Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My guest today is legendary singer songwriter Eric Anderson. Eric, you have a new song, Danger Lane. Tell us about it.
I think it pretty much speaks for itself. It's about school shootings, mass shootings. Our quator with David Amram last May and we did it in one take.
And you live in the Netherlands. You talk about David Amram, who still lives I think near Woodstock. How did you actually do it?
Went into a studio, he started a piano and I got the on booth and I just read the lyric. I read the narrative and he played piano.
And this was where.
Shelter Shelter Island Studio in New York.
I see, and you are doing some promotion on this. How you getting the word out?
I put it on Facebook and nobody looked at it.
You put it a Facebook and nobody looked at it.
As what you said, maybe twenty people.
So what are you doing to get people to look at it?
Well, the guy I work with, the guy not the guy who does the visuals Rent and Fisheries in Toronto, he's like this very young wizard. I gave him the images, he put it together, and he's putting some stuff on TikTok and putting some teasers up like one Verse to try to get some interests. I mean it's growing. I mean, it's like we've had about three hundred hits in about thirteen days. But I mean it's not a thing you can say you like, you know, like somebody's dog or
somebody's anniversary or somebody's birthday. Yeah, I like this. I like that. You know, you don't you don't. You don't watch a video about mass shootings and school shootings and say I like it. So I don't know if people know how to respond, but if they watch it, they don't, they don't respond.
Well, it's very impact though. What inspired you to weigh in on this now?
Well, I'm probably one of the only artists who are doing it and weighing in on these kinds of things. I mean, I'm I'm doing a thing like this. I'm working on a thing about militias private armies in America. Yeah, I'm working on a bunch of things that I guess nobody you know, things that are only in the news or newspapers or television. You know, things like that. Artists don't. It's too much to wrap your heads around. You can't.
I mean it's not topical in the normal sense where you write a topical song and then the next day something else happens. You know, when people first started writing topical songs in the village, people that fill up folks or tom packs and those people. I mean, if something happened, you had to wait till Walter Cronkite come on and the next night for a half hour newscast or something, or get some people got the New York Times maybe,
and you could write a protest song about a specific event. Now, man, all, I mean, this ship has hit the fan. I mean it's twenty four hour, twenty four to seven news c and I mean it's just it's NonStop. So for a writer, how do you put your where do you grab something and say, I'm going to write a protest song. So these songs that I'm doing on they're not really protest songs.
They are more like descriptions of diseases, long term descriptions, you know, They're not dealing with an event at the moment. And of course, since we recorded this in May, many many mass shootings have happened, and many school shootings happened. I think there's over one hundred and seventy now since the New Year, there's been one hundred and seven many mass shootings when it's over three or four people in the United States.
And to what did we Does music today have power to make change?
I don't know.
You tell me, well, the biggest challenge is being heard relevant of the content of the music. Tell me more about the private militias.
Just getting back to dangerlund just say it's on YouTube. I'm from I was from Buffalo, New York, and we rolled into town the day after the want there was a shooting at the top supermarket, like about, you know, four blocks away from where I was doing a gig. And we've been driving around doing some shows and I went over there actually to pick up an honorary doctorate
and we got some gigs around that we played. And it was the first time I went to the States, right, I felt this palpable, like something could happen to anybody. It wasn't like going this was last spring. It wasn't the feeling where you could you know, these things happened to somebody else, like somebody died or something happened to them,
but it's not going to happen to me. But this time when I went over, I had, you know, man, the stuff could just happened to you know, I just it was in the air, something I ever felt before coming to the States. And then we rolled into town. Man the day after this thing at the tops happened, and then the EVOLVEDI thing, so last thing. So we put some of this stuff together and made a video. And that's what I'm doing. I'm making videos. And since then,
how many look what's happened. It's like, it's a no brainer write a song about this. I mean, it's going to be happening next week, the week after that. You know, it's not a people, it's not a thing people on Facebook or Instagram. I really want to see who wants to hear about this stuff. I mean so, but anyway, somebody's got to take a look at it. And so it was me. So I was the one that got tapped.
I was the shoulder that got tapped on. The militia thing is along the same lines, you know, using images and talking about being summoned by you know, like a leader who snaps his fingers and everybody's ready to go, uh little private armies. So it's a it's a it's a work about that. So we're we're working on this. Now. I've already done, I've already uh recorded the track. We just have to make the video with this this guy Brandan, he's got the images I sent and so so we're
doing that. We're putting these kind of things together. But I don't know if anybody's going to look at it and want to see it, they're interested, who knows. But it's something I just show you I had to do. And but I don't think I don't know any artists that are the Dare Delvin of these the matters. So we'll see what happens.
Okay, you have it quite a perspective, having been in music and being very aware sixty plus years ago what changed in America?
You're asking me, I'm asking you, what do you think.
I think it was when the Baby boomers, after the sixties were over, became very focused on money, and then when Reagan legitimized greed, they sort of lost all of their sixties values. That's the key element in my book. And then committing quality after that, Well.
It's a complex question. The stuff that. I think it just became more evident after the sixties. This stuff was always going on since Melan Carnegie Rock of this stuff's always been going on. I think people in the sixties, you know, they had this maybe they had this hope. You know. I was, I mean I was in the first handful of songwriters looking at this stuff, you know,
in the village. I mean, it gave birth to what the so called singer songwriter movement, you know, and those people maybe might have seven people, five people writing writing about five hundred thousand things. Now you've got five hundred thousand singer songwriters and it's hard to even write about five.
Things that well well put.
So you get this, you get this dream of the sixties, and you think things are going to happen, and then you find out that the good guy's lost. You know. But it was a beautiful idea, but it just didn't fly. And you know, it just it goes on and it goes on and it goes on. You know, it's not the country. Well, first of all, America is many countries.
There's a lot of different kinds. There's a lot of America's happening in one country, and they're always amen, and getting trying to get everybody to agree on anything is very difficult. I mean, the Italians don't agree on anything, and they're just one people. In America, you get a country of immigrants, and every wave of immigrants hated the next wave, every wave of immigrants that came. I don't know if you ever read Cheos Without Money by Michael Golden.
It's a brilliant book about the Lowers Side, about how people lived in their neighborhood cages. It's an absolutely incredible book. And every time I knew, you know, if you if you went around the corner, you went to the wrong block, they kicked the ship out of you. And I mean the Italians get you. If they didn't, then the Irish would get you. And I mean, and the whole thing was built up where you when you got to America,
you dropped everything at the door. You know, you drop the language, you dropped the culture, you dropped You're going to you know, Lucy, you're going to be an American. Don't talk Italian, don't talk about this, don't talk about it. You're going to learn to be an American. And that's the way that was where things took a left turn. So a lot of beautiful cultural stuff just got thrown by the you know, cast aside because people wanted their kids to conform and to belong and to be part
of the big, big dream. So, you know, so the splintering and all this and strange false consensus of what it is to be this or be that. It was a dangerous thing. It was a big weapon. It was a club, you know, promulgated by Hollywood, you know, white fences and keep mothers at the door with aprons, and you know, it's and no one can, no one could possibly not all people could fit into this thing. So I don't know, I don't know if the sixties something
happened afterwards. There is always this way. That's a tough it's a tough question.
Well, you were born in forty three, so you're really a child in the fifties. What were the fifties like? You were ten years older than I am. Were they as straight liced and repressed and mindless as they're depicted.
Well, you had to have something to compare it to. I mean, you didn't. You can just walk around in your saddleshiares and say hmm no, but I had an ankling something was a little wrong. I mean, of course I did, you know, that's so I gravitated to things. I mean, when I was thirteen, I went to see Elvis Presley, and my parents took me to see Miles Davis when I was like fifteen, So I mean I got to see some stuff. But you know, you knew something,
something was in the air. And I think it was just through reading and through films and stuff that I realized there was another world out there that had nothing to do with what I was looking at. And that's the world I wanted to find. And that's the world I wanted to see, and that's the world I wanted to live in. And that's why people jumped ship and they you know, that was the that was the thing that informed the sixties. Some people were braver than others.
Some people, you know, cut a new path coming from the Beats, you know, the Beat. The beat things started it in the village and in San Francisco and the hippies, you know, the beats were like the Beats were like hippies, but hippies didn't read books. But it was a movement and uh literary movement and that and people at least I've got I picked up on it, and I think people like Bob, you know, Dylan and lou Reid and people like that picked up on it. A few people.
So growing up in the Buffalo area, what'd your father do for a living?
Well, my father was He was a metal metallurgical engineer who went to Case Western Reserve and he dealt with nuclear energy projects. I don't know how specific you want to got.
As specific as you do, well.
I don't know. He uh, he worked with it. He worked with a metal called zirconium. Zirconium was a metal, and he worked with people that work with nuclear energy and nuclear reactors, submarines, all kinds of things that dealt with nuclear reactors. Zirconium was this metal that was a coat around uranium. It was like it was like a shaft something went around it and so the uranium would
heat up and it was surrounded by water. And nuclear energy is basically steam, you know, like that makes electricity. That's all it is. Really, So you got it. You've got nuclear nuclear energy, nuclear rods, and you've got water and a mixed steam. But the problem is the uranium it oxidizes, it rusts, so Zirconium was an element of metal that allowed the electrons to pass through to you know,
create a nuclear fission, and but it wouldn't rust. So the zirconium allowed the activity to go on without having the nuclear rods rusting or oxidizing. And in between those things were carbon rods that would absorb electrons that could make because you know, splitting atoms, the electrons went flying all over the place looking for other atoms to split.
So they had carb they had carbon rods. It's very simple, actually, and then you had carbon rods in the next two They could absorb electrons and therefore you could control the heat, how hot you wanted it, and so did an explode like a nuclear bomb. So that's the kind of thing he was into, what he was involved with.
So in the late fifties and early sixties, although we had fear of the H and A bombs, this was really cutting edge stuff. But by the late seventies there was a reaction the China syndrome. What'd your father think about all that?
About what China?
The people who suddenly were against nuclear power.
Well, I mean these are things they probably read about in the newspapers. There were protest marches and whatnot. It didn't affect him directly. Nobody laid siege to the company or surrounded the surrounded them where they had to build a motor around it or something like that. They you know, they carried on business, and they still do today to
some degree. I mean, there's people like my father that are working in France, you know, Germany, all over the all over the world, and in China and rush everywhere, and anybody who deals with nuclear energy deals with this. But protest wise, I don't know.
I mean, did you ever argue with your father about nuclear energy? Were you against nuclear power?
My parents were Republicans, so I didn't. I didn't have any kind of I didn't take any kind of stance on this at all. In fact, I wasn't really aware of the of these movements, which is kind of an insular value of being in a suburb. I guess, you know, you get insulated from all this.
So how many kids in the family?
Whose family?
Your family growing up?
Well, there was a there was a mother, father, and two brothers.
So where are you in the hierarchy of the three kids.
Well, well, there are two brothers, me and another brother.
Okay, are you the older or the younger.
And the young I mean I'm the older.
Why what kind of kid were you growing up? Were you like a member of the group? Were you outside of group? We're the leader?
Well, man, I was on the student council, I was vice president of a class one year, and then I lost interests in all that stuff. And I, like I said, I was, I was in a lot of extra curricular reading. But I did. I work in a restaurant, and I worked in a record store make money to buy records. I uh played some sports. I played tennis. I was on a football team for a while and played baseball. You know, the usual stuff, whatever kid does.
So you were aware at the birth of rock and roll? What was that like?
Well, it was pretty earth shattering, you know. I mean I my parents been listening to people like Raynoble, My father like rayn Noble, Elbowdi you know, the very thought of you those I don't know how familiar with this stuff. You know, Benny Goodman, these kind of big band, big bands used to play this, you know. I mean he he when he went to when he went to high school.
One weekend, count Basie played by high school in Cleveland and the other weekend, Duke Ellington played, so he was he was very exposed to big band music and America. You love music. Rock and roll was this was the way. It was the vehicle that taught us how to learn three chords on a guitar. See, we all started with rock and roll. And Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers came to my high school to play. I saw them. I saw I always performed at the Memorial auDA tourium
and a goal suit. So it was and I've learned to start playing guitar, and you know, I was. I had a few I had a couple of folk groups, had a rock group. You know, but every kid does that, I think in the fifties.
So what was it like seeing Elvis and Buddy Holly.
Well, you were, you knew you were in the presence of it. I mean I didn't get to see Duke Ellington in person. I didn't get to see Gwen Miller, I didn't get to see Benny Good. They were all on records. I mean I never got to see but they were great. You know, you know, you were in the present and stead of a great musical explosion. It was like it was like being parachuted into a volcano.
Okay, you graduate from high school, you go to college. What was college like?
Well, I was in pre med. I'd been working at a cancer institute in Buffalo Roswell Park for a couple of years, and under the auspices of this Hungarian doctor who lived next door to me, we became friends and you got me interested in research. So I was going to I was interested in becoming a research scientist. And so I was in the pre med and college. But then I started getting too music and more and more, and I started reading stuff that wasn't part of the curriculum.
And then I was in a motorcycle fraternity, which I quit very soon, and it wasn't in it for very long. When they they were rushing Jewish kids and they when they they said, come to the kitchen, I want to want to show our ovens that I just packed a bag and I booked out. Either I never went back again, but I still kept a motorcycle. So we were doing things like jumping freights. It was Lake Geneva was a Hobart Colleges and lake and the freight trains would go
by and we were jumping freights. And then came the unfortunate day when a few of us went and ripped up the president's lawn with their motorcycles and fucked up the shrubs and just just really didn't care. So I was expelled, expelled, A few of us were expelled, and it's funny just to conclude this story, a year ago I got an email from the dean of the college. But parents before I say, when I got expelled by I went direpidly to San Francisco because I wanted to.
I wanted to meet the beats or see the beat scene. So I had a plan. But a year ago I got this email saying they wanted to give me an honorary doctorate at this college, and I thought it was a hoax. I said, they got to be fucking crazy. So my wife, who is a doctor, she is a PhD actually, and she's a scientist. She said, maybe read this again, and the guy wrote me again. He said, you know, we want to give you this PhD. And the guy turned out to be great, this deane, he
just turned out to be amazing. But he really said, we want to give you this PhD in Humanities and literature because you were the most accomplished dropout the school has ever seen in two hundred year history of its
two hundred year history. So I went there and I I got uh work cap and gown, and I got a scroll and my wife and our biggest fear was within, you know, hidden within the scroll would be some kind of invoice or bill for like a gardening bill of like eighty thousand dollars or something for what we did to the to the to the loan of the president. But people remembered it, and I mean they're still talking
about him who was extraordined. I mean, winning the lottery, all the lotteries would be probably greater the chances than me getting this in this college was this is Hobart College. It's a private school in Geneva, New York. And ingam. My wife said, you know, we tell people on some she sings in my group when we play we play, she says, you know what what took She was a little kind of mock irritated. She says, what took me like five years to get a PhD in the Netherlands,
took you five minutes. She didn't like that. Sorry, but she's a good sport. So we did some shows and that's where That's where I rolled into town after the tops massacre the supermarket, and that's when the Boss started rolling on these these new kinds of topical works. I'm doing these videos.
I'm doing okay. So A what did your parents say when you got expelled? And B how did you literally decide and get to San Francisco?
Well? I hitched out after college. I mean I just I talked. I mean they love music, so they understood to some degree. But when I talked to them, I would always say, promise them, yeah, I'm going to go back to school. You know. They said, were you going to go back? You ever going to Yeah? I said, yeah, I'm going to go back. This went on for years. I think I had two records out and I was still telling you I was going to go back to college.
So what you hitch site? Did you have any money? You landed in San Francisco? What happens?
Not? Really? I saved a little well. I had a little folk group. We did a Woodn't anything. There was a guy named Harry Altman. Harry Altman ran the Town Casino, which was which was the club. It was like the guy I'm trying to think of a comparison in New York. I mean it was a supper club that had like people like Sinatra, Dean Martin, all these people. He was
friends with all these people. So I had this idea and I went up to I says, you know, I'd like to do like a hoot and anything like because I figured I could make some money to go to the coast. So I had a little group and he was very receptive because you see, I've heard about this folk music stuff. Yeah, nanny, hmmm, Well we could give it a we could give it a whirl. And and the place we were doing it was in the Glen Casino, which is near where I lived, you know, in the
suburbs and Snyder. And then the Union got wind of it and I had to get out of the union and join the union. But I couldn't play. I couldn't read me well, I had studied piano, but I couldn't read music enough to play guitar on a session in Buffalo, New York with jazz guys or anything like that. But they were trying to figure out a way to make the money, get me to pay for the union, but not have me do any work for the union. So I had that pan a couple hundred bucks, got in
the union. Harry Oltman was happy about that. And I mean for years they came around to the clubs I played in the States, collecting dues. A guy in a trench call like Peter falkould come and wait til the end of the show and want twenty bucks and give me like a like a receipt this stuff when I mean, I want to and I mean it was crazy because I I you know, but we so we did this thing. It was a huge success. Harry Oltman couldn't believe it.
And we had this packed house and I made a few hundred bucks, took my guitar and I hitchhiked west, got rise and met my friend in California and we went up to went up and got a place in Stinton Beach in Marin County. This is like nineteen sixty three. And then I went down to the Coffee Gallery and North Beach, which is kind of the Italian equivalent village Greenwage Village, San Francisco. And I got a gig at the Coffee Gallery and I was playing there a couple
of nights a week. Gino Valente. You know, come on, people, Let's get together. He wrote that song about peace, you know, Gino Valente h.
Of course he was also beating quick Silver passengers.
Yeah, he was. His name is Chet. He had another Chet something right. Anyway, he wrote a song about peace and walked around dealing dope with a boweying k I've strapped to his thigh walk in the streets. And then Janet Shopping played another couple of nights, so we were all we had this little thing going at the Coffee Gery and that's where TODM. Paxson found me and he invited me to New York and that's how I got into the singer songwriter sing So.
Before we get to New York. You were there when the bead poets were the thing, before it broke through, before all the hippies ultimately came. Sixty five, sixty six, sixty seven. What was it like and did you have access to fur Ling Getty and all these other people?
Well, yes, and no, I mean I was there. I met a poet named David Meltzer, and he's a published poet and he's written he wrote a book about the beats. He's he was very much into the scene with Michael McClure and those people, Philip Whalen and he was working at the City Lights Bookstarting through David, I met Farle and Getty and then then Alan gins were going to come in from Cambodia from Vietnam. He floated into town in all white, looking like he was an Indian guru,
and I met him and met McClure, and uh. Of course, Alan gainsber was very much against the Vietnam War. He was over there and he saw all the stuff that was going on before it escalated. So and David, David and I had a little group called the Snoops County Camp Followers, which is like a little folk group that included my wife, Debbie Green, who was a singer. And she owned a club called the Cabal out there and Berkeley. The Cabal is a club. This is a kind of
a tangent tangent tangent gentle uh interview. But she had a club that you know, like Lightning Hopkins auld play and Doc Watson, you know, Clarence A Actually Lenny Bruce, you know, they would play her club. It was kind of modeled up to the Club forty seven became later became an item and went to New York.
But well, okay, what point did you start playing original material?
Well, I was doing. I was doing. I was doing original material starting in San Francisco. I was trying stuff out. I mean, I wanted to be a writer. That that was that I knew.
How'd you meet Tom Paxton And how did he convince you to come to New York?
He was playing at the Cabal where Debbie had this club, and then he she brought him over to the Coffee Gallery. You heard me play, and he liked my act and he invited me to New York and said, here, stay in my house. He gave me the keys. So I went there, and Debbie and I went there and we lived in his house. He was in England for a while, and then I met Phil Oaks and Phil Phil took
me around the streets. I met Davon Rock, I met Dylan, bob On Everybody, Patrick Sky, Buffy, Saint Marie, and and then I got a deal with Vanguard Records.
Okay, before you get there, you hitchhiked to California. How do you get from California to New York.
I flew to my parents' house in Buffalo. I stayed there for a couple of months to detox kind of. And then I went to New York and to Paxson's place. But when I was in, when I was at my house, all this stuff's in bios and stuff. Actually, But when I got to my my parents' house, it was nice because I could sit at the dining room table and I really started writing songs. Uh. I wrote a song called come on My bed Side there I remember, so it was a it was kind of a beautiful, very
innocent time. And then I got, I think, uh, somehow I got to ride to New York and and then it all began.
Now, Debbie was with you the whole time.
Yeah, she flew she flew in and then joined me in New York.
Okay, so you're now in Tom Paxton's apartment. You're there with Debbie. You don't really know anybody.
What happens, Well, phil Oaks took me around to meet a lot of people film and uh, and then and Dylan, you know, he introduced me to some people. I think he introduced me to Jack Elliott. And but you know, Bob was making you know, he was doing tours and making some good money. He was you know, he was
doing sol tourists driving around. I mean, I think when I hit when I hit this, when I hit the set, I think he'd had three records out, you know, but he'd becoming down and plants testing stuff, and you know, in the clubs, which is great, and hang out and it was all about writers and writing and uh, this little this little group that thought could change the world. I mean, we're talking about four or five songwriters of this kind of this kind of you know, people like
Bob and David Blue and phil Oaks. It was just this a little handful. And there were guys who played over the night out, people like the great Fred Neil was like it was my favorite of all of them, but he and Tim Harden and people at least at Kendrick. These people played in the night Out. There's a whole thing over there, you know. And people like Lou Reed I never met. He was over on the East Side doing stuff, playing different things, clubs and stuff. So phil Oaks,
phil Oaks will come on. You're saying, saying, Bob, how are we going to do this? This is nineteen sixty four and it's now twenty twenty three.
How are we going to Well, we're going, as I say, we started this, we started with your new record. As I say, I'm willing to jump back to twenty twenty three. If there's something specific you want to mention.
I don't know. I don't know. I'm just wondering. It's a there's a lot of a lot of a lot of territory. But anyway, Yeah, So it was an exciting time and I think the highlight for me of being in the village was I had signed with Vanguard Records and had recorded, but I didn't the record didn't come up for ages. It seemed like an eternity. It's like being a kid trying to watch in the clock one as you know one is French French lessons going to be over, and like the hour never ends. And it
was like this. I waited like a year and a half or something to the till the Bloody record came out, the first album, and it seemed like an eternity. And I was living on the Lower East Side, cooking for junkies, you know, on East tenth Street. So finally the one thing that was really good was it people in the village. I got to know all the club owners, like from
the Gate Art to Lougovin. People are like people that the village vanguard, the jazz places and I and the people like the gas light and clubs like that on Gurtish Folks City. I had done one gig because Robert Shelton in the New York Times got me a gig at Folks City, and then kind of nothing happened. It was a good gig. Me and John Lee Hooker did a gig, but then nothing happens. I'm sitting around cooking for chunkies, trying to do some gardening and for people,
and going to these clubs at night. And then I lived up at Broadside Magazine. I don't know if you've heard of that. That broad of course topical songwriting. So I lived up there. But the most important thing is that people were playing for a week at venues. You know light it happens, you know Mississippi, John Hurt, Doc Watson, Clarence Ashley, all these people devon round fill everybody did we go in to a club and play for a week all over America. Miles Davids, John Coltrane, mingus we
play the game for a week. So I could get down there and I'd sit at their knees at these people's knees. And this was my PhD in music. I mean, and sit there every single night and hear Lightning Hopkins and it blew my mind. And I don't think many people can say that. So, I mean, that's where I really learned, how about touch space music? You know, though I didn't apply everything I learned right away, because I can tell by all the scratch marks on my guitar.
I was really overplaying sometimes it was a loud song. I gotta play loud, you know, and it doesn't. And I later I found out it really didn't work that way because it's all about space.
You said you were cooking for junkies. What were you literally doing cooking for junkies?
I was like living on a West t debian e. Were lived on West tenth Street. These guys lived on Ice Street. And I'd get down and go to the markets, the vegelable marketing stuff, had a kid to the place, go and cook launch for Then they'd be they'd be knotted out in the living room and I'd go and take plates to them food.
And they paid you for this.
They paid me, Yeah, they paid me. I mean, I don't know how much. Thirty bucks a week or something. I don't know.
And what was Debbie doing.
Debbie was going between here and Boston. I mean there in Boston, you know she was. She had her things, she had. We got kicked out of this place, said a German landlord. Was on Eastown Street. He took me out in the back and set me out of set me down on a milk carton. He said, I got to talk to you. I said, yes, what's wrong the rent? No? No, he said, are you married to that girl? And I said no. He said, you know, I didn't think so. And I'm gonna I'm going to evict you from this place.
Evict me for what he said, because you and her are the reason Adam and iQue got thrown out of the garden of beating. Pack your bags be out of here in a week. I mean, you couldn't make this ship up. But these are the kinds of things that were happening. I mean, you never knew everything. It's like a piano fell out of a tree and hitch on the head. You don't have any You never prepared for these things.
How'd you get your record deal?
Well? I think Tom Paxston called Robert Shelton at the New York Times, and Robert Shelton came down to Tom's house and I played him some songs. I was sitting in a chair, he was sitting on the bed, and he liked what he heard and he wrote a thing. He wrote. He got arranged for a gig at the Curtius Folks City, and he wrote a thing about me in the New York Times that I was the antidote to the Beatles. Because Robert Shelton was a writer who
a brilliant guy. He believed that after Elvis in the fifties and the rock and roll, the next big thing should be the singer songwriters, the phil oaks Is and the Bob Dylans, and that should be the big thing in American culture. Is musically, the Beatles were immortal ono me to him. And the ironic thing is that the Beatles manager became my manager, Brian Epston. That was the whole twist. And the headline of this article is the
Antidote to the Beatles. So there you go. I mean, like I said, it's like the piano's falling out of the trees. So he called Robert Shelton, called Maynard Solomon and manutt Solomon came down. He said on the bed, and I said on the terror, and I sang them songs and we went and he got me a deal and that was it. I mean, almost too easy, you know, it was almost too easy. It was ridiculous.
Okay, while you're cooking for junkies waiting for the album to come out, are you playing out live? No?
Like I said, I couldn't get any work waiting for this record to come out. I'm sitting around doing nothing. I'm just going to hear people playing clubs.
So what happens when the record does come out?
Nothing happened right away, but you know, suddenly there, you know, people were interested in it because it got really good reviews. And so I started playing gigs, you know, for a week, like like like Miles did, and like Hofkins did, and all these all my heroes. So you go to you'd go play a gig in Cleveland, you go play a gig in Chicago, you go play a gig in Montreal, you go play a gig in Toronto, you go play a gig in Atlanta, and it's like you could you
could live there. You knew the restaurants, you knew where the movie theaters, you could start a family. I mean, it was just you basically moved into a town. You became this sort of weird Dennison of a city. It was incredible, you know. And you know then, so the people like me who could see Light Hopkins played for a week or Mississippi John like multiple times in a year to see these guys play. People were lucky if they could even see him play at a college concert
somewhere for one night. I mean, the stuff I saw, and it doesn't exist anymore, it doesn't skip chains Son House. All these people I saw, they're gone. Nobody ever got to see him, I mean except the people who paid to come, you know, to come to the gigs. But I got into free so I could just sit there all week. And I think I was the only songwriter
who was doing that. I didn't. I don't remember seeing any pack Center dum Von Rock or Feliks or It was only me there catching all these blues acts and jazz acts and you know, and the great folk act like Clarence Ashley, Gene Ritchie and uh Reverend Gary Davis, people like that. I mean, it was phenomenal because then I didn't have a record collection I didn't have. I didn't have blues records or anything, and it was just phenomenal.
How did you hook up with Epstein?
I was playing a gig down at the Steve Paul scene and Bob Bobby Columbia was my drummer. Bobby, you know, he started blood spotting Terrace later on. Bobby. I don't know how the hell I met Bobby Colombia, but he but he was my drummer and I had a little band. Gabby played some piano and he's somehow knew brianis and he just I don't know his brother knew him or something, and he brought Brian down. I didn't know if you know he was there, Brian was. Brian came down to
the gate. We played, you know, like another gig for a week. Brian came down for every single night, and I didn't know he was there for like five nights. But I just there was this guy sitting there in the middle. There was always this one person sitting at the at the table there. And then finally I met him and we went to Bobby's. He wanted he said, can I manage you? You know, I'd love to do that. I said, sure, he said, Oh, I mean this is the guy who really trusted. I mean, we loved him
right away. We were just shattered when he died. It was like it's really horrible, really horrible, because he had this thing. He just said, look, just do what you do. Just don't call me. Remember there's six hours difference, five hours differences during England and London and New York. Don't call me at night because I'm trying to sleep, because I didn't think about the time difference, you know. So but he said, look, just do what you do and if it's okay with you, I'll try to put you
in very special places. If you approve of it, I agree with it. And that was the only managerial thing was said.
So you make a number of albums for Vanguard, ultimately six. It supports your touring in these varying cities. But can you feel the momentum building or.
What was it like? Well, I don't know. Show business ever was my thing, you know, as my record sales will a test. I mean I've never been. I think my main interest is writing, always exploring my mindset is I was just I was in a dugout canoe somewhere at the Amazon River and I just was paddling upstream to see what I could find. So, I mean, I was always interested in the writing. And then of course you document the stuff and make records and you experiment
with music and you fool around and stuff. But I guess the momentum was building. Yeah, things were happening, but I didn't. I can't tell you anything about how much I thought about it.
I'd you end up on Warner Brothers.
Oh, this friend of Philokes is uh Andy Wickham signed me? And was that a good experience or bad experience? Well, I think they gave me too much freedom, O the way. One album I made in Nashville that was pretty good and some good well they all had good songs. But the other one in LA was kind of it was kind of a big band extravaganza, and I didn't think it worked at all. I think there were some really good songs in it, but it didn't really do that well.
And even Eve Babbis did the cover you know her of course recently died. Yes, we were friends, and she did she did a cover and uh and uh the record didn't do very well. So Mo Austin said, look, I'm going to release you and hey, you can have the tapes, okay. And I'm living in Venice, and you know, I mean I have no sense of business at all. I mean I think I think my dog has more sense of business than I do. But I and then Clive Davis came along and signed me from from Columbia Records.
Can you be a little bit more specific? How did you connect with Clive Davis?
I think, I think again it was like through Bobby Bobby Columbia. Again, it was both of these things happened through Bobby.
So you switched to Colombia and you make Blue River, which is considered to be legendary and has some impact. Did you feel that on the inside.
Yeah, I mean I knew there was a special, something very special happened. I mean because it was kind of taped together in a way. I mean, forgive the pun, but because I did some of the stuff. I did one track with Roy Halley and San Francisco. I did one track New York at Columbia Studios. I did two tracks at Wally Hyder's in LA I did the rest the other five tracks in Nashville, and somehow the guy put it together. It sounded like it was all done.
I don't know how it happened. This was like something that this is mono from having or something. I don't know how it happened. And then there you go. You got a thing that's like more than some of its parts. I mean, the sum is greater than the you know, than the parts.
Gestalt And how did you end up moving from Columbia day Arista.
Well, my second album for Columbia got lost, I think on purpose, because when I was making the album, Clive got fired. People all over Columbia Records was crawling with FBI people. There's like pay all accusations and drugs, and I mean the whole place was exploding. Clive had you know, Clyde was on the streets. And the people that Clive picked for me, who worked with me, they weren't into I don't think they were so interested in losing their gigs.
They are very ambitious at Sony or Columbia, and I think they held on to their jobs. Nobody wanted to finish this album and it just got dropped. So we finished it in Nashville. We finished it, and then I got a call in New York from somebody from and naturally, oops, we got to tell sorry, we think your album got lost. Well,
of course nothing gets lost. And years later a woman named Amy Herriton started this research around the world at Columbia, I mean searching all the vaults from Tokyo to Paris, London, Berlin, everywhere there was vaults Columbia, they or you know CBS records. They searched us in and they turned it out, turned up and they were in Nashville because a truck came up with no identification went into the vaults on fifty
first Street. A lot of the tapes of Columbia are like where IBM keeps stuff, and it's in a mountain up and near Woodstock, like a mountain. What's it called.
There's a name, Iron Mountain.
Yeah. So they got all but anyway, some stuff was put. So they dumped all these tapes all over the floor in the middle of the night with no signing and no signing out, no nothing. Somebody just ran in from a truck dumped the ta They saw them. Somebody saw them,
but nobody knew who they were. Dumped the tapes and the next day a guy who worked there was carrying a whole armful of tapes that went over his head, walked around the corner, slipped on the tapes that are ond the floor, broke his vertebrand, his back and he's been out of work ever since. Wow, and that's how the tapes are found. So you go to.
Arista just when Clive Davis starts that company. You make a couple of albums there. The record copany doesn't even have that many records, he puts out. Patty Smith puts out Eric Carmon, did you feel you got the proper attention you made the right records there?
Well, he was just starting up. I mean, you know you make records, you don't. I mean, I don't know if they were right. They felt that, you know, they feel right when you're doing it, but that doesn't mean in hindsight they were right.
So ultimately you end up moving to Norway. How does that happen?
You meet somebody you know, like journalists? Well, I don't know about you, but sometimes a journalist will say, well, why did you, why did you? Why are you in the Netherlands? You say a woman and there's never a follow up. Course it's incredible in your case, I don't know, I can't predict.
So where'd you meet this woman. I think I met her in I met her in Norway and you were there working.
Yeah, I met her return of concert, I met her.
And what had happened between you and Debbie at this point?
Oh, deb and Debbie and I had been separated for twenty years, but we still got together making Did you ever see the movie the song.
Poet, not the whole thing?
No? Well, if you watch the whole Thaniel, you understand more.
Okay, And that's something you'd rather not speak about.
Well, I mean you know that's already on record. No, I mean you know it's there the story, okayage journalist. Man, it's I'm the one living the life and doing the art.
So okay, So you had you had a daughter? Was that a big responsibility? And what she up to today?
She's a singer, and she's a yoga practitioner, and she lives in Hawaii. She has a couple of kids, and she's studying medicine. She's taking courses in medicine, and she's become a quite serious about it.
And what kind of relationship do you have with her?
I don't know, you know, Bob, I don't know. I mean, these questions are I think I don't want to talk about my private life and my relationships. I don't ask you about yours.
Well you could, but we don't have to go there.
So was it about I mean, I'm very close. I love her very much. We're very close. She's a great, very talented girl. She's on this album, this tribute album. She sings a song. You can hear what she does. If you have an album, I don't know if you do. Somebody one too.
It's on streaming services. So was it a big decision to move to Norway? Because Norway is not the I've been there a couple of times, but it's not the epicenter of the music business.
Yeah, but say, I never really felt I was in the music business, so that that didn't even I was mainly in the writing business in my so I didn't think about that. And I wanted to go to Europe. I wanted to poke around and see things in Europe and spend some time in Europe. So Norway is a good place to, you know, to move around from any place, any place in Europe's could you have you just have
a place. It's always a good place to leave and go to from Europe, you know, And I'd read a lot of I think a lot of the is my early inspirations of stuff were European. I think, you know Rambo Bolt of the poets I read and Russian writers I never got to rush with. I can't go, No, they just napped this guy from the Wall Street RAI very unsafe place to go. But yeah, so I got to see Europe and I got to see things that
I wanted to see. But I mean New York was always you know, I think it's always in your soul. I mean you I was thinking about New York City, you know, the walking down the street, and it's the same as it was ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, thirty, The rhythm of the streets, the pace, the walking, I mean, it's it's just always the same. That's the thing about New York that I love. It
just will never change. As long as there's street lights and as long as there's you know, traffic, the pace, the walking pace, it's like it epitomizes New York and that stays with me. And I guess, I guess you really are in New York. Or if you think about how the Yankees did me, you go to sleep at night in this chair?
How often do you get to New York.
I'm going on a couple of weeks. I'm recording, finishing an album that I started a few weeks. I'm doing some shows. I'm doing one out at mccabs. Maybe I'll see you there, right, And.
How about financially? You move to you know, Oslo or wherever you were in Norway? How does it work financially? Do you have enough money from the music business where you're playing gigs?
Well, I mean you get royalties, you play good. I mean the royalties aren't so great now and then it's so good. They kind of drastically fell. I mean, even with Bob Dylan singing my song on three records, it's still that he ain't making me any money. But yeah, I mean there's enough. You play, you get some royalties. You know, there's enough, and you can survive money. I've never I don't think about it too much. So what was it like?
Living in Norway is supposed to living in the US.
Safer. It's safer. They got to they have a healthcare sist. Nobody's walking around with guns. I mean, you know, man, in like fourteenth States, you can walk around with guns concealed or or not concealed without a permit handguns. How do you feel about that?
I feel pretty bad. And uh, you know, the world situation in light of what's going on not only in Hungry but China and Israel, and then you have Trump, it's it's a scary time. Something I've never experienced in my lifetime.
Yeah, it's it's the hour of the autocrats. It's uh, it's like something you didn't think, what ever happened? I mean, but it is happening. I mean, Holland has a right wing government. I mean it's not anything nobody's walking around doing saying it Kyle Hitler or anything like that. I mean, but it's a right wing government. It's very pro business. They're not really into helping anybody. They're into taking stuff away if they can. It's not it's not as bad
as the States. I mean the States. The States are the paradigm of oh, you can't all, you don't get or can't cut.
Can you amplify that a little bit.
I'm saying the States they're they're the paradom. You know, They're the ones representing a country, social system, cultures of all the things you can't get and are not protected or not covered. I mean like health care, healthcare, education. I mean, it's a country that doesn't realize that healthcare and education are the main ingredients in the recipe for the future. For a country, you have to have healthy people who are educated and know things to carry out
to carry the torch. But it's always been an elite, you know, with it's an elitist. I mean, it's not quite as elitist as England. You know, where the minute, the minute of the second you open your mouth, they know what class you're coming from. You know, just by the first word you say. They can pinpoint you. You know, just just by the sound of the words you use, like somebody from Brooklyn or somebody from Queens. There's somebody from you know, in England, there's there's a there's a
whole hierarchy of language, of elocution. So I don't know, Norway's nice. I mean Europe's nice. It's a europe is people. They complain about the taxes, but people are driving tesla's around here. People are driving, I mean, you know, it's people are many people are doing fine, but of course there are some people who aren't. But that's true of everywhere.
So you had a number of kids in Oslo. What are they up to?
One's a singer, she's on the album named Signa. You can hear her on the Spotify. One's a painter. That there's a photographer, and the other one's a school teacher.
And how old are they?
Man? Now, I got to think they range from thirty five to an early late twenties.
And so the mother of those children was an artist herself. Yeah, of some renowned correct.
Yep, she is. She's she's a famous painter and artist in Norway and scount Avia, Sweden and Denmark somewhat too.
And how did it end with her? Such you met a new woman and you're now living in the Netherlands.
Read my book Bomb read my book.
So how long you been living in the Netherlands.
I've been here about twenty years. I mean I met I met my wife in Switzerland anger and she we joke and sometimes on stage. She's the one who said it took her five years to get her pH d. She says, well, what are you doing here in Switzerland? I said, well, I'm here to count my money. And she she tells people, well, and it took him a very long time because it was all in coins. It was all in coins. I'm writing, I'm writing a song
about this now actually yeah. But and she's a musician and she sings, and she made an album herself called Fallen angel and we were in Riterda and we gave a copy to Bob to do them. Three months later an album came out called Fallen Angels. Now, I wonder if there's any connection.
When it was the last time you connected with Bob.
Well, I don't know. He he must like me, because you know, they were great giving me the you know, for the song for this tribute album, you know, give me all the I mean, they just they just handled it over on a silver platter, him and his manager. They were wonderful in terms of well, I was doing this album about there's I think there's a part of
my life you don't know much about. But I made a few albums about writers about Heinriz Bull, the writer, the Nobil Prize German writer Lord Byron and Albert Camu three albums of writers. They were done in Germany and I was doing stuff on Camu and I know the Jefs sent stuff to doing about the stuff I was doing with that the you know, the lyrics. I didn't ask him to do it. I didn't even it wasn't intended for him, but I was thinking Jesus is going to show up in his next record or something. So
I mean, I haven't but I haven't been. I have been in touch with it. I haven't been in touch with them in a while. Actually, well, I mean we went. Yeah, it's been a while. But he's great to talk to because he loves and he loves Literturney. He loves them. He's very curious. The good beauty of him is he's very curious about stuff. So I mean, I feel a kinship with him.
When you were in Norway, you formed a group with Rick Danko of the band and a local musician. How did that come together?
I saw Rick in New York and Rick said, hey, man, come and sing on the show. I sang on a show. It was with the Room full of Blues, him in the room full of blues. Yeah, of course, And I sang on a show and he said, hey, come up to Woodstock, Let's write some stuff, let's do something. And so I went up to Woodstock for a few days. I didn't even bring a spare pair of underwear. And I ended up there for two weeks, maybe more three weeks. I went, his wife got me underwear, got me shirts.
I went and I bought a jacket. I mean, I just I was just going up for a couple of days. And then we started working together. And then I knew this guy Yonis fell in North Norway and I had done some over some this album stages that you know, dismissing. It was an album that got lost in Columbia and it got found. I told you it got found. I don't know or maybe you know this. And after they searched all over the place, that showed up on the
floor of a tapefault. So we did some bonus tracks for the CD, and Rick arranged the gig for me, and Rick played on it, and Jonas came in from Norway and sang a little. Willie Nile did some singing. I think Garth Hudson was a jumped. Anyway, we went up to Woodstock and Rick arranged his gig. He got an amp and he got Mike's and stuff at this little place and what was it called the Woodstock the Cafe Tinker Street Cafe, very famous place. So he did this gig and Jonas had been drinking beer all day,
sitting in the audience. I'm playing singing, Rick's playing bass, saying, and we did the song called Blue River, and Jonas just jumps up and starts singing a third part, and the whole place just exploded. It was like the Beatles or something. I don't know, it was like, and the whole roof just splintered. So we said, hey, wait a minute. Mick Ronson was there too. Mick was playing some slide and the whole place just everybody went whoa, all of us,
including us. So we started this little group and made a couple of records and people loved it.
Well, I think it's on the first record. You have a definitive version of that song Twilight from the band.
Yeah, that's fixt time.
So during this period when you leave the state you live in Norway, live in Netherlands, you're obviously searching, going to Europe, learning things, studying. Did you always view yourself as a musician, recording artist or did you think that part of your life was done and then you would return. What was going through your mind?
You know, I got to tell you something, thinking is the Antichrist of art. I don't think about those things.
Okay, there seems to be somewhat of a renaissance now you talk about the tribute to album. We have the news song danger Land. Is this conscious like, Okay, I want to get back in the game, get some attention.
I don't think that way, Bun. Maybe I'll tell you. I'll give you a little clue. When it comes to writing, I don't even know. I don't even know what I'm doing. I mean, I think I'm probably like an idiots avants. The songs just basically visit me and I just sit with a pen and I just I'm a scenographer. I just take it down. They're already there. They just come through me and I write them down. I don't think about it. I don't plan it, I don't craft it out,
I don't. It just goes through my fingers and I write it down. There's like visitations or something. They come from the air. And I think that's about pretty much sums up for everything that in terms of how I operate.
How did the tribute album come together?
This guy had this idea he wanted to do it, and so we contacted people and I had ideas about who could do what songs? Have you heard it?
Yeah?
I had an idea who could do what? And and there were people were very cooperative and nice and they recorded the songs and I think they I think I did a pretty good job eight with an R and the thing because they liked what they they wanted to
do the songs. We had a couple, you know something you know I was hoping to get, you know, we were thinking about Jackson Brown and UH and James Taylor on a song that James and I had worked on once years ago and this was before the pandemic and then he was going on tour this kind of thing and Jackson, I don't know, it just got nothing. Ever came to marry Go Shay was going to do something. You know, she got money for the record and she had this song that she wanted that song, another song,
but she ended up not doing it. So I mean, maybe there's some kind of like you got to have a certain star pouper, Maybe you have to be of a certain kind of echelons thing to say, Oh, Paul mccartti, you be on my record, and like if you've had three number one hits, they might say yes. So you know, there might be a subtext or a hidden story of this thing. You know what I'm saying to get people to be to do your songs.
Oh, it's a whole political thing. And I think you have a pretty good angle on it.
I mean I wrote like Graham, I wrote Graham on Nash and he just said no.
Well, at least, you know, a lot of times, a lot of times you can't even hear from people. You know, they figure if you don't hear from them, that means no.
Well, you know whatever. But I mean the people who did it, I think they put their hearts and souls onto it, and I think they did a beautiful, beautiful and Bob was Dylan was the first to get on board.
So Joni Mitchell credits you with learning about open tunings. How did you start experimenting with open tunings?
You're in these blues guys down in the village, you know, like like like Fred McDowell, he's he plays slide guitar. Booka White does tunings, you know. I you know, I got interested in tunings. And so I was at her house in Detroit, she was living there with her husband, and she did just fed up with doing normal to me, she hated it playing c's and acts and she's And I understood it because it's you know, tunings are more trancy,
they're more there's a fluidity to them. You know, it's more shall I say, more Arabic, because it's more, it's less defined in terms of like chords using straight chords. And she so taught her I think etuning E or T and she tuning and she loved it. And I think she told me she went on. She's probably made. She made about one hundred and two tunings. One night on the phone. She played me was the place she
played me about fourteen tunings she did. I mean I was just sitting and she even played the tunings of Keith Richards Uses. It probably got from her, you know, she got you got it from her, So she did. It was phenomenal what she did. She took off. It took off. And I mean if she hadn't learned it from me, she would have learned it from somebody else. But I think maybe I saved her a little time now.
Needless to say, Joni Mitchell, not only being a great artist, has gotten a great amount of acclaim anybody from that era, who you feel needs recognition or music needs to be heard today, who's fallen off the radar to a degree besides myself, besides yourself.
Beside as myself, Well, I mean, you know, we're in the danger zone now. I mean a lot of people aren't alonger with us. I'm trying to think, like, like, what do you can be? Could you make it? Could you be a little clearer about.
That when you say, well, you know Tim hard in a couple of his songs, if I were a carpenter, a couple of things are remembered, but he's fading into UH history. You know, you talk about Mississippi, Fred McDowell. These are people if you live through the era, you're aware of, but younger generations are not aware of a lot of these UH performers.
Well, they all had their own music, you know. They are things that speak to them that you know, that express what they're feeling. And that's just that's how things have been since you know Mozart before However, that said Mozart, some of these things that leak through the ages, you know, like especially in the classical world and to some extent in the jazz world. I've been listening to a lot to Oscar Peterson lately, you know, and uh Canadian guy
from Montreal phenomenal. But I'm I think, you know, I like people like Fred Neil. He's probably the greatest white singer there ever was, you know, outside of like George Jones and like Sinatra and Mat Papado to or somebody like that, those people, you know, but bred Neil was great. I think Tim Harden is great. He wrote these beautiful songs. All the blues people, you know, I think they're always pertinent,
They're always significant, and they'll never go away. And like the jazz people, I mean, you know, Miles will always be with us, called Trane, you know, all these people will be with us. So I mean I'm a funny guy to ask, because I've listened to all this old you know. I listened to Fat Swaller, and I listened to you know, real Father Heinz, And I mean I listened to all this stuff all the time. So I mean, I'm not of this world. I'm not of this time zone.
But I mean there's a lot of people that you know, probably deserve to be heard more.
Of, you know, And Thirsty Boots ended up being covered by many artists Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, etcetera. Was that just serendipitous that all of a sudden you found out they were recording your songs? Or do you know how they ended.
Up doing it? No idea, They just did it. I had no idea one day you turned on the radio or something. There it is you never know in advance. And the thing with the Dylan thing was very strange. I mean, al Cooper kind of inted at something. He said, yeah, I think he did this. Somebody thought it sounded too much like you, al Cooper. You told me this once
years ago. I never gave it any thought. But then he recorded like for It was on a one version, a record day version, one was on another portraits, another support one, an album, another version. And then when I talked to Jeff Rosen and as manager, he came up with another version that was completely beautiful, that was just sitting there and gave it to us and we put Tony Garnier out of you know, the basse player from his band, Tony, and it came out beautifully. Everybody loved it.
But I don't you don't know. I mean, it's Judy. I didn't know about her I didn't know. Sometimes I hear about a recording I never knew about from Australia, from like Fancois Hardie. I didn't know she had recorded Violenceadahn.
I mean, yeah, I know.
You think I live in an igloo or something in a bubble, but probably I do, But I don't. I don't really, I'm not always aware of the recordings.
Now, you mentioned we're discussing that people who need more attention didn't get it. You mentioned yourself. So how do you feel about your place in the firmament in history and to what degree do you want more recognition?
Well, I think I never had a hit record, you know. So I think if I'll tell you one thing, if you have a hit record, you can play state fairs. Now, you can play corporate parties. Maybe, I mean you can play you know, I mean having you only need one hit record, and I mean you can. And if people will follow they like that, they might if they look into your work, they might like other parts of your work, like in the case of Lou Read for example. You know, but with not having a hit it's kind of it's
kind of heavy. It's like heavy lifting, you know, to try to get your stuff out there, and I accept that. I realized it's true. You can't do what can you do? So or even if you have somebody else get a hit of your song, that can help too. And I think I think the Blues Project had a hit on Violence of John. I think it was a top ten hit something like that. But I mean a little bit
of it rubs off I was supposed. But so you just go and carry on and you do what you what you got into doing it for, and that's the writing. And you just soldier on and you know whatever may be will be, because I mean, I'm not going to sit down and try to write a pop hit. I would not. I never know how to do it in the first place.
Did you ever get any pressure from Clive Davis to try to write a hit?
No, Clive never said a word. You just let me do what I wanted to do. It was great. We were surprised. We invited me. We flew over for his birthday party. He turned ninety years old. He had this big party at Chipriani's in New York and Wall Street. So we ang and I fly over and we're saying, all right, we'll probably end up under a balcony or something or by a pillar. So we walk in and I'm not performing or anything. And we walk into the place and somebody comes with a little name tag, and
we were at the door. They wouldn't let Stevie vanzanin. They wouldn't let him into the party because he didn't have any ID, and I mean, and so I'm standing there not even knowing him, arguing with the guy at the door, saying, wait a minute, he's you know, such and such and so and so, and they finally let him in, so we got him. But so anyway, somebody comes with a name tag in a suit and we rushes through this huge place with all these round tables. Man, and we go right to the front of the stage.
Put us down, and we're sitting down, and like Judy Cowns is on the right, Alicia Keys is on the left, Patti Smith is in front, art Guardfuncle and Robert de Niro. This is the table we're sitting at. And we're thinking, oh shit, man, we're going to probably end up, you know, eating peanut but or sandwiches or something by some pillar. But how nice it is of Clive to advise us. They Clive, he put us right. You know, with all
these beautiful people. John Warwick is over the next table, and Barry Manilow and you know the people that he worked with. So it was a beautiful night. It was very a wonderful thing, and I talked to Clive a little bit. There was a great wonderful thing to do. But you never know, I mean, how you stand in this world where how your music affects people or what it does to people. You basically don't have a clue. I mean, they're like orphans that they go off on
their own and they live in their own lives. You don't know what they will mean or what they do mean to other people. You have, no, you don't have a clue. You go, You're in your world and you keep doing and doing more of what you did.
And how much are you touring these days?
Well, I would like to tour more, I think, but I'm touring not too much, very little. I'm doing some dates in the spring. We're doing the Winery, We're doing the Cage, doing a show in Arizona, Musical Instrument Museum, Strange Eclectic dates, a date in Boston. Yeah, some are sprinkling on the East coast. Not too much though, but ten dates. I ain't going to get rich during concerts.
How do you feel about so many of your contemporaries passing?
Where do you begin? I mean, well, not too good. I mean I feel I mean people I knew, like like Lou Reid was my best friend in New York. Laurie kept Laurie is you know, she says, uh, you know, it's it's okay to feel said, but don't be sad. You know she's a She's a Buddhist too. I mean, he was a tight she guy. But I mean Lou, I was very close to Townsman sand we wrote together. And I was close to you know, Rick Tanko, we
worked together. I mean, these are people that meant a lot to me, and they knew my kids, so as you know, and the list goes on. So you do feel kind of in one way, you feel kind of isolated. You feel you feel kind of left. I mean, I wonder where you begin to realize that the question is and why are they? Did they did they die? Or why did they pass into the other world or the other side. The real question is why are we still here?
Then you got to grapple with that. I and I think sometimes you walk around and think, well, man, you know you feel okay, you might be the eyes for Towns. You might be the eyes for Lou, or you might be the eyes for these or Phi looks. You know, he was my brother, Fred Neil. He should be very close people to me, and so you feel why am I? You know, you feel kind of like the last man standing. And Joni, who's the godmother my daughter. We almost lost her. She fell on the floor, you know, was on the
floor for two days. Nobody found her, so you know, and she'll probably be at the gig in La because she always comes to the show. But I don't know. It's a strange, strange thing to see these beautiful, wonderful, talented, funny, great people who you were very close to. But you know they live on within you too, They live on inside. Sometimes when I'm writing, a line will come up or something, Oh yeah, towns or run don't remind me of Lou
or something remind me of speaking of Lou. I had the impression you were the Lou read of interviewers.
Okay, I'm pretty familiar with Lou Reed's career. I didn't know him personally. I've heard from LORII. But what exactly does that mean?
Well, Taylor Swift called me and she told me that you were like the lou Read of interviewers. No, I'm kidding.
Well that's obviously a joke. But okay, so.
Anyway, but but I mean these people, you know, you they you know, you just carry them with you. They're inside you know. But it is a bizarre thing. I'm trying to think that there's there's many more too, the ones whose names you don't know. You know Debbie also, we lost her. Debbie figured very big in my life. We worked a lot on the music and she's in the film. She's She does a great She narrates a lot of the film. Do what do we do?
You come to play your own death?
Well, I don't think. I don't. I don't think about it that much and I don't really it doesn't really, it doesn't really bother me. I H. I think you reach a certain point when you know you're in the danger zone with you know, with things like hell, things that are going on. Fortunately I'm okay. But I think you think about it and you know, you get your head,
you get yourself prepared for it. You have to be a little you can't get attached to it though, But you have to see it's a thing that's it's gonna it's gonna happen. It's gonna come like I just turned the big eight. Oh you know that was a number for years. Oh yeah, people turn eighty you know her people people you know, people get pensions or people. I don't get a pension, but I mean, and then one day you are eighty years old, that number has visited you.
You know, is there anything you want to accomplish or do before you leave this mortal claw?
Well, I'm working. You know, I'm a great believer that you don't really leave the You don't leave the planet until you finish what you were intended or what you were meant to do. Until you've finished your work. And when you've finished those things, then you're ready to let go with a body. You know. I'm working. I've got an episodic novel I've been working on for years. I would love to see it, see that into the light of day. And I've got this memoir thing I've been
working on. I would love it to be able to walk into the sun. But it all takes time. And I'm working on this album now that I started and I got to finish their stamp thing. It's like it's like the cross on my back. I got this burden I've got to carry to Calvary or something. So we're going to try to finish. It's the spring and have it out in the fall. To I thing called Dance and Love and Death and another another writer toose Leonard Cohen.
You know Leonard left so these I didn't know Crosby that well, I mean I know, but you know these. This is what happens. I mean, you reach this danger zone and this is but a lot of people they left way before their time, you know, way before they There's a new book Lou Reed put out. You should get it. It's called The Art of the Straight Line. It's really beautiful. I'm reading it now. LORI put it together and it's really a sensational it's a really a
great book. Hel Willners in it, and uh and Ramanta Ramuncho Mata from in Paris season. He does a great chapter and now it's wonderful to read. It's very refreshing and lu jumps off the page. He's right comes alive. Have you heard about it?
Of course? So what's an average day like for you.
Well, I get up and I walk the dog and I start writing.
So you're working as hard as you ever were.
Yeah, I've writ a lot of new songs for this record. Plus I'm doing these video I'm doing these projects, these sort of topical songs that nobody wants to look at her face or even think about. But I'm going to do it anyway because in the end they're going to see that it mattered.
Why do you think doing topical song sixty years ago was at the forefront of artistic culture and now it's way in the background.
Well, topical songs. See these things? I don't know. I sent you the rain falls down in Amsterdam, did you hear it? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, so.
About fascism and Nazis and how these things. This was I wrote right after the wall fell down. They they're precient. They're like, they're not the protest songs. They're not really topical songs. We're using that as a term of convenience, but I mean it's these are these are more like I say, like from a medical journalistic if you go to the Meal clinic site, you know that you read a description of a disease, you get a disease say about mass shootings. It's not going to change. It's never
going to change. It's just going to get worse if the bodies are going to pile up. And this thing, this song, this lays it all out. And it's from the point of view of a shooter, which is unique. It's not like singing about something or what's a bad thing to do? Shoot, you know. This is actually about a kid who goes and shoots some shoots up his class, you know. So, I mean it's these perspectives are very interesting, you know. It's almost cinemagraph h h. Cinemagraphic, and they
approach in some ways, but it's not descriptive. It's actually active. So it's I think they're important, these things, these songs, and nobody's doing it. No artists are reacting. They just
it's just newspapers and television. That's it. And it's vers so sorry, and like at the end of danger landswers, you know, prayers and our prayers are with you, you know, our thoughts and prayer prayers are cheap in danger Land, you know, and you always hear it the same old ship over and over again, and it's like, come on, a government is supposed to a government is supposed to protect, you know, keep your keep its people safe. All right,
there's criminals. They're gonna go kill them. You can't stop criminals they go, But you just take their toys away. They can't have these toys. They can be criminal all they want, but don't let them have these these weapons. Read the Washington Post. Read what a read? What an eight?
Yeah yeah, I saw that post yesterday.
See what a book? See what a bully can do to a kid? You know? I mean, so these this is this, these songs are important, but nobody knows it yet. Nobody knows.
Well, we're getting the word out here. But also, why do you believe there can be no change?
Well, I read the Times. I must be a there must be some kind of newsprint massacres because I get the New York Times delivered to my door every day in the Netherlands, and I read the article about that. Do you get the New York Times? Absolutely well, I'll send you a link to this thing if you didn't catch it. About to republic kends, who are going to empower the ones that can make or break anything? They say the same old talking points, nothing can be done.
It's the most extraordinary comments they made about it.
I read the article.
Yeah, so you're asking me, can things change? What do you think when you read that?
Well, I view it. Listen, public protests driven by younger people helped stop the Vietnam War, and I certainly remember that. I thought that when the Supreme Court struck down abortion rights, people would be rioting in the streets. They were not. So I think back to what was happening in Vietnam. Well, half the public was affected because of the draft. So my question becomes in my mind, what is the trigger point where people react. We saw this in Israel. There
was a trigger point. It was not anticipated. No one felt that they would get into power and do this, and the public said no, Moss. We certainly know there are plenty of trigger points on the right. Is there a trigger point on the left? As I say, I thought there was. Things are going in the wrong direction, even if I mean, one can't predict the future. But the Republicans presently control the House of Representatives. They passed the debt ceiling limits under Trump when there was a
lot of spending. They won't do it under Biden. They won't even put forth a budget. How long can this go on? Before people react and at this point, yeah, but.
Remember Israel is a country. It's more homogeneous. America is not really a homogeneous is not a homogeneous country like Italy Israel. I know, Israel's come from all over Europe and other people. After the diaspora. Diaspora, however you have pronounced that. I mean they are many, many came back return.
It's still through the cultural and the religion there's more homogeneous, you know, the Orthodox alternate notwithstanding or Italy or French, you know, you got this sort of or the Dutch people. America is a different story. And I'll tell you this counting, it's not going to end in like several lifetimes as far as we know, because the way the thing was set up Israel, they don't have states. They don't have an Alabama, they don't have a Massachusetts, they don't have
a South Dakota. It's set up so you've got to go through a lot of hoops and a lot of ringers to get things to stop, especially taking because it's not just not selling assault weapons. You got to do what Australia is. You've got to turn the weapons in and pay, you know, pay people to turn their weapons and they've got more webs than people. It's just and it's it's going on and on and on. So I mean,
it's become it's like palpable. It's the danger in the States is and the Republicans are whoever they those people are, they're not. No one's going to change this. There's going to be more than what there's been one hundred and seventy mass shootings. I said before, since the New Year. It's March thirtieth now, it's these things are going to espect.
More of these guns are being sold. It's a good business to be in selling guns, you know, the handgun thing with no licenses, right, They don't even need to get a lesson. They don't have to go learn how to shoot, go to get a certificate from a shooting club that you know how to use a weapon, and you can carry it around to a bar, into a high school, into a college behind your back, your belt. So I don't know how this is going to play, you know, but you read the article. That was the
scariest thing I ever read. Because there's no support, there's no backing up. They just want to live. They want to unleash it more. They want to what's the word on leash or they want to lessen the restrictions, right.
I mean some of the stuff is absolutely head turning, like getting in Arkansas, getting rid of protections for child workers. I am a pessimist, but I must throw in here. We grew up the concept that marijuana would be legal. People talked about it, we laughed about it. But it's true gays can get married. So as much as I'm a pessimist, things can change. The other thing is, we grew up with all these people fighting for their nations
and we'd say, man, that's not where I'm at. You look at some of these countries like Hungry, like Ukraine. In the reverse, you realize at some point maybe you have to. I'm an old guy, but you have to sacrifice your life for some This is the other thing that you're talking about in your art. You're standing for something that's a concept that has been lost to say. I'm gonna put everything on the line, irrelevant of what goes on.
I'm putting things on the line, and you got to start with one person, start somewhere. Also, remember game marriage, marijuana doesn't have This thing chizzled into the Constitution called the Second Amendment and the second Second Amendment. By the way, it was where Robert Palmer hit me into this. You know, the writer from the name.
Robert Palmer, the writer New York Times nowseason.
Palmer, it's you know him and his daughter in mine went to Sarah Lawrence together. They were very best friends, and Palmer was very close friend of mine. He said, you know, the Second Amendment, and I it turned out to be totally, patently true. The Second Amendment was not about, well, the British are going to come, let's all get our guns out to protect ourselves. It was put in by Southern states only for white slave owners to have enough AMMO,
have enough guns to prevent uprisings. That's all the Second Amendent was ever about. And it was nothing more or nothing less, nothing to do but the British are coming, or this is kind of nothing like that. It was only about protecting against slave uprisings. And I mean, think about that and that and that tacit understanding that built in thing. People aren't You don't need a pistol to shoot a deer for food. You don't need an assault rifle to shoot a deer to eat food. So they
changed the narrative to saying well, government's bad. They're going to come and fuck us over, not only take our guns away, but they're going to tax us. They're gonna this, they're going to that. So they switched from deer to government. They switched the whole rationale at the NRA. So you know, the and this thing, it's going to be the second amount. That's a tough rock to pry loose in this thing, which is different than the gay marriage, are different than
the marijuana things. Those are cultural. Those things cultural evolutions that happen, and that's good. It's off of the good. I mean, William Browse was talking about decriminalizing pot like in the forties. But I mean it's it's just a very difficult and a very dangerous and I mean I don't like to be alarmists, but what's going on. It's a very very dangerous thing. And the young people that should be changing the rules are the ones pulling the triggers killing everybody.
Wow, that's pretty dynamic. So needless to say, as you said earlier, the pace is accelerating. So what will be the effect of the pace accelerating.
Well, there'll be more people killed, There'll be more shootings, more mass shootings, more suicides, young people at home in their homes. I mean guns, I guess after the thing I wrote. Guns are kind of unavoidable to discuss this at this point, especially it's right in your face in the newspaper, on TV all the time as we speak. Something's probably happened. But young people having guns. It's the leading cause of death with young people. Teenagers are guns.
Yeah, I saw that report. But let's just assume for the sake of discussion that there won't be laws preventing this. What's going to happen. Do you think everybody's going to get a gun? What's going to happen in schools? What do you think will be the reaction to this action?
Well, the reaction from the right is that teachers should be armed. Maybe students should be armed to protect themselves for somebody's going to come and kill them. That have more guns is the answer to guns in places where there could be a mass gatherings, where there could be some kind of a threat. But look, man, these things have in MYO the video, I mean, it's this little film art piece thing. It's not hard, it's just a film.
I mean, there's McDonald's. There's restaurants, there's gas stations. I mean, if you're on the road, man, you pull into a gas station two in the morning, there's some pretty weird people standing around the pumps. And man, some of these people got guns. And you're just going to get a cant a Snickers bar, you know, And it's I, I don't know, I don't know, but mark my mark my words out of this thing. Yeah, keep tune in and kick tuned in to my my, my little movies.
On that note, Eric, I think we're going to put a stop to it. You're a very aer udite, intelligent man. Great to get the history. You can obviously wrestle with the issues. Thanks so much for taking the time with my audience. Good night, Okay, till next time. This is Bob Left Sets