Bob Ezrin pt2

they wanted more recognition, they wanted more respect. They felt like I was too sort of in charge of that side of things, and I think that there was also uh, some disagreement amongst the different factions about what they were going to do as their next step. Anyway, it was just not comfortable for everybody, and it was clear to me on the first day of rehearsal that some people in the room were not happy to see me, and

that happens, you know, in life. Sometimes that happens. By the end of the day, I just realized that this was not going to be a happy experience, and um, I took Alice aside and said Uh, look, I I can't do this. And I called Jack Douglas, who had been working for me and doing some production for me, and I asked my my then partner X my what who used to be my boss, Jack Richardson. I asked him, Um, if he and Jack Douglas together would take over the project.

I knew between the two of them there would be a continuity there and a comfort factor for the band. So they said yes, and I think they did a really good job. Now the band broke up slightly thereafter. Did you foresee that happening? Yeah, I sort of did. I you know I did. I didn't really, I didn't have anything to do it that. I didn't talk to anybody about that. But I did say to Chef and to Alice that, you know, if they do decide to go out on their own, that they should call me.

I'd be very happy to come back. So what was the process? Ultimately Alice Cooper went solo, but he was identified with the name of the band at that point. How did that come together that you went back to

work with Alice? Well, let's be clear about something. When the when the band formed, um, you know, it was it was obvious to to chef UM and it was suggested by Pat Kingsley, one of the greatest pr people in the world, UM, that you couldn't have a band called Alice Cooper without having someone in the band called Alice Cooper. So um Vincent Fernier got selected. He was the lead singer after all, and he literally changed his name legally and went through all that process to become

Alice Cooper. He was also the guy then that spoke on behalf of the band. So at seven in the morning, where everybody else was sleeping off the gig of the night before, he's on the phone with Match Paris or some other you know, periodical somewhere. He's doing all this

spokesman stuff. He's working double duty. So by the time it came to determining where the band was going to go, it was clear that, you know, Alice Cooper going off on his own would be Alice Cooper and the rest of the band would have to find um a different name. Do you believe there was resentment from the rest of the band that he went on using the name? You know? I think, you know, maybe at the at the time there might have been, but but nobody could you know,

you you. You can't deny a person the right to work under their own name. That's just like, that's just common sense. So, you know, resentment that he stayed Alice Cooper, I don't think so. There may have been some resentment about um, you know, chefs staying with him and me going back and that you know, sort of um leaving them out there on their own. And I can I can understand that. Since then, happily everybody has um remain friends,

continue to work together. We just did um some sessions and Phoenix with the original guys and Alice and um we all talked to each other all the time. Dennis has written songs on Alice's current records and stuff. So all is well, okay, So how does the process go down in a more granular fashion in terms of the

story that you get back to work with Alice. Um. The it's a very simple one that that um uh they have to do a project, a solo project, and Sheep has um uh a clause in his contract, in the Alice Cooper contract that allows them to do a soundtrack album for different label than Warner Brothers. So they go to a sister label so as to keep peace in the family. They go to Atlantic Records and then Chef calls me up and says, you know we're gonna do it again. Would you like to work with Alice?

And oh, by the way, we need a soundtrack, meaning we have to come up with an idea for a movie or um our TV show. So Alice and I got together and UM interestingly, so we get together, we start talking about this and we came up we we decided to come up with our own story. So we come up with a storyline where this rock star named Stephen something he uh and his mistress are in a private plane somewhere over the Rockies and the plane goes down,

He disappears, she disappears. Twenty eight days later, he uh surfaces alone and he's fine, and he looks fine. The suggestion, you know, is that something untoward may have happened there during that twey eight days and and he comes back and now he's rock star by day and evening and by night he's a vampire and a killer. And so that was the idea and way we came up with

this thing, Welcome to My Nightmare. And UM and Sheff introduced us to a movie director UH named Denny man, who would who would have been the director of this project if it had all sort of worked out? Alis and I went to Vancouver, BC UH to meet with Denny Man on a ship off the coast of Vancouver where he was shooting a movie featuring um uh, Ian McShane, um Donald Pleasants and Vincent Price Wow and Vette Memu,

who happened to be my wet dream. Right. So so there we were onto forward, you know, and I was standing next to Mr Price. He pulled out a cigar Monte Cristo, which I was smoking in those days. I loved monte Cristos, and I just said, look, I know this is very forward, but would you happen to have one more of those? And he was Suddenly we were like cigar buddies, you know how cigar buddies are, and and so we started talking and I'm listening that voice, and I just said to him, Mr Price, how would

you like to make your rock and roll debut? And uh? And he he looked at me like it was some kind of joke, but then he said sure. So I said, well, we'll stay in touch. And of course there was no movie. We came up with an idea for a television special,

uh for ABC Wide World of Entertainment. This was back when they they had ABC Wide World of Sports, the Agony of defeating, the ecstasy of victory or whatever it was, right, and then they decided, well, we're you know, this is working so well for sports, We're gonna do it for entertainment. So they set up this slot. And I believe we were the first ones with this project called Welcome to My Nightmare, which is its own show all by itself.

So we should move on from this, but let me just tell you that there has never been a three ring circus like that whole experience in my entire life. And someday we'll talk all about it. Okay. Meanwhile, you work with Kiss, making what many people believe is their best album, Destroyer. Tell us a story of that. Well,

you know, the the Kiss situation was really interesting. I I always had a published phone number in Toronto when I was when I was living in Toronto, and they were fans who used to call me and just talk to me about stuff. There was this one kid, Mike Longman's who called me up. He was sixteen years old and he said, Um, there's this band that that needs you man, they really need you. You need to work

with this band. They're called Kiss. I didn't I had never heard of them, um, but he was adamant about it. So I started looking them up and listening to music and stuff. And then literally like three days later, I was at CITYTV downtown Toronto doing an interview for an artist that I had signed to my label. So I was going up this rors to the TV studio and as I was going up, the members of Kiss were coming down from just having done their um interview in

in makeup, pull makeup, full costume. They were coming clumping down those stairs. It was like a herd of buffalo, you know, clo and as they got close to me, they were like giants. They were these monstrous guys, you know. And and uh, Paul Stanley was in the lead. So I stopped Paul and said, hi, um, I'm bob Ezrind and he said, oh, we know who you are. And I said, well that's good, because now I know who you are. I said, are you guys happy with your records?

And he said yeah, why you know, Like, what do you mean I mean? And I just said, well, you know, I don't mean anything. I'm just saying, if at any point you're not, um, I'd be really interested in talking to you about working together. And that was that. I didn't speak to anybody after that. And then some months later I got a call from Bill a Coin, the manager, the manager of the band, saying, you know, the band

would very much like to meet with you. And first we wanted we wanted you to go see them play

a live So I did. I went to Michigan, Um, I think it was Anne Arbor, you know, and uh, they were playing in an arena stand you know, you know, just general standing, not even seating, and the place the place was pretty full, or about nine thousand people in the arena, and they were all fifteen year old pimpley boys, which to me looked like a massive opportunity because I was thinking, like, if they do this well with nothing but pimpley boys, imagine if we could just expand the

platform and um and attract a larger audience. And because while I was watching them, like, I was thinking, you know what, these guys are actually really good and there and they're sexy too in a in a strange way, and yet they're they're just playing this kind of you know hard drink and hard partying, macho thing for the sake of fifteen year olds, that if I could just get them to expand their repertoire a bit, that we

might be able to get to a larger audience. Okay, And so you see them, and how do you seal the deal? And then what's the next step in making the record? So we go to a We go to uh, a Middle Eastern restaurant in New York City chosen by Gene Simmons, and we have I have Moose for the

first time and just love it. And then we have this conversation where I tell them I remind them of the movie The Wild One, which to all your listeners is probably way too long ago, But it was a biker movie that had legendary Marlon Brando, the leader of one bike gang, and Lee Marvin, the leader of the other. Marlon Brando's gang were bad, but Lee Marvin's gang was really bad, and they descended on this little town and there,

and they were just going to destroy the place. But sure how there was one girl who who heart was pure, who believed that she could she could change and save Marlon Brando. So she and Marlon brand his name was Johnny in the movie. So she decided that she was going to she was going to cure Johnny with love in a sense, so she and Johnny fall into love and and and then of course what happens is Johnny goes from zero to hero and he and his guys

saved the town. So I just said to them, like, right now, you guys are Lee Marvin, this is not gonna I mean, it's cool to be bad, but I want you to be bad but sexy too. And I think that it would be great if you were bad and and every girl in the world thought they could fix you. That to me would be that would be genius. So they love that idea, you know. And and I said, well, you know, let's get to work. It's gonna be the

material to start off with. We're gonna have to have songs that do that for us, and we're gonna have to make a really good record. I think the meeting was terrific because, you know, Jane and Paul and I are you know, we're all Jewish boys who grew up um with dreams of blonds and envy of of our Protestant, our white Anglo Saxon Protestant friends, you know, so we

had a common platform. We knew where we were coming from, and and the other guys were you know, they were good humored, and I mean I just found the whole band really kind of fun to work with. Okay, So none of the songs were written prior to your involvement. There were bits and pieces because they knew that they were going to start up again. Okay, there were a couple of legendary Kiss songs first Detroit Rock City. What's the story? How does that come together? Let's let me

ask you this. You send them off to wood shed, when you get back together with them, to what degree of the songs complete? Well, I didn't send them anywhere. They had already started to work on material for the album. The next step really was for me to go to each of them individually and sit and listen through their like mountains of cassette tapes and and little bits and pieces to see what we liked and what sort of

fit this the new mission. Right. So, um, we went through a lot of stuff and there were some really good you know, there were great riffs and there were not so great riffs, and um, but there was enough to get us started and so so once once I, once I felt like we had the pieces that we needed. Then um, we got together and started to really craft

them into songs. Now, most of the writing, the writing for the album was Um, Gene and Paul, sometimes separately, sometimes together, And there was the one obligatory UM song that that that had to come from Peter Chris and I don't know what happened about the A song there should have been one, but anyway, so we got together. We had these little bits of pieces, and uh, sometimes it would just be me and one of them, and

sometimes it will be the three of us. A lot of the time we went by this time, I was living in New York. We came to my apartment and sat at my piano, which has a lot to do with some of the arrangement stuff like the shout and shout a loud don don don don do da da don dome that's like a left hand piano thing. And the riff for Detroit Rock City, Um, that's and that's pure guitar and pure cock and balls. It's just a

really amazing riff. And uh, I don't you know, honestly, I don't know how it turned from just being like a regular rock song into being this rock and roll saga. But I do know that all of us were theatrical. We were all looking for something more than just you know, who wants to party and who wants to drink a lot for this record, So we started telling a story and and um, and then the make of the of that record was really exciting too, because we were experimenting

with new technology and we're adding sound effects. Many people don't know this, but the entire front of that song was binaurally recorded. It was me wearing a binaural head microphone, and that was me in the car. That's me doing the dishes nets, you know, and humming as the kid, right and uh, but it's in binoral so if you put on headphones, it's like three sixty degree sound and you're right there in the center of it. So where

was it cut. It was cut at the record plant in New York City on forty four Street West, my favorite all time UM rock and roll studio, and um, you know, sadly it doesn't exist anymore. It was an amazing place where great adventures happened and lots of magic was getting the adventures and getting to the sound. How important is a specific studio to you, Um, well, there are certain things that are important, and then you can

find the studio that fits. You know, I don't want to I don't want to be that guy who can only paint on Tuesday afternoons, you know. I basically, you know, my mantra is basically, you know, give me, you know, give me a cell phone and a flashlight and I'll put I'll give you a record, new show, you know. So it's I can basically make records anyway, that is

the truth. But I but I do want, where possible to have an optimum circumstance for the band because the at the end of the day, their performance in that studio depends a lot on how they feel and on on what the studio does to inspire them, make them comfortable, bring out better performances in them. So in that sense, it's very important. For a band like Kiss, it was very important that they be in the room together. That's

that's massive. Um. They needed to see each other and they needed to playoff of each other's excitement as things as interesting things were happening. But by the same token, we had to keep the drums as separate as possible. So that we could go back and UM redo some parts if necessary, or we could actually edit from one section to another into the drum tracks without picking up the wrong leakage from the room. So the record plant studio was perfect because they had this massive drum booth

you could put Peter Chris in. It was only open at eyesight level, so he could see us all we could see him, but UM, most of the sound from the room was prevented from getting into the mics of his drums. That gave me a tremendous amount of flexibility. Okay, is there a specific board you'd like to use? Specific

mixing monitors? No? Really, how about engineer now? Well, ok okay, let me let me do you know that's that's a pretty fast I'll answer there are people I love to work with UM and you know, in the last little while, I've done a lot of work with Justin Quarterloo in uh Nashville. He's really good, really fast and UM. And then you know, I have some younger engineers that I like to work with. I like to bring along to sort of learn my system and be UM responsive to

me on a kind of more natural level. And so there's uh, I've got Julian Shank in Nashville as well. And then there's Jill Zimmerman in Toronto who's a young engineer from Germany that's moved to Canada. Is very talented, very smart. Um. And I've worked with Brian Monkar's in Canada who is actually uh, you know, fully fledged producer but you know, sometimes does some mixing and engineering for me. And then in in England where I do a lot of work, um the engineer depends on um the job.

But for all of the Pink Floyd stuff, all the things that I did in Pink Floyd Land, it was Andrew Jackson, who is just phenomenal, incredibly musicals and I have you know, I mean there's a long list. Okay, so tell us a story that So now am I going to piss off the people? I didn't put on people? That's why I said, no, it's easier, you know. But but you know, there's lots of really good people. That's the point. But the more interesting thing is that you

don't require you don't have the right hand person. You must use no. No, I you know, because listen, I've been doing this for a long long time. And and also you know, when I was starting out like we were. We were breaking new ground. I didn't really want somebody

that only knew one way of doing things. Brian Christian was a fantastic partner at that time as an engineer because he knew Jack Jack's methodology, but he was also aren't enough and had enough experience to be able to adapt to me and to start um learning my way of doing things and helping me with developing my way

of doing things. So did Um Shelley yakas you know from from the record plant, and Roy Cicala, who you know, the great, the late great Roy Sicela, who had a tremendous amount to uh to do with my matriculation, and and at the very very beginning there was Phil ramonas I think I mentioned earlier, David David Green. So I've had, you know, I've gone to school with some really really good people. I've learned a lot. I've also learned that if you push the wrong button, nothing explodes. You don't die.

It's amazing. So you know, you could be afraid of doing stuff, but sometimes you just gotta push and if it sounds good, you go, okay, that's what I wanted, you know, And if it sounds shitty. You go, oh whoops. Okay, So tell us about the creation of beth Um. You know, we had to have we had to have a Peter

Cris song to keep peace in the family. And he and Stan Pendridge had come up with a kind of bouncy little thing called Beck b E, C K and U, and it was it was sort of it was a little bit like the cock and balls um approach of earlier kiss. It was just kind of arrogant and sort of dismissive of the girl and basically say, you know, you're not that important. I got I got guys to hang out with, We're gonna go play music and that. But there was a really not there was there was

a kernel of something there that I really loved. And um, it just that you know Beck, that there's was Beck. I hear you calling, but I can't come home right now. That just exploded in my brain. So I asked, I said to Peter, can I take that home and play with it a little bit? And he was very gracious said sure. So I went home and I just closed my eyes and thought about it, and to me, it was, well, first of all, I don't know Becca is Jeff Beck or Rebecca or whatever. It's confusing. So I'm gonna go

with Beth because that's a gentle, soft, beautiful name. And and when the guy calls her up and he's saying he can't come home right now, I don't want it to be because she's um not important to him. I wanted to be because his heart is broken. I wanted to be because home is nowhere to be anymore. And that and here comes our here comes our wild one moment,

our Johnny moment. I want the nasty rock and roll guy to break down in tears in front of all the girls of the world and say, you know, I didn't go home because I didn't feel loved anymore, so that they would wrap him in their arms and love him to death. So you go back and you show it to the band. What, especially Chris, What does he say? I honestly don't remember whether it was instantly accepted or not. I mean, I think I think, um, I think Paul

and Jean for sure recognized that it was a better version. Um. I'm not sure that anybody paid it as much attention as I did at the time. But you know, as it as it developed, it got you know, it became clearer and clearer that this there was something really special about this song. Okay, the album comes out and it was a monstrous success. What is the band's reaction to this success and to what degree did they give kudos to you? Okay, well, first of all, the album gets

reviewed in the long lead press. So, and this is just before it's released, and an article comes out, I don't remember if it's Rolling Stone or Record World or somewhere, and this guy writes an article that basically says that I have destroyed Kiss and that and that I have you know, I've I've feminized them and basically turned them into an and Margaret style. I they yeah, he literally said, you know, well, you know, adding and Margaret horns to

my favorite band. And he says he closes the article with the line I have a mind to go to Toronto and punch Bob ezran in the nos on behalf of Kiss fans everything, you know, and um I sent him a funny response, but you know, we we don't need that now. But um that got everybody nuts. The band got crazy, um management got crazy, and they started to wonder if, oh my god, you know, did we actually make a huge mistake here. And then I believe that that g Bill a Coin, the manager, maybe he

was hearing voices from elsewhere. You know, there's always other voices in other courses. As we say, there's always critics. Everybody wants to tell you that what you just did would have been better if only they had done it. And so somebody must have been saying, you know, this is really gonna be a problem for you guys. And I blithely go off on vacation with my sons, and I have a I have a answering service in New York. This is in the days when there were no machines.

There were little ladies the city at a switchboard in New York City that were like my mom, you know. They used to when I would stay out too late, they would go, where were you? What were you doing? You know. So I get back, I get back from two weeks of vacation, and I call my answering service because then no cell phone, you know, like nobody could reach you. That's fine, that was just fine. That was

the idea. So I get home, I check on on my service for messages, and you know, the lady says, where have you been, Mr Douglas has been calling you and calling you, and he seems very very upset. You should call him right away. So no, I thought that there was like some health issue or something terrible that had happened. I called Jack right away, and he was he was struggling with with his words because he just he was so comfortable saying to me what he had

to say. And he prefaced it by saying, look, I won't do this if you don't want me to. But he had gotten a call from Kiss management asking if he would do the next Kiss record. We weren't even out yet, or maybe we had just come out, and clearly it was um you know, so the opposite of a vote of a vote of confidence or any kind of thanks or any recognition of my you know, it's exactly the opposite of what you're asking, right, And I just like I was, like, I sat back in my cheer,

going wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, say this again. We just finished an album, Like, what are you saying? He said, Well, you know, Bill had called him and the band was very unhappy with the results and they would really like to um explorer working with Jack. Now, by that time, I think he had done the first Aerosmith record. In fact, I know he yet um uh his first record with Aarsmith, not their first record. So you know, I was like I was, I was just in shock, and I just

said to Jack, you know what, fuck them. If that's the reaction after all that work and all the really cool stuff that's on that record and all the time we spent together and the friendship I thought we had, If that's it, they call around behind my back and ask my own um, you know, I don't want to say protege, but you know that in a sense he was, you know, my own guy. If he wants to replace me, that is just so um insulting and uh and just

you know, it just blew my mind. So I just basically said to him, you know what, call him back and tell him you'll do it. And while you're at it, till tell Bill a Coin to go funk himself. And I didn't speak to them for a long time thereafter. You know, they didn't reach out. UM. I don't really know how it happened. I did stay in touch with Um, I did stay in touch with Jean and occasionally but not very often. And Paul lived just across the street

from me, in New York that was even worse. You know, it was awkward. He lived directly across the street and uh, you know, with his girlfriend at the time. And anyway, I don't really remember exactly how we got how the conversation came up for bringing us back together, but I know that it was, um, a long time there after, years, a few years thereafter, okay, but most people at this point believe Destroyer is their best album. In addition, I believe it is their biggest seller by a mile. So

they never acknowledged that. Well, no, they did after they did later, you know later, Um, I know what they didn't acknowledge was that breakup. They didn't acknowledge the breakup and how improperly it went down. They didn't nobody called to apologize. And at the time I was enough of a punk and young enough that to me that was like it was a matter of principle. You know, if they don't apologize, I'm not gonna you know, I'm not going to be the first one to say, what the

funk happened? You know, So it took us a long time to get back together. Today, if that kind of stuff happens to me, I know, to just pick up a phone and say, you know, are you sure about this? Do you really mean that? Um? But I was young and brash and and you know what, Listen that that brashness and that that youthful energy that had a lot to do with making that album what it is. Okay, Now, these are tall guys, and Gene Simmons only has one personality.

We know, we've both in a racked with a lot of household names, and you see, it's a public face in the private face. But with Jeanne, what you see is what you get. So well, you know what, I I reject that. I I think that for many people, what you see is what you get. But um, but I love Jeene Simmons. I do. And by the way, I love Paul Stanley, and uh, both of them are

really uh they're deep guys. They're really deep. Now with jean anytime he's in the company of somebody who's not in the inner circle where he's completely comfortable, you're right, it's the Gene show. Seven. So if I come with to him with um, a friend, it's the Gene show. He doesn't relax, he's he's on, he's he does his stick. Okay, So but let me tell you this, and I want to tell you this. It's important because a lot of

people think that about him. But when my son died, those two guys showed up at the funeral in public, and then they came to the Shiva house and and Jean and Shannon came came over to me and literally they put their arms around me and made a sandwich out of me and they just held me. This is Gene Simmons and I and they held me and I cried there. You know, I stood there and cried, but I felt safe. I felt like people that I loved we're protecting me, which is the idea of the ship,

isn't it in the first place. So there's a soft and there's a marshmallow loving kind um side to Jean. But he's developed this, you know, he's developed this public persona, which which is how he's made a living. So it's for him. It's worked out really well. So previously you've gone to see lou Reid in the opening act was Genesis. You became infatuated with the band, and then you go on to work with Peter Gabriel. How do you get involved with Peter Gabriel who has just left Genesis and

he's going to make his first solo album. So, um, it's interesting, you asked, because I was talking to Tony Smith and I said, was it you that reached out to me? Like? How did I get to work with Peter? And he said, yes, that that it came from his office. Now you know why they asked for me. Maybe it had to do with the Lou Reid record. I'm not entirely sure, but as as I he may have told you before. Maybe it's in the first half. I don't remember.

But when I when I went to see Lou play for the first time at Massey Hall in Toronto, the opening act was Genesis, and I had said at the time, you know, boyl I really want to work with that kid with the flower in his head, which was Peter Gabriel and um, and I became a little bit obsessed with Genesis in general, but with him specifically. So when I got the call, when I got the call from London saying, um, you know, would you come over and

meet with Peter. We want to talk to you about potentially working with him, I was like, yep, I'll leave tomorrow, you know. So um, I got there and I and it was an amazing couple of days because it included not just Peter, who is a phenomenal guy, like you want to talk about a dear friend. Um, this is someone you know. Peter and I have have remained close like family style friends all these years, for a very very long time. And yet we've only worked together just

a you know, on a few things. It's not a lot, but um, but every time it's been very meaningful. So we get there and um, I meet with Tony Smith Gail Colson, who is the managing director of the label that that Peter signed, which is called Charisma Records. And uh, and she's the Flying Charisma label. Well yeah originally, but then if he just became Charisma, but you're right, yeah, and and uh, she's fantastic and and so on top of things, but really smart and and and and very

invested in Peter as an artist. And of course Tony is his manager, so he is totally invested. So the three of us are talking about Peter and his career. Tony Stratton Smith no Tony Smith manager, So those two are and we're talking about career. But then I go and meet the owner of the label, Tony Stratton Smith, who is a well beautifully dressed, incredibly articulate, wonderful English gay man with the the kind of verb that all and and style that only the very wealthy English game

and could have, you know. And he was just an amazing character. And uh and we we started up a friendship that that went on for a few years too. But just spending time with him was such a trip I loved. Like every time I'd go back to London, I would just have lunch with him because I just love listening to him and I love watching him. He was such a great show. Anyway, So from and sadly he's not with us anymore. But so I go from London to meet with Peter in Bath, which is where

he was, where he lived and where he's from. Um and um. He picks me up and he's a very sweet, very shy, very kind of held back but gentleman. Um and uh. And he tours me around Bath to show me where he where he came from. He's very proud of that place, and it's Roman roots and and the kind of mystical connection that whole area has. Um some people consider it some the Druids considered it to be

the the mystical center center of the universe. So anyway, so we did a lot of that stuff, and as we were spending time doing that stuff, we were relaxing and we were coming down to being just two guys who were having a good conversation about stuff that we enjoyed. He saw that I was interested in things he was interested in, and then I knew a fair bit about him, and he was very happy to hear that I saw that show that tour and that that's where I had

made the determination that I wanted to do this. So we went to his house, a modest house that he lived in with his wife, Jill and his daughter Anna, who I think was a toddler at the time. Uh, And he had a little upright piano in the front the house. That we sat down there and started um

playing stuff. He started playing stuff to me that he was thinking about that that um he wanted to put on his solo record, and we started talking about just sort of you know, lofty, um conceptual stuff, you know, theatrical things like how would the show go, which, by the way, is something that I do love to put before recording in many cases, and I know I'm dealing with a theatrical artist, and since I come out of theater originally, UM, I'd love to know what their vision

is for the show and how we can make an album that that fulfills that vision. So in Peter's case, you know, this is his big introduction. He's stepping out and he needs to be taken seriously by the same token. He needs to show all the different sides of him that he didn't feel he was getting to express within the band. So we so we listen to music. I hear lots of good stuff, but I hear lots of

stuff that's not quite right yet. And he's not ready from my point of view, And I feel like also he's just beginning to get his hands around who he wants to be. And so I don't want to rush him. I tell the label and management we're not ready to go in the studio. I don't want to go in the studio with him now. But what I would like is I would like him to come back to New York. I will rent him a place there, UM, and I would like him to spend um a month in New

York writing, where I can watch and where I can influence. UM. He can come and use my piano and my apartment. It's perfectly safe and and so that was that. So we do we arrange the trip to go to bring Peter to New York for a month. So the apartment dig this the apartment I found for him, belonged to

Garson Kanan and Ruth Gordon. Wow, Hollywood Royalty. And for anybody who doesn't know, people are listening, Ruth Gordon was the was the next the old next door neighbor and Rosemary's baby, and Garson Caden was one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. But she of course was Maude and Harold and Maude, and she was Maud and Harold and Maude. She's like, she's legendary. So this was there. This was their Chelsea apartment. It was a magnificent, small,

kind of rabbit warren of an apartment. And why they rented it out, I have no idea, but we went through show bizz channels to find one. So that's what we got. And uh, Peter and Jill and Anna came to New York. They stayed there. Peter came to my house every day and um, I had a split level apartment, so I would go upstairs to the back to where my office was and work on other stuff, and I left Peter in the in the living room with the

grand piano with a cassette machine beside him. And every time I heard anything I loved, I would run out and go record that record that we want to hear that again and Uh. Over that period of time, we developed a clear vision of what we were hoping to accomplish. We talked about the band we'd like to work with, we talked about sort of where to do it. We sort of laid out our our master plan and we

amassed a body of material that I felt confident. So then he went back to London to finish those songs, and the next time we met was in Toronto where we decided to do the record at the Nimbus studios called sound Stage, and I put together a band for him. It was like the Dirty Dozen. It was a group of people that I had worked with on other things before and then I knew pretty well, along with a few people that came from Peter Um and Uh. I brought in Tony Levin was my sort of go to

bass player at the time. Alan Schwartzberg, who was the drummer Jimmy Mailan god rest him, who was a brilliant percussionist. But to say percussion is is short changing him. He was like a soundscape artist with common you know, instruments and things. He was a genius. And and I had Steve Hunter, the you know, the brilliant Steve Hunter who has been on so many projects with me and has so much to do with if I have a sound, a rock sound, so much to do with that sound.

And uh, and Peter brought Larry Fast, who I was aware of, a great synthesizer. Um uh he was. He was an innovator, a synthesizer innovator as well as a terrific musician. And and then he said, may I please have one Brit. I said, I give you one brit. You get one one push right, you know, you get one brit. Um. So he invited, um, Robert Fripp. Thank you Okay. So I said, I'll give you one brit. You gotta push for one Britton. He said, well, I'd like to bring Robert Fripp, which is not a punishment

by any means. So there they were, you know, this group of people. And every day we started off in Jack Richardson's office where there was an upright piano, Peter would sit down. He would play this very complicated piece of music that he had finally uh uh cobbled together out of the pieces that we did in New York and that we had done some work on after um and uh and they were like complicated. This was Prague

with a capital Prague. So this was like and the guys in the band, like a lot of them were, They were just sitting there their eyes rolling in their head, and they would ask him to like what was that, thinking the you can you play that again? You know that. They were feverishly taken notes. Tony Levin, on the other hand, was reading a novel and and like by the first time through he had it, he had clocked it, you know. Um. And then everybody once they all knew the song and

they knew what it comprised of. Then we moved into the studio and parts were developed in a sign. In some cases I had ideas. In some cases we just made it up right there on the spot. So we would try stuff, you know, rule uh. So you know, Peter loves rule sets, and so do I. They're they're just I don't mean as a as a restriction. But as you know, we liked the five challenges, you know, So for Salisbury Hill, I took away Alan Schwartzburg symbols.

I just took him off the kit altogether, so you know, even if he tried to hit one, he couldn't. And I gave him a shaker um and put uh t towel over his stare drum to develop a certain sound. And so and that that that kind of electronic drum sound that we had. We invented it right there on

the spot. We we we decided it needed a name, so we called it a synthabam and and I just I played that part doom do do doo dood doom bom boom boom, bump bump while Larry was playing um the more orchestral sounds and things like that, and we cut that track live. We cut them all live. Okay. This was seen as a very innovative album. I know it was different in Canada, but Genesis was not that well known such that when the first album came out

it was almost a debut like Genesis. And Genesis of course came out with their Minus Peter album at a similar to they came out with the previous one. I think Wind and Wutheringe came out at that time, so this was a wild album to listen to, as accessible as Saulisbury Hill and Modern Love were the Burgermeister and all this other stuff. It was like you heard it, It was like what is this? And that was all intentional, all intentional. Every little bit of it was intentional, including

excuse me. You know that song excuse Me? It was a little ditty that he had written. Tony Levin said, you know, I'm in a barbershop quartet. He said, this kind of sounds like a barbershop quartet to be and I go, that's genius. So we create a barbershop quartet out of the members of the band. I didn't hire other people. They all learned their parts. Tony helped to arrange this thing. In fact, you know, it was basically

his chart on that. And and also I knew that Tony played tuba, had had played tuba in a symphony, so uh, we got a tuba, hired a tuba, and um and I had Tony played the bass part on the tube ins that have on the base and anyway, you know, they loved doing it so much that we actually took the act on the road in Toronto, in the sense that like literally we went on a new hazel and Hazelton Avenue and and saying it on the sidewalk just to see, you know, people would gather and

and the the the rap dinner, which which I would usually do for projects like this, and just have a celebration and a wrap dinner. It was such a great experience and everybody had such a wonderful time. I took everybody out to a restaurant called Napoleon, which was very white tablecloth, very you know, a very high end Toronto restaurant, and and and we had bought gifts for everybody in the band, which I brought out at a certain point

during dinner, and and everybody dressed up. Peter dressed up in a three piece gray suit with a black shirt and black tie and oh, by the way, ball bearing uh contact lenses so which over which he wore dark glasses. And so you know, we walked him into the restaurant and he had his dark glasses on and he and the waiters would shout at him because they thought he was blind as people do, you know, for for blind people. I'd never got that they would shout at him, and

then at one point they asked him a question. He took his glasses off and was looking at them with literally ball bearing eyes. And the guy that was taking our order, he like threw his pad and jumped back and and and had to leave the room. He was so shocked. Anyway, it was a fun dinner. Everybody got something that was meaningful to them. Frip got a pocket watch, gold pocket watch, so he could stand on the table and say, and we would say, I say, Robert, what

time is it? And he would take it out with a flourish and tell us the time. Um and Steve Hunter got a an electric guitar. I I don't remember what everybody else got, but I do remember that I bought Tony a tuba and play one a long time. So he gets the tuba and I say, gentlemen, excuse me. They stood up. He played the tuba and then they started singing excuse me as a barbershop quartet in the entire restaurant went crazy and applauded. They all gave us

like a standing ovasion. I said, well, we do two shows a night and three on the days. You know, please come back anyway, it was just a great time, the making of it, the ending of it, the camaraderie of it. And as you know, some of those people went on with Peter for years and years. Tony still with him, okay. And there was a famous story of Peter and the wall in the studio. Peter had to go up on the wall. No, not the wall, the pillar. Okay. Yeah.

So the studio had two pillars in it that were structural and there there were brick pillars if we were doing Modern Love. And I wasn't getting the performance that I thought he was capable of, and so I started, almost chokingly, saying to him, listen, okay, we got three more shots at this, and if you don't get it, you're going up the pillar. And he would laugh and I would laugh. So and then we tried again and I go, you know, that's not what I'm looking for.

Two more and it's up the pillar and he would laugh and I would laugh. And then finally got to no more, and I turned to Brian Christian, the engineer, who was a big guy, really big, like six ft three, muscle bound, a linebacker kind of guy. We went outside into the studio. We we had a ladder um Brian held him. Brian like took him up the ladder, held him in place while we gaffer taped under his armpits on the pillar, and then we took the ladder away. And there he was dangling by his armpits. And I

said to the to the assistant engineer Michael. So they did. They put the mic up in front of his face. We went back in the control room and I said, okay, let's try it now. And when it got to the chorus, he made he made Peter Theater out of it. It was so wonderful to watch. He was flailing his arms and his legs and and he went. He was screaming, oh the pain, and you know modern love can stray. It was great. And that's the performer and sits on

the record. Okay. That Peter goes on to make two more records that don't get as much promotion and don't get as much success at least the third, not at first, and they have a much thinner sound than you were record, begging the question, although you ultimately work with Peter again, Hey, was Peter happy with your record? And why did you not do a second record with Peter right away? The thing about Peter is that, um, he has to see he has to see things from all possible sides. It's

very important to him. And and I was consciously trying to break him out of his habit of of overthinking things, you know. So I made it fast. I mean we did that whole album and and the mixing and everything in about thirteen weeks. And for him that was just too quick. I barreled, basically, I sort of took charge and barreled through his concerns and and he was very sweet and very polite, and actually he was having a

great time. Uh enemy came over and they did an interview with him, which which ended up being titled a Mumble Free Gabriel, you know, is rocking and rolling in Toronto or something like that. He was feeling confident, he was feeling like a rock star, and he was and you could hear it. He was performing like that. But

that was a temporary condition, I'm afraid. And when um he went back to England and back to his home life and um, his more familiar surroundings, he kind of reverted a bit back to the um less than completely confident guy, and and he started to wonder about all the things that he might have done on the record

if only I had given him time. And I think at the same time, you know, Frip didn't love me and probably was saying to him, you know, well, if you know, if we've done this, we could have experimented with that, and that this is too mainstream or whatever, and um, you know what happens. It just happens. You have a really wonderful time with somebody and then they decide that you know, that was great, but now they would like to try this instead. And that's what happened,

you know. And then he had huge success. I mean, as as big as my record was, it wasn't the biggest one, although it turns out that Salisbury Hill is the most enduring of his song. So, uh, at what

point in this does your marriage break up? Not during Peter Gabriel though we were, I mean during your whole story here, well you know it was starting it literally in and uh, well the reason I'm asking is less your personal sturm and drang into what degree was your work in the rock and roll lifestyle contributing to the breakup of the marriage, Oh hugely? And also my my youth,

you know, like I got married when we were. I got married at seventeen, and and we had our son that year because we got married because because Arlene was pregnant and um, and so you know, that's just too young. I'm sorry, you're just not ready for it. I hadn't even really been out, and you know, I hadn't played the field or dated or done anything. I hadn't done anything. And suddenly I was I was a dad, and I

had to be a breadwinner. And and somehow I ended up in rock and roll, which is not necessarily the best lifestyle for, you know, trying to maintain a young family. And and you know, and I was susceptible to everything. I was like, you know, oh boy, I love the you know, all the side, you know, all all the perks, you know, from the drugs to the sex, the whole

rock and roll thing. Um, I participated in. And so, you know, in fairness to Arlene, if this was an impossible situation, but also you know, we were you know, maybe we wouldn't have ended up married together. If we had had more time to develop a relationship and really understand who we were as people, we may not have ended up together. But now we had two kids, and so we did the best we could. Um, we did a sort of trial separation. I'm making quotation marks in

the air here. Um, I moved to New York and basically we broke down pretty much. Then we did try a couple of times to see what it would be like if I came back to Toronto, and we gave it another shot, but they were short, short forays into what was it impossible? Um, you know, an impossible situation? So we ended up really breaking up. Then we didn't divorce forum several years thereafter, and I took care of

her and and the kids. We did have some conflict, as one does when you're divorced, when you're divorcing, um, but we're Arlene is my co grandparent of of you know, a wonderful little boy, and co parent with my you know, our son Joshua, of whom we are extremely proud, and also of our late son David, you know, who we still uh dream about and talk about. And we have remained, um friendly, and we have a you know, a pretty intimate relationship now and you know, as friends, not lovers,

but as friends. She calls me her husband pretty good. I've ever heard that before. Yeah, I mean neither I like it. Who blew the whistle? Ultimately? Who wanted out her? Are you? It's never mutual? No, I was making her really unhappy and I was unhappy. And um yeah, okay,

so how do you end up working with pet Floyd? So? Um. While we were doing a lot of work in London with Alice Cooper, I met um Caroline Christie who had been working for the legendary Derek Taylor at um W A and London, and she was kind of our handler. She was doing a great job with with us, and she basically knew everybody, and everybody knew her. Um. At a point I suggested to my then partners and Nimbus that we needed more of a presence in London and

we should hire Caroline to work with us. So she she came to work for us, and she that that way, she got to see me in the studio a number of times. And um. So when it was time for Roger, who by then was now UM Caroline's fiancee, they were together, they were talking about their future when you hired her, when she involved with Roger? Okay, No, but I was

there when they met. I mean I wasn't in the room it was during that time that they met, so I knew that she had you know, she was going to date him, and uh, and of course I was a big Pink Floyd fan who wasn't at the time. Then, Um, they came to Canada for Animals. At the end of the Animals tour, they played at either Win Stadium in Hamilton, Ontario and blew up the scoreboard. That's a famous story

with their piro. But anyway, so, uh, you know, Caroline called me because we're friends, and she came to a barbecue at our house. Um, Roger wasn't feeling well, so he didn't attend, but we talked about Roger and about her her relationship and how great things we were and so on, and she said, you know, why didn't you come with us and we'll go out to see the show together, and I that I'd love to. So I went with a friend of mine from the street who

was who happened to be a psychiatrist. Was he like this massive groupie, you know, this massive Pink Floyd groupie. And we got in a limo with Roger and Caroline drove out to Hamilton's which is about an hour drive a little over an hour and um. During that time he was talking about his sense of alienation and um, how he had thought about, you know, even like building a wall between the band and the audience, et cetera, and um. And then they did the show. It was amazing.

And then after the show he and Steve O. Rourke decided to have a fist fight in the in the bathroom in the dressing rooms, and Roger cut his foot badly. So uh, Dr Biddy, my buddy Dr John Biddy, who was a psychiatrist with but a medical doctor like, he wraps it up and we're going to the emergency room in Hamilton's. So here we go in the limo with

Rogery Garrell. I would get him the emergency room, we get his foot stitched up, and then in the car on the way back to Toronto, we get um, we get very um uh frank with each other about stuff you know you just do at six o'clock in the morning. Now you've been you've been through an adventure and um. And we talked again about the wall, you know, and I said, you know, that could actually be a really cool idea. And that was that. That was the end

of the conversation. So a few years later, when clearly things were not going well for them. Maybe it wasn't even a few years. Maybe it was just a little over a year. I don't remember, honestly. Um he decided that he was going to do this project, The Wall, which he had written, and basically it was going to be a Roger Waters record, that's it, but that he did not feel um comfortable in handling the rest of the band. He was sure that that was not gonna

go well. So Caroline said, well, you know, I've spent a lot of time with Bob in the studio and you guys met and you talked about this, like, what do you think about bringing Bob in to help you with this? That's how the conversation first happened. Okay, but I thought based on prior conversation they'd actually done some work before that you ultimately flew over and got involved. I flew over one time just to meet with Roger, and I went to Roger and Caroline's house in the country.

Roger played me two projects, one that became pros and cons and one that was The Wall, and asked me which I preferred. There was no question that to me it was The Wall. You know, that that would be the one that they ought to do next, and apparently he had done the same thing with members of the band. They picked that one, so he said okay, and we started talking about how to do it, what it was missing,

what role I ought to play. Um, it was beginning to become apparent to me that he wasn't really looking for me to get involved in the music. So I just had to say to look, you know, if what you're looking for as an engineer or a button pusher, I'm not the right guy for this, because there are other people who could do a way better job of that than me. But if what you're looking for is a collaborator on the musical side of this thing and the conceptual side of it, I'd be thrilled and honored

to to participate. So we had that famous conversation where he said, okay, but um, if you write anything, don't expect any publishing. So at that time, it was going to be an all Roger, you know, it was gonna be an All Roger written, you know, written and performed by you know anyway. So um, I just decided to let that slip and that we would deal with it at a later time. And so then I went away, and then they did do some work on this thing.

They had gotten together in London and at britand you Row, which was the studio that they worked out of at the time, and next door to which was there there p a company p A and lights company, so they

had kind of a warehouse next door. They started working on that, and then they called me, and um, I got to London and I was told, oh, by the way, um, it's not you and Roger producing, it's you Roger and David, which meant that was gonna cut my um, you know, my my points and my the the money I was working for by a third and um, and then my mass probably wrong about that. So I'm gonna say so

that was gonna cut down the point anyway. So I said, well, you know, I actually got I walked out of the room and just and I called my lawyer and I just was saying, like, you know, like this is insulting. Here we go again, well you know, like the like the uh the kiss situation. And I was just about to say, go fund yourself, and he said, Bob, it's pick Floyd, and I went, yeah, you're right. So I

went back and I'll go okay. And then they said, and oh, by the way, um, James Guthrie is going to be producing too, And I said, no, sorry that I gotta draw the line there. That's not happening. He's an engineer. I like him, he's a nice guy, he's talented. I'm happy to work with him. He is not producing this record. So we had a little bit of a conversation about that. And I didn't mean it to hold James back in any way. And it wasn't that. I'm not um a generous guy when it comes to those things,

but it wasn't quite appropriate. So that was my belief then and I stand by it now. So anyway, so it was the three of us we were there. Doesn't Guthrie at this point get credited as a producer? Yes, at that by the very end he got credit. Did he get any did you? I don't know whether he got paid for it, but god knows, you know, he has.

He has stayed on with them as a as a go to guy on many many levels for forever, you know, so he you know, he I think he did well with this relationship and he deserved too, because he was amazing. He was a great engineer, very musical guy. Um he was exactly the right guy for the project at the time. So that's how it started. And um and on the first day, on my first day, UM, they had rented me a really nice flat. They had given me a car. The session call was for ten am. They like to

work from ten to six. This was all new for me. Boy, you know, this was not rock and roll, but I was, you know, I was happy to do it. So I got in the car and the studio was in a place called Islington, just just off the Angel which may be the most complicated intersection in the entire civilized world. So uh and and and there was no no GPS in those days, so no phone talking to me. I had a map and I was trying to find row.

It was impossible, and I just kept going around the circles and ending up in the wrong one way and all this stuff. It was terrible. I finally found the studio and there was no parking because it's a tiny little street and all of them had their they're matching BMW's lined up in front of the studio. There's no place for rita park. So then I found a parking spot. Finally, and I by that time I get back to the studio, I am frazzled, I'm angry, I'm just and I'm sweating,

and I, you know, and I come up. I I come up the door to the studio and I go down the stairs towards the control room, and up coming up the stairs is Nick Griffiths, who was their old engineer. And and it was but it was almost like meeting Igor on my way to the dungeon, you know. And Igor looks at me and says, they did this to me. You know, I'm heading into the control room. I opened the door, and people are not happy. There's a there's four guys and Roger staring at the door, tapping on

his watch. Which was that was it for me? That was that was the last straw, right, a guy tapping on his watch. I said, excuse me, can I speak to you outside for a second. So we went out in the hallway and I just I started just yelled at him. I said, I already have a father, asshole. I will that this is so demeaning, you know, it's disrespectful and I will not be treated like this, and

blah blah blah. And while I'm yelling what I don't realize is the guys in the control room they can hear it, and the rest of the members of the band are going, yes, like somebody standing up to him. You know. I didn't know any of this stuff really, but I just had to get it out. It was just by frustration at the morning. Anyway, I got it out, and we came back and I said, now let's go back in there and let's work like partners. Okay, let's work like collaborators, and let's not do any of this

ship anymore. And and so we went in and the mood of the room it changed remarkably, you know, from from when I first came in. Anyway. You know, we had our ups and our downs during the making of it, we had disagreements and stuff. But our relationship Rogers and mine was said at that moment, and from that point on it was respectful. It was cordial. At sometimes it

was it was like friendship. Like he would wake me up on a Sunday morning to go to McDonald's with his kids, you know, because misery loves company, you know, But I mean, seriously, he just you know, he liked to hang out and um, and so did I and The thing that happened at the end of the project that estranged us for all that time is something that I regret enormously because because I did love the man and I and I loved working with him, I loved his brain, I love the challenge of him and uh,

and it was it was very saddening to me that that that relationship died over my misstep. Okay, can you tell us what the misstep? Is comfortable with that? Sure? The misstep is this? The misstep is this? A journalist from in Toronto who had been my friend, the guy that I hung out with, was supposed to come to l A to see the l A shows at the Sports Arena and um. And he called me up a few weeks ahead of time and he said, the magazine won't let me go. I can't go, and I'm dying.

And I said, oh god, I'm so sorry, because I knew what a fan he was, you know, and we were gonna hang out. I was going to introduce him to the boys and you know, like this was this was a massive thing for him to be able to attend it and and review it and all that stuff. And he said, it's he said, I can't tell you. I'm like, I want to hang myself. It is so awful. What am I gonna miss? And I said, I can't tell you that David I had signed an n d A. And he said, oh, come on, it's just us. It's

just the two of us. Come on. So I said, look, I'm I'm about to sit down for dinner, but I'll just give you a like, okay, okay, I'll just give you some broad strokes short, but but trust me, like you'll get to see it. I'll make sure you get to see it, maybe New York or something like. They said, yeah, yeah, but I mean, you know, I'm dying. So I told him some things about the show. We hung up in

Billboard the following week. It said, over dinner with Bob Ezron, we learned we the journalistic we and it laid out some stuff about the show. And I got a seasoned assisted letter like immediately from the Pink Floyd office. I was told that Roger was apoplectic at this and he had every right to be, and and that you know they were they were going to take action against me, and that I was not to come to the show

and and I mean it really was serious. It was really serious and and you know, I was a naive guy, like up until then, nobody ever lied to me before like that. Nobody'd ever like, you know, put me in a position where I compromised myself. They made me compromise myself and then they put me into trouble. I'd never had that experience, Honestly, I just thought people were what they said they were. There's a rule here, never trust writers never. Okay, switching back, there's some stories you told

me I want to cover. Hey, let's go back to the wall and the table read. Well. You know, all during the making of The Wall, we were also creating what we saw as as the stage show. Right, this is another one where thinking through the stage show and formed the record in a huge way. And we were building models, and we were experimenting with bricks, you know, like what would bricks look like? How would they fall over? And I kill people? How can we make it go

up fast and down fast? Etcetera, etcetera. By the end of the making of the album, where we were now in rough territory, we we had we had not yet got into mixing um. We had a table model of what the um of what the stage was going to look like and UM, well I'm saying, is I realize I'm answering the wrong question, But that's okay, you're gonna want to hear this. So we had a table model of the of the show, and we played the songs

and moved the little figurings around. We had little men that were band members, and we had little model inflatables and little models of this and that, and we played through the show so that everybody could see it for the first time, see the the physical realization of it for the first time, and know what it was that we had been working on for this length of time. And so um, you know, so hard and and it was.

That was a magical moment because everybody, including us, playing it all out like that for the first time, everybody saw what we what we knew. We add then back to your original question. So, um, thinking about the Wall as a theatrical piece and thinking about it as UM very much a concept record, not in a loose sense, in a very um literal sense, and it was going

to be a story that took us from beginning to end. Um. I started playing with the sequence of things of songs and bits of songs that Roger had given me and things that we were working on in the studio. UM, and I started to see a kind of story arc um. And then one night, I don't know it just bam, just went off in my head, UM, and I saw it all like, so there it is, there's the story, and I wrote it down. I wrote it like a script, like a film script, because it was easier to visualize

that way. So it opens up with act one seeing one, um, you know, the sound of a bomb falling that that does not ignite, and then a baby cries. Now we're into the next bit, and we just and I described every scene and stuffed the song title and the lyrics and their lyrics as though they were dialogues. So when you look at a film script, you have a description of the scene, then you have the name of the of the character, and then you have, in a smaller window,

you have the words they'd say. So I I use that format. And where I didn't have the the song yet that told this part of the story, I just told the part of the story and said song TV W to be written, UM. And it came really quickly, and by the end of a few hours I had a script for what I what I saw as the story arc of the wall, and then I brought that in the next morning, made copies, photo copies as we

had in those days, you know. Um, no, sorry, I made I made mimiograph copies as we had in those days, and handed them out to everybody, and I said look and and um, and I had James ready to play the pieces in the order that they were in the script. Um. So we did a table read through as though it was a movie, and you know, I read and and then the song would play and we'd sing on top of it, or the lyrics were already there and we

would listen to it. And it became very clear at that moment um what the shape of the story was going to be and what we had and more importantly, what we still didn't have. Tell us the story of the creation of comfortably Numb. It's been told a lot of times. Um, well, I want your version, which we

I've heard from you previously. Okay, Well, then you know the the the story of comfortably nom is this that that in this script that I had written, there was a song, um in d I had noted because that would be a really great key to go to from the song before um that during which Pink checks out

and um. And so every day, by the way, we would have tea because we're British, and we would have tea and tea is at at four o'clock every day at four o'clock, come hell or high water, we go upstairs to the the the upstairs conservatory and somebody would bring us a tray with tea and Vicky's so we'd sit there and we talked about what we were doing and what we'd have to get done in the in the remaining ninety minutes right and in there there was a lot that was where a lot of stuff was

discovered too, because I would throw things out and people would make suggested. So I said, as anybody got a song, indeed, we need a song in d for this this slot and to tell this part of the story. And David said, well, you know, I've got this little piece I was working on for my solo album, but you know it's not quite finished, but you know this might work well here. And so he plays that high string part tuned in a way I'd never heard before and sounding just like magic.

It was it was gold dust falling from the sky and and but it didn't go anywhere. I mean, it was it was a lyric that was not relevant to this story. So I said to Roger, you know, what do you think about taking this and let's let's get let's get the story and over top of this thing. And and Roger said, he I'm not writing I'm not writing lyrics or a melody to that tripe, you know, or something like that, you know, something that was half

a joke but half not not a joke. And so as half a joke but half not a joke, I said to him, So you don't really think you can handle the assignment? Assignment? Is that? Is that? Is that what you're saying? Um? And and he told me to go fuck myself, as he often did, and and then

we went back to work, you know. And a couple of days later he came and um and played me the demo that he had created for Comfortably Numb, and he said, here's your fucking song, you know and and and I mean when I heard those, and I had the lyrics on paper too, there is no pain. You are receiving a distant ship smoke on the horizon. You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move. But I can't hear what you're saying. When I was a child, I had a fever and my hands felt just like

two balloons. Now I have that feeling. Once again. This is not me. You do not understand. This is not how I am. I have become comfortably numb, and I've got goose flesh right now, like right now, all over my body. When I say that to you, imagine when I read it for the first time, and I heard it for the first time, it was one of the most brilliant things I'd ever read in literature, poetry or song lyric. It was beyond Okay. Now, the other thing

you've told me is you have this experience. It's unbelievably successful. You're at a pinnacle of your career. You go back to Toronto, you expect your phone to blow up and crickets, crickets, but nothing after the wall. UM, I decided that I wanted to come back to Toronto. I wanted to spend time with my kids. I wanted to UM, I wanted to lead a more you know, I wanted to have

more of a home life. And and why not. I just had the biggest record in uh, you know, the biggest record in the world and maybe the biggest album certainly of the last ten years, and it was heading on to be the biggest rock album of all time. So I would go back to Toronto and of course people would call me and they would come there to work with me. Of course they would, why wouldn't they? And then yeah, like after twelve months, it was Crickets and I became Bob Who. And I was working with

a lot of local talent. Some were, you know, really terrific. And I mean I did an album with mariraey McLaughlin, really talented folk singer, and UM and I worked on with a band called The Kings. We did a single called Switching to Glide, which is you know, was one of those one hit winner It was a big hit UM in the United States, and I brought the album did You Kings Are Here? Good Man? Good Man good Man?

UM And and then Randy Phillips became the manager of The Kings and we went in to do the second album and uh, Randy Who, as you know, went on to UH he ran a g for a while. He was Rod Stewart's manager and UH and has you know a multitude of adventures in in music land. UM and he's a really smart guy and and uh and and you know, we liked each other. So he just said to me, what the funk are you doing here? Like you need to come back out to l A. You know,

you need to come where the work is. And you know, by that time, UM, I remarried and and we had a baby girl, and we had all you know, hers mine an hour, So now were where we had five kids, and um and uh. It was not a trivial decision to make, you know, but we all decided we would

do it. And and really, you want to know, the real reason why we decided to go to l A was because my parents had already moved there, and I was I felt terribly guilty from the time they left that they were so far away from their grandkids and they were getting to see them very much. So this was, you know, this was not a hard decision to make. I didn't like l A. I didn't want to live in l A. I wanted to go to New York. I wanted to go to London, but my parents were

in l A. So that's where we went. And the deal was, we're gonna try it for nine months and if Dad doesn't like it. We're gonna go to New York. And everybody agreed. Then we got to l A within you know, literally, uh four weeks, five weeks, I was working with Rod Stewart and stuff just started to happen. Um. And at the end of the nine months though, I was not liking the experience of living in l A. I love the work, but I didn't like living there. And I just said to everybody, Okay, um, you know

what we talked about before, I don't like it. We're gonna go. And they all looked at me and went, dude, we'll help you pack. You know, like the kids. You know, they all had by that time, they had the big eighties hair, you know, all the shoulder pads. They were all due this and do that. They loved it, they loved being there, and so we stayed and it ended up being really good for all of us. Okay. Now, most producers have a window whether they're essentially done. In

your particular case, you have a long career. You are a traditional producer, whereas today many producers are essentially engineers. You get into the concepts, the writing, etcetera. But then it does seem to slow down. You have another adventure and then you come back and you walk us through those changers. Well, you know, when when we were doing the Division bell Um and I was I was commuting back and forth to do the Division bell First of all,

that was really wearing um. But second of all, you know, nobody was like we we were not working as hard as we used to. You know, we were spending a lot of time, um, making pasta and having an you know, and going out on the river and stuff. Is a beautiful studio, great setting, wonderful um. And I was beginning to lose my sense of motivation. You know, I felt like I was repeating myself on some levels. And I guess,

I guess it's just like after so many years. At that point, this is now twenty four years into the adventure, right, I had already started working on some CD ROM stuff. I'd already started on technology. I didn't go straight from music and then start technology. I've always been a technology guy anyway on a certain level. So that was really exciting me. Like every time I would be with that and those people, like I was just firing on all cylinders.

But when I was going back to the boat, which was beautiful and wonderful, which I loved, and with David Gilmour, who I love, and all this, you know, this great team. I was kind of in, you know, I felt like I was in a comfort zone, and I didn't want to be in a comfort zone. So I came home and I said, you know, I think I'm gonna I'm gonna stop that for a while, and I think I'm going to uh go into this technology thing, you know,

because I believed in interactive entertainment. I was once again working with brilliant, amazing people, working with the Monty Python guys. You know, I signed them to our company to make a series of of c rom games. Um. I was already friends with Eric Idol, and I became really good friends with Terry Gilliam who you know, you know, Jan and I had lunch with him on the last trip to England, and I stay in close touch with him

and he's an amazing guy. UM And Howie Mandel, God bless him, another Torontonian, got involved with us to do all these educational titles and stuff. I was just having a blast and and the creative team and uh technology team. These were people that were at the top of their game and that's who I wanted to be with. So we built a studio in um Burbank. We built a large UH animation and in digital entertainment studio. There we were doing work for Sony, we were doing work for Disney. UM.

We invented lip sync on the fly. We had UM a new digital income paint program that made it possible for us to turn out animation faster than anybody else. We had an amazing team and in that building we had a couple of hundred young, hungry, energized people as as animators and creative directors and UH and engineers too, And that's where I wanted to be. So that's where

I was. What happened was UM Mark Mercuriitis was was UH managing Storm Ferguson, who is the guy who made all the Pink Floyd artwork except for the wall, which was Jerry Scarf. But Storm and his partner Po they created some of the greatest artwork and of all times, some of the most legendary album covers and certainly all of that historical Pink Floyds h So UH they wanted to do a CD ram of Storm's work. They wanted to get all of his works at him talking and

all that stuff. And and Mark Uh grew up in Toronto and was uh an employee of UM, the two guys who owned Sanctuary and UH and A and a music manager. I mean he he came to Storm through music management. He decided to make it his life's work to get me back into his studio. So they came, he in Storm to Los Angeles to talk to us about doing the Storm project. And he announced me basically said you are going back into a studio if it kills me. And I said do your best, you know,

like okay, sure kid, you know. But he was relentless, like like unstoppable as he is in life. Merk Mercuriatis is relentless. And his latest venture proves that. It's called him no this which was the name of Storms design company that did all those albums, and in honor of Storm, it is called Hypnosis, and and Mark's son is called Storm. Yeah. Look, Storm was very meaningful to all of us and very dear to all of us. And if you could just see my my room here, you will see Storm artwork

all around the walls of this house. Um. You know some that I bought and I also paid for him to do a a limited edition art paper addition of these of these works, and so out of that I got a few artist proofs too. So this is like a storm shrine in this house. You know, works on a mission, works on a mission, and he starts setting me stuff, and he starts calling me in for meetings.

I think, I uh, I did meet with Iron Maiden, you know, based on Mark's recommendation, and it got to hang out a little bit with Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer. We got on very well, but it's really his band. Yeah, but for some reason it didn't work out. But his cousin, Rob Dickinson, was the lead singer in CA. And then Mark brought me some demos from those guys and they knocked my socks off. The sound of Rob Dickinson in

a way reminded me a little bit of Peter. He had that that dusky um, beautiful British Barris Tanner, you know, that um that I really loved, and I I guess, I guess, you know, Merk infected me with that virus, you know, and slowly, maturely like it wasn't gonna be my record. But what I consider maybe executive producing we're working with the team, you know, and slowly, maturely he sucked me into, uh, you know, playing a much larger role in the project and loving it. I loved it.

I loved doing it. It reminded me of the excitement of the process, and um, that sort of that lit the fire underneath me again. Okay, now, before we get back to a couple of records you've done in the last decade or so. Philanthropy is a big part of your life. Can you tell us the genesis of that and what you've been involved in. I was in the hospital once, you know, I checked myself in for drug abuse.

Is approximately when this is approximately in this, you know, like when I moved to New York, checked myself in a Gracie Square, not the nicest hospital in the world. It's a psychiatric hospital. But I wanted to go somewhere where they locked the doors and I wanted to stop doing drugs. So I'm in a room, and in psychiatric hospitals there's a window on your door. You don't get to be behind closed doors, right people, People can observe you,

and your name's on the door up front. Now, of course, I moved in with a harpsichord, and I had, you know, and I had a guitar. And I mean it was like I was air to not to not get in trouble, but I wasn't there um to stop thinking and creating and making music. So I was kind of doing both. So I spent a lot of time with the door closed. However, several times a day an old man would come by and look at me through the window and just stare at me, and then he would turn around and go away.

So one day he came and he looked at me and stared at me, and I opened the door to say, can I help you, sir? And he said, you know what means the name? And I said, uh no, not really. He said it means the helper, and then he turned around and walked down the hall with his his ship stained ass showing through his you know, through those medical those embarrassing medical robes that they would dress people in. And that hit me like a ton of bricks. But

that's only just an illustration. Why, you know, where is it? What does it come from? It's baked in, man, It's baked. First of all, It's baked into us as a people. My grandparents used to put food on the on the doorstep for what they would refer to as the poor family during the depression when they had nothing. And Um and my great grandfather into whose house I was born actually, and when they would have the high holidays, we would

come over and we'd open the cellar door. We had sellers in those days, and there was a tin a tin um box on the door that said uh sedaka, and you would have to you would have to put money in the box before um, before the holiday would start. And and my father was a doctor and a healer, and my mother opened our home to every stray in not just the neighborhood, but from you know, all walks of and from all corners of the world. So I

grew up with that this was normal. Normal is you open your home, you open your heart, you do what you can to help people. Well, I certainly know you're involved with the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, but you also started music rising with Edge from you too. How do you even know Edge? And you know, as I said at the beginning of our first podcast, you're the straw that stirs the drink. I mean, you sit at home and all of a sudden you have ideas and you

just start ringing people up. Yeah, you know what, Sometimes I've just bumped into somebody and then I have the idea, you know, because my dad used to say, like when we were little kids, when we had company over, and it was almost always relatives, right that would come over to our house, my dad would come upstairs and wake us up literally to come downstairs and sing for the relatives, and and we would go. And my dad would always say this phrase, and he said it until the day died.

This moment will never come again. This moment will never come again. So down we would go because that moment would never come again, and we had to say and and in a way, that's how, you know, that's a little bit of how I live my life. You know, this moment will never come again. And so when I bump into somebody and and I just suddenly I just see all the potential of the of the encounter, and I go for it. Why not, this moment will never

come again. I may never see them again. Bob is understating it because he's really very heavily involved in philanthropy, and you might bump into him yourself. Okay, well, you may bump into me. But so Katrina happens and we're watching it on television. It is, uh, you know, next to the next to Night eleven. It's just one of the most devastating things you can see in real time, happening right before your eyes in a major city in America.

And it's not just any city. It's the magic city that my uncle, the jazz fanatic, used to play records from and tell me stories about, and I used to dream of as a place where that's where music lived, you know, And and it is a place that the members of you two also were, you know, that they were in love with and they'd actually gone there and worked and stuff. Because it is it is the heart

of jazz, rhythm and blues rock, you name it. Everything comes from West Africa, through the Caribbean, in through that port and into America most everything. So when we're watching it go under water and we're watching people die, we're watching people on rooftops saying please save me and stuff, it just it. First of all, I cried watching and secondly, then I got really angry because I didn't see the response that I wanted to see from the US government.

It was, as you recall, you know, people were sort of saying, well, you know doing you're doing a good job.

Whatever he said said about Brownie, Hell, heck of a job, Brownie, That's what So UM I was planning to do something, and then I got a call from Marty Albertson, who at the time was the chairman and CEO of Guitar Center and sat on the board with me of the Mr Hollins Opus Foundation and knew a bit about me and sort of the other things that I was doing, and so he called me up and he said, look,

Henry Jessquits, who who owns Gibson Guitars. He wants to make uh commemorative guitar and sell a million dollars worth of it. And he wants to UM buy instruments and give them to people there who have lost their their musical instruments in the flood, which sounded like a pretty good idea, except for the part about giving instruments to people, because we didn't know how we were going to be able to do that. But h I said, well, let let me think about it and I'll call you back.

At the time, I was also on the board UH the l A chapter board of NERO and UM and it was a trustee. Um, so I was here. You know, I had a relationship with the people in Music Cares, and I called up Kristin Manson, who was running Music Cares at the time, and I just said, listen, um, I know you guys are sending money to UH your members out there. How many people have lost their instruments? And she said, that's a really good question. I don't know.

So up till then, they've had about fifteen hundred requests for support. They went back to everybody, and she came back to me literally a few days later and said, there's people who have lost their instruments. So then I thought, well, a million dollars, give or take a little, that's a thousand dollars of person. So I said to Marty, Marty, if we gave people a thousand dollars and they shopped wholesale or at at your cost for instruments, what could

they buy with that? And he God bless Marty. We went from that conversation to tell you what, I'll give you the first two dollars of the sale of these guitars, which hadn't even been built yet. I'll give you that money. And oh, by the way, I'm going to create a dedicated on line for you at musicians Friend, which is the online service of Guitar Center, that these people can call, they can give him a code. Those people will help them buy the instrument and we'll ship it to them

wherever they are. Couldn't be better. So um, that same time, right about that same time, you two was playing Toronto, and and Michael Cole and I were invited to lunch with the band because you know, we sort of knew some of the people involved. And so we went to lunch and Roger mcnabee was at that lunch, the guy that that you would started Elevation Partners with Bono. Yes, and um and uh, and so was Jimmy Ivy. So he's out at the table and and they sat me

next to the edge, who I loved. I thought, you know, he was really fun to sit with. He was he had a great sense of humor, he was easy to talk to, he was comfortable. We got laughing. He says to me, you know, the first single I ever bought with schools up. And I said, you're kidding me, and he said, nope, first single I ever bought. And that's why I'm in the music business. Then Bono chirps up and he goes, actually I stole it, but it was

my first single or something like, you know. And then and then Jimmy I having uh chimes in because Jimmy's first gig was at the Record Plan and they put him on Alice Cooper as an assistant engineer basically a runner under me, because they figured if he could survive me, he could survive anything I used to break in their guys, right, and he was amazing. He was just like quick witted, smart Jimmy Shoes That is exactly right. We named him Jimmy Shoe is because he always showed up in different

you know, he had he had styled. Jimmy had style and uh and of course you know he went on to be more successful than any of us by a mile. But um, so they were all in the room and they were just talking about Alice Cooper and this and that, and then that gave me the uh, let's say it gave me the confidence to be able to turn to edge and say, Okay, look, I'm I'm gonna do this thing for the people in New Orleans, and I want

to know if you'd like to play too. Um. At first, what I said to was, do you have any guitars we could sell, you know, and like make some money, Like guitars you're not using that we could sell and make some money. And he goes, I'll do you better than that, and he said, give me your number and I'll call you on the weekend. So I gave him my home number and and left the lunch, figuring that was just another rock star moment, you know, where you give up your number and you never hear from anybody

ever again. Saturday afternoon, we're we're barbecuing and I get a phone call. Hey, Bob, it's the Edge, And okay, now I've spoken to Yamaha, I've spoken to this manufacturer and that manufacturer, and they're willing to do this, and they're willing to do that. And what I think we ought to do is we ought to uh coordinate with Marty, and we ought to and I knew at that moment he was in So I said, you know what, buddy, let's be partners, you know, let's do this together. And

he said, you know, i'd love to. I'd be honored to be able to do something for that place, you know. And so from there it just exploded quickly. We called up UH micro Pino and Arthur Foco Uh from Live Nation and at that point that company was called spin Coo. It had just been spun out of Clear Channel and UM, and we asked him for a dollar on a ticket

help us. To raise money. We hit up the Bush Clinton Fund, which had been established just for stuff like this, because you two had a connection through UH one of Clinton's aids, and they gave us five hundred thousand dollars. The Buffett family gave us money. UH. Suddenly people were giving us money and we were and we were now able not just to fulfill the needs of the musicians who have lost instruments, but now we could go and help the churches, the community centers, and later on a

little while down line, we could help schools. Over over time, we raised well over seven million dollars. We got instruments to everybody that needed it. We still had a million dollars left, and so I went to Tulane University and UM we created a course of study in music rising the musical cultures of the Gulf South. So the idea was that when it happens again, because it's not a matter of if we all know that that this music would never be lost. We were going to digitize it.

We were gonna get videos of the people who played it. We're gonna we're gonna make it something that people could study till the end of time. And and it's there, and it's been up for years. Okay, So at this point in time, I'm not talking about going back through your career. What do you see yourself as you see yourself as a record producer? Again, that's very funny. What do I see myself as you know? I see myself as you keep you keep using the term alta kacker.

That's me for your I see myself as you know, as a capetchy old jew. You know, I got a headache and my back and my knees. And um, I've never said I am a record producer. In fact, I was conscious about that because, um, people would say that stuff like, well you know, what do you do? Well, I am this, And I would think to myself, well, you that's not what you are, it's what you do. So people say, well what do you do? I say, well,

you know, I'm uh, I'm in the music business. I produced stuff, I produced other kinds of entertainment to and uh. But also I'm in education, I'm in um a little bit in um uh civil rights and justice and water and and I'm a big time right now evangelists for the environment. Okay, so yes, you are involved all kinds of things. You had ling ling Uh and Metallica hooked up for the Grand we did. We did the Grammys.

That was fun, that was okay. You just had a huge success with Andrea Bocelli, a record that was long in the birth thing. And you've also worked with Fish. How many albums you've done with Fish at this point? Um? I did two albums with Fish and how did that come together? So? Um, they were getting to a point where they were gonna make records again. I think they'd had a little bit of a hiatus and they wanted to do something serious. Page Um, the keyboard players, was

a big fan of my work. He knew who I was, So when they were thinking about who maybe to work with, I guess my name got thrown into the hat. And um, and I know um some of the people from Red Light. So I had done the Pete Seeger ninetieth birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden where we had Dave Matthews and a bunch of other people. So I had worked with Corin on stuff like that. You know, I guess you know, mine was a familiar name. So somebody said, well, why

don't we meet him? I went to Dick Sporting Goods in Alfaretta, Georgia, and and to tell you the truth, the reason I went really was because my granddaughter Zoe was living in Alfaretta, Georgia at the time, and this gave me an opportunity, opportunity to go see her spend time with her because it was hard to get to Georgia.

You know, it was not sort of on my beaten path to see her and spend time with her and have her come to a show with me and just like really have a great bonding experience with my beautiful girl. So I said, okay, I'll do it, and then uh and Zoe came with me that we had dinner with them. I didn't realize that bringing my granddaughter was a really

big plus to these guys. They're real family guys. Their kids roll around sound check, you know, they love to they love to bring their whole families on the road. They're very, very human and um and you know, they're good Vermont boys. You know, they're just like really nice, progressive, family oriented guys. So they like me, and we had

really good conversations. Another one of those, a little bit like the Purple conversation, UM, where I just said, you know, what I saw on stage side is amazing, and we're gonna need to try and get that. Let's not be let's not be limited by lengths of songs or any of that other stuff. Let's just really go for it. I went to Vermont and work with them in their barn, and we spent weeks together and we had a lot

of fun, uh, you know, routining material, picking songs. These were guys who you know, who would come in with like scores of songs to pour through each of them and um, and then we broke it down to an album's worth of material. We had a lot of fun doing it. Then we went to Nashville and the sessions. I try to keep the sessions as as fast and exciting as they are, and and you know, to create an atmosphere for them that was um, that was inspiring and UM and felt safe. So they really went for it.

They liked it. The album came out people said nice things about it. I think it did. Okay, they really loved the experience, so then they decided when it came time to do it again that they would call me back. Okay. Fish is a good example here. From the beginning of their career, it has primarily been about the live show and the records, even when they were the major label with Electra, have never been as big as their live show.

In addition, you mentioned your work with Deep Purple. Now need Let's say they're a classic heritage act, but we know in the streaming era it focuses more on tracks, even if you put out the album, and in a world where it's flattened, a lot of these records do not have the dominance that they once had, irrelevant of

their quality, irrelevant of their genre. What's it like in terms of your motivation, Because when you were making records with people like Alice Cooper and Kissing Pink Floyd, you knew these records were gonna come out, They're gonna get a good list, and based on their quality and luck, they might really become known by everybody, which is almost an impossibility today. Okay, that's a that's a big question,

big long question. In the case of Deep Purple for example, and this is true of Alice too, right now, they have a fan base that just stays with them no matter what they do. And those people they buy physical product. So in a world where nobody buys physical product, Deep Purple sales are primarily physical. And in Germany alone they sell a lot of records. So um, while you want to say, well, you know that, you know, why did

I do that? There's nothing in it for you. Actually got royalty papments out of the Deep Purple albums, and I didn't get that out of a lot of contemporary people. And with and with Andrea Bocelli, for example, we sold a million physical albums millions, So um, there are people who still buy um. Admittedly they're mostly older people. Um, and but older people like music too, you know, and

they have a right to anyway. What motivates me to work with Fish, Well, what motivated me to work with Fish was just because it was just such an off the wall idea and they were so good the players. Oh my god, I saw the show and I'm like, wow, I want to spend a few weeks in the studio with those guys, right that that could be a lot of fun. Luckily, I'm in a position where, um, you know, I, if I didn't do that project, I wasn't going to starve. So I got to do it for the right reasons.

I wasn't doing it for the paycheck. I was doing it for the excitement of it. And and sure enough that that proved to be true. In the Deep Purple case, it was exactly the same thing. I went to see Deep Purple play live at Massey Hall again in Toronto. It was it was was it the Machine had tour where they played the whole album. No, no, I would love that. I didn't see that show. Yeah, but but you saw him at Masket Hall. So Neil Warneck their their agent is also Alice Cooper's agent, and and and

Pink Floyd's agent for the long as well. A friend he called me up and he said, you're going to produce the next D Purple album. I said, no, I'm not. He said, yes, you are, and I said, no, I'm not. You know, I don't want to get pigeonholed as the oldies guy. And you know, I've got to stay with Alice. And that's for me. That's about it for classic bands and he said, well, you have to just do me

this favorite. Just go see them play live. Now understand Machine had the album was was a seminal listening experience for me that did a huge amount to put me in touch with my love for heavy music. Um. I was once asked if I would produce Made in Japan, but I was doing something else and couldn't do it. And as you may recall, that went on to become like the biggest rock album of the past ten years,

sold like twelve million coffees or something like that. I just kept watching the numbers, thinking I didn't make that money. Oh crap anyway, But so it wasn't like Deep Purple with Strangers to me, and um So I went to see them play live. The opening parts of the show, they were playing their more contemporary material and it didn't

really get me off, I have to say. Um. But then in the you know boats, halfway through the set, they go into this jam where they're all, um, they're like showing off there there they hit the virtuoso button and they're playing stuff that just knocks my socks off, and and all the old people in the audience who up until then we're like politely applauding or yelling from their seats. They got up and they started dancing in the aisles of their arms and twirling circles like they

were back in Woodstock. It was amazing. It was crazy, and I thought, you know, I haven't heard that in rock and roll in so long I almost forgot it existed. Prague, real, unapologetic, virtuoso level Prague. I loved it. And then of course they closed the show with all the classics, which you know, just reminded me of how great a band they were. So the next morning we had a late breakfast and

we talked uh the possibility of working together. Um. By this time I think that they had had their confidence shaken by people who told them that they had to try to be a contemporary rock band. Like that's not fair to do to guys at our age. You know, it's just not this. Yeah, it's not who we are.

It's not gonna happen and m and I said to them at breakfast, I said, look, if you if if you're looking at me as a guy who's gonna make like a quote unquote contemporary rock album with you, I I think you've come to the wrong place because I don't think that's possible for you in norder, I think

it's relevant. I think that's bad for you. I think if you want to make a record, it sounds like what I heard in that jam session and in those classic songs later on in the set where we don't give a ship about length of song, how many you know pieces, all this stuff. We don't think about radio. We just go in there and be be bravely and on a apologetically prague I'm in if that's what you want, I'm in. Uh. And and you know when I left now, uh,

Steve and I had already worked together. Steve Morris, the guitar player, we had already worked together when he was in Kansas who I also produced By the Way and and the Dixie Drags before that, and when Dixie Dregs all along the you know, the Dregs went on for a long time, and Roger Glutter was one of my production heroes, like he had produced some of the albums that you know, being a Progue fan and a British rock fan, he had produced some of the greatest albums

in my collection. So for me, like this would have been a fun This would have been a great gig. I realized after that being would be a great gig, so okay, I'm gonna go for it. And apparently they liked the speech and we started the process and and um and and I've just enjoyed the hell out of

this relationship. We've we've come, we're friends. We talk, you know, when we're not working together, and um, you know, we see each other in various places that I you know, Ian Gillen came to do his vocals to our to Nasau in the Bahamas, where we have a place, and he stayed with us. He stayed at our house and we did the vocals together. We ate together and hung together. You know, I really like them, but I really admire them,

Like these are really really great musicians. He's an incredibly good vocalist and and and he and Roger are seriously good lyricists too. So you know, for me, that was a that has been and I hope continues to be a really fun gig. And we sold records. Okay, we're in this crazy COVID era, but what have you got in the pipeline of anything? Looks like, uh, nobody's going on the road for a little while. So um, uh

you know. We're is finishing up Alice is album that we had to we had to interrupt because of uh coronavirus. And we've been finishing it remotely, um, which is which is an interesting process. It takes a little a little more time than I'm you know that I would really like. But but it's also kind of cool because it's like I could really concentrate on one thing at a time,

which is not normally my nature. And then I get it all together and and I have managed to clone my studio pretty much identically here in my house in Toronto, so I can get it up to a point where it's um, I can mix it here. All I do is send it back to Nashville to Julian who who puts it through our hardware and prints it there. But UM, so we're gonna finish that. That's gonna be done within I would say three or four weeks, um, because it's

not the only thing I'm doing right now. Right now, I am on mission from God to get people to register and vote in the next election. Um. You know, my buddy Andy, who you know well, who you ski with and stuff. We are we're we're on a you know, we are on a mission and this is taking quite a bit of time. Plus I've got my environmental stuff and In Place of War and the Mr Hollins Opus Foundation and Music Rising, They're all going at the same time. So what I in my spare time, what I do

is I'm finishing this record. But but Alison I are already saying like, well, you know, why stop. We're having a good time. Let's keep going. So I think that will happen. A couple of people have sent me notes saying, you know, would you like to talk about stuff? And I'm open to it, though it would be very difficult to do under current circumstances. So we'll see, you know, we'll see. Bob. Okay, I think we've come to the end of the feeling we've known, and I think we'll

leave a third episode for the future. So Bob, I thank you so much. Going through your history and telling all these fantastic stories from our audience. Well, it's you know, what's fun to tell because it gets I get a chance to live it again. You know. I sort of stay in the present, as you know, but but to go back and relive that stuff, it's really you know, it was great times, great fun. I feel unbelievably privileged to have had these opportunities and to experience these things. Well,

this has been great. Bob Till next time. This is Bob left stuff