I Am all In.
I Am all In with Scott Patterson, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I Am all In Podcast one. I want to interview one of eleven Production's iHeart Radio, iHeart Media, iHeart Podcast. We have the extreme privilege of talking to one of the biggest legends in the history of the entertainment business, Paul. Mister Paul Anka, And let me tell you something a little bit about this guy and what he has accomplished so far in his life.
He is a legendary singer and songwriter who's best known for his signature hit songs Diana, Lonely Boy, put Your Head on My Shoulder. As songwriter, Paul wrote the theme song for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Tom Jones has hit She's a Lady, Frank Sinatra's signature song My Way,
and If That isn't enough. With over nine hundred songs to his credit, Paul's songs have also been recorded by Ready for This, Elvis, Presley, Barbers, Streis and Linda Ronstant The Sex Pistols, Nina Simone, Gypsy Kings, and Robbie Williams, to name a few. I am a big fan of all of those people, especially Robbie Williams. Now, Paul has ventured into podcasting with his best friend Skip Bronson in
their show Our Way with Paul Ankin Skip Bronson. The series will give listeners a backstage pass to the lives of icons across film, music, television, sports, and technology in a whole new way. Listeners will hear from guests across industry, including Jason Bateman, Mark Burnett, Michael Buble, Bill Burr, Billy Bush, Gail King, and even the President of France Emmanuel So, Paul,
let's first start off. We're going to talk a little bit about Gilmore Girls, and we're going to get into your career as a songwriter, and then we're going to talk about your podcast. Let's start off with the Gilmore stuff. When did you first hear about Lorelized dog being named after you?
Well, I think it was right from the inception, you know, heartbeat Later, I want to get out there, obviously, and you know, I became a huge fan of the show. Obviously it was a great show, well written, et cetera, et cetera. But from the exception, you know, probably what after the first couple of weeks, everybody came around and I heard about it, and I thought it was cool
because it's so international. I've been an international creature, but I was ultimately hearing from everybody all over the world.
And so you were aware of the show before you you found out about it.
Friends were watching it. I think my kids were watching it. Right, the show, I mean, we're not talking about to something obscure. This show was like everybody loved it. So I was very much aware of the show. Yeah.
Right, And then you made a cameo in the cold open of season six, episode eighteen. Tell us how that came about? That Black and White?
Well, I have to call and I said, yeah, let's do it. I think we did a couple. When I first got the call, I was very happy to do it, you know, I thought, yeah, natural for me. And they were great to work with. They were just a fun group of people and very bright, knew what they were doing, and that was very comforting to me.
Right, do do fans approach you about your appearances on Calor Girls?
I'm still do fans. I got friends, I got people who did at parties. It always comes up, and you know, I hate the phrase. It is what it is, but it is what it is, and it was great to be a part of it. You know. It was something that I wore like a badge.
I loved it. Right, Let's talk a little bit about your music career, because this is this is a you know, reading your bio and reading about you and listening to all the old songs, it just it's just absolutely fascinating. I'm a songwriter myself, so I'm really eager to hear about your background. I mean, you you sold songs, you write, you were writing songs. You were musical prodigy growing up. Yeah,
and you sold songs. You went to New York and sold a song when you were what fifteen, sixteen years old.
I was born in Ottawa, Canada, and my dad wanted me to, you know, be a lawyer like my uncle, or a journalist because I had won awards for my short stories in school, so I had kind of a writing way about me. I was typing seventy words a minute, as in a class with forty girls, me and my friend, and I always got drawn to music. You know, back then it was pretty much the R and B rhythm and blues and some country and that pops the vibe.
It just kind of integrated itself, but it was primarily you know, it was the black movement in music, like it's been for many decades. Kind of was inspiring. And I fell out a shorthand class. I hated it, and the teacher wasn't too thrilled with me. And you know, when you're a teenager, you think you know everything. But I just said, okay, put me a music out. So I started taking drums and start taking trumpet, and then I wound up with Missus Reese, who was a piano teacher,
and she started in. I mean, my dad got me a little old piano that they stuck in a basement. You know, I was writing in this basement. It was not a decked out basement. You know. We was at modest background. So I started in Ottawa and I just started messing around on the piano, you know, and it wasn't until I got kind of inspired with this crush that I had on this girl that was a three years older than me, which you know, back then that was a big deal along with everything else. I'll tall
you were at this, you were I'll want you. So I just sat down and you know, I wrote, like a kid, I'm so young you're so old. I don't think I could get away with that today, but you know, I wrote it and it started with that, and ultimately, like any process, I said, okay, now what's the next step? And I started reading at all these record labels. I had that if you'd got to Nashville, LA, or New York,
maybe Chicago, somebody would hear you. So, you know, with a couple of you know, songs in my pocket some money i'd saved up on an Eastern vacation. When I got to New York, walked into an office some friends of mine set up an appointment for me and Don Costa. I mean, I attributed, you know, a lot of my success to a team effort. You know, you never want to be the smartest guy, and Don Costa was the guy. He's the one that saw this kid banging away at
the piano. And from May when I recorded to August, when I wound up with American band standing at Sullivan, that's when it all took off.
How old were you on ed Sullivan.
Fifteen or sixteen?
Unbelievable and you were singing, and you were writing the songs you were singing and they were big number one hits. Or charting and way up in the charts and you were a teen idol and super famous at fifteen six.
Well, ye, kind of freaky, you know. It wasn't really the day and age of young idols or whatever the hell I wanted to call it, right, That all kind of morphed itself with the Philadelphia guys. But it's all timing, you know. I just had the passion and the drive and nothing else, and then you hone your talent, whatever that is. But there was no tell vision in the sense of the programs you see today, right, No, you know,
none of these talent contests. And it just happened so quickly because the mere content of what we did and the structure that was around us. You were a hit in one week with radio, You did all of an American bandstand. You went on radio, and within a week the whole country knew who you were. So there I was. I was in the middle of that with people that were twice my age until the others started floating in.
And then I started working with Beverly Brothers, Frankie Lineman and Frankie Avalon, all these young artists who had with a young movement. We were traveling together on these buses, each doing two songs through you know, all kinds of weather breakdown with buses that weren't luxurious, and we're all thrown together like little pioneers. And that's where all happened, you know, And you looked up to the rack pack
of Las Vegas. That's all. The was the Beatles, which is another story which I think I had a hand in getting them, Warrior because I met them in Europe. But that was the industry until the Beatles, until Hendrix changed it in terms of picking up a guitar. And I just continued honing my craft, knowing I was still a kid, but writing about only what I knew popular love was older money boy, all that kind of stuff, right and loving it, just saying, wow, I'm making two
hundred bucks a week. You know, I had a paper out, I was a caddie. I worked at restaurant. I was earning three bucks, spooky, And you know that's when I learned to be focused, you know, because you learned at some point in there that you may not last. You know a lot of the guys I didn't. So until you make each of those evolutions, you keep doing what you're doing, getting better, but it's tonight sholl theme longest day.
You know. My big reach out was for Buddy Hawley, who was my friend when it doesn't matter anymore for him. It was the last song unfortunately recorded, because he died on that plane crash on the tour.
Tell Us you mentioned two things, how it happened so quickly for you at fifteen, and then your relationship with the Beatles and bringing them over to the United States. Tell Us you get to New York, you have a song, Who hears it? What happens after they hear it? How did they hear it? Who signed you? How did you get on Ed Sullivan? Did an agent come in? Did a record company sign you right away? And then it was just off to the moon for you.
Well, as I mentioned, you know, I had saved up some money. It was Easter vacation. I went down in New York. I'd been there prior because I want to contest collecting souper wrappers for Campbell's soup. So I got a feel for New York. Don Costa, as I mentioned, was with this new company, ABC Paramount. I had this appointment. I went up jeans T shirt, you know, walked in scared to death, sat down and played I think, Diana, don't gamble with love and tell me that you love me in.
His office, right right there, right there, in his office in New York.
Okay, in New York, all twenty minutes and you said, okay, wor's your parents that they're not here? I said, no, I just flew down this little hotel. Blah blah blah. Well I want to sign you, but you're too young. Parents here is signed it. I said, well, call them, so we get on the phone. They call. My parents were stunned, you know. They were saying, let them get them out of his system. Go down, yeah, blah blah blah,
right right right, and they fly in. Next day there was Sam Clark, who was the president of the company.
And which which company are we talking about? We're talking about a record company.
ABC Paramount, which was a new division of the ABC television network.
It was starting outble.
So now ABC starts a label, ABC Paramount. My parents are in a room less again, six suits all around me, you know, and our people, the press bubble. They're all excited, and I'm sitting there. My dad dot my mom's in shock. And we signed a contract and they gave me hundred dollars a month to write, and I was going to remain there until we recorded. My parents go home. I stay at the President Hotel. I think my uncles down there. Somebody's watching over me. And I got up at two
o'clock in the afternoon late. I supposed to be there at one Capital Studios up front, and I'm freaking out, and I will run from forty some street about six blocks to a Capital studio and I walk in. Now you have to understand and try to explain it to somebody of the newer artists, say initially Michael Buble.
I love Michael.
Therefore, in the beginning, still I am that you're in a room and you're with top session musicians who are looking at these lead sheets and arrangements, and you're in this room. You need to study the arrangement. You rehearse for maybe let's say thirty minutes to get the vibe and where you're going. And you walk into a small studio a booth where they have a one cor inch tape, two reels on a corrage tape, and now you're putting
a booth and this tape starts to roll. We're not where we are today with technology and all the stuff that we know is out there. You can cut a hit in your bedroom with your macans whatever, and you start singing, and you're singing with sheer energy, passion and scared of death, trying to adapt to this concept of you'll keep recording till you get what you want or what they want. And I must have done twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen takes and that was it. Now if there was something you want to fix, and I try to tell a lot of people to that, you take a razor blade, we would cut the tape, take a piece of scotch tape, put the scotch tape on the cut and that was your fix. Then you take it from there that you were done. Once you captured it, they put it on
a piece of plastic vinyl disc. They walk it over to Alan Freed, send it to a couple of Rarea stations, and you knew in forty eight hours if you had it it so here I am finally get Diana Don't Gamble with Love out Dick Clark wanted Don't Gamble with Love. Somebody turns it over to Diana and within a week you're booked on American Bandstand and you're on ed Solomon that fall, and there's your life.
There's your new life.
All these guys around you. You've got a new record company with an ABC television company that was not making money. They're just starting, but they were shipping a courier. Would take whatever money they earned off of Diana, which back then was a lot of money. They put it on an airplane with a courier, go out and pay the bills and lot spectus. My life changed right there.
I was wow, Wow, Wow.
The Slim Show. I'm in a studio where David Letterman right broad with right.
I used to study acting on the top floor there, right above that studio.
There you go. They say, the day before, Paul, you're going into Madison Square Gardens. We're not going to shoot it at the theater, small theater environment. I go to a rehearsal and I'm in this vast space Madison Square Garden my first big network show. But I used to watch as a kid every Sunday. That's all you did was watch that until Mickey Mouse Club came along and
television was that solo. Sure, I'm on the floor and I'm rehearsing and the band was like they could have been a city, and I have to deal with all these elements. What I tell you was I scared. We go on the air and I'm singing Diana in Madison Square Garden on my first of many at Sullivan shows.
Tell us now about this Beatles connection. How did you meet them? How did you convince them to come conquer America? Which actually affected your career? Didn't it?
Well? After Diana? I have a string of hits, I've got it kind of someone of the foundation of working coming along as an entertainer, and I'm living in an international life. I mean, Japan five HiT's a big parade, and I'm sensing this international career. At seventeen eighteen nineteen, I'm going to Europe. I'm constantly going to Europe, etcetera, etcetera.
So I'm in France, the country that I embraced at a young age, loving it, And I go to see a friend of mine who's working in the classic theater of the Olympia Theater been there forever and still there. And I go to see my buddy who's headlining. And as was it was back then, you'd have an opening act or a few opening acts and that was pretty much,
you know, the presentation all over the world. So when and I'm waiting for my friend to come on and I hear that is a differments at No Sicknuvau group Lore Engeler and set it does see who plays, and you know, because because people they're watching an these guys come out with the hair and with the thing and suits and shirtain times. But they've got you know, there's that new vibe and I'm looking as a musician, but wow, and they're doing covers. They're a cover band. Okay, I'm saying,
look at those guys, man, that's kind of cool. So from that I meet them. Then I go to England and I'm you know, I took Thank god I took pictures. You know, nobody could believe it. And we'd become friendly in the sense of that when I was in England, i'd see them, we hang and you talk and they would tell me, oh, we love this and you know you Chuck Berry and we copied this. And I'm really I'm looking at myself as you know, I'm not toning
a guitar. I'm not doing what they were in terms of emulating Americans and and and there was none of those, None of the English bands or artists were on the hit for It was all American American artists. So we get to know each other and they say, we want to do what you're doing, you know, we want to
publish and you want to write. And it was a great man because I really like you guys, and you had that energy that you anyway, I come back home from these trips and I talked to my agents in New York, Norman Weiss and Sid Bernston at general artists. I have to remember, we're in a time, in a space then where it wasn't a media driven society. It was radio anything you want to hear from Europe? Yeah, Blenn in a month later, you know, you knew nothing. It was all tell EXAs and you were short on
what was happening at the time. And I come home and bring records home and until Weise and Bernstein, these guys, the Beatles, a bit of them, we talk about Beatles still was emerging, that whole English family. Finally, whatever button I pushed your them. They flew to England and met with this guy, Brian Epstein, who was their manager, and one thing led to another. They bring them over and like me, only like me in terms of the only thing you could do. I'm on Sullivan earlier in my life.
Their for a show at Sullivan, Well the rest is hitty, won't deliver it. They take off. But it took me a while to convince these guys that this guy, these people are real. So then the floodgates, and I was happy with it because prior to that, you know, we were embraced, we those of us doing the pop music, et cetera, by our friends, and nobody else liked this. Parents didn't like us, Madison Avenue didn't like us, but
we had our little following. When the Beatles hit Madison Avenue opened up, everything changed in everybody's mind in terms of pop music. So I call it pop music, and I think that for that. Well, of course, the fritsh Invasion hits, and some of us are off the radio. I'm off of my label. I buy back all my stuff for two hundred and fifty dollars. I go to a Victor and I get into a new group with this company. Because I would travel all over the world
and my record company had trouble with distributing. But when i'd walk down the street in Italy or wherever i'd see RCA Victor washing machine. It's dost wherever I live make and so that's all I want to be with. So minute with RCA. And that was the next days of my life.
Wow, let's skip ahead now and get into your relationship with the rat Pack and meeting Frank Sinatra and being friends and writing my way.
And so there we are, Bobby, Darren, Frank, all of us. We're growing, we're getting ogre. I'm mastering the songwriting thing as best I can. But we're not oblivious to the fact that we may not be around because we had heard and we were pretty much taught that this can't last forever.
What year is this now?
Late fifties, gotcha, because we all heard of this place called Las Vegas. Elvis went in, didn't like it. I said, okay, I want to I want to be like those guys. I want to learn to be an entertainer. And fifty eight fifty nine they said, look, you can't headline there, but we want you to work with Sophie Tucker. I'd seen her, but I Sophie Tucker, but you know, I admired the fact that she was in veteran and had some good reputation. Long the short, I'm performing with Sophie
Tucker in the late fifties Las Vegas. What they'd never seen was there. I am this kid with Sophie Tucker and every kid that was in school in Las Vegas. I guess in this you know city that wasn't the city. Then shows up and they're going nuts in this twelve hundred seat clubroom and purso vi, Tucker's getting pissed. Put in a very gracious manner, where she my boy, I want you to close the show. So they made me close the show. She'd go on first to keep the
kids in the room, get me quiet. And that was my first taste of Vegas. Now I had been there. I was like Darren and Avalon. We loved these guys, Frank Sinatra, we'd loved swing. We couldn't do it. So what we did is we'd put acts together with big band and say that's our goal. We got to work the clubs. So I started late sixties at the Copacabana in New York City. That was your kind of your entree to Vegas. Now you're in her environment with a mob whatever you want to call them, the boys, they
ran everything. But it was the record business, music cement business, the nightclubs, and they were great to work for, gentlemen right in an industry that was in his infancy stage. So from Sophie Tucker, from the Kopa where everything went well for me, I wind up with these guys that I idolized and antilitated to be around. Call the wrap round,
and I'm working in Sansotel. Now here you are. I got this kid still maybe early twenties, sitting in steam rooms, nude, looking at these guys, nude, having trouble with eye contact, not believing I'm in a room with these guys. And it went from there, you know, getting to know them, adoring Sammy Davis who became my friend, Adoring Sinatra, who was very gracious with me teaching me. They're befuddled in a sense on what's this kid doing on our world?
You know, kids selling lots of records, making money for the guys. And they sloped me in. And then I'm stepping up. You know, I'm a hit. My act is good and blah blah blah. I'm learning my trade. I'm learning how to be a performance. So all the sixties I'm with these guys, but I'm younger and I don't know how to approach them and go. You know, I got a song for you because I'm still you know, coming off the longest day. You've got tonight chill theme. So the credit is getting broader to one day at
the Fox and Blue Hotel, great hotel. You'd work Vegas and then you'd wind up at the Fountain Blue. Nothing like it, that style, it at the class and.
Then that's my that's Miami. You're talking about.
Miami, Florida. Yeah, so between Vegas and Miami, Florida, that was your hang spot with these guys, and here I am growing up with the rap pack. If you will, do one day when Sinatra was doing a film in Miami, I'm working in the Laurent room at the Fountain Blue. Mid sixties. He's doing a film called Lady and Ice. I think Lady and Ice, which with the guys that we worked for, could have been a documentary. You know, we were still working for the boys. I'm having dinner
one night. I think he was married to me at Barrel, who was twenty one, and he was you know, tick a high number. But he's going through that dilemma he's going through, wanting to retire. The rat pack is over, and he's being very open with me as to I think I've had enough, and I'm saying to myself, he's gonna quit. He's gonna do one more album with Don Costa, my guy who I introduced a Sinatra, and I never
wrote a song for him. One thing leads to another within that creative process, and this was a spiritual moment for me after hearing that at the Fountain, where we had such great times together. Once I get back to New York, twelve midnight, sitting there in front of my typewriter, got still type from my days of school, seventy words, but I start metaphorically, and now the end is near, and so I faced the final curtain, all about him, as if you were writing it, finish it. At five
in the morning, I called him in Vegas. I think it was at Caesar's. One thing leads to another the next night because he said, get out here with it, blah blah blah. I'm in his rest room. I play in my way. A couple of months later, I get a phone call. He's in Los Angeles at a record studio. Kid that was my nickname. Well, we all had nicknames. Sammy was smoking the Bear, Dean was Veno. Everyone that hung around with them on your bathlob in the health clubs.
You had your name of that. He says, kid, listen to this, and he took the phone. He put it next to a speaker, and I heard My Way for the first time. Well, the guy that was retiring and quitting now stayed ten more years, changed my life as a writer, my flotos and changed it for him. You know the rest of the story.
He recorded your song without you knowing it.
Well, I knew he was doing it. I was in the dressing room, played it for him Costa's in bo. Two months later, he calls me from a studio with Costa. They had just recorded it. No one else has heard it yet, and they played it to me over the phone.
That famous recording that everybody knows that you You heard that over the phone over the.
Phone, LA to New York.
Wow.
Yeah, And I cried. I had happy tears.
I'll bet you how did my Way change your life? Did it change your life immediately? What happened?
Well, it changed my life in the moment because I knew I had something. You know I had enough under my feet as a song guy to know this was something pretty special, right. It changed his life that he decided say the business though, he went into retirement and then I wrote let Me Try Again, which was his
comeback song. But it changed his you know, I humbly submit it changed mind certainly because you know, everything prior to that was love songs and you know, stuff that was in the growth pattern of working at my craft. It was that unusual and different song that it changed both our lives. Absolutely.
You must have been flooded with offers for the top artists in the world to co write with you or for you to write material for them. I'm sure that happened. How did you handle that?
Well, yes, all of a sudden it changed, and that everybody wanted to write with you, but they wanted to write another My Way. Does the work like that? You're not going to have fifty My Ways songs? But certainly opened up the the respect in the gravitas because prior to that I was in the niche of writing for my age and the song was so different in the environment of what was making it. Then you know, Hendricks
had opened it up. There was rock, there was the folks stuff that was happening, But here was this different type of material for the guy. That was the guy, and nobody else could be Sinatra. He was the guy. So yeah, I started writing with people. That kind of came a little later, but what it did was it gets me. The record deal happened with Jubilation, Skry centered jubilation, Do I Love You with Donna Fargo, number one country record, having My Baby one Man Woman, I don't like to
sleep alone, number one records again. So it opened the door and the attention to wait a second, my way, and now the seventies with this stuff, so with writing with others, and with the acceptance, if you will in a very fickle business, well really you learn at an early age nobody really cares each yet and spitch out. That's that what changed my life. It gave me a new CREDENTI m then I'd let me try again with him, and I was writing She's a Lady, and all that stuff started to happen. We Uh.
I'm a huge Tom Jones fan, grew up watching his weekly show and he'd come out and go crazy with his dance routines and his great vocals and the girls would go crazy.
Yeah, I was there, and.
It's not unusual to be loved by anyone. And he would start out the show with that tell us about working with Tom Jones.
So I was with the same agency as Tom Joneson and he and the Humperdinck were probably a third of the gross earnings of this agency. And I'm working in Vegas, and of course they were familiar in my way. They're familiar with my career. Like he wanted to meet Presley because you want to meet him. I wanted to meet Tom telling me. So we all got to know each other, and we got to know each other well the way
they come to my home. We'd set up and watch movies because I'd get these uh movie reels from the movie companies. Would sit till nine ten in the morning, freaking champagne, having a good time. So we lock in, we're playing tennis together. I'm in England, I'm on Tom's show, and it gets to well, what about me write me a song? That's a lady. I finished the show in England,
and I spent a lot of time with him. When I think I started and on the back of a dinner menu on tw away because that was the carrier. We'd go back and forth on so a yets she's a lady out there. I try to capture the vibe of this sex idol. And he never had a number one record in the United States. Never. She's a Lady was his one and only. So we write that, and of course we rock, you know, we lock in, we hang and we're all together. We're friends for many many years.
They record a few of my songs, you know, from popoll We made it happen. And I had a great relationship with them and their manager for quite a few years. And Tom's a great sinner.
Now she's a fantastic voice.
Yeah, and here we are today. He's still doing what he's doing, and I'm doing what I'm doing an ingle.
Wow, I'm just overwhelmed. Let me ask you this, Do you prefer being the songwriter or the performer or is it a mix of both for you?
From a security standpoint, I like being the writer because it's a fallback position, and I think that the kind of gravitas that comes with it, you know, back to the Beatles. We want to write, you want to that's a stable kind of consciousness that you live in. The performing thing was morphine and morphing. You know, you're constantly
learning and you're constantly getting comfort zones. But you in front of people, you're writing, you're by yourself from there, on your own time schedule, if you will, and you can just sit there and take your time and kind of wait for it to happen. But the performing is fun. Right, twenty years, I've enjoyed, you know, feeling that I knew what I was doing, connecting with an audience, with a body of work. So the answer to the question is both. I would venture to guess that if I didn't have
the gift of writing, I don't think we'd be talking today. Frankly, I don't think anybody would was interested, nor were they to write for a fifteen year old kid in an industry that was growing. No one would have the state of mind to say, okay here that you're going to say I'm so young and your old, or you're gonna go I had they called in popular or put your
head on I'm just a look. Those all came from my feelings as a teenager, right, So the writing world for me was the most important to keep up, right, you know, I didn't really start feeling confident until well this day tonight's your thing where people started looking at me different, you know, kids growing, you know. So the performing thing was the roll of the dice. It was working, but I didn't feel as secure doing that as I did as a writer.
Let me ask you this from songwriter to songwriter, and I've never sold anything to anybody, But do you have any control after you give the song to an artist about the final product when you hear it? Do you are you surprised? Are you positive about what you hear? Or are you like, oh, you know, maybe we should edit it and this, you know, give them some direction, or you just give the song away?
And good question. Actually, you don't always have control. Once you submitted a demonstration, a demo, we call right field the song depending on the artist Sinatra, I gave him a piano demo. She's a Lady was had some rhythm
elements to it. Once you give it to certain established artists, whether it was Skrysander, Jubilation Lady with Tom the Sinatra stuff, you're really trusting and putting it in the hands of professionals, right, You're putting it in the hands people that know how to do good, putting it in the hands of those that have realized there's something great they've been gifted as an artist, and that seems to always work for them.
So the answer is there is a wall that once it leads you, you have to trust what their perception is and their talent group that sits down and vibes what fits their artists. Now, I've always approached it as a casting person in a motion picture. You know what you're writing for Tom, you know his capability, his name, you know the way Sinatra sing. So I'm emulating when you're writing. So you're type cast. You're trusting when you give it away, and you sit and wait for the
phone call. Now, when I heard Sid Vicious singing my way, Mari Scossia calls that I'm using my film, I was taken aback and I didn't know whether I wanted to relinquish the rights for the usage till I woke up a few days later. I said, what who am I to sit here and judge what someone across the waters was feeling on this song that meant something to do him and realizing he went to Paris and redid an amplifier and had a jazz and he did it. The
way he felt it. I didn't judge it. I said, you know what, I did the honesty in that, but I'm going to grant that now. There's no way I could have perceived what he was going to do with it, and ultimately I accepted it. So you're really sitting there hoping that as part of this team, that you're going to hear what comes back to you. In most cases, I like what came back to me. I never you know, when Donnie Osmond was they want to do popul Love, they wanted to do Lonely Boy, and he did a
couple of my tunes. I accepted it. You know, I heard it the way that they perceived it. And I can't really tell you that there's ever a large percentage of treatments that I didn't like. You know, I can't really say, and you don't have a say. As I said earlier, to go elbowing around. Everybody said doing this now. When I wound up with Buddy Holly, I had no idea what Jacob's the arrangers producer. The song that started
on a kind of guitar. You know, he talked the chords and was simply, you know, very young and there you go and bathing he and I'm embulating him, and hear the guitarist. Now we get to New York. There's this huge string section and a big orchestra. We got here, but do what I was doing? He wanted a big band, he wanted strings, something he'd never done. He was on his solo career now left a bad situation, and this was going to be his new sound. So that threw
me at first. But I got it, you know, I got the genius of Jacobson and where they were going with that. But that was a differential from the kind of demo that I.
Do you know you're writing a hit? When you're writing a hit, do you know it's a hit? Does it come to you quickly? Does it download from the muse instantly and it's a rush to get it down? Is that how it works for you?
We'd all be richer in this business if we knew that. You don't really know other than being a professional. You don't really know other than when you know you've got something special. But the journey ahead is how do you capture it right? Right? I had a feeling on my way, I had a feeling uncheasy, lady, But you don't really know. You know when you've got something you like, you know, something that's has the merit, you know, something that could be.
But till the process is finished, you right. I've sat with so many writers, and I've been blessed with all kinds of great writers, and you sit there and you know you've got something you know with it britback Rock, Michael McDonald. I mean, all the guys I live with, you don't know that you get there, you don't know it's finished. No.
Interesting. I'm actually going to Nashville the middle of next month to co write with the Warner Chapel artists. They want me to come down and co write with them. I've never co written. Can you give me any advice on how that process is? Because I've never tried to do it, and now I'm getting in the arena with people that are actually known and gifted and all that.
So, if the vibe and everything in life is that chemical attachment with someone, well, you're looking for a relationship, you're looking for a business venture. You should know within an hour, hour and a half maybe soon you're feeling for this person. You should know whether there's a compatibility. You should know what you share in terms of music
where you're all coming from. Then it could be a great process because now you have this balancing off of each other and mutual respect for each other that you know, what instrument do you play? Your piano player, guitar player.
Hi write on guitar.
So you're going to the right place Nashville, every three yards probably with guys that have guitars and piano, and you're going to know within that first couple of hours. Okay, you gotta be relaxed and you got to be open minded to sit there and go it. What do we want to write about? Where's the book? What's the key line here? Where are we going with? You need to now morphed with someone that you respect and you have a feeling for to get that initial idea to where
you ultimately want to go. Now that may take you a day. You may get it in six hours. You may get it in three days once you've locked into it. But it can be an incredible experience working with someone that brings to the table what you've been to the table, taking the heavy load off of you and having this broad spectrum of creative foundation to work from. So it can be very cool, but the first couple of hours
communicating that you know each other is very important. Now you could find also that you're going to go nowhere. You know. It was a different thing for me writing with Michael Jackson because he didn't have an instrument, you know, I had to sit and lay cords and do but I heard the talent with his sounds. But I mean it was a sound with it right right. But I knew within the first couple of hours once we found her kind of place with each other, because something was
going to come out of it. And I had his last three HiT's you know this is it? Love never felt so good and the Drake record It Don't Matter to Me. That was the mostable experience I've ever had to write with someone. It was with Michael Jackson.
Unbelievable. My wife is going to die when she hears this. She's a huge Michael Jackson fan and she loves those songs. She knew I was talking to you today. She wanted to like sit in and ask you questions, but I said, you know.
It was an interesting artist. You know, I knew him as a kid with his family that came to my show in Vegas. They grew up with that whole era of sinopter myself. So when I finally got in a room with him together in my home in Carmel, it was like a heartwarming and it seemed to grow up and see where he's coming from, where he was intellectually dealing with the business. So that was a pretty cool journey for me. What are you than songs?
I'll bet let's talk a little bit and about your post cast. How'd that come about? What's it about?
Well, you know, for the last few years, do a podcast. You know, you've got great stories, blah blah blah that kind of Yeah. I let my son in law carry it, Jason Bateman, who's very successful in that world. Oh yeah, And I just you know, I didn't have time, you know, I was traveling. I didn't have interest raply, you know. I told my stories and went on Stern and I've done all of them, and I'd like to leave it
at that. One thing leads to another. And someone, I think heard me on Bateman and it led to iHeart Radio and my buddy Skip Ronson was a friend. We talked every day. Someone came up with the notion after hearing me on a few of these that yeah, you should do a podcast, and you you know, have to see Skip and I hang out at lunches and what have you. Why don't you guys do it together. When I looked at it, you know, look, I'm not gonna make a zillion dollars. I'm gonna have a lot of fun.
And with my buddy, I could take an hour or two out of the day. If I can inspire someone with it, if I can in any way give them some kind of a look into life of writing or whatever, yeah, let's do it. So it was that quick, you know, it was just a bunch of people coming together, putting it together and letting it Skip saying, yeah, I'm going to do it because you know, I don't think that sensing he was thinking of. It came together quickly in
an environment where everybody got a podcasts. We're all in the same boat, right, So we knew what we were going to draw from from our friends and everything. And I had some time to do it. You know, I don't work. I don't want to work two hundred days a year like I used to. I tour fifty to seventy or five days. I've got my other stuff and I can fit this thing because I do it from my house where I am. And that was it, and we have good Now we've got Bill Burrow was on
the other night. It was a buddy and it was just hilarious. Jason did it. We've got a whole list of great people who know how to talk about their life and their experience and we're having fun with it.
You're gonna You're gonna have the President of France on.
Uh yeah, the guy I'm talking to that was a pr guy because I was given an award, but it was just quit. So now I've got it. Was a new guy. You know, politicians never that's a whole other world. But I don't want to be a part of which we all have to respect and the fact that I just deal with their lives or not. But yeah, we'll ultimately get him. We've got Carlos Slimp going on from Mexico. Wow. We've got a lot of insent people that Kimmel we got, we get commitments from people.
Yeah, well good. I wish you the best of luck with all of that. And it is it is the easiest job and the best job I've had in my life is doing a podcast. It's it's really quite fun and I heart's great and the great support, so I wish I wish you the best with that.
What made it easy was the unknown that hits you and then the reality of what you're dealing with and the whole team that I've worked with that are just amazing to work with and makes much. It makes life easier, you know, to get on base right away, that revolving door to get to where you want to.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and ask you if I could send you a song sure that I wrote that I think you would.
Like well, I'm sure I would like it. The challenge today for guys like me and everyone in the business is what do you do with them? You know, everybody's writing there on stuff.
If you like this song, yeah, we'll figure out what to do with it. But if you like it, if it does something for you, just the thought of you listening to one of my songs.
Did it? The butler did it? Now you're back? If I boom, so you go from there. You know what you deal is with clarity, transparency, honestly and go. I can do it. I don't know who can do it. I don't know if I'm doing an album, maybe it should go here, you know, because the music business changed so drastically. I mean, I feel it really has for people out there. He's not like years ago you could get you know where you're going. You get a place.
You're probably going to the right place in Nashville because they still have a channel to artists that don't write what most of them do well. This possibility of getting a artist to do a song today, I don't even see a lot of artists wanted to do CDs or to contribute anymore because it's changed. You got these artists that years ago you had a promotion team to make a great album, and I'm excited you do an album.
Today there's no promotion team. They're not spending so I could list to a bunch of people to put albums up. They don't do forty thousand CDs not good. No, So with the streaming and everything going on, it's where do you go with a song? Ooh, you give it? You know at the end of the day, who I'm going to give the songs?
Right? I think you give them away. I think with the world of social media, it's like you can't really sell them, you know. The money's in the touring. I mean, if you want to earn a living, it's touring and merch and that's it.
Yeah. Well I got a song brewing now with Tiger Oh wow. I mean he's got in his studio. I think he likes it. We'll see. But you keep trying, you keep doing. But like you say, all artists make their money on the road. Right, the music you've got, artificial intelligence is going to change our lives so drastically. It's not here, but wait, the grand process next three years change lives in all occupational films, and it's going to change in the music business, film, etc.
I think AI is going to I think we're we're looking at massive copyright and infringement issues and lawsuits coming down the pub.
Try to prevent that. Right theoretically, okay, but it's too big and there's too many power bases that will sit down with the right people and say, okay, guys, look you can't do this. These are intellectual rights. You can't do that. There's a lot of money that have been made, Let's do the right thing. They don't want two thousand figuratively losses coming out them, you know, just they won't you have to accept change. You have to be optimistic. I live through change all my life. You hang in,
you keep on keeping on, you take the clothes. I hope it changes for the best, and it will. I'm worried about the guys that are going to be able to work and other occupations. Forget about collarge. You have people that will lot of jobs, and the governments and the corporations will have to restructure. Tell everybody to stay home, work two days a week. I'm just giving you. We'll give you money. They'll go and then's spend it. And you'll see this globe now with where we have to
contend with China and Europe and Russia. There'll be this huge change wrapped around artificial intelligence. Let's hope we use it right and let's hope everybody survives with it. But it's coming. You will. You're seen in medicine. You've got all kinds of new applications with AI and technology. It's unheard of and it's coming and it will happen, and it's a wonderful thing.
Yeah, which is why live entertainment will grow in popularity because they won't be able to get it anywhere else. Nothing will be real in their lives except live theater and live music and live this and live that. So I'm hopeful for that. Would you do us the honor of playing rapid fire with us? The thought of playing rapid fire with you. It's something we do with all of our guests, and it's just sort of give basic gilmore questions and I ask you what your preferences are
and you can answer if you want to. Would you do that for us?
I would love to do it. Yeah, just the questions, but go ahead.
Yeah, okay, here's the first question. How do you like your coffee?
I like my coffee. I have another sugar guy. I use honey, a gabi. I use oat milk and black of course. I like the French press or I put it in. I do the purest form of coffee. I do coffee minimum of four times a day, maybe or because I think when I'm an avid reader on all fronts, that coffee is healthy player. So I drink it right right too. I've spoken to doctors about it because I'm a health free and that's how I like it. I don't generally do shots, but I do cups of black coffee.
I done properly out of the right mechanisms.
Great. Next question, are you team Logan, Team Jess or team Dean? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?
I can intelligently answer that question.
Good. Would you rather work with Michelle or Kirk Michelle? Why? I like Michelle because he's Canadian, He's from Montreal.
I feel a chemistry with Michelle.
H What would you order at Luke's Diner.
Or a Hamburger and a Milkshire?
Who would you rather hang out with? Paris or Lane?
Paris boy?
I like Paris, Harvard or Yale.
With the state of those universities today, look, colleges are going through some real transitions. The whole education system to me is little frail. I don't like a few things going on. But they're both great. They're both great going into the legal field obviously, Harvard.
Would you rather attend a dar event with Emily or a town meeting with Taylor?
I think a town meetings too.
Gilmore girls character that you would want as a roommate?
Wow, you know, listen, roommate girlfriend, wives, one room. That's a serious.
Question, serious man, who do you think?
Wow? Give me three choices?
Okay, right? No, I know I knew that let me see, Well, you like Paris, So let's say, uh, Paris or Babet or Laurel I Paris, Babet or Laurel I. Sally Strauthers played Babet, Paris, Paris again, Paris for the wind.
The city of Paris has been good to me, and I'm going with Paris.
Okay, Uh, something in your life you are all in on.
I'm all in empathy for others, being non judgmental, and I'm all in in on trying to constantly institute the necessity of love for one another the people. I think there's a some kind of cure based around if everybody can feel more love than they are and empathy and kindness. Now that's traveling through the world where I see all
of the adversity, the treatment of people. It's never going to always be perfect, but I think if people could start learning a little more but kind, empathetic, and show some love, it's going to be a little easier on everybody. Because I've never seen the world in this state that it's in right now. I think that there's some pain ahead of us here until certain things are resolved, And the only thing ultimately that's going to inch you ahead
is feeling empathy, kindness and love for people. Other than that, it's going to get worse, you know, because it's just too many unresolved things that are going on, you know, for my liking, that are not making it an easy world to live in.
I have one last question, and I thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this. Are you aware, based on just one song that you wrote, My Way, of the impact the positive impact that that has had on literally billions of people since you have written that song, and it will continue to positively impact people in a very positive way so that they can show that empathy and love and get strength from that song. Are you aware of the impact of that song?
I learned very early in my creative life. My life is a it's what I do. You sit in the room and you create even when you perform, but you take my way. As you mentioned, there's a large black hole between me sitting here today with you and what people are embracing out there with my Way or whatever song. But let's use my way. You don't fully realize ever, with that black hole in front of you, how you've
affected people. Where you get a sense of it when you're performing up there and you hit that song in your lineup, and you see the tears, You see the reaction of people, you see how they react to you at the end of it. Only then do you get a sense. You get a sense someone someone comes up to you. You get a sense when you get a letter from someone that's dealing with someone that does not have the health them, that's their brother is on death
row in a prison. You eclectically get these responses. But to say that I fully get it, No, absolutely not. I don't think any of us do it. You know, I was at a dinner prior to the other night with a top neurosurgeon in the country. I didn't know him, he didn't know me, and it came out within the dinner. You know how my Way was his song, he said. But I'm gonna tell you something. I will tell a
lot of people. When I was operating in the seventies, and I would go in and take a tumor the size of an orange or whatever out of someone's head. As I would pull it out, I would sing, having my Baby. No, you know, I've never heard much about my song having my Baby, other than the obvious meeting. But it's like pulling a baby, he said absolutely, and everyone there was in the court, he said, don't do it anymore because they're now younger, they don't know the song.
But I would be singing having my baby. And you know, it's kind of back to what you said that was such an impact on me the other day. I'd say, I can't get my hair around that. You'd be pulling a cancers as someone's edit, you're singing and having my baby says, So you never know, you just ever know the full impact. Now, you take a country like the Philippines where they take their music seriously. I know for a fact because they're just an amazing country in terms
of how they embrace music. Singing. I think three people are dead because in a karaoke karaoke bar they sang my Way the wrong way and they shot him. If you look it up, you actually read the content in the event they shoot people for singing my Way the wrong way, look at the extreme of that, and it's been written up. It's you. Well, we're done. You'll google it and you'll see I will who got shot in the Philippines and a carrier. That's not the effect that I want my song to have. On anyway.
It has been a pleasure, it really has. I feel like I can quit podcasting now because I've done the interview, and but I but I won't.
You'll keep doing it because you do it well, and you're going to go to Nashville and you're gonna do that well, and you're going to constantly feel what music and the magic there has and always see conversations what it does for you. Because if you have a passion, it's something in life. But you're so ahead of the game because most people, no, some people don't have a passion and a commitment to what they're doing. And that's always sad to me because you have to have that
in your life to have a fulfilled life. You know, I need that. So you're fortunate and I'm fortunate.
Yeah, I agree. Thank you for sharing your stories. Thank you for your time. It has been an honor.
And just get get Paris in the room with me somewhere.
I will, I'll see what I can do. I'll send you that song. Have a have a great rest of your day, Good luck with the podcast. Thank you again.
Well, I'm at a Broadway show that I'm dealing with here today. We got the money and now I have to sit and go through the waiting process. They want done in six months. So that's that's a new one, and that's a huge hurtle. It's a one a one time shot. Can't make a mistake there. So that's where I'm going from.
You Broadway show, just just scoring a Broadway show?
Okay, story my life?
Oh is that it's going to be about you.
Yeah, I'm starting at fifteen and we're down to the list of songs and I'm dealing with writers.
Now have you seen the Springsteen Broadway Show.
Yeah, I've saw it on the Netflix.
I think, Yeah, I'm watching this a full out.
Show cast, full deal. We've got to get two actors, maybe three one. We can add it in at fifteen, sixteen and right mid twenties, and then it depends. We'll probably end it my way.
What a great idea, What a great idea.
We'll see how this idea mars.
But I mean, just to stage all those big songs, what a great idea. Oh man, I wish you luck with that one.
I lived unluck. I'll always take luck.
All right, Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen. Paul Anka, we're talking about one of the giants of the past sixty, sixty five, even seventy years in the entertainment field. An honor to talk to you all right, Thank you, Take care, hey everybody, and talk forget. Follow us on Instagram at I Am all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.