I think it was probably a trying time for Andy sitting across from me, but he set up a little black and white TV in the kitchen for me, and the Yankees were on and I was the Yankees guy, and he put it on. He kept just he would walk over a couple hours and just walk up and just say, do you like Famous Amous cookies? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. You drop off a crook, can't walk away. Welcome to episode three ninety one. Sam Hollander. I was at there's
a little driving Ranger in my house. I went too for like thirty minutes yesterday that my golf clubs and back at the car, had a little time to kill, and so I stopped it hit some balls, and I was listening to the Weezer song records, the new song I got records in my head and it's in my head every it I've got, And so Sam Hollander wrote that song and we talked about it coming up in
a minute. But that's new Weezer. But I could list you, and I think I probably will, but I want to say he's got a book called twenty one Hit Wonder and you get it at Sam Hollander Songs dot Com, or you can search twenty one hit Wonder on Amazon. That being said, I felt like I could have done
two to three hours with Sam. He just had a story about everything, from whose babysitter was, his parents, all the songs that he wrote, and I can list some of them here, Panic at the Disco, High Hopes, Fits in the Tantrums, Handclapp, Boys Like Girls, The Great Escape, Jim Class Heroes, he produces when a Cupid show called metro Stations Shake It. He's just got so much. He's got over twenty two US top forty hits, ten number ones, ten top fives, eighty seven top tens. Globally, his songs
have streamed over five billion times. In twenty nineteen, held the number one position on the Billboard Rock Songwriters Chart for nine weeks, which was a year end record. I don't know. I liked the guy. You know, I always will kind of feel their energy and fully give that back to them so they feel comfortable. And what I liked about Sam was he's like, hey, man, what's up Sam? Hanging out with chilling. He's so dry sometimes I didn't
know if he was joking or not. And then I just sit there and be like, I'm gonna let you say the next thing because I don't know if you're kidding or not. Like talking about the baham In when he worked with them, there's just a lot where I was I don't know if he's kidding, And then sometimes he wasn't kidding, especially the kids Bop stuff. Yeah, kids Bop. I was like, is this a joke? It turns out it wasn't a joke. So just a really cool story.
I mean, Sam spent thirty years just kind of fighting through this songwriting and the rapping and the producing, and he put all this in a book and he's speaking in a lot of places, and he's donating all the money to musicians on call. It's a very inspiring story. It's a very entertaining story. And again Sam Hollandersongs dot Com or twenty one Hit Wonder that's the name of the book. You can buy it on Amazon. What was your main takeaway here, Mike with Sam that you can
get it start later in life. Yeah, he didn't write his first number one till after he had failed doing other things hard. Then you know, there's a story. I never want to say too much in this part of it because it's so good. But there's one story about a tragedy happening like right when he's about to launch something. So if it wasn't him failing, it was like things happening around it that cause things not to go right. But then he hit it, and I hope you like it.
I enjoyed it a whole bunch. Here he is, and follow him on Instagram if you don't even want to see what his face looks like. I like to do that at Sam Hollander And here he is, Sam. How is your day today? Hey? Pretty good? Pretty glorious. Man. You know, here's my problem. The shirt. I'm more in the T shirt. I think a woman's shirt. This one. I didn't realize it and then I was looking in the mirror and I was like, that's a woman shirt. So I put this on over the top, so you
think I was at least kind of cool. It was up from your Zomba class. You know, that's the one class I haven't done. Zoba. Have you ever been to Zoomba? You know? Honestly, I don't want to make this awkward for you, but actually trademark the name Zimba. I actually created Zimba. You didn't know I am the forbidden dance. You didn't I trademark zoom bass. I mean you've done everything else right, man? Have you ever been to a zoomba class? Though? Um, I've actually witnessed a zumba class,
but you haven't done it. Oh look at me? Have you done tybo back in the day? Can Tybo can say something true? Yeah? I actually had a song on a Tybo vhs Banks Billy Blanks. What song was that though? Um? It was called Supersonic Love, and the royalties from that would definitely paid for the bottle of water. You guys were nice enough to push them on directions. So it wasn't like a massive song they wanted to put in it. No, No,
it was. It was a filler song. It was a song of like many of my other early releases, that was dropped by a record label, and I found a way to make five dollars off of it. So you know, when I was going through your entire catalog of songs you wrote and produced, and it's it's it's so many massive hits, and you know the song that I really liked of yours, that I felt like was gonna like and it's still this sometimes because they played a clip of it in at the Naum stadiums all the time.
Is handclap. That's a fun little dud. Yeah, because they do a lot of the in the stadiums. I was a pioneer in jack Jams. You know what I mean. That's a jock jam. Remember the Tommy Boy Jack Jams compilation. Absolutely, I had jock Jam one in Foyee goal. Yes, I had jock Jam two. Are you ready for this? Do do? Do? Dot dot? And then it was just one to one to the other. I went. I actually sat in on
the uh the commercial for jack Jams two. My friend Kennedy directed it, and uh I got to watch Michael Buffer do his thing in real time on a commercial, which was pretty cool because he does in the middle of the jock jams, even the single version when I was because I did pop radio for a long time, he would do the let's get ready to rumble? Oh man, that's like so handclap was my version of a jack jam. I guess I don't think it was necessarily constructed that way,
but um, it's funny. I mean it really, it's still play it every supporting thing around the world and it's neat, especially in New York because I hear it, you know, at the Yankee Games, at the Nick Games, at the Neck Games. It's kind of fun. Do you ever stand up in a wave? That's what I would do when you that's played to stand up, be like, that's that's me. If I do that, then that's the moment they stopped
playing it when they realize what I looked like. That would be at the end of it, when you when when I look at again your massive body of work, there are so many even micro hooks or catchy things that I think, Nana, Nana, that was a fun yeah that I'm not responsible for that. I just took a free ride on. But it's a nice little ditty. No. Yeah, there's the thing. One thing I would say is I am I love immediacy in music, you know what I mean.
And I think it's born out of the fact that I think most kids today have, you know, severely warped attention spans. So when I'm digging in, I'm really just trying to get it in the intro immediately. And you know you TikTok before it was TikTok. It's what it sounds like. I'm i gonna say two seconds. I'll put it like this. If I had been born in a previous decade, I would not have been able to make Emerson Lake on Palmer Records, you know what I mean.
It would have been a very different wiring. So there's no twelve minute intro in my vocab. So I was listening yesterday to Derek and the Domino's Leila, and you know, the song plays and hello, it's not the Clapton unplugged, it's the you know, the original, you know. And at the end it's a five minute piano So yeah, culture every time. Look, man, I wish, I wish I could
have been that guy. But true, I would have been the guy who would have said to them in their main man, let's dedit this thing now, letten, Let's make it to like two minutes and forty seconds. Joy. Yeah it was and then. And I can enjoy older songs from before even you know, we were making anything creatively it's jokes or music. I can enjoy the process and how culture was different then. And but even that outro in that song, I was like, were they high drugs? Yeah?
It was just it just continued on and and I've heard it a hundred times, but as in my car and I we have an old Bronco that just has to Russial radio only awesome, and I was like, I don't know what the channels are, so I'm not gonna change it. So I'm gonna listen to this four minute outro of the entire Leila you gotta stick it out, which is the exact opposite of Nana No No, because immediately you got us with cupid chokehold you know what.
That was the genius of traving McCoy and he was driving it and he once again he let me hitch onto his wagon on that one. But um no, it's just a really really I do like going for the jugular early on, you know, And maybe it's I have no sense of dynamic anymore and I'm just warped, But I really just like things just sort of from the from the initial onset. I just wanted to hit where did that come from? Or what music did you like? Or what was it that you didn't like so much
that made you go we gotta grab him quick? Well? I don't know, I mean, I grew up. I was the definitive ktel kid, you know, what I mean, I was like this, you know, late seventies early He's had all those k tail collections. And that's what I loved because it was it was so um. It wasn't genre specific for the most part, you know, so you could have Seals and Crofts next to David Gates next to um, you know, next to the Bellamy Brothers next to the Bags or some disco stuff or kiss. So that was
my introduction of music. And the one thing I would say is, you know, it was usually the three minute edit on all those songs. They weren't going to let anything go extended. So I began to hear songs truly as like a three minute single. And I remember, I remember when I was twenty or so and Drama Rama hit, and I remember hearing, uh, you know, not Dramarama, what's the what's the Delamitri would roll to me right when hit Yeah, but that thing's like two minutes in two seconds, Rod,
It's the fastest song in history. And what I realized about that song was one reason why I crushed it radio is because you could fit it into any slot going to a commercial. You know. It was like it was so short that it could work as a bumper to things. So then I just sort of got in that notion. So I guess I am TikTok pioneer Bobby what And that's what I thought, because everything goes quick,
short attention span. You hit us quick. You give us what we're gonna need to know when that song's over, and if we don't listen to all of it, that's fine. If we do, we got it. I could do that with many of your songs and we can shake it Metro station shake. It's a zumba classic. Now see when you talk about zoom, but you lose me a little bit. And I think you're kidding because you only witnessed one.
If you said tibout, I believe you because you probably saw a few more of those since you made five bucks off of it, and say a few more, Bobby. Growing up in New York, how much of your childhood to early adulthood were you there? Mostly? I was there every day. I mean the city was like until what age, you know? I was in the New York till I was the age of forty Okay, so I never left.
So does that mean you're a billy Joel guy? I'm a Springsteen m Billy Joel Guy, which is kind of a rarity, you know what I mean, they're in the in the Tristate area. I do sometimes feel there's like a defined Mason Dixon between the two. Almost Mets Yankees, ye undred percent. I'm definitely Yankees, um, but for Billy.
You know, it's funny because Billie's thing. I love on the theatricality, and I love um the nods to um, you know, Sinatra and all the you know, sort of rappack kind of crooners, some the way he fused like theatrical crooner doom, you know. And then Springsteen. I love the word play. So Springsteen was a huge influence for me because I really really dug especially on Greetings from
Asbury Park, that first record. Um, there's it's you know, he's pulling all this Dylan stuff, but there's just something about what he was doing melodically on that first record that blew my head. That's one of my first favorite records. So there had to be so much music around you, even if you didn't get to go to it. To just be living in New York City, I mean, I
grew up in Mountain Pine, Arkansas. There was no music around me, so anything I got had to be only from the radio or driving to get a tape which later turned into a CD. So it was like the nearest big venue hour and a half and it was little rock. Well, and it's another end every three months, right, you know? So was it important to whomever was raising you to make sure that you were cultured at all
while living in New York? One thousand percent? Like you know, I was exposed to the arts early on my UM, I know the whole appeal to you, but my dad was a modern dancer and I know you're you're very well dashed in the modern and Dan, well, you're a champion dance. Um, so it's very very important to um. You know, my dad was a dancer and then he became an architect, but he was a modern He was a professional dancer kind of dancer. What he specialized in.
He was with the Jose Lemone group doing modern dance in the nineteen fifties. And how did he get started in that? He started dancing like eleven, was professional at seventeen toward the entire world. Broke every toe on both feet by the time he was twenty three, went back to Yale and became an architect. Do you remember him dancing at all? No, I wasn't okay, so you were not two hundred Yeah, jeez, man, But I didn't know if he's still like dance recreationally. He didn't dance recreationally,
but you know, it's funny. He would sway around the room. He was an incredible guy. Man. He was just so rhythmic and cool. So when I listen to music and I sort of was less versed in my steps, I would watch him in the background listening to music, and the way he flowed was magical. Its beautiful. And my mom was an artist too, so I mom was what kind of artists? My mom was a heavy cat man. My mom was like really like that. She was an interior designer, but she came from the bottom of this thing.
She just started at the very pit of this thing. And she became an expert on Victorian era furniture and which is a very strange sort of lane. And she really became like one of them foremost experts on it overnight and started doing apartments. But when I was a little kid, she was sort of carrying our thing and she did Mick Jagger's apartment, Eve Saan Laurent's apartment, all these sort of studio fifty four era things. And you know, when I was a little guy. This is probably how
I got a book deal. But when I was a little guy, you know, and I was always pleading for her to take me to record shops. One day she just said, I'm gonna rop you off at a babysitter's house. I gotta get rid of you. And she dropped me off at Andy Warhol's and Andy Warhole used to babysit me as a little kid, which is wild. I know that you wrote about that in your book. It's true. And the next question was is your book true or lies? And so you answered that it's true too. Yeah that's good.
I like that because I we can keep going here act. Yeah, that's good. Andy Warhole is a babysitter. Do you have memories of that or was it before you were No? I do, I do. Um, it happened through I would say three three, maybe a fourth time and then needs to come into our house too. Um. I have very distinct memories because this was somebody who probably wasn't that stoke to hang out with like a greasy little kid.
With nose burgers running down his face, you know. So it was, Um, I think it was probably a trying time for Andy sitting across from me, but you know, he set up a little black and white TV in the kitchen for me, and it was a little little black and white TV and the Yankees were on and I was the Yankees guy and he put it on. He kept just he would walk over a couple hours and just walk up and just say, do you like Famous Miss Cookies? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you
drop off a cookie and walk away. It was about the extent of our frader in hissation. But it was pretty cool. Like, you know, your mom and dad are very interesting to me because so they pushed the arts. So yeah, when I played culture childhood, Yeah, when I played high school football, they thought literally like I had failed. How did they meet? Do you know? Um? I do know.
My mom was widowed at um twenty three, and she was widowed and she was a single mom, and she met my dad through a friend in the city, just like casually, and so I assumed their their bond was something artistic, creative. It sounds like they both have that spirit inside of that they were incredible. Man. They were like both like they're both of their esthetics where at like a level I've never seen. They were both everything
about them. You know. They lived in this little studio apartment in the city and they tricked this thing out to such an extent in like nineteen sixty nine or before I was born, but it was in magazines. It was featured because the design level of design was so sophisticated and cool, Like they were just like they were brilliant minds. So what do you remember as far as their parenting? What was a priority from them to you as for just being a good human? Like what were
they trying to teach you? Well, I gotta be honestly, they were very They were very decent people. And you know, I think the number one thing they wanted to teach me one was aspirational things that everything was obtainable. You know. I was blessed to have like a support network that other kids didn't have, you know what I mean, Like,
and that's never been lost on me. Like when you have when you're entering this business and you have two parents who are cheering for you, hoping that you enter something or do something different or color outside the lines. That's pretty cool, you know, so I would say I was blessed with that, and then you know, they were just they were they were so kind and they're so gracious. In our town specifically, we lived an hour north in
northern Westchester. And the way they approached everybody, they were so they were known. They'd just be like very generous, decent people, like they would talk to everybody. That's one thing that was stom me early on. It's just, you know, have no fear of talking to people, look people in the eye, and like honestly just like be a human. You know, I ask all the childhood stuff because I
grew into associopath. I was going to get there later about that specifically, but it's you know, when I'm reading about you and reading different parts of the book to Michael, was like, you gotta read this, you gotta read this that you didn't have it hit in two or thirty five, Is that accurate? That's completely well memory completely you had these parents is that you can do anything. They didn't really set boundaries for you. Accept the boundary of you
can push the boundary as much as you'd like, hustle. Yeah, just just just go. Just hustle, and so you're eighteen nineteen even up twenty four twenty five, like, where did you see your life going? What was the goal? What was the plan? Then? Well, the plan from day one it was I really, um, you know, I was a student. I was a student of records, right, I mean, you know, I collected records the way other kids collected baseball cards.
Probably had a couple of thousand records about tom I was about twenty three twenty four because or flea markets in the city in the mid twenties and twenty twenty four twenty fifth where you could buy Nickel records. So I used to stockpile Nickel records, and I just I was like a voracious collector. I was looking at the back and just trying to figure out who the songwriters were,
who the producers were. I grew up up watching a lot of films, so I got really into screenwriting, right, So I nerded out over screenwriters like I wanted to be Albert Brooks or John Hughes are one of these cats, you know. And so with the songwriting, it was the same thing. And as far as my parents went, you know, I you know, they unleashed me into the city. You know.
I went to school, I dropped out. I went to three colleges and two semesters, which I think is pretty unheard of, and I ended up ended up claw in the city. But I really did have one, one singular goal, and that was I wanted to write with artists and really just be that voice in the room who sort of directed the movie a little bit, you know what
I mean, who wrote the script and sort of. Um it was a trick I learned from Nol Rodgers down the road, but I really was I was early in my head, that was in my wiring, which was to constantly you try to write the sequel to whatever any artist, doesn't matter if they're unknown or they've just put up their first song or whatever. I'm creating the next movie, like where would it go, what's the pivot? What's weekend? Bernie's too, you know, And that's what I started doing.
And the problem was this guy named Kurt Cobain came along, this jerk, and he wrote his own songs, and so it became super I was twenty and suddenly was super inherently uncool to collaborate with an out guy outside of the room, you know, previously. You go back to Appetite for Destruction for G and R or any of those Eagles records, you know, and there's co writers all over these things. Carol King wrote it's too late with Tony Stern,
you know. So there was a place for that person to be in the room who sort of is that other sort of appendant creatively but isn't part of the group. And suddenly it wasn't in vogue anymore. It wasn't cool, And so I had to claw my way through the city at that time, and I had to eat. So I Bobby. I was a rapper and I got a record Deals rapper. I don't know if you're kidding, because I also had a record Deals rapper. I did. My name is Captain Caucasian. What was your name? Um, we're
gonna find out. Um, this is the This could be a Bobby cast trivia question for anyone who writes in but nobody writes it. Okay, that's a problem. But I did. I did get a record deal with Select Records, which is Atlantics hip hop records. So they had at the time they had um Kid and play Cha brock utfo Kidden player on top of the World, year was this. By the way, this is nineteen ninety one. Okay, so Beastie Boys have been around for a little bit. Beast
He's been around. Third Base had come out and they were big Goes a Weasel, right, Yeah, that was big in the city. And then and then Filling It was where I was shopping when Vanilla Vanilla Ice came out And it was funny because Vanilla ICE's label tried to sign me. They flew me down a Plano, Texas Old Tracks Records, and I remember um pivotal moment in my youth. I'm probably twenty years old maybe yeah, I just probably
turned twenty. And it took me into a closet and it was all the Vanilla Ice merch, you know what I mean, Vanilla's tooth braces, hunchboxes, you know whatever. It was like. It was so it was so um dystopian, and I remember thinking, I really like I've entered into like a universe I could never understand. But I made this record, I got signed, I had a video out, and then I got dropped within two weeks. You know what I mean, what's the record. It's called Notorious Big, Yeah,
I've heard of it. Then I have heard of it. Yeah, you know, but after my failed hip, what was wrong with the record? Um? I made it myself. So the biggest mistake was I got a record deal and immediately Select tried to hook me up with producer so Bob Power wand to work with me, and he had done he had engineered and um he had engineered and mixed
all those trip called Quest records. And then they hooked me with these guys track masters who would go on to do all of the Diddy and Mace stuff and getting Jiggy with it and all that nineties big sample heavy hip out. These guys all wanted to work with me, and I of course turned it all down to make my own record because I was very headstrong. I didn't want to collaborate with anybody, and I made the worst album ever recorded. So I made this terrible recording and
I lost my record deal. By the time I would it came out, it was it was shell for a year. They finally like threw it against the wall and then Bobby decided to start rapping with a German accent because I think that was my next pivot. So I felt like I was doing cultural appropriation of I was an early cultural appropriator. So I started and cultural appropriation I did so. I started rapping with a German accent and I did that, Um, why was a good idea? Euro
dance was beginning explode. Remember the Burman Brothers are different person. Yeah so you did so? You did? You had been gentleman Parterson, you'd that's a terrible German accent, but it d'd be like, oh I am German. Yes, yeah. Yeah. So if you ever watch uh, Whoopie Goldberg and Eddie, she's coaching the Knicks. She's angry Whoopie yelling at the knicks. Um my song plays, She's yelling at a knick and it's in the background. You can hear my weird German
flow in the background, a little pronounced. But um, that didn't work. Hang tight the Bobby Cast. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Bobby Cast. Then, um, I started making beats, and so that's when I started doing lots of programming and making beats. And well, your beats good on your record though you talk about you made your own records. I did. My beats were terrible. My records. So then I you know, back then, I actually worked with a programmer on it. But then when I started
making beats, actually got an sp twelve of them. My beats were all right. I could actually I could do it, and I sort of had the tricks of the era of all that sort of tune hip hop stuff. But do you think, though, that that bad record bad? You said it, not me though. The failure there, And I guess the point that I'm hope being that I'm leading us to is that there was a lot of learning that happened from that failure. The best thing that ever happened to me, right, failure. See, the reason I wrote
this book is because the failure defined me. You know. I read every entertainment bow for the most part. You know of my peers, certainly songwriter books, etcetera. And a lot of them are humble brags, you know, and I understand it. It's part of the game for me. What was interesting about my story was the first fifteen years of the career, not the second half. The second half's been magical, but it's not why I wrote a book. I wrote a book because the stuff at the front
end was so fascinating. Because I made every possible tactical and creative error you could ever make, and I always learned from the lessons. So I make my first record and it's a colossalness. You know, I learned I need to be a collaborator. I might not be good enough on my own to pull off what I think when I'm hearing in my head, I'm not able to execute.
So then it was like speed dating. Years of speed dating collaborators to try to find like the magic fit, and so everything was just like this weird learning curve. I started doing music for commercials and music for industrials, Garnier, Mabel and all the stuff. And basically then I started creating my own groups because I figured if I created the group, they'd have no choice but to sing my songs.
Quality theory, let me fuck it on paper. Yeah. So, um, the first five albums I made were major I got. You know, my manager M Brett was at the time, was able to get five major label deals for artists over a two year period, which was unheard of. We had nothing, We had never done anything. I'd never done anything, and um, I had the distinction of the first five albums I ever made weren't released, And you go, how does it work? Well? Because there's no Internet, no Spotify, nothing.
This is not you know, so no iTunes. So back then it's still physical CDs and as you know, like a bunch of records they'd signed thirty x a year or whatever, but a couple were tax write offs. Mine were always the write off. So the first five albums didn't come out. The sixth, finally is the one that
breaks through. Um. It was a group called Bad Ronald that took out an ad in the Village Voice in New York cast this thing we went to UM we recorded at Henson Um in LA and I had a panic attack in the middle of it because I knew this was my last shout in this business. And why
did you think that was all? I shot that well, because when you have five albums, it's such a weird number to go, well, my six short certainly isn't gonna because you know what, the phone just wasn't ringing, got you know what I mean, like, no one's taking my calls. And I think I was somebody who generally people rooted for. But you know, man, it's like at some point you're like a you know you're a draft pick. At some
point you know you're gonna get cut. Your stock isn't there, and that's where I was at, and so I m I was just at the very bottom of this thing. And we make this album and the floodgates open, and I have a song on MTV right and it's the first song ever, bad Ronald, Let's begin song on MTV, most magical feeling in the world, crying, first song, first song ever literally in a video, because up to that the only TV usage I had was background music in
a real world Seattle, That's true. And so if you have this thing and on the night of the record releases, you remember, you know, record store releases were Tuesdays, so the Monday night before it, most record stores stay open to midnight, and you'd have record release Monday nights, you know what I mean. And so all throughout the city, like whatever. You were a fan of a New York city, those people will congregate for the record release of that record.
You need to go to the record stourace. So our record was this It was the easy Rider helmet from the movie American Flag, and it was displayed at fourteenth and Broadway in the Virgin Mega store and we had the flat on the corner of Broadway sky High. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen, right, So we went to take pictures there directly before. It was the most magical feeling. I was so excited, and we were there at midnight and I went to bed next morning.
We woke up of September eleventh, two thousand and one, and as I ran down the street, I watched the towers fall from Washington Square Park around the corner. And then when I ran uptown and all these people are running towards me covered in soot, and all these people are screaming looking for family members that are all congregating
in Union Square. So the press trucks are there and the press start photographing, and the city, you know, all the news trucks are photographing our album cover with people covered in white dust past the American flag. So um, it was the most harrowing, just awful day obviously my life. And you know, I never went back to that store for two and a half years, and I didn't fly
for two years. And Bad Ronald were dropped within three weeks because their record was just like loud, abrasive, sort of raunchy hip hop and with rock hip hop, you know, and that wasn't what people wanted on September twelfth, they wanted Norah Jones, you know, so that was the end for me. So I had the phone stop ringing, and I had to take a side hustle. So I started making beats on kids pop records. That's not I'm serious,
and that's why I'm pausing here. Serious. So when you say making beats, so you're how about this, I wasn't even producing. I was the drum programmer. So you're making as close to as possible, like the real version, but a little softer version of the songs that family friendly. Yeah, how do you get that job? Gary Phillips was a guitar player I'd used. He had done session work. He actually did the entire Bad Ronald record. He was amazing.
He had produced a singer Songwriana Michael Tolture, a record that had done that didn't really happen, and he'd become my session guy, and he got the gig as the main producer for kids while he still is. And he knew that I was having a hard time, and he knew that my phone had stopped ringing and I wasn't gonna quit. So he gave me, like he started throwing me a little big. He's like, hey, do the Beyonce crazy and love kids, Bob, And as I always say,
that's my hot beat on that man. So in casey tonight want to do the forbidden Mamba to that thing, I got you, it's my beat. So when did you start to re establish, even within yourself, who you were. Well, I met a guy who changed my life. I met a guy named Jonathan Daniel. You know a couple of pivotal things. One and one Danny to say is even in the midst of all the failure and futility I had. The first thing that really changed my life was I met Carol King, and Carol King took an interest in me,
and Karl did just meet. I brought her in on one of these records to sing a record that was never released, a female ours named Tarsha Viga and Urca, and she was like an MC and it was once again acoustics like sort of like a vibe acoustic hip hop record. And I brought her in and I, you know,
they wanted arca. I wanted to feature on the record, and they were suggesting in there and people of that era, you know, sort of neo soul, and I suggested Carol King and Brian Maloof was at NR and he had a relationship with her camp And two days later she came down the studio to hang out with us, and she sat across from us and she's looking at Tarsha and she said, Tarsha, I love what you do lyrically.
I think it's great. I love the nuances blah blah, and Tarsha God bless her looked at me and said, well, he writes it. I don't write the stuff he writes it. So next thing, you know, me and Carol and my boy Duke, we locked the door for like you know, over a year. We probably wrote ten or twelve songs I wanted to say, and we just kept it was
a masterclass. It was like the first person and specifically for me, it was the first person who really identified something in me beyond the fact that I was mildly amusing, you know, and she uh, we did this thing and we ended up writing and producing the title track of the last album she ever made. It was the single the title track. It was a big gap commercial with her and her daughter as a song called Love Makes
the World. And I had a Carol King song, so it was weird as I had five unreleased albums had a Carol King song and then you know, obviously you know my Baha men work right, so you do and I'm gonna get to that too. Yeah that was big. Yeah, we got we got bahamen to come in a minute with the Carol King and you know when that's one of the big headlines that you read about you. Yeah, yeah, first,
you know, Carol King the first big breakthrough. But I wonder if the breakthrough was that, as you're writing these songs, did she and maybe didn't need it, but did she give you a kind of a reintroduction to your confidence? Yeah? It's just you know what was like I entered the building as the fan first um ilays want to work with all the real building cats, you know what I mean.
So the notion that somebody so esteemed could find something in my writing that was a that offset all the failure to me because at least I felt like I was getting grandmothered into something. So then she told Paul Williams about me, and Paul Williams was one of my favorite writers ever. I was a massive Paul Bliams fan because he was like me. He was a lyricist and he was sort of kookie. And so suddenly me and Paul and Carol and Duca writing songs together, right, and
she just she was she was. She was an advocate for me, and I desperately needed it, and so that gave me some currency in my head. And then but this, you know, a guy named Jonathan Daniel m. Change is the guy who really changed my career. He was as a manager and you know, he's about, you know, eight
years older than me something like that. He'd been hair bands in the eighties at the same the same kind of trajectory though, like just dancing around all these scenes and then you know, like in the way I was dancing around scenes in New York City but never really having his own moment, that breakout moment. He was you know, his band was called Candy, it was and it was Jonathan and Gilby Clark, and then Gilbey Clark joins GNR then,
you know, and he then became a publisher. He started he was running the Cures publishing company in the US, that sort of rance course, and he starts a management company called Crush Management, and he started reaching out to me and he would get advanced copies of all these albums I was making that weren't getting released, and he would take me out to launch and commit these pep talks, and he understood what I was pulling from, right, So he'd sit across from me and say, oh, that's really cool.
You're going for like a bones how Turtles thing on this, or you're going for a love and spoonful thing on this. So you're going for a Dennis Lambert thing, or you know these idols, all these songwriters that idoled like a you know, like an idolized like a nerd, you know. And he was the only person who understood my references. And he said to me, look, he said, you know, I'm on the precipice of something, but I have a
whole way of bands. They're pop punk, and this is growing into a scene, and we're gonna need somebody who, you know, maybe an adult in the room who understands song about a step more with a few of the act and they were these little indie records, no budget, fueled by Ramen. Records were run out of Jacksonville, you know, a dorm at Gainesville, originally with John Janet and I signed up and the first record ever made you know, so understand now I'm coming out of It ended up
being seven albums. I made major label albums Real Budgets, right, Real Budgets, and first five aren't released. The sixth comes out in September eleventh, and the seventh was a group called the Cooler Kids that DreamWorks folded in the as the record came out, so they were folded in in
our scope and they were dropped. So I made all these major label records for Budgets, and then suddenly here I am, and I'm pitched these records for you know, twenty five thousand, all in for everything, mixing, mastering, production, you know, sample clearances if they use you know, so I'm losing money in these things. That first record was called The Gym Class Heroes, and I make this record, like you said, you know, and I have my first number one hit. So I went from having absolutely nothing
in that thirty five have a number one hit? Does it happen like on the movie show where you get no calls? And didn't you have a number one hit? And then all of a sudden, the phones like I don't anybody bringing, anybody wants to work with you? One thousand percent? What was interesting about it was one thing Jonathan Jonathan Daniel is based on my guru. He's one of my best friends, but he's also been my guru
and I'm with Crush Management now too. But one thing he told me early on is he said, you don't necessarily need to take all the calls. You need an infrastructure about three or four people in this business who believe in you, who've always been very loyal to you, and as long as they're in the position to make some sort of moves that you can just work with those people. And that's what I chose to do. So
there was Steve Greenberg at es Curve. There was James Deaner when he was at Doctone, you know, be Interscope. There was you know, the Crush guys and Pete Gambarg and people like. There were people who just like constantly gave me work. So I didn't have to take all
that incoming. And it's great for my psyche because I think it's a massive mistake that writers or producers make when they finally enter the zeitgeist, you know, because you just get so seduced by it, you're like, oh my god, I can't believe I'm getting all these calls blah blah blah, but you don't realize that you're fly by night to
these other people. You know, that's a transient sort of relationship with the people who sort of rode with you from the beginning will stick with you through the lows. Because truthfully, for every sort of solid couple of you know, pockets where I'm really killing it, then of course there's going to be a fall. It happens. We all just
roller coaster up and down. We were talking about before you got here doing the intro for this which, by the way, the book twenty one hit Wonder, which we've been talking about, and you write it, and you're you're donating the proceeds to every reason I call right, Yeah, So every penny from my end from this book, from inception goes to musicians on call and all my speaking gigs too. So I've been torn around the country on my own time. I went to been a thirty university
so far, five high schools. I'm gonna get up to fifty. And I've done you know, everything from a General Modus convent in Last Tuesday to you know, Music Business College's convention, the Media Convention in Las Vegas on Friday. Every penny that I raised goes to musicians on Call and why And I said that as someone who was on the board for a while, and I know he was very
you've been involved in it. Well, the long and short of it is, I knew the gentleman who started it when we were all in our twenties, and I didn't really get involved. And then when my dad was in his last days, he was at a Mount Sina he was in a cancer word of Mount SINAI and I just lost my mom and now my dad's really sick, and I'm in a pretty dark space. And I walk up there and I hear, like I hear a man singing in the hallway. He's kind of warming up. And
I walk out. It's like an eighty year old cat with a big, bushy beard and acoustic guitar and he's walking into a room to play for an elderly woman in the next room. And so I waited till he's completed, and I took him aside. I said, like, where do you know? Who are you? He said, I'm with musicians on call. And literally my face froze because I had, you know, I'd always wanted to get involved, and I felt like this was this weird, divine sort of religious experience.
So I immediately signed on joining joined the advisory board. And then we have this Christmas group. It's me and Kevin Griffin, Mark McGrath. It's a bunch of us, Lisa Loebe and we just thing called Band of Merrymakers. And so we gave proceeds to it, and we started playing in the hospitals and like doing the workshops, and I was doing writing clinics like with kids who were in really tough shape, and it um is the most valuable
work I've ever done. I figured, you know, there's a lot of charities that get a ton of shine and have more financial resources, and I felt, well, if I could do anything to help, it was probably it was worth it. The Bobby Cast. We'll be right back. This is the Bobby Cast. When you speak at any other things, you said, a college, a convention, bunch executives, what's your one story that you know is going to light the room of people are gonna love it. They're going to
be entertained. You may twist and turn on him a little bit, but you know that's your money story. Oh man, I'll be The truth is I'm walking money, So I know that's why I'm asking you, like, what's your what's your antidote that you're like, this is the one I want to be known, not not what song did you write or produce? But what's your one antidote that you want to be known for? All right? You're ready? Yeah,
all right? So, um, I really think the one direction one lands a lot because kids like Harry styles so um, very quickly, I'm sitting at coffee shop in La. It's raining, and um, you know, everybody in La is scared of rain, so they're all on top of each other, and there's there's a meeting going on behind me, and it's a publisher pitching a writer and I recognize that's beca tishker
is a huge manager and publisher. And she's she's pitching the Swedish guy and he's got very thick cent, very thick coccent, you know, and she's like, you know, so you're not doing your band anymore, blah blah blah. You know you're starting to write now, you're doing you're writing now blah blaha. Yes, I'm beginning to write them blah blah blah. For some reason, I turn around and I look at the sexy fella and I realized that it's
Peter Spence and the guitarist and the Cardigans. And the Cardigans for me were mine er van, you know, really, Cardigans were my favorite band of the night. Love me, love me, say that should love me. For those that want to hear it perfectly, sing back, well the way, it's perfect, thank you yeah um, and so that I'm literally fanboy and this guy. I interrupt their conversation because I have no filter, and we kick it and she's like, oh my god, you guys should write together. It be
such a great fit. And you know, I'm gonna bring I'll add my writer ko Jack, who's a track guy. Cool ko Jack, and the three you guys should write, I said, great. So we show up and secretly I'm thinking we're gonna write a Cardigans song. And this is like my my, my wish fulfilment, you know. And I show up at the studio and these guys are these guys are real pop guys. I'm not a real pop guy. I'm quirky. I'm more of a rock guy who sort of just has pop leanings, you know, And I show up.
These guys are like, I'm like, so, let's dig in. Let's do something really vibeing cardigans and Feter's like, no, I don't. I'm not doing cardigans anymore. So wow, So we we we said what should we do? We said, let's write a song for one direction. Let's try that. And I didn't know what that meant, you know, I mean, I knew what makes you beautiful? That that was the extent of my knowledge. I thought it was an incredible single,
but this wasn't my forte. So I went outside and Bobby, I got high, like I do in these situations, smoked the reefer, and uh. I went outside and I just started writing these words. I write these words, and I write an entire lyric and I'm bring it inside. These guys have no idea what it's gonna land, you know. And fifteen minutes I'm quick, you know, and I'm bringing in and the guy started singing, and he's got the Swedish accent, you know, very thick. He's like, duh, you
remember somewhere all nine. I want to go back there every night. And when he's singing, I'm thinking, man, this is this is like, this is like a Fellini movie. Man, this is not gonna this is not gonna stick, you know. And uh, we finished this thing, finished the song, and I thought a zero percent chance of landing. But I was high and we you know, eat Thai food and they were nice guys, had a beer, and then I
went home. The next day, they like, we're getting texts from Simon Cowell and getting texts from Max Martin and Doctor Luke and everyone's like rock me Equal Smash. So secretly I'm like, oh my god, what have I been
doing my life? Man? Because I've spent my life now at this point, I've worked with, you know, everyone from you know, I would say, like Train and dawtry to you know, Carol, you know, Tom Jones, to a million fun bands with funny t shirts and funny haircuts, and thinking myself, why do I have to work with these like soul sucking artists when I could just literally get high and write like these little gibberish words and it lands, you know, So immediately the three of us become like
a reading writing configuration. Right, It's me Co, Jack and Peter, and we're gonna We're gonna be the next writing team, you know, in La, and I've just moved La. Dudes, I'm new to all of this. You know. I'm from a very different thing in New York. And suddenly it's like teams in middle but you know, and I'll start digging in and we write for thirty days straight. We write the thirty worst songs ever written. And the crazy thing is, I'm the problem, not those guys. Those guys
are really good, but they're dialed in. They're like, let's do Selena Gomez today. I don't know what that is, you know what I mean. So I'm sitting there and going, oh, cool man, I'm gonna write like a Smith song, you know. So I'm writing some Morrissey stuff. And they're like, wait, wait, wait, no, this isn't landing. It makes no sense. It's not logical. I'm like, but it is. It's deep, you know. So
you can see the novelties wearing off. I'm flying back to Boston, right and I'm on a plane to Boston from LA and you know, Peter sends me a voice note and now he's cutting my verbal lungs because it's now he's giving me a lyric and it says, you must sing I got the got the goal I got the gotta gotta and he's like, all these gottas right, And I'm on the plane and I'm literally sitting in this seat and I'm gonna sweat. I'm so angry. I'm like, why is he making me sing gottas? I don't want
to sing gattas. I want my own words on this melody. And so I text him in the plane. He's like, no, it has to be gotta you, gotta gotta you kept saying that back and forth. The weirdest exchange, one of the things where like, how are we adults? And this is what we get paid for, you know? And I finally at the last text backfarth A, Yeah, I just don't feel this man. Those guys never worked with me
ever again. Okay, now here's the only problem. Driving my kid to school a year later, and I'm listening to kiss in La and Ariana grounds love me Harder, comes on you gotta gotta love me harder, and I heard the gottas and I hadn't heard gotta in a chorus like this repeated, and I just turned to my daughter.
She's like six or seven. It makes by seven or eight, And I was like, can you just type something into my phone, just type writer Ariana gron love me Harder, Peter's funds And so you know, I've played that one wrong, but that was my only fay in the one direction and straight a hip hop stuff, and obviously it's probably not what I do best. You know a song I love as playing it on my radio show just a
couple weeks ago. It's a new Weezer song Records. That's a fun duty And again it's so now that I've spoken with you and kind of hear the macro version of what you're about. Even that song starts with what that song is us. And when you talk about how you perceive music and you want to get to what to get too fast? I think old songs like Sweet Emotion. It starts right Aaron Smith. Sweet Emotion starts with a chorus. That's it. It comes back to that. But that's that's
the heat of the song. When record starts, it's so hood you go for the jogular right at it. You know. The thing about records is um I started writing that with Rivers during the pandemic on the front end in like late twenty or something like that. I was I was in cape cod and I pulled out an acoustic and I was singing this idea and I kept singing. I got records in my head of I felt like it could land, you know, and I got on zoom with them and we kept kicking it back and forth.
We kicked it back and forth about a year, a year and a half, and it was amazing because I really we kept debating. There was an internal debate. I think about front loading the hook to that extent, but that's why it works to me, like it's and the second hook just sonicla, a littlefficults, a little you know, I got work, and then the second comes around because
he pops the octave. Yeah, that's my trip, you know, like man in my writing, it doesn't matter if it was you know, when we were doing the Boys like Girls are We the Kings or Metros any of those things. Like the one thing I love is when a chorus
just explodes. I like melodies they're kind of static down sitting in a little box because that comes from the hip hop stuff, right, So I love melodies that are somewhat linear, and then that gives you room to just have like this big caboo sort of octave jumping records. Does it right? Like that first chorus, you know if you like, oh, it's sort of restrained rivers, and then when he hits the top note, you're like, Wow, I
love Weezer. I wear I was visually impaired. My rideye doesn't work, and I was like, man, there's nobody cool that wears glasses. Right. Rivers hugellibration to me because I was like, Oh, he's nerdy but awesome. He's so awesome, He's not nerdy, and I want to be that guy, the coolest. And so here's my quick Weezer story. Yeah, I worked on American Idol for four years as the head head mentor. I'd work with the kids, some young adults on everything from song selection to how to sing
it tempo, being interviewed. They just had me there as the Swiss army knife. And at the end of every season, everybody would come in, all the big stars for it for duets, right, and this partist would be with this person, and Weezer was coming in. Now I had never met anyone from Weezer, and I was freaking pumped. I'm jaded, not in a way of I don't care, but I've seen everybody. I know that most people that I think are awesome in music, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are,
but they're just normal folk. Sometimes abnormal, but not in the way you prefer. Absolutely, But as Weezer, right, there's like three or four my whole life that I'm like, I would totally fan boy out. And Weezer's playing the finale of American Idol. So I'll let my producer know. I say, Hey, I'm just letting you know I'm a massive Weezer fan. In the whole season. People have been in and out, but I'm not gonna go in, like, hey,
would you sign this like a picture? I said, Weezer's coming, and if it's cool, I'd like to walk out and just say hello. And they're like, yeah, of course. I thought, like at your show too, there's five. There's five of you on this show is Luke, Lionel, Katie Ryan, and myself, and so we kind of had free rein over everything, and I said, I'm gonna walk out to the bus
if that's cool. They're like yeah, sure. So they come in and I go to the record store down by where the lot was and I get the blue vinyl Yes, because that blue album for me was it was near ami but right, it was right, Yeah, I mean it was what I was. I'm a blue guy more than picker and guy myself. It took me later in life understand and appreciated so but Blue loved it immediately. I go get it big, Vinyl, I walk up. I'm nervous. I'm an adult man, I'm nervous. Like yeah, I say, hey, guys,
mine's Bobby. I'll be working with you guys later tonight. I'm the head mentor here and reckon, I don't I'm not even gonna fake it. I'm just a massive fan. Do you care if would you guys sign this? And like, yeah, come on in, And so I don't. I don't see Rivers at all. And so all the other guys are around, and there's super cool and they're signing the man yet well where you from? From? Markets? Over? You guys? That all the small talk, But to me it means a
little more than that. To them, just another dude knocking on the bus door. And so the into the star bunk, the door opens and it's Rivers. He just kind of opens it and kind of looks in and he sees me and the little bit. He's been like, you know, fixing his face there's like a mirror, like fixing his hair, doing a little teeth thing, and I'm just going there. He is of all the things that I can say. It's like an elevator pitch and I'm not pitching anything.
I just want to let the guy know. But I don't want to let him know so hard that he's creeped out. It's behind line, sure, but I never met him, right, And so he looks at me, and I don't want to go, hey, will you sign this? But I wanted him to sign this, And so he goes back to just thing, looks at me again, and he starts to take a step toward me, and I'm like you My heart starts to beat a little bit. I'm like, this
is my moment right here, It's time. He takes about a half step forward and then shuts the door and goes back. And it wasn't toward me. It wasn't toward me. It wasn't toward anything I did that, you know, I wasn't. I was in his person. I ask you a question, Can I ask you a question? Yeah? Is that album still unsigned? In that space? They sent it back with him okay, and he was cool enough to sign it all right, because I was going to take care of
that for you, you you know, And I wasn't upset. Actually I appreciated that because that was a dude being who exactly who he was. He's awesome. I gotta say something about Rivers, which is, you know, one thing I would tell is Rivers Pat Monahan, you know, fits like a few of these cats who I really love and I pretty close with. The one thing I'll tell you about all of them is the work ethic is like nothing you've ever seen. Rivers writes like three songs a day,
like just absolutely just to permeate a Weezer record. For me is like Holy Grail, because honestly, I'm competing with the ten songs Rivers wrote last night. He's so prolific and really good. And Monahan is the same way and fits the same way. These guys work so hard and we're all the same age. So the notion that, like, you know, you can be this grown ass guy and just hit like aggressively wanted that bad and chase the
art that to that extent. Rivers I learned that from more than any other artist I've never seen somebody work as hard as Rivers does. Next time we talk to him, tell him I love him. It's awkward. I didn't get a chance to tell him that it's a little awkward. It'd be very awkward and say Bobby loves you. No, I'm actually gonna say it. I'm like, dude, honestly, like you shut the bus door on him, you kind of put the kind of bust him. You know. I met
Pat probably January of this year for the first time. Wow. We were at a Pebble beach playing the play Pebble Beach Front and so I guess this year they finally thought I was famous enough to be invited. Yeah, I'm pitch on him and so, well, I appreciate that. Yeah, and so I go out. I heard he's not bad, he's pretty good. Yeah, and so, but he was also super kind. He's a great guy, like overly kind to where I was like, man, you do not have to
be this night. But he wasn't being anything that he wasn't. He's the best. And I went and ask a couple of other friends that have played it. He was like, oh yeah, Pat Money and he's like the greatest dude. Oh no, he's my guy. Like iow Iowa pat so much. He's an incredible friend and honestly, he's always he's he's so funny, he's so quick, and he doesn't suffer fools. He's really he's brilliant. Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor, Wow, and we're back on
the Bobby Cast. Bobby, one thing I did want to say to us in the six degrees between us, do you know where we cross in the greatest way. You gotta take this dancing with the stars. John Schneider, Oh yeah, I went to my high school, really, Dukes of Hazzard. He is from upstate New York. Why nobody knows that fact, I didn't know that. I'm going to throw that out for all the Foxes out there, But John Schneider attended
Fox Lane High School. The reason I know that, which is a little interesting aside, is I did always want to get out and I wanted to get down the world and do something, you know, something loud in this business. When I was in ninth grade, he took the bus every Friday after school and I'll go to the Bedford Hills Library and upstairs on the third floor, this a little like beat up building. They kept old yearbooks like the stacks from historically from our high school. So I
found both. There are our Illuminati where John Schneider and Susan Day from the Partridge family in La Law and I would find their yearbooks and then I would start to create these composites in my brain of how we could have been friends and who they hung out with, them trying to figure out who they ung out with and stuffing. I just I was obsessed with it. So, yeah, the John Schneider reveals that shouldn't be from upstate New York. They should have made sure medium money in mountains. Quite
good looking as it as a young guy. Yeah, I looking older guy, but like really good looking younger. No one's ever accused me of that. I didn't know you're younger guy. I might fall in love with you then too. No, you know, I have big Doughey features and I've always have, so they're kind of exaggerated. I wouldn't say cartoonium Ringo star, He's a bully um Ringo star. Honestly show up at Ringo's house, you know, buddy, my Winston Simone with the
great managers, my favorite managers ever in this business. Winston Simone connects me with a word had gotten out that Ringo was open to new collaborators because he's got a really tight circle. Right, It's Luca, Third's Joe Walsh. It's um, do you get nervous about the Ringo though you've been with a lot of people, but it's a beatle okay, Ringo. I don't get nervous with anybody. And still, yeah, it's probably you know, And that's honestly goes back to the
war whole thing. I think, you know what I mean, Like, when you're exposed to stuff so young, you just get kind of numb to it. Maybe nervous isn't the word. And I don't get nervous really either. Same again, but still I was excited. But to meet Rivers, I was definitely stoked, you know, like I mean's Ringo, you know what I mean? Like, but I was able to at
least I was composed, which helps, you know. And I would say, I showed up to the house and we dug in, you know, and we sat down the couch and right off the battles like piece of love, Piece of love. And then with like six seconds, it was like he was grilling me, like the toughest job interview in history for what reason. Well, I just think, like, you know, he probably, you know, he's got his guard up.
I think he's probably trying to figure out my motives of why I'm so psyched to work with him, et cetera. You know. And it was very interesting because I really I tried to punch back whenever you'd say something, I try to say something weighty back, and it wasn't landing. And I thought, okay, I've literally screwed up this one opportunity.
I'm in my car driving home and I said to him, I said, look, I said, you know, I'm gonna go home and I'm going to write a song and if you'll have me back tomorrow, i'll play for you said, come at two o'clock. So I came back. I wrote this tune, and my boy grand Michael's my engineer programmer as a writer, really talented kid. He reharmed what I was going for because I was trying to do some really randy newmany kind of chordal stuff, and I'm you know,
I'm somewhat limited. And I went and sang ringo the tune, and he's sitting there at Ringo and his engineer, Bruce Sugars, a engineer, producer, a great guy, and these guys are just they dead pan me and I sing it, and you know, my voice is, you know, isn't the sexiest tone.
It's sort of like, you know, it's like the Budweiser commercial that you turned down, you know, And so I sing this thing for him and Ringo goes, that's absolute shit, and I was like, whoa, and he's so dry and I'm trying to read him and he goes, no, I'm joking, joking. I love it. I love it, he said, but you know what, you sang me a song. I'm just gonna cut you a song. And I said, well, I didn't sing you a second verse or a bridge. H And next thing, you know, he just ripped into it and
wrote a second verse. And this guy like comes alive at a level I've never seen, and his energy is freakish. He's jumping up and down, and I said, it's like one of these kids at a rave. You know, he's like po going and he's eighty at the time. Well he's probably seventy eight at the time. He's po going up and down. The best physicality in the world. He's running behind the kid. I'm watching Ringo play and his
pocket is so nasty. He's doing all the sort of tricks they all did them, nasty, no embellishment, incredible feel, his pockets crazy and he's doing all the hambercushion. They's singing, he's doing everything's running around the room and I looked at it. It It was the first moment I really like felt like, man if this is how people age now, Like I'm alright with it, you know what I mean.
And it's funny because I over appeared. You know, I've worked with some some incredible greats of the era, right Carol King, Ringo on the OJS, Eddie Lavert my god Eddie and Walter h Tom Jones, Joe Cocker. One thing I say about all these people, Mike love they all.
They're the most incredible physical shape. It's humbling like every single time, Like you know, I had a night with the OJ's and we went out they played the Apollo Theater and then we all went out for drinks at some hotel bar and it's two in the morning and Eddie Laverte is gone. He's like, we're not done we're not done. He's dancing around more bloc goal. You know, these guys like they live it, and the fact that they have that energy makes me just feel so good.
As you know, as I hit thirty now, I felt that, you know what I mean? I got four final questions. Number one is I was watching my TikTok. Lets me watch a lot of late sixties, early seventies, especially singer songwriter kind of acoustic. I want your TikTok that's where, that's where I live, and nineties wrestling. You know what
mine is? What mine's usually like. It's usually like a young artist, usually from Nashville or something along the lines, and it's like, hey, they're in their car and the cameras are gonna go, Hey, I just broke up with my girlfriend today and I wrote a song about it. You want to hear it. And then they do the fake turn of the dial and then they lipsick a log to it for a second. They do a lot of hand movements, and that's when I just keep scrolling past. Sorry,
I digress. That's I don't live there. I see those sometimes said to maybe I don't live there. I want to live where you live, all right, so go ahead. So I lives cool. Now loves cool because I see a lot of Tom Jones singing, either live or like on a television studio syste. I had no idea because the Tom Jones version that I know from my life is older Tom Jones caricature. Yeah, he's a beast. He's a real soul singer, one of the best I've ever heard,
superstar good. I watched him and Ray Charles sing together, he back and forth. Yeah, Tom Jones had all the respect I mean, like he's literally look, he's one of those British like sort of just like soul like it's so good. Yeah. No, it's funny because like his pop cultural presence I think is so different from actually the core of his voice. He's a singer. And then I heard him sing later, maybe like two years ago on the voice in another country as an older guy and
still sings something. I just had no idea. You know, I'm like a fetishist for raspy vocals, you know what I mean. So coming out of the UK, there's all those those cats like Tom Jones or Chris Riya, who's like very forgotten, but Chris Riha, you know, certainly in the States over the he's big, but like it's a gravel and when singers come along and have that British gravelly thing, Man, I'm the first guy at the record store, you know what I mean? Every single time it's my
favorite voice. Cocker. I mean, come on, it's like literally like like like literally like like if you're gonna sweat that much when you sing, I need to appreciate that exactly. But Joe Cocker, like you know, you're one third of the way into a Cocker show. Or I would watch him live. Didn't get to go watch him in person, but I would watch Cocker live. You guys pouring sweat,
like wiping himself down singing ballads. Well, the problem is like the bar was so high, you know, these guys, the performance level and the and the and the way they just left it all out on the stage. And there are very few singers I would say the same thing about now. It's not the same level of commitment,
you know, like Cocker's thing was unbelievable. It's just and to cover a Beatles song, you're right right, and there are a lot of and listen, I love a lot of Joe Cocker, but I think how ballsy to cover a Beatles song period, but then you do have big balls when you do it, and you nail it. I mean it's it's one of the greatest covers ever. And the intro it's so was it the Wonder Years it was it was ahead of Yeah, so you know it
was you know, once against that intro. I mean you are so like, that's an intro that'll suck you in. You instantly know that record wrap the bat and I mean his commitment level on the vocal and I'm with you, man, like I feel like, um, I feel like when people
bludge in um classics, it's um. You know, that's just it's it's a it's a no can do for me, you know what I mean, it kind of sucks you in it at the beginning of all of his songs, I mean, even going You are So Beautiful to Me right comes on and it's and it's so you It's just it's that first vocal note and you're like, well this is different, but you can leave your hat on or any of the eighties stuff. I mean, it was just consistent, you know it um really really and one
of the greatest singers. I didn't get to know him or anything. He just cut one of the songs, but he uh, he's incredible. You know. So my book that I wrote was called fail until You Don't, and it was basically me just screwing it right and some of the complations we've had, I knew the answer for. I would just want to walk down it with you. But I knew. Listen, you your rap care didn't go well at DJ. You know you weren't near as good as I.
Let's be honest. You know I've made a big career out of this and you've done fair at what you're doing. I do have a face for radio, so you have all But why why was it important to you in this book to showcase the difficult times as the main theme? I'll tell you because, um, you know, my daughter's seventeen, so what is that gen z or whatever? You know.
I'm scared for these kids because when you have, when you have so much technology at your hands and so much everything is just pulling at your attention twenty four hours a day. I'm scared that these kids might not have the same work ethic because I think they might get just constantly pulled and like, hey, I don't want to do this very long, and maybe I'll do this job for six weeks, and maybe I'll do this and
quit this and quit this and quit this. And I stuck something out against improbable odds, and it was the greatest decision in my life, and I think I believe there. I want to speak to two people with this book, one to the youth, just to say there is a pathway, but I want you to be aware of what you're entering. Right. You have to understand you're going to get failed two thousand times two thousand Knows Matt Tell, Negrom and Buddy's book. It's like two thousand knows. It's just the truth. You're
gonna You're the rejections. You have to use them as scars, you know. You have to take those scars and take those calluses and have them fuel you to go forward. But if you don't have that wiring, and if you're going into this delusion, they thinking okay, Like once again, like I got TikTok famous last night, I had a song and went viral, blah blah blah. You don't understand what you're in for. If you want to do this
as long as I've been doing it. The rejections will mount at a freakish level, and I just want people to be aware of it. But there is a way out. And the other thing is I really want to reach anybody who has creative wiring who just might have packed it in early, you know, because I was blessed, Like I came up in the city and you know, we're in these village in New York, and I would say, if I came up with like a hundred cats in that time, you know, five six of us left doing it,
you know what I mean. Like most people went on to different things, some because they lost interest and others because they just couldn't feasibly make it work anymore. I kind of want to speak to those people and say, you know, give it another shot. Give it another shot. It's not you're not done by any stretch. Because honestly, if you are as tenacious about it as I was, you can probably you know, I don't know what goal.
You know, you have to ascertain your own goals, but like you could, you know, you could do something special.
It's just here's case in point of somebody who was like moderately gifted at best when he started and just got better, you know, third question of four why now, though, because I felt like I was still like mildly culturally relevant, and my fear was, you know, in a decade from now, some of these songs might not have the same residence, and I want to do it when people actually might still take my phone calls, you know, including a publisher.
It's like, you know, I don't know if a book do it, you know, ten years from now, if a publisher would have been interested. But also, look, we're in such a crazy time right, We're entering into the AI phase and all these other you know, technological advances, they're gonna just absolutely affect the music. It's just obvious where all the stuff is headed. And it felt like a nice moment to pivot creatively for a second and to just get out of the fray, clear my head. Right,
everything this is all me. There's no co writers or ghost writers. It's literally three hundred zillion pages of my psyche. But I felt like this was like a rinse out and then I'm going to come back like just stronger than ever because I feel so creatively sort of motivated, because I needed the break. My final question it's just two words with the question mark at the end of it, Harry's close Baha Man. Question one. All right, so you guys are all very familiar with who let the dogs out,
so let's not make it weird between us. Couldn't be more Yeah, So I didn't do that one, Okay, I did the follow up. It was called move It like This. It was recorded the Bahamas with the Baham and a couple little fun facts for you. Won the Bahaman stole my headphones and didn't return them, which was kind of dark. So if you ever like our ent cruise ship and you see one of the Bahaman guys wearing a nice, nice pair of Panasonic phones from back in the day,
I think you could make a case for me. Second of all, we did get yelled at we're in the Bam. There was a McDonald's in the Bahamas and me and Mike Mangini, my buddy, and Dave Shomer we were working with these guys and we had a twelve Newton session and Mike walked through the door at twelve o two carrying a couple of bags of McDonald's for us, and the leader of the Bahaman screamed at him about being
late and that McDonald's should never be a priority. And by the way, I remember I didn't learn from mistakes, right, I've learned from mistakes. I have never let McDonald's be a priority, and you know my bookings. Ever again, you never know where you will learn something from a Bahaman. It could be in the Bahamas with the Bahama men. You know. I gambled down there. We went to the we went to the paradise. What's called the what's accompassment?
What's what's the big casino? And uh robin down there about the casino? I trust it. There's a casino, so you know. And I won like nine hundred dollars, which was so huge for me. And I'm so cheap. You know, everyone's goating me. They're like double down, double down. I'm like nine hundred dollars. This is a new stereo. And I took it back to New York and I bought this shitty stereo. It's amazing, prodest moment of life. Listen, this has been I could do this for two hours. Hey,
we've done over an hour here. I'm just a massive fan of your word. Brother, I'm a bigger fan. And honestly, this that you have no idea much means to me man, you're a you're a you're an icon, You're a beacon of light for the community. And also you did great work with music music. It's on call, which I know of, so it's awesome. Well thanks, I appreciate the time. Everybody twenty one hit Wonder if they want to order it, yeah, I mean just go to Amazon and you know and
order it. And um, if they have any questions that can always hit me on the Graham. I'm on the Graham. Just give out your number of text you Yeah, they can. You know, it's great. They're good. All right, you guys follow Sam Sam Hollander on Instagram. Twenty one hit Wonder is the book? And you still making money off all these songs? It still come in. I progress and sold my catalogs. Did is that in the news? And how much it was? I would never let that out, but
you know it was great. So I did it twenty nineteen to Hypnosis and um sold at all? I did over ten million, Um, it doesn't matter, Okay, all right, it's always said to my daughter, over ten million dollar hairs. So no, I did great and um and everything I have going forward since two thousand nineteen is mine and hopefully I'll sell another one. But what it did was it really freed me up to do things like this and you know, just be a better human. When did
you write records? Um, that's twenty twenty one, so I owe on records. We're on the way, We're on our way. That's records in my hit jam, Sam, thank you, Thank you for having me. Guys, thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production