In this episode of the LEGENDS: Podcast by All Day Vinyl, host Scott Dudelson explores the life and career of Ricky Byrd, a 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee for his work as guitarist in Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.
Our conversation spans Byrds early beginnings, the impact of his collaborations with music legends like Steve Marriott, Joan Jett & Roger Daltrey, his inspiring journey to sobriety, the new music he is making on Little Steven Van Zandt's Wicked Cool record label, and the impact Bryd has made as a 'recovery troubadour'
We dive deep into Byrd's musical journey, shedding light on his experiences and influences that have helped shape his rock and roll sound. Byrd shares stories from the heart of the New York City rock scene in the 70s and 80s, hanging with Steve Marriott and seeing The Runaways at CBGB's, the destruction his addiction caused and the inspiration he draws for his new music including his new tribute to Jeff Beck, 'Rhapsody in Blues'
Byrd shares his personal struggle with addiction and the steps he took towards recovery. His raw and comforting account offers insight into the challenges faced by many people in the music industry and the world at large.
This episode extends beyond just a nostalgic journey, providing an insightful lens into the power of resilience and an artist still creating and rocking.
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Thank you for tuning in! If you like the podcast please rate, subscribe and check out our other episodes with music legends. Thank you!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Thank you for listening. This is the Legends Podcast by All Day Vinyl,
and I'm your host, Scott Dettelson.
After you finish this episode, please subscribe, rate, and check us out on Instagram
and YouTube at All Day Vinyl.
Today, I'm excited to speak with an ace guitar player, a songwriter,
and 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee.
While my guest is best known as a member of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts,
playing guitar and co-writing on key albums, including I Love Rock and Roll
(00:22):
and Up Your Alley, he's also carved out a career as a solo artist and through
his extensive work as a mental health and recovery advocate has been dubbed
a recovery troubadour, a subject we're going to talk about.
I'm pleased to introduce to you Ricky Bird. Ricky, how are you doing, Scott?
Appreciate having you here. Let's start with the new and we'll take it back
(00:42):
because the new is very fascinating and I think it does connect very closely with your history.
So you released a song song earlier this year called Rhapsody in Blues,
which is a tribute to Jeff Beck.
I know Jeff is one of your early heroes.
So tell me about both the song, Why This Tribute, and if you have any history with Jeff.
(01:05):
I mean, I met him a couple of times, no history beyond that.
But so I'm signed to Wicked Cool Records.
Let's take it back to that. And at first
I said to steven van zandt and that's his label
i said i just want to
put out singles you know i don't i don't see the point of putting out full records
(01:26):
at this you know because you get radio if you're lucky enough to get radio they
play one or two songs and you got like 10 songs on there or 12 songs so yeah
he said sounds great i said yeah let's i want to be like tommy james let's just
put out singles like it's 1965.
So we put out in 2023, the first one was called Glamdemic Blues, right?
(01:50):
And then I wrote, obviously, it's as the title says, I wrote that during the COVID lockdown.
Just very glam, you know, the music is very glam.
Lyrics are all about like, you know, just give me one Saturday night,
just one Saturday night, you know?
Second one came out two months or three months after that called Alien.
Once again, very glamish, my influence that come from 1973, 73, 74.
(02:18):
And that song is basically, and I told Van Zant this, I had watched The Day
the Earth Stood Still on TCM.
And I had a dream that night that I was in a sort of like an interrogation room
with three, four aliens.
But right out of central casting aliens and van
(02:39):
zant was there see he was sitting at the table with me and and
i told him i don't remember if you were silvio dante or
if you were van zant but i was trying
to buy the earth more time see and he was
sort of the you know he was the middle man and then
i was so i woke up and i wrote the song alien you know
and that was the second song then about three months later which
(03:00):
were in 2023 and meanwhile i'm working
on more songs as these songs come out comes luan
straight up rock and roll song sort of like a
jerry lee lewis you know kind of
thing little richard that's the only song that
has lyrics that lean towards a recovery narrative like my previous two records
(03:23):
that i put out and so that was that one and then we then we lost jeff which
was horrible and i guess it came out of nowhere it wasn't like one One of those rock and roll cats,
like you thought this news was going to come at some point.
He was not that guy, really.
He was touring, too, up until last year.
(03:45):
And he was a big influence on me when I was a kid, when I was 14.
The Truth record, all that stuff.
The stuff with Rod Stewart. And then later, when he did the solo stuff,
he got a little bit more progressive.
Kind of lost me there for a few years when it got very progressive.
But I was always listening to him and, and,
stealing little licks not that anybody could play jeff beck licks but i did the best i could,
(04:10):
so he was always part of my lexicon you know in rock and roll yeah and i don't know i just,
i just had to write something i don't know
what made me do it and i wanted to do an instrumental it was the first instrumental
i've ever written which is interesting and it's not just a music with no lyrics
you actually have to make it interesting yeah and you have to come up with the
(04:33):
theme the melody has to be an interesting to carry the song so we cut that rhapsody and blues,
and i'm a gershwin fan so i thought that was a clever title and that and that's
it it was just it was just me nodding to jeff beck you know it's just i wasn't
trying to play like jeff beck i wasn't trying to you know i was just i was just
(04:55):
i there's a there are a couple of riffs on there that are Jeff Beck-esque.
But other than that, that's my guitar playing and I just wanted to throw a couple
of his licks in there to say, yeah, this is a tribute to you, brother.
So we did a video. We did a video for it. And all of these songs have been played
quite a bit on Little Stevens Underground Garage.
(05:17):
I've heard them on them. Absolutely. Thank you. Good.
That's a kick too. That's one of the biggest kicks when I'm driving in my car
by myself, you know, and it comes on.
But we did a video for it maybe a month and a half ago. We're going to save
it for the album, which brings me back to that conversation.
So I'm writing, I'm writing, but now all of a sudden I got like nine songs,
10 songs, and I say to Van Zandt, I guess this is a record. This is going to full length.
(05:43):
So I'm at the tail end, I could see the finish line.
We just cut as far as drummers i used steve holly
who's played wings wings played
with joe cocker played with ian hunter for a long time and then
aaron comis from the spin doctors tommy price
played on a track too i'm not sure what's
you know i don't know what's what's going to wind up on the record i cut 15 songs
(06:05):
and aaron and myself and bob
stander my co-producer we do it out at a place called parchesi studios out in
long island here in new york which is bob's studio and we just cut the last
two tracks i mean we cut the because i don't have a band see there's a the process
is i go in and i and i play guitar to a click track and then we start piling stuff on,
(06:29):
because i just don't have a band and it's always jeff kazee on keyboards jeff
i met when i played with the southside johnny and the asbury jukes for a year
change bob plays bass amazing bass bass player and guitar player.
Obviously, all the guitars are mine.
And all the vocals are mine. I try to get, because it's so far out in Long Island,
I wind up doing a lot of the backgrounds myself, which Stephen can't stand.
(06:52):
In fact, on the two songs we just worked on, he had me come into the Wicked Cool office.
And had a bunch of, we had, I think I'm going to call them the Baba Black Sheep
Singers because of this part they sang, the background. So it was Willie Nile.
Mark Ribbler, who is a great guitar player, he's Stephen's musical director
(07:14):
for the Disciples of Soul.
Who else was it? Jeff Kazee and Stephen. So they sang.
Stephen wanted to put other voices on there. He said some of the songs,
you know, it's not that important. You can't really notice. You can't tell it's all me.
Not that there aren't very famous records out that the lead singer sang all the backgrounds to.
But he wanted to throw some other stuff up there. So we just did that last month.
(07:39):
And we're getting close, you know. This is April. I'm trying to finish it by
the end of April and hand it in.
I can't wait to hear it. I mean, you've got a unique rock and roll sound that's
even carried when you were doing the recovery records and now you're doing these rock records.
And from what I gather, what I've read about you and heard, this harkens back
to the early influences when you saw Beatles on Sullivan and ultimately saw
(08:02):
the Rolling Stones and thought that was dangerous, that was dirty.
So I want to go back a little to those times.
How were you finding this music that was coming in from England before it was...
You know so there's internet that's easy so yeah
so i started off i got my first guitar when i was nine
(08:23):
and that was after seeing this beatles in the storms on ed sullivan just
like everybody in my demographic will tell you the same story yeah um and then
we moved to the bronx i grew up in the bronx we moved to queens and then that
was my first experience with playing with other people and some of the guys
that i met which i'm still friends with to this day in fact we played I played
(08:44):
Flushing High School, 1973.
It was pretty much the first big concert I played, right?
And we were doing – because, you know, you would play church dances.
You put together little bands, right, garage bands.
I'm like 16, and we would play – back then, so if you'd play a dance,
you'd play Midnight Hour, you know, I don't know, Rascals with Good Lovin',
(09:09):
stuff with Land of a Thousand Dancers, that kind of stuff.
These guys we started that i
met there were a couple of parks out here when we
moved to queens that had live concerts in the summer and i
met this little group of guys musicians at
one of these parks it might have been alley pond park or crochet park
(09:29):
and we became friends and we
put together a band but they had already been
to england a couple of times they were a couple of like they're maybe i'm 16
they were 18 they had already traveled to
england so they came back with the
clothes first off right the velvet
(09:49):
suits you know the snakeskin boots
the velvet suits and the snakeskin boots oh wait a minute there's a lyric
hold on and and they turned me on to stuff
that i wasn't listening to yet a lot of the
british stuff now a lot of it also had to do with when radio changed from transistor
radio am tommy james al green you know new york radio stations they would play
(10:14):
everything on one station to fm which they would play album sides,
and you know you were just a kid and you would have your headphones on you'd be just laying there.
You know and just listening to like rock in the film or humble pie and you know
fog hat and slave play, you know, I mean, all the Rock Stewart in the faces.
(10:37):
And they turned me on to a lot of stuff that I didn't know about yet.
So that was really my intro to that music.
Now, my intro to the blues happened from all the magazines that I read when
I was a kid, where you'd see Keith Richards talking about Muddy Waters,
or Howlin' Wolf, or, you know, Chuck Berry.
Chuck Berry, we heard on that AM Actually, probably back then it was My Ding-a-ling
(11:02):
was probably the single that came out. Because the other stuff was in the 50s, right?
And I was just a little, little, little bastard at that point.
But then you'd start going to find blues records.
So it was basically from musicians that I listened to when I would read articles.
They sent me to find the blues stuff, which now we do my age.
(11:27):
Yeah. When you do stuff, I turn other kids that are younger than me on to,
have you ever heard Spooky Tooth?
Or, oh, you got to check out, they did a version of I Am the Walrus.
Or you know stuff like that so it just
all goes around keeps going around a big circle and that's
really that's that's how i started to listen to
that stuff and i found stuff and i was i
(11:48):
loved everything i i wasn't into prog rock i mean yeah i had yes albums i had
the yes fragile right it wasn't my favorite stuff though i like the jay giles
band i love slade we saw slade a couple of times mountain leslie became a friend
of mine there was a place here in new york called the Academy of Music on 14th Street.
And back in the 20s, it was a vaudeville house.
(12:10):
So I was a little young for the Fillmore. I saw a couple of shows at the Fillmore.
But when I was at the age to be able to go to concerts, 14, something like that,
it was the Academy of Music was the concert hall.
And it was two shows, 8 and 11.
And it was like $2.50 for a ticket or something.
(12:31):
And it was three acts, right? So it was Jay Giles, Humble Pie,
and Mountain. I'm making that up, but it probably happened. Totally.
That was it for me. That was my introduction to stuff.
At what point did you start taking those influences, writing your own songs,
and start playing more, I don't want to say professionally, but at least in
(12:53):
the clubs beyond the high schools or beyond?
New York was fabulous at that time. There was this underground subculture,
let's call it, rock and roll, glam, glitter.
There were a few clubs. There was Max's Kansas City, famous club.
That's where I made my bones, right, as a kid, getting in there with funny dudes.
(13:14):
Tell me about Max's. That's a legendary, infamous.
Yeah, well, before me, when I started going there, it was –,
sort of they catered to the artists say and
mickey ruskin who owned the place scrappy looking
guy right stand at the front door he was
a you know he said he was somebody that loved
artists and loved to support artists so if they couldn't they would come in
(13:38):
for lunch or early dinner the artist and they couldn't pay they would give him
pieces of art that's the art that hung on the walls when i started going there
it just became the place so if zeppelin was playing at the garden,
you knew zeppelin was going to wind up at max's kansas city later that night,
and if led zeppelin was going to be at max's kansas city there'd be some girls at max's kansas city.
(14:03):
You know so so me and my friends used to come in from queens at that point and
we would go hang out there later on we started we'd start playing there because
downstairs was the bar and we would eat eat dinner, the famous chickpeas that
they had on the table that wound up being thrown later at the night.
And there was the famous, there was the back room. You walked in,
there was a long bar and there was some tables, booths. And then the back room
(14:25):
is when somebody famous came in, like David Bowie or Jagger,
they would go in the back and there would be this big table.
One time when Martha Hoople played, they played the Uris Theater,
which I was at the shows. I think the three shows I was at, two of them.
Queen opening. It was Queen's first time in America.
They all wound up at Max's around this big round table. As soon as you entered
(14:48):
the back room of the round table.
And me and my friends stood around them like little morons staring at them,
which you would do, right? Yeah.
And then 20 years later, I'm playing in Ian Hunter's band, touring Europe and Scandinavia.
So there you go. That's how to hopefully- Do you ever recount that to him?
Tell him that you- Oh, yeah. He knew that. I told him that story right off the bat.
(15:10):
You know but everybody you see everybody there yeah if you stood up you know
i remember seeing angela and david bowie walking in matching suits you know
and so there was max's there was the mercer rock center which was another place
that was very arty artsy all velvet,
stuff and mirrors and it was just you know i think it was something else also
(15:31):
so it had a different sort of look to it that's where like the new york dolls played.
Right you know before that even before max's
there was a club called nobody's that was on bleaker street that we
used to go to where you would see jimmy page he'd walk in
he'd be sitting at the bar drinking a remy you know like it was
just these just little subculture these little clubs that
(15:53):
the the musicians knew when they came to town that they would go they could
go and hang out and not be bothered too much then i started playing these places
same places you know there There was a place in Queens called Coventry on Queens
Boulevard where Kiss played before the make-up.
My bands would play there. I was 16 then.
(16:15):
But we would mix up some originals with some free.
My friend Phil, who I'm talking about, was one of those guys that we played
flushing in high school.
He sent me a tape of us rehearsing in a storefront doing a free song.
I'm trying to think of which one it was.
Wishing Well. Wishing Well. With me singing.
Singing in this little storefront on the
(16:37):
boulevard you know so we were we were way
different than a lot of the other bands we were playing if we were playing
cover stuff we were doing Savoy Brown Humble Pie
yeah Flushing High School we opened up with Four Day Creep from the Rockin'
the Fillmore record and remember I'm 16 yeah yeah yeah too young to drink and
but I was playing but I was turned on to that yes exactly totally now did I
(17:01):
like American music yeah I mean I liked I love the Jay Giles band. Oh, yeah.
Please put them in the rock hall. Amen.
And Mountain, I loved. I loved Creedence. I loved Cactus.
I loved Cactus. What was the Carmen Atpeace on drums? Yeah, Tim Bogard.
We'll both later play with Jeff Beck.
(17:23):
Yes, exactly. That's right. And Jimmy McCarty, Jim McCarty on guitar,
who played with Mitch Ryder.
There was a song called Parchment's Farm, an old blues song that Cactus did.
And I can't tell you how many hours I tried to learn that break.
Everybody should go YouTube Cactus doing Parchment's Farm. It was very fast.
(17:45):
And I was trying to learn the break. So over and scratch the record,
just trying over and over again. That was my beginnings, New York City.
And because it was a subculture, it was the New York Dolls. They were like this
huge band. And Manchester City, they were like the rock stars when they came in.
You know and and and we would just we would
just hang and then we would try to do our own stuff and then we would
(18:06):
play like i said church dances maybe there was one or two clubs in queens that
were like you know most places wanted you to do cover stuff you know but but
you could find one or two maybe that you could do some original music or you'd
have to mix it up let me ask you being you You know,
being young in this incredible fast scene,
(18:28):
drugs and alcohol were obviously a part in that.
I'm curious, where in your journey did that, because obviously the recovery
is a major part of your story.
So the beginning of it, where does that come into your world?
Well, I mean, I started smoking pot when I was 13. and
(18:48):
because i have the addictive personality trait
which got worse as i got older when we smoked one joint and everybody else wanted
to go home and do their homework i was like why don't we smoke another one you
know more addicted to more right but as soon as you started doing that stuff
with the bands and garage bands you know somebody would bring over six pack or,
(19:11):
teenagers right there were certain drugs that were around and quaaludes you
know there's certain pills,
and I started out drinking beer and then when I started hanging out in the city
at these clubs then I you know I don't think I ever said no to anything anybody
offered me but to my detriment but.
I started drinking Southern Comfort at first, I think. And that was disgusting.
(19:33):
But, you know, I drank it because Janis Joplin liked it.
And then, of course, I switched over to Jack Daniels because my two favorites,
Keith and Frank Sinatra, that was their drink, right?
But you could see it starts to progress, right?
If you have that, what I have, addictive behavior, you would do more.
You would just do, you know, I'm on the high. One more will get me higher.
(19:56):
And then it started turning into a nightmare
in the late 70s when cocaine showed its face
it's cocaine's always been around but it went through different class systems
right it's in the 20s it might have been
jazz musicians and maybe the highbrow people the socialites you know went to
hollywood you know it kept changing places and then it became part of the rock
(20:19):
business at a certain point it was probably always there but it became a thing in the the late 70s,
I would say, you know, to me.
And then that's where it was accessible.
And then I started doing that.
Hindsight is obviously always 20-20, but at the time, did it feel like,
not just with you, but in the surroundings, that the drugs were part of the
(20:44):
creative process and part of that outlet?
Or was there recognition that it was... I don't think I was that deep to think
it was part of the creative process, But it was part of the rock and roll world
that I read about in those magazines.
So if you wanted to be one of those guys or those girls when you were 16.
(21:06):
It was just like follow the bouncing ball, right? Right. Yeah.
And not everybody did drugs and booze, but probably the majority at that time.
And did it lead to some great songwriting?
Yeah, it must have. A lot of Beatles stuff, a lot of Stone stuff.
My favorite songs were written like that. That doesn't mean it can't be written
(21:29):
without it, and it certainly doesn't because I'm doing some of my best stuff now.
That's what it's for. And I used until 87, so I've been sober.
I've been in recovery for 36 years now.
And it's- And it got worse as it got along when you started mixing.
You become professional chemists. Yes.
You know like if i do this and then i take some of that well
(21:50):
this will put me to sleep but i'll do this to wake me up and then this will
keep me going through the night i have
some i have some questions on that in a bit but i want to make a highlight
a point you just made which is you know a lot
of people were a lot of famous celebrities and musicians
were doing drugs and that's what you want to emulate and what was not
being celebrated at the time which is being celebrated now
(22:10):
is sobriety right those few that were sober
nobody was writing about how awesome that is and
then what a model they are it was always about the antics so
there are one or two people from back then of course
yeah that did not ever pick up a drink
or it's right you know but I think it's safe to say the majority of people did
you know and now it's probably the other it's probably turned around yeah we
(22:35):
have definitely more resources and you're a big part of you know pushing that
forward and I mean I try to spread the word I've done some music cares I'm who I'm friends with,
I did a couple of, facilitated a couple of songwriter groups for them here in
New York with people that just got into recovery.
Some of them you knew, some of them were newcomers to the business.
(23:00):
And their main problem was they couldn't remember, they couldn't write now that they're in recovery.
They were questioning if they still could write, if did they lose their edge?
I'm here to tell you, you don't lose your edge. you know in fact you remember
your edge you know you remember what you do and i mean only for me speaking
(23:21):
to myself i've never played this well i've never written this well i've never
sang this well was i rocking back then yeah of course i was rocking i've always
been a good guitar player,
i know what i'm doing but now i think i'm i've come into my own as all of those things Yeah.
I don't think I've heard anybody who's made that transition in recovery say
(23:43):
that it was better before.
I mean, it's, I think... No. And I'm never going to say I didn't have a good
time. I mean, there was some disastrous things. I mean, I almost died.
Literally almost died. What was, if you don't mind sharing, what was that?
I was out with Joan. We were playing in Alabama. I was experimenting with smoking Coke.
(24:05):
And I think that I smoked tons of pot so that my lungs were not healthy anyway, by the time I was 13.
But I did love weed.
And if anything, that's the only thing I miss at this point.
You know, just watch a Yankee game and take a few hits. But obviously, I can't.
But, yeah, I think I wound up putting a hole in my lung, so it collapsed on the road.
(24:27):
And I wound up in a hospital in Alabama. And it was very serious,
and it was closer than they told me. I found out years later how bad it was.
And that didn't stop me, by the way. That was in 83. Oh, that was in a house.
No, it kept going until 87.
Let's let's take a let's take a step back going back to new
york and and the late late 70s if cbgbs
and that that error you were in you
(24:50):
were in a couple bands and you had a stint
where you were playing with steve marriott is that is
that right i never played in a band with them but we became friends we became
really good friends and you know just a sidebar
here yeah cbgbs came a a little later
you know when the ramones started i mean later from nobody's that club that
(25:12):
was that wasn't a lot that wasn't a music club it was a bar but i wasn't really
a cbs guy like i i've been there i went there i played there but i was a max's
kansas city guy like cbs was more of a punk,
alternative i was more of faces you know exile on main street yeah rock and
roll yeah so so i didn't I wasn't a lot at CBGBs,
(25:37):
but I played there with Joan. I played there with my bands.
Is that where you first saw Joan?
Yeah, I saw The Runaways. Was that at CBGB? Yes, it was.
What's the recollection of that?
God it was so long ago i don't remember i mean i i remember we
were me and my friends went probably the same friends we went
(26:00):
to see an old girl band you know it was it
was like what is this you know and it was rocking you know
it was cool the jump was great so yeah
you know thumbs up or fortuitous years later
you would you would end up connecting yeah yeah yeah but
then it was probably it was almost we went because we heard
about them we read about them we wanted to see
(26:22):
what this was right we wanted to see what
it was because they i didn't hear a lot of them on the radio right
so i wanted to see me and my friends wanted to see what
the band was this old girl band and they were great yeah the
the mythology and the legend is is incredible and before we get before we get
to john and you linking up with her i want to quickly steve marad is a personal
(26:44):
hero of mine as well music he did with the small faces and humble pie and i'm
curious at the time you you You linked up with him.
What phase of his career was he in? Was that post-HumblePie while he was doing his solo? Oh, yeah.
He still had versions of HumblePie. Yeah, right.
I met him when the last, I think it was the last HumblePie record,
(27:06):
Go for the Throat, I think it was.
But Carol, my wife, Carol Kay is a publicist. She worked at Lieber Krebs as
a publicist. Lieber Krebs was a very famous management company.
Aerosmith, Nugent, Def Leppard, on and on. HumblePie.
Later, this is way past the Rock in the Fillmore. And so go through the throat.
That was Steve, Bobby Tench, who just passed away, also played with Jeff Beck.
(27:29):
See, everything's connected.
And Sooty Jones and Jerry Shirley on drums. That was when I met Steve.
They lived, him and Pam, his wife, and their kid, Toby, who's like this grown-up guitar player now.
They had an apartment in the village. So we spent a lot of time hanging out
there. And also, you know, when me and Carol would have a fight,
(27:50):
I would go stay with Steve and Pam.
And we became really good friends. And I could close my eyes and see Steve and
me on the couch with guitars and him singing full voice, like Rockin' the Fillmore
voice in my ear, you know, and teaching me how to sing.
Like tell me, you know, sing from down here, you know.
(28:10):
And and funny enough he had his guitars under
the bed was probably the guitar he used on rock in the
film or not in a case just thrown under the bed or one
of those guitars that he was famous for but we were looking through
i don't know his closet was open i said oh man where'd
you get these shoes he says i'll take them man so what's
the history he said i wore them on top of the pops with the small faces when
(28:31):
we did ichiku park or something so i still have those
wild i tried to wear them but
his feet were a lot smaller than mine he was a little guy but we yeah we got
we hung out a lot we hung out a lot i had some really interesting times together
we got high too a lot yeah he was apparently that around that time he was a
pretty wild dude is that is that right he told me this was my first.
(28:57):
Sort of notice on the wall we were sitting he said he had after hummel pie he
put together these bands one was called packet of three and they played a place
here that was another famous club called the cat club in new york so the the
bus was parked outside i was sitting on the bus with steve and we were doing
we were doing blow i guess at this point it doesn't matter,
and and i kept taking that back to do more and he said you know you should cut
(29:21):
down on that stuff mate and then i in my brain just went oh that's not a good sign.
You know and and i'll never forget that
that was the first notice on the wall that maybe i
was going too far but i loved
the music here's my favorite singer you know put him paul rogers terry
reed yeah you know those that's the thing of
(29:42):
course rod those are the singers that really
you know put a run in my stocking as they say when
i was a teenager listening to that stuff absolutely and and you know we saw
paul rogers i think carol's doing his publicity they were playing at bb king's
on in times square and we went to see him and dude he started singing and i
got all teary because his voice was just as strong as it was when he was that kid in free,
(30:08):
and i've had a chance i was in a band with simon kirk we've done events together
you know so i've done all right now plenty of times and yeah those i've had
that's one thing and another sidebar is like through my career i've been lucky
enough to play with a lot of these people that i spun their their vinyl when
I was a kid. Yeah, incredible.
(30:28):
I've had a chance to play Mississippi Queen with Leslie West and BS Pal.
And I never played on stage with Steve, but we've played plenty of stuff in his apartment.
And of course, jumping around, the stuff that I do most of now,
more before, I still do them now, but before COVID,
(30:52):
there's this crew of us that are like, Like, you know, Will Lee,
Liberty DeVito from Billy Joel's band.
Jeff Carlisi from 38 Special.
Rob Austin, who plays with Frampton for the last 25 years. Plays with a lot of people.
We're like a crew, see? So when there's these charity events around the country, they always call us.
(31:15):
You know, the substitutes, if somebody can't make it, Paul Schaefer's done them.
That's given me the ability to be in this all-star band for months.
50 events over the last 10 years where I'm backing up Mavis Staple,
Ryan Wilson, Smokey Robinson, you know, now I can't, Darling Love.
(31:36):
Amazing. I mean, you can see it on my Wikipedia page.
Playing like three songs with Smokey Robinson, you know, playing in my room with Ryan Wilson.
You know, it's a pretty magnificent career. And I couldn't ask for anything more.
I don't have a band, like I said, but I do this new music.
(31:57):
We're going to get to that. I want to go back. What allowed you to get to this
place was your ultimate meeting with Joan Jett and joining the Blackhearts,
which you joined during the I Love Rock and Roll sessions. Is that right?
Yeah. So once again, Carol, so Joan Jett and Kenny Laguna, her manager,
they didn't have an office yet.
(32:18):
They were friends with Steve Lieber of Lieber and Krebs, so they would use one
of the rooms there as their office. So Carol became friendly with Joan and Kenny.
They were looking for a guitar player. Carol said, do you want to go down and
jam with Joan Jett? I said, yeah, yeah, she's great.
And long story short, I wound up joining the band. They were cutting the Isle of Rock and Roll record.
(32:38):
We wound up, except for Crimson and Clover and Little Drummer Boy,
which was Eric Idle. Eric Idle. Eric Amble.
Eric Idle's Monty Python. Eric Amble, who's a great guitar player, great producer.
I redid all the stuff except for
those two songs. He played the break on Crimson, I played rhythm on that.
(33:00):
He had left the band, so we redid everything.
Then we hit the road. We got into a small, what do they call it?
Minivan. It was bigger than a minivan. It wasn't a tour bus.
It was between a tour bus and a minivan.
At that point, did Joan have success from the, I know she put out Bad Reputation.
(33:23):
Yeah, she had Cult 6th Sense. Cult 6th Sense, right.
Right. I Love Rock and Roll is what. Yeah, I Love Rock and Roll just blew it up.
Yeah. And it happened as we were on the road. So the record comes out. We're playing clubs.
All of a sudden, the clubs are packed. Then all of a sudden,
we're playing theaters.
Then all of a sudden, we're playing stadiums. And we're opening for ZZ Top or
(33:45):
The Police or something like that.
It literally happened while we were on the road. And every week they would bring
the music papers, you know, billboard.
Record world was it record world what was it called yeah you know the industry papers magazines,
you could see uh the rock and roll climbing up the charts but we were in the middle of,
(34:06):
excuse me we were in the middle of this hurricane or tornado
let's put it on say a tornado tornado being being the tour
or the yeah like like we didn't know what was going on it
was just getting bigger yeah all of a sudden we have a proper tour
bus yeah you know now we
have two tour buses and then that's it and then we traveled
the world a couple of times and we did all those right but it was very consistent yeah
(34:28):
you guys were always come back do
the second record go out on tour come back do the third
you know it was that and you you co-wrote a
number of songs after i love rock and roll throughout
yeah i think it was like 13 songs yeah a lot
of really great ones and and tell me how how you you know because joan and kenny
were their unit how did how did you fit into it and how did you start the the
(34:53):
co-writing with who was that well i mean you know she was she was my bandmate
she was like my sister right so we were like best friends back then.
We were just i some of it was off the road like a complete like a session okay
we're gonna meet out at the studio and we're gonna write and it was just me
me and john with two guitars,
or it would be in a hotel room or hey john i got this idea or john would say
(35:17):
hey what do you think Look at this. It's just that.
And you've co-written with a number of really incredible people of the years,
Roger Daltrey included, Joan, obviously. I did a Roger Daltrey record.
Right. I want to ask you about that.
But really, to bring it to now, when you co-write with the Roger Daltrey,
co-write with the Joan Jett.
(35:40):
What's the distinct experience like with each of them and how they process music?
Oh well everybody's different i mean yeah yeah and what is this when i write my own songs,
it always starts with me on the guitar which is interesting because somebody
just asked me to hook me up with somebody this artist to write who doesn't play
an instrument so she's going to send me a melody to a click and she wants me
(36:05):
to put the music behind it which is the complete opposite,
of the way i do it i've never i've never done it that i've never written music
to lyrics i've I've always written music and then the lyrics.
So that's going to be a great challenge.
So with every single person, everybody has their own process.
When you're writing with Roger, for example, are you guys coming up with lyrics
(36:28):
together? Are you coming up with the melody?
How does he get it? Yeah, I remember how that one went. It was Gerard McMahon
who produced the record, who's my pal for a long time, brought me in on that
record to be the guitar player and the songwriter.
And i wound up producing co-producing one
of his tracks too i can't remember i think we sat in
gerard's house in the village the west
(36:50):
village me gerard and roger with acoustic
guitars and we just started doing and
maybe somebody had a title i mean it's so different
i mean the one thing i know when i write because
i had a sony music publishing deal for a couple of years if
it's like like oh write with this guy scott he's
(37:10):
doing a record with you know he wants to
write with you let's go out and have coffee first you know
i need to sit and let's just do this but i can't
just sit down it's not it's not a business to me like yeah it's
a business but i gotta sit down and and sort of
get who are you like what kind of.
Song do you want to write let's tell some stories and then
(37:33):
go and sometimes the music business is gets very just
sort of like well when i was at sony you would
go up to their studios to write or record
it was very big building you
know what i'm saying it's very corporate yeah yeah you know and not in oregon
you're not organic whereas it's no joan joan jett you'd be she's your sister
(37:57):
you're hanging out you're right with that said the Brill Building where all
those great songs came from from the 50s and the 60s that was a building also
and they'd be sitting in a room.
Neil Sedaka or Neil Diamond or this one or that one or Carole King,
oh the Temptations are upstairs, they need a song you know, so but they still
had it, their room was this writer's room yeah, they had their chemistry.
(38:20):
Carole King and Jerry Goffin they had their thing but the difference between
what I wrote for Sony from the Brill Building is what I'm saying,
The four tops are looking for material.
When I wrote for Sony, it was just write songs. It was very rare that they said
Cher was looking for a song.
It was write songs, and then let's see if we can get them placed.
(38:44):
Right. As opposed to writing for a specific artist.
And when you write for a specific artist, you've got to get in their head a
little bit. Because we're not writing a Ricky Bird song. We're writing a Roger Daltrey song.
I'm just bringing what I do to it. So it's different for everybody you write
with. If you're writing to their record and they're already established,
(39:05):
you've got to come up with something that's them.
And you just bring your little perks, what you do well, to the session.
But you don't drive the session if you're writing with Madonna or somebody, whoever.
You know what I mean? You're not driving. You're sort of, you're driving.
Let me just, you just tell me which way we're going.
(39:28):
When you were playing with roger did you get
to do the windmill well i probably
did it just because i'm an asshole right that's what you got you
got if you're gonna fucking play yeah a who
song you got to do that well when i was that 16 year old kid yeah when we were
into the who we would play who songs i did i was wearing suspenders like he
(39:48):
wore like and the kids are all right you know like i was doing i had an sg and
i was doing windmills oh yeah you know i didn't know who i was i didn't wasn't
anybody yet i was just this kid right but But Pete Townsend,
I was talking to not only Roger about this, but friends of mine, unique guitar players.
Jeff Beck, like most of the, like you talk to nine out of 10 people that are
(40:09):
around my demographic, they'll say Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page,
Paul Kossoff, you know, Jeff Beck.
We all play a little bit. You could hear a little bit of those guys in all of us.
You could be in denial, but you're going to hear it. You can hear Clapton riffs
or Jimmy Page riffs on my records. Sure.
(40:31):
They turn into mine because I turn them inside out sometimes.
But that's a whole – we'll get into this.
It's very rare to hear somebody play like Jeff Beck or Pete Townshend because
they came from a different place.
Pete Townshend played – I can't even explain it. His leads were rhythm.
You know what I'm saying? It's a completely different place. Yeah, they invented it.
(40:56):
Exactly. And Jimmy Page, I mean, Jeff Beck, thought from the other side of his brain.
Like, his leads or like, you know, the stuff he did with Truth,
with Rod Stewart, that's one thing.
Then he started to get bored with that and he started to play differently.
And he started not using a pick and he started using a strat with the bar.
Right. And his playing got into something else. It's different from when he was with the Yardbirds.
(41:21):
So, I guess my point is, those two guys are unique in their playing.
A lot of the other ones I'm mentioning,
Mike Bloomfield, all had their beginnings with the blues, right?
Of course. Like they took what Hound Dog Taylor did, Muddy Waters,
and turned it into this electric stuff and added their own seasoning.
(41:46):
But you can hear the blues in everybody's guitar playing. Absolutely.
And Paul Kossoff, I was just thinking about this yesterday, Paul Kossoff had,
to me, the best vibrato, right, vibrato? Yeah.
But you also listen to Angus Young has that same vibrato from ACDC.
And other people have slow vibrato.
(42:09):
And then there's Albert King. That's a whole other freaking podcast,
my favorite blues guitar player. The difference is he could play,
he played one note 15 different ways.
He did one note, but he would bend it 15 different ways in between.
He'd be in between the two notes, you know? Yeah.
You've, you know, what I like about your music is you've distilled all this
(42:29):
and you're, you're a rock and roll. You've taken this and put it in.
It's different than rock.
What's that? It's different than rock. I'm a rock and roll guy.
Yeah. Yeah. You are a rock and roll guy. Yeah. Yeah. Ain't no rock without the roll.
No, this is, this is a harken back to this is the Chuck.
Bury is the root of it and i
say when people ask me what is
(42:50):
your mission statement for these records i
want it to be the music that excited me when i was 14
so i'm not afraid to do a nod to
jimmy page or to this one or that one i do
it on purpose yeah you hear your little bits i
mean i just did a steve marriott scream i try
to do one on every album on this on one of these new songs
(43:12):
called you get one life is what it's called you get one life and I do a scream
at the end is completely marry it yeah I know his riffs backwards and forwards
not in his key but I know his riffs his voice was way higher than mine.
Talking about the recovery Troubadour stuff, which ties into exactly what we're
(43:35):
talking about, which is the rock and roll music that you grew up with.
But you put it into the context over the last 10 years with lyrics dealing with your recovery.
And you've spent a lot of time over the years assisting people in recovery and being a part of that.
Can you talk a little about those two records, Sobering Times and Can You Get Away?
So my friend Richie Supa, who played with Aerosmith for a little while when
(44:01):
Joe Perry was doing his thing, but he wrote amazing, co-wrote amazing, Chip Away the Stones,
and a ton of other songs with other artists. He lives in Florida.
He got into recovery just a little after me, and he said, I'm doing a recovery
show here in Fort Lauderdale.
You want to come do Isle of Rock and Roll, play some blues? He had a song called In the Rooms.
(44:23):
I said, yeah, great. great. So I never did it before, right?
I never combined the things.
I played and I had people coming over to me afterwards saying,
I grew up on your music. That's so amazing. You're in recovery.
I'm in recovery or my brother's struggling or this happened or that.
And I said, yeah, that's interesting now. Maybe I could help you somehow.
(44:46):
Maybe I could get some wiggle room in music business where i could sort of do
some stuff with recovery come back to new york i write a song with richie by
phone called broken broken is a place it's on the clean getaway record last song.
And i put it on line i can't remember where i put it youtube somewhere i started
(45:11):
getting messages from people around the world saying how the lyrics helped them
okay maybe i should write the second one.
Anyway, so that process went on. I wrote like five songs.
I knew somebody from these, I started doing these recovery gigs with an all-star band for charity.
So I met some people from a treatment facility that was from Florida,
(45:33):
but they had a few in New York, in Jersey.
I said, what if I came to your place and did a recovery music group?
Great. Started doing that, and every time I finished, the reaction was amazing.
I only had five, six songs. And I would tell my story a little bit.
Every time I finished, somebody would say to me, where do I get this stuff,
this music? How can I take it home?
(45:55):
So I don't know. I could procrastinate. Finally, I did the Clean Getaway record.
And then what I did is I would take a stack of them. And when I would do another
treatment facility, I would bring a stack of them and give them to the clients in treatment.
That's how that started. I kept writing. And then I was in that mindset of recovery songs.
(46:15):
So that's the sobering. And I started writing for Sobering Times,
which was not going to be Sobering Times, but I just couldn't write anything for Recovery Songs.
That's where Sobering Times came from. Cut to this record.
I said, I've got enough Recovery Songs for now.
I tried to consciously not write those songs, except for Luann,
(46:36):
which I talked about before.
So I just became this Recovery Troubadour guy, I guess somebody called me.
And before COVID, I was going all over the country doing these recovery music groups.
And hopefully I could start it up again, just playing those two records.
Not all the songs, because some of them are too electric to play acoustic.
I would do an hour. And so it would be like seven songs and talking.
(46:59):
And I would do a couple of cover songs too.
I think I did The Bottle Let Me Down by Merle Haggard. That's on the Sobering Times record.
What else did I do? I did one or two cover songs that had to do with that, with recovery.
And I was completely happy. That was fabulous.
And what makes it the best is that all these years later, from people that I
(47:24):
played to five years ago,
I will still open up Facebook and there's a message from some cat that I played
to at a place in New Jersey, Turning Point,
treatment facility, says, I still listen to him, names his song,
and it still helps me stay sober.
So, what more can you ask for as a recovery guy and as a songwriter?
(47:45):
I mean, as a songwriter, that's it.
People are getting something from the songs, right? We're here to make people laugh, cry, and think.
And dance well amazing
amazing story ricky and i'm excited to hear the new music that you have coming
out and you think maybe there's gonna be a record at some point no not is there
(48:05):
gonna be there's gonna be there is a record yeah and when is there gonna be
a record hopefully i'm gonna hand it in by the end of april i'm working really
hard i've only had a few to work on,
right if i hand it in gonna do the cover little
business i know what it's called already but i'm say it yet and come out late
fall i mean i don't know man it depends you know the problem is how long it
(48:28):
takes to make vinyl these days yeah because there's not a lot of plants one
thing i want to specifically mention besides the fact is people should go to rickybird.com,
there's plenty of cool stuff on that there's tons and tons of pictures in the photo gallery,
of my whole career of all fun stuff so if you want to see some some of that
cool stuff like like me playing with McCartney at the Rock Hall in Ringo.
(48:52):
But me and Marriott, all this great fun stuff.
There's a store there where those two records are.
All the new music, it gives you the links to get the new songs that are on Wicked
Cool, all kinds of stuff.
Sign up to my email so you could be informed if I'm coming to your town.
Am I going to put a band together? Oh, God, please no.
(49:14):
But you never know. I'll never say no. No, I want people and I'm asking people
to be patrons of the arts.
It's a different music business we live in.
Streaming is fabulous. But for artists like myself, you know,
small records, we put out records to just keep it going, keep people happy and
(49:34):
put out music because that's what we do.
We need people to download the music. That's direct money that helps us keep making music.
Nobody's getting rich. It's about continuing the process of making music for rock and roll fans.
Streaming is ridiculous because the amount of streams you need to get anything out of that.
(49:57):
Yeah, Beyonce and Taylor, those people, they make tons of money from streaming.
Streaming but for artists like myself
that put these records out
i mean you need billions of streams bro that's right
but if you go right now and download one of
the four singles that money goes straight
(50:18):
to the artist or to the record company who's
you know you split it whatever it is so i'm asking
people i'm i'm so thrilled you
love what i do now but i i we need
you to actually put your money where your mouth is like
if you love rock and roll then buy the music
once they started giving it away for free it was the death of
(50:40):
of anything now bands make their money from touring
and selling merch am i gonna do that i don't know i can't imagine myself doing
it like like jones going back on the road for the summer right big tour i don't
think i could i don't think i would want to do that at this point i like being
home i like recording i love writing i love going going to the gym.
(51:02):
I love hanging out with my family.
I don't think I could do that massive tour thing these days.
Would I like to put a band together and do special gigs?
Let's say play the city wineries around the country. That'd be fun. Or do an acoustic tour.
But not months and months. It's just, I'm done.
(51:25):
I second that. Everybody should download support. If you have merchandise by
the merchandise, this is half by half.
It adds up, you know, I know it's 99 cents for a single, but you know,
and when I, when I get the vinyl man, buy the vinyl, everybody loves vinyls, you know?
Yeah, exactly. I just found every time I go to the studio, there's a second hand shop like blocks.
(51:51):
And I always wind up stopping there or on a break, we go there.
And the other day I picked up, okay.
Gene Pitney vinyl, perfect condition. Love it.
Dion's greatest tip like every Dion song Dion's a friend of mine right we took
out like three bucks yeah,
Joe Cocker the Joe Cocker record remember his face on the front the big face
(52:12):
I had I can't I can't stand the rain,
yeah and it had Bird on a Wire she came in through the bathroom window it was
a great when I was a kid great oh it's that first the very first one where it's
the drawing yes yeah yeah yeah what else what was the other one I came oh oh
my god the Chambers Brothers time has come today oh yeah Yeah, so good.
So every time I go there, I come home with a bag. And Carol goes, what'd you get?
(52:36):
Here's my take today.
I love it. I love hearing that.
Yeah, man. And I just always check to see. I saw, oh, God, I saw a record I really wanted.
Because I lost all my, we had Hurricane Sandy here. And that's a whole other
conversation. Did it affect you?
Oh, God, we lost half the house. This is where I'm sitting now.
(52:57):
The water was up to the ceiling. I'm in the basement.
Oh, wow. yeah so i lost both of us carol lost all her records and stuff but
so i'm just picking i don't want to go crazy i'm picking specific yeah what's
the one you wanted what were you about well i saw it there and i was excited
kim it might have been the first jimmy hendrix record something
which was the first record i ever bought yeah i remember
(53:19):
i went and i bought jimmy hendrix experience and the
first monkeys album on the same day those were so what that
really tells tell us my story right there yeah that's great but
but they had it dude like pull it out and scratch i was
so bummed out you know you gotta make you
gotta pull it out it's a good condition totally totally you
know so well yeah dude i'm still i'm still a rock and roll guy really i got
(53:43):
my guitar and 12th and there's there's my baseball cards oh yeah when i was
when you were a kid yeah right there you got the old the old yankees all my
comic books and rock magazines are right over there. That's awesome.
Yeah. I never got past 12. No, neither have I. I'm dealing with the same thing,
the baseball cards. Which is a problem. The vinyl.
(54:04):
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You got to have stuff that brings you back to that.
Yeah, the nothing. You got to be an adult. See, recovery made me an adult.
But you got to have a place to walk into where you could be 12 again.
Because it's a very harsh world out there now. Yeah, you got to take a moment
and go back to being that kid.
And me being that kid is going to Yankee Stadium, getting a couple of francs with my kid or whoever.
(54:30):
My daughter, thankfully, and her boyfriend both love baseball, Yankees.
You know, sitting there for three hours or even sitting out.
I'm very happy to sit on my couch and watch games.
You know, I watch every single Yankee game if I'm here.
And that takes me back. back. And it's important to go back sometimes because it's so cutthroat now.
(54:53):
And everything is more, more. I got to get through. I got to do this. I got to do that.
And just to sit and be 12 and take your cards out, I open that book and I just
go through them and I just look at them.
Oh, look, Whitey Ford. All the years.
That's really cool. And I hope I never change.
Amen. I hope you don't. Except for my white hair. all right ricky well thank
(55:15):
you so much for the time thank you for your contribution to everything in music
history i appreciate you you're uh asking good questions and you know people
out there just keep supporting rock and roll man because they'll come a day
where there won't be any rock and roll,
yeah yeah people can't afford to make the music there's not going to be any
you're going to be listening to journey records for the rest of your life which
(55:37):
is not a bad thing no i don't want to I don't want to piss off any Journey fans.
All right, Ricky. Thanks, brother. I'll see you soon. Cheers.
Thank you for listening to the Legends Podcast by All Day Vinyl.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate it, share it, subscribe,
and follow us and check us out at All Day Vinyl on Instagram and YouTube.
Thank you for listening. This is the Legends Podcast by All Day Vinyl,
and I'm your host, Scott Dettelson.
After you finish this episode, please subscribe, rate, and check us out on Instagram
and YouTube at All Day Vinyl.
Today, I'm excited to speak with an ace guitar player, a songwriter,
and 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee.
While my guest is best known as a member of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts,
playing guitar and co-writing on key albums, including I Love Rock and Roll
(00:22):
and Up Your Alley, he's also carved out a career as a solo artist and through
his extensive work as a mental health and recovery advocate has been dubbed
a recovery troubadour, a subject we're going to talk about.
I'm pleased to introduce to you Ricky Bird. Ricky, how are you doing, Scott?
Appreciate having you here. Let's start with the new and we'll take it back
(00:42):
because the new is very fascinating and I think it does connect very closely with your history.
So you released a song song earlier this year called Rhapsody in Blues,
which is a tribute to Jeff Beck.
I know Jeff is one of your early heroes.
So tell me about both the song, Why This Tribute, and if you have any history with Jeff.
(01:05):
I mean, I met him a couple of times, no history beyond that.
But so I'm signed to Wicked Cool Records.
Let's take it back to that. And at first
I said to steven van zandt and that's his label
i said i just want to
put out singles you know i don't i don't see the point of putting out full records
(01:26):
at this you know because you get radio if you're lucky enough to get radio they
play one or two songs and you got like 10 songs on there or 12 songs so yeah
he said sounds great i said yeah let's i want to be like tommy james let's just
put out singles like it's 1965.
So we put out in 2023, the first one was called Glamdemic Blues, right?
(01:50):
And then I wrote, obviously, it's as the title says, I wrote that during the COVID lockdown.
Just very glam, you know, the music is very glam.
Lyrics are all about like, you know, just give me one Saturday night,
just one Saturday night, you know?
Second one came out two months or three months after that called Alien.
Once again, very glamish, my influence that come from 1973, 73, 74.
(02:18):
And that song is basically, and I told Van Zant this, I had watched The Day
the Earth Stood Still on TCM.
And I had a dream that night that I was in a sort of like an interrogation room
with three, four aliens.
But right out of central casting aliens and van
(02:39):
zant was there see he was sitting at the table with me and and
i told him i don't remember if you were silvio dante or
if you were van zant but i was trying
to buy the earth more time see and he was
sort of the you know he was the middle man and then
i was so i woke up and i wrote the song alien you know
and that was the second song then about three months later which
(03:00):
were in 2023 and meanwhile i'm working
on more songs as these songs come out comes luan
straight up rock and roll song sort of like a
jerry lee lewis you know kind of
thing little richard that's the only song that
has lyrics that lean towards a recovery narrative like my previous two records
(03:23):
that i put out and so that was that one and then we then we lost jeff which
was horrible and i guess it came out of nowhere it wasn't like one One of those rock and roll cats,
like you thought this news was going to come at some point.
He was not that guy, really.
He was touring, too, up until last year.
(03:45):
And he was a big influence on me when I was a kid, when I was 14.
The Truth record, all that stuff.
The stuff with Rod Stewart. And then later, when he did the solo stuff,
he got a little bit more progressive.
Kind of lost me there for a few years when it got very progressive.
But I was always listening to him and, and,
stealing little licks not that anybody could play jeff beck licks but i did the best i could,
(04:10):
so he was always part of my lexicon you know in rock and roll yeah and i don't know i just,
i just had to write something i don't know
what made me do it and i wanted to do an instrumental it was the first instrumental
i've ever written which is interesting and it's not just a music with no lyrics
you actually have to make it interesting yeah and you have to come up with the
(04:33):
theme the melody has to be an interesting to carry the song so we cut that rhapsody and blues,
and i'm a gershwin fan so i thought that was a clever title and that and that's
it it was just it was just me nodding to jeff beck you know it's just i wasn't
trying to play like jeff beck i wasn't trying to you know i was just i was just
(04:55):
i there's a there are a couple of riffs on there that are Jeff Beck-esque.
But other than that, that's my guitar playing and I just wanted to throw a couple
of his licks in there to say, yeah, this is a tribute to you, brother.
So we did a video. We did a video for it. And all of these songs have been played
quite a bit on Little Stevens Underground Garage.
(05:17):
I've heard them on them. Absolutely. Thank you. Good.
That's a kick too. That's one of the biggest kicks when I'm driving in my car
by myself, you know, and it comes on.
But we did a video for it maybe a month and a half ago. We're going to save
it for the album, which brings me back to that conversation.
So I'm writing, I'm writing, but now all of a sudden I got like nine songs,
10 songs, and I say to Van Zandt, I guess this is a record. This is going to full length.
(05:43):
So I'm at the tail end, I could see the finish line.
We just cut as far as drummers i used steve holly
who's played wings wings played
with joe cocker played with ian hunter for a long time and then
aaron comis from the spin doctors tommy price
played on a track too i'm not sure what's
you know i don't know what's what's going to wind up on the record i cut 15 songs
(06:05):
and aaron and myself and bob
stander my co-producer we do it out at a place called parchesi studios out in
long island here in new york which is bob's studio and we just cut the last
two tracks i mean we cut the because i don't have a band see there's a the process
is i go in and i and i play guitar to a click track and then we start piling stuff on,
(06:29):
because i just don't have a band and it's always jeff kazee on keyboards jeff
i met when i played with the southside johnny and the asbury jukes for a year
change bob plays bass amazing bass bass player and guitar player.
Obviously, all the guitars are mine.
And all the vocals are mine. I try to get, because it's so far out in Long Island,
I wind up doing a lot of the backgrounds myself, which Stephen can't stand.
(06:52):
In fact, on the two songs we just worked on, he had me come into the Wicked Cool office.
And had a bunch of, we had, I think I'm going to call them the Baba Black Sheep
Singers because of this part they sang, the background. So it was Willie Nile.
Mark Ribbler, who is a great guitar player, he's Stephen's musical director
(07:14):
for the Disciples of Soul.
Who else was it? Jeff Kazee and Stephen. So they sang.
Stephen wanted to put other voices on there. He said some of the songs,
you know, it's not that important. You can't really notice. You can't tell it's all me.
Not that there aren't very famous records out that the lead singer sang all the backgrounds to.
But he wanted to throw some other stuff up there. So we just did that last month.
(07:39):
And we're getting close, you know. This is April. I'm trying to finish it by
the end of April and hand it in.
I can't wait to hear it. I mean, you've got a unique rock and roll sound that's
even carried when you were doing the recovery records and now you're doing these rock records.
And from what I gather, what I've read about you and heard, this harkens back
to the early influences when you saw Beatles on Sullivan and ultimately saw
(08:02):
the Rolling Stones and thought that was dangerous, that was dirty.
So I want to go back a little to those times.
How were you finding this music that was coming in from England before it was...
You know so there's internet that's easy so yeah
so i started off i got my first guitar when i was nine
(08:23):
and that was after seeing this beatles in the storms on ed sullivan just
like everybody in my demographic will tell you the same story yeah um and then
we moved to the bronx i grew up in the bronx we moved to queens and then that
was my first experience with playing with other people and some of the guys
that i met which i'm still friends with to this day in fact we played I played
(08:44):
Flushing High School, 1973.
It was pretty much the first big concert I played, right?
And we were doing – because, you know, you would play church dances.
You put together little bands, right, garage bands.
I'm like 16, and we would play – back then, so if you'd play a dance,
you'd play Midnight Hour, you know, I don't know, Rascals with Good Lovin',
(09:09):
stuff with Land of a Thousand Dancers, that kind of stuff.
These guys we started that i
met there were a couple of parks out here when we
moved to queens that had live concerts in the summer and i
met this little group of guys musicians at
one of these parks it might have been alley pond park or crochet park
(09:29):
and we became friends and we
put together a band but they had already been
to england a couple of times they were a couple of like they're maybe i'm 16
they were 18 they had already traveled to
england so they came back with the
clothes first off right the velvet
(09:49):
suits you know the snakeskin boots
the velvet suits and the snakeskin boots oh wait a minute there's a lyric
hold on and and they turned me on to stuff
that i wasn't listening to yet a lot of the
british stuff now a lot of it also had to do with when radio changed from transistor
radio am tommy james al green you know new york radio stations they would play
(10:14):
everything on one station to fm which they would play album sides,
and you know you were just a kid and you would have your headphones on you'd be just laying there.
You know and just listening to like rock in the film or humble pie and you know
fog hat and slave play, you know, I mean, all the Rock Stewart in the faces.
(10:37):
And they turned me on to a lot of stuff that I didn't know about yet.
So that was really my intro to that music.
Now, my intro to the blues happened from all the magazines that I read when
I was a kid, where you'd see Keith Richards talking about Muddy Waters,
or Howlin' Wolf, or, you know, Chuck Berry.
Chuck Berry, we heard on that AM Actually, probably back then it was My Ding-a-ling
(11:02):
was probably the single that came out. Because the other stuff was in the 50s, right?
And I was just a little, little, little bastard at that point.
But then you'd start going to find blues records.
So it was basically from musicians that I listened to when I would read articles.
They sent me to find the blues stuff, which now we do my age.
(11:27):
Yeah. When you do stuff, I turn other kids that are younger than me on to,
have you ever heard Spooky Tooth?
Or, oh, you got to check out, they did a version of I Am the Walrus.
Or you know stuff like that so it just
all goes around keeps going around a big circle and that's
really that's that's how i started to listen to
that stuff and i found stuff and i was i
(11:48):
loved everything i i wasn't into prog rock i mean yeah i had yes albums i had
the yes fragile right it wasn't my favorite stuff though i like the jay giles
band i love slade we saw slade a couple of times mountain leslie became a friend
of mine there was a place here in new york called the Academy of Music on 14th Street.
And back in the 20s, it was a vaudeville house.
(12:10):
So I was a little young for the Fillmore. I saw a couple of shows at the Fillmore.
But when I was at the age to be able to go to concerts, 14, something like that,
it was the Academy of Music was the concert hall.
And it was two shows, 8 and 11.
And it was like $2.50 for a ticket or something.
(12:31):
And it was three acts, right? So it was Jay Giles, Humble Pie,
and Mountain. I'm making that up, but it probably happened. Totally.
That was it for me. That was my introduction to stuff.
At what point did you start taking those influences, writing your own songs,
and start playing more, I don't want to say professionally, but at least in
(12:53):
the clubs beyond the high schools or beyond?
New York was fabulous at that time. There was this underground subculture,
let's call it, rock and roll, glam, glitter.
There were a few clubs. There was Max's Kansas City, famous club.
That's where I made my bones, right, as a kid, getting in there with funny dudes.
(13:14):
Tell me about Max's. That's a legendary, infamous.
Yeah, well, before me, when I started going there, it was –,
sort of they catered to the artists say and
mickey ruskin who owned the place scrappy looking
guy right stand at the front door he was
a you know he said he was somebody that loved
artists and loved to support artists so if they couldn't they would come in
(13:38):
for lunch or early dinner the artist and they couldn't pay they would give him
pieces of art that's the art that hung on the walls when i started going there
it just became the place so if zeppelin was playing at the garden,
you knew zeppelin was going to wind up at max's kansas city later that night,
and if led zeppelin was going to be at max's kansas city there'd be some girls at max's kansas city.
(14:03):
You know so so me and my friends used to come in from queens at that point and
we would go hang out there later on we started we'd start playing there because
downstairs was the bar and we would eat eat dinner, the famous chickpeas that
they had on the table that wound up being thrown later at the night.
And there was the famous, there was the back room. You walked in,
there was a long bar and there was some tables, booths. And then the back room
(14:25):
is when somebody famous came in, like David Bowie or Jagger,
they would go in the back and there would be this big table.
One time when Martha Hoople played, they played the Uris Theater,
which I was at the shows. I think the three shows I was at, two of them.
Queen opening. It was Queen's first time in America.
They all wound up at Max's around this big round table. As soon as you entered
(14:48):
the back room of the round table.
And me and my friends stood around them like little morons staring at them,
which you would do, right? Yeah.
And then 20 years later, I'm playing in Ian Hunter's band, touring Europe and Scandinavia.
So there you go. That's how to hopefully- Do you ever recount that to him?
Tell him that you- Oh, yeah. He knew that. I told him that story right off the bat.
(15:10):
You know but everybody you see everybody there yeah if you stood up you know
i remember seeing angela and david bowie walking in matching suits you know
and so there was max's there was the mercer rock center which was another place
that was very arty artsy all velvet,
stuff and mirrors and it was just you know i think it was something else also
(15:31):
so it had a different sort of look to it that's where like the new york dolls played.
Right you know before that even before max's
there was a club called nobody's that was on bleaker street that we
used to go to where you would see jimmy page he'd walk in
he'd be sitting at the bar drinking a remy you know like it was
just these just little subculture these little clubs that
(15:53):
the the musicians knew when they came to town that they would go they could
go and hang out and not be bothered too much then i started playing these places
same places you know there There was a place in Queens called Coventry on Queens
Boulevard where Kiss played before the make-up.
My bands would play there. I was 16 then.
(16:15):
But we would mix up some originals with some free.
My friend Phil, who I'm talking about, was one of those guys that we played
flushing in high school.
He sent me a tape of us rehearsing in a storefront doing a free song.
I'm trying to think of which one it was.
Wishing Well. Wishing Well. With me singing.
Singing in this little storefront on the
(16:37):
boulevard you know so we were we were way
different than a lot of the other bands we were playing if we were playing
cover stuff we were doing Savoy Brown Humble Pie
yeah Flushing High School we opened up with Four Day Creep from the Rockin'
the Fillmore record and remember I'm 16 yeah yeah yeah too young to drink and
but I was playing but I was turned on to that yes exactly totally now did I
(17:01):
like American music yeah I mean I liked I love the Jay Giles band. Oh, yeah.
Please put them in the rock hall. Amen.
And Mountain, I loved. I loved Creedence. I loved Cactus.
I loved Cactus. What was the Carmen Atpeace on drums? Yeah, Tim Bogard.
We'll both later play with Jeff Beck.
(17:23):
Yes, exactly. That's right. And Jimmy McCarty, Jim McCarty on guitar,
who played with Mitch Ryder.
There was a song called Parchment's Farm, an old blues song that Cactus did.
And I can't tell you how many hours I tried to learn that break.
Everybody should go YouTube Cactus doing Parchment's Farm. It was very fast.
(17:45):
And I was trying to learn the break. So over and scratch the record,
just trying over and over again. That was my beginnings, New York City.
And because it was a subculture, it was the New York Dolls. They were like this
huge band. And Manchester City, they were like the rock stars when they came in.
You know and and and we would just we would
just hang and then we would try to do our own stuff and then we would
(18:06):
play like i said church dances maybe there was one or two clubs in queens that
were like you know most places wanted you to do cover stuff you know but but
you could find one or two maybe that you could do some original music or you'd
have to mix it up let me ask you being you You know,
being young in this incredible fast scene,
(18:28):
drugs and alcohol were obviously a part in that.
I'm curious, where in your journey did that, because obviously the recovery
is a major part of your story.
So the beginning of it, where does that come into your world?
Well, I mean, I started smoking pot when I was 13. and
(18:48):
because i have the addictive personality trait
which got worse as i got older when we smoked one joint and everybody else wanted
to go home and do their homework i was like why don't we smoke another one you
know more addicted to more right but as soon as you started doing that stuff
with the bands and garage bands you know somebody would bring over six pack or,
(19:11):
teenagers right there were certain drugs that were around and quaaludes you
know there's certain pills,
and I started out drinking beer and then when I started hanging out in the city
at these clubs then I you know I don't think I ever said no to anything anybody
offered me but to my detriment but.
I started drinking Southern Comfort at first, I think. And that was disgusting.
(19:33):
But, you know, I drank it because Janis Joplin liked it.
And then, of course, I switched over to Jack Daniels because my two favorites,
Keith and Frank Sinatra, that was their drink, right?
But you could see it starts to progress, right?
If you have that, what I have, addictive behavior, you would do more.
You would just do, you know, I'm on the high. One more will get me higher.
(19:56):
And then it started turning into a nightmare
in the late 70s when cocaine showed its face
it's cocaine's always been around but it went through different class systems
right it's in the 20s it might have been
jazz musicians and maybe the highbrow people the socialites you know went to
hollywood you know it kept changing places and then it became part of the rock
(20:19):
business at a certain point it was probably always there but it became a thing in the the late 70s,
I would say, you know, to me.
And then that's where it was accessible.
And then I started doing that.
Hindsight is obviously always 20-20, but at the time, did it feel like,
not just with you, but in the surroundings, that the drugs were part of the
(20:44):
creative process and part of that outlet?
Or was there recognition that it was... I don't think I was that deep to think
it was part of the creative process, But it was part of the rock and roll world
that I read about in those magazines.
So if you wanted to be one of those guys or those girls when you were 16.
(21:06):
It was just like follow the bouncing ball, right? Right. Yeah.
And not everybody did drugs and booze, but probably the majority at that time.
And did it lead to some great songwriting?
Yeah, it must have. A lot of Beatles stuff, a lot of Stone stuff.
My favorite songs were written like that. That doesn't mean it can't be written
(21:29):
without it, and it certainly doesn't because I'm doing some of my best stuff now.
That's what it's for. And I used until 87, so I've been sober.
I've been in recovery for 36 years now.
And it's- And it got worse as it got along when you started mixing.
You become professional chemists. Yes.
You know like if i do this and then i take some of that well
(21:50):
this will put me to sleep but i'll do this to wake me up and then this will
keep me going through the night i have
some i have some questions on that in a bit but i want to make a highlight
a point you just made which is you know a lot
of people were a lot of famous celebrities and musicians
were doing drugs and that's what you want to emulate and what was not
being celebrated at the time which is being celebrated now
(22:10):
is sobriety right those few that were sober
nobody was writing about how awesome that is and
then what a model they are it was always about the antics so
there are one or two people from back then of course
yeah that did not ever pick up a drink
or it's right you know but I think it's safe to say the majority of people did
you know and now it's probably the other it's probably turned around yeah we
(22:35):
have definitely more resources and you're a big part of you know pushing that
forward and I mean I try to spread the word I've done some music cares I'm who I'm friends with,
I did a couple of, facilitated a couple of songwriter groups for them here in
New York with people that just got into recovery.
Some of them you knew, some of them were newcomers to the business.
(23:00):
And their main problem was they couldn't remember, they couldn't write now that they're in recovery.
They were questioning if they still could write, if did they lose their edge?
I'm here to tell you, you don't lose your edge. you know in fact you remember
your edge you know you remember what you do and i mean only for me speaking
(23:21):
to myself i've never played this well i've never written this well i've never
sang this well was i rocking back then yeah of course i was rocking i've always
been a good guitar player,
i know what i'm doing but now i think i'm i've come into my own as all of those things Yeah.
I don't think I've heard anybody who's made that transition in recovery say
(23:43):
that it was better before.
I mean, it's, I think... No. And I'm never going to say I didn't have a good
time. I mean, there was some disastrous things. I mean, I almost died.
Literally almost died. What was, if you don't mind sharing, what was that?
I was out with Joan. We were playing in Alabama. I was experimenting with smoking Coke.
(24:05):
And I think that I smoked tons of pot so that my lungs were not healthy anyway, by the time I was 13.
But I did love weed.
And if anything, that's the only thing I miss at this point.
You know, just watch a Yankee game and take a few hits. But obviously, I can't.
But, yeah, I think I wound up putting a hole in my lung, so it collapsed on the road.
(24:27):
And I wound up in a hospital in Alabama. And it was very serious,
and it was closer than they told me. I found out years later how bad it was.
And that didn't stop me, by the way. That was in 83. Oh, that was in a house.
No, it kept going until 87.
Let's let's take a let's take a step back going back to new
york and and the late late 70s if cbgbs
and that that error you were in you
(24:50):
were in a couple bands and you had a stint
where you were playing with steve marriott is that is
that right i never played in a band with them but we became friends we became
really good friends and you know just a sidebar
here yeah cbgbs came a a little later
you know when the ramones started i mean later from nobody's that club that
(25:12):
was that wasn't a lot that wasn't a music club it was a bar but i wasn't really
a cbs guy like i i've been there i went there i played there but i was a max's
kansas city guy like cbs was more of a punk,
alternative i was more of faces you know exile on main street yeah rock and
roll yeah so so i didn't I wasn't a lot at CBGBs,
(25:37):
but I played there with Joan. I played there with my bands.
Is that where you first saw Joan?
Yeah, I saw The Runaways. Was that at CBGB? Yes, it was.
What's the recollection of that?
God it was so long ago i don't remember i mean i i remember we
were me and my friends went probably the same friends we went
(26:00):
to see an old girl band you know it was it
was like what is this you know and it was rocking you know
it was cool the jump was great so yeah
you know thumbs up or fortuitous years later
you would you would end up connecting yeah yeah yeah but
then it was probably it was almost we went because we heard
about them we read about them we wanted to see
(26:22):
what this was right we wanted to see what
it was because they i didn't hear a lot of them on the radio right
so i wanted to see me and my friends wanted to see what
the band was this old girl band and they were great yeah the
the mythology and the legend is is incredible and before we get before we get
to john and you linking up with her i want to quickly steve marad is a personal
(26:44):
hero of mine as well music he did with the small faces and humble pie and i'm
curious at the time you you You linked up with him.
What phase of his career was he in? Was that post-HumblePie while he was doing his solo? Oh, yeah.
He still had versions of HumblePie. Yeah, right.
I met him when the last, I think it was the last HumblePie record,
(27:06):
Go for the Throat, I think it was.
But Carol, my wife, Carol Kay is a publicist. She worked at Lieber Krebs as
a publicist. Lieber Krebs was a very famous management company.
Aerosmith, Nugent, Def Leppard, on and on. HumblePie.
Later, this is way past the Rock in the Fillmore. And so go through the throat.
That was Steve, Bobby Tench, who just passed away, also played with Jeff Beck.
(27:29):
See, everything's connected.
And Sooty Jones and Jerry Shirley on drums. That was when I met Steve.
They lived, him and Pam, his wife, and their kid, Toby, who's like this grown-up guitar player now.
They had an apartment in the village. So we spent a lot of time hanging out
there. And also, you know, when me and Carol would have a fight,
(27:50):
I would go stay with Steve and Pam.
And we became really good friends. And I could close my eyes and see Steve and
me on the couch with guitars and him singing full voice, like Rockin' the Fillmore
voice in my ear, you know, and teaching me how to sing.
Like tell me, you know, sing from down here, you know.
(28:10):
And and funny enough he had his guitars under
the bed was probably the guitar he used on rock in the
film or not in a case just thrown under the bed or one
of those guitars that he was famous for but we were looking through
i don't know his closet was open i said oh man where'd
you get these shoes he says i'll take them man so what's
the history he said i wore them on top of the pops with the small faces when
(28:31):
we did ichiku park or something so i still have those
wild i tried to wear them but
his feet were a lot smaller than mine he was a little guy but we yeah we got
we hung out a lot we hung out a lot i had some really interesting times together
we got high too a lot yeah he was apparently that around that time he was a
pretty wild dude is that is that right he told me this was my first.
(28:57):
Sort of notice on the wall we were sitting he said he had after hummel pie he
put together these bands one was called packet of three and they played a place
here that was another famous club called the cat club in new york so the the
bus was parked outside i was sitting on the bus with steve and we were doing
we were doing blow i guess at this point it doesn't matter,
and and i kept taking that back to do more and he said you know you should cut
(29:21):
down on that stuff mate and then i in my brain just went oh that's not a good sign.
You know and and i'll never forget that
that was the first notice on the wall that maybe i
was going too far but i loved
the music here's my favorite singer you know put him paul rogers terry
reed yeah you know those that's the thing of
(29:42):
course rod those are the singers that really
you know put a run in my stocking as they say when
i was a teenager listening to that stuff absolutely and and you know we saw
paul rogers i think carol's doing his publicity they were playing at bb king's
on in times square and we went to see him and dude he started singing and i
got all teary because his voice was just as strong as it was when he was that kid in free,
(30:08):
and i've had a chance i was in a band with simon kirk we've done events together
you know so i've done all right now plenty of times and yeah those i've had
that's one thing and another sidebar is like through my career i've been lucky
enough to play with a lot of these people that i spun their their vinyl when
I was a kid. Yeah, incredible.
(30:28):
I've had a chance to play Mississippi Queen with Leslie West and BS Pal.
And I never played on stage with Steve, but we've played plenty of stuff in his apartment.
And of course, jumping around, the stuff that I do most of now,
more before, I still do them now, but before COVID,
(30:52):
there's this crew of us that are like, Like, you know, Will Lee,
Liberty DeVito from Billy Joel's band.
Jeff Carlisi from 38 Special.
Rob Austin, who plays with Frampton for the last 25 years. Plays with a lot of people.
We're like a crew, see? So when there's these charity events around the country, they always call us.
(31:15):
You know, the substitutes, if somebody can't make it, Paul Schaefer's done them.
That's given me the ability to be in this all-star band for months.
50 events over the last 10 years where I'm backing up Mavis Staple,
Ryan Wilson, Smokey Robinson, you know, now I can't, Darling Love.
(31:36):
Amazing. I mean, you can see it on my Wikipedia page.
Playing like three songs with Smokey Robinson, you know, playing in my room with Ryan Wilson.
You know, it's a pretty magnificent career. And I couldn't ask for anything more.
I don't have a band, like I said, but I do this new music.
(31:57):
We're going to get to that. I want to go back. What allowed you to get to this
place was your ultimate meeting with Joan Jett and joining the Blackhearts,
which you joined during the I Love Rock and Roll sessions. Is that right?
Yeah. So once again, Carol, so Joan Jett and Kenny Laguna, her manager,
they didn't have an office yet.
(32:18):
They were friends with Steve Lieber of Lieber and Krebs, so they would use one
of the rooms there as their office. So Carol became friendly with Joan and Kenny.
They were looking for a guitar player. Carol said, do you want to go down and
jam with Joan Jett? I said, yeah, yeah, she's great.
And long story short, I wound up joining the band. They were cutting the Isle of Rock and Roll record.
(32:38):
We wound up, except for Crimson and Clover and Little Drummer Boy,
which was Eric Idle. Eric Idle. Eric Amble.
Eric Idle's Monty Python. Eric Amble, who's a great guitar player, great producer.
I redid all the stuff except for
those two songs. He played the break on Crimson, I played rhythm on that.
(33:00):
He had left the band, so we redid everything.
Then we hit the road. We got into a small, what do they call it?
Minivan. It was bigger than a minivan. It wasn't a tour bus.
It was between a tour bus and a minivan.
At that point, did Joan have success from the, I know she put out Bad Reputation.
(33:23):
Yeah, she had Cult 6th Sense. Cult 6th Sense, right.
Right. I Love Rock and Roll is what. Yeah, I Love Rock and Roll just blew it up.
Yeah. And it happened as we were on the road. So the record comes out. We're playing clubs.
All of a sudden, the clubs are packed. Then all of a sudden,
we're playing theaters.
Then all of a sudden, we're playing stadiums. And we're opening for ZZ Top or
(33:45):
The Police or something like that.
It literally happened while we were on the road. And every week they would bring
the music papers, you know, billboard.
Record world was it record world what was it called yeah you know the industry papers magazines,
you could see uh the rock and roll climbing up the charts but we were in the middle of,
(34:06):
excuse me we were in the middle of this hurricane or tornado
let's put it on say a tornado tornado being being the tour
or the yeah like like we didn't know what was going on it
was just getting bigger yeah all of a sudden we have a proper tour
bus yeah you know now we
have two tour buses and then that's it and then we traveled
the world a couple of times and we did all those right but it was very consistent yeah
(34:28):
you guys were always come back do
the second record go out on tour come back do the third
you know it was that and you you co-wrote a
number of songs after i love rock and roll throughout
yeah i think it was like 13 songs yeah a lot
of really great ones and and tell me how how you you know because joan and kenny
were their unit how did how did you fit into it and how did you start the the
(34:53):
co-writing with who was that well i mean you know she was she was my bandmate
she was like my sister right so we were like best friends back then.
We were just i some of it was off the road like a complete like a session okay
we're gonna meet out at the studio and we're gonna write and it was just me
me and john with two guitars,
or it would be in a hotel room or hey john i got this idea or john would say
(35:17):
hey what do you think Look at this. It's just that.
And you've co-written with a number of really incredible people of the years,
Roger Daltrey included, Joan, obviously. I did a Roger Daltrey record.
Right. I want to ask you about that.
But really, to bring it to now, when you co-write with the Roger Daltrey,
co-write with the Joan Jett.
(35:40):
What's the distinct experience like with each of them and how they process music?
Oh well everybody's different i mean yeah yeah and what is this when i write my own songs,
it always starts with me on the guitar which is interesting because somebody
just asked me to hook me up with somebody this artist to write who doesn't play
an instrument so she's going to send me a melody to a click and she wants me
(36:05):
to put the music behind it which is the complete opposite,
of the way i do it i've never i've never done it that i've never written music
to lyrics i've I've always written music and then the lyrics.
So that's going to be a great challenge.
So with every single person, everybody has their own process.
When you're writing with Roger, for example, are you guys coming up with lyrics
(36:28):
together? Are you coming up with the melody?
How does he get it? Yeah, I remember how that one went. It was Gerard McMahon
who produced the record, who's my pal for a long time, brought me in on that
record to be the guitar player and the songwriter.
And i wound up producing co-producing one
of his tracks too i can't remember i think we sat in
gerard's house in the village the west
(36:50):
village me gerard and roger with acoustic
guitars and we just started doing and
maybe somebody had a title i mean it's so different
i mean the one thing i know when i write because
i had a sony music publishing deal for a couple of years if
it's like like oh write with this guy scott he's
(37:10):
doing a record with you know he wants to
write with you let's go out and have coffee first you know
i need to sit and let's just do this but i can't
just sit down it's not it's not a business to me like yeah it's
a business but i gotta sit down and and sort of
get who are you like what kind of.
Song do you want to write let's tell some stories and then
(37:33):
go and sometimes the music business is gets very just
sort of like well when i was at sony you would
go up to their studios to write or record
it was very big building you
know what i'm saying it's very corporate yeah yeah you know and not in oregon
you're not organic whereas it's no joan joan jett you'd be she's your sister
(37:57):
you're hanging out you're right with that said the Brill Building where all
those great songs came from from the 50s and the 60s that was a building also
and they'd be sitting in a room.
Neil Sedaka or Neil Diamond or this one or that one or Carole King,
oh the Temptations are upstairs, they need a song you know, so but they still
had it, their room was this writer's room yeah, they had their chemistry.
(38:20):
Carole King and Jerry Goffin they had their thing but the difference between
what I wrote for Sony from the Brill Building is what I'm saying,
The four tops are looking for material.
When I wrote for Sony, it was just write songs. It was very rare that they said
Cher was looking for a song.
It was write songs, and then let's see if we can get them placed.
(38:44):
Right. As opposed to writing for a specific artist.
And when you write for a specific artist, you've got to get in their head a
little bit. Because we're not writing a Ricky Bird song. We're writing a Roger Daltrey song.
I'm just bringing what I do to it. So it's different for everybody you write
with. If you're writing to their record and they're already established,
(39:05):
you've got to come up with something that's them.
And you just bring your little perks, what you do well, to the session.
But you don't drive the session if you're writing with Madonna or somebody, whoever.
You know what I mean? You're not driving. You're sort of, you're driving.
Let me just, you just tell me which way we're going.
(39:28):
When you were playing with roger did you get
to do the windmill well i probably
did it just because i'm an asshole right that's what you got you
got if you're gonna fucking play yeah a who
song you got to do that well when i was that 16 year old kid yeah when we were
into the who we would play who songs i did i was wearing suspenders like he
(39:48):
wore like and the kids are all right you know like i was doing i had an sg and
i was doing windmills oh yeah you know i didn't know who i was i didn't wasn't
anybody yet i was just this kid right but But Pete Townsend,
I was talking to not only Roger about this, but friends of mine, unique guitar players.
Jeff Beck, like most of the, like you talk to nine out of 10 people that are
(40:09):
around my demographic, they'll say Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page,
Paul Kossoff, you know, Jeff Beck.
We all play a little bit. You could hear a little bit of those guys in all of us.
You could be in denial, but you're going to hear it. You can hear Clapton riffs
or Jimmy Page riffs on my records. Sure.
(40:31):
They turn into mine because I turn them inside out sometimes.
But that's a whole – we'll get into this.
It's very rare to hear somebody play like Jeff Beck or Pete Townshend because
they came from a different place.
Pete Townshend played – I can't even explain it. His leads were rhythm.
You know what I'm saying? It's a completely different place. Yeah, they invented it.
(40:56):
Exactly. And Jimmy Page, I mean, Jeff Beck, thought from the other side of his brain.
Like, his leads or like, you know, the stuff he did with Truth,
with Rod Stewart, that's one thing.
Then he started to get bored with that and he started to play differently.
And he started not using a pick and he started using a strat with the bar.
Right. And his playing got into something else. It's different from when he was with the Yardbirds.
(41:21):
So, I guess my point is, those two guys are unique in their playing.
A lot of the other ones I'm mentioning,
Mike Bloomfield, all had their beginnings with the blues, right?
Of course. Like they took what Hound Dog Taylor did, Muddy Waters,
and turned it into this electric stuff and added their own seasoning.
(41:46):
But you can hear the blues in everybody's guitar playing. Absolutely.
And Paul Kossoff, I was just thinking about this yesterday, Paul Kossoff had,
to me, the best vibrato, right, vibrato? Yeah.
But you also listen to Angus Young has that same vibrato from ACDC.
And other people have slow vibrato.
(42:09):
And then there's Albert King. That's a whole other freaking podcast,
my favorite blues guitar player. The difference is he could play,
he played one note 15 different ways.
He did one note, but he would bend it 15 different ways in between.
He'd be in between the two notes, you know? Yeah.
You've, you know, what I like about your music is you've distilled all this
(42:29):
and you're, you're a rock and roll. You've taken this and put it in.
It's different than rock.
What's that? It's different than rock. I'm a rock and roll guy.
Yeah. Yeah. You are a rock and roll guy. Yeah. Yeah. Ain't no rock without the roll.
No, this is, this is a harken back to this is the Chuck.
Bury is the root of it and i
say when people ask me what is
(42:50):
your mission statement for these records i
want it to be the music that excited me when i was 14
so i'm not afraid to do a nod to
jimmy page or to this one or that one i do
it on purpose yeah you hear your little bits i
mean i just did a steve marriott scream i try
to do one on every album on this on one of these new songs
(43:12):
called you get one life is what it's called you get one life and I do a scream
at the end is completely marry it yeah I know his riffs backwards and forwards
not in his key but I know his riffs his voice was way higher than mine.
Talking about the recovery Troubadour stuff, which ties into exactly what we're
(43:35):
talking about, which is the rock and roll music that you grew up with.
But you put it into the context over the last 10 years with lyrics dealing with your recovery.
And you've spent a lot of time over the years assisting people in recovery and being a part of that.
Can you talk a little about those two records, Sobering Times and Can You Get Away?
So my friend Richie Supa, who played with Aerosmith for a little while when
(44:01):
Joe Perry was doing his thing, but he wrote amazing, co-wrote amazing, Chip Away the Stones,
and a ton of other songs with other artists. He lives in Florida.
He got into recovery just a little after me, and he said, I'm doing a recovery
show here in Fort Lauderdale.
You want to come do Isle of Rock and Roll, play some blues? He had a song called In the Rooms.
(44:23):
I said, yeah, great. great. So I never did it before, right?
I never combined the things.
I played and I had people coming over to me afterwards saying,
I grew up on your music. That's so amazing. You're in recovery.
I'm in recovery or my brother's struggling or this happened or that.
And I said, yeah, that's interesting now. Maybe I could help you somehow.
(44:46):
Maybe I could get some wiggle room in music business where i could sort of do
some stuff with recovery come back to new york i write a song with richie by
phone called broken broken is a place it's on the clean getaway record last song.
And i put it on line i can't remember where i put it youtube somewhere i started
(45:11):
getting messages from people around the world saying how the lyrics helped them
okay maybe i should write the second one.
Anyway, so that process went on. I wrote like five songs.
I knew somebody from these, I started doing these recovery gigs with an all-star band for charity.
So I met some people from a treatment facility that was from Florida,
(45:33):
but they had a few in New York, in Jersey.
I said, what if I came to your place and did a recovery music group?
Great. Started doing that, and every time I finished, the reaction was amazing.
I only had five, six songs. And I would tell my story a little bit.
Every time I finished, somebody would say to me, where do I get this stuff,
this music? How can I take it home?
(45:55):
So I don't know. I could procrastinate. Finally, I did the Clean Getaway record.
And then what I did is I would take a stack of them. And when I would do another
treatment facility, I would bring a stack of them and give them to the clients in treatment.
That's how that started. I kept writing. And then I was in that mindset of recovery songs.
(46:15):
So that's the sobering. And I started writing for Sobering Times,
which was not going to be Sobering Times, but I just couldn't write anything for Recovery Songs.
That's where Sobering Times came from. Cut to this record.
I said, I've got enough Recovery Songs for now.
I tried to consciously not write those songs, except for Luann,
(46:36):
which I talked about before.
So I just became this Recovery Troubadour guy, I guess somebody called me.
And before COVID, I was going all over the country doing these recovery music groups.
And hopefully I could start it up again, just playing those two records.
Not all the songs, because some of them are too electric to play acoustic.
I would do an hour. And so it would be like seven songs and talking.
(46:59):
And I would do a couple of cover songs too.
I think I did The Bottle Let Me Down by Merle Haggard. That's on the Sobering Times record.
What else did I do? I did one or two cover songs that had to do with that, with recovery.
And I was completely happy. That was fabulous.
And what makes it the best is that all these years later, from people that I
(47:24):
played to five years ago,
I will still open up Facebook and there's a message from some cat that I played
to at a place in New Jersey, Turning Point,
treatment facility, says, I still listen to him, names his song,
and it still helps me stay sober.
So, what more can you ask for as a recovery guy and as a songwriter?
(47:45):
I mean, as a songwriter, that's it.
People are getting something from the songs, right? We're here to make people laugh, cry, and think.
And dance well amazing
amazing story ricky and i'm excited to hear the new music that you have coming
out and you think maybe there's gonna be a record at some point no not is there
(48:05):
gonna be there's gonna be there is a record yeah and when is there gonna be
a record hopefully i'm gonna hand it in by the end of april i'm working really
hard i've only had a few to work on,
right if i hand it in gonna do the cover little
business i know what it's called already but i'm say it yet and come out late
fall i mean i don't know man it depends you know the problem is how long it
(48:28):
takes to make vinyl these days yeah because there's not a lot of plants one
thing i want to specifically mention besides the fact is people should go to rickybird.com,
there's plenty of cool stuff on that there's tons and tons of pictures in the photo gallery,
of my whole career of all fun stuff so if you want to see some some of that
cool stuff like like me playing with McCartney at the Rock Hall in Ringo.
(48:52):
But me and Marriott, all this great fun stuff.
There's a store there where those two records are.
All the new music, it gives you the links to get the new songs that are on Wicked
Cool, all kinds of stuff.
Sign up to my email so you could be informed if I'm coming to your town.
Am I going to put a band together? Oh, God, please no.
(49:14):
But you never know. I'll never say no. No, I want people and I'm asking people
to be patrons of the arts.
It's a different music business we live in.
Streaming is fabulous. But for artists like myself, you know,
small records, we put out records to just keep it going, keep people happy and
(49:34):
put out music because that's what we do.
We need people to download the music. That's direct money that helps us keep making music.
Nobody's getting rich. It's about continuing the process of making music for rock and roll fans.
Streaming is ridiculous because the amount of streams you need to get anything out of that.
(49:57):
Yeah, Beyonce and Taylor, those people, they make tons of money from streaming.
Streaming but for artists like myself
that put these records out
i mean you need billions of streams bro that's right
but if you go right now and download one of
the four singles that money goes straight
(50:18):
to the artist or to the record company who's
you know you split it whatever it is so i'm asking
people i'm i'm so thrilled you
love what i do now but i i we need
you to actually put your money where your mouth is like
if you love rock and roll then buy the music
once they started giving it away for free it was the death of
(50:40):
of anything now bands make their money from touring
and selling merch am i gonna do that i don't know i can't imagine myself doing
it like like jones going back on the road for the summer right big tour i don't
think i could i don't think i would want to do that at this point i like being
home i like recording i love writing i love going going to the gym.
(51:02):
I love hanging out with my family.
I don't think I could do that massive tour thing these days.
Would I like to put a band together and do special gigs?
Let's say play the city wineries around the country. That'd be fun. Or do an acoustic tour.
But not months and months. It's just, I'm done.
(51:25):
I second that. Everybody should download support. If you have merchandise by
the merchandise, this is half by half.
It adds up, you know, I know it's 99 cents for a single, but you know,
and when I, when I get the vinyl man, buy the vinyl, everybody loves vinyls, you know?
Yeah, exactly. I just found every time I go to the studio, there's a second hand shop like blocks.
(51:51):
And I always wind up stopping there or on a break, we go there.
And the other day I picked up, okay.
Gene Pitney vinyl, perfect condition. Love it.
Dion's greatest tip like every Dion song Dion's a friend of mine right we took
out like three bucks yeah,
Joe Cocker the Joe Cocker record remember his face on the front the big face
(52:12):
I had I can't I can't stand the rain,
yeah and it had Bird on a Wire she came in through the bathroom window it was
a great when I was a kid great oh it's that first the very first one where it's
the drawing yes yeah yeah yeah what else what was the other one I came oh oh
my god the Chambers Brothers time has come today oh yeah Yeah, so good.
So every time I go there, I come home with a bag. And Carol goes, what'd you get?
(52:36):
Here's my take today.
I love it. I love hearing that.
Yeah, man. And I just always check to see. I saw, oh, God, I saw a record I really wanted.
Because I lost all my, we had Hurricane Sandy here. And that's a whole other
conversation. Did it affect you?
Oh, God, we lost half the house. This is where I'm sitting now.
(52:57):
The water was up to the ceiling. I'm in the basement.
Oh, wow. yeah so i lost both of us carol lost all her records and stuff but
so i'm just picking i don't want to go crazy i'm picking specific yeah what's
the one you wanted what were you about well i saw it there and i was excited
kim it might have been the first jimmy hendrix record something
which was the first record i ever bought yeah i remember
(53:19):
i went and i bought jimmy hendrix experience and the
first monkeys album on the same day those were so what that
really tells tell us my story right there yeah that's great but
but they had it dude like pull it out and scratch i was
so bummed out you know you gotta make you
gotta pull it out it's a good condition totally totally you
know so well yeah dude i'm still i'm still a rock and roll guy really i got
(53:43):
my guitar and 12th and there's there's my baseball cards oh yeah when i was
when you were a kid yeah right there you got the old the old yankees all my
comic books and rock magazines are right over there. That's awesome.
Yeah. I never got past 12. No, neither have I. I'm dealing with the same thing,
the baseball cards. Which is a problem. The vinyl.
(54:04):
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You got to have stuff that brings you back to that.
Yeah, the nothing. You got to be an adult. See, recovery made me an adult.
But you got to have a place to walk into where you could be 12 again.
Because it's a very harsh world out there now. Yeah, you got to take a moment
and go back to being that kid.
And me being that kid is going to Yankee Stadium, getting a couple of francs with my kid or whoever.
(54:30):
My daughter, thankfully, and her boyfriend both love baseball, Yankees.
You know, sitting there for three hours or even sitting out.
I'm very happy to sit on my couch and watch games.
You know, I watch every single Yankee game if I'm here.
And that takes me back. back. And it's important to go back sometimes because it's so cutthroat now.
(54:53):
And everything is more, more. I got to get through. I got to do this. I got to do that.
And just to sit and be 12 and take your cards out, I open that book and I just
go through them and I just look at them.
Oh, look, Whitey Ford. All the years.
That's really cool. And I hope I never change.
Amen. I hope you don't. Except for my white hair. all right ricky well thank
(55:15):
you so much for the time thank you for your contribution to everything in music
history i appreciate you you're uh asking good questions and you know people
out there just keep supporting rock and roll man because they'll come a day
where there won't be any rock and roll,
yeah yeah people can't afford to make the music there's not going to be any
you're going to be listening to journey records for the rest of your life which
(55:37):
is not a bad thing no i don't want to I don't want to piss off any Journey fans.
All right, Ricky. Thanks, brother. I'll see you soon. Cheers.
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