In this episode of LEGENDS: Podcast by All Day Vinyl, host Scott Dudelson speaks with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Stu Cook, The iconic bass player and co-founder of the Creedence Clearwater Revival. Cook takes us on an incredible journey, sharing intricate details of his music career from CCR to his work with Roky Erickson.
Listen as Cook unveils the highs and lows of his career with Creedence Clearwater Revival and his profound bond with his long-term music companion, Doug 'Cosmo' Clifford. A treasure trove of captivating anecdotes & reflections, the episode offers an immersive exploration into the history of CCR from their early beginning in Junior High, first tastes of stardom to their performance at Royal Albert Hall in 1970.
Dive into the backstage reality and the interpersonal dynamics that fostered the band's journey as Cook recalls the birth of "Born on the Bayou" during soundcheck, internal dissensions, legal quagmires, and challenges that shadowed Creedence Clearwater Revival. Cook presents an unfiltered perspective into the band's glorious legacy.
This conversation also spotlights Cook's stint producing Roky Erickson and stories from the making of the album "The Evil One."
This episode captures the ins and outs of an iconic rock and roll career. A must-hear for classic rock enthusiasts.
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Episode Transcript
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(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 a legend. This gentleman is a Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame member, producer who helmed Rocky Erickson's best solo album, The Evil One,
member of pioneering country rock band Southern Pacific, and most notably co-founder
(00:23):
and bass player of Queens Clearwater Revival, in my opinion,
the greatest American rock band ever.
I'm pleased to introduce to you a legend, Stu Cook.
Thank you so much, Stu, for joining. Good afternoon.
Appreciate your time today.
So we're going to start from the now and move our way back.
And the now is that you're retired and you're enjoying the retirement.
(00:47):
But up until a few years years ago, you were touring for the last 25 years with
your compadre, Doug Cosmo Clifford in Green's Clock, Clearwater Revisited.
So tell me why it was time to end that project after that 25 years.
(01:09):
Well, 25 years is a pretty good career, especially when you're having it off the the same catalog.
We never expected it to be as popular as it became.
It just started off as an idea to maybe get out of the house and play a little
music for corporate events, charities, things like that.
(01:29):
And it evolved into a full-time project for 25 years.
Between 120 and 180 days of the year away from home.
Became quite a monster, actually. We had a great time. We saw the world multiple times in the van.
But it just seemed that, you know, we'd been there, we'd done that.
(01:55):
And it's time to move on, to try to do something else with our lives.
You know, we're not, I like to say there's way more sand in the bottom of the
glass than there is in the top of the hourglass.
And i mean we could have played a few more years i guess we've both been concerned
about the quality of the of the show we you know held ourselves to some pretty
high standards over the years and because it was an uphill fight you know nobody
(02:19):
said we didn't get permission to do this most,
people thought we were crazy when we started that we could never do it without
the original lead lead singer.
And so every show we had to put it down and make sure people believed it.
And after 25 years of beating ourselves up on the road, we had to ask ourselves,
(02:42):
you know, is this still as good as it was five years, 10 years ago?
And the honest answer was, you know, we're losing a step or two here and there.
The audience may or may not know it, but we do. As a result,
we had to have the final revival tour.
(03:03):
Do you still find the need after that project ended to play these songs?
Do you find yourself out and performing with anybody?
You know, I hang out with a bunch of other people, not regularly, but maybe once a month.
And we might play one or two Creedence songs. Yeah.
Mostly songs by other popular artists over the years, our favorite artists.
(03:28):
There's four or five of us, and then we get together in a guy's garage.
And we have a little PA set up and do some videoing, and everybody plays and
sings, you know, whatever songs that they know, and everybody knows each other's songs.
I wanted to mention that the universe must have had something in mind for us
(03:51):
because possibly one month after we played our final show in Aguas Calientes, Mexico,
we played Mexico City in Aguas Calientes at the end of February 2020.
And it wasn't 30 days later, and the whole world was shut down from the pandemic.
So the industry went away.
(04:13):
Even if we'd wanted to continue, we couldn't have.
The universe took you back to right where you started, which is in the garage. Pretty much.
Playing covers with some friends. Now I'm singing Eric Clapton and Tom Petty songs with my friends.
And, you know, like I said, occasional Creedence songs thrown in there,
(04:33):
but we don't have a drummer, so I don't play bass. I play guitar.
It's not much fun playing bass unless you've got a good drummer, which I've had.
I've been fortunate enough to play with three great drummers over my career,
Doug Clifford, Keith Knudsen from the Doobie Brothers, Yeah.
A couple of years in Revisited when Doug was ailing, we played with a fellow
(04:57):
by the name of Ron Wickso, who's just a monster.
And so, you know, I've always had a good drummer to bounce off of.
So I've been extremely fortunate.
Yeah. So now without a set of drums, there's not much sense in me playing bass.
So I enjoy playing guitar and it's easier to sing with.
And so, you know, you mentioned Doug Cosmo. You know, he's been your drummer
(05:20):
for 60 years, over 60 years.
I met Doug in the first day of school in the seventh grade.
Yeah, tell me about how, I mean, you guys are, obviously Creedence got big in
the mid to late 60s, but you were one of the early bands.
I mean, 1957, 59.
You said 57 was when you met him?
(05:41):
Yeah, it could have been. I think it was 57, something like that, 57, 58.
First day of school in the seventh seventh
grade junior high we were
in the same homeroom same letters for our last name
right so that's where we met and then we formed the blue velvets with john fogarty
(06:01):
a year later how did how did you how do you all connect with each other that
you all are musicians and not just classmates well we weren't really musicians
as per se we We were just fans.
And it turned out we have pretty much the same record collection.
And so we shared our love for the early rock and roll artists and early blues guys.
(06:27):
But of course, when rock and roll really exploded, guys like Ricky Nelson,
Pat Stomato, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Larry Williams.
We all loved that stuff. It really got us going.
So then we were just an instrumental trio, and we played boys clubs and county fairs.
(06:52):
Eventually, we got a little bit older. Once we got our driver's license,
we could play fraternity parties and things like that.
You were in a small town. Were there other bands in the vicinity,
or were you guys holding court? We were pretty much the only band,
actually, that I recall.
In fact, our high school used to send us to other high schools what they called exchange assemblies.
(07:19):
And we would go represent El Cerrito High. We'd go play at Alameda High or Incineroar
High or Richmond High, one of the other local high schools, and entertain them for their assembly.
You know, they're students once a week, once a month.
Everybody in the whole school gets together in the gym, right?
And so we got to take the whole morning off to go do that and then we got the afternoon off,
(07:42):
so it was paying off that's a pretty sweet deal yeah
it was paying off early but though there really weren't any other bands
in in our age group around
that we were aware of i mean it when you
know by the time the stones and the beatles arrived everybody had a band you
(08:03):
know or wanted to be in a band you were desert veterans by that time seasoned
veterans you know we've been playing we learned how to play together you know
we learned our instruments,
at the same time and and we sort of developed a early on developed a six cents
you know where we just we could and.
(08:27):
You know we just felt where where what each other
was going to do and it just it made putting it
together when we actually played it sounded
more professional even
though we weren't but we you know we had the the advantage of having been doing
it for several years by the time the mid-60s came around you know we actually
(08:50):
started playing in 59 i believe we i think we made our first recording in 1959 actually.
I think I was in the band two weeks and we were in the recording studio with
Tom Fogarty, John's older brother.
We were his backup band for many years.
(09:10):
But yeah, I think that's all pretty accurate.
I've done a bunch of interviews and a lot of people cite the Beatles and Rolling
Stones as the impetus for bands to start writing original original songs,
but you guys were writing, or Tom and John were writing songs in the early 60s before that.
(09:30):
Was that a unique element in the music scene from your perspective?
You know, it may have been. I never thought about it much.
As an instrumental trio, we played The Ventures, Johnny and the Hurricanes,
and there was a a few other notable bands that were without vocalists at the time.
(09:56):
Link Wray was an artist that did instrumentals and instrumentals could become a pop hit too.
I mean, most of popular music as I recall back in the 50s was sort of popified country.
In other words, Patsy Cline would be a country star but then she could have a pop hit.
(10:19):
She could be number one on the national charts, not just country,
but the popular music charts in Billboard, the Hot 100, I guess they called it.
And that happened over and over again. Country artists were the easiest to cross over.
Black artists, rhythm and blues artists, the hardest.
They had to have their own...
(10:43):
Radio stations and you know they were like a subset of popular music still popular,
amongst their fans but but not as broad
nearly as broad a fan base and then you know honestly that was racism you know
prevalent in sports prevalent in entertainment prevalent everywhere in america
back in the 50s in the in the 60s and to some extent in the 21st century you
(11:08):
know It hasn't gone away yet.
But the original songs just seemed like the natural thing to do.
When you run out of other people's songs, why not?
By then, if you learn a bunch of other people's songs, you realize that there's no mystery to music.
(11:30):
There's only 12 notes in the Western scale.
And if you listen to popular music, there's only three or four chords that are
used over and over and over.
In mostly the same order pattern so
then it's just coming up with the you know a
new idea a new story so how
did you how do you all go from a regional band
(11:51):
to end up connecting with fantasy records to get
your first incarnation of ccr out
the gollywogs well you know we were when we
were making these early records we were backing up other artists besides
tom we were on a little label called orchestra then
there was a black artist that we backed up name of
(12:12):
james powell i forget the name of the label
that he was he was on but there was a bunch of small independent labels
in the san francisco bay area and fantasy was one
of them actually they were probably the biggest small independent label and
they made their mark by being some of the early doing the The early recordings
(12:33):
of artists that went on to become huge in the jazz genre.
Including Brubeck, Montgomery, Cal Jader, Bollosete.
Of course, Vince Giraldi was how we ended up at Fantasy.
Vince Giraldi recorded the music to a...
(12:57):
A movie called Black Orpheus. And the theme song was Cast Your Fate to the Winds.
And they were on Fantasy. And we thought, well, you know, here's,
and it was a hit, number one hit.
And another instrumental that was a hit, way bigger than the movie.
And which was sort of like an international film festival winner,
(13:19):
Brazilian, as I think I mentioned.
So we thought, well, here's a Bay Area local label that has a hit.
Let's take our stuff over there and so tom and john went over there with our
tapes and they were being run by a couple of beatniks the weiss brothers max and saul and max.
(13:40):
Offered us a contract and so we signed with him and his brother and max became our manager,
and he named us the gollywogs without asking us and and we get the records the
record you You know, we do our first recording when the box of records comes
and we open it up and we go, who the golly walks?
(14:02):
You know, we're looking at these brand new 45s in a white envelope.
What did you think you were going to be recording as?
We were going to be either the Blue Velvets or the Visions. We thought we might
be the Visions at that time.
But somewhere along the way, Max thought that it didn't sound British enough.
Right? The British invasion. And so, you know, get hip, baby.
(14:26):
That was Max pink socks, glow in the dark socks, sandals, beard,
you know, just a regular San Francisco beat Nick part of that whole beat generation,
which was closely tied to the West coast jazz.
And so we were on, we ended up on fantasy after he sold the company and,
(14:48):
to Saul Zantz and some partners of his.
Saul offered us a contract and offered to buy John an amp. So we said, sure.
Nobody else is offering us anything. We never got any other offers.
It's not like there was a big bidding war.
We took the contract. The guy said, hey, your dad's a lawyer.
(15:10):
Let's see what he thinks. And so I took the contracts to him,
and he looked at me and says, fuck, I don't know.
I'm not in the music business, but I can tell you one thing.
I don't see any other offers for you guys.
So if you really want to make records, this is the deal that you have to take.
And so it was our decision to at least take the leap, regardless of the terms
(15:34):
of the deal, which weren't great, but they're roughly equivalent to the same
deal the Beatles signed.
An entry level, low royalty rate. They take your publishing, that kind of a deal.
And so there we were. We were in showbiz.
(15:55):
Is that the contract that John Fogarty famously was trying to get out of over the years?
Yeah. Yeah, he's been trying to get out of a lot of deals that he signed.
Sometimes he signed them over and over, and he still didn't like them.
It didn't get any better each time he signed them. I wonder why he did that.
(16:16):
But regardless, yeah, we were always with Fantasy, and they always gave us a
crappy deal, and that's the same deal we have today.
And that allowed you to start, obviously. You did the Gollywogs,
and that transformed into CCR, and you ultimately put out your first record,
self-titled, and it had Suzy Q on it.
(16:37):
Was Suzy Q, that must have been a song.
It was obviously a Dale Hawkins song that in the late 50s you grew up with.
Was that in your concert repertoire prior to recording it?
Well, it was, then it wasn't, then it was again.
We always liked it.
So we played it pretty regularly. Then the Stones recorded it.
(17:02):
And we said, well, we're already playing it in our four-hour shows, four one-hour sets.
We were already playing a bunch of Stones songs. So we covered the Stones.
We didn't cover the Beatles.
Because we were more of an R&B outfit.
I mean, our inclinations were more like theirs. you know, before they started
(17:25):
writing, they played American blues.
So we stopped playing it.
And then just about the time we were, I think we'd already decided to become
CCR, we were playing a show up north of Sacramento,
real close to one of the military bases. This is during the Vietnam War.
(17:48):
So we had a lot of, I think it was an Air Force base, So there were a lot of airmen there.
And anyway, we were playing like four hours a night, five hours a night.
I mean, we just ran out of songs to play by the end of the night.
You could repeat like three hours in, you could start the show over because
by then everybody that was there at the beginning had already left. So we could start over.
(18:11):
But by the fifth set, it was like, you know, what do we do for 50 minutes?
And I suggested that we just, you know, psychedelic long jams and so on were
becoming the rage in the San Francisco scene, which Credence really wasn't a part of.
Although we played the same venues and, you know, knew a lot of the same people,
(18:34):
we weren't a San Francisco scene band per se.
We were more focused on Top 40, you know, the three-minute song.
But I suggested to the band that we, that we just play Susie Q and then just
jam for 20 minutes and that'll get us, you know, almost halfway through our last set. Yeah.
(18:55):
And I said, you know, we'll just play the three verses. We'll do the regular
solo, come back and do another verse.
And then we'll just jam, you know, until people fall down.
So we did that from then on. Then it became part of a repertoire again.
So we recorded the long version. I think we got it pretty quick, one or two takes.
(19:17):
And the record company released it as a single. the A side was the lyrics,
you know, the vocal part and the B side was the jam.
So that's the story on that song. And you, you know, you mentioned the psychedelic
scene in San Francisco and there's a story that circulated around for years.
(19:37):
And that story is that you all went to maybe the Fillmore, to the Grateful Dead and watch them play.
And at that show made a decision that,
you weren't going to go in that psychedelic realm and you
were not going to do drugs and it this was a whole whole scene
that was you know you were going to make a concerted effort
(19:58):
to avoid well that's
just a story uh what they call it urban myth yeah we
just we always maintained that that partying
and and performance didn't mix
and to that end we never we
never drank we never got high before we played
(20:19):
after we played another story
but and we we weren't in our our whole approach was not let's let's get high
and see what happens you know ours was like okay we got 12 songs you know two
and a half three and a half four minutes i think i think I think one of our,
(20:41):
I think Born on the Bayou is over five minutes, okay, just as a song.
But most of them were, you know, short AM type singles. Yeah.
And that was our, that was our approach because we were, we wanted to,
there was no FM radio when we started.
If you, you know, if you wanted to, to, to make a mark, to have,
(21:04):
to have hits, they had to be two and a half, three and a half minutes long and be played on top 40.
And so that was always our goal. And so we, we always, I get,
you know, we, I wouldn't say we were over rehearsed, but we were, we were always focused.
Focused what we're trying to do and you know we knew what we needed to do to to pull it off and,
(21:27):
getting drunk and getting high didn't fit with you know doing good consistently
but like you know like you know anybody comes home from work right they have
a drink you know i'd get high whatever Yeah,
we had normal lives when we weren't being professional.
(21:48):
I mean, you guys were so prolific. I want to go into a little depth on specifically
1969, Bayou Country, Green River, Willing the Poor Boys.
You were so prolific. On a high level, what is that like for you in terms of all that action?
Well, that was a big year for sure. I don't think any band had done that.
(22:10):
No American artist had done that. The Beatles were pretty prolific as well.
But to truth be known, Bayou Country was recorded in 1968.
Right, the end of the year, right. It was released in January 69.
So we had three releases in the year 1969, but we only recorded two full albums that year.
(22:36):
Our style of recording was...
Record the a and the b side record an a and a b side record another a and a
b side and then go in and record the rest and that's how we made an album it
wasn't till i think pendulum,
when we actually went into the studio and recorded all
(22:58):
the songs at once so we and the
first album was recorded that way so first and second album were
recorded recorded all at once as well but from green
river willie and the poor boys cosmos factory were all
recorded in in chunks in between touring
those those two albums that were recorded in
full were they done quickly or were
(23:20):
these sessions that uh you guys had to perfect out no we played live you know
we we do two three four takes of a song if it wasn't happening we'd move on
to another other song come back
always always try to catch it fresh never really i never as a bass player,
(23:40):
i mean i never really said this is the
part i have to play this part every single time i played a different every every
take i played something different you know just a little bit only i would i
would know really or somebody who was you know a being the bass parts the bass
track from from one take to another would notice it immediately.
(24:01):
But, you know, it was the general part in the groove.
You know, if I did something in the first verse, I wouldn't do it in the third verse or something.
You know, just kind of flip ideas around.
They were always bouncing around. It could be this way, it could be that way.
You know, it doesn't make any difference. Just play it as good as you can.
(24:22):
The take would be when everybody played it as good as they can at the same time.
And we usually I mean some of it is amazing some of it like I heard it through
the grapevine I think it was like the first or second take keep on chugging
same Susie Q very very quick we were we rehearsed every day.
Four or five hours a day, you know, Monday through Friday at Cosmos factory
(24:47):
or the original factory was just a tool shed and Doug Clifford's backyard.
But yeah, we, I mean, we were, it was a job. It was a task.
You know, the goal was to get better, to make better records,
to play better, you know, to, you know, to get the brass ring.
(25:07):
Right. Give me a little slice of life of what the factory was like on a day
where you would all have to, John, bring in a song and you all have to rehearse or learn.
What does that look like at that time period?
Well, the factory was the Cosmos Factory, which became the factory.
(25:29):
It was in sort of the warehouse district of Berkeley, California, down by Interstate 80.
And 1230 5th Street Berkeley.
CA we'd drive in, you know, we'd get there like 10, 930, about 10 1030,
we'd all, there was inside parking, the crew rolled up the big metal door,
(25:52):
we rolled in have some coffee maybe shoot some pool,
then go back to the to the rehearsal area that you see on the cover of Cosmos
Factory factory and you know said about the whatever the task of the day was
if it was a new song you know,
here's how it goes here's my idea john would play it
sing it as much as you know as if
(26:14):
the lyrics weren't done he'd just kind of say well
you know this is this is the melody this is what i'm thinking right here and
then we just start playing just start playing it together and you know doug
would say how about what if i do this here you know john said no maybe not that
maybe not there maybe not that maybe not anywhere and try this and try that and you go up I,
(26:36):
think this needs that there see go
ahead try it so yeah that's good you know and each pretty
you know some of stuff's obvious I mean like you
look at a song like bad moon rising you know it's just a one note bass part
doesn't even go boom boom boom boom because boom boom boom boom you know it's
(26:57):
like okay nobody in to show me that except maybe to you know play less right
don't make it sound so country.
So a lot of the stuff is obvious. A lot of the stuff John had specific ideas that he wanted us to try.
It just would depend on how we approached it.
(27:18):
One of the really cool things that Doug just kind of forced into a song was
at the end of We'll Stop the Rain, on the fade out,
there's a lot of drum action, a lot of drum rolls and things like that.
John didn't like them. Doug said, I love them. I'm going to keep playing them.
(27:42):
I don't know if John ever liked them, but they're on the record.
I've seen footage from the factory and you're all hanging out and you,
Doug, look so relaxed, so cool, so chill.
Did you feel that there was camaraderie during these times or was it,
do you look back fondly at that era?
(28:05):
I have to look at the whole career with a whole lot of fondness,
it's been quite a blessing.
We got extremely lucky and that's really what it is in this business.
It's how good you are is not as relevant as how bad you want it and how hard you try.
(28:29):
And then, you know, there's the universe has to line up, you know,
so that radio will play your song and people will like it and request it.
And then it'll end up in the record stores or, you know, then you get to do another record.
But, you know, the whole period, you know, unlike anything fresh and new, it started out great.
(28:53):
I mean, we started out in junior high school, right? It was an adventure in
learning to drink beer and grow up.
The more successful we got, the more stress the whole project came under.
(29:13):
I don't know specifically what time frame you're relating to me.
And I want to go back to 69 real quick on Born on the Bayou.
There's a story about that song being birthed at the Avalon on stage to record a soundtrack.
(29:33):
Do you have any memory of that moment? Yeah.
We were like fifth on the bill. Taj Mahal was the headliner.
Bunch of other local acts.
When I say local acts, I mean, you know, might have been Quicksilver or might
have been, you know, other Bay Area, San Francisco scene bands.
Taj Mahal was like a national artist at the
(29:55):
time you know and so
we were like fifth on the bill right we were the so we were gonna play first
so we were last to soundcheck and we were up you know trying to get a sound
and John started playing that you know once we pretty much worked our way through
the soundcheck we just kind of goofing off and John started playing.
(30:18):
The riff for Born on the Bayou. You know, that guitar part that's at the intro.
I mean, throughout the song, actually.
And so we all just started jamming on that. You know, just hitting the quarter
notes on the bell, the cymbal, and cooking along.
So one of the production people got all over us and said, you know,
(30:39):
why don't you knock it off? Get off the stage.
You guys are not going anywhere. You know, that sucks.
Scram. you know that's what
i remember of it it was like the the the
birth of the song was was was tainted by somebody else's opinion of of where
we were headed and then how how long after does some event like that does the
(31:04):
song actually come back to y'all to within a year yeah yeah i mean I mean,
that was in 68,
and Bio Country came out in early 69, and it was the flip side of Proud Mary.
Then in 1970, y'all went to Europe to tour, and there was just a documentary
that came out, a lot of great footage of y'all playing.
(31:27):
Oh, yeah, the Royal Alder Hall. Yeah, you know, nobody could ever agree on who
owned it between us and the record company.
And, you know, John had a lot of problems with all the people there,
and his own problems got mixed in with Frieden's problems.
So nothing ever happened with it. It just sat there and sat there.
(31:50):
And there was a lot of that documentary-style footage that was shot with it
that nobody knew what to do with.
No one ever sat down and said, here's what we got. Let's make something out of this.
Until three or four years ago, I guess, when...
Sig Sigwerth at Kraft, which is one of Conker Music Group's labels that deals with catalog.
(32:15):
They're more of a catalog.
I don't know that Fantasy is...
I don't really know what's going on over there. But Kraft is the brand.
And Sig became one of the producers of the project. And he landed the dude to narrate. Right.
(32:39):
Right. You know, like, come on,
what can be better? The biggest Credence Clearwater Revolve fan for sure.
Yeah. Not too big a CCR fan at all.
And I mean, how many times have I watched the big Lebowski? You know? Oh my God, me too.
They call me the dude. My last name is Dettelson. In fact, I've got on my shirt
(32:59):
right here. It says, dude, the dude.
Yeah uh hero so anyway that that was a great show the only thing missing was
the encore you know by then because john had somehow decided another management decision,
(33:21):
okay a poor management decision that the band would no longer do encores because they were phony.
You know my feeling was
yeah you know i can see where if you
hadn't played well enough in your own mind you might
not think that that you earned an encore but my god
if the audience wants an encore right you must
(33:45):
have fooled them right if if you didn't if
you didn't think you did that well and they did who are
you going to side with you know you're going to always side with
your fans and so we didn't
do an encore but it was it was quite
a show all of our concerts were a little on
the short side i felt but you know that
(34:06):
was sort of the norm and until you know
the grateful dead and so on you know to the then the
long shows you know springsteen and you know everybody started doing
two and a half mccartney even for a while
was doing you know full feature-length concerts but ours were like 45 55 minutes
and so it wasn't a long production which is you know why i guess they didn't
(34:32):
feel at the time that there was enough enough actual footage,
to make a a special out of but when
they finally figured out how they were going to use some of the b-roll.
Just so happened that the solzans had hired some some guy with a 16 millimeter
camera to follow us around while we were on tour and we had no idea who he was
(34:56):
or what the point of it was but.
I mean, nobody would talk to him very much. I talked to him all the time because
I was interested in photography.
What I loved, I loved a lot about that, the Robert Hall show.
And that was one of my first times seeing a full concert.
But I loved how you all are arranged on stage with Cosmo up front in the line.
(35:20):
You usually don't see that kind of arrangement where the front man isn't in
front, the drummer isn't in the back.
Yeah well that's a revisit revisited went with the drum
riser and the drums in the back right yeah how
did how did you all come come upon that unique
formation as a stage show nightclubs little
bars that we played in i mean there wasn't room for much
(35:43):
of anything i preferred being on the
other side of doug the hi-hat side where the
side where john was i thought i would
i could have locked in a little better if i could
be on that side but the way
we had it is you know there's a way we did it in the in the bars the
stage was you know not very deep
(36:04):
not very wide tom fogarty any anecdotes you could share about tom i'm a fan
of his solo albums okay of his work i got it i got Tom was the first guy to
leave the band that was the first big crack.
In what had been a solid team since 1959.
(36:31):
He felt that he just didn't have any space in the band he was the original singer and he,
turned it over to John because he felt John had a more rock and roll voice it's
what we needed at the time this is in let's say 1967 66 67 67 i want to say,
(36:54):
And then, you know, after we'd had three, four, five hit albums,
Tom wanted more room within the band, wanted to write, at least,
you know, offer songs, present songs.
And I think he might have wanted to sing a song or two.
(37:19):
Sort of like, you know, Ringo sang a few, right? night even let you know they
let ringo sing george sang a couple but you know it was really lennon mccartney's
ball oh man the dolphins were jumping like mad in front of my house,
very nice they and so you know after a while he just got tired of,
(37:40):
john turning him down so he went solo and
he rented a space like
one or two doors down from Cosmos Factory as
his rehearsal place where he put together his band Ruby with Randy Oda and he
had a really cool rhythm section I forget the name of the guys but a couple
(38:02):
of black kids they were uh yeah they had a good band and in fact Doug and I played on a on a,
a couple of his solo albums I played lead guitar on Joyful Resurrection direction.
I mean, yeah, we, you know, we, we, we supported Tom.
We were, I, Tom must have quit a half a dozen times.
(38:22):
Doug and I talked him out of it. You know, come on, Tom, you know,
you know, John will change his mind and he goes, ah, I don't think so.
Well, give it a little, you know, give me, give him another shot at it.
And then, you know, a couple of months later, nah, I'm out of here.
No, no, things are going too good. Don't leave now.
No, I can't take it anymore. I don't need it you know he's my brother he won't
(38:43):
even let me do this that anyway doug and i felt like we were squeezed in a like
a fogarty sandwich between the two of them.
But, you know, we kept it together as long as we could. I used to see Tom play
around the Bay Area all the time.
Then he started hanging out with Jerry Garcia and Merle Saunders and jamming with those guys.
(39:06):
John Kahn was a bass player, I think.
Those are great records. They did. I love those. Those are my favorites. Really? Really? Yeah.
Merle was a great guy. Merle was, like, one of the original guys that we met
on Fantasy Records. He'd been there forever.
The Chinese guy Edwin that that that worked
in the in the warehouse called him Molo Shono I don't
(39:30):
know where that came from but Merle was Molo Molo Shono and so yeah Tom had
a you know Tom had a lot of music in him and and it was a shame that that that
it didn't fit you know as as we evolved and became more and more,
you know, almost a parody of ourselves,
(39:51):
I guess, you know, after a while, if you don't really, you know,
Creed just stopped really growing.
When John, by the time John had fully taken control of the band,
it just became like, okay, here we go again.
You know, not that we weren't having hit records and, and, you know,
making good money and so on, but the, the, The excitement had slipped away because
(40:13):
it just didn't feel like a band anymore.
It was more like it was becoming more and more John's solo project with three other guys.
All I can say to that is, how many hit records have you had since you got rid
(40:34):
of the guys that were holding you back? One.
So, yeah, I mean...
If we had a real manager, he would have said, hey, kids, settle down and let
me explain some things to you about, you know, where you are,
where you've been and where you're likely to go.
(40:54):
And, you know, how we can best manage this so that, you know,
you have the most success possible,
everything that you can earn, you'll get. But we didn't have a mentor.
We thought Solzhenitsyn was a mentor. tour, but it turned out that he was not,
(41:16):
he was not, you know, to him, it was just a piece of paper.
You know, the contract was just business. And when we first,
when we signed with him, we said, he said, you know, this is just a start.
If you guys get successful, we'll tear this up and all share in the pie equally.
Well, you know, after a couple of hit albums and we went back in and said well
(41:38):
what about that pie he said I think I'm going to live with this contract I have.
So you know things like that definitely took
away you know it changed everybody's perspective
you know I mean first we thought we were all on the same team you know and gradually
that chipped away at you know it wasn't just success it was along with the success
(42:05):
there was you know some some very poignant disappointments that just led to,
you know, the lack of enthusiasm, the lack of, you know, the spark.
The spark went because of the internal pressure,
P.S. Such is life. You guys, the
legacy you left before then is absolutely insane and will live forever.
(42:32):
There's nothing at all wrong with, my screen just keeps popping off of the Zoom. There we go.
There's nothing wrong with our stuff. I'm glad to hear it.
I'm glad, you know what, I'm really glad that so many younger people have turned on to it.
We're more popular now than we've ever been. And it will continue with the streaming and that stuff.
(42:55):
I thought, you know, catalog music would just go by the wayside.
It would just be, you know, hip hop and R and B and pop music and so on.
But I mean, in the last, the last five years, we've gone from less than on a
streaming, just looking at streaming, we've gone from less than 10 million listeners
a month to over 33 million listeners a month.
(43:19):
So it's, i guess you
know each each new format
has has been very kind to to our legacy
absolutely yeah before before we
wrap let's talk to rocky erickson okay for the
the listeners just to give some context rocky erickson was
a legendary psychedelic rock pioneer in
(43:41):
austin texas in the late 60s with the 13th floor
elevators and in the late 70s
to you hooked up with them to produce two of his
first solo albums which are amazing
well i know evil one that's like some of
rocky's most seminal songs i walk with the zombie two-headed
dog yeah i mean these are these
(44:03):
tell me tell me how are you tell me how you hooked up because that that seems
like an odd first of all the music is is rock serious rock so it makes sense
but you're in there but rocky as a personality uh doesn't seem one that you're
you're connecting with tell me the story of how this this happens look at this
guy that i was smoking weed with,
(44:24):
was Rocky's manager. And one day he asked me if I'd be interested in going to
the studio with Rocky. And I said, oh my God, yeah.
He's one of the greatest rock and roll vocalists.
Of the period. One of them ever, really. I mean, that guy could scream his ass off.
(44:46):
And so we got introduced and Rocky had this, he was always testing.
He had this kind of, his personality was that he would do stuff just to provoke,
just to see how you would react.
And once I passed the test, you know, we went in the studio and I worked closely
with his musical director, Dwayne Aklaskan, lead guitar player in the Aliens.
(45:13):
And Bill Miller, the electric auto harp player, was also instrumental in helping
me get inside of Rocky's head.
They'd known each other for quite a while. I think he might have been from Texas as well.
But yeah, Rocky was, sometimes he was there, sometimes he wasn't.
He had a lot of personal struggles.
(45:36):
He ran into some problems with the law and marijuana early on in Texas,
which was never a good thing.
And rather than go to jail he went to they put him in a mental institution which
didn't help him out much you know in fact when we were recording uh the evil
(45:57):
one we were doing the vocals down in in austin at a studio owned by this guy what's his name uh.
Maybe it'll come to me.
Anyway, he wrote the song Muskrat Love for Captain and Tennille.
He's like a Texas legend kind of guy. Anyway, he owned this studio.
(46:17):
And I'd have to put on a coat and tie and go up to the Rusk Metal Institution,
and check Rocky out and take him down to the studio.
We'd do the vocals. And after a while, he'd start to drift, you know,
start talking to his manager about, you know, what about that apartment you're going to get me?
(46:37):
Craig, he said, Rocky, I think we're done. We're done for the day. Drive him back.
Whenever I went to get him, you know, I had the coat and tie on.
And all the other inmates would come up to me and say, hey, can you get me out? Can you get me out?
And I go, finally, I'm just trying to figure out what's going on.
And so I asked one of the supervisors what's going on. And they said,
(46:58):
oh, you got a coat and a tie on. They think you're a doctor.
And they see you get Rocky out. they see you getting rocky out they they want
to know if you can get them out too.
But yeah you know working with
rocky was was where i learned really learned how to be a producer
you know just how to get more out of an artist with their cooperation you know
(47:22):
and you know just try keep everything positive don't try and work it to death
you know try and keep it keep the flow you know loose and and things naturally
and you know don't worry about little.
Little things you know a little out of tune here a little this little
that yeah you know whatever you know but are you you know
(47:42):
is the performance good is it real boy rocky
was real when he was really performing i mean there
was just nobody nobody could talk about he would nail it he would
know he's i want to go back and do this part let's try and do
this and do this again and so he
was was involved when he was
there you know when he was focused he was really there
(48:03):
and he was funny oh
my god we would uh i would
always run a two-track tape machine always when
we were in the when we were working so that
i could capture everything that you
know like the in between takes while we're rewinding the tape we
we'd be talking and rocky would be blowing our minds with things
(48:25):
and and so we had we recorded everything i
don't know where that stuff is because his manager just recently passed
away i think there's a guy in texas that that
may have access to all those archives but i mean hours and hours of stuff and
sometimes we couldn't fit it all on the 16 track so i would have rather than
(48:46):
erase something that we already had that we weren't sure you know We didn't
want to stop to comp it down and free up the tracks.
I would just record it on the two-track, and then we'd just wild sync it in.
We'd just push record, push start, and hope that it dropped in.
And because we couldn't manipulate it like you can with digital,
(49:08):
you know, drag it a beat or a half a beat, a half a second this way or that way.
And so we, you know, it took hours and hours and hours to do some of this stuff,
but sometimes Rocky would bring in a song and he, you know, like he had it all
kind of backwards, you know, he had it all there, but it would be backwards
from a song, the story point of view,
(49:28):
like he'd be singing the last verse first, for example.
And so I would have to, you
know rearrange it all for him you know
get the band bored and okay this
is the way it's going to be this is the way you're going
to do it always and my biggest thrill was when we finished with the evil one
(49:49):
and rocky heard it and he said you know i really like that i think stew did
a great job and he used to call me buzzy he buzzes around all the time what
do you where'd you come come up with that.
He says, you're just always buzzing around, you know? And I'm saying,
well, I'm just trying to keep up with you, man.
Amazing. What's, what's happening with that record? Cause it's not,
(50:12):
I don't think it's on Spotify.
You know, we, we recorded 15 songs and they were split between two albums.
The first one was the evil one on CBS UK.
And then TEO, which is the evil one, right? Abbreviated. And,
The first one had the wild collage color album cover done by Captain Colors,
(50:38):
who was another local legend artist.
Then the second one, TEO, was on 415 Records, Howie Stein's label in San Francisco.
And that had the black and white with the open door and the light shining through it.
And so we got two albums out of these 15 songs.
Songs so there was obviously some duplication between the releases but one was a foreign release,
(51:05):
and the other was a domestic release so we
didn't really nobody seemed to mind i mean
nobody at the labels minded everybody liked the songs
and now since then it's been
re-released and re-released and re-released and re-released the
last really good release was a three
album anthology called
(51:28):
by a label in pacific northwest called light in the
attic yeah and the whole the first album is my 15 songs and the second album
has a lot of other people's recordings and live recordings later recordings
i think duane might have produced some of them and i'm not sure what's on the
third one, more outtakes and stuff like that.
(51:50):
But it's a pretty complete Rocky collection.
Somewhere around here, I have it all on vinyl. It was a really nice package.
And now, actually, other people are starting to cover Rocky songs. There's a,
I forget her name. I think her name is Chelsea. I can't remember her last name.
But she did an absolutely spooky version of one of my favorites.
(52:15):
If you have ghosts, you have everything.
And it's on a soundtrack for a film.
But it's really dark and very echoey and very slow.
And it's more like a sung poem than a rock song.
But it's definitely rocky. And that's one of my favorite songs.
(52:36):
I think of Demons, if you have Ghosts, to me, those are like Rocky doing love songs.
Amazing. Well, Stu, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the great
contribution on all fronts to music history.
And I wish you so much luck in retirement and enjoying the non-tourner lifestyle.
(52:57):
Yeah, I got, you know, like I got with my nuclear family, I got four kids.
Six grandkids, kids probably more on
the way now that my youngest son just got hitched yeah so
i'm i'm pretty busy you know if
i'm not on stage anymore which
i like i said earlier i do miss i got
(53:20):
other things now i can you know well see which
one of my grandkids wants to play both of my granddaughters play and
sing one's a drummer both of them play guitar they both
sing real good they're like six and eight years old
oh you got a new band you could join it's right
built in for you yeah it's you know i give
them all the encouragement i can i you know they're a.
(53:43):
Little small for a little young for full-size instruments yet
although one of them plays my son's
electronic drum set pretty good you know and teaching herself
you know listens the same way you know
i'm i'm originally classically trained but as
i got more and more into popular music i became more
(54:03):
of an ear player and so they're right now
they're listening to records and teaching themselves how to
play the drum parts and the guitar parts
that they hear and they both take guitar lessons i think
they might both be taking drum lessons as well now we got i think
we got them both drum lessons for christmas whatever one gets
the other one wants anyway you
(54:24):
know life is good i just hope
i can get enough of it thank you so much sue i appreciate
everything you be well cheers scott cheers thank you for listening to the legends
podcast by all day vinyl if you enjoyed this episode please rate it share it
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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 a legend. This gentleman is a Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame member, producer who helmed Rocky Erickson's best solo album, The Evil One,
member of pioneering country rock band Southern Pacific, and most notably co-founder
(00:23):
and bass player of Queens Clearwater Revival, in my opinion,
the greatest American rock band ever.
I'm pleased to introduce to you a legend, Stu Cook.
Thank you so much, Stu, for joining. Good afternoon.
Appreciate your time today.
So we're going to start from the now and move our way back.
And the now is that you're retired and you're enjoying the retirement.
(00:47):
But up until a few years years ago, you were touring for the last 25 years with
your compadre, Doug Cosmo Clifford in Green's Clock, Clearwater Revisited.
So tell me why it was time to end that project after that 25 years.
(01:09):
Well, 25 years is a pretty good career, especially when you're having it off the the same catalog.
We never expected it to be as popular as it became.
It just started off as an idea to maybe get out of the house and play a little
music for corporate events, charities, things like that.
(01:29):
And it evolved into a full-time project for 25 years.
Between 120 and 180 days of the year away from home.
Became quite a monster, actually. We had a great time. We saw the world multiple times in the van.
But it just seemed that, you know, we'd been there, we'd done that.
(01:55):
And it's time to move on, to try to do something else with our lives.
You know, we're not, I like to say there's way more sand in the bottom of the
glass than there is in the top of the hourglass.
And i mean we could have played a few more years i guess we've both been concerned
about the quality of the of the show we you know held ourselves to some pretty
high standards over the years and because it was an uphill fight you know nobody
(02:19):
said we didn't get permission to do this most,
people thought we were crazy when we started that we could never do it without
the original lead lead singer.
And so every show we had to put it down and make sure people believed it.
And after 25 years of beating ourselves up on the road, we had to ask ourselves,
(02:42):
you know, is this still as good as it was five years, 10 years ago?
And the honest answer was, you know, we're losing a step or two here and there.
The audience may or may not know it, but we do. As a result,
we had to have the final revival tour.
(03:03):
Do you still find the need after that project ended to play these songs?
Do you find yourself out and performing with anybody?
You know, I hang out with a bunch of other people, not regularly, but maybe once a month.
And we might play one or two Creedence songs. Yeah.
Mostly songs by other popular artists over the years, our favorite artists.
(03:28):
There's four or five of us, and then we get together in a guy's garage.
And we have a little PA set up and do some videoing, and everybody plays and
sings, you know, whatever songs that they know, and everybody knows each other's songs.
I wanted to mention that the universe must have had something in mind for us
(03:51):
because possibly one month after we played our final show in Aguas Calientes, Mexico,
we played Mexico City in Aguas Calientes at the end of February 2020.
And it wasn't 30 days later, and the whole world was shut down from the pandemic.
So the industry went away.
(04:13):
Even if we'd wanted to continue, we couldn't have.
The universe took you back to right where you started, which is in the garage. Pretty much.
Playing covers with some friends. Now I'm singing Eric Clapton and Tom Petty songs with my friends.
And, you know, like I said, occasional Creedence songs thrown in there,
(04:33):
but we don't have a drummer, so I don't play bass. I play guitar.
It's not much fun playing bass unless you've got a good drummer, which I've had.
I've been fortunate enough to play with three great drummers over my career,
Doug Clifford, Keith Knudsen from the Doobie Brothers, Yeah.
A couple of years in Revisited when Doug was ailing, we played with a fellow
(04:57):
by the name of Ron Wickso, who's just a monster.
And so, you know, I've always had a good drummer to bounce off of.
So I've been extremely fortunate.
Yeah. So now without a set of drums, there's not much sense in me playing bass.
So I enjoy playing guitar and it's easier to sing with.
And so, you know, you mentioned Doug Cosmo. You know, he's been your drummer
(05:20):
for 60 years, over 60 years.
I met Doug in the first day of school in the seventh grade.
Yeah, tell me about how, I mean, you guys are, obviously Creedence got big in
the mid to late 60s, but you were one of the early bands.
I mean, 1957, 59.
You said 57 was when you met him?
(05:41):
Yeah, it could have been. I think it was 57, something like that, 57, 58.
First day of school in the seventh seventh
grade junior high we were
in the same homeroom same letters for our last name
right so that's where we met and then we formed the blue velvets with john fogarty
(06:01):
a year later how did how did you how do you all connect with each other that
you all are musicians and not just classmates well we weren't really musicians
as per se we We were just fans.
And it turned out we have pretty much the same record collection.
And so we shared our love for the early rock and roll artists and early blues guys.
(06:27):
But of course, when rock and roll really exploded, guys like Ricky Nelson,
Pat Stomato, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Larry Williams.
We all loved that stuff. It really got us going.
So then we were just an instrumental trio, and we played boys clubs and county fairs.
(06:52):
Eventually, we got a little bit older. Once we got our driver's license,
we could play fraternity parties and things like that.
You were in a small town. Were there other bands in the vicinity,
or were you guys holding court? We were pretty much the only band,
actually, that I recall.
In fact, our high school used to send us to other high schools what they called exchange assemblies.
(07:19):
And we would go represent El Cerrito High. We'd go play at Alameda High or Incineroar
High or Richmond High, one of the other local high schools, and entertain them for their assembly.
You know, they're students once a week, once a month.
Everybody in the whole school gets together in the gym, right?
And so we got to take the whole morning off to go do that and then we got the afternoon off,
(07:42):
so it was paying off that's a pretty sweet deal yeah
it was paying off early but though there really weren't any other bands
in in our age group around
that we were aware of i mean it when you
know by the time the stones and the beatles arrived everybody had a band you
(08:03):
know or wanted to be in a band you were desert veterans by that time seasoned
veterans you know we've been playing we learned how to play together you know
we learned our instruments,
at the same time and and we sort of developed a early on developed a six cents
you know where we just we could and.
(08:27):
You know we just felt where where what each other
was going to do and it just it made putting it
together when we actually played it sounded
more professional even
though we weren't but we you know we had the the advantage of having been doing
it for several years by the time the mid-60s came around you know we actually
(08:50):
started playing in 59 i believe we i think we made our first recording in 1959 actually.
I think I was in the band two weeks and we were in the recording studio with
Tom Fogarty, John's older brother.
We were his backup band for many years.
(09:10):
But yeah, I think that's all pretty accurate.
I've done a bunch of interviews and a lot of people cite the Beatles and Rolling
Stones as the impetus for bands to start writing original original songs,
but you guys were writing, or Tom and John were writing songs in the early 60s before that.
(09:30):
Was that a unique element in the music scene from your perspective?
You know, it may have been. I never thought about it much.
As an instrumental trio, we played The Ventures, Johnny and the Hurricanes,
and there was a a few other notable bands that were without vocalists at the time.
(09:56):
Link Wray was an artist that did instrumentals and instrumentals could become a pop hit too.
I mean, most of popular music as I recall back in the 50s was sort of popified country.
In other words, Patsy Cline would be a country star but then she could have a pop hit.
(10:19):
She could be number one on the national charts, not just country,
but the popular music charts in Billboard, the Hot 100, I guess they called it.
And that happened over and over again. Country artists were the easiest to cross over.
Black artists, rhythm and blues artists, the hardest.
They had to have their own...
(10:43):
Radio stations and you know they were like a subset of popular music still popular,
amongst their fans but but not as broad
nearly as broad a fan base and then you know honestly that was racism you know
prevalent in sports prevalent in entertainment prevalent everywhere in america
back in the 50s in the in the 60s and to some extent in the 21st century you
(11:08):
know It hasn't gone away yet.
But the original songs just seemed like the natural thing to do.
When you run out of other people's songs, why not?
By then, if you learn a bunch of other people's songs, you realize that there's no mystery to music.
(11:30):
There's only 12 notes in the Western scale.
And if you listen to popular music, there's only three or four chords that are
used over and over and over.
In mostly the same order pattern so
then it's just coming up with the you know a
new idea a new story so how
did you how do you all go from a regional band
(11:51):
to end up connecting with fantasy records to get
your first incarnation of ccr out
the gollywogs well you know we were when we
were making these early records we were backing up other artists besides
tom we were on a little label called orchestra then
there was a black artist that we backed up name of
(12:12):
james powell i forget the name of the label
that he was he was on but there was a bunch of small independent labels
in the san francisco bay area and fantasy was one
of them actually they were probably the biggest small independent label and
they made their mark by being some of the early doing the The early recordings
(12:33):
of artists that went on to become huge in the jazz genre.
Including Brubeck, Montgomery, Cal Jader, Bollosete.
Of course, Vince Giraldi was how we ended up at Fantasy.
Vince Giraldi recorded the music to a...
(12:57):
A movie called Black Orpheus. And the theme song was Cast Your Fate to the Winds.
And they were on Fantasy. And we thought, well, you know, here's,
and it was a hit, number one hit.
And another instrumental that was a hit, way bigger than the movie.
And which was sort of like an international film festival winner,
(13:19):
Brazilian, as I think I mentioned.
So we thought, well, here's a Bay Area local label that has a hit.
Let's take our stuff over there and so tom and john went over there with our
tapes and they were being run by a couple of beatniks the weiss brothers max and saul and max.
(13:40):
Offered us a contract and so we signed with him and his brother and max became our manager,
and he named us the gollywogs without asking us and and we get the records the
record you You know, we do our first recording when the box of records comes
and we open it up and we go, who the golly walks?
(14:02):
You know, we're looking at these brand new 45s in a white envelope.
What did you think you were going to be recording as?
We were going to be either the Blue Velvets or the Visions. We thought we might
be the Visions at that time.
But somewhere along the way, Max thought that it didn't sound British enough.
Right? The British invasion. And so, you know, get hip, baby.
(14:26):
That was Max pink socks, glow in the dark socks, sandals, beard,
you know, just a regular San Francisco beat Nick part of that whole beat generation,
which was closely tied to the West coast jazz.
And so we were on, we ended up on fantasy after he sold the company and,
(14:48):
to Saul Zantz and some partners of his.
Saul offered us a contract and offered to buy John an amp. So we said, sure.
Nobody else is offering us anything. We never got any other offers.
It's not like there was a big bidding war.
We took the contract. The guy said, hey, your dad's a lawyer.
(15:10):
Let's see what he thinks. And so I took the contracts to him,
and he looked at me and says, fuck, I don't know.
I'm not in the music business, but I can tell you one thing.
I don't see any other offers for you guys.
So if you really want to make records, this is the deal that you have to take.
And so it was our decision to at least take the leap, regardless of the terms
(15:34):
of the deal, which weren't great, but they're roughly equivalent to the same
deal the Beatles signed.
An entry level, low royalty rate. They take your publishing, that kind of a deal.
And so there we were. We were in showbiz.
(15:55):
Is that the contract that John Fogarty famously was trying to get out of over the years?
Yeah. Yeah, he's been trying to get out of a lot of deals that he signed.
Sometimes he signed them over and over, and he still didn't like them.
It didn't get any better each time he signed them. I wonder why he did that.
(16:16):
But regardless, yeah, we were always with Fantasy, and they always gave us a
crappy deal, and that's the same deal we have today.
And that allowed you to start, obviously. You did the Gollywogs,
and that transformed into CCR, and you ultimately put out your first record,
self-titled, and it had Suzy Q on it.
(16:37):
Was Suzy Q, that must have been a song.
It was obviously a Dale Hawkins song that in the late 50s you grew up with.
Was that in your concert repertoire prior to recording it?
Well, it was, then it wasn't, then it was again.
We always liked it.
So we played it pretty regularly. Then the Stones recorded it.
(17:02):
And we said, well, we're already playing it in our four-hour shows, four one-hour sets.
We were already playing a bunch of Stones songs. So we covered the Stones.
We didn't cover the Beatles.
Because we were more of an R&B outfit.
I mean, our inclinations were more like theirs. you know, before they started
(17:25):
writing, they played American blues.
So we stopped playing it.
And then just about the time we were, I think we'd already decided to become
CCR, we were playing a show up north of Sacramento,
real close to one of the military bases. This is during the Vietnam War.
(17:48):
So we had a lot of, I think it was an Air Force base, So there were a lot of airmen there.
And anyway, we were playing like four hours a night, five hours a night.
I mean, we just ran out of songs to play by the end of the night.
You could repeat like three hours in, you could start the show over because
by then everybody that was there at the beginning had already left. So we could start over.
(18:11):
But by the fifth set, it was like, you know, what do we do for 50 minutes?
And I suggested that we just, you know, psychedelic long jams and so on were
becoming the rage in the San Francisco scene, which Credence really wasn't a part of.
Although we played the same venues and, you know, knew a lot of the same people,
(18:34):
we weren't a San Francisco scene band per se.
We were more focused on Top 40, you know, the three-minute song.
But I suggested to the band that we, that we just play Susie Q and then just
jam for 20 minutes and that'll get us, you know, almost halfway through our last set. Yeah.
(18:55):
And I said, you know, we'll just play the three verses. We'll do the regular
solo, come back and do another verse.
And then we'll just jam, you know, until people fall down.
So we did that from then on. Then it became part of a repertoire again.
So we recorded the long version. I think we got it pretty quick, one or two takes.
(19:17):
And the record company released it as a single. the A side was the lyrics,
you know, the vocal part and the B side was the jam.
So that's the story on that song. And you, you know, you mentioned the psychedelic
scene in San Francisco and there's a story that circulated around for years.
(19:37):
And that story is that you all went to maybe the Fillmore, to the Grateful Dead and watch them play.
And at that show made a decision that,
you weren't going to go in that psychedelic realm and you
were not going to do drugs and it this was a whole whole scene
that was you know you were going to make a concerted effort
(19:58):
to avoid well that's
just a story uh what they call it urban myth yeah we
just we always maintained that that partying
and and performance didn't mix
and to that end we never we
never drank we never got high before we played
(20:19):
after we played another story
but and we we weren't in our our whole approach was not let's let's get high
and see what happens you know ours was like okay we got 12 songs you know two
and a half three and a half four minutes i think i think I think one of our,
(20:41):
I think Born on the Bayou is over five minutes, okay, just as a song.
But most of them were, you know, short AM type singles. Yeah.
And that was our, that was our approach because we were, we wanted to,
there was no FM radio when we started.
If you, you know, if you wanted to, to, to make a mark, to have,
(21:04):
to have hits, they had to be two and a half, three and a half minutes long and be played on top 40.
And so that was always our goal. And so we, we always, I get,
you know, we, I wouldn't say we were over rehearsed, but we were, we were always focused.
Focused what we're trying to do and you know we knew what we needed to do to to pull it off and,
(21:27):
getting drunk and getting high didn't fit with you know doing good consistently
but like you know like you know anybody comes home from work right they have
a drink you know i'd get high whatever Yeah,
we had normal lives when we weren't being professional.
(21:48):
I mean, you guys were so prolific. I want to go into a little depth on specifically
1969, Bayou Country, Green River, Willing the Poor Boys.
You were so prolific. On a high level, what is that like for you in terms of all that action?
Well, that was a big year for sure. I don't think any band had done that.
(22:10):
No American artist had done that. The Beatles were pretty prolific as well.
But to truth be known, Bayou Country was recorded in 1968.
Right, the end of the year, right. It was released in January 69.
So we had three releases in the year 1969, but we only recorded two full albums that year.
(22:36):
Our style of recording was...
Record the a and the b side record an a and a b side record another a and a
b side and then go in and record the rest and that's how we made an album it
wasn't till i think pendulum,
when we actually went into the studio and recorded all
(22:58):
the songs at once so we and the
first album was recorded that way so first and second album were
recorded recorded all at once as well but from green
river willie and the poor boys cosmos factory were all
recorded in in chunks in between touring
those those two albums that were recorded in
full were they done quickly or were
(23:20):
these sessions that uh you guys had to perfect out no we played live you know
we we do two three four takes of a song if it wasn't happening we'd move on
to another other song come back
always always try to catch it fresh never really i never as a bass player,
(23:40):
i mean i never really said this is the
part i have to play this part every single time i played a different every every
take i played something different you know just a little bit only i would i
would know really or somebody who was you know a being the bass parts the bass
track from from one take to another would notice it immediately.
(24:01):
But, you know, it was the general part in the groove.
You know, if I did something in the first verse, I wouldn't do it in the third verse or something.
You know, just kind of flip ideas around.
They were always bouncing around. It could be this way, it could be that way.
You know, it doesn't make any difference. Just play it as good as you can.
(24:22):
The take would be when everybody played it as good as they can at the same time.
And we usually I mean some of it is amazing some of it like I heard it through
the grapevine I think it was like the first or second take keep on chugging
same Susie Q very very quick we were we rehearsed every day.
Four or five hours a day, you know, Monday through Friday at Cosmos factory
(24:47):
or the original factory was just a tool shed and Doug Clifford's backyard.
But yeah, we, I mean, we were, it was a job. It was a task.
You know, the goal was to get better, to make better records,
to play better, you know, to, you know, to get the brass ring.
(25:07):
Right. Give me a little slice of life of what the factory was like on a day
where you would all have to, John, bring in a song and you all have to rehearse or learn.
What does that look like at that time period?
Well, the factory was the Cosmos Factory, which became the factory.
(25:29):
It was in sort of the warehouse district of Berkeley, California, down by Interstate 80.
And 1230 5th Street Berkeley.
CA we'd drive in, you know, we'd get there like 10, 930, about 10 1030,
we'd all, there was inside parking, the crew rolled up the big metal door,
(25:52):
we rolled in have some coffee maybe shoot some pool,
then go back to the to the rehearsal area that you see on the cover of Cosmos
Factory factory and you know said about the whatever the task of the day was
if it was a new song you know,
here's how it goes here's my idea john would play it
sing it as much as you know as if
(26:14):
the lyrics weren't done he'd just kind of say well
you know this is this is the melody this is what i'm thinking right here and
then we just start playing just start playing it together and you know doug
would say how about what if i do this here you know john said no maybe not that
maybe not there maybe not that maybe not anywhere and try this and try that and you go up I,
(26:36):
think this needs that there see go
ahead try it so yeah that's good you know and each pretty
you know some of stuff's obvious I mean like you
look at a song like bad moon rising you know it's just a one note bass part
doesn't even go boom boom boom boom because boom boom boom boom you know it's
(26:57):
like okay nobody in to show me that except maybe to you know play less right
don't make it sound so country.
So a lot of the stuff is obvious. A lot of the stuff John had specific ideas that he wanted us to try.
It just would depend on how we approached it.
(27:18):
One of the really cool things that Doug just kind of forced into a song was
at the end of We'll Stop the Rain, on the fade out,
there's a lot of drum action, a lot of drum rolls and things like that.
John didn't like them. Doug said, I love them. I'm going to keep playing them.
(27:42):
I don't know if John ever liked them, but they're on the record.
I've seen footage from the factory and you're all hanging out and you,
Doug, look so relaxed, so cool, so chill.
Did you feel that there was camaraderie during these times or was it,
do you look back fondly at that era?
(28:05):
I have to look at the whole career with a whole lot of fondness,
it's been quite a blessing.
We got extremely lucky and that's really what it is in this business.
It's how good you are is not as relevant as how bad you want it and how hard you try.
(28:29):
And then, you know, there's the universe has to line up, you know,
so that radio will play your song and people will like it and request it.
And then it'll end up in the record stores or, you know, then you get to do another record.
But, you know, the whole period, you know, unlike anything fresh and new, it started out great.
(28:53):
I mean, we started out in junior high school, right? It was an adventure in
learning to drink beer and grow up.
The more successful we got, the more stress the whole project came under.
(29:13):
I don't know specifically what time frame you're relating to me.
And I want to go back to 69 real quick on Born on the Bayou.
There's a story about that song being birthed at the Avalon on stage to record a soundtrack.
(29:33):
Do you have any memory of that moment? Yeah.
We were like fifth on the bill. Taj Mahal was the headliner.
Bunch of other local acts.
When I say local acts, I mean, you know, might have been Quicksilver or might
have been, you know, other Bay Area, San Francisco scene bands.
Taj Mahal was like a national artist at the
(29:55):
time you know and so
we were like fifth on the bill right we were the so we were gonna play first
so we were last to soundcheck and we were up you know trying to get a sound
and John started playing that you know once we pretty much worked our way through
the soundcheck we just kind of goofing off and John started playing.
(30:18):
The riff for Born on the Bayou. You know, that guitar part that's at the intro.
I mean, throughout the song, actually.
And so we all just started jamming on that. You know, just hitting the quarter
notes on the bell, the cymbal, and cooking along.
So one of the production people got all over us and said, you know,
(30:39):
why don't you knock it off? Get off the stage.
You guys are not going anywhere. You know, that sucks.
Scram. you know that's what
i remember of it it was like the the the
birth of the song was was was tainted by somebody else's opinion of of where
we were headed and then how how long after does some event like that does the
(31:04):
song actually come back to y'all to within a year yeah yeah i mean I mean,
that was in 68,
and Bio Country came out in early 69, and it was the flip side of Proud Mary.
Then in 1970, y'all went to Europe to tour, and there was just a documentary
that came out, a lot of great footage of y'all playing.
(31:27):
Oh, yeah, the Royal Alder Hall. Yeah, you know, nobody could ever agree on who
owned it between us and the record company.
And, you know, John had a lot of problems with all the people there,
and his own problems got mixed in with Frieden's problems.
So nothing ever happened with it. It just sat there and sat there.
(31:50):
And there was a lot of that documentary-style footage that was shot with it
that nobody knew what to do with.
No one ever sat down and said, here's what we got. Let's make something out of this.
Until three or four years ago, I guess, when...
Sig Sigwerth at Kraft, which is one of Conker Music Group's labels that deals with catalog.
(32:15):
They're more of a catalog.
I don't know that Fantasy is...
I don't really know what's going on over there. But Kraft is the brand.
And Sig became one of the producers of the project. And he landed the dude to narrate. Right.
(32:39):
Right. You know, like, come on,
what can be better? The biggest Credence Clearwater Revolve fan for sure.
Yeah. Not too big a CCR fan at all.
And I mean, how many times have I watched the big Lebowski? You know? Oh my God, me too.
They call me the dude. My last name is Dettelson. In fact, I've got on my shirt
(32:59):
right here. It says, dude, the dude.
Yeah uh hero so anyway that that was a great show the only thing missing was
the encore you know by then because john had somehow decided another management decision,
(33:21):
okay a poor management decision that the band would no longer do encores because they were phony.
You know my feeling was
yeah you know i can see where if you
hadn't played well enough in your own mind you might
not think that that you earned an encore but my god
if the audience wants an encore right you must
(33:45):
have fooled them right if if you didn't if
you didn't think you did that well and they did who are
you going to side with you know you're going to always side with
your fans and so we didn't
do an encore but it was it was quite
a show all of our concerts were a little on
the short side i felt but you know that
(34:06):
was sort of the norm and until you know
the grateful dead and so on you know to the then the
long shows you know springsteen and you know everybody started doing
two and a half mccartney even for a while
was doing you know full feature-length concerts but ours were like 45 55 minutes
and so it wasn't a long production which is you know why i guess they didn't
(34:32):
feel at the time that there was enough enough actual footage,
to make a a special out of but when
they finally figured out how they were going to use some of the b-roll.
Just so happened that the solzans had hired some some guy with a 16 millimeter
camera to follow us around while we were on tour and we had no idea who he was
(34:56):
or what the point of it was but.
I mean, nobody would talk to him very much. I talked to him all the time because
I was interested in photography.
What I loved, I loved a lot about that, the Robert Hall show.
And that was one of my first times seeing a full concert.
But I loved how you all are arranged on stage with Cosmo up front in the line.
(35:20):
You usually don't see that kind of arrangement where the front man isn't in
front, the drummer isn't in the back.
Yeah well that's a revisit revisited went with the drum
riser and the drums in the back right yeah how
did how did you all come come upon that unique
formation as a stage show nightclubs little
bars that we played in i mean there wasn't room for much
(35:43):
of anything i preferred being on the
other side of doug the hi-hat side where the
side where john was i thought i would
i could have locked in a little better if i could
be on that side but the way
we had it is you know there's a way we did it in the in the bars the
stage was you know not very deep
(36:04):
not very wide tom fogarty any anecdotes you could share about tom i'm a fan
of his solo albums okay of his work i got it i got Tom was the first guy to
leave the band that was the first big crack.
In what had been a solid team since 1959.
(36:31):
He felt that he just didn't have any space in the band he was the original singer and he,
turned it over to John because he felt John had a more rock and roll voice it's
what we needed at the time this is in let's say 1967 66 67 67 i want to say,
(36:54):
And then, you know, after we'd had three, four, five hit albums,
Tom wanted more room within the band, wanted to write, at least,
you know, offer songs, present songs.
And I think he might have wanted to sing a song or two.
(37:19):
Sort of like, you know, Ringo sang a few, right? night even let you know they
let ringo sing george sang a couple but you know it was really lennon mccartney's
ball oh man the dolphins were jumping like mad in front of my house,
very nice they and so you know after a while he just got tired of,
(37:40):
john turning him down so he went solo and
he rented a space like
one or two doors down from Cosmos Factory as
his rehearsal place where he put together his band Ruby with Randy Oda and he
had a really cool rhythm section I forget the name of the guys but a couple
(38:02):
of black kids they were uh yeah they had a good band and in fact Doug and I played on a on a,
a couple of his solo albums I played lead guitar on Joyful Resurrection direction.
I mean, yeah, we, you know, we, we, we supported Tom.
We were, I, Tom must have quit a half a dozen times.
(38:22):
Doug and I talked him out of it. You know, come on, Tom, you know,
you know, John will change his mind and he goes, ah, I don't think so.
Well, give it a little, you know, give me, give him another shot at it.
And then, you know, a couple of months later, nah, I'm out of here.
No, no, things are going too good. Don't leave now.
No, I can't take it anymore. I don't need it you know he's my brother he won't
(38:43):
even let me do this that anyway doug and i felt like we were squeezed in a like
a fogarty sandwich between the two of them.
But, you know, we kept it together as long as we could. I used to see Tom play
around the Bay Area all the time.
Then he started hanging out with Jerry Garcia and Merle Saunders and jamming with those guys.
(39:06):
John Kahn was a bass player, I think.
Those are great records. They did. I love those. Those are my favorites. Really? Really? Yeah.
Merle was a great guy. Merle was, like, one of the original guys that we met
on Fantasy Records. He'd been there forever.
The Chinese guy Edwin that that that worked
in the in the warehouse called him Molo Shono I don't
(39:30):
know where that came from but Merle was Molo Molo Shono and so yeah Tom had
a you know Tom had a lot of music in him and and it was a shame that that that
it didn't fit you know as as we evolved and became more and more,
you know, almost a parody of ourselves,
(39:51):
I guess, you know, after a while, if you don't really, you know,
Creed just stopped really growing.
When John, by the time John had fully taken control of the band,
it just became like, okay, here we go again.
You know, not that we weren't having hit records and, and, you know,
making good money and so on, but the, the, The excitement had slipped away because
(40:13):
it just didn't feel like a band anymore.
It was more like it was becoming more and more John's solo project with three other guys.
All I can say to that is, how many hit records have you had since you got rid
(40:34):
of the guys that were holding you back? One.
So, yeah, I mean...
If we had a real manager, he would have said, hey, kids, settle down and let
me explain some things to you about, you know, where you are,
where you've been and where you're likely to go.
(40:54):
And, you know, how we can best manage this so that, you know,
you have the most success possible,
everything that you can earn, you'll get. But we didn't have a mentor.
We thought Solzhenitsyn was a mentor. tour, but it turned out that he was not,
(41:16):
he was not, you know, to him, it was just a piece of paper.
You know, the contract was just business. And when we first,
when we signed with him, we said, he said, you know, this is just a start.
If you guys get successful, we'll tear this up and all share in the pie equally.
Well, you know, after a couple of hit albums and we went back in and said well
(41:38):
what about that pie he said I think I'm going to live with this contract I have.
So you know things like that definitely took
away you know it changed everybody's perspective
you know I mean first we thought we were all on the same team you know and gradually
that chipped away at you know it wasn't just success it was along with the success
(42:05):
there was you know some some very poignant disappointments that just led to,
you know, the lack of enthusiasm, the lack of, you know, the spark.
The spark went because of the internal pressure,
P.S. Such is life. You guys, the
legacy you left before then is absolutely insane and will live forever.
(42:32):
There's nothing at all wrong with, my screen just keeps popping off of the Zoom. There we go.
There's nothing wrong with our stuff. I'm glad to hear it.
I'm glad, you know what, I'm really glad that so many younger people have turned on to it.
We're more popular now than we've ever been. And it will continue with the streaming and that stuff.
(42:55):
I thought, you know, catalog music would just go by the wayside.
It would just be, you know, hip hop and R and B and pop music and so on.
But I mean, in the last, the last five years, we've gone from less than on a
streaming, just looking at streaming, we've gone from less than 10 million listeners
a month to over 33 million listeners a month.
(43:19):
So it's, i guess you
know each each new format
has has been very kind to to our legacy
absolutely yeah before before we
wrap let's talk to rocky erickson okay for the
the listeners just to give some context rocky erickson was
a legendary psychedelic rock pioneer in
(43:41):
austin texas in the late 60s with the 13th floor
elevators and in the late 70s
to you hooked up with them to produce two of his
first solo albums which are amazing
well i know evil one that's like some of
rocky's most seminal songs i walk with the zombie two-headed
dog yeah i mean these are these
(44:03):
tell me tell me how are you tell me how you hooked up because that that seems
like an odd first of all the music is is rock serious rock so it makes sense
but you're in there but rocky as a personality uh doesn't seem one that you're
you're connecting with tell me the story of how this this happens look at this
guy that i was smoking weed with,
(44:24):
was Rocky's manager. And one day he asked me if I'd be interested in going to
the studio with Rocky. And I said, oh my God, yeah.
He's one of the greatest rock and roll vocalists.
Of the period. One of them ever, really. I mean, that guy could scream his ass off.
(44:46):
And so we got introduced and Rocky had this, he was always testing.
He had this kind of, his personality was that he would do stuff just to provoke,
just to see how you would react.
And once I passed the test, you know, we went in the studio and I worked closely
with his musical director, Dwayne Aklaskan, lead guitar player in the Aliens.
(45:13):
And Bill Miller, the electric auto harp player, was also instrumental in helping
me get inside of Rocky's head.
They'd known each other for quite a while. I think he might have been from Texas as well.
But yeah, Rocky was, sometimes he was there, sometimes he wasn't.
He had a lot of personal struggles.
(45:36):
He ran into some problems with the law and marijuana early on in Texas,
which was never a good thing.
And rather than go to jail he went to they put him in a mental institution which
didn't help him out much you know in fact when we were recording uh the evil
(45:57):
one we were doing the vocals down in in austin at a studio owned by this guy what's his name uh.
Maybe it'll come to me.
Anyway, he wrote the song Muskrat Love for Captain and Tennille.
He's like a Texas legend kind of guy. Anyway, he owned this studio.
(46:17):
And I'd have to put on a coat and tie and go up to the Rusk Metal Institution,
and check Rocky out and take him down to the studio.
We'd do the vocals. And after a while, he'd start to drift, you know,
start talking to his manager about, you know, what about that apartment you're going to get me?
(46:37):
Craig, he said, Rocky, I think we're done. We're done for the day. Drive him back.
Whenever I went to get him, you know, I had the coat and tie on.
And all the other inmates would come up to me and say, hey, can you get me out? Can you get me out?
And I go, finally, I'm just trying to figure out what's going on.
And so I asked one of the supervisors what's going on. And they said,
(46:58):
oh, you got a coat and a tie on. They think you're a doctor.
And they see you get Rocky out. they see you getting rocky out they they want
to know if you can get them out too.
But yeah you know working with
rocky was was where i learned really learned how to be a producer
you know just how to get more out of an artist with their cooperation you know
(47:22):
and you know just try keep everything positive don't try and work it to death
you know try and keep it keep the flow you know loose and and things naturally
and you know don't worry about little.
Little things you know a little out of tune here a little this little
that yeah you know whatever you know but are you you know
(47:42):
is the performance good is it real boy rocky
was real when he was really performing i mean there
was just nobody nobody could talk about he would nail it he would
know he's i want to go back and do this part let's try and do
this and do this again and so he
was was involved when he was
there you know when he was focused he was really there
(48:03):
and he was funny oh
my god we would uh i would
always run a two-track tape machine always when
we were in the when we were working so that
i could capture everything that you
know like the in between takes while we're rewinding the tape we
we'd be talking and rocky would be blowing our minds with things
(48:25):
and and so we had we recorded everything i
don't know where that stuff is because his manager just recently passed
away i think there's a guy in texas that that
may have access to all those archives but i mean hours and hours of stuff and
sometimes we couldn't fit it all on the 16 track so i would have rather than
(48:46):
erase something that we already had that we weren't sure you know We didn't
want to stop to comp it down and free up the tracks.
I would just record it on the two-track, and then we'd just wild sync it in.
We'd just push record, push start, and hope that it dropped in.
And because we couldn't manipulate it like you can with digital,
(49:08):
you know, drag it a beat or a half a beat, a half a second this way or that way.
And so we, you know, it took hours and hours and hours to do some of this stuff,
but sometimes Rocky would bring in a song and he, you know, like he had it all
kind of backwards, you know, he had it all there, but it would be backwards
from a song, the story point of view,
(49:28):
like he'd be singing the last verse first, for example.
And so I would have to, you
know rearrange it all for him you know
get the band bored and okay this
is the way it's going to be this is the way you're going
to do it always and my biggest thrill was when we finished with the evil one
(49:49):
and rocky heard it and he said you know i really like that i think stew did
a great job and he used to call me buzzy he buzzes around all the time what
do you where'd you come come up with that.
He says, you're just always buzzing around, you know? And I'm saying,
well, I'm just trying to keep up with you, man.
Amazing. What's, what's happening with that record? Cause it's not,
(50:12):
I don't think it's on Spotify.
You know, we, we recorded 15 songs and they were split between two albums.
The first one was the evil one on CBS UK.
And then TEO, which is the evil one, right? Abbreviated. And,
The first one had the wild collage color album cover done by Captain Colors,
(50:38):
who was another local legend artist.
Then the second one, TEO, was on 415 Records, Howie Stein's label in San Francisco.
And that had the black and white with the open door and the light shining through it.
And so we got two albums out of these 15 songs.
Songs so there was obviously some duplication between the releases but one was a foreign release,
(51:05):
and the other was a domestic release so we
didn't really nobody seemed to mind i mean
nobody at the labels minded everybody liked the songs
and now since then it's been
re-released and re-released and re-released and re-released the
last really good release was a three
album anthology called
(51:28):
by a label in pacific northwest called light in the
attic yeah and the whole the first album is my 15 songs and the second album
has a lot of other people's recordings and live recordings later recordings
i think duane might have produced some of them and i'm not sure what's on the
third one, more outtakes and stuff like that.
(51:50):
But it's a pretty complete Rocky collection.
Somewhere around here, I have it all on vinyl. It was a really nice package.
And now, actually, other people are starting to cover Rocky songs. There's a,
I forget her name. I think her name is Chelsea. I can't remember her last name.
But she did an absolutely spooky version of one of my favorites.
(52:15):
If you have ghosts, you have everything.
And it's on a soundtrack for a film.
But it's really dark and very echoey and very slow.
And it's more like a sung poem than a rock song.
But it's definitely rocky. And that's one of my favorite songs.
(52:36):
I think of Demons, if you have Ghosts, to me, those are like Rocky doing love songs.
Amazing. Well, Stu, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the great
contribution on all fronts to music history.
And I wish you so much luck in retirement and enjoying the non-tourner lifestyle.
(52:57):
Yeah, I got, you know, like I got with my nuclear family, I got four kids.
Six grandkids, kids probably more on
the way now that my youngest son just got hitched yeah so
i'm i'm pretty busy you know if
i'm not on stage anymore which
i like i said earlier i do miss i got
(53:20):
other things now i can you know well see which
one of my grandkids wants to play both of my granddaughters play and
sing one's a drummer both of them play guitar they both
sing real good they're like six and eight years old
oh you got a new band you could join it's right
built in for you yeah it's you know i give
them all the encouragement i can i you know they're a.
(53:43):
Little small for a little young for full-size instruments yet
although one of them plays my son's
electronic drum set pretty good you know and teaching herself
you know listens the same way you know
i'm i'm originally classically trained but as
i got more and more into popular music i became more
(54:03):
of an ear player and so they're right now
they're listening to records and teaching themselves how to
play the drum parts and the guitar parts
that they hear and they both take guitar lessons i think
they might both be taking drum lessons as well now we got i think
we got them both drum lessons for christmas whatever one gets
the other one wants anyway you
(54:24):
know life is good i just hope
i can get enough of it thank you so much sue i appreciate
everything you be well cheers scott cheers thank you for listening to the legends
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