 2 (16:01):
I met her at a friend of mine ran a
biotech company here in Seattle, and she was his executive assistant.
And I told I saw her at an event that
I was invited to, like a charity event where one
of the one of the founders of the Microsoft. You know,

(16:22):
it's all a lot of wealthy people here because of
Microsoft and Amazon and everything else, and so one of
the first early founders had a place where it's kind
of like jay Leno, you know, like a ton of
cars that nobody else would have, and they held this
event there and the woman that was the greeter there

(16:47):
I was very much attracted to. And so I found
out that this was his personal assistant and we had
met before, but I asked him if he might if
I asked her out. So I did, and we've been
together ever since. Funny thing about that night, though, I
told her about ten years ago, I'll never forget this

(17:09):
outfit that you were wearing. I described the outfit and
it wasn't until like six years ago. She said, I
gotta tell you, I never had an outfit like, I'm like, wow,
do maybe I have the wrong woman? No? But yeah,

(17:30):
So that's that's how we met. Pamela. I know that
a friend of mine is friend of your wife of
Dorian Ringer Ross.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely from BMI in the soundtrack world.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
I sent this record to her and she is head
over heels about it. She just loves it, like like crazy.
She said some of the strongest things than anybody has
said yet. So that's a good sign.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Absolutely. You mentioned in all Microsoft, Amazon people who made
a lot of money there. To what degree did you
interact with those people? Were there any opportunities there?

Speaker 2 (18:10):
No opportunities for me there. I mean I did have
interaction with Paul Allen, who I found to be really enjoyable.
I mean it's amazing. I mean really, it's like Okay,
you go to his house and you can do some recording.
The recording studio is an exact replica of Peter Gabriel's

(18:31):
studio in Bath, England. And then and then he replicated
that in la and on two or three of his
yachts as well. You know, it's like before it was
before anybody did this kind of thing. He had his
whole music collection digitized and you know, you could just
push a button and the music came up. Now we

(18:53):
all do that, but at that time, I, you know,
I really respected what he did is starting the museum here,
which is supposed to be a Jimi Hendrix museum. But no,
I haven't had opportunity to get rich. Even though there's

(19:14):
rich people. It's a it's a different thing. I'm not
a you know, there's ways that I thought I could
have interacted with them in terms of Amazon even or
or companies that like provide music, because I really love
what music does in different environments. I'm a big fan
of you know, it's like I don't listen to the

(19:38):
blues for years, and then you walk into a tavern
or something and the blues is playing and you go, wow,
nothing nothing like the blues man. I mean in the
right place, in the right you know. I don't know
if you're like that when you listen, but so much
has to do with your mood, the time of day,
and the and where you are specifically, you know, physically.

(20:01):
And I like to make playlists. I love to make
playlists for different you know. I'll be in a restaurant
and I think this is a really great restaurant, really cool,
really hip, really kind of international, but the music sucks,
and so I'll go home and I'll make a playlist
for them that I think this would really make your
place much better, much much like I found out later,

(20:24):
like Riuichi Sakamoto did. I don't know if you heard
about this. Where the great you know, the great piano
player composer riu Chi Sakamoto frequented a sushi bar in
New York City that he absolutely adored, the food, the chef,
And finally, one day he went to the owner chef

(20:46):
and he said, whatever his name, son, I really think
you're a genius with the food. I come here all
the time because I appreciate you and the place, But
I would you mind if I make a playlist for here?
Because I don't like the music that you play. And
it's a great story. And they ended up writing an

(21:10):
article about it in the New York Times, and then
the playlist was published on Spotify, and I thought, this
is so great. I completely get this. You know, I
love the place, but I can't stand the music. So
I'm a big fan of creating playlists for different sort
of vibes. And I do it for friends if they're

(21:30):
getting married or if they're doing this and that, just
because I enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
So did you give the restaurant your playlist?

Speaker 2 (21:38):
I did, And now I don't know if they've played
it or not. I haven't heard like, oh wow, it
really changes the vibe, man, thank you so much or
anything like that. But it was a good excuse to
put together like what I thought was like a sophisticated
international cool vibe and much like it used to be

(22:00):
in the was the eighties, when the when the Buddha
Bar was happening. I think it started in Paris, and
I always liked their playlist and somebody took me in
there one night when I was in Paris and they
were playing music of mine, and I thought, this is
the fucking coolest thing. I mean, I'm in the Buddha

(22:20):
Bar and my album transfer Station Blue with Klaus Schultz
and my brother Kevin was playing, and I thought, this
is this is what I like. I mean, I see
my music going in different places than most people. I mean,
what I do now is I look at websites like
Sedition Arts, and I look at the graphic artists from

(22:41):
around the world, Berlin and Japan, and they make the
most beautiful you know, digital art, moving art, and I'll
take down their music and I'll put my music in there,
various pieces and see what works, and then if it
works out, con attack the artist and I'll say, let's collaborate,

(23:02):
let's do you know. I mean, I would like to
see music more look for more interesting ways than than
you know, like like more environ you know, complete environments,
and and so I'm excited about I'm excited about the

(23:24):
future in that way.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Let's go back to the beginning. How'd you become a drummer?

Speaker 2 (23:31):
I was, I had just been kicked out of a
Catholic school in seventh grade. Why oh, some silly thing
where you know, have a bunch of pens in your pocket,
and one of them happened to be the kind of
smoke bomb that you make from a from a ballpoint

(23:55):
pen where you had a h what is it, a
bobby pin? Bobby pin and a and a match, a
wooden match, and so when you pull the bobby pin,
it smells like rotten eggs and and that accidentally went off.
And it was so funny because it was taught by sisters.

(24:20):
And the sister said, oh, somebody must be having some
problems in the neighborhood, and let's let's stop and say
a prayer and and all that. So everything was fine
until some kids, you know, actually went and told on me,
you know, like really so uh, and it was a

(24:44):
big deal. My father had come down and my father
was like, come on really, And then my father got
an argument with the main nun and and and I
got kicked out, so that there went my There went
my My career is being a priest, which I was
considering doing. So I went to this public school and

(25:07):
I must have been banging on the desk or trying
to be funny. I got kicked out of the class,
and I told me to go to the principal's office.
So I went to the principal's office and I got scolded,
And on the way back to the class, I passed
a room that was the band room, and the whole
percussion section was right there at the door, and the

(25:29):
door was open, and it just stopped me in my
tracks enough so that I got in trouble for being
taking so long to get back to the other class.
But that day I went and bought drumsticks and got
three rug samples and started playing the drums.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Now what year were we in and what was happening
in music? Did the Beatles hit yet?

Speaker 2 (25:53):
The Beatles had not hit yet. It was just before
so I'm not so with the years. But the Beatles
had not hit. But I started taking drum lessons. I
went to high school. I was playing in bands, and
then in high school the Beatles because I was already
playing pretty well and the beat the Beatles hit, and

(26:16):
we used to my brother and I used to listen
every day. We listened to the Beatles, and we listened
to you know stereo where it's just the vocals and
then the other side where it's just the band. That's
so cool. That was like that was like, I mean,
I feel the same way now. We were just talking

(26:37):
about that here where now you can isolate tracks of
of you know, recordings, and I still feel like that
is revelatory, you know, And so that was very exciting.
So I was into the Beatles. I was into It
was also time of Jefferson airplaying Grateful Dead. So it

(27:00):
was this time when the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia
they were happening in Palo Alto and I lived in
Redwood City, which is a suburb of San Francisco in
between San Francisco and San Jose, and so they put
me back in a Catholic high school, all boys high school,

(27:21):
and I would take the train from Redwood City to
Mountain View in order to make band every day. And
I loved it. I loved being on the train. But
stuff started to happen and it was like Jefferson air Plane.
I remember going to a concert in Redwood City in

(27:44):
Palo Alto, I mean, and it was Jefferson air Plane
and it was Santana before they were they had a record,
and I thought, I saw Jack Cassidy and Orma and
I was looking at Jack Cassidy with those shades and
you know his hair, and I thought, man, how do

(28:04):
you get to be that cool? How does one you know,
how would I go about it? And I remember seeing
Santana as well, and and then I was into I
got into rock music, but it was more like funk,
and then I started getting into jazz. But I learned

(28:25):
from a couple of friends in high school that all
that San Francisco music was coming from folk music. It
was just electrified folk music. Basically. Jerry Garcia, you know,
was a banjo picker and Yorma was you know, acoustic picker,
and they were you know. I mean that's the time

(28:46):
when say, Richie Haven's album was out, you know, and
it was that vibe, that was a strong vibe. So
the whole scene that San Francisco sing was a very
powerful poll for a young any young person, much less
than aspiring musician, which I had become at that point.
And I just kept playing with as many people as

(29:09):
I could. But I never owned my own drums until
after high school, and so I would always have to
borrow drums for any gigs or anything like that. I
was into it, you know. Then I went to junior
college in sam Matteo, and there was a guy named
Dick Crest who allowed me to be in the big band.

(29:32):
And I've been into gene Krupa and that kind of
stuff too, and he put me set me up. He
said it was one of those school situations where professionals
could join the big band, they could audition. They were
the guys that were playing on Broadway in San Francisco
could come down an audition and be in this school band.

(29:56):
And for some reason he chose me and just said
there's something about you that I like. And so I
learned how to play in a big band. And at
that period, that's when John Coltrane's happening, Miles Davis, and
I learned that where the activity was, the excitement was

(30:19):
in these small groups, not the big bands. I mean,
I would go see Buddy Rich and I would go
and I loved all that stuff. I would go see
Count Basie and I loved it. But the exciting thing
was happening with drummers like Tony Williams and Jack d
Jeannette and Elvin Jones. And so then I pursued that

(30:41):
and R and B. So I always played in R
and B bands, and the only rock bands I played
in were like high school bands. You know, you'd play
a school dance or something. But I was serious about
R and B. Every time James Brown came out with
a record, I'd be down at the club and I
don't know why they'd let me in, but I'd go

(31:02):
down there and play the latest James Ground Brown groove.
And so that's what I was aspiring to be, is
really like a more like a jazz drummer. To tell
you the truth.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Let's go back. Your parents did what for a living.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
My mother was a nurse. She got up. I remember
when I was in high school, we got up very
early because she got up to do the morning shift
and she would take me, while still dark outside to
the train station to go to high school. So my
mother was a registered nurse. My father worked at the

(31:49):
Salmonteo County Planning Commission, and he was a big fan
of jazz music. My father was so that there was
a lot of jazz in the house, and there was
a lot of Broadway music. My mother was into the
Broadway and I mean I was totally into all that
stuff too. I mean, you know, we got a problem.

(32:14):
We got a problem right here in River City.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Oh man, my mother played all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Oh yeah, uh, I used to have that stuff down
like a rapper, you know. It's like and it starts
with a piano of the room done in room pool
and the rhymes with pool. That's right, we have Now
when I see that stuff, I see how brilliant it was.
West Side Story that was another one. I mean I
knew every word and note of that record before I
saw the movie. When we went drove up to San Francisco.

(32:43):
It was a big deal to see that movie and
the big screen because we all knew the music and
everything already, and that was that was very influential stuff
to me as well.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
So you talk about this brother as your brother, older, younger,
and is he your only sibling.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
I have an older brother and I have a younger brother.
The brother I was sitting around with listening to the
Beatles was my younger brother, Kevin. My older brother Rich
was serious into music as well, but he had gone
away during high school to a seminary because he was
going to be a priest and that didn't work out

(33:27):
in the end. But everybody was really into music. Everybody's
still into music.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
So, Okay, you said you took lessons, but you didn't
own drums till you graduate from high school. Tell me
about the lessons and then how you played in bands
into what degree you played in bands in high school?

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yes, I would, I would. My father would drive me
to drum lessons. I had some really great teachers, but
we couldn't afford a drum set. But I bought my
first snare drum. I did my bike bicycle route delivering
papers and I saved up and I bought a catalog
Japanese catalog snare drum, and I bought another one, so

(34:13):
now I had a snare and a tom tom. But
I would always borrow drums. There was a kid around
the corner who had one. There was another guy whose
father owned owned a deli in Redwad City and they
lived in Woodside, which is you know, a wealthy area,
and he had a drum kit that he didn't play
so much, so he would let me use that. My

(34:36):
first drums that I bought was on the road after
high school, and I bought him saving up well on
the road, and those were the drums I played at Woodstock.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Well, let's go a little bit slower. So when you
were in high school, did you play in bands at
SA Cops, bar Mitzvah's other events or not?

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Absolutely a lot.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
So then when you said you didn't get your first
drums till you went on the road. How'd you get
the gig to go on the road without the drums.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Well, I borrowed drums for that. Some guy put a
band together of schoolmates. He was older than us. I mean,
he said, I'm booking. You know. We were a cover band.
We took a train to Elko, Nevada, and from there
we got in a car. We went to you know,

(35:34):
played around Nevada and North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho. And
during that period is so I had borrowed drums. But
during that period I saved up money like per diem
money and stuff like that, and I bought my first
drum kit somewhere there in like North Dakota. And I

(35:56):
knew all along what I wanted to get because I
used to be under the covers with the Ludwig catalog
looking at drums. I knew how much a drum key costs,
and I knew this, and so I knew what I wanted.
So I was just fortunate, I guess to either they
had drums or I borrowed drums during high school to
play these gigs. Some of the guys that I played

(36:18):
with were They lived in you know, Atherton Menlo Park,
so they had money. They probably had extra drums there too.
You know. My father was very much in my corner
for and supportive of me playing drums, and so I'll

(36:40):
always be grateful for that. And he loved music, and
he loved musicians, and he loved black musicians, you know,
and we lived in the suburbs, but he was just
like you know, I mean, there was one time when
my brother and I went to Stanford University to see
John Coltrane, and I didn't have tickets, and I'm not

(37:06):
sure how it happened, but I ended up coming through
the ceiling in the men's bathroom, which turned out to
be the dressing room where Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison
and McCoy tyner were and they're like, who the hell
is this? And that's the first time I met Elvin Jones.
And he invited us up to San Francisco where they

(37:31):
were playing at the what's it called Jazz Workshop Broadway
in San Francisco, and my father drove us up and
of course we didn't realize that they wouldn't let us
in because we weren't twenty one. So we stood outside
like little puppies watching as what my father got all

(37:51):
night carrying on with Elvin and Jimmy Garrison having the
time of his life, you know, watching Coltrane.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Okay, let's go back. You're in junior high school. You're
in the big band. What's the next step for you?

Speaker 2 (38:08):
No, in big band, that's like junior college. So during
that period, I came to a big decision because I
wasn't sure what I was going to do. I was
very interested. I've always been an avid reader. I still
read a lot, and I was interested in writing. And

(38:36):
there was a class where there was an assignment that
I was finishing up. It was a writing class, a
literature class, and I told the teacher I'm going to
be one day late with this, but it's going to
be really good. And he said, if you're late, I'm
going to fail you. I said, you know it'll be

(38:59):
worth it. And so it wasn't. Well. He gave me
an f. I said, you know, I'm the one in
this class that cares more than any other kid in
here about what you're talking about or teaching, and so
you know you're making a choice like this. So it

(39:21):
pissed me off enough that I quit everything in college
except for big band. And that was a period of
time when it was like hippie time and it was
us in them and straight people and you know, other people.
And so I decided that if I'm going to do this,

(39:42):
I'm gonna do I'm gonna take it, approach it like
a job. So my drums were set up in the
living room in our little suburban house.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Just to be clear, you'd already gone on that road gig.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
That's right, because now I was after high school. I
was in junior college and College of San Matteo, and
so my parents went to work, and at eight am,
i'd be there at the drums, like I said, I'm
gonna I'm gonna work at like eight to five, you know.

(40:15):
And so I practice and i'd have a real to
reel tape recorder there where i'd slow things down to
three and a half, three and a third, thirty three
and a third whatever it was, and learned things. And
I was taking lessons, and then at three o'clock i'd
go to big band, and then at night i'd go
play clubs around the Palo Alto area, and that's what

(40:37):
I did for a good solid couple of years, and
I really progressed because I was practicing all day long.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
Okay, in the next step.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
The next step was apparently some of the guys from
Jefferson Airplane heard about me, or somebody told me told
them about me. At this point, I was going to
the film more. You know, that was the mecca. I mean,

(41:13):
I would I've seen groups like the Yardbirds with Jeff
Beck and Jimmy Page. You see Cream there, very much
like Charles Lloyd with Jack Dee Jeannette with the Blues guys.
And there was a thing that happened where you probably

(41:38):
are familiar with this, but with Al Cooper and Steven
Stills and Michael Bloomfield. All Right, So I called all
my friends for some reason, my musician friends, and said,
let's go see if we can sit in and and
so they're like, yeah, right. And then there's one guy

(41:59):
that said, man, that sounds like fun. Hold on one second.
I was still living at home. He was living with
a girl already. He came back after talking to his
girlfriend and said, uh, I think I'm just going to
stay in And I think that that night when he
said that was the reason I didn't get married till
I was in my thirties. So I borrowed my father's

(42:24):
car and I said, damn it, at least I can
go and say that I tried. I'm going to go
and just say, you know, what the hell I mean.
You know, they're right, probably nothing's gonna happen, but I'm
going to go. So I drove up to the city,
went to Fillmore West, walked in in Census, going past
the apples, grabbed an apple before I could get my

(42:46):
fear go up. I walked straight up to the stage
to Michael Bloomfield looked up and I pulled down on
his pants and I said, hey, man, I'm a drummer.
You think I could sit in and it's like, okay,
my job's done. At least I tried. I'm waiting for
him to, you know, laugh at me or whatever. Instead

(43:08):
he leans down and said, man, the drummer is a
really nice guy. Let me go ask him. And I'm like,
oh shit, you know this I didn't expect. Well. I
ended up sitting in that night. I mean, it was
so traumatic, I don't even remember it. But afterwards I
was backstage, which is oh man, I'm backstage here, you know,

(43:30):
with all these guys, and the bass player in Santana
and the manager in Santana at that time came up
to me and said, we heard you play, and we're
thinking about getting another drummer, you know, And so they
took my number, and I didn't hear from them. So

(43:51):
what happened was somehow Jeff's an airplane heard about me
and they invited me. Yorma and Jack, those were my guys,
and they invited me to go to La They were
recording Bathing at Baxter's that record and the first airplane

(44:14):
ride I ever took was with those two guys PSA
and where the stewardesses were really all cute and with
short pink skirts, and it was special to fly back then.
And Buddy Miles, I remember, was on that flight as well.
And I stayed with Yorma. What was that hotel so

(44:40):
where everybody stayed, you know, No, the other one.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Well, later it was the Sunset Marquis, But before that
it was like all those places in Hollywood, like in
Hollywood and Highland between there and Libria.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, it's on the tip of my tongue. It wasn't
Sunset Marquee yet but it wasn't Riot House at any rate.
Here I am, I'm a kid. I'm down there with
Yourma and Jack. And like Jim Morrison comes by the hotel.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
You know, Oh you're talking about shit on Santa Monica Boulevard, the.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
Tropicana Tropicana, that's right, right, So I feel like a
like Forrest Gump, you know. And and then Eric Clapton
comes by with a cassette of a group he's really
excited about, really kind of raving about, and they were
called the Band. And then I go to the studio

(45:39):
and then David Crosby comes in and he presents the
band with a tune called Triad, which the Birds didn't
want to do because they thought it was too racy.
And so David comes in teaches them the song and
they put it down a record. And you know, that

(46:01):
was like my weekend in La. It's like if I
went back home, nobody would believe me, you know, And
so I would go over to the Jeffson Airplanes, their
mansion on Fulton St.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Wa Wait for you, did you play when you were
down there that weekend?

Speaker 2 (46:15):
No? I did not. They just brought me along to
observe because they still had their drummer. I think it
was Spencer Dryden, and so I'm not sure what the
what the politics were, but I would go over to
their mansion, you know, I would hang out and I

(46:37):
would play. We'd jam over there. Garcia would be there.
I mean, Ken Kesey would be there. Jeez. There were
a night at Orma's house where it's just like unbelievable
stuff for a kid that was like seventeen or something,
you know, it's like and somehow it didn't work out
with them. And so I'm back at my parents' house

(47:02):
and I go sit in up there at the Fillmore
and I don't hear from them, but as one does
when you're a musician, you're always looking for free studio time.
And I went to this studio in San Matteo, the
same city that I went to college and where I
used to go there all the time, try to get

(47:23):
studio time. And I walk in. As I'm walking in,
literally the drummer in Santana. We passed each other at
the doorway. I go inside and Santana is there recording
their first album for Columbia. They had been to La
and it didn't They didn't like the vibe, and so

(47:46):
they just had a falling out with their drummer, and
a couple of guys remembered me from that night at
the Filmore, and then they asked me if I wanted
to play, If you want a jam, you know and lead.
We played for a long time, and after that they
took me in a room, I mean it was Carlos

(48:07):
and Greg Rawley, I think Carabello, and they asked me
if I wanted to join the band, and I said,
you know, let me checked my schedule. So they followed
me home, literally to my parents' house. I go in
and pack a few things. I wake up my folks

(48:29):
and say, okay, this is where I get off. I'll
be up in the city and I'll be in touch.
And I drove up to the Mission District with these
guys and took my place on the Where was I
on the couch? Yeah, on the couch, And now I

(48:52):
was in the band.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Okay, now you're.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
In the Yeah. So all of a sudden, all these
things that I had worked so hard for and saved
up for, like like a union card. You know, it
took a while to get. They already had a manager,
they already had a record deal. They had an office,

(49:21):
they had a rehearsal place, and they they just plugged
me in and and they rehearsed their ass off. You know,
I think that two bands worked as hard as we
did at rehearsals like Sighting the Family Stone and Santana.

(49:45):
We were it was like a job. We rehearsed all
day long, every day. And then after rehearsal, we'd go
to the film wore we could get in for free
and we'd go check the groups out, and you know,
it was like quite a life. But we were working hard.
And I soon realized, I said this in my speech

(50:05):
at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, that this
was no hippie love thing. This was like a street
gang and their weapon was music. And it was really
like that. It was like they're serious, you know. I mean,
they'd make fun of you if you weren't doing it right.
You know, it's like your mama that type of thing,
you know, and so you had to get thick skinned,

(50:27):
and you know, it's it was. It was so much
better than being in Jefferson Airplane. It was just meant
to be Jefferson Airplane. Like I listened to every once
in a while not really, but like David Crosby's first album,

(50:48):
which I played on and I listened to it, and
it's that music. It's hard for me to play, you know,
It's like I don't even know how it can sound
good kind of. So the Santana thing was perfect because
it was fiery and I was not at all a
Latin drummer, not whatsoever. But I approached everything like a

(51:11):
jazz drummer and it fit and it was just such
a natural place for me to be musically, and then
be friends with Yorman and Jack from Jeffson Airplane.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Okay, the record, the album doesn't come out until actually
just afterwards, talk like days. What was it like recording
that album and to what degree could the band work
out to support themselves on what we live it on.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
The band was quite popular in the Bay Area. I
mean I had seen the band twice before I even
went up to the film More. I saw them at
a church days and I saw them at a high school,
and I was a fan of the band. He even
commented to my brother, this, that's that's a band I'd

(52:08):
love to play with. So, like I said, you know,
they were gigging a lot. They took time out to
do the record. The record was intense because it was
all live. It was all live. It's like, you know,

(52:29):
we do a better take, we do this, okay. The
guitars could punch in, keyboards could punch in, drums couldn't
punch in, and so, and the demand of the intensity
was great. You know. It wasn't like mister nice guy's stuff.
It was like, motherfucker, come on, you know. And so,

(52:53):
but I loved it. I just it was just perfect
place for me to be. And then the record was
done and we beg We'd be gigging all over the
place in the Bay Area and some places down the coast.
And Bill Graham was a big fan of the band,

(53:15):
and he he told us about a big festival that's
coming up. He said, you're going to play this festival
and your lives are going to change after it. And
I'm going to tell you right now, it's not going

(53:35):
to be like anything that you ever experienced, and you
don't you want to keep yourself in check. And so
he prepared us for this festival by sending us out
and doing festivals like the Texas Pop Festival, Atlanta Pop Festival,
Miami Big festivals. You know, of course there were San

(54:00):
Francisco bands playing, but other bands as well, and it
sort of got us playing in front of larger audiences
than say Fillmore's or auditoriums and things like that. And
then you know, of course the festival that he was

(54:21):
talking about was Woodstock, and Michael Lang and John Roberts
and the folks that put it together had bitten something off,
but they realized that it's a little more they can
chew that they you know, it got big and they
asked Bill Graham, which probably really hurt them because Bill

(54:43):
Graham was already like the man to them, right. And
Bill said, yes, they do it if he could pick
a band to play at the show. And so he
gave them like three or four options. I forget, I
don't know who the others were. And Michael Lang and

(55:03):
those guys decided they listened to Santana and they said Santana.
So that's how we got on that show.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
Okay, the movie doesn't come out until April nineteen seventy,
so prior to that, it's all press. What was it like?
I mean, we've all seen the movie, but your experience,
what was it like playing Woodstock?

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Well, it's interesting because I mean we took a break
from the summer of touring prior to Woodstock. We stayed
in a house in Woodstock. We rented a house and
we set up to play in the living room. So

(55:51):
because we were always playing, and then we started hearing
about the traffic problems. We started hearing about what they're
shutting down the through ways that they called it the
through way out in California, it's the freeway out there
was the through way, so and that was like, whoa,

(56:14):
you know, we can't drive there. We're gonna have to
go to the holiday in where they have helicopters and
we're going to have to go in that way. So
we flew in on the helicopter, I think with the
Dead I know, Jerry Garcia was there, Janie, and that's
when we realized, you know, it's like, holy shit, I mean,

(56:37):
look at this amount of people. This is like you
never nothing you'd ever experienced before, much less that you're
going to play in front of them. So so that
was really something. But by the time we got to
play there, By the time we got on stage, and

(56:58):
one of the things that I realized in respect Bob
is that as a band. We never thought of ourselves
as quote unquote entertainers. We were like serious musicians band.
We played to inspire each other, and so we were
always kind of close, I mean physically, so that we

(57:20):
could hear each other and that we could like look
each other in the eyes. And it was a huge stage,
and the other stages that we had played on that
summer were huge too, but we always work close to
each other physically, and it was the same thing at Woodstock.
So the only frightening thing about Woodstock was I remember

(57:43):
my thinking was, this is like being at the ocean
and all you can see is water until you see
the horizon, and it was it was like being at
the ocean, except it was people. We were very high
up as well, and so there it was quite a

(58:05):
bit distance. And so in later years I thought, after
being in Santana and stuff, I thought, it's more difficult
to play in a smaller club than a huge place
because you can see the people you know. And we

(58:25):
had the benefit of us being a band that played
two and four each other, and so so it was
very intense. And the other thing is that I keep
forgetting is that nobody had heard any of our music.
Everybody else had an album out, nobody had heard any
of our music. But by the time we were done,

(58:47):
they loved us. And I think I attribute that to
it was we were so tribal and they were tribal.
It it just clicked. You know. The band was one
big rhythm section and oftentimes not with little funky intimate
parts like James Brown or something, you know, with this

(59:08):
kind of guitar or this like every you know, the
bandwidth was really wide and it was all playing the
same rhythm at the same time, and it just it
just worked, to say the least.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Okay, Woodstock, there's a lot of press, those people paying attention,
No you play. First album comes out, Evil Ways, is
a lot of play on FM, kind of a hit
on AM. The album is something. And then third week
of April the movie comes out the record Triple Albums

(59:47):
that comes out at the same time. Had you seen
or where what was in the movie before it was
actually released.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
Everybody says we did, but I don't remember it. What
I remember is in New York City a year later
and standing in line to see the movie with everybody else.
So we're all of the band are standing in line
and the show before the one we were going into

(01:00:16):
comes out and they're walking out of the theater under
the street. Then they start pointing at us, and prior
to that that had never happened.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Okay, so you're in the theater.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
No, we're on the stode.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
No no, no, no, Now you're in the theater.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
And we've all seen the movie multiple times. What are
some of the highlights. Crosbie still's Nashy Young saying they're
scared shit liss sly in the family Stone.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
But one of the iconic moments in the whole fucking
movie is you doing a drum solo. What was it
like sitting there in the audience and seeing the amount
of time you've got in the movie?

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Me up, it was I didn't know whether just creep
down in my chair and disappear or stand up and
start shouting that's me, that's me. And also there were
six of me up there the way they did the edit,
and of course later I learned that it was Scorsese

(01:01:21):
that did that edit, and I didn't know what to do.
I honestly, you know, how do you react to seeing
six of yourselves up there and only that then people
gave it a stay in ovation when it's done, and
I'm like, oh my god, you know, let me call
my mommy. You know, no, I didn't think that, but

(01:01:45):
it's like, what do you do. It's like a place
you'd never been before, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Okay, there were many fewer stars there in the world
at large, unlike today, no one's as big. There are
many people in the landscape. You are now internationally known,
not only the band, but your face. You're walking around
people now recognize you. It wasn't It.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
Wasn't quite like that. I mean I've always been and
even then sort of like in between, like like for me,
it's like I have enough fame for myself, thank you
very much. It's not like I could go anywhere and
people would point at me and things like that. It
was still I mean, it was a huge film, but

(01:02:35):
it wasn't like at the same time, it really wasn't
like a movie star or it wasn't Jimmy Hendrix or
you know, something like that. And but it was never
where people would pointing at me going down the street.
I would get recognized and and you know, but it

(01:02:57):
was it was never quite like that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Okay, just after the movie comes out, you start recording
A Braxis, which is just a phenomenal album, doesn't get
as much respect as it should to this day. Tell
me about recording A Braxis.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
Yeah, I think it was really an amazing process. We
had grown so quickly from being a band that the
first album is all live you know, I mean, this
is like raw material. The second album was songs, and

(01:03:35):
we started learning really quickly how to utilize the studio.
Carlos learned really quickly, like how to punch in, and
so that his guitar parts, I mean, they're classic parts
to this day. You know, he's not just riffing, and
they're memorable, and so you could see that what he

(01:03:56):
had in mind was like memorable melody that would stand
the test of time. We were really good at arranging songs.
I brought Fleetwood Max Black Magic Woman to Greg Rawleigh.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
A little bit slower at this point. Many people know
that that's a Peter Green song, but most people didn't
know for years. How did you know the song? How'd
you decided to bring to Greg rawling.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Well, I'm a big record fan. I am now always been,
whether it's like the cool English groups or Burt backrack,
you know, to study his arrangements, but or Henry Mancini
for that matter, and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
I got it. I got it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Yeah. So that that that album was so heavy, That
Fleetwood Mac album, I mean it had a well on it.
It had black magic war it has not only that,
the sound of it was so cool. It was like
when you first heard John Mayle's Blues Breakers with Eric

(01:05:10):
Clapton right or East West right. I mean, those were
the sounds. You'd see them in every living room and
you know, you just think about it and you smell
the incense in the pot. But it was the sound
and as well as the blues were during that time too.
I mean, the hippies love the blues and and so

(01:05:33):
these are kind of iconic and this record, to me
sounded iconic. But I also thought that Greg this would
fit his voice very well, and so I brought it
to him and he learned it, and he kept trying
to present it to the band at sound checks, and

(01:05:54):
it took a while, you know, for it to sync
in to Carlos or the other guy, but then it started.
We started working on an arrangement, and I think one
of the one of the best things about the band
was how we arranged the tunes simple as they may be,
to be dynamic and classic, you know, I mean, I

(01:06:18):
mean Bill Graham brought us Okova, you know. Yeah, Bill
was a salsa fan, and so he suggested that tune
and then evil ways. Like these guys when I when
I first started living with them, their tastes were. It

(01:06:44):
was really fascinating to me because the stuff that they
liked sometimes seemed so crude to me, you know, like
like crude. Like for instance, one of the tunes that
the band played, uh before I was in, I mean,
they already did Jingo, they already did some other tunes,

(01:07:04):
but was one called fried neck Bones by Willie Bobo.
And all it was was a groove and it was
fr neck Bones and some home fries wood, you know,
over and over and over again. And I'm thinking this
is so basic, you know, so rudimentary, It's like it

(01:07:26):
almost makes me laugh. But to them, it was all
about the groove, you know. And so in the arrangements
that that we would create create for these songs, it
was all about the groove. But there was also dynamics
in the piece, like I think that the Black Magic
Woman arrangement is really brilliant that Santana did you know?

(01:07:47):
And Carlos is like his theme up at the top,
and the drums the way they come in, and then
the beat that I play. The beat that I play
I learned from a record that I bought for fifty
nine cents in a drug store when I was a kid.
It was like bb King plays the cha cha and

(01:08:11):
I pulled that out of the hat. But that's blues
players were playing that rhythm anyway, so it's not like
I created anything. But but yeah, so also with that record,
I got to toot my own horn here because I
edited the singles. I edited like like Oilcova. I'd go

(01:08:33):
into the editing room and not tell anybody in the
band and I make a single out of it because
the band was kind of a jam band in a
lot of ways, and I just had a knack for
editing and I enjoyed it, and I was kind of
fearless with it. And you know, this is the kind

(01:08:54):
of thing that you don't tell anybody or they'll argue
with you, you know, so just do it if they
don't like it, and say, gave all the tape, you know,
to the engineer. But yeah, that record was interesting also.
We were doing it at Wally Hiders Studios in San
Francisco on Hyde Street and which is now a den

(01:09:19):
of iniquity, and that was just unbelievable to look at.
But at the same time we were recording that, Creten's
clear Water was recording their big hit album in another
room downstairs. I got called down to play with David Crosby.
David Crosby was down there. I just saw a picture

(01:09:41):
of this like six months ago for the first time.
It's me behind Crosby and then the Jerry Garcia and
Phil Lesh and Neil Young, you know. And I'm like,
you know, I don't even remember these things, you know,
and or you think you do, but then here's a photo,

(01:10:03):
you know. And this was all happening in the same
studio at the same time. That was another discipline band
was Queen's clear Water. They were different. They were not
of the hippie ilk you know. I mean John Fogeli
ran a tight ship and wrote tight songs as well.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
Okay, I gotta talk about a couple more tracks on
that album. See if you have any stories incident at
nesha Burg, anything you can tell me about.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
That absolutely that incident at at niche Borg is. Everything
to do with that song has to do with a
piano player that used to hang around us, a blues
player named Alberto gi and Quinto.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
He was.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
He's Italian and a white guy who played with James Cotton.
He was also like a militant black you know, even
though he's white. He was a big black panther guy,
you know, revolutionary type of guy with the beard, like
everything's about Jacovara and uh uh. He lived with the

(01:11:23):
bass player David Brown, but he was brilliant and we
brought him into it to help us arrange some of
these songs like that. He played piano on it, Greg
Rawley later, you know, learn some stuff on it. But
that arrangement of that song, I'm trying to remember the song.

(01:11:50):
I think that was. That line came from like an
advertisement like cleaner than this, some kind of like cleaning
cleaning oil or cleaning liquid. And then that bum bum
bum bum dundown. So all that. So there's like two

(01:12:10):
or three sections just to the intro, so it was
a little bit complex for us. And then to me
is the most beautiful part where it goes into the
domm doom and that part that I'm playing, I can't

(01:12:30):
play that anymore. It was so it was so I
worked a long time on it, and if you play,
you have to play it lightly, but it's like a
slow motion wise, just like GETT. It was pretty complex,

(01:12:53):
but it was such a joy. It was just such
a pleasure because this is kind of like my my
Brazilian jazz light style. To play with Santana now it's
like I can't even I can't even play that hard,
you know, And so I just loved it. And plus
what I loved was Carlos is playing, I mean, his

(01:13:16):
melodicism and the way he would arrange his his solos,
you know, which were they were not like the usual
solos like a Bloomfield solo or a Claptain solo. They
were parts that were, you know, burned in your memory.
And I always loved playing that. It showed a certain

(01:13:40):
level of musicianship. And then when it breaks open on
the end to that slow halftime thing, I don't know,
it's just sexy as hell. It's so sensual, and Carlos
and I always were like there with that, you know,
and he would bend that note and take forever to
come down like a water, you know, and I was,

(01:14:02):
you know, I'm like that guy, that the type of
drummer that's the hopeless romantic, you know. So I'm like
drooling and sweating and just like right there with it.
You know. It's this music that moved me. There was
another tune on that record, See which one was it?
Do you have a list of the tunes? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
But you know, I was going to ask you about
a track. My entrance to the album and the reason
I bought it is a track that no one talks about,
which I don't think is the track you're talking about.
But do you have anything you can tell me about
Mother's Daughter?

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
I laughed, because that's Greg Rawley, right, This is what
Greg Rowley brought this. This is like English rock, you know,
to the band and I have a hard time playing
that kind of stuff. I mean, it was like easier
for me to play the other stuff and play this
kind of Mother's Daughter. Let me see, I get it

(01:14:57):
confused with I hope you're feeling better.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):
Right right? You know, well, as I say, if it
doesn't have any specific song, but it's followed, I hope
you're feeling better? And then are you talking about Samba
Patti or Sea Cabo or singing Winds, Crying Beasts on
the koya. What was the other song you wanted to
say something about it?

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
It is not on that record, but I can comment
on some of those songs. Samba Patti, now Samba Pati.
I didn't play drums on that was played by our
Timbali player and nic Roguin Conga player, Chipzo Arrayis. He

(01:15:41):
had a feel on that thing that you know, it
just brought the thing to life, and so I just said,
you play it because I can learn it later. But
we're making this record, and you know, he's kind of
masterful at drums and everything, and so he played that.
It's just so beautiful. It's simple, but man, it's a

(01:16:06):
feel too, you know. And I knew the value of
that song that was. It was like a Carlos classic.
Same thing with Shako bo. I ended up recording it,
but that rhythm is his k comes from him, you
know these You know, I'm still the white kid from
the suburbs at this point, you know, opening myself up

(01:16:29):
to because he he was nic Roguin. Michael Kerrabello is
of Puerto Rican descent, and and so it was a
blend of these different things. It wasn't like New York salsa,
let's put it that way. And so that that rhythm

(01:16:50):
I would just transfer to the uh tom thoms for socoo.
You know, that was new for me. You know, stuff
like jingo even you know, goom goom, doom, goom goom.
It's just basic. But I've seen a lot of cover

(01:17:10):
cover bands do that stuff, and if it's not right,
it's not right, you know. So I learned a lot
from that. So what on na koya? That's Tippito again too,
what's the other one?

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
You know, let's see singing winds, crying beasts.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
Yeah, so that's Carabello. But that's me. That all that vibe,
all that stuff, that's me. All the anything vibe and
you know vibes bib her phone as well, and the
idea for just the atmosphere. I set that up and
it was a beautiful way to start the record. It

(01:17:52):
was kind of a bold way to start a record,
definitely right. I mean you could have they say had
a hit first, but we were very much into like
a vibe. And even that's because the arrange, the arrangements
of the songs too, it's all like setting a mood. Really,
but there was one other tune. I'm trying to think,

(01:18:14):
if it's on this, maybe it's on another album.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
Okay, let's go to the next record. Your nineteen seventy
one album Santana usually can refer it to as Santana
three gets great reviews. Santana's Gigantic has a hit with
no one to depend on, But it from the outside
didn't seem as commercially successful as the previous album. What

(01:18:39):
did it feel like on the inside.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
On the inside, it felt like trouble was brewing. The
success of a Braxis and Santana as a worldwide band,
and we went to countries before a lot of the
rock groups, did you know, South America, Central America, places

(01:19:04):
like that. We got kicked out of Peru by the
president of the country. Drugs. There were drugs involved at
this point. There was ego involved, there was money involved,
you know, sex, drugs in rock and roll. Here you go,
you know so much at such a young age, and

(01:19:27):
you know, they hopefully they teach courses about that stuff now,
but they didn't then. And you're kind of lucky if
you survive, and then you're even lucky if you, you know,
can think and still make the music you want to make.
So that was a heady time. A lot of cocaine.
There was a lot of cocaine around that period, and

(01:19:50):
that that druggle do it. So Trpezzo had an aneurysm
in his brain. He took some somebody gave him some
acid and it didn't go well with him and he
was never quite the same after that. Coke Escavito, who

(01:20:10):
was Sheila's uncle, and Pete Escoveto were in and around
the band at that time too, because they were well
regarded Timbali and Latin players. There was also a band
called a brack as Teca at that time that was
their band and very popular, had a lot of great players.

(01:20:34):
Coke Escavito became a big influence on Carlos during that period,
and he brought in no one to depend on. Although
I've heard that tune since by somebody else, like Tito
punt or something. He brought in another Tito Puente song
for that album, and perhaps the song but inside we

(01:20:58):
were still playing well, but it was starting to split
at the seams a little bit and it was difficult
to make that, but it's still a great record. I
think it's really a great record. Let's see what else
is on that record.

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
Well, you know we can move forward from there because
there are good songs on that. But how does Neil
Sean get into the band?

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
Okay? So, like I said, Greg Rowley, English Rock, Right,
So Greg and I went to see went to a
club in Palo Alto where I used to play as
a kid all the time, called the Poppycock on the
University Way, and Neil Sean was playing with a band there.

(01:21:50):
Neil was like fifteen sixteen and he just blowing everybody away.
Now he was in Samatao. When I was in Junior
College of Samontao. I was playing charts in the big
band that Neil has shown father had written Matt shown

(01:22:12):
and so Greg was like, holy shit, who is this guy? Now?
This is what Greg wanted, you know, like for his songs.
He wanted like a Clapton kind of vibe. And Carlos
was as great as Carlos was. I know that Greg
always wished they had this other thing. So he had

(01:22:34):
the balls to propose that, you know, Neil maybe play
with us. And and I remember there was one night
Neil's in high school, mind you and he goes to
the Berkeley Community Theater and he sits in with Eric
Clapton playing Leila and you can imagine, you know. And

(01:22:59):
then and then Eric Clapton asked him if he wanted
to join his band. Can you imagine Neil going to
high school? It's like it's like my it's like my
trip to la Like who's gonna believe you? You know?
And and then Carlos like it was so big of

(01:23:21):
him to say, yes, okay, you know, we can have
another guitar player in the band. And and that opened
it up in a lot of ways. In some ways,
so Neil was in the band. He had to make
a choice between Santana and Eric Clapton and kind of
heady for junior in high school or something, uh, and

(01:23:46):
obviously a prodigy, very based in that Eric Clapton vibe.
And so obviously he chose Santana because he's familiar with
the guys and you know, we're writing the neighborhood and
that sort of thing. So that's how Neil got in
the band. And then that changed some of the writing.

(01:24:07):
It's changed some of the the approach, but the guitar
solos there came like two guitar solos and they were
very different. But but I think Neil also kicked Carlos's
butt too.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:24:19):
It's like the kid could play. And not that Carlos
ever needed anybody kicking kicking is you know, he he
already was one of the most driven people I'd ever met. So,
but that's how Neil got in the band.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
Okay, the following album, caravans Aai your co producer. How
do you become co producer?

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
Well, I've become co producer because this is this was
kind of my record, me and Carlos's record. And uh,
but before you do that, what are the tunes on
the on the third album I Want to Drive Me Crazy?
What that tune is that?

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
Well, the tunes on the third album are Batuka, No
One to Depend On, Taboo to sant Loo, Overture, Everybody's Everything,
Lagira Jungle Strut, Everything's Coming Our Way, and Paro los Romberos.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
Right, that's a Tito plantation. Yeah, it's one of those
tunes that is one of my favorites. There's some good
tunes on there now that you run them down. So
what was happening? What happened? More and more was more success,
more money, more drugs. And in another part of the

(01:25:43):
music world, what was happening was Miles Davis, Bitches Brew,
Weather Report, chick Corea, all this other stuff that was
happening that I thought, this is where the shit is.
I mean, you know, the rock and roll is rock
and roll, but this is some new stuff. Me having

(01:26:05):
followed the jazz thing and seeing what's happening is the
jazz guys are kind of moving over to the rock vibe,
at least playing a backbeat, and things are changing. You
know that Bitches Brew Miles Davis went in the studio
to record Bitches Brew one day after Woodstock. Wow, that's

(01:26:26):
what Lenny White told me. So it's like there's change
happening here and it's very exciting and and I was
all over that and all over the Brazilian music that
was happening music. You know, Sergo Mendez was doing really
interesting things, and Carlos and I started leaning in that direction,

(01:26:46):
and we also started getting tired of the lifestyle and
we both got spiritual teachers. Now that started because John mcgloffin,
he had you know, Streech of Noi and has done
Mamavius Orchestra, which was like, like going to that show

(01:27:11):
is like going to another planet. You know, It's like
I'll never forget, like having to scrape myself off the
wall after sliding down, you know, after hearing Billy called
me in the volume of that band and it was
just otherworldly. And that's when I realized, I am never
going to play play like that in my life. There's

(01:27:31):
no way I'm ever gonna play like that in my life.
So don't even try, you know, find your own way
and h and be happy. So so Carlos and I
started bringing this kind of music into the band, like live,
like even on last days at the film more we do.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
In a silent way, you kill it in a way,
you do it better than the original. Oh unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
And you know, man, it's just a groove too, right,
Like that's a very simple way for like saying that
Carlos is somebody to play a Miles tune, it's actually
a Joe zallin All tune, right who started weather Report.
But you could see the connection we after the third album,
Carlos and I were so into this stuff that we

(01:28:23):
and we were popular enough that we would we would
hire weather Report to be our opening act on a
tour so we could just watch them every night, you know,
one one time with Bobby Womack, so I wanted to
try to write with them. I love Bibie Womack, I
love Maybe Staples, right, that kind of singer. So okay,

(01:28:47):
So we go in the studio and we're very influenced
by by you know, Antonio Carlos, Joe Beam and Pharaoh
Sanders and Coltrane and Miles and and we have a
new bass player now named Dougie Rouch who we met
in Africa at that concert in Africa, and he was

(01:29:09):
kind of genius with odd times and electronics ahead of
his time. And we started playing this stuff and we
did the album and it was very conceptual album too,
I mean, you know, crickets at the top and the
saxophone where I did twenty seven edits of Hadley Calluman

(01:29:30):
solo to make it like a sound pastiche. And it's
still a beautiful record. I didn't listen to it until
the fiftieth anniversary, like in the last year, and I
gave it a listen all the way through and I
thought it blew my mind.

Speaker 1 (01:29:47):
Bob.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
I thought, wow, man, we really did some good work. So,
but the band hated it. Greg Rawley hates hated it.
Neil didn't like it. There was a roadie that we
had named Herbie Herbert. I knew Herbie right, so, and

(01:30:12):
Herbie was like, you know, Herbie was the guy that
started putting tied eyes on amplifiers and he was, you know,
a supreme roadie. But he hated it too. He was
not only they hated it, they were pissed. Clive Davis
was pissed. Clive Davis told me and Carlos your committing
career suicide, you know, And but we loved it. And

(01:30:38):
so Herbie was so pissed he said, I'm gonna start
a band. I'm gonna put a band together based around
Neil Sean and it's gonna be progressive, but it's going
to be rock and roll. And Greg Rawley was there
and that's how Journey started. So I always figure, ah,
I had a big hand in starting Journey, which I

(01:31:00):
had a piece of it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:10):
Let's stop for a second. Tell me about you and
Carlos getting spiritual teachers.

Speaker 2 (01:31:15):
I think for him it was dramagloffin, you know, being
with treacham Noy, which he and also Larry Coriel had
been a disciple. I think he was thinking, Number one,
I don't like the lifestyle of like these drugs. It's
ruining the music, it's ruining this. And two maybe if

(01:31:40):
I get a guru like that, I can play like them,
you know, I don't know. For me, I was of
the same mind. I was reading, already reading spiritual books.
We were both like into Paramahansa, Yoga Nanda. We were.
I mean I always wanted to. I mean, before I
got kicked out of that school, I wanted to be

(01:32:00):
a priest. You know. I was a guy that rode
my bicycle to mass six am Mass every day, and
I in my mind, I was going to be a
servant of God. I was going to be specifically, it
was going to be a missionary priest. Don't ask me why.
So later, while being on the road for you know,

(01:32:23):
two hundred days, I said, I'm a missionary, you know.
And but it's the music, it's it's it's okay. So
I started getting deep into reading all of the the
Eastern religion books. I was very much into it. And

(01:32:45):
and I went with Carlos to see shreepedim Noid for
the first time in New York. To me, we both
took a taxi out there and went and sat in
front of him while he was like on a stage
and he meditated, and the whole place turned white. It
was really phenomenal. And and then back in the taxi,

(01:33:06):
Carlos was like, Man, I think I found my guy.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
What do you think?

Speaker 2 (01:33:09):
You know? I think that was really amazing, But I
don't think i've I don't think he's my guy. So
I ended up going with a which seemed like a
different type of spiritual person named Swami Sachanda, who more
or less brought yoga to the States in a big way.

(01:33:34):
And it kept us really clear and clean. You know,
we were meditating every day, we were eating clean, we
had aspirations, and we let the other stuff go. And
it became very clear, with no no question or doubt,
that we wanted to move in a new direction. And

(01:33:56):
that's how that's how all that happened Caravanserai, and and
that's how the band broke up.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
Okay, a couple of things. What do you feel about
all those spiritual insights fifty years on?

Speaker 2 (01:34:14):
I think I believe them all feel the same way
about them now that I did. Then it's just that
I incorporate them differently. But deep down I think this
record Drums Compassion is just an extension of that. To me,

(01:34:35):
this is an extension of Cara answer II. It's an
extension of the way that I actually feel about music
and what the power of music is. And then if
you're going to talk about the power of music, then
you have to talk about the power of pulse and rhythm.
And I've very much always been into sound and frequency
and vibration. I'm not a hippie, but I'm pretty out there,

(01:34:59):
you know so, But I have a I have a
better sense of humor now than I used to. Uh.
I was pretty strict and hard on myself, uh and
pretty a snob in a lot of ways. There's a
lot of music I didn't like. I didn't like Zeppelin,
Pink Floyd, come on, you know this? That is more

(01:35:21):
like I want players. But now I'm I'm much more
open and I can accept just the vibe, you know, what,
the intention, what somebody's doing. And but I still have
the same hunger to find new music constantly, which I

(01:35:42):
find that most of my contemporaries do not, you know,
I mean I'm I love finding new music. I mean,
whether it's like the English or Norwegian or Scandinavian jazz scene.
The younger people who come up, they came up with electronics,

(01:36:03):
but they came up liking Coltrane and and Pharaoh Sanders
and so it makes for really interesting combinations. I just
discovered this guy the other day. You probably know him.
His name is Wren. You know, this guy so out there, Bob.

(01:36:24):
It's so out there, but it's brilliant. I mean it's
like he's got this song where he's talking to himself
like two different like and it's so deep and intense,
and you got to say you can say like sister
is fucked up, or you say this is really interesting,
you know. I mean, so I'm I'm of the mind

(01:36:46):
that there's a lot of good music going on out there.
And I read you all the time talking about, you know,
how musicians keep barking up the same tree when that
tree is like there's no more bark on it, you know.
And that's why I'm curious to put my music in
different environments now, with these digital artists or you know,

(01:37:08):
immersive situations and and and you know, I mean, I'm
going to be seventy five years old next week, you know.
And I mean, I'm enjoying making my AI art as
much as I used to love playing drums. And now
that's a big area too. That's like, that's like, that's

(01:37:30):
as heavy as talking about Trump or Biden. You know,
you start talking politics, you start talking AI. But I
see it as a tool and I think we're living
in exciting times. Scary times, mind you, but but I'm
excited by you know, what people are doing in music.

(01:37:54):
You just you can't look on the charts. You can't
look here or there. You got to look in different places.

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
You know, let's go back and do some clean up work.
So how does it end with you in Santiana?

Speaker 2 (01:38:07):
All right? So I had been thinking for quite a
while that was time to leave. There was a moment
where we were working on like I guess I called
the Trilogy of our Carave answer, I I Barboletta, welcome
care answer, I welcome Barboletta. And you know, it's like

(01:38:31):
I thought it was me and Carlos, you know, we're
taking this thing in a new direction. And then I also,
you know, was a big fan of Brazilian music and
brought some Brazilian stuff in there, and I hear Toe
and Flora you know, are you familiar with them? Yeah?
So they were in the studio one night. We had

(01:38:53):
done a tune and that I had co written called
Yours is the Light, and Flora Uh was going to
sing it. I wrote the lyrics and she sang it,
and my playing on it is one of the proudest
moments of my Santana career. Playing this style of like
Brazilian music, you know. It was It's kind of like

(01:39:14):
incident Nicheborg type of you know, like, oh, this is
really something I can be proud of. And then at
the end of it, Carlos looked over at I hear
two and asked him, do you want to redo the drums?
You know? And I here two listened to it and said,
I'm not fucking touching that, you know, and I'm like,
thank you. I hear too. And that night I realized

(01:39:36):
it it wasn't me and Carlos anymore, you know what
I mean. It's like, if he in front of me
is going to ask somebody to redo my track, it's
like time for me to get out of here. So
what happened was I was living with my brother Kevin,
and I had this extreme pain. I had to crawl

(01:39:59):
into his bedroom and say, take me to the hospital.
And I thought I was going to die, and I said,
if I wake up alive. On the way to the hospital,
I said, if I wake up alive, I'm gonna have
to do the things that I've been putting off and
make some changes. I woke up alive. Turned out to

(01:40:20):
be a kidney stone. Wow, and those suckers hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
Oh, I've had a few, believe me.

Speaker 2 (01:40:27):
I know, right, geez, only comparable to childbirth. So so
the band, it was the new band, you know, the
original guys were gone, a new version of the band.
We were booked for a tour, but I had woken
up alive after making a promise to myself. So I

(01:40:48):
called the office and I said I'm not going. I'm
not going to do and they said, well, surely you
can do the tour. It's booked, and you wouldn't do
that to us, you know. Carlos came down to me
and I said, I'm sorry. I have to keep the
promise that I made to myself. I'm sure you can
find somebody else. I'm not going, and that's why I

(01:41:10):
left the band. So it wasn't on great terms, but
I was the last guy to leave from the original band.
But I felt like now it was different. What I
thought was like the two of us, it wasn't, you know,
so I mean, we're back in touch now. We talked
for an hour yesterday, you know, stuff like that, but
there was you know, that's how I left the band,

(01:41:35):
and it was it was really wonderful. I ended up
going down to Baja California to this health place. It's
really well known, and I stayed there for a month.
I brought my drums, I got super healthy, and I
came back and it just think, okay, where do I
want to go from here?

Speaker 1 (01:41:56):
You know, So how did you start Automatic Man or
how'd you get involved there?

Speaker 2 (01:42:04):
Automatic Man was okay. So I went to see Pink
Floyd the Wall at the Cow Palace, I think, and
and I thought, now, like I wasn't into their records
or anything like this, but I was always into performance

(01:42:26):
art and I was curious and I wanted to start
putting something together that now was real groove heavy but
not Latin but like funk rock, you know, but sophisticated.
And I wanted it to be conceptual, and so I

(01:42:47):
brought a friend of mine up there, young keyboard player
named Bayete Todd Cochrane, who was like kind of a
prodigy in the jazz scene, and while watching the Wall,
I told him like what I'd like to do, and

(01:43:08):
we started conceptualizing and putting it together, found Pat Thrall
and Donnie Harvey and rehearsed every single day at my house,
like every single day. And then I also at this

(01:43:29):
time had pursued Stomia Marshtaw and that was a recording
that was going to happen through Chris Blackwell in London,
and so the manager of Automatic Man flew to London
to meet with Chris Blackwell, and we made it so
that I could do both projects at the same time
in London, and we made a brilliant album. And that's

(01:43:53):
where I met Chris Kimsey and oh my god, I
just enjoyed that interview so much.

Speaker 1 (01:44:01):
Oh yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:44:02):
Oh my gosh. So that's how automatically I think we
made a brilliant record, a brilliant record, and then they
wanted to get rid of me for the second record
and wanted to move to l A. I was like whatever, man,
I mean, you know so, but we never did anything

(01:44:25):
live well, it never came off well live. It was
always kind of a disaster. But we do have this
record to be proud of and we're hoping to do
a re release with some extras and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:44:37):
With that record, I bought it because you were on it.
I certainly played it. How did you end up working
with Sammy Hagar and Neil Sean in the subsequent decade.

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
Funny story with that one. I was talking to Neil Sean.
I was living in New York City and and just
talking like we do, and he's saying, you know, we're
doing this thing. I'm doing this thing with Sammy Hagar,
and you know, we're talking about a bass player, Kenny

(01:45:11):
Aronson maybe, And I knew Kenny because we'd done some
stuff in New York. He said, we're just looking for
a drummer. And you know how it is, you talk
to your friends and you don't think of them as
a drummer. It's just your friend. So it was like that.
It's like, Michael, you know, why don't you do it?
And so so I did it. It was a real

(01:45:34):
real Herbie Herbert project. You know, real tight. Everything was
clean and you know, really good. But it's not really
my Like I said, I'm not really a rock drummer.
But I had a good time doing it. The guys
were great. I respected them. Years later, Sammy came out

(01:45:59):
with his book, you know, with Joe Selwyn friend, and
it was really I was reading it and he said,
so we got this drummer, Michael Shreeve. Now Michael's a
great rhythmic drummer, but he's no rock drummer, you know.
And I practically split up my coffee because I thought,
how outrageous the thing to say, you know, and I thought,

(01:46:20):
he's absolutely right. You know, he's absolutely right. I mean,
you gotta be honest with yourself. You know, I'm not
that kind of rock drummer. I wasn't back then, and
more than ever, i'm not now. I mean I can
kind of get by with that kind of plane. And
so it was a quick project that took like a

(01:46:41):
month to do, you know, live recording, the live shows,
filming of the shows, and then it was see you later,
and that was that.

Speaker 1 (01:46:51):
Okay, you're the drummer, you're in the band. You know,
you're not the main songwriter. So after all Automatic Man
in the go project, are you getting kind of anxious?
What am I going to do for work? What am
I going to do for money?

Speaker 2 (01:47:08):
Yeah? That's always a thing with me. So after Automatic Man,
let's see what did I do? Okay? We played? We
played Winterland Automatic Man. And the next day I met
with Bill Graham, just the two of us in his office,
and I said, what'd you think? It was a disaster?

(01:47:35):
And he said, you really want to know what I think?
I said, Bill, you know, I know you're not going
to pull any words or so he came around the desk,
sat right next to him and he said, no, it's
not for you, and it's not going to happen. And
that day my girlfriend the time I was living with

(01:47:55):
I rented a boat a lake in Golden Gate Park
and I said, I think it's time for me to
go to New York City. This is what I've always
wanted to do. And so I asked her if she
would come, and so moved to New York City. I

(01:48:16):
kind of moved outside of New York City to Rockham
County to Grand View on Hudson. Really interesting story. So
I bought a house from a guy named Lee Friedman
on the Hudson He's in the city. Lee Friedman's the
guy that ended up doing all the merchandising for Kiss.

(01:48:38):
He came from like Betsy Johnson that scene, and we
became friends. So by the time it was when it
was time for me to move into the house, I
went in to move and the family that was there
had not moved out. So I get there physically and
I'm like, what's going on? And the guy that was

(01:49:01):
living there was Arimavakian. Are you familiar with Aaron Avakian.
They dissed him in the in the in the movie
about the making of The Godfather, and it wasn't true
what they were saying about him. But he was so
upset because his wife had run off with al Pacino,

(01:49:24):
and and so you know that could be expected he
had he he didn't have. He couldn't get together to
pack up and move. Later, I became like his daughter
became my girlfriend. I'm still good friends with his son,

(01:49:45):
guitar player Tristanovakian. So I moved in there and then
I decided, well, really why I wanted to move to
New York City to be in the city, and so
what I did was I started a band called Novo Combo,

(01:50:05):
and I thought, I'm give myself a shot at this
sort of commercial thing again. I met a guy named
Stephen D's through Bill o'coyn kiss, his manager, and we
put a band together and we made a couple of albums,
some really good stuff, but it ended up falling apart

(01:50:25):
as well. And after that experience is when I said,
no more bands, no more democracy bands. You know, I
don't want to do anything unless I have final say
and it's just what I want. And stop trying to
make a hit, Stop trying to be beat your Santana stuff,

(01:50:46):
Stop trying to show everybody you can still make a hit.
Just fuck that. You know. You've always been left to center,
do it and do it hard and be happy doing it.
So anytime I went from money Bob, it just turned
out to be like it didn't work, you know. And
so ever since then, it's sort of I've just done

(01:51:10):
what I want, what I want to do, you know,
and learn to live with whatever I have. And the
money is not always great, it's up and down, but
I'm perfectly happy, you know. So I mean because I
feel kind of fulfilled, you know what I mean, I mean,
I know guys and I talked to them often who

(01:51:32):
have big bands and everything. I couldn't even live that way,
tell you the truth. You know, you've got to play
all the hits from forty years ago or this, and
there's so much ego, and it's like, I don't even
want to live. You know, I don't even have to
be a musician if I don't want to, you know,
So if you're going to do it, do what you
want to do, because it's kind of sad. I remember

(01:51:57):
at the when we were inducted into the Hall of Fame,
there was Fleetwood Mac and it was the Eagles same night.
And I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but
I could see the wives of some of these guys
from the Eagles and you know, like crying because their

(01:52:19):
husband now is getting the recognition that they deserve. It
look like roadkilled to me, where some people come out
on top and they're all shiny, but the people behind
them that have been through this stuff with them and
they don't get what they what the stars get.

Speaker 1 (01:52:38):
They're like.

Speaker 2 (01:52:40):
They're ruined and they live in the past. And I
always learned from that kind of thing. You know, just like,
do something else, you know, you don't have to live
off the fumes of whatever you did in the past.
Like do something make yourself happy, you know, do something
that you feel good about, you know, and if it's
not music, then so what do something else? You know?

(01:53:03):
I mean, you know what Forrest Gump's mother said, you know,
life is like a box of chocolates. So that's how
I'm choosing to do it. And that's why I'm also
excited about the new possibilities of like places to put

(01:53:23):
the music, you know, and I don't know, it makes
it pleases me.

Speaker 1 (01:53:32):
Are there any royalties coming in?

Speaker 2 (01:53:35):
Yes, I still get royalties.

Speaker 1 (01:53:38):
Enough to live on. Just you know, on the royalties.

Speaker 2 (01:53:42):
That's what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 (01:53:44):
So you've never had to get a straight job.

Speaker 2 (01:53:49):
No, I never did. I mean I probably should have,
but I never did. I mean, I never, I never did.
So I don't know what I do, you know. I mean,
if I could do some programming music for your you know,
one of those companies that do restaurants or this, that
and the other, I could do that. I could do that.
I met with somebody several times. People want to meet

(01:54:12):
me and maybe be in their company. But I realized
they don't really want me to do the job. They
just want to meet me. You know. It's like I
could do this, but you don't really You're not really
interested in me doing it, are you?

Speaker 1 (01:54:24):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:54:25):
I mean, I I really enjoy like what music does
in different environments, that kind of thing. So but I
don't know some in some ways, I feel like some
of my better years are yet to come.

Speaker 1 (01:54:40):
How often do you play the drums now?

Speaker 2 (01:54:43):
Not so much. I'm in the studio every day. But
I have a fib and I have I had a
heart attack in December, but not a big heart attack
because my all my arteries are clear, you know. But

(01:55:03):
I've still never been the same. But I've recently got
really fascinated with what contemporary snare drummers are doing, and
that made me think, Okay, I'm gonna get back into
snare drum. I'm gonna go back to basics and do
you know, but I mean, I'm sitting here in the
studio with drums, and I'll do a lot of stuff
electronically and then the acoustic drums will be the last

(01:55:27):
thing to go on instead of the first thing like
it used to be. So It's more like I'm interested
in creating musical environments, and then how do acoustic drums
fit into that?

Speaker 1 (01:55:38):
What are the interesting thing that people are doing with
snare drums today?

Speaker 2 (01:55:43):
Well, they're writing snare drum solos that also involve other
songs they're playing to nobody can hear it, but they're
playing to a click and with other sounds coming out.
You know. It's and also just things they do with
the sticks, and it's like, whoa, I just discovered this
last week, several of them, and I thought this is

(01:56:07):
so cool, you know, so let me look into this
and see just this area. You know. Another thing I'm
thinking is I was just talking with Don Gunn here today.
Is I mean even I'd like kind of music I'm
making today. Look, I wouldn't mind having some of the
some of the you know, some other drummers playing on

(01:56:28):
it than myself, you know, like what's that band, what's
the Bandyan Chang plays with? What they called? Uh yeah, Anyway,
there's this drummer named Ian Chang, which is so cool
and I love and I love the electronics stuff, and

(01:56:48):
I've been doing that since the seventies as well, so
I still find like it's exciting time to make music.
If I don't live in the past.

Speaker 1 (01:57:00):
You too many people are living in the past. Man.
I could talk to you forever, Michael. There's so many
things about San Francisco and about drummers. But I think
we're gonna cut it off here now. Thanks so much
for talking to my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:57:13):
No, it's been a pleasure. It's been it's a pleasure
to meet you after all these years, because of course
we all feel like we know you because you you're
so honest about what you think and and don't think.
I love it. Keep doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:57:27):
Thanks so much, Michael.

Speaker 2 (01:57:29):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:57:30):
Until next time. This is Bob left Sex