Eric Bazilian

since the summer. I've spent every summer there since I met my wife in nine and then every other Christmas. Done a couple of full years, but we decided to do it again. Now did she meet you based on your fame? Absolutely not. She sat next to me on a flight from from JFK to Stockholm. We were on our way to do a festival by that basically by

the North Pole. She had been. She had lived in l A for a bunch of years, moved back to Sweden, went back to l A to keep her green card active and see if the the ex boyfriend was a thing. So we sat next to each other, um exchanged phone numbers, um, stayed in touch, found myself back there a few few weeks later, and you know, it happened and the rest is history. So you've been bands, most specifically the Hooters were still together. Is who the members married to? Does

that affect the harmony of the band? It really can? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I was married what I call my training marriage um before this, and she uh, she was also our bands stylist and visual director. Um. So she's responsible for those colors that we wore and that got weird, it got really it complicated things a lot. Okay, So you're from Philadelphia. I am from Philadelphia. Okay, when how did you first get into music? Um? I saw the Beatles on edge before that. Were you into music? It

get all before the people. My mom My mom was like a child prodigy concert pianist. She like, yeah, she went to Curtis when she was nine, Curtis the famous Curtis Institute, and um uh she was studying at the University of Pennsylvania. She met my father when she was eighteen, got married, had me And Okay, wait, did you finish college or she drop off? When she finished college in Wow, did you finish a pen? She did? She she graduated Penn after I did, so what motive hit her to

go back? She and my dad got divorced when I was twenty one, and so she wanted to, you know, find herself. And she apparently I don't remember this, but apparently she asked me, you know, what do you think I should study? And I said, well, because my mother, being even though she was a musician, had a serious scientific bent about her. So I said, well, how about science? So anthropology. So she ended up majoring in physical anthropology.

That's unbelievable. So your parents get divorced when you're twenty one. I have a very good friend whose parents got divorced right after we graduate from college. It really messed him up. Didn't mess you up? I didn't think it did at the time. In retrospect, yeah it did. I mean, it's it, you know, it shakes the foundation. But you know, I was I wasn't living at home. Um, but you know, yeah, I think on some level it definitely did. So since

she's a concert pianist, did she introduce you? She make you take piano lessons as a little kid. She didn't make me. I I asked her for them, and I did. She used to play the piano in the house all the time, and I would sit next to her while she was rocking chopin really and I would you know, that was the first that was really my first rock experience. Even though she was playing chopin. I would just see the way, you know, her eyes would roll up into her head and she would you know, I want that?

Did She also play records in the house, not that much. But then my uncle, my my father's brother, played guitar. He was a folk musician. Yeah, of any noted, no, no, no, but he taught me my first guitar chords and my first song on guitar. But the first song that I ever learned to play and sing was El press Nueva by Joan Bayaz and I learned it in Spanish. And how old were you? I was nine or ten? I think I was ten at that point, Okay. So you

start playing piano at what age six? Probably okay? And when you when you pick up the guitar at what not? Eight or nine? Not? Probably nine? And so you were taught how to read music? To this day, can you read music? I was taught to try to read music. It's like I learned the alphabet, but I could never like make music out of it. I've had a recent experience with with reading because I am Someone showed me a video of Chris Theely doing a Bach solo violand

sonata on mandolin. Now, mandolin, here's a mandolin. My my career basically in the United well in the in the United States, began with these cards. So I owe a lot to the mandolin, but I never really addressed it as a serious instrument. It was a spice in the Hooters, the Hooters Arsenal of sounds. Um. Someone showed me this video of Christinely playing this Bach piece and I said,

I'm I'm gonna learn that. And this was right when we had moved to Stockholm, and I walked into the famous Hellstones music store and he had just gotten in this ninety five Gibson mandolin. The price was right. I didn't have a mandolin in Sweden. Bought the mandolin, went home, downloaded the sheet music, printed it out. And that was early September. And I am still struggling to play this piece, but I can kind of read a little bit. Now. Wow, so okay, you're playing guitar and piano a little bit

and then are you listening to the transistor? Philly has a legendary radio stage. Yeah, oh, I listened to. You know, it's funny that the Beatles weren't the first thing that that shook my rock to my question? So what was ironically? The first record I ever bought was do Move? Uh nak We can't play the too because we get into publishing, right, But that was certainly good. But continue, So the first song I learned was Sukiyaki, right, which is really called

Aruko by Ki Sakamoto. And I would stay home from school feign illness to listen to the radio to hear that song, which they were playing every playing every hour. Your father was a psychiatrist. He didn't realize you were feigning illness. No, he didn't notice. How many siblings do you have? None? None? You're the old there's a lot of pressure on you. Okay, So the Beatles. It's February sixty four, February nine, The Beatles come on, Sullivan. How

does that change? My parents had gone to Baltimore to look at it a Steinway for my mom, and I opted to stay home because I wanted to watch the Beatles. So I went over to our friend Bernie's house. You know, they walked out, they did um all my loving and you know, wow, And I remember when they remember because underneath it they put the status of all the people. And then he's married. I think it was. It was during It was either at that point or I want to hold your hand where I realized I want to

be him. First I looked at Paul, because no one Paul was cute and he and and dark haired and and I wanted to be him. And then I looked at George, who was playing the solo for till there was you, and I said, no, I want to be him. Then I saw John, who was like the coolest guy alive. I said no, I want to be him. And then I saw Ringo, and no one had more fun than Ringo. I realized I wanted to be all four of them. Okay,

So then what happened next? So what happened that next was the next day Bernie and I started our first band. Bernie was gonna play drums, and once again, Bernie's your best friend, best friend. Okay, Bernie had any musical experience, none whatsoever. Okay, and did you start said band? We did? We did, We did it with our friend Paul. So it was a trio. We and I called us the

Limes stuff like the quarry Men. And so before this had happened and I had learned to play this Joan Bayz song, my uncle I knew a guy named Gene London who had a local kids show in Philadelphia, and I performed on that show. So performed playing the guitar and playing the guitar, singing the song. Well, that's pretty dramatic. Unfortunately they the tapes are long gone, but he brought us back. So the Limestones performed on the Gene London show. We did A Hard Day's Night and House of the

Rising Sun. I mean, I'm speechless. So in high school you must have been the biggest thing going. This is so I was getting the crap kicked out of me because I had long hair. Wow, you went to public school or private? I went to public school through sixth grade and then I went to private school. But you didn't get yours k I actually did. In private school. I went to a Quaker school, and I thought, oh, I'm you know, I'm gonna be certain. No, it all

changed in like ninth grade. Uh, And like the guy who was kicking my ass and eighth grade suddenly is like, you know, my biggest defender of So you see the Beatles, you need an electric guitar, API I got. Well, I wanted to play bass because I wanted to be like Paul first, So I got. I got you know, Dan electro bass for eighty dollars. Okay, eighty dollars your parents give you. Um, I had saved it, um, and I got the bass. And we thought that Paul, who knew

a couple of chords, was going to play guitar. Well, Paul couldn't play guitar, so Paul played bass. I played guitar. And where'd you get a guitar? Paul had a guitar, he had a Superro, he had like a thirty and you had the amps too. I think we had one amp between us, which is what the Beatles had for a while. And we did, Um, yeah, we did. We did the TV show and then um, that's sort of never really caught fire. It wasn't until I was fifteen,

um that my first real band jailed. It was still Bernie, Bernie and I and then um, there was a kid that I went to Hebrew school with and Paul Vernick, who kept trying to get me to play with him, but he was such a nevish he was just like, come on, man, come on man, I can sing, I can play. Okay, fine, And then Bernie. It turns out he went to high school with Bernie, and uh, Bernie said, you know, this kid is really good. So we got the three of us got together. By this point, Bernie's

playing bass, We get a drummer. This kid opens Paul opens his mouth, and I'm like, oh god, this is like, you know, Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney. This was like the voice and he played great rhythm guitar and he wrote songs. So we had our first real band at fifteen sixteen. It was called Evil Seed, and I just got in touch with What are The guy who managed us back then got in touch with me. He had recordings which I thought were all gone, Wow, Where are Paul and

Bernie today? Paul is no longer with us. He had substance issues, which ultimately kim okay. Bernie is in northern California doing, you know, living a real life, having a real job, still playing bass. We get together sometimes and it's like where one brain with four hands Okay, so you have Evil Seed, you're fifteen years old. What happens next? Musically? You know, we start getting really good. Uh, and then they come over to the house and fire me because

I have another year of high school left. I was a year younger and um, and I was also taking pictures. I was really into photography at that point as well. I don't know whose idea it was, but they fired me. And then three months later they came back cap in hand and said, sorry, man, would you come back? And did you go back? I did? I did because it really was a great band. I mean, listen, how much were you working in terms of you know, playing like

forts parties and stuff like that. We we actually someone actually did hire us for about misfah and they shut us down after the first song. They did not want to hear Cream and Hendricks covers. So this was a band you played in the living in the basement or in the party room, but you didn't play out. We did.

We did. We played you know, coffee houses. There was one legendary coffee house called the heck It Circle, like he could he They got us um where a lot of weird, a lot of weird ship went down but I managed to stay away from all that. So so this band, Evil Seed takes you all the way through high school, all the way through high school yep, and then you yourself go to PEN and I myself go

to Pen. Band kind of breaks up. At this point, Paul has already had his his substance issues have already gotten the better of him, and it turns out that there are other mental mental health things involved. So yeah, I go off to Pen and my first week there, I go to an electronic music class that they have. They have him Moog synthesizers, serial number zero zero three, and I see this guy in there with really long blonde hair down to his waist and I recognize him.

He's in another Philly band called Wax that I've seen open for the Birds, and um, we start talking and hanging out and it turns out that his band, Wax guitar player had left. At that point, their configuration was two electric pianos, two drummers, a bass player, and a singer. And I'm like, put me in. So I joined that band, and that was challenging because he was at that even

at that point, Rob Himan was like that was Robbin. Yeah, Okay, challenging because of his personality or because you weren't up to snuff musically. I was up to snuff, but I really had I mean I really did have to up my game the musically. It was really some sophisticated music. It was even then even instead we're talking about like September seventy one. Okay, so you joined that band. How much time goes to that band as opposed to school? A lot? In fact, I basically almost flunked out second

semester freshman year. But you graduated a physics major. Right by everybody's standards. Physics is not easy. You know, I'm wired. I'm wired. Funny, I guess I was getting seasoned history courses and a's in physics. Yeah, he just just comes naturally. It didn't I had to work hard. But if I worked hard, I'd get it and and the feeling of

satisfaction was similar to learning a piece of music. You know that understanding Newton, understanding einst I there was there was a moment, you know, there was magic eye paintings. For me. It was like that I would stare at a problem, and stare at a problem, and all of a sudden I would see it clearly, and then if I looked away, it would disappear. Okay, the obvious question people would ask today is you have anything to do with physics today? Not externally, but I think internally my process,

the way my subconscious mechanism works. I think it's the same thing. I was going to ask that question second. So you certainly answered it. But when people don't get today today, when it's funny, because it's our generation and even younger generations, they send their kids to school as a glorified trade school to get a job. Where we went. Our parents said, if you go and you graduate, we don't care what right. That's what That's what mine said exactly.

So you are now playing with Rob in this band Wax, to what degree? Do you have a dream of further success? That's all I really want to do. In the meantime, I took all the premed requirements and you know, got my degree. Rob graduated three years before I did. H So he and the singer David went off and just kept writing songs. Meanwhile, Rick Schurdoff, who was the drummer in that band, goes and gets a job for Clive

Davis as an A and R slash producer. His first act of a and our heroism is he finds Mandy for Barry Manilow. By Clive's terms, that's a huge victory. Yeah, well by anybody's terms. I mean, Clive is always about when you would go for a meeting with Clive, when you want to hire somebody, he would say, bringing five songs that are out there that you believe will be covered and be hits. That's exactly what he what. I think that was one of them. I think peaceful Easy

Feeling was one. I think Mandy came later. I don't think that was an audition song. So so so Rick goes off there and you're left at pen doing what studying physics? And I had a band, you know, my my roommate who had known from high school years. He had a Hammond organ, and then we found some other guys. We had a band called Cyclic Blowfield and his funky calypsos. Definitely the seventies. And to what degree were you known

in Philadelphia? Not at all? We played fat part ease um, you know, w and what to what degree was there a scene in Philly at that point? There wasn't. That's the thing there really wasn't much of a scene. Yeah, the famous Tower Theater where David Bowie cut his live album, So there was a live music scene, but none of the local people were populating. The Tower didn't really start going until the mid seventies, right seventy four, even seventy There was a spectrum and where the roof blew off?

Where the roof? Yeah, yea for those I don't know, that's a famous arena in Philadelphia. So the roof blows off the spectrum. But were you an avid concert going yourself? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I was a photographer too. Did you have a dream of being a successful to be the Annie Leeb of it? No, I had a dream of being John Paul George and Ringo. But in the meantime, I enjoyed taking pictures of these people and I love being in the dark room. I

loved printing them. So it was purely a hobby. Yeah, yeah, except that at that point, bands would play two nights at the Electric Factory. They play Friday and Saturday. I've got on Friday. First in line, get right up front, which is literally pushed up against the stage, which is about a yard high. Shoot Shoot Shoot, Shoot, Go Home. Developed the negatives, let him dry overnight, spend all day printing, go back down, get first in line, and sell prints

to kids online. So you were obviously dedicated. You would sell them to the sell them to the people in the line. How much would you selve them for? Buck? Buck and a half? Maybe? How big were the prints? Five by seven? Eight by ten? Really? Yeah? And what was somebody's supposed to do with the print during the show? Yeah, you know, nobody ever seen. But then I would I

started handing them to the bands on stage. People would come out, someone would come out and say, with the individual who handed those photographs to Rod Stewart please come backstage? And did you meet Rod Stewart? I did? I did? And Ronnie Wood. It was the first Faces tour and like like an idiot, I sold the Negatives while Rod Stewart was so cool back then he was So those were the first rock stars you met? Or did you met other people? Um? I actually had um? Well, but

yeah that was them, Jeff back ten years after. I really went after ten years after because I wanted to be Alvin Lee and I actually got to be friends with them because I was fifteen sixteen, but I looked twelve my voice didn't change a lot of sixteen. So this begs the question greatest guitarists in rock history. Ah, that's that's a pantheon. I mean I have my favorites

for different things. George Harrison obviously, because he was the first guitarist that had parts, he really played orchestra Ley. Then came the Holy Trinity, Clapton, Beck, and Hendricks. Okay, of those, how do you rank those three or the unrankable? They're kind of unrancable, I say, technically Beck right, hands down if you like panatonic blues, Clapton revolutionizing the guitar

as a world Hendricks. Okay, so let's go back. So Rick Shart off to New York working for Clive, and Rob is playing in his own band because he graduated three years before. He and David the singer are writing. They're just writing songs so that Rick can signed them to Arista. Right when I'm about to graduate, they get signed, right, that's Baby Grant. That's Baby Grant. So again it's a keyboard player and a and a singer. They need a guitar player. Okay, So were you in touch with them

when they called you? Yeah? I touch all through. Okay, so you called, so you must have thought you made it. I thought, this is it. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna make a lot of money right away, and you know we're going to go on the road and all that great stuff that goes along with it. And then what happens, Well, well, we're still working on the songs and and you know, Rob's playing me these songs. And you know, the thing about meeting Rob was I met

my equal, you know. I mean, Paul, who was in The Evil Seed was an amazing songwriter singer, but Rob, you know, his musicality just was on another level. I mean really it was. To me, it was like Steely Dan on steroids, the way his his sense for chord changes and melodies, and and David who wrote all the lyrics. Then, um, so it really really challenged me and it made me up my game, especially when it was time to arrange these songs and come up with signature guitar parts, and

I would come up with like instrumental sections. I'd go off and would it and come back with this you know, three minute exploration and they loved it because you could do that. Then yeah, well listen, nothing better than having your work be loved. So you make the record who produced that record? Rick Rick and Rob Okay and the record comes out. I have to own that record where you're not on the cover and you got the person made out of vegetables. And that's the second album. Well

that's the second album. I don't know if I own the first. First one has has a Botero painting. I have to go back to my collection. I certainly remember the second. So you get to make two records. But by my standards, nothing really happens with either of those rounds. Now. I mean, we had a couple of shows where it really felt like it was happening, and afterwards we're going, We're the next Beatles, But uh no, it didn't happen. I think we were. We were ten years ahead of

our time or ten years behind. But you know, our first album came out when Talking Heads was happening, and it was everything was going minimal and you know, and if you you know, if you could play really well, you kind of had to hide it. Whereas I'm playing like I'm getting paid by the note. But Clive is amnimal. He's behind it, he's behind it, but you can tell he's like Rick was his pet A and R guy, so we'll let Rick have his fun with these guys.

But after we did the second album and we started writing songs for the third and by this point that Robin David had brought me in as a full member of the band, and you know, brought me into the songwriting process, uh, And we started writing songs and sending them to Clive, and Clive kind of sat us down and said, guys, you know what a hit song sounds like, and he played us actually something that he thought was going to be a hit song, which was really lame.

And it was not a hit. No, but you know what, nobody nobody bats a thousand. Even Clive doesn't take away from anything. So we sit down and and we we just realized this is not the place for us. And then at some point Rob and I realized that it wasn't gonna happen the style of music we were doing. Um, the singer wasn't a rock star. And he even told us, he said, you know, I wasn't born to rock. So Rob and I decided to give it one more shot. This is seventy nine. We're gonna have We're gonna have

one more band. What are we gonna do? How are we going to make it into something that everyone else isn't doing because we're not gonna do punk, because we're just way beyond that. Um. At this point, the SKA Invasion was happening, of course, so you know, we saw madness, we saw the Selector, we saw the Specials, the police were happening. And Robert Rob actually grew up going to Jamaica as a kid and he was way into reggae, so he said, you know what, no American bands were

doing this sca thing. Let's try that. And we had already found a drummer. When originally we were going to do it as a three piece, I mean, Robin I looked at each other and I said, can you sing? I don't know? Can you I don't know? Well let's try it. Well at least if we sing together, at least we can cover each other's asses. And we originally we're going to do it as a as a three piece.

Rob was going to play left hand bass like Raymond's Eric, but then um, the drummer was was in a band which was which was breaking up because the lead singer and lead guitarists were leaving. So I went with them with that band, they had a two week commitment at this club, and I realized, here's a great drummer, a great bass player, a great guitars will bring them in. And that became the Hooters, the original, the original Hooters. So this is this is at this point, it is

eighty this is living in New York. Were living in Philly, Okay, And what's the next step with the Hooters. Next step with the Hooters is to write some songs, get a band name, and get some gigs. Now the band is named after the melodica. Yeah, Well, what happened was we went into do our first first demos and uh my, my friend Glenn, who was actually sitting out there and in the control room, had had a melodica. Uh. Rob and I being into reggae, we're listening to a lot

of Augustus Pablo, you know. He would just play melodica over over these these tracks. Um, and Rob said, how we should try a melodica, said, well, my buddy Glenn's got one of them. And the meantime a friend of ours had a mandolin and he also happened to have some recording gear, so he recorded our first demos so we're set up setting it for the first demos. I'm playing a mandolin better than that, but um, And then

the engineer says, give me a level on that hooter. Ah, And we looked at each other and went, okay, well, this is a hooter. This is a hooter. The band name thing took a few days because we were looking. We wanted to be a plural noun so that each one, each guy in the band could say I am a beatle, rolling stone, not a shoe, not a chair, and it couldn't be a household name. And then dawned on one of us that it could be a hooter. So you become the Hooters. And what's the next step towards success?

Rob's girlfriend at the time had a successful record store that like alternative punk, new wave record store, and she took it upon herself to to manage us with with with Rob and we had a we had a very successful marketing campaign. We printed up, we got she made a logo for us, and printed up a bunch of yellow eight and a half by eleven sheets of paper that said h oo question mark, and we papered them all over the city. Right, that's a good campaign. I

gotta give her credit. And then a week later Hooters, and then the the date of our first show, which was I think June of at a bar in Levittown,

and was it successful to people show up? People showed up well because the band that I had played in with David, our drummer, had a following, so they knew David and they knew me, And yeah, they came, you know, a hundred maybe the first night, two hundred the second night, and we ended up playing at the bar called Vernon's five nights a week, four sets a night, so that was like that was our Hamburg exactly. I was just thinking, so, how do you end up getting a deal with Columbia?

That was a long road really Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did Vernon's places like that. Then we started doing a residency at a place called Grendel's Lair in the City on South Street in Philly every Monday night. Again. The first time maybe we had seventy five people, second time and fifty and within a few months the line was around the block. Then a very lucky thing happened. Uh this this jockey named Michael Tearson. I hear from Michael tears all the time of course you do, Of course

you do. He decides he's going to put the studio on lockdown and only play the music he wants to play. Guerilla Radio. That was the that was the original Guerilla Radio. So Betsy the manager calls him and says, hey, we got some demos. Should we come down and said yeah. So he plays our our first demo. It was a sky instrumental called Man in the Street. Um, he plays it, and I guess the phones went wild because they started playing it like in regular rotation. This is w MMR.

This isn't like you know, you know, cheesy little. That's one of the original so called underground FM rock stations. Yep, yep, it was the second one. You know, things just and then we put out our first single. We did a live broadcast. We opened for for the Beat, for the English Beat, who are our heroes right mirror in the bathroom, Oh my god? And um we opened for them, and we did a live version of All Your Zombies, which they started playing and started really playing it. So we

put that out as our second single. So things are really heating up. We're really getting gigs and it's spreading out into the you know, into Jersey into Delaware. But what happens in Philly stays in Philly. You know, you go to New York to try to get somebody interested, we'll come play in New York. So you go, I think the place was called Privates and ten people show up, you know, the A and our genius has come out and say, well, it wasn't electric, right, but you try

being electric in front of ten people. Hey, it's Bob left Sets. I thank you for your time. Welcome to my new podcast, the Bob left Sets Podcast. Remember to subscribe on tune in iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. So the Cindy law Per record was before the Hooters deal. Yes, okay, Rick calls you Ricks, the producer of that. What does he say? He says, because she she's already come from failure in bankruptcy, right, he says, And he was basically

assigned her. Um and he says, I got this artist and uh, he took her to see a number of musicians and apparently she didn't like me at first. She liked Rob, but she wasn't nuts about me. So it was originally going to be another guitar player. But then I don't know if Rick talked her into it, or she saw us again and decided I was up to snuff. But we started hunkering down in our We had this rehearsal studio that we called the ranch like but it

was like not a ranch. It was like here in Philadelphia. It was really like Deliverance world around there. Um and Rick had is his suitcase full of songs. He had girls just want to have Fun. Well, that's a Robert Hazard song from Philadelphia. Did you know Robert Yeah? Oh sure. He was our competition. He was our arrival. He had that one thing, you know, We had that song on the Elevator of Life. Which Escalator of Life? He talked about his taking his mas to to the supermarket. He's

dead himself at this so okay he had that. And then where do time after time and all that stuff come from? Time after time? It was a later rival girls this one am I allowed to play any of girls? Just one to happen, but keep it short. Okay, this was how it was originally written. But come home in the middle of the night, my father. I haven't heard the original version, so Cindy and it was boys just want to have fun? No, it was girls just when Western.

Yes it was, but Cindy said, I will never sing that song as song as I don't like the music and it's demeaning to women. So we tried doing it as a reggae. We tried doing it as a sky we tried doing it as like a cat Stevens. She was not having any of it. But Rick, who was really an a and our genius, he knew that that voice singing that song was gold. So finally one day we came in and Rick's like, can't we figure out

a way to do this? Now? This was when Come On Eileen was all over the world, and who didn't love Come On Eileen? So Cindy says, can't you make it sound like come On Eileen? And I remember that I have such a clear visual memory of that moment. I had an eight to eight drum machine, that's what we did all of the demos, of course, and I turned it that big tempo knob down. I changed the

kick drum pattern. I picked up my guitar and I went, yeah, yeah, that's that's what's it like when you hear that riff that you just come off that easy. When it became ubiquitous all over TV, and radio did that kind of just like blow your mind. It was pretty wacky. I mean it was yeah, yeah, I probably felt like Raphael Ravenscroft felt when every year right Acre Street, because I got paid about as much as he did for that.

But um uh, And you know, of course a week later, she's saying, you know, I always wanted to sing that song. That song is so empowering to women. Oh listen, leave, I'll leave it in today's environment. I won't make any comment about that. So you're making that record? How long does it take to make that album? We spent about six months demoing the songs that that that Rick had brought in a couple of them Cindy had co written.

It was a Jewels sheer song. There was all through the night, and then we went into um, we went into the record plant and okay, you make the record. You have any idea it's going to be this gigantic smash, which it turns out to be. I was really sort of running on fumes creatively at that point. Cindy is brilliant. I love her. She's like that wacky cousin that you like have Thanksgiving with and and and you're tired afterwards.

But but she's great. I mean, I think she's one of the greatest singers ever and fine, fine person, but it was it was draining. And then towards the very end, Rick was saying, you know, we could really use a couple more songs, and Cindy was reading TV guide looking for titles, so she found two titles Vertigo and time after time I got Vertigo. We tried to write a song called Vertigo. It wasn't good. She and Rob meanwhile, come to me a couple of days later, say hey,

we got an idea for a song. They play me the chorus like a verse idea and the chorus, and I just said, you've you've just written yesterday. We're gonna We're gonna hear the song for the rest of our lives. Who created the arrangement? That was really me and Rob and Rick and Bill Whitman, who was the engineer and is now Cindy's musical director for fifteen years. So, but the album comes out and goes nuclear. Did you foresee that at all? No? I remember when I got got

my first pressing of it. I just listened to that. I get aside from time after time, time after time was a slam dunk. But like I heard, girls just want to have fun coming out of my speakers, and I'm like, I don't know, I just don't notice. H But obviously I was wrong. Okay, so that's a big success. How do the Hooters get signed? A lot of it was on the strength of that. I mean I think that gave Rick the ammunition he needed to be able

to sign us. So you basically owe your career to wreck absolutely and even more so as in the next chapter, Will Will Will reveal. But um, you know, we we got we got a deal. We made the record, and you know, All Use Zombies was the first the first they were now in the MTV era. Okay, so when you started the Hooters, it was before that because August of eighty one is MTV. So how does that affect the creative process and what you end up doing. It

didn't affect their songwriting or record making at all. I mean, we just figured somebody would come in and make a video. So okay, so you do All Use Zombies, which becomes a huge yet became it's funny. It's funny. I think it peaked at number fifty seven. Yeah, but the numbers are irrelevant. They played They played it all the time on the on the video channel, and then the next track comes and we danced, which was really was what

made us go platinum. And now you're touring and you're living the life, living the life, and do you believe that you've you've achieved your dream? I was too busy to believe anything. It really you miss it the first time. You know, we weren't we weren't that young. I mean I was already in my early thirties when this was happening. But you know, it's such a whirlwind. I mean, we played live AID, live aid. You know, people ask me

what was it like? I don't know. You know, we walked on stage, we did two songs, we were off. Do you hang out the rest of the day? I actually there were there were personal issues. I actually ended up going home for for a few hours, and I went back for the for the finale. But um, I was there for a fair amount of it. Okay, So the first album comes out, goes platinum, and then where does that leave you? Um? When we toured a bunch, we opened for Lover Boy, Turn Me Loose, YEP, and

we opened for for Squeeze. UM, Don Henley for two weeks, Squeeze for a couple of months, and Lover Boy Um and then we have to make another album. And then Day by Day was the third single, which was actually the highest charting single. But you have three hits, which by today's standards is gargantrain, actually four Where did the Children Go? The single didn't really do well, but the video was number It was our highest charting video, number two,

a live video. So then we have to make another record, and there's that, you know, sophomore. We've used you know, we've used all of our But while we were on the road, we stayed busy, you know, we we're we're on a bus. I had a mandlin and um on one day, on a drive from New Orleans to San Antonio, I picked up a mandolin and start going, etcetera, etcetera. It's just that easy, just comes to you. Yeah, m the brain and the fingers become one, okay, and you

realize you've written something that's gonna go. I realized I've written something that's gonna make me go. For a while. The whole band was in the back lounge when we when we did that, and you know, Rob was playing in the melodica the hooter Um, and it actually took us six months to write the song because you know, a riff like that is just a riff you got right. At some point you have to sing something, and I never thought the song actually came up to the level

of that. I wish that we would have found a way to sing that melody, but the words never came. Okay, But that's the second album. Now, that's the second album, so that we do the second time, we take a big chance a chordion's mandolin's uh, really going going out, going for our ethnic weirdness thing. We've left the reggae thing behind at this point. You know, we're staying with our God theme, you know, all you zombies as a Bible story. And we write Satellite, which is about like

Jimmy Folwell and and that el evangelist thing. Everybody thinks we're like a Christian band or you know know, we're a couple of lass Hebrews right and stuff. So the album comes out and it's Ships Gold, which they took back from us because after the returns um Our first single from that album was Johnny b which the video was directed by David Fincher. Did you know he was going to turn into David Fincher. Nobody knew who he

had to turn to David Fincher. But um, and we toured with Bryan Adams on that album, but it never really caught hold in the US. Meanwhile, Germany happens. Johnny b is a smash ubiquitous in Germany. We go there and wow, I can do this, Okay, Germany and Scandinavia. But what does the label say? Label says, that's great, But um, you know, we gotta do another album. So we go back and we've come off the road and we're a kick ass band. I mean we still are.

We're more now than ever. Really, it's a rock and roll show and the mandolins and the accordions make it rock even harder. We play at we play at hard rock festivals in Europe. Now. We played between like Black Label Society and Azzi really Yeah and Pete. When we pull out the mandolins and the according to they go nuts, they lose their minds. So it's the energy that appeals to that. It's the energy. It's the energy and the

songs because we write real songs. Okay, So you're making the third record, making the third record, I want to Rock. I Want to Rock. We end up doing five miles, a cover of five hundred miles, and we have Peter Poe and Mary sing on it with us, and it's kind of a lugubrious reggae vibe. The whole album ends up being our folkiest album yet, and I can't blame it when anyone I signed off on every decision that

was the album that wanted to be made. It's like saying, I'm going to conceive and give birth to a nuclear physicist and he turns out being a basketball player. You can't, You just can't. You know, every song, every recording has a life of its own, its decide. The one chooses the wizard, chooses the Wizard. That's a good one. I've never heard that one before. It's from Harry Potter, whose I haven't read it. There you go. It's in the films too. But so we do our focus album yet

and at this point Columbia basically drops us. I mean they don't drop us, but you know, they pulled the plug on everything. We're touring places where we were selling out theaters, were playing at at clubs and strip malls, nobody's coming, nobody's playing the record on the radio. We're fighting on the bus. Then we get a call we're

going to Sweden. We're going to Stockholm. So March ninety we played the concert house coat who said in Stockholm, which is one of the most beautiful venues in the world, it's sold out. Everyone knows every word to every song. Five Miles is a number one record there, And it's like, at this point, okay, we're a European band. We knew even then. Okay, let's segue. Now do you becoming a songwriter? Because was the year of Joan Osborne. Joan came a

bit later along what year was John Osborne? Joan Osborne was um came out in God, I guess it's in the past and it's all blending together. So at what point do you side you're gonna write songs for other people? Rob and I did a bit a bit of that. We we did an album with Patty Smythe We wrote some of the songs on that. We did Uh. We did Cindy's third album with her and we wrote we

wrote a lot of that. But Rick and I've actually simultaneously found Joan in ninety three, she was playing at one of our manager's clubs in Philadelphia, and Um, we decided to have her over and see what happened, and we we clicked. Okay, I love that album. She's never been able to follow it up with Ladder and all those other songs. Get But how do you write one of us? Okay, Well, here's how you write a one of us. It was like a laboratory. We would go

in every day to to our our place. Anybody had an idea, we would develop it, try to make a real song. And the meanwhile, I've been on tour with the Hooters. I sit down on a plane, a flight from from JFK to Stockholm, and this beautiful, obviously Swedish girl sits next to me. I asked her her name in Swedish because I was already I had a feeling. I had a feeling was gonna come in early Andy, and um, she says, I'm a Swedish girl with the Jewish name. Oh, Sarah, Well, I'm a Jewish boy with

a Swedish name. Um. And one thing leads to another. That January, she she moves in with me. We're making We're gonna make the Jonas on record. She has my car, picks me up at one of our sessions. I have a guitar riff. You saw, you saw the thing with the fingers. I picked up a guitar at Rob's one morning and I did this. It just came out that that's what it's the riff doujor. That was the riff doujur. So that was in my head. I was playing that

playing on the piano. In fact, when Sarah came to pick me up from the session, I was sitting at the piano playing it and Joan was like riffing, doing her Joan bluesy riffing thing over it. Maybe we'll make something out of that. So we go home, we have dinner. We watched the Making of Sergeant Pepper. You've seen that documentary George Martin at the flat four channel. So it ends and Sarah says, well, four track recording. What's what's that all about? I said, well that, well, that crap

on my dining room table. That's a four track recorder. Oh record something for me, she says, So, okay, I've got this guitar riff. I have a little keyboard with you know, drum sounds. And bass sounds. So I make a little arrangement, a little track arrangement. Okay, I'll for the verse, I'll just apeggiated of chord changes. Yeah, and then I'll go somewhere for the B section. Yeah. Um. And I put together a little arrangement and recorded it,

and I thought she'd be really impressed. And she's like, oh, that's cool. Now sing it? Like sing it? What do you mean? You need a chorus, you need a title, you need a concept, and you have to write verses. And then you realize that the verses don't fit the chorus, so you change the course. And then two weeks later you realize you ruined the whole thing, and you start over,

and eventually you know it takes takes some time here. Meanwhile, she falls asleep on the sofa and I hear the voice of Brad Roberts from the Crash Test Dummies in my head, singing, if God had a name? Right? So, yeah, I've told you this before, so but tell everybody else, telling, telling everybody else. I hit record and I sang the song. I sang the whole song except the last line of the chorus. I was stuck just the stranger on the bus and Sarah wakes up and goes trying to get home.

Stranger on the bus trying to get trying to trying to make his way. Thank you, go back to sleeve. Okay, you finished the song. Finished the song. One in the morning, my my five year old daughters asleep upstairs. Go into our our writing session the next day, have the little dad tape with me. Forget about the song. I forget that I've done it. Take a break in the afternoon. Um, there might have been some herbal component to the to the break. Uh. And then I remember, oh, guys, I

wrote this crazy thing, popping it. Rob pops in and it was we were at Rob's at this point. Song ends. I look up at first I see Rob and he's sitting there with his arms crossed with that Oh god, here's another one of another one of Eric's weird songs. I look at Joan and she's like, you know, okay, when can we get back to work? And Rick is just looking down in that deep Rick space that he gets into. Looks up says Joan, you think you could sing that? He didn't say do you want to sing that?

Because she probably would have said, right, do you think you could sing that the story I tell us she said, I can sing the phone Book right out the lyrics. I don't think she actually said that. She did say something about a phone book, but it wasn't in that context. But I wrote out the lyrics. I plugged the guitar in and we just did a live to tape version with guitar and vocal, and we all just looked at each other and went, okay. I got remembered. That session ended.

I got in the car, poptica set in, listened and started writing the grammy speech I should have gotten to give. So you knew right away. I knew. I knew that voice, that that was the voice that was born to sing that song, and that was the song that that voice was born to say. Okay. Now that song became ubiquitous, to the point there was even a backlash. Did you experience that as the writer? No? Yeah, they protested Joan Osborne the Catholic League, which turns out has nothing to

do with the Catholic Church. Yeah. Really, And I saw the guy interviewed on TV and he says, I remember him saying, yes, you know her album, there's lots of spirituality and sexuality and it raises questions. That's what a song does. We'll have none of that here, but okay, you write a song of that magnitude, two opportunities come to you. Bone starts ringing off the Desmond Child. This

is where Desmond comes in. My buddy Glenn was sitting out there, met Desmond at a dinner in Miami, calls me and says, can I give Desmond Child your number? I'm like, are you kidding? Right? Right right? So Desmond calls me and he says, I've got this artist in uh in London that I'm gonna sign. I've got a song title Kiss the Rain, and I want to write that song with you, and I want you to play your guitar like you played it on one of us,

and I want your lyrical quirkiness for this, okay. And I said, well cool, but I'm going to France next week for this songwriting thing at my Miles Copeland's castle. Okay, I'll come. So he followed me there and that's okay, and that's where we started the song. And then he lured me to London where we finished it with Billy and at the Houseyon Hotel. Okay, how hard is it to write when you're giving those prescriptions as supposed to

waiting for inspiration. I'll tell you how it happened. We were standing by a wall in the courtyard and in the castle and I picked up the guitar and go and Desmond says, that's the chorus. That's that you've We've just started kiss the Rain, okay, and it's cool. And so we went to London. I played that and Desmond, you know, kissed all right? That was you know, you know I I do too, in fact of what you hear, and that we recorded on My My, um My then State of the Art Roland vs. Eight eight in that

hotel room in London. So what are your some of your other favorite sort of sort of songs for hire that you've written. I still like old before I die. Robbie Williams first single, Okay, you know we live in America where Robbie Williams never made it. How big was that song in the UK? Huge? Huge all over Europe over here? Okay? So you write these songs. We hear all these stories about the music business. Do you believe you were a the deals were fair and you got

the money you were entitled to. I still not have not seen a scent from from our our Sony records, our Columbia Records were still in the red. Wow, that was a songwriter. Um, I've always kept my publishing, so that's yeah. That was good. That continues to be good. You know that the balance is changing now because streaming favors the the rights owners. So right, the songwriters are

screwed in terms of percentage wise with streaming. Draconian. Okay, so do you now view yourself You've had these successes, We're going back twenty years to you know yourself yourself as a songwriter as opposed to performer. I'm a musician, you know. I'm a guitar player. I'm a singer when I need to be. I'm an entertainer. I love performing.

I write songs because I need something to play. And at this point in time, do you write the song and then find the artist or to use or is it like with Desmond Child, Hey, here's the title, here's the situation. Right for this, it's usually with the artist. You know. I had a great relationship with Amanda Marshall.

I wrote almost all of her second album. She was whatever happened to her, you know, I stay in touch with her, and she she had a nightmare thing with her management and with with her her record company, and she literally couldn't make music for five years, six years. And by then, but I even saw at the Troupe door, I was a huge fan. I wrote eleven of the thirteen songs on that second album and produced the singles.

I loved her. I love her as a person, her voice, she did things that were I wept after she did the vocal for if I Didn't Have You, which is I think one of the best songs I've ever written. She did a song on the Tin Cup soundtrack. We involved in that. That was earlier. Okay, So okay, you said you work with her and any other situations recently, Yeah, yeah, I mean I've been writing with the Scorpions for two

thousand three. About Scorpions went on their retirement tour. I think I know the age, and I think the retirement tour was three and a half years ago. And then there's been two new albums since those five years ago. And I actually wrote the single from that album, the Bet, which was called the Best is Yet to come? Right have been a clue? So you know, some people would say that's a huge journey from Joan Osborne. But I guess if you're a guitar player, it all works. It's

all music. It's all music. You know. I've done a lot of folky stuff I've done, I've done r and you know, it's music. It's finding a melody in some words, and finding a way to play it. So how do you decide to get the Hooters back together? You get the band back together as well. We sort of we never broke up. The phone started ringing off the hook

for me. You know. Rick signed us again to his his label, PolyGram, but the well had sort of run dry for Hooters songs, uh and Rob and Rick had this concept for an album called Largo, which was based on the Vorjak's epic journey across America. I wasn't feeling it. I didn't really get what the concept was. Um, but

the music was beautiful. Um. It was just it was ironic that on on the heels of my biggest ever hit, which was totally lyric driven, I didn't write a word of lyric on on the Largo album and it ultimately stiffed. It did, which is a shame because it did. It really did deserve to be heard, but there wasn't a real artist. You know, I didn't. I did not want it to be called the Hooters. It to me it was not a Hooters record. The Hooters are a rock band.

That was not supposed to be Hooter's album. Um it's a beautiful record. In fact, we performed it at Joe's Pub last year because Rick and Rick is on a mission to make a musical out of it. But there's no book. It's like it's that kind of asked backwards. But God us and his tenacity is is noteworthy. But uh, you know Rob wanted you know, we had kids were do you know we're raising our families. Rob wants to

build a studio. I'm getting all these opportunities, and you know I did just I wanted to do a solo record, which I did. I finally released that in two thousand to no acclaim. But it's but I enjoyed it. Thank you you did, and you wrote a really nice thing about it. Time just went by all of a sudden. We hadn't you know, played in six years. And then we get a phone call from Pierre Robert at w MMR. He's celebrating twenty years with the Hooters get together and

play at his anniversary concerts. So we get on stage. We played forty minutes before Fuel. So we get on stage. You know, we re hearsed a couple of days and we remember playing looking around. We even think this is the best band I'll ever be in. I mean, you know, I've played with the greatest musicians in the world, but this is the best band I will ever be in. And uh, you know, we all had we had commitments through that summer. So but finally two thousand three we

went back on. We went back to Germany. We toured all summer. And how much you work now basically it's a it's a summer job, okay. And how many of the people are original people? Well, our bass players only been with us since seven and everybody else, everybody else is originally Yeah, and we had we added a six member in two thousand ten because I broke my shoulder. Didn't know if I'd be able to play skiing don't do not a bad fall, but it was a snow

uh snow ice snake under this powder snake. I landed on my on my elbow. Snap. I didn't know if I'd be able to play, So we added friend who I always said, if I hurt myself, you're the call. So can everybody make a living from their music? From the Hooters? We we we Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Okay, So if you achieve the dream looking at it from above, of course, I've written a song that everyone in the world knows and loves. I play in a band that plays as much as we want to, when we want

to where we want to. I still feel there's a bit of a restless thing. I feel like there's something I still haven't done that I'm gonna do right, And how hard are you working at it? I am working. It's so hard. I'm working it so hard. I'm know now that I'm living in Stockholm, I'm in the center of the songwriting producing universe. So one day I'm writing a pop song. Uh, the next day I'm writing with a hard rock band. So you okay, So how does that answer your work? There's a network or you have

to create the network for yourself. They come to me that we have to. You have come to listen to the Bob Left Sets podcast with Eric Basilian. We heard amazing stories about his band Cyndi Lawper other successes. Thanks so much, for doing this. Thank you, Bob. Always a pleasure. Hi, this is Bob left Sets. I don't want to thank you for being a fan of my podcast. You can email me at Bob at left sets dot com and let us know what you think. We're open to all ideas.

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