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So Harvey, that's cool tune.
Listen. I'm just it's in a world where we have so much variety, whether it be rap music or ed m or singer songwriter ballads, acoustic music. Something happens when you kind of hear a raucous rock and roll, you know, Chuck Berry inspired riff, even as bumper music. Yeah, it kind of things start jumping a bit, yeah, and it builds. I haven't felt that way on the Rolling Stones albums. For the live thing is a different scenario. I haven't felt, you know, maybe close to them in the audio world.
I'm talking product for a very long time, and maybe I'm being maybe I'm rejoining the fan club a bit, you know. And I guess you feel the same way too.
I do.
And what I caught myself doing was hitting replay on that tune.
I'm like, I want to hear it again.
And.
I do want to amplify one other thing. And not because I'm a child of Hollywood, but when the Stones come to town and record in Hollywood, like some of the new record on Sunset Boulevard at the studio, I think a lot of people forget maybe that's my job is on the expedition that literally, I don't know, ninety percent of their recordings from nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty seven we're done on Sunset Boulevard, where a lot
of the new record was done at this studio. They did a lot of their seminal albums with the producer Andrew lou Goldham at RCAA Studios, and then they did Bridges to Babylon in the same facility. And so there is the influence of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard. And I mean,
I've always said that the Rolling Stones records. Could you imagine if the albums you cherish from sixty four to sixty seven, that little block, imagine if they were recorded in New York instead of the flexibility and the environmental graphic of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard. The setting, the bioregional environment does play a part in what we eventually hear, and I think some of that has seeped in this new recording.
You know, you remind me of the conversation around the Tammy Show.
Well, I'm the expert on that one, I will believe.
Yeah, so I'm going to turn you on that because I think it's still a lot of people don't know about this, but it's still a little bit like in the biopic with James Brown and you know, as legend goes, the band was still in nineteen sixty four when the first toured America, they hadn't even had a hit right on American radio.
They were kind of obscure.
I think didn't Bill Wyman or somebody describe it as an absolute disaster the first tour or the other you know, there's a.
Lot of myths about that. And listen, I was twelve years old across the street from the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, you know, at a surfboard shop. I did not know what was going down, although I sure noticed a lot of girls wearing short skirts. I was too busy with my surfer pal, longboarder Peter Piper, buying paraffin wax for our con surfboards. I actually had a Macaha skateboard. I
didn't know what was going on. But in the fifty years of reporting and interviewing everybody associated with the Tammy Show, director, producer, band members, choreographers, you know, and Sting references it in one of his songs as well with the Police. Let's just be really clear that it was a two day
shoot with a rehearsal. It was sort of, shall we say, like all Hollywood movies, because I've been a lot of film sets, it's shot out of sequence, and so you know, even the order of what we see on DVD now or on TV, that's not with the exception of the hosts Jan and Dean. I mean, sure, you know the Stones, James Brown, the Stones had to follow James Brown. But you know there was an hour to wait, or there was a lot of break time to set up equipment
and things like that. It isn't this situation as perceived by all of us. What counts is the product that impacts us and the genius work of Jack Nietzsche as the musical director of The Tammy Show. I just have been in the studio with a wonderful guitarist, Don Peak. I did ten years with Ray Charles. He's on a lot of the big the Jackson five records. He did many years with Barry White. Don Peak is in both the Tammy Show Band in the orchestra. He's also in the Big T and T Show, which is kind of
this sister element to the Tammy Show. So I have talked extensively with these people. And the last time I was on your show, when I was touting my book on music documentaries, Rock Set doc you know, we we we talked about the Tammy Show and some of these things. And so I've made it a point to talk to the participants, and you know, they have their own stories. The truth is often in the middle, but it does work.
And both Mick Jagger, you know, has told the story that he actually had to sort of do some ministry work with James Brown when it was explained to James Brown listen to them, you know, you're going to be kind of we're going to be kind of following you. And even Nick said, you know, it's kind of shot out of a sequence. It's going to be a put
together project. I don't think James Brown was having any of that, but I actually think and I've talked to Jack Nietzschee, you know, the late Jack Nietzschee extensively about the Tammy Show, and he thought James Brown opening if you want to use that term for the Rolling Stones or them following his act. Oh, if James was an act, it was life on stage that he thought it inspired
the Rolling Stones to take it to another level. And and you know, for all of us as consumers, guess what we like both of them, James Brown and the Rolling Stones and the Motown Acts and janed Dean, And it's such a time capsule of a rock and roll, isn't it.
Well.
I will go over the old ground that we tackled last time, but I will say what I like most about the story, sorry, is that Mick Jagger got has come up. And if that part of the story is true of James Brown telling Mick Jagger follow that because he knows that, you know, Jagger had been ripping off a lot of his moves and nobody did it better than the original hardest working man at show business. So I mean, I look at that and I say, I
hope that part of the story is true. I do know that, as you have said before in the past that.
I think maybe it wasn't you.
But so somebody said that, I mean, didn't they didn't they regret doing it? I mean, wasn't it Like many of the Stones performers were like, that was a huge mistake to try and go on that stage sort of but.
The interesting thing is the bands, everybody who participated. It was a package deal, and everybody got paid quite handsomely. In nineteen sixty four phase.
What would be a nineteen sixty four.
I think every person involved, I'm talking every act got twenty five grand each. Wow, they did surrender all the rights. They're talking about product television, sure, a movie exhibition.
That is a ton of money.
Back then, though, I was put together by GAC General Artist Corporation, kind of a booking agent. And so even shall we say, the other people on the band, the groups besides you know, the Stones and James Brown and the Motown Artists. So everybody got a nice payday. And here they are at the beach in southern California. So I don't think anybody regretted anything about that. And sometimes
when you have that baptism by fire. Look, the Stones got to I'm sure it helped fuel their records that they were recording on Sunset Boulevard at RCA right after that, or when they did extra touring and then the Stones and by the way, Mick Jagger had watched Little Richard probably thirty times on a nineteen sixty three tour with the everly brothers, Don Teak and I were talking about this, so he was already looking at Icontina Turner and motown music and Little Richard and of course you know he
went to the Apollo before or after to go see James Brown. He's never hidden the fact that the influences he wore on his sleeve, and eventually he became his own performer after soaking up the DNA of these legends.
But okay, let me just fundamentally, since you know the Tammy Show, and for people who don't, it's worth looking at and it's worth looking into because it's so fascinating. And do we ever agree on what exactly Tammy Tami?
Well? Teenage American Music International, that's kind of where it comes from. But I've interviewed the director, Steve Bender a couple of times, but you know, because I know his history and he went to LA High School and he's another native Angelino. I mean, Steve had worked on a show called Jazz Scene USA in like sixty and sixty one.
So his blocking techniques there is directorial style. It came from jazz as an improv, but he also knew how lights were working, and he knew to bring in uh the choreographer David Winters and also Tony Bassel, So there was choreography and dance and energy and impulse and and also it was so well done. Plus it was in a new kind of film stock called electrona vision, which
was short lived. It's if you've ever seen the movie Harlow, it was kind of a different the direct It was sort of like you shoot it on video and then you put it back to like film. It's a different kind of black and white film experience. It didn't last long due to it was kind of expensive, but that was something developed from radio state TV station KTLA out here. So the film stock is even it plays the part again like I was talking earlier about the studios and
room tone and environmental aspect. It even brings you in a little deeper maybe, although it's all been transferred now and highlighted on DVD and Blu ray, and it's a little different. But it was not your traditional shoot quick black and white concert footage of a rock and roll
band and lip sync. It really was a two and a half day kind of concert experience that we got to see in theaters and quick, and then it disappeared for a long time because there was no video outlets, there was no VCRs, there was no DVDs, and then it came back and now it's a really good discovery for anybody to see that era and.
To see Terry gar right dancing in the back, d bat and.
Man's in there too. There's it was a thriving, throbbing Los Angeles experience and it kind of bleeds into the things that Jack could would do the following year when he brought a shin dig on television, right, I mean it all comes from it. Yeah, I can see that all right, but correlation.
But is it not true then though, that the Stones insisted on going last, and that that's what the regret is, is that they they should have been more respectful of James Brown and the energy that he brought to a stage, regardless as you say, whether or not there was an hour's gap for resetting cameras and lights or whatever, that they recognize, even if the story is not true about you know, James Brown passing Mick Jagger and the Wings saying to him, yet go on top that that it
was still that was still the Stone's choice that they were the last act and as maybe at the time, they feel like they hadn't they really hadn't earned that yet.
Well, you know it, Partymie agrees with you with pardon me. Ben's to Jack Nietzsche, the musical director who knew the Rolling Stones and brought them in and said to Steve Bender, they're hot, They're going to be huge. They do roots music. And I think Jack told me more than once he suggested or determine the order, because he knew, let's start it off with some surf music or pop vocal, you know,
Jan and Dean. Let's take everybody through some other English groups early on during the pavement, Billy J. Kramer, Let's let the Motown artists, whether it be the Supremes or of course Martin Gay. Let's let Chuck Berry kick it off pretty early to set up the Stones, and Chuck Berry is their ancestral godfather. I think Jack really set it up that the Stones and management and their record label probably didn't have the clout or power in nineteen sixty four to demand this kind of stuff. I think
it just kind of worked out that way. But Jack Nietzsche saw the promise of the Rolling Stones very early, and you know, he probably liked to put them into a baptism by fire thing, and by the time they played the show, and it was taped, and by the time they started playing, they took off. And Jack Meetzsche's told me in two different books when the Stones appeared,
it was a new type of emotion. Now. I don't know if he was comparing or contrasting James, you know, James's gig, and James was otherworldly, but the Stones at least held their mud pretty much that it was not disaster. And I think as we look at it now, I'm just glad we have Brian Jones on screen and we can see that original band right at that moment.
Not stoned out of his mind like he was doing sympathy for the devil or whatever it was, that other thing that you could see him there.
It was quite passive show.
Yeah, let's just say it was passive. Okay, So that's the Tammy Show. Do you have photos in this book Rolling Stones icons from that period?
I didn't know.
I know there's a nineteen sixty four photos, but there were there was probably some rights issues where they couldn't license some things, but there are, you know, pictures from nineteen sixty four, and there are you know, pictures from the rock and roll circus, and you know some of their television appearances. But I think what happened with this book, and it happens largely I think with the Stones is we are maybe you and I are a bit different
in some people in your listenership. Somehow most of the Stones photos end up being live stage shots. Oh okay, you know, as opposed to because photographers and studios. You know, there weren't people weren't taking a lot of pictures of rock and roll bands in studios and sixty four they might have been a set person or somebody aligned with a television station. Nobody was carrying a lot of their
own photographers in that sixty three sixty four world. That's why we're very grateful when we see early motown apps and some of those people, because you don't see tons of the photos.
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