Paul Shaffer

Mr. Showbiz.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Setts Podcast.
My guess is the one and only Paul Schaeffer. Paul,
you're doing this benefit for pop culture with Jeff Barry
on September thirteenth in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Tell me about that, well, how much time do we have?
We have plenty of time go for It's a convocated story.
First of all, my daughter, Victoria Lily Schaeffer, what she's
thirty years old now. What she does is run a
rescue association here in Los Angeles. I'm visiting her now
I'm Los Angeles now called pop Culture and it's the

(00:46):
title of her book as well. She wrote a book
about pop culture because it's obviously about puppies, but also
the whole culture of you know, dog lovers and how
it comes upon a person, you know, sometimes not of
their own volition. Anyway, that's what she does. And then
we have the great songwriter Jeff Barry, who, with his

(01:08):
late wife Ellie Greenwich, wrote all of I Don't Know
about You, but they're all my favorite songsble starting from
be My Baby by the Rawnetes baby I Love You,
I Can Hear Music Do, a ditty from which we
called the title for our evening that we're going to
have September thirteenth here in La doa Ditties for Doggies.

(01:31):
Jeff is eighty five years old now but still funny
as hell. And his list of songs going through I
Honestly Love You by Olivia Newton John that he wrote
with Peter Allen and stuff. You know, he's got stories
for days. And I am what Irwin Corey used to

(01:52):
call himself the world's foremost authority on his stuff. And
Ellie was one of my good friends, his late wife,
and I worked with Jeff in seventy four. It's a
whole michigs that I could get into about how we
met and how long we've met. Anyway, he surfaced in
my life just simontaneously. I told him about my kids.
If Victoria's out there, he's in the next canyon over.

(02:16):
That's the way they speak out here on the coast.
And he said, well, we should do something and give
the you know, an evening and give the my songs
and stories and we'll give the money to Victoria's rescue.
And I said, you're on. So du Ditty's four Doggies
is going to It's live at the club called the

(02:37):
Right Off Room, The Right Off Room in Studio City, California,
on venture, I believe, And it's going to be Jeff
and I and you know, it's on the internet, of
course you could. We would love people to buy tickets
and events, so we know, you know, if we got
a show, if we've got an evening or not. So
far we're doing pretty well. It's where I'm like a
month away, but I can't wait. I just you know,

(03:00):
these songs and group of songs I've just been obsessed
with since I saw the Rawnettes on American Bandstand Do
It in the afternoon when the American Bandstand was on
a Saturday afternoon, and then went skiing in the freezing
frozen North where I was growing up, but couldn't get

(03:21):
this song out of my mind. You know, be my Baby.
What a sound and what a sentiment and what I mean,
what girls the Rawnettes? Oh my goodness. I was just
starting to, you know, learn about girls and stuff. This
is the way to go, and to learn what an
explosion on Saturday afternoon. So then you know, meeting Jeff

(03:43):
Barry later and working with him was just you know,
for me, incredible and I can't wait because even there's
things I got to know that I still don't understand
and know about how they wrote certain songs and stuff. Okay,
so what exactly hanky panky is another one? Right now?

Speaker 1 (04:00):
What I think was the show going to be?

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Well, Jeff sings. He was a vocalist too, back in
the day and by the day, I mean, you know,
the late fifties, early sixties. Then he became a writer
and his first hit as a writer was Tell Laura
I love her. Remember that, repur Laura, I love it?
Come on exactly what great melody? And what you know?

(04:25):
What a story about a star car race and a death?
Tell Laura? Well he opens with that, you know, and
then we're just going to get into it. I want
to hear immediately about you know what, what is the
story behind it? And how did you know? Where the
hell did you come from? And all kinds of things.
And it turns out we have we both have Don

(04:46):
Rickles's stories. We've already established that. So we're going to
get those in, you know, before we do anything else.
And then just it's going to be all music. And
you know, when he does say the do ron ron,
the audience just will be singing along naturally, they can't
help themselves. He says, you know, once in a while,

(05:07):
he hasn't done it much, but once in a while
he does a thing like this with a pianist, he says.
You know, when I say, met him on Monday, and
he looks so fun the audience just is there to do, run, run,
you know. And so I'll be the pianist playing for him.
And nobody plays these songs better because nobody loves them
like I do. And we're just going to go through
all the hits, including I Honestly Love You, you know, for

(05:31):
Olivia Newton John that he's also going to sing, and
then you know, other surprises. But I'll give away one
surprises because you asked. But we have a dear friend
in common whose name is Ron Dante. And Ron was
the voice of the Archies when they sang Sugar Sugar,
another of Jeff's compositions. So I got and Ron really

(05:55):
got me started doing arrangements in the studios in New
York in the seventies because he heard a thing that
Jeff and I had done together, and so I just
called around. You know, He's going to come over and
sing sugar, Sugar, that'll be part of the evening too,
and you never know, there may be other surprise.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Okay, you got to tell one Don Rickles story.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Okay, I'll tell mine. The first time he did Letterman,
I was thrilled because he had obviously watched the show
and knew my name was early in our run. And
he turned to me on the panel and he said, Paul,
have your self committed? That's it, jeffs is funny even.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Okay, you're with your sister. You resume your daughter in
the Sian Finando, are you staying in her house or
staying in a hotel?

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Staying at her house this time?

Speaker 1 (06:51):
What is that like all these years later?

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, first of all, she's got a wonderful gentleman with
whom you know who is sharing this house with her
as well, named Brandon More and you know, not not
involved in show business at all, but you know they
are a serious couple and we have to stay out

(07:16):
of their way and be respectful. So of course it's
a little bit of a of a tap dance, and
my wife can't help herself but to say, you know,
you haven't changed this light bulb since we were here, honey,
cool it with the lightbell. You know, it's it's as
exactly as you might imagine, but it's it's great to

(07:37):
see Victoria, and the fact that we can still do
it at all is I guess quite amazing.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Okay, you come to the West Coast. Are you the
type of person who emails people in Vance and Texam
I'm coming. We got to get together or is it
more of a family homebody thing.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Well, and you know, different trips. Toy's been out here
for a few years now, I'm not even sure six
eight years, so every trip can be different. And I
do have some friends here, and some of my Canadian
friends live here, you know, transplants, and sometimes I do
get to get to see them, and sometimes it's just
all about Victoria and family visits too, so you know,

(08:21):
we do it both ways.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Okay, certainly you have a long reputation as being mister
showbiz appreciating these people, knowing their backstories. Did you really
only see them on television when you were on the
show or are they friends?

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Uh? Well, I've got to get some clarification on the question.
Currently you're talking about me today. Well, yes, give me
an example.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
I don't need to separate. It could be. You know,
what I'm really asking is Dave was famous for not
hanging with the guests. Oh yeah, even though we saw
our guests all the time. Although Dave sort of stood
apart from showbiz, whereas you were heavily immersed in love,
showbiz knew everybody's story. So when people were in town

(09:13):
in New York to be on the show, would you
go hang with them after the show? When you came
to the West Coast, would you bring them up both
when you were on television all those nights a week
and now.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Well, certainly some you know, by the time I got
on on the Letterman Show, I was thirty two, had
already done you know, five years of the first five
years of Saturday Night Live. So for instance, I had
friends who had been you know, in the cast and
Saturday Night Live. It's still friends. If someone like it,

(09:47):
a Dan Ackroyd or something, we absolutely might have hung
out afterwards. Martin Short, you know who, with Eugene Levy
and Dave Thomash are really my three closest friends from Canada.
If any of them, well, when Martin Short would do it,
you know, we sort of had a tradition we would

(10:08):
we try to keep the limo that they sent for him,
and we we would specifically go hit the town, you know,
because he would come from. As I said, he lives
in Los Angeles, Like maybe not said it, but one
of the people that I might call up coming. So
you know, these are our actual friends. Now. Maybe back
in the eighties, Oh, we had a couple of classic

(10:29):
jam sessions after shows here and there, you know, where
a musician might say, hey, let's you know, can we
get a little rehearsal studio in jams. So that did
happen when we but we were we had the energy
to do it afterwards. By the end of the show,
Believe me, I was just as happy to go home.
So tired all the time. It was doing a show

(10:49):
every single day. You look at even the guys doing
these daily shows. Now, I saw Seth Meyers the other day.
Oh my god, it's just exhausted, just like I was
when you're doing it every single day.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Okay, so the show ends, Yeah, and at first there's
a relief. But yeah, it must have been a big
emotional adjustment.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
I think you're right. And it was physical too. First
of all, I was a migraine sufferer. During the show,
I was on a drug called Gaba Penton. There are a
lot of people seem to know what it is now, Yeah,
just for migraine headaches. On a huge dose of it.
And as soon as the show ended, it stopped working.

(11:33):
I got started getting headaches again, which was also kind
of part of it. Anyway, when you're a migraine suffer,
sometimes on the weekends, when the pressure's off, that's when
you get a headache. You know, during the week you're
kind of guarding. Anyway, that happened to me, and I
had to get off that Gaba Penton, which was a
whole another you know, ordeal, and so all of that happened,

(11:54):
and emotionally, well, you know, even before emotionally your schedule
is different. Absolutely start getting hyped up at about four
thirty because the tape you st roll at five thirty,
and then you wait, I don't have to do the show,
but boy, you certainly miss it. And I definitely missed it.

(12:17):
For my goodness, you know, certainly the first year or
two until I readjusted anything, I didn't feel busy at all.
Even if I had like a week of recording sessions.
There's just kind of nothing compared to how busy we
all were doing that daily show. And it was yeah,

(12:37):
pressure filled and I had headaches all the time, but
you get used to it, and you know, yeah, it
took me a while to get over it. Now I'm
over it and say, as I heard Dave let him
and say the other day, I think we may have
done it maybe five years too long because we were
up there and it takes some energy.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
So you're saying the energy was depleted and it hurt
the show a little.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Bit, No, you know, because Dave would never let that happen.
I think it's more of a effect that I was saying,
attired all the time, You're gonna get up for that
show and do the best, you know, and he was.
He never stopped coming in super early in the morning,
staying super late analyzing the show. That never let up.
I think he just had to. It's a little harder

(13:24):
to summon the energy.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Okay. I've been to Canada a million times. Love Canada.
But starting in the eighties, so you're growing up in
the fifties and sixties, Like if you go to some
of these foreign countries like Norway, they were really in
the dark ages ultimately, Norway got money from Oyal and
had changed thing. Did you feel like you were on

(13:47):
the outside looking in or did you just feel part
of the whole United States stream?

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Outside looking in? For sure? And I think that you
know a lot of people, Uh ask me and my
Canadian friends all the time, why there's so many you know,
especially in comedy. Why is there so much comedy coming
from Canada, Canadians coming to me. I think that's a
good part of it. We were so close to it,

(14:16):
but so far, and we were studying it, you know,
we studied the Ed Sullivan Show just as closely as
anybody else, but to us it was even more special
to get to see Sophie Tucker or something. And I
don't know, it was just really I was very far
away from it up in thunder Bay, Ontario.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Okay, you're growing up. What kind of kid are you?

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Kind of shy and an only child, quiet and had
all the privacy I would want as a kid, didn't
really fit in. Have to be kind of rugged and
love the outdoors to feel comfortable in thunder Bay, Ontario,

(15:06):
And when I was a kid was called Fort William
and Port Arthur, and the two cities amalgamated. But if
you love you know, and I did ski for sure,
because it was you know, socially, as a kid, you
had to either ski or skate. And I was a skier.
And you know, a badge of honor would be if

(15:27):
you could stay up and party, you know, into the
evening and then be on the slopes at eight am
as soon as the chairlifts. You know that that's a man,
you know, or a gal who knows how to party.
But and I was doing that kind of stuff and
it was cold as hell.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Okay, let's stalk with the skiing thing for a minute.
On Dave's final show, the final shot is him skiing
with his son. There was video, beautiful. Okay, when was
the last time you skied?

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Not since I left thunder Bay.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
So once you left, that was it. Not when your
kids growing up, not like, well, let's do this as
a family now.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
And I feel, as you know, one thing that I
was a little negligent. I really tried to step up
and be you know, and I had a son besides Victoria,
I've got a twenty four year old son. And you know,
just like in the movie you play Carousel, My god,
you got to be a father to a son, and
I did my best, but skiing, no, I would not,

(16:31):
you know, it wasn't worth it because I could. I
can't imagine having any kind of gortex or material things
that they have now that keep you warm. Oh yeah,
we better not only freezing but kind of bundled up,
could barely move ski poles in your hand and just
you know, coming, Oh my goodness. But as far as

(16:51):
the kind of kid I was, I've got this recollection
of waiting for the chairlift at the bottom, and when
you're not skiing, it's even colder. You're just standing there,
you know, it's way ah and you're in northern Ontario,
and the chairlift was blasting music like they might add

(17:13):
a carnival, you know, in front of a ride, blasting
out music. And I hear, you know, as I'm waiting,
I hear this for the very first time, and I
think I would have been twelve. I hear the Tokens
record the Lion sleeps. Oh wow. And it was again

(17:35):
sort of like that, you know, experience of the rawat
seeing the but even more immediate. That got me through
the day of skiing, and why I come down and
waiting again. You'd hear it again, and every time I
couldn't believe the sound. The sound just kind of galvanized me.
And that got me, you know. That's what became important

(17:57):
to me and kind of saved my life. I think
a lot of rock and rollers talk about it. Okay,
rock and roll will save my life. So music in
the household? And when did you start taking piano lessons?
My mother has said, you'll take lessons when you are six.
When do you start to learn how to read in school?

(18:17):
Read English? That's the time, That's what she believed. And
so I started lessons at age six.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
You know, I took piano lessons at the same age,
actually started at five. But you can go to lessons
and not practice and not be into it, or you
can be into it. Were you always into it? Or
was when you heard the tokens on or something that
you became accelerated.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
I always into it in that My mother kind of
set me up. She was one of those Jewish mothers
who had music in the house specifically so that I
would get involved in it. And she played chopin and
she played Broadway music the ethel Merman and Mary Martin
at Carnegie Hall and it just you know, it does

(19:03):
seep in rock, monerof and stuff. That was her music.
And then my dad, this conservative lawyer from thunder Bay,
small town lawyer, but he dug the great jazz vocalists
Billy Eckstein and Sarah vaugh and he turned me onto
Ray Charles. On Sundays, you know, he would put on

(19:24):
his records and won Ray Charles. So that was pretty,
you know, pretty good. And my mother also was a pianist,
played you know, not professionally or anything, but could play
the piano certain classical things from music. And I remember,
as an infant being under the piano as she played,

(19:45):
feeling of it, you know, the sound coming down. But
as soon as she got me playing taking lessons, she
stopped playing, never played again, almost like her work was
done because I was playing and I played these lessons,
and I don't know the first lesson. I came home

(20:08):
and I started figuring out my own, you know, melodies,
not that I ever wrote. I was not a writer,
but just I figured out that you could play the
William tell overture, which every kid was on our mind
because of the Lone Ranger television, mostly on all Black Keys.
But I couldn't even figure that out until that first

(20:28):
lesson came home, though, and that's what I wanted to. Hey,
you can actually, you know, and that's I kind of
started getting interested right away and playing by ear, and
that's really what, you know, what became important to me
and what I still really do. Maybe why I never
really wrote or I found you know, I only wrote

(20:50):
one or two songs my whole life because of what
I really like to do is sit down and play
the songs that I know. So I never bought records,
but as I was listening, you know, I didn't buy
Being My Baby, but I could sure play it and
I used to pound it out on the piano really loud,
get the sound up, you know, and kind of play
all the different parts, not on out the string part

(21:11):
and stuff, you know, just figuring out my ear. And
I still get my kicks doing that.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
Okay, Brian Wilson feels the same way Be My Baby,
as you and me both know, interacting with Brian Wilson
is its own special, uh situation. But did you ever
discuss that with Brian?

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yeah? Sure you can almost have to. Well, Uh, there
was a point when and this is really it's not
my own story. I've been reported back to me, but
I kind of had something to do that I was.
I missed the second season of Saturday Night Life because
I was in California doing my show and got to

(22:00):
work with Jeff Barry. But during that season, Brian appeared
as a guest. I believe, and the singers were gotten.
You know Howard Shore Musical got Brian the singers background
singers the kind of people that I know. Susan Collins another,
you know, a woman who stands at attention for be
my Baby and can sing with that Ronnie sound, and

(22:24):
Ellie and Susan knew. Ellie Greenwich, the actual Eli Grittich,
sang background for for Brian Wilson, and Brian heard that
Ellie had written be my Baby. He was just, you know,
he was floored. He became, he became, he became her
baby and was saying, you know, Elley just you know,

(22:48):
just enjoying being her presence.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
I think, okay, So you're practicing the piano, you're working
out songs. If I was in school with you, would
I say, oh, that's Paul shef for he plays the
piano or was it?

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah? I think so okay, Well, because I you know,
I was always called upon to play in the school assemblies.
I'm not sure how it started because I can't remember,
but I have a recollection of myself, but coming up
in front of the assembly when the whole school's assembled,
you know, and playing a little classical piece from my

(23:23):
lesson Mozart or something and boring everybody. But in what
we called junior high grade seven and eight up there
in Canada, I started becoming aware of rock and roll,
and I said, you know about grade seven, now you

(23:44):
know what instead of Mozart, I think I'm going to
play Pipeline by the Chantes And I'm not sure. Well no,
I mean, it's another whole story why I summoned the
nerve to do it. But when I did, it was pandemonia.
The kids were expecting, you know, Mozart and it's figured

(24:11):
out how to do that on the piano. Don't don't,
don't do do And I was like, you know, I
got a reaction that said, you don't have to write
your own songs, just you know, look at what you
can do to an audience just with a great song
and a performance of it. So I learned that early.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
I had a friend who booked Oprah for live gigs,
and someone said, well, why does Oprah have to play
live gigs? And he said, you can't get that hit
anywhere else. So what was it like when they're reacting
to pipeline?

Speaker 2 (24:45):
I'm sure it was great.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
You know.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
I was a child of about twelve, and so, as
I say, kind of life changing thought of I realized that, I,
you know, this works. I think that's what I thought
to myself, Hey, this and so when I would be
called upon, and I throughout my high school career play

(25:06):
the piano. You know, I started playing when the Beatles
came out a.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Little bit slower. Okay, So we have I Turner, Chuck
Berry's Sun Records. We have Elvis, Elvis kind of goes down.
We have Fabian, we have Bobby ry Dell. Were you
a fan of popular music in general before the bats
were just specific sounds?

Speaker 2 (25:30):
No popular that music and what it could do to me?
Those chords they were so simple, they were all the same,
same four chords. And I found, you know, once I
learned them, I could play all these songs. Now. Bandstand.
I remember seeing my first American bandstand on a trip
family trip to Minneapolis, because we had no American television.

(25:54):
We only had one channel when I was, you know,
in elementary school, the CBC. It carried The Sullivan Show,
luckily CBC, and that's why I ed what and how
rye friends up in Canada. You know that was because
he had a seat Canadian audience. But I had to
go to Minneapolis with a family to see American Bandstand

(26:15):
and see Bobby ry Dell performed that afternoon, lip syncing
as they all did on American bands to Butterfly Baby,
and during the instrumental, pulling a girl out of the
audience a teeny bopper and a poodle skirt and dance
dancing with her was phenomenal and the girl was flushed afterwards,

(26:36):
Dick so suave. What did you think, my dear about
Bobby Red? You know? And this just stuck with me
and the Philly sound, I loved it both times. You know,
there's probably more than two, but you know, the last
time I remember it was a great gamble and huff
I'm Philly's soul. But before that, American Bandstand with with

(26:59):
the Dovells, d d Sharp, all these great acts coming
out of Philly, the uh Watusi you know, I think
I guess I was ddee sharp. But who am I
trying to think of the Orleans? Uh, don't hang up, no, no, man,
I used to after school. You know, I didn't buy

(27:19):
the records play play them. And you know that intro
of One Fine Day by the Chaffons that Peril King
played amazing to play that down, and so it's way
before the Beatles, really wait, by way before I made
man a good three years three three years before.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Okay, So at what point did you start playing in
bands with other people?

Speaker 2 (27:48):
There was a hip guy in my in high school.
Uh Rick Lazar was his name. Uh. He was of
Assyrian origin, and he was himself a young musician, saxophone player,
smoker sacks always smell like cigarettes. And heard me, you know,

(28:13):
I would have been grade nine or something, first year
of high school, heard me. He would he a year older,
heard me in the assembly playing something by the Beatles
or something you know pop, and he actually, you know,
made his business to introduce himself to me and say,
let's I can get the music room. He said, at lunchtime,

(28:34):
we can go in there, let's play some records and
just play a little bit. My first real jam session
with another guy and we got on. We played the
Paul Butterfield album, first Paul Butterfield album that he had.
That's how Hippi he was, you know, up in thunder Bay,
and it set on the back of the album. Play

(28:56):
this for best results, play at top volume right and
we absolutely did, turned it up full and just a
little square vinyl player in the music room. And that
was and he had a band already. He was in
a band. They were first called the Laurentians, named after
a kind of Pontiac car that was only available on Canada.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah, so they weren't named after the mountain range. They
were named after the Pontiac.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
They were named after the Pontiac because another band even
earlier in town was called Bonneville's. And we had a
guy who wanted to do everything they did because they
seemed to be successful. So this is pretty early Ricky,
Funky Ricky. We called him Rick Lazar. His middle name
was shad Rack. Sometimes he went by Shad as a

(29:45):
guy who wrote my you know, I wrote a little
book with a great ghostwriter, David Rich, who said, oh
thank you in this part though, he said, I talked
about Funky Ricky and Rich's phrase was something like, you
know he was a two years he was a year
older in about a decade, Hipper. It was really true
of him. And I joined his band and they changed

(30:06):
their name eventually to the Fugitives, the Fabulous Fugitives, and
they had been a sax instrumental band, Ricky on sacks
playing Johnny and the Hurricanes stuff crossfire. Ricky could do
a technique called the flutter toongue I think, and Peter

(30:29):
Gunn of course. And then when the Beatles hit, right
as I was joining, they added vocals, one guy, Bobo
Bob Anyak. He could sing very well, and they added
me to their band on keyboards. They had had no
keyboard before. So now I started doing gigs and I
joined the af M Musicians Union. Even up there, I

(30:52):
had to join the unions. We were a union band.
Became a Union member, and we would do a gig.
Bucks sometimes was a scale for three hours or twenty
two dollars for four hour dance. That was the kind
of okay.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
A couple of questions and what instrument were you taking?
Because it wasn't long after the Beatles broke in America
that the Dave Clark five broke and Mike Smith had
his portable organ whatever, So what were you taking the gigs?

Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yes, sir, well, Mike Smith had the holy grail of
pol Combo organs, the Voux Continental, so beautifully designed. The
way it looked was fabulous, the chrome legs and the
shape of a Z. And they were made in Italy,
these these Vox organs, but marketed by Vox out of Britain.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
I never knew the breed.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, they were. They took over I think it was
the Thomas something like that. There was a there was
a collapse. But these organs cost one thousand dollars in Canada,
a little out of my range. However, what they you know,
financial arrangement. I worked out with my dad to pay
him back a little bit each gig, which he eventually

(32:06):
forgot about. Don't worry about it. But I bought a
Honer organ. Honer organ just because it was in the
music store, really no other reason, and it didn't cost
a whole thousand dollars. And I got that in an amp.
And the amp was a Trainer amp because the Trainer
was a Canadian company out of Toronto, t R A

(32:29):
Y and O R. And you know again, better prices,
not a great not great for keyboards. I later got
a better you know, because it was good for guitar.
It had a lot of distortion. But yeah, lugging around
my own amp and keyboard. There was no such thing
as Roadie's then, I don't the word hadn't even come along.
And always thirty below, you know, So it was always

(32:52):
gigging after the gig, a little soaking, wet loading the
equipment into the back of the car. I think, ironically
we may have had a Pontiac lavension, always sit, always
getting the flu because you know, so cold and always
wet from the gig and stuff. Those are my my

(33:14):
Toronto can and sometimes even going by the A and
W drive in wet stuff in the back. Then you
get home, you know, after a big Hamburger from anw
too cold to unload. So sometimes try to leave the
amp out wow in the in the car, but you
only do that once because the tubes freeze in the

(33:37):
cold thirty below, and it's just you know, got to
replace all the tubes. Had all that happen to me.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Okay, so when did you first hear the Beatles?

Speaker 2 (33:49):
I'm not sure if I heard any music before the
Sullivan Show or not their appearance on the Sullivan Show. Certainly,
I I could pick ups AM radio from Chicago as
early as Dick Beyondy.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
And were you a big listener, Yes, with your transistor
under the pillow, the whole bit.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
A whole bit. The transistor was a rocket radio in
the shape of a rocket. It was a crystal radio
where you tuned it in. I could hear Dick Beyondi
on this crystal radio and he just died. By the way.
Are you familiar with him? Yeah, well he I you know,
I came in contact with him a little bit later on,

(34:36):
so I you know, he's known to have played the
Beatles for the first time. I'm not sure if that's
true or not. So I may have heard the music,
but certainly saw no. I guess I did, because I
guess I kind of knew the songs a little bit
when I saw them on Sullivan and that was quite
a revelation. But I got to say, and I say
this more and more in my old crabby age, but

(34:57):
I can't believe the number of MUSICI certainly well Americans
and Canadians who just cite no matter how old, even
if they're older than I am. Cite that Beatles on Sullivan.
That's when I picked up a guitar, you know, Oh yeah,
they're all. Joe Walsh comes to mind. You know, a
guy you know who is such credibility as a musician

(35:19):
and stuff, but wasn't really into it till he heard
the Beatles. Not the case with me when I heard
the Four Seasons though, when they are.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Okay, So what are the key Four Seasons tracks for you?

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Well, I mean, good goodness, gracious Sherry was the first one,
of course, infectious, Big Girls Don't Cry. That opening weird.
I mean, it's so the sound is, you know, just
stuck with me. Maybe that one, And that's what they
did on a Sullivan. They did Big Girls Don't Cry,
and that opening is just so strange, Frankie's voice on

(35:58):
the top, the way the other guys saying we're strange too.
Turns out they had been like club musicians in Jersey
all these years, and they were not young when they
hit Sullivan. They were already in there, maybe thirty five.
You know. They had a look that I wasn't familiar with,
and they had those ties those formal times. Yeah like that,

(36:21):
but that Wow. I mean that galvanized me. And then
the great Bob Gaudio, who wrote a lot of that
early stuff, and you know, was so kind of the
musical leader. The way he stood on stage, I'll never
forget it. He was pointed upstage. They didn't know how
to shoot or deal with a big piano or organ

(36:43):
at that time, so they had him kind of pointed
upstage and he would put stretch his neck around to
get back to the mic, and oh to see it,
you know, and that that kind of stuck with me.
But then followed them, and as you know, were they
really the only American group that kept having hits well

(37:04):
through through.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
The one other band because we had Cherry, we had
you know, big girls, Beach Boys, and they exactly So
were you a beach.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Sure? How can you not be a Beach Boys fan? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Even though there's a summer of sixty four was Dawn
and Go Away, and I get around, But.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
I get around it. You know, brilliant if they're both
brilliant in their own in their own way, and you
don't have to go to pet sounds, you know, for
the intellectual Beach Boys to think that they're great, I
get around. Was a knockout musically. Now do you know okay,
do you know the first line of the first lyric
of the one that Al Jardine sings.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
Yeah, Well, since you put me down, I've been out
doing in my head.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
Well you see that, out doing in my head. I
never learned that until I used to finally get to
see them live a little bit, became very close friends
with Billy Hinschy, one of their side. I knew Billy absolutely,
very sad passion, yes and so. But he told me
it was you know, nobody knows that but you and
me and Billy. Yeah out and Al Jardine out doing

(38:15):
in my head? What a what a crazy lyric? People
think it's you know, up to it in my.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Head or but there's some other ones okay on uh
summer days and summer nights.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
That had California Girls first song on the second side,
and it had the single version of Helped Me Ronda
at the end of the first side when Beach Boys
Today had a studio version wasn't mixed the same way.
But before help Me Ronda, there's a song that Carl
sings called girl Don't Tell Me Hey Girl, And you

(38:47):
know there were saying you know there were certain lyrics there.
I didn't have any idea what they were until the internet. Hit.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Ah, that's a great one, girl, don't tell me. Oh right, yeah,
maybe Brian wrote those lyrics himself. You know, I'm not sure.
I'm kind of a Beach Boys student too, and I
you know, I can keep up with a lot of
these fanatics who can talk Beach Boys twenty four hours
a day, and I can be okay, I ask you,

(39:17):
right with them.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Let's go to the other fanatics. What about the Grateful
Dead in the Boss fanatics?

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well, okay, you want me to too.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
No, No, I'm okay, I'm gonna go into this. Okay, Okay,
I'm fans of both of those acts. I always say
with Springsteen, I saw him at the bottom Line in
seventy four, the year before Born to Run, he premiered
jungle Land, and then The Grateful Dead I saw a
million times in the seventies. And you have all these
people who are not there, no matter what you say,

(39:49):
they're bigger authorities than you are. No, no, no, was
it this show blah blah blah blah blah. I was
wondering if you had any of those experiences.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Well, you know, reguarding the Dead, I must confess I
didn't really get them until I got a chance to
play with Jerry Garcia. Ok.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Well, a little bit slower because Jerry has such a
legend and you were familiar somewhat with the music by
time that happened. Uncle John's band been out, et cetera.
What was the experience of playing with Jerry?

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Well, say, that's the whole thing. I mean, first time
I saw them live it was with the closing of
winter Land in about seventy eight, okay or seventy you
know where we I was with the Blues Brothers at
that time. Akroyd and Belushi from the SNL.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
I saw you at the Universally Amphitheater.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Oh wow, sure the first time, of course. Well that
was you know, yeah, that was pretty good. The Rubber
Biscuit did that first album, Rubber Biscuit, right, Dakroyd just
came up with that one out of it, you know,
I don't know where, but we opened and then the
New Writers and the Dead right, so, you know, the

(41:06):
Dead were just starting at midnight and going on and
they broadcast live and stuff. And at this point, no,
I did not understand them. I started to understand, you know,
what they were supposed to be doing, but I couldn't
penetrate it. When Jerry and Bob where came on Letterman, uh,

(41:31):
and then I saw them, you know, we got to
I was around them when they did SNL two the
various time. But when the two of them just came
on and let him and play with my band, and
Jerry turned to the band like Miles Davis. Somehow he
was so open, he opened his heart up to us,
and I started hearing him. It was just it was

(41:52):
then that I realized what he's doing. I couldn't understand
it before, but he his spirit. You know, that's my
personal experience with him right musically unbelievable. I became an
accolade right there. Okay, is it acolyte?

Speaker 1 (42:09):
So you were a keyboard player. A lot of prog
rock is keyboard beast. Were you a fan of prog rock?

Speaker 2 (42:17):
I guess not not really. I didn't hear any I mean,
schmoss rock has not really even been named. But if
there was such a thing, that's me I'm looking for.
I don't know, chords, melodies, things like that. Certainly, yes,
you know some of those hits absolutely roundabout. Yeah, great,

(42:38):
I can hear it in my head and great, you
know all that keyboard is great, certainly, Rick Wickman a
fan Lord John Lord incredible. I don't know if that
counts as prog rock. When they did Hush, well, that's.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
You know that they were there earlier. You know, we've
sort of gotten that. But let's go back. You were
talking about playing with the guy, the saxophone player playing
jamming on the Paul Butterfield band. I think East West
was the first one. No, that was the second one. Second,
first one. I was not a big Butterfield fan. I
was out of that bat. That of course, was that
you were playing the records at home on the piano.

(43:14):
This was in the era although I was in the
New York radio market. We had to own it to
hear it in many cases, so there's certain blank spots.
But Okay, the reason I bring this up is we
have the Beatles, we had the British invasion, We have
San Francisco, and in nineteen sixty seven in San Francisco

(43:36):
and in New York, the first underground FM radio stations. Okay,
and Hendrick is sixty seven, Cream is sixty eight we're
more of a top forty guy. Or when that stuff
came he said, I'm into that too.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Oh. I was into that too because I was in
college going to going to University of Toronto, and Toronto
had an relatively early FM station, CHUM FM.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Right of course, yeah, great station, okay, And so.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
I was listening in college and you know, Knights in
White Satin comes to mind. Right, that was heavy rotation there.
But certain things I got a line on you spirit,
I guess I was kind of picking the hits out
of that stuff, but certainly was into how could you
not be into FM radio and those DJs? Who there

(44:29):
was one DJ still going up there. I think when
he first came on the scene, his name with Dave Mickey. Yeah,
he was like a beyond, you know, a BEYONDI of Canada.
But then he became Dave Marsen.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
You know. Scott Muni was on AM seventy seven WABC
on number one in the nation, Scott Muni Show. Then
he was on WADW. Hello, this is Scott Beauty. I mean,
you couldn't believe it was the same guy.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Got a great Scott any story, Okay, tell us nineteen
eighty one, I was doing studio work. It was just
a year before Letterman started. And after I had left SNL,
just studio work, a lot of jingle work in New York,

(45:19):
playing on Coca Cola and whatever, you know, the products,
and I was in that business. And then I went
and took a little vacation to Hawaii with my wife
and gotten a bad car accident there and broke all
nine ribs in the shoulder and everything, and took a
good three years to recover. Letterman started in the middle

(45:41):
of my recovery. Dave Letterman still remembers you said there
was you came in for that first meeting. You said
you were kind of walking on an angle. I knew
something was wrong. I had had that I had had
that accident. I was in the hospital and in Honolulu
for twelve days. And while I was there, we kind

(46:02):
of got around in New York and all my lovely
friends in the studio business and jiggle business called me
there you you know, hope you're okay, and everything was
very nice of them. I was morphined out and stuff.
One guy though, and he's no longer with us, Hillary Lipsitz.
That's the way he spoke. He produced a lot of things,

(46:24):
including you know when the when the four seasons saying
things go better with coke in that era, he produced
all that stuff and he said, here, Paul, he spoke
like that all right over there in Honolulu, here's say
a load of my friend. He was a big drinker,
and he put his drinking buddy on the phone. Here,
this is Scott Muni. He says, say a load of
Daddy butter tie over there. Wqaw over there, good friend

(46:47):
of mine over there in Honolulu. Wow, I said, Scott,
I'm in an oxygen town. I'm not going to say
a load to a DJ. But thanks though. Anyway, that
was that lovelier of the colony.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
Nonetheless, Okay, before we leave thunder Bay, what was it
like being Jewish in thunder Bay?

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Well, not too many Jewish families, although when I was
a kid growing up there there were forty families. That
was a lot. I think it's a lot less now.
And yeah, it was different. I didn't you know, certainly
wasn't aware of any anti Semitism there. It may have existed.
I may have been just to it too naive to
know about it. Certainly didn't get into my in my way,

(47:45):
you know, we would take off the high holidays and
and that w was be big in the school and
we were allowed to miss a couple of days, you know,
but we would be watching the World Series anyway at home.
That's what I remember mostly, how about it?

Speaker 1 (48:02):
So what point do you say this is my profession,
this is my job? When do you have that light
bulb moment?

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Not until college University of Toronto, chum FM playing and
first year. I mean I certainly didn't have the nerve
to even think myself that I was going to go
into any kind of show business. No, absolutely too far
fetched coming from thunder Bay and the Canadian in general,

(48:35):
Canadians can be a little pessimistic. You know, who do
you think you are? You know you you got to
be a big stay. So I was. And my dad,
you know, would have loved me to have a profession,
a real profession. And I didn't. Law didn't see following

(48:56):
in his Footsessen scene, right, But I didn't. I was
going to try some thing. I don't know, but I
was taking liberal arts, sociology, philosophy and psychology. Got very
depressed first year. I didn't have a band anymore, I
had no you know, no musical outlet. I didn't exactly
know why, but I was just sleeping all the time.

(49:18):
Imagine today they'd be diagnosing it as Epstein Barr or something.
But I was just you know, so sad and then
but still in Toronto, and it was great because it
was you know, a real city and there were real
rock acts coming and blues acts and a nightclub called

(49:43):
the Rock Pile where you know, very Phil Moore asque
I guess just opened with Blood Sweat and Tears with
the Canadian David Clayton Thomas on vocals, whom we knew
because through his Canadian records and stuff. He was a
a phenomena up there too. I could sing great, and

(50:05):
they opened BS and t opened at the Rock Pile,
and I was at all four shows, two on Friday,
two on Saturday, just starting to you know, study this stuff,
get excited about it, but still you know, trying to
do philosophy and things, a little bit of an ecotomy.

(50:26):
Stayed in New York, stayed in Toronto that summer, didn't
go back to thunder Bay, and I said I'd love
to maybe, as you know, Blood Sweat and Tears in Chicago.
And so the first time horns started making their way,
although Bobby or Adell's records had horns, but they featured them,
I guess. And I said to my parents, I'd like

(50:47):
to stay in Toronto and take an arranging course this summer,
and they, you know, I sold them on that. Really
I wanted to be where the action was, oh, Toronto
town instead of you know, thunder Bay. But I took
this arrange of course, and it sure is a good
thing I did. It's really the only training I have

(51:09):
in arranging, and I kind of became an arranger. So
that was good, good luck. But one night, oh, I
started you know, listening, getting a little bit into the
Toronto jazz scene too, sometimes going to see a guitar
stuff there named Sonny Greenwich, incredible Coltrane inspired. And one night,

(51:31):
early morning, actually coming home that summer after I don't
know what, I got a job in a bar band
very easily and played covers that summer to support myself.
Coming home at six am. A guy sitting on a
stoop in their village. They had kind of a Greenwich
village there called Yorkville. A guy sitting on a stoop

(51:53):
of a deli playing guitar acoustic guitar and I walked
by and hear a couple of notes and said, holy,
I walk right. I double take and I go right
back and start listening to him, and it just blows
my mind. He's out, He's playing, you know, it's like
Coltrane again on guitar scales that I've never heard of,

(52:17):
not blues based in any way, only guitarists. Really, I
ever heard like that. I said, what are you doing?
And that very morning we went over to the UFT
practice room and he started showing me stuff, opening me
up and really in the old fashioned way. He started
me on standards. My parents knew all the standard and

(52:38):
I knew them, but couldn't hear them. Couldn't hear those
slightly more sophisticated chords. He showed me a couple of things.
All of a sudden, things started unlock, and I really
started to think I could maybe, maybe I could be
a musician. I started playing with him, apprenticing with him.
Eventually he came back to New York. He was in

(52:59):
New York originally, and I still play with him. I
just did an album, produced an album with him.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Just how is it somebody we know?

Speaker 2 (53:08):
He's unknown? He should be known. His name is Desigi Munios,
maybe a little on you own because you can't pronounce
his name, but that's the kind of a spiritualistic name,
you know. Munios is his real last name.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
What was he doing out at six am?

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Uh? He had just gone to town and it was
free you know, we were free spirits. I was out
at six am two coming home walking through the village.
He was playing. I started playing with him right then
and then and then I got him. So I graduated

(53:44):
at that point, you could, you know, there were thirteen
years of high school, but then you could get a
degree after three years, which I took like an undergrad
bachelor's degree. And I said to my parents, let me,
you know, give me a year. See what happens if
I'm starving. I don't know. Maybe i'd go to grad school.

(54:05):
I don't know exactly, but you know, i'd try. Maybe
I could be a professor. I didn't, you know, I
still didn't over. Just give me a year. And I
played with Desigi Minios. These out gigs, hippie kind of
style gigs is what we played actually, and lounge gigs
at the same time. And then when I would accompany

(54:29):
people who were auditioning for shows. That was another thing
I could do and make like I would charge twenty
bucks wait, but.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
A little bit slower because there are stars and then
they are working musicians, and anybody who knows working musicians
is it's all based on networking and the gift of gab.
So to what degree were you working it in order
to get these gigs for auditions, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
I was not smooth at all at that time. I
was shy and under confident. But I could play rock
and roll on the piano because I could do it
in that assembly with pipeline and people would remember me
if I could get heard. And that's all I was

(55:18):
trying to do too, and taking gigs, you know, lounge gigs,
Well I took. I took a gig just because I could,
you know, if it was going to be a cover band,
I just know all. I knew all the songs I
could play, and I already could play a little organ,
which was big, but you know, special technique involved with Oregon.

(55:39):
Of course I could do that. If I had to
audition for a band, you know, absolutely no problem. So
I had that confidence, but no confidence as far as
interpersonal or anything but confidence on the keyboard, and I
took a gig. We're going to go up to northern
Quebec and play for missile bases, Canadian missile based troops. There,

(56:00):
Canadian troops in the dead of winter on a bus
and I did that. It was like my first professional tour,
if you will. I had just a gas and I
met a girl on their Avril chown. She was a
singer who was going to do a few numbers for
the troops. And she said, I'm auditioning for a show.

(56:24):
It's coming on New York show Godspell, the auditions next week.
Could you play for me? And I want to do
a song from the show if we could learn it together,
which we did and she I charged you twenty bucks.
We learned one of the songs from the Godspell from
the cast album when we went to the auditions, and

(56:44):
she made it through the first auditions and for the
final audition. Stephen Schwartz came to town. He was the
composer of Godspell. That was his first show. Now he's
a composer of Wicked, biggest show ever. I think literally
two movies being made about it, as you know, right.
But anyway, he's in town and Avril comes up her

(57:05):
name Avril Chown and sings this song of his from
the show, and he says, I want to talk to
that piano player. And he said, can you play the
rest of the auditions? He said, this guy I've got
doesn't know any of the songs that people want to sing. Well,
you know, I know most of them were just singing

(57:26):
Aquarius from Hair anyway, So I played the rest of
the auditions for him, and at the end of the
day he said, can you put a band together and
conduct the show? And it was just like as I've
said Lana Turner and Schwabz, I was discovered, just like.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
That, Okay, a little bit slower would before Avril, Were
you doing auditions for twenty dollars a show.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Once in a while? Yeah, maybe a local show or something,
you know, Yes? And I had was.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
This, someone would tear your name off in the grocery store.
How did they find you?

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Just they would find me? I don't know, I can't,
I don't know. I'm trying to get into the business.
So I might show up at a jam session or
something and somebody, hey, you know, can you play for me?
And okay, I had that you know, so.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
You put together the band for Godspell. Godspell's playing, that's
a lot of work, okay, usually eight shows a week
whatever one say the week? Guess yes, okay, So in reality,
all that popular music, you're playing, lounge music whatever, you
don't even have time for that because you're playing a Godspell.

(58:40):
Was that well, that's right.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
I left all those gigs behind and was that the final?

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Was that fine with you? That now you're the musical
conductor and piano player for Godspell and you're not in
any other band whatever?

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Oh? Absolutely? It was way more legit than I thought
I would go I and it turned out my career
kind of went in that direction. But I thought, you know,
I'd be in a band and work by ear as
bands do you know rock bands do. But I had taken, luckily,

(59:16):
I had taken some piano lessons and this one year
one arranging course. But you know, I could read my site.
Reading was never any good and it still isn't. The
piano teachers are right back when they said, you know,
don't play by ear, you won't learn to read, and
that was the case with me. I can play by year,
but I can't reading is not I can read and

(59:38):
I can arrange. I have the knowledge, I just can't
sight read some of these rehearsal canis put anything in
front of them, they could play it. I can't. So
they had to send me the score and I in advance.
Luckily they did, and I worked on it hard learning it.
Luckily I had the album I could I could learn,
you know, I had that to hear for that opening,

(01:00:01):
really hard. No, you know, I've worked and worked and
worked on thrilled to be in Godspell. No other bands.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
That's where we are and how long you in Godspell
before the next step.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
I did a year of Godspell in in Toronto, and
during that time Steven Schwartz got a movie deal and
they made a movie out of Godspell and he brought
me in from Toronto to play on the score first

(01:00:34):
time in New York in a New York recording studio.
I came into two different times, one to play on
various songs because he did like the leg you know.
He allowed me to put my own licks in because
I couldn't really read exact anyway, and he liked it
it put it on the movie score, and then he said,

(01:00:55):
when this show up here, I'd never take you out
of the show up here, he said, but when it's over,
I want you to come New York and he did
show ended. I spent some time just really not doing
much in Toronto, not committing, kind of having this in
the back of the mind. My mind is sure enough.
Shworts called, I'm doing this in nineteen seventy four. Now

(01:01:17):
I'm doing the Magic Show on Broadway, coincidentally with the Canadian,
the late great Doug Henning, the magician come down and
play for that. And that's when I moved to New York.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
And any immigration issues or you got the well.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
I got a I got My first permit was an
H two category, which they got me to do the
Magic show. But it said you can only play the
Magic show. You can't go and do other gigs. So

(01:01:57):
this isn't good for somebody who's trying to get around,
you know. I could only do things for free instead
of jam sessions and stuff. But at least I was
making a living doing the Magic show. Looking for an
immigration lawyer who can get me, you know, lead to
be into this country and open this visa maybe so
I could do other gigs, but no lawyers wanted any

(01:02:20):
you know, they just said, we got enough pianists here,
we don't need you. If you were a nuclear scientist,
maybe I can't help you. Finally, I came across one
guy who said, well, you've gone to prove to them
that you're not here to take a job away from
an America. You're here to provide a unique and that's

(01:02:44):
the keyword, unique service to America. And he says, if
you can come up with something like that, especially if
it's kind of technical and musical, an immigration officer couldn't
question it. You've got to be a musician, you know,
then we have a chance. First thing we would do
is get you your status change, and now if they

(01:03:09):
admit you're unique, then we can then go on get
you a green card, which I have eventually got and
now I'm a citizen and okay, proud of.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
So tell me how did you prove you were unique?

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Well? I said, how about this, the lawyer, what if
I could prove I'm an expert in music and comedy
and how they intercept, providing music for comedy and understanding comedy,
knowing where the laps are, what's funny, whatever you know?
And he said sounds good, And I got letters from

(01:03:41):
all kinds of people. I had done a few things already.
I was able to get a letter from Norman Lear
because I had done a pilot for him that went nowhere.
I got a letter from well, I can't remember, oh,
a guy who owned the National Lampoon. I was doing
stuff for the National Lampoon Radio hour, working with Chris
Guest there and Bill Murray. That's you know, networking, you

(01:04:05):
meet people. That's an example of it. So I got
letters and sure enough it worked, and it's exactly what
the immigration officer said. He said, I'm sure this is
you know, I can't question it. It's not my area.
And I got a different you know, that's when I
got my green card.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Okay, so your status changes. How does that open up
your career?

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Then I get to do other things for other people,
sessions and stuff. Especially at that time, I thought if
I could be a session man, play on records, and
you know, we started to learn what that was us
fans when we heard about the Muscle Shoals, rhythm section
and stuff. And then now we know about the Wrecking

(01:04:47):
Crew and how there's these people making records in the
studios going from sessions. It sounded wonderful to me, and
I started getting little by little get dates like that
again networking. Like you said, what kind of dates, Well,

(01:05:09):
there was a I've left out an interesting thing. I
mentioned Norman Lear. I was very aware, you know, as
a fan up in Canada, even of Don Kirshner. He
was the.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Pubblic This was before the TV show when it was
the Monkeys and everything.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Well it was yeah, this is post monkeys. Yeah, but
in the seventies, right, he said, I was. I was
doing the Magic Show, right, you know, very early, knowing
various actors, though I knew Broadway type of people. There's
a guy named Don Scardino played Jesus in various Godspell companies.
He became a director TV director, very successful. And he said,

(01:05:50):
you know, we're all in our twenties. He said, I
had just auditioned for this show, Don Kirshner, He's going
to try to do a Monkey's in the seventies. And
I said, you know, I got the part for the pilot,
he said, And I told him, you know about you,
You're funny and maybe they want a real musician. So
I auditioned for Kirshner and got the part. And before

(01:06:13):
I knew it. I was in Hollywood and we made
a pilot called Hereafter, and Jeff Barry, one of Donnie's guys,
came in to produce and wrote the theme. That's when
I met how I met Jeff Barry. I'm going to
do this thing with him. On the September thirteenth, Jeff
and I made a song together. He produced it. I

(01:06:33):
wrote it with Scardino. Kirshner brings it back to New York.
He's playing it in his office. Kirshner's demo singer is
ron Dante, who has become Barry Manilo's producer. Barry knew
on the scene now and he's got Ohmandy and I
write the songs. Ron Dante produced all those things with
Barry and Rondante. Here's this Jeff Barry thing, and he

(01:06:57):
hears my arrangement. He says, that's not Jeff's style. Jeff
is sugar Sugar, so he says he started using me
as a ranger and first artist. His artist was a
guy named Paul Jabbara. Of course, Paul was going to
try to be an artist. I was doing a chart.

(01:07:20):
Paul's song was called One Man Ain't Enough. He was
already mining those humorous aspects of love, and we made
a good record, Ron producing and I got I wrote
strings and stuff disco. Nothing happened as an artist for
Paul Jabbara, but way later he moved to La He

(01:07:42):
won an Oscar for wrinning last Dance for Donna Summer,
and then he came back to New York. And this
is about eighty nineteen eighty one, and he called me
up and he said, you did a great job on
One Man. Ain't enough with Ron Dante. He said, I
got a title now for Donna Summer. I want you
to write it with me. What do you think about

(01:08:04):
It's raining Men? And I said I'll be right over.
And you know that became a.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
But you said he was writing for Donna Summer. How
did it end up with the Weather Girls?

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
Well, because Donna Summer heard it and hated it. She
had become religious by this point and she didn't. She
was insulted by it and she didn't like especially when
it said Hallelujah, It's raining men, and she objected to it.
She sent a bible to Paul. She and Paul were

(01:08:38):
great friends, but she rejected the song, and Paul tried
everything because he knew his kind of flamboyant guy, if
you will, who knew all the divas at the time,
and he played it for everybody, Diana Ross, Patty LaBelle Cheer,
and they all hated it. It didn't daunt him. He

(01:09:00):
made a track and he remembered these two girls they
used to sing for Sylvester right under the name two
Tons of Fun. He put their voices on it and
called them the Weather Girls, and that when it became
a hit, they were glad to go and work as
the Wedder Girls.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
A couple of questions, yes, sir, hey, what was it
like to have a hit?

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
Kind of amazing for me, of course, being so tuned
to the radio stade. This song took off very gradually,
interestingly enough, and it became a number one dance record
right away, but as far as top forty, it got

(01:09:53):
to about forty three.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
It's one of those songs everybody knows, but if you
look it up in the chart numbers not qu.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Just forty three, just out of the top forty. Nonetheless,
it started taking off another country's end, and when it
turned out to be the right tempo for aerobics, it's fast.
It's a fast dance temple, which worked in the clubs,
and it also worked for aerobics, and that's when it
crossed out of the gay clubs into the masses. You know,

(01:10:24):
women liked it too in the gym. So it took
a long time. Took years for this to kind of happen,
and then people use it all over the world in
commercials or movies and stuff. But it kind of, as
I say, it's not like, wow, I got another top
ten record. Was never that. It's just kind of a
gradual swell.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
Okay, you write that song? Who owns it? And what
was your percentage of the one hundred percent ownership?

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
I did not give up my half of the publishing.
You did not, No, I did not, So I for
the first time, I do have half the publishing on it.
Now there's a little deal in praised with Paul Jabbara
and his descendants. Now he's unfortunately left us, so with

(01:11:16):
my share, you know, I share it a little bit
with them.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Well what way did well?

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
Because Paul did say you know, hey, I you know
I want you to write this song. Well you you know,
And I don't want to get into the details of.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
That, but just understand, didn't he have the other half
of the song.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
He did, but he was signed to a company. He said,
I'm never going to make any money off this. You've
got to understand, I'm so in debt to them. With
all the sessions I do. By the time I recoup,
I won't make any money. So will you give me
a little money from your part of the publishing? And
I did. I'm happy to do it, and you still
will do it. I still do it, and you still

(01:11:54):
own the song. Yes, yes, and I have resisted. I
have been offered. You know, some of these well, I
don't know what they call these new publishers that are
coming buying up people's catalog. Mine certainly isn't worth what
Springsys is. I only got one song, but I all
wrote the Letterman theme too, but that was that. But still,

(01:12:14):
you know, some deals have come across. I just said,
come on, it's my only song. I'm just going to
hang on to this, see what happens, because I'll tell
you something when I want to use it for a
toothpaste commercial in Denmark. If you don't have any publishing,
you're not going to hear about it, period, and you're
not going to get paid for it's a different thing
when you have a little of the publishing than I

(01:12:35):
have have it. So that's absolutely true.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
Okay, so you have this hit with the Weather Girls.
What's the next step for you?

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
Just continue? I was already on Letterman by that point.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
No, no, well let's go back to chapter Oh so,
oh yeah, So how do you get from Godspell to SNL?

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
Godspell or Stephen Schwartz brought me to New York And
I was already in New York when the SNL people
showed up. After I had done Godspell in Toronto, I
was now a theatrical musician. I started doing a few
other shows getting those calls, and a guy came in
to play saxophone in the band for one of those

(01:13:22):
shows in Toronto, and it was Howard shore Uh. And
that's when we met and we hit it off. And
Howard turns out to have been he was in a
band up in Canada that had some success, Lighthouse of
course one morning. Yes, he was a saxophone player in that.

(01:13:44):
And he was also Lauren Michael's best friend. Oh he
had They had gone to summer camp and done shows together.
So Lauren came to town to do SNL and Howard
was his musical director from the old days in camp.
Howard was gonna, you know, and Howard did a great

(01:14:04):
job for them and for him. And I was already
in town doing the Magic show. Howard called me up,
had offered me this job, and I was thinking, oh
my god, it's going to be variety of every I
can have to new music every week. I don't know

(01:14:26):
if I can cut it. And after I accepted, I
called Howard one night, Howard, I don't think I'm the
right guy, and he had to talk me into it.
I said, it's not daily. You know, we're going to
have time to rehearse. You'll have the music. He calmed
me down, and that's how I got on that show,
hired by him. But he said, you know, you were
hiring a lot of people. You know. Gilda had been

(01:14:49):
in Godspell in Toronto. She was from Detroit really, but
had been up in Toronto. Ackroyd I knew he had
around backstage Godspell. Belushi was one of the first guys
I met when I came to New York. To another
connection I had Brian Doyle Murray. Bill Murray's older brother.

(01:15:14):
Brian introduced me around in New York. When I got there,
Brian introduced me the National Lampoon people. I started working
with the doing musical parodies and stuff with them.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
Now, were you the pianist in Lemmings.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
No, let Mes is before my time great pianist in
Lemmings named Paul Jacobs. He was with the Lampoon even
before I and Paul Jacobs and I worked together on
this one album we made for them called Goodbye Pop.
Christopher Guest was with us, that was what he was
doing at the time. He was in New York at

(01:15:52):
the time. We wrote some songs together. We wrote a
song together called Kung Fu Christmas. You know what if
the stylistics did a Christmas song? That type of thing,
and that's a collector's item. Goodbye Pop. Nonetheless, some funny
stuff on it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
Okay, SNL starts well, the first host was George Carlin
was either very yes, that's right, yes, And I watched
the first and I ate it was sort of hip.
It took a couple of months to become a phenomenon. Yeah,
what was it like being on the show? What was
your viewpoint? Looking out?

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Awfully fun to do leading up to the first show,
I couldn't believe we were going to go alive. It
didn't seem possible. So many elements, so many different stages
in that big studio, eight h cutting from one to
another to another, and it's all going to be live.

(01:16:51):
There was no music on the very first show, you know,
no act that we had to play for or anything,
as I was man, just the theme and some ins
and outs, so not too much pressure and in general,
not so aware of any you know how successful the
show was being just having the time of my life,

(01:17:12):
really doing a doing a network show. And I remember
the Christmas Show, how much fun that was because of
remembering watching the you know, Dinah Shore's Christmas Show or
Andy Williams Christmas, this long tradition and how important television
was to me up in Canada, and then to be
a part of a Christmas show myself and getting to

(01:17:33):
play for Martha Reeves that that Christmas who Lauren booked.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Okay, your breakthrough on camera moment is is Don Kirshner.
How did that happen? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
Brian dol Murray was a good friend. As I mentioned, Billy,
his brother was already on the show. Brian later joined
SNL as a writer. In fact, he was there as
a writer when I came back from doing that Norman
Lear thing with Jeff Barry and Kirshner, and I got
my when it bombed, I got my old job back

(01:18:10):
on SNL and I returned, and I was as always
though part of writing meetings and stuff. I was there
for sir, you know, especially if things were going to
get musical. I was up late with everybody off and
on Tuesday nights.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
And.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
Brian had an idea for a musical number. We had
a character on the show, a running character. He was
really a writer, Michael O'donahue, one of the key guys,
uh you know, when it came to attitude, dangerous attitude
of the show, and he had a character he would

(01:18:50):
do on camera sometimes, mister Mike just he was dimly
lit and he was kind of eerie and stuff. And
Brian said, what if we do a thing Garrett Morris,
our dear friend and actor on it, the only black guy,
the only black actor on the show at the time, Garrett.
The idea is Garrett and drag doing Tina Turner, which

(01:19:12):
he really tore up, and mister Mike on guitar, and
so instead of it's instead of Eyking Tina, It's Mike
and Tina. That was the whole idea. Obviously not much
of an idea to hang your hat on, but it
required some exposition. You know, how are we going to
set this up? Explain that he's Mike, mister Mike, and

(01:19:33):
it's mister Mike and Tina. And I said, I could
introduce this as Don Kirshner. I had worked with Kirshner,
of course Jeff Barry on this on This Bomb Show
at seventy seven, and during that time out in La
Kirshner was hard again with his uh Don Kirshner's rock

(01:19:54):
concert first you know that? And there was another one anyway,
it didn't call you, yeah, exactly, And Kirscher called me
one day. He knew I was a big fan of it.
I gush all over him, you know, I knew all
about Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart and all of his
all of that stuff. And he called me up and

(01:20:14):
he said, I'm going to go on I've had voiceovers
all this time on my show introducing the acts. I'm
going to go on camera myself. He said, you know,
people are saying, maybe I'm a little stiff. He said,
but Sullivan was stiff and he had the gig, you
know what I mean. And I got the gig. He
spoke very kind of fast and show busy in person.
You know, I got the gig. You know, I may

(01:20:35):
be stiff, and I got the gig, he says, So
I want you to be there. I'm going to go.
I want Lucky to be there when I go on
camera for the first time. And I drove down somewhere
near Hollywood and Vine to a studio and he's doing
these intros and I never saw anything so funny because
he was so animated and fast talking as a publisher.
But he said, forget about it. You know, we want

(01:20:56):
to talk about track record with the Neil Diamonds and
the Carol Kingdom. They saidakas ever looked at a contract,
he would go a mile a minute, but when he
got on camera, he froze up and he I'm Don
Kashner and this is rock constant, So you know, it
stuck with me. And I did at that time to

(01:21:16):
introduce my Contina Turner, and that's how that's how that
came about the show. God blessed them. They were so
loose that anybody was welcome to get in on it
if they if they had something that might be funny.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
Okay, but a couple of things. This was when it
was the Hippis show in the country, and unlike today,
there was a limited number of outlets. Suddenly you're famous.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
What's it like walking around not famous? Really starting to
get a little exposure.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
You go to the grocery store people.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
I have to say, no, I have to say that's
certainly did start to happen when Lettermans started. When A
Letterman Show started in eighty two, there was an amazing difference. Yes,
and I became sort of well known for sure, but
not during the you know, my little roles on SNL
and by the fifth season I was even known as

(01:22:19):
a featured player. These are these, you know, almost the
semi regular I got that billing and did a few
you know kershner was really the only thing I could do.
But they would work me into some other things too,
But no, I never really got you know, uh, it
was never really much of a recognition factor until the
Letterman Show.

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
And how did you end up in spinal Tap?

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
Well, fifth season of SNL, my fifth and last season,
Harry Shearer was It was one of his first two
appearances as a cast member. He became a cast member
that year and the two of us hit it off,
and we're still close friends, and we wrote together on SNL.

(01:23:07):
First thing we wrote together was a kind of a
parody of a backers audition. Lauren was really, you know,
hoping that the two of us would get together and
write something musical. We didn't know that you could be
like Tina Fay and then put it on Broadway. We
weren't thinking like that at all, you know, but we

(01:23:29):
wrote something that we thought was very funny. A backers
audition for the worst show you could possibly imagine, something
about the Manson family. B Arthur was a hostess, and
she played like a society woman who had lent her
home for this backers audition. Harry and I Young composers,

(01:23:51):
and the rest of the cast. Billy build a Garrett
playing of the different characters in the show, singing the
song Garrett as man and singing a song called nine
because we all know he was into that number nine.
And the hook was that it was in nine to
eight times, just like those silly songs in Superstar. Every

(01:24:11):
song had to be kind of in different times, so
that was our so we hit it off strong. And
when Harry and the guys were developed spinal Tap, Harry
sold them on me. This guy's funny, and you know
he would be great for this part. The local promo man,
and I knew them all. Rob Reiner had had hosted us,

(01:24:33):
and I knew them all a little bit. Chris of
course from from from National Lampoon and McKean socially, so
they all, you know, it didn't take too much. And
when I said to Harry, well, so you're going to
send me my lines, and he said, you'll be making
them up, I said what, And it turns out that

(01:24:53):
that's that's the way the movie was done. They had
just seen outlines. No, he had to make the prown lines.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
How long did you actually work on set?

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
Two days work. I came out on a weekend to
do two days work. First day was the scene. Well,
there's a little problem because I was the local promo
man and my first scene was I arrived late after
a gig to the band's hotel and I have to

(01:25:24):
talk them into getting up super early the next morning
to do a radio interview, and they just don't want
to do it. And I'm going crazy and I this scene,
you know, well, I was. They put in a thing
where I took an egg. I once did it in
realized so frustrated that I smashed an egg right on
my head and that was in the move in the movie.

(01:25:47):
But then I do get them to the next day
we're shooting in the radio studio. I get them up
for the early morning interview and there's a DJ ready
to go to play, a guy playing a DJ. But
Harry sure is a DJ too, as I'm sure you know,
very much a perfectionist, and he did. He just didn't

(01:26:08):
approve of the way this DJ, the DJ couldn't you know,
operate his own slip his own card in queuing up
a record at the same time, couldn't know. Harry just
didn't approve. So that means that scene had to go,
and my scene leading up to it that really had
to go to Aloha. Thank god. It appears as a
bonus track on the DVD, the egg Stink the egg thing,

(01:26:31):
and then and then they then then they kicked my
ass scene in the in the record store. All in
all in two days.

Speaker 1 (01:26:40):
Okay, the movie comes out. It's sort of the slow burn,
but it never went away this is Do you start
getting recognized from that and people telling your lines?

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
Do you Every band that came on Letterman had to
take the dvdeo on their on their bus, the touring bus,
so they were all familiar with it, and they all said,
many of them said the same thing, it's not funny
to us, so real that we don't you know that
we don't like it, but we watch it anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
Okay, So how'd you get the gig with Letterman?

Speaker 2 (01:27:15):
Well, you know, at as Saturday at Light Live was
ending for me after the first after that fifth season,
Letterman was starting up a show, a morning show on
NBC Live in the morning, and they were asked me

(01:27:36):
to I got the call to do that show, or
at least to meet on it, but I may have
been actually to do it, but it just didn't seem
right to me the morning, you know how I had
known a little bit about David Letterban, not too much, though,
didn't seem right, and I passed on it. You know,

(01:27:58):
I felt like I was still young. I didn't have to,
you know, I didn't know the value of a gig
like I do now. I passed on and Letterman still
I would refer to it on the show, Paul, you
didn't do the morning show, did you know, Dave? Why not?
I couldn't get up that early. That became a running thing.
But the show was two hip for the room and

(01:28:21):
too hip for the hour, and it didn't succeed. But
when they they got their notice, you know, but you
got to keep doing shows. You were canceling, you, but
you got to keep doing shows for another month. That
was the funniest month I've ever seen because they were
no pressure. So I was watching that show not regretting
that I hadn't done it, though, and then they remembered

(01:28:42):
me two years later when he got his night show.
I got the call again, and this show was going
to be so late, it was going to be after
the tonight show, after Johnny carrs. I said, that's that's
more like it, you know, And I was thrilled to
do that show. And I came in for a meeting
with Dave and his producer and we hit it off.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
And how did you hire the band?

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
Well, I had been working in the studios and I
just hired and I had actually produced for a record
for a couple of studio guys. Four Studio guys had
a band together called the twenty four Street Band. Their
success was only in Japan, but I made a record
with him, produced a record for that market, and they
were just some of the best guys and they already

(01:29:28):
played together. So it was Will Lee one of the
all time greatest bass players still to this day, and
was with me all through the whole Letterman Show till
the end. I still play with him. Steve Jordan on
dramas an incredible phenomenon at the time. He's got nothing
but bigger since then, and most recently joined the Rolling Stones.

(01:29:50):
And Hiram Bullock, the great him Book on Guitar, who
really was like Hendricks but with musical training, has left
us unfortunately. But he was a first guitar so that
first crack Man was really strong. The musicians still remembered,

(01:30:11):
and it lasted not too long. It is a certain
kind of you know, you need a certain kind of
discipline to be able to show up every single day.
Hiram may have been a little too free spirited.

Speaker 1 (01:30:24):
So tell me about the evolution. And then you go
earlier on CBS and you get a female guitar player too.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
Yeah, So Hiram, you know, I had to leave, and
I tried out lots of guitar players on the air,
and Sid McGinnis was the best. He had played with
Peter Gabriel, among many others, and I hired him. And
then when Steve Jordan left, he was getting a little hot,

(01:30:52):
you know, just too hot hang around. And Anton fig
I had met in the studios. He had played on
a number of the Kiss records on you know, uncredited,
and he was just a great, uh studio drummer with
a rock sound, and he played the show great. So

(01:31:12):
there was that when we did that, you know, all
those twelve years at NBC. But when it came time
to move to the earlier hour eleven thirty on CBS,
there was I just you know, Paul, you got to
get a bigger band. It's a bigger show. We just
want a bigger band. That's all that they specified. And

(01:31:33):
it was going to be tough because Dave was so spontaneous.
I think still to this day, we're the only show
that if something happens out of left field, it's really
happening out of left field. It's not we rehearsed it before,
you know, we would rehearse sketches of course they would
be obvious when we were reading lines. But but if
something funny happened, if somebody said it something funny in

(01:31:55):
the audience, Dave would just chase the whole show. Let's
go with that, let's you know instead of that, let's
you know, And then whatever I had planned, you know,
I stopped planning stuff. Original band only four peaces. We
could play anything. We didn't need charts. We all kind
of knew all the song I hired guy. All these guys,
although they were studio players, they had that in common

(01:32:17):
with me. They knew all the rock songs. They were
unusual studio players, often older jazz players. They looked down
on rock. But I found these guys who knew the
same songs. So it's tough to expand the band. But
eventually I got it right, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):
Was the original concept that when the bands come on,
when the musical acts come on, your band would play alone,
not one hundred percent of the time, but most times.
Whereas previously Skitch Henderson all these other people they played
during commercials, but when the musical act came on, they
had their own players.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
Yes, but that wasn't really true of a doc. Severnson
who you know, if yet in rock and roll era, yeah,
he didn't play as much. But back in the day,
if Tony Benn was on, if Frank Sinatra was on,
you know the yes, the Pouseman was playing, because that
was their style. They were a big man. Yes, David

(01:33:21):
Letterman himself definitely would have loved it if we could
have played for everybody that He said, you know, anything
else you can see on MTV, Let's see them interact
with you guys, And he loved that. And for a
period of time we did play for a lot of
the acts. It was good because we didn't have much
of a stage. We had a very small studio at NBC,

(01:33:46):
and it just was nicer to have a few people
from the band come nice for everybody. But eventually when
we got to CBS, the competition for booking became strong.
There were other shows. Everybody wanted to get the act first,
you know, whether it be the Lemonheads or these various

(01:34:11):
acts in the nineties and stuff. Much easier for them
to come in with their own setup, and that's kind
of became you know, let them, you know, just let
make it easy. Otherwise they're going to go do jay,
you know, so that but why was why? It kind
of changed and we didn't play for as many people

(01:34:31):
by any meaning.

Speaker 1 (01:34:32):
So were you involved in booking the acts at all?

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
No, not at all.

Speaker 1 (01:34:39):
How far in advance would you know an act was
coming on and working with rehearsing the material, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:34:48):
Well, it varied. Sometimes we would have enough notice, but
sometimes it could be the night before that we would
be playing with somebody and in that case, well, you know,
in the early days eighties, I was working with a
cassette machine and cassettes, and I would make cassettes of
these songs. Get them to everybody. There was no phones,

(01:35:13):
couldn't email it, track everybody, get the cassettes, start listening.
Everyone would do their homework. I started out writing charts
for people, but then I realized, let them just learn it.
That was what I really loved, everybody learning it from
the record like I used to as a kid. But eventually,
you know, when I got horns, then I needed charts,

(01:35:35):
and then you know, and I had to It was
back to getting an arranger and getting arrangements for these things.

Speaker 1 (01:35:43):
Okay, send out the cassettes the next day the act
is there, Then what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
Well, we had very little time to do it, less
than an hour to set them up and also rehearse
with them. We were we had to be as prepared
as we could be, that's all. And for the most part,
they were really surprised and happy, you know, that we

(01:36:10):
were able to play their stuff so well. Sometimes we
would play it more like the record. They hadn't heard
it that way. They've been doing it differently on the
road with their own bands. You know, we played record versions.
Sometimes they got a kick out of it. Only a
couple of times, you know, people weren't so happy. Just
a few times. I certainly did it. I got my
share of tires when I really blew it, though not

(01:36:33):
necessarily in those acts, but you know, at certain.

Speaker 1 (01:36:36):
Times tell me about blowing it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
Well, one thing that comes to mind is I blew
it with mister Anthony Newley, one of my favorites of
all time. We had a running thing going. This was
a Letterman eighties from NBC had a running thing going
for a while with a theme song. We had a
viewer male theme song. We used to answer viewer male,

(01:37:03):
what if there was a theme song? What if we
could get Henry Mancini to write it, which we did.
Henry came in conducted and he had written a theme
song for viewer mail.

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
My girlfriend's father.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
I heard. I happen to know this, Okay, give.

Speaker 1 (01:37:21):
He wrote the theme song for your male keep going.

Speaker 2 (01:37:24):
Give her my best. I will yes, and then it
became a you know, he came in and when Tails
conducted it, he wrote us more of a thing like,
you know, the New Heart theme, that kind of style,
very jaunty. And then we started doing his theme with

(01:37:45):
other people, with other celebrities. What if we could get
Johnny Mathis to sing the Mancinis theme. You know, we
were doing all of this, but it was just a
silly viewer male thing. Nonetheless, one week Anthony Knewley was
going to sing it. It's gonna at Mancini's theme to
viewer male, view a male. That's what Henry wrote. He said,

(01:38:11):
I wanted something like Hallelujah to be view were male.
So I had Newly. And then often, you know, as
a writer of special material, as I am, I would
write a section in for the different artists. So for Newly,
I wrote in a section the viewer male clown. Because
he was always singing about the happy clown. He's great

(01:38:33):
the viewer mail clown view a male. So that was
the idea. And Tony, excuse me, newly, Tony newly, if
I may. That's what the rat pag is to call Tony,
and I had a reversal. It was great. He had
a great sense of humor about it. One of those
songs I really stole from in one of the lines

(01:38:57):
viewer male clown. He's only funny, but mistake, he said,
Oh that's mine, you know which. I appreciate it, but
I'm so cocky that I didn't write any of it down.
I thought I'll just remember it. It's just me and
him piano, and he sings, and we sing the first section,

(01:39:18):
Doo the mail, and it's going great. And then I
got to modulate into the new slow section the viewer
maile clown. I modulate wrong. I come out about a
fifth higher than it's supposed to be. And he his
ear is so good. He follows me into the new key.

(01:39:40):
But now he's up well laugh at the viewer mail.
He's way high and I'm just dying, Oh my god,
what have I done? And then he hits this note
at the end of view of milk. He hits it.
It's out of anybody's range. He hits the note. It's brilliant.
He gets a clause as he goes off. I hear

(01:40:01):
this from backstage. Fuck. He's so mad, so mad that
producer happened to run into him later at the Friars
Club said, oh, Paul Fields so terrible about it. And
he said, oh, Paul feels terrible. But I wrote him,
you know, the nicest letter I could in England, and
he a lovely letter, humorous letter. He wrote me back.

(01:40:25):
You know I hit a note, he said, I hid
notes that dogs from miles away. You know, whatever it was,
Thank god he forgave me.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
Okay, when you were playing with bands, did you ever
mess it up during the show such he had to
redo it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:46):
Well, yes, for soon reason. Yeah, once in a while
would happened. Not sometimes my mess sure, or somebody would
mess up. Yeah, we'd always redo it for technical reason,
you know, if there was a feedback or something. Yeah,
we'll do it again. We do it right after the show,
do it one more time sometimes, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
I became a fan of the show, would record it
every night and then watch it on the VCR. Sons
commercials such that I would save certain performances that blew
my mind. I'm gonna bring up the two performances that

(01:41:27):
I remember most and let me know if you actually
remember those. Okakay, Melissa Ethridge, I'm the only one. She
came out and she was stopping. That was what really
she She'd had a few albums before, and I certainly
knew her and had the records. But she came out
and just killed. That is that anything that resonates at all?

Speaker 2 (01:41:50):
I remember it, and I remember you know, she was
just a great performer and a live performer who, like me,
had been I don't know where she came up in
bars or or what, but she could. You know, she
gave it her all and you know nothing went wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
Okay, then what's the one easy?

Speaker 2 (01:42:10):
And and she you know, she did kill. And I
got to play with her a number of other places
and times of various you know, charity events whatever. She
always came through, always killed another.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
One's been in the news recently because of her untimely death.
But shinead O'Connor, did you made me the Thief of
your Heart? From the movie In the Name of the Father.
She was just unbelievable. Any memory of that.

Speaker 2 (01:42:40):
Well, I saw a cliff recently in the wake of
her death. I don't know the title, but she was
doing the one that goes du du exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:42:50):
It's the titles called you made Me the Thief of
Your Right. You know, as I say, it's confusing.

Speaker 2 (01:42:55):
Again, you know, smooth she had, you know, sometimes I
think she could be affectionists. And of course we all
remember the Saturday Night Live episode and stuff. It just
went down smoothly. I noticed I'd gotten another I hired
an extra guitar player for her, a guy that I knew,
and do you know she came out and killed it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
Okay, So a couple of your own memorable experiences of
musical guests that really touched you, either because it's personal
or because they were hit it way out of the park.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):
Well, James Brown is I always say when he did
the show, he did it in a number of times
with the very first time, and I had the original
band and we were all so into James Brown we
couldn't wait. And he did it very early, one of
the early guys who came on and did it with us,

(01:43:49):
and I think it was because we were playing his
stuff a lot for the ins and out of commercials.
He probably heard us playing something by him because we
were playing his stuff all the time, and he might
have seen it in his Askaf statement too. Anyway, his
agent called and said, he wants to come on ah

(01:44:10):
and you know great. We weren't having musical guests every night.
It was not a pattern as it became, and they
didn't you know, they weren't relegated to the very last
spot after the last commercial. At this point it was
it was new to us. We hadn't had many musicians
at all. We said to him, how what does he
want to play? He said, what does a man want

(01:44:32):
to play with me? Great? You know, very smart? You
know what do they know? So Steve said, I got it.
I want love to do sex Machine with him because
of that beat. Hiram said, there was a time, because
of that guitar party don't don't, don't, don't don't do
one of the early single line parts. Well, you know

(01:44:57):
it just thrilled with all of it, and he said, okay, cool,
we were going to do those two. There was a
time and sex Machine. He brought two horn players. That's
it hit two of his own horn players. And played
with us four guys. We couldn't none of us could
believe we were playing with him. But when he started

(01:45:17):
singing and dancing, it was just so strong you couldn't
help but play. We sounded better than we ever thought
we would, and we did the second song. We ran
out of time in the rehearsal. We didn't get a
chance to end. We didn't get a chance to make
up an ending for the second song. There was a

(01:45:40):
time which he was going to demonstrate all the dances,
so I didn't know what was going to happen. But
there we were on the air and he just, you know,
he just cut us off. He's no problem. And then
he heard us doing a third one of his and
he said, and we all, you know, all of us

(01:46:02):
in the band had gotten our first VCRs. At the
time home VCRs. We used to get together after every
show and watch that the tape of it. We couldn't
believe it. And we memorized all the dialogue too, with
the entry you know, on the panel. And he James
took over the show at the end after we heard

(01:46:24):
us to David Letterman, you have to do it now
before you cruise. Can we cruise with I got the feeling,
and then you hear Steve Jodd whoa his voice like
just out of the area he had taken over. Dave said,
we can, We'll take a commercial, came back and he
did a third song. Unrehearsed that show. God never got

(01:46:47):
over it. Still I think one of the greatest, and
a terrific performance on him dancing unbelievable, not much rehearsal,
camera shot of his feet, you know, iconic, keep going,
just wonderful. Sly another one, Slim in the family Stone tell.

Speaker 1 (01:47:07):
Me that story.

Speaker 2 (01:47:11):
He came in looking great, wearing a track suit, and
he was wonderful to work with. We rented him a
clavinet and a wah wah pedal or some kind of
problem with it. He didn't care. Didn't let him, you know,
and he did two numbers. Again. He was just terrific.

(01:47:35):
And then he at the end of it, he bought
a hundred bucks from me. But this is the most
amazing part of it. A couple of years later, I
had been reading in Rolling Stone magazine that Sly was

(01:47:56):
around working with Bobby Womack in Los Angeles, and somehow
we Bobby Walmack got booked on Letterman. He came into
the rehearsal and came after me. First thing he did,
take his wallet out, give me a hundred bucks. He says. Here,
he says, you'll never get this from slot. This is
my money, but I'm giving this to you. So what

(01:48:17):
a mind blower that was. That was when I knew
I was in show business. It was one of the cats.
Then Bobby Walmack paid me back.

Speaker 1 (01:48:28):
Leaving me sort of speechless.

Speaker 2 (01:48:30):
Who has a story like that? I know you can't
take it. You have.

Speaker 1 (01:48:35):
Anybody you didn't play with who was alive during you know,
the Letterman era.

Speaker 2 (01:48:42):
Well, Sinatra and Elvis obviously I did pretty well though
you know, I played with Carl Perkins. We got pretty
close to Elvis and others of course, and as far
as Sinatra, well, I did play with Sammy. Both times
were amazing lessons for me. Playing with Sammy Davis and

(01:49:05):
Tony Bennett I got to play with. So I did
awfully well.

Speaker 1 (01:49:10):
Now the show I remember correctly, The Late Night Show
ended with Bruce Springsteen and did you're the team the booker?
Did they try to get Well, it's too late for Elvis,
but did they try to get Sinatra.

Speaker 2 (01:49:25):
I don't know the answer. Not sure. I'm sure they
must have, but I just, you know, I have no information,
don't know. That's I really was not involved in the booking,
and I when I tried to be once, it just exploded.
It's so hard dealing with the agents and pr agents

(01:49:45):
and stuff, you know. Ah, so I stayed out of Who.

Speaker 1 (01:49:50):
Is it that you wanted a book?

Speaker 2 (01:49:53):
Well, okay, I'll tell the story. It was Paul Carrick.
Do you remember that, gentleman.

Speaker 1 (01:49:59):
I noted, Oh, Kerrick, Yeah, absolutely? How long has this
been going on?

Speaker 2 (01:50:05):
Yes? How long? That's right. He had a solo record
that I just loved. Right, I've forgotten it, and I
was in my mind and I was thinking, how long now? Anyway,
I just you know, the show was it had booked
a number of acts in a row that I just

(01:50:26):
didn't get. And I said to myself that Paul Carrack
song is so great, Let's get him on. And I just,
you know, as they say, stuck my neck out a
little bit. Let's get Paul Carrock. Can we not even
know the song? Don't shuit it on me, Ma, that's
the song that he had out of the time, So

(01:50:46):
they book him and then the word comes back, but
he doesn't want to do that song. He wants to
do his new song. So I put on a new
song and I'm no, you know, excuse me, but it's
just to me. It didn't have that That other song
was just so great. But here I am. You know,
now I got it and I'm gonna either one. Afterwards,

(01:51:08):
Paul is that's you wanted that guy on, you know,
because he was going to do a song that I
didn't want him to do. Somehow he got a bad
throat infection. He didn't do the show at all, so
it was came, came, moved. But that kind of was
a lesson, stay out of that. We have people that
do that, they know how to do it. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:51:26):
Yeah, it's interesting. He's put out all these albums of
covers that no one seems to know about. Check it
out because I think you'd find it interesting. It was
that one album that you know, we got the play
on MTV was in the eighties. I can't remember the
name of that track either. Okay, so what keeps you busy? Now?

Speaker 2 (01:51:48):
Well, I am having recovered from that initial shock of
not doing the show anymore. I'm just really enjoying myself.
I do various music. I'm doing sessions again. There aren't
sessions like they used to be because the computer plays
all the stuff now. But just did an album with

(01:52:12):
a guy named Fred Lipschis, who was the arrangements. Yeah,
so that was again, you know, kind of a full circle.
And I did one two that I'm in the middle
of with Casigi Minuos. I kind of am going back
to the you know, straight music when I look back
at my career and I have more time to do

(01:52:32):
so now I'm enjoying my kids, of course, and practicing again,
practicing the piano. And I was about to say, when
I look back, my favorite stuff is not even you know,
getting on TV that was wonderful, of course, but the
sessions I got to do. How fast I got going

(01:52:54):
as a session player, and I made a record with
Burt Backreck in about nineteen seventy six. I can't believe it,
you know, It's just one of those things. And that's
what really I'm the proudest stuff I think.

Speaker 1 (01:53:07):
And did you play sessions when you were on with
Letterman or that was just wasn't enough time?

Speaker 2 (01:53:12):
No, I was. I did some of the but you know,
it was disappearing, and not only the whole scene disappearing,
but also disappearing for me. If you're on TV, people
think you're busy. You know, you need to be in
the scene. But I still do things here and there.

Speaker 1 (01:53:27):
And how did you get involved with the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame.

Speaker 2 (01:53:31):
From a session thing? I had done a session that
involved Almited Urtigan, the founder of Atlantic Records and then
and one of the founders of the Rock Roll Hall
of Fame. Uh it was the Honey Drippers with Robert
plant That was during Letterman or earlier in Letterman run.

(01:53:55):
I just got a call, It's a session Saturday and
Sunday Robert plant Of course, you know I'm going to
be there, and it was let's see, well, Jeff Beck
and Ile Rogers were there as guitars. Wayne Peeswater and
based the Late Grade and the drummer has moved to
Los Angeles now name this case. But that was, you know,

(01:54:19):
just a session call. But I got to work for
Robert Planting. To hear his voice in the in the
phones was pretty amazing. And I hit it off with
Almet and he you know, and then he started seeing
me on Letterman and he called me for the Rock
Roll Hall of Fame and the first one was they
were afraid to the first one was with Fatz Nomeno

(01:54:41):
and everybody, you know, all the greats that were alive,
Elvis posthumously of course, and they said, well, we can't
ask we don't want to ask them to play because
we're honoring them. How can we ask them to work?
Yet we've got to have, you know, how are we
going to finesse some kind of a jam session? And
Bill Graham was still alive and he was on the committee,

(01:55:04):
and he said, well, I'll just you know, I'll say,
let's come up for a group photo and we'll just
have instruments, amps and guitars and see what and we
know they're going to play. Well, they took that photo
and they went running for the instruments. The greats, they
couldn't wait, and the jam was just on. They were
calling their own tunes and playing. It was just fantastic.

(01:55:26):
It just erupted.

Speaker 1 (01:55:27):
And at this point you still involved or what?

Speaker 2 (01:55:30):
Yeah, that was the first show. So I was involved
the first time. I mean I was involved really all
through John Winner's era of it. So almost thirty years
I think to varying degrees to every year depending on
who the inductees were. But that first year was incredible
and it was totally spontaneous, And when Bill Graham was alive,

(01:55:52):
he really politic for that jam. It shouldn't be rehearsed.
Don't try to get a show. It's the only time
you're going to see music. Absolutely jamming, and so while
he was alive, that's the way it was. And that
jan Winner, however, also a great friend of mine. He
wanted more of a rehearsed television show, so that's what

(01:56:13):
it morphed into. But initially it was absolutely a jam.

Speaker 1 (01:56:18):
One final question, Okay, Al Cooper, you had a legendary
career with the blues project Blood, Sweat and Tears, Supersession
of course, had the albums with Sounds of the South
with Leonard skinnerd etc. He says his only income is

(01:56:38):
for performing rights, and that you started to use his
song with the Cape every Friday night. Yeah, and he
was saying he got paid and then one night they
retired the Cape. How did you end up using his
song and how did you end up retiring it?

Speaker 2 (01:56:57):
One of these things where Dave I was playing it
and singing it myself, I love you more than you'll
ever know. And I was playing it for a bumper
or something. And Dave Letterman, who was much more musical
than anybody would have given him credit for, he heard every
note that we played all through those years. He said, gee,

(01:57:18):
that sounds like a James Brown thing. I should feel
like I should come out with a cape or something.
And of course Al had been inspired by It's a
Man's World when he wrote that. You know, I think
he would be the first to tell us that, and
Dave thought it was a James Brown turned out to
Al Cooper, So that's why it became one of ol

(01:57:41):
songs instead of one of James's. But after Dave made
that suggestion of cape, it looks like something about a cape.
I don't know exactly, but we started doing the cape bit.
We just rased it all go down on my knees,
you come out with the cape, and we did that.
Dave put the cape on me and then it just

(01:58:02):
just like that other story I told. It became a
runner and we started getting celebrities to put the cape
on me, and it came every Friday night and we
would actually come back from the commercial for the id spot,
I would be doing that cape. Whether it was Heidi
Klume or President Trump, all these people came out with

(01:58:23):
the cape, and James himself came out and put the
cape on me. And then you know, two years this
went on. Al said he built himself a new bathroom,
only he would put it that way. It had run
its course, you know, and we had run out of celebrities,
my goodness, we had everybody. And so it happened that

(01:58:48):
on an episode of American Idol that year, Paul Anka
saying my way. I couldn't for no reason. So I
just said, well, let's get Paul Ankle here and with
new spec lyrics about the cape, retiring the cape, and
that all came to pass. Paul sang my way about
the cape, something about well, we had agreed to work

(01:59:12):
with him. He is the master of special lyrics.

Speaker 1 (01:59:15):
You know, he wrote special lyrics for my birthday. I mean, God,
bless you, my jaw is still dropped.

Speaker 2 (01:59:23):
Well, our writers made the mistake of sending him some
lyrics that they had written. When he came in. He
came in by saying, you know, he says, yeah, you guys,
thank the lyrics. You saved me. You saved me two
days work, he says. But I kept one of your jokes,
which was that they had written which was about the

(01:59:44):
celebrities putting the cape when every case, in every case
they showed their true face except Joan Rivers that he liked.
But otherwise you readid everything very funny, and they retired
the cape and al you know, I'm sorry. I did
the best I could for you.

Speaker 1 (02:00:03):
And on that note, Paul, I think we're going to
draw it to a close. I want to thank you
so much for taking the time to speak to my audience.
And I want to remind everybody September thirteenth, your gig
with Jeff Barret.

Speaker 2 (02:00:17):
It's going to be a fun night. You know. I'm
the world's foremost authority. See you there, Bob, A lot
of fun. Say hi to your lovely one.

Speaker 1 (02:00:26):
Okay, till next time. This is Bob left Stets