Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My guest today is Fred Malin, record producer, composer, Songwriter's got a new book, Unplugged.
Fred. Why this book and why now?
Well, you know, Bob, I felt that the hard drive up here gets a little full, so I wanted to make sure I remembered stuff. And that was probably the first reason why I started putting stories together on paper. And I also wanted to leave something, you know, for my kids and grandkids, et cetera. That would be sort of a story of, you know, how to survive through a life of music.
Okay, and how long did it take you to do it?
Started, you know, sort of dictating stories into my iPhone about six years ago and then got serious about a year and a half ago.
Okay. One of the most striking things in the book is you dropped out of high school at sixteen. How did you convince your parents to let you do that?
Well? I had a very understanding mom and a good dad, but who didn't quite understand as well. And you know, Bob, I think we're the same age. But they saw it coming and so my mom realized that I hated school, especially by the time I was sixteen years old, and she knew that I wanted to make my life in music, and she believed in me, and she was a very
very much the wind beneath my wings. And we walked to the high school together in Merrick Long Island and Calhoun High School and on my birthday and we said goodbye.
What did the administration say?
Oh, I don't think they gave a shit.
Yeah, but you're in a middle class suburb. Did anybody else drop out at sixteen?
No? You know, listen in nineteen sixty nine, growing up in Merrick Long Island, which is a very sort of middle class suburb of New York. You know, I do have a vivid memory, Bob of me sort of sitting outside of our house but not particularly close by, but close enough to hear a conversation that my mom was having with a neighbor. And this is right after I quit school, and the neighbor was saying to my mom,
you know, Peg, I'm so sorry about Fred. And I was thinking to myself, you know, they must think I'm going to the circus or that I'm dead, But I felt more alive than ever.
Okay, you drop out a high school with the vision of making any music. Now you're not busy all day, what are you doing? Well?
I had a part time job at a bookstore because I'm a bookworm, and there was a lovely lady in America who had a paperback bookstore, and I would make some money there. But also, you know, i'd be knocking on doors in New York trying to get a record deal as a singer songwriter, and really wasn't quite in my opinion, I don't think I was as good as
I needed to be in that particular way. And then shortly after I went and spent a really interesting year in upstate New York with my older brother Larry and a bunch of poets in a commune.
Wait, wait, wait, let's go back those in the book you tell some tales you're knocking on doors. You actually have an audition with John Hamm and tell us about that.
I God bless you for reading even a few books. That's just wonderful. You know. I was fifteen and I had a fourteen year old dear friend, Sam Kashner, who's
become a very esteemed novelist and a biographer. And Sam wrote a scrawled letter literally I saw the letter later to John Hammond, and his secretary read the scrawl somehow made it out, and John Hammond agreed to let me audition for him with my buddy who I was fifteen, he was fourteen, and we took the train to New York and went to Black Rock and I had a loaned out Martin I was using and I played a few songs for John Hammon, and it was just I was,
you know, ten feet off the ground, because if anyone doesn't know, John Hammond was the esteemed day and our man who discovered Bob Dylan, Billie Holliday, and Bruce Springsteen. So yeah, it was pretty cool and he was very kind to me. Bob. He said, I like what you're doing. He said, I want you to come back in about two years. I want you to have some life in front of you.
Okay, when you were performing for John Hammond, did you think you were worthy of a record deal?
I hoped I was. I don't know if I don't know if I believe that, but I hoped I was.
Okay, you know, you talk about your mother being the wind beneath your wings in that era, we are the exact same age, or close to it. And no one wanted their kid to be an artist because an artist starve. Were you convinced you were gonna make it?
I had a drive, and at that point, my drive was very focused on, you know, the people, and when I was sixteen, the people I really admired, like Neil Young and James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and all these kinds of people that were really breaking the rules and becoming these autobiographical singer songwriters. And I felt like I was obviously young, but I thought that might be part of the interest that people might have in me. And I, yeah,
I was, you know, I just hoped. I don't think it was you know, I don't think I was arrogant. I think I was just really hopeful.
Okay, you drop out of school, you put all your eggs in one basket. It is almost impossible to make it. What was going through your head? You were definitely gonna make it because you were good enough, or you were gonna work long enough and hard enough to make it. What was happening?
I think all the above. I think I was. I think I had talent, and I think I had I was co writing songs with my older brother, and I thought they were cool. But yeah, I mean, I just I had a lot of belief in myself and I had quit school because of that belief.
Okay, you were knocking on doors New York City before you went up state. What kind of reaction did you get.
Oh, I didn't get much reaction at all, you know. I mean it was, first of all, I didn't know anybody. You know, I don't come from a show of business family, and I didn't have anybody at age sixteen that I could network with. So, you know, I knocked on some doors and most of them were closed. And I did get one song published by Warner Brothers Music when I was sixteen that my brother and I had written, and I remember the person who signed that song was a
guy who was in the Belmonts with Dion. His name was Fred Mulano, so he was on the Buddy Holly death tour. I found that pretty fascinating. But yeah, outside of that song being published that year where I was sort of working part time at a bookstore and then the rest of the time trying to knock on doors didn't really work.
So how did you decide to go move up north with your brother who was considerably older.
Yeah, Larry is seven years older, and at that point, at sixteen, we had become each other's best friends, and he had become very creative. He wasn't supposed to be. He was in Georgetown University, actually in the same dorm room as Clinton, and two years later he found acting. And then Quinton went to Ithaca College, which destroyed my father. But Larry became my best pal because he wanted to be a poet and he wanted to write, and so
he wrote songs together. And when he moved from a poetry commune where he was living after he finished school in Ithaca, New York, in Trumansburg, actually a little bit, I guess north of Ithaca, he then decided to go to Canada, to Toronto.
Wait wait, wait, wait a little bit slower. Sure you got to visit him, Yes, you try to go back to school for a minute.
Oh in Ithaca. Yeah, I went to visit Larry and we did this hang for about six months where I stayed at this commune, this poetry commune. It was lovely and at the same time, you know what, I was turning seventeen and there was some not pressure but maybe even internal pressure. But I should try to go back to high school to get my high school diploma. And so I stayed with a friend of Larry's in Ithaca and tried Ithaca High School for that, you know, for
that shot. And I only lasted two days. It was so poisonous. I just said gotta go and I went back. And then shortly after Larry went to Toronto, and I followed him.
Okay, were you a bad student or not interested?
Was I a bad student? I really hated school. So I hated math, and I hated you know, social studies was okay, English. I could have taught the class because I was a you know, a bookworm, but no I a science class. I mean, these things still give me the chills.
So you have kids, would you have let your kids drop out? And what'd you tell them?
Well, you know, I have two great kids and two grandkids now. But when I was raising my kids, if they had shown me that kind of drive and musicality, I would have said, go for it.
Well, you know, no one really likes homework. So when they would be there with math and science, would you say, no, you gotta do this, you got to get your degree.
I was so busy at that point when they were going through their school at that point. They didn't come to me with those things. They just got their work done.
Okay, you're living in Ithaca, and next door is Bob Mogu tell us about that?
Well, isn't that a great great story?
Yeah?
I mean we were in this lovely old house where this poetry commune was, and sometimes we didn't have enough running water for showers. And Bob mog and his wife Shirley lived down the road and Ithaca, the neighborhood of Ithaca, as well as Trumansburg where we were. Trumansburg's a very small upstate New York town, and we had all sort of known each other through different sort of community outreach things.
And Bob had heard that I was a musician, and someone said, oh, you should really invite Fred to your studio, your workplace, and I did. I got to go to his Trumansberg studio and try to play with one of his you know, mile high tall synthesizers, and he was kind to me, and surely especially they would let us take showers at their house when we couldn't shower at home. And then, yeah, that was just a I have a
great photo. I think I might have put it in the book of the of the Mailbox that says Mogue.
You will also say that Mog goes to work for kurtzwhile and you end up using that connection to get an instrument at a deep discount. Yeah.
When I started to make my way without planning it, I fell into film and TV composing in around nineteen eighty five, and I needed to have this. You know, there was there, there were fair Lights, there were Saint Clavier's, and there were Kurzwele's and Bob Mogue was now the chief scientist at Kurzweil. So I reached out to him and he was really happy to hear from me. He had known that I had become a record producer. Now he heard I was become a TV film composer film
and TV composer, which I told him all about. And I said, Bob, I need a great deal on occur as well, and he said, oh, no, don't you worry, You'll get my deal, and away we went.
Do you remember how much that was?
I think it was around twelve thousand, down from like twenty four or something, so I.
Know it's ancient history, but what exactly was the difference between the fair Lights Sinclavier and the kurts Wow.
Well, first of all, the price, the sink Clavier and the fair Child were very expensive in the I think I think a sinclavier could have cost one hundred grand. I don't even remember anymore. It was very stupid high. But you know, these were the first digital sequencing instruments and sampling instruments, and everyone you know was using them in film and TV composing, and Kurzwew was this very unique one, but it was affordable.
So tell us a little bit more about the Kurtzwaw.
Well. Kurzwaul was developed by Ray Kurzweil, who was an incredible scientist, and if you read all about him, his his work on the reading machine for the blind alone should get him a Pulletzer or whatever they give you these days, a Nobel. But he also created this wonderful instrument which has onboard fantastic samples of piano and synth and all sorts of orchestral sounds, and you can keep adding sounds and you can create your own sounds. So the nice part about it for me was it was
sort of an inspiration machine. It had it was very easy to use, so I could literally record something like a piano pass and then hit track two right on the same keyboard air and then overdub and then hit track three, and I would have twelve tracks. And then I started to mity things all, you know, I start to get very involved in film and TV. But it was a wonderful I still keep my Kurzwell two fifty here in the studio because occasionally you need a certain sound that is a curswew sound.
Okay, how'd you get out of the draft?
Oh?
I was real fortunate. I had moved to Toronto and I became a member of draft Board one hundred, which was a draft board that they would only grab people from in case of absolutely you know, if everyone else couldn't go, they would go to draft Board one hundred. Then on top of it, Bob I got a really high lottery number the next year.
Okay, Toronto, I've been many times. I'm going next week as a matter of fact. But you're there in the early seventies. Is it provincial? What's Toronto like?
In the early seventies, Toronto was really a wonderland. I had made friends on my first visit to Toronto in seventy two, made friends with Tony Kosnek, who was living in a house close to my brother, and it was again a very free and lovely time in Toronto was really blooming and you know, just a lot of artistic things were happening, and Tony was making a record and he wanted me to be in the band, and I was again as a seventeen year old fresh out of
Long Island, Toronto was just exciting to me and working with Tony was thrilling. In the band was Paul Schaeffer, who was our piano player, who was fresh out of Thunder Bay, Ontario. And the guitar player quit and I had to become the bass player, and Paul actually had to teach me how to do a better job on bass.
Let's go back at step. What instruments did you play? How did you learn how to play growing up?
Well, I think I was always a drummer because I would drum on the tin can garbage cans as a child. And then when the Beatles hit, I grabbed guitar and became very studious as far as just immersing myself and trying to play guitar because I was absolutely you know, just my whole life changed with the Beatles. So I really was a guitar player who played some drums and had to learn how to play bass for Tony.
Okay, So continue the narrative from there.
Well, you know, the one thing that was really fascinating was when I got there, the Canadian government had passed a Canadian content ruling that from this day on, everything on the radio and television had to be thirty three and a third percent Canadian. This had never happened before. So, in other words, a Canadian radio station before seventy two could play all the UK and American music they wanted, and played two Canadian songs a day if they wanted.
And all of a sudden, now there was this incredible gold rush on for Canadian artists to be signed and Canadian music to be on the radio.
Okay, And how did that affect what you were doing?
I think it just opened up the doors all of a sudden, you know, all the doors that were closed to me in New York. Toronto was such an open city anyway. And then on top of it, there was a frenzy almost to sign anybody who could play guitar, anybody who could write songs, because they had to fill this thirty three and a third content all of a sudden, and Tony was one of the recipients of that. You know, there was also you know, the government would give you
grants to record records. I mean, it was really quite a country. But at the same time it helped me immensely a few years later when I started to produce records.
Just stopping here for a second, you know, we're living in an era of political turmoil and there's friction between Canada and the US. Having lived so much in Canada, what is the difference between Canada and the people in Canada and the people in US.
Well, I think, you know, first of all, I'm a dual citizen, and I've been a Canadian citizen for many years, but a landed immigrant for many years before that. But I feel more Canadian than I do American. I find it to be very much. I just feel very Canadian. I feel very lucky to have been sort of allowed in the country. I feel lucky to have had my
life there. The weather is terrible, but the people and the history and the living history that we love there shows it to be a much more compassionate and a much more I don't know, tolerant place.
So tell me about joining a comedy troupe in Toronto.
Yeah, you know, I think, first of all, you know, in those days especially, you just take every opportunity you can get. And my brother and two colleagues who were doing underground theater at that point in Toronto, decided to try to create their own improvisational comedy group and they called it homemade theater. But they needed someone to do
music and that was me. So I was the fourth member of this improvisational comedy group and I would do the music for each of their improvisational skits and it was really quite fun. And then it actually turned into a situation where the other improvisationally comedy group, Improvisational Comedy Group, came around from Chicago Second City, and they opened up in Toronto and they had a real facility and a bar.
So we sort of lost our uniqueness, but we loved all the folks who had become part of the Second City Toronto troupe.
But this was not really amateur. I had success. You were working for the government, you were getting paid. Yeah.
No, I mean, you know again, Toronto was a very wide open place at that point, very accepting of all new ideas and all creativity, and we were, you know, we were embraced, and yes, we worked for the government. Eventually, Homemade Theater had their own television show on CBC for three years, which was a show for children called Homemade Television, and we were so completely improper on so many levels. We should never have been on that show. But we were sort of like Monty Python for kids.
So in the back of your mind, we were saying, well, you know, I'm not on the right track anymore.
Well, you see, he has a lot of derailment, isn't there, Bob. I mean there's a certain amount of you know, he starts out wanting to be the Beatles, and now he's, you know, a singer songwriter, and now he's this, now he's that. You know. I just took all the gigs I could because I could try to do them. And at the same time, when we were doing Homemade Theater, I was still doing my gigs as a singer songwriter in certain clubs, and I was starting to produce records
because I had fallen into that. So there was a lot of things going on, Bob that were paying the bills in a way that was good enough, but I could keep doing all of them.
Yeah, Okay, how did you end up producing records? And how did you end up giving up being a singer songwriter?
Yeah? How did I give up the dream? Well, first of all, I want to be honest and say that I don't think I had what was needed to be, you know, in the pantheon of the James Taylors and
the Neil Young's and the Joni Mitchells, et cetera. I think I was good, And I think what was really obvious to me, though, is I fell into producing a friend's demo, and because I sort of knew a little bit about what producing is, which of course were is directing, I sort of fell into this and we got a record deal from the demo, and that was Dan Hill, a Canadian artist that I had been playing gigs alongside of. And all of a sudden we had a first album
of Dance released in Canada and it went gold. We had a hit record in Canada. It got released in the States, it didn't do anything. We had a second album of Dance, which again went gold in Canada but didn't get well received in the US on twentieth Century Fox Records and by that time, I had really said, you know what, I'm not going to go in front of the camera. I'm going to go behind the camera. I like arranging music, I like producing records. I want to do this and I liked it.
So tell us about making the hit with Dan Hill?
Sure, I mean our third album, which was going to be called Longer Fuse. This was nineteen seventy seven in Toronto. Had been told by Harvey Cooper, who's a lovely man and we still stay in touch, who was at that point head of twentieth Century Fox Records in LA. He was politely told that if he didn't have a smash hit, he'd be dumped. And we were just kids, you know.
I was twenty three, my partner was twenty two. Dan was twenty two, And just the long story short is that Dan went to LA and tried to co write for the first time and wasn't really successful in that. But ATB Music was taking his music in the US, and so they said, why don't you try writing with Barry Man. And of course Barry was, along with his wife Cynthia, while you know, probably two of the most
revered songwriters in the history of radio. And so they didn't do well working together, but Dan left him a lyric and Barry then that night put music to the lyric and sent us a little cassette that he had done on his boombox where Barry sang and played piano. And here we are sort of with this sort of damocles over our head, no knowing if we don't have
a hit, we're going to be dumped. And we hear this demo that came in from La and it's sometimes when we touch and it's really like an Elton John Your song, Like it's really beautiful and super hooky, and you know, we just looked at each other and here's a great thing.
Bob.
Then, back then in seventy seven, these kinds of things were possible, Like you could say, you know, this could be a hit, and you really thought it could be a hit. You know, it wasn't that you had one percent chance of having a hit. You actually had a chance. And this was the song we knew that could be the hit, and we did cut the track of it.
Dan had a terribly hard time doing the vocal We probably had ninety six different vocal moves in the comp done meticulously on faders onto twenty four track tape, and no matter what, I don't think anything could have stopped that particular song, especially with women. Women really loved it and it was a absolute smash all over the world.
We didn't get to number one. I think we got to number two and some of the charts, and then I think Jimmy Sorry, Billy Joels just the Way You Are or Saturday Night Fever or some song from that might have kicked us out of number one. But it became an iconic record, which I'm very proud of. Although I have to be honest, you know, that wasn't my wheelhouse.
Elton John was or James Taylor was. But I found that sometimes we touched, you know, was so commercial and so emotional that I couldn't believe it couldn't be a hit. And some melodic too.
By the way, Okay, you're working in Canada. You got a guy who's got a couple of stiff records. In retrospect, were you world class or you just had a great song and you managed to get it down.
I think we wanted to be world class, and I don't think we really were the way I had hoped we would be. But I think when it came to making Dan's records, especially the third album, which had sometimes when we touch on it, I think we did damn well. I think became pretty close to being world class producers.
So ultimately you picture all this money coming in and then the label goes under tell us about that.
Yeah, well there you go. Isn't show business great?
Yeah?
I again one of the how many hits are you going to have that are that long lasting and that iconic? And the answer is probably very few in your lifetime.
I was so fortunate to have that hit. And then I was young enough that we sort of spent the money before we had it, and we at that point had moved to LA and we got word one day in the studio that the Canadian company GRT that had signed Dan and then we're distributed by twentieth Century Fox in the US were going bankrupt and all of the money that had started to come in from you know, early late seventy seven, seventy eight, when the record hit,
all that money and the album sales and everything were basically heading towards GRT or probably had been received by GRT. And we actually sent somebody there who watched grt's office be padlocked and I never saw and my partner and I and Dan as an artist, never saw probably seventy percent of that of money. Ever, you know, later on down the line we would see money. But you know, as producers and as the artist, you don't get money from radio play. You only get it from mechanicals, from
the actual record label. So that was a pretty big blow. And we couldn't get the money because we were so low on the list of people that were owed money that I guess we would have gotten pennies. So what happens next with you and Dan, Well, we did a fourth album by the time we found out that the royalties weren't coming in from times sometimes that we touch, and that album did come out. But after that, there was just some things that happened, which again happened in
show business. My partner, Matt McCauley's parents had financed Dan's original record so that was their production company that did the albums, and so Dan's lawyers found a way out of their contract and Dan then re signed with Columbia, leaving Matt and I no longer involved in producing him. Matt and I had moved to la under the umbrella of Clive Davis, and you know, we stopped working with Dan and there was some lawsuits Buteen Matthew's parents and
Dan and I was out of that loop. But you know, things happen, you know, crap happens.
Okay, we talk about how well or poorly streaming pays today in a year. How much money do you make for sometimes when we touch?
Now, well, you know I can't divulge that, but it's not the kind of money you would hope. Sorry, is it six figures? No?
No? Okay, So how do you get to deal with Clive? And what is the experience with Clive?
Well, you know, a lot of good things come out of having a hit record, like sometimes when we touch, and so once we did. I had produced a demo with matt of a guy named fran mckendrey, which Arista then signed, and then Clive took notice of us and realized we had a big hit and said you should work for Arista as staff producers. And I really wanted to move to la at that point because I thought
that's where everything was happening. And so Matthew and I and not Yeah, Matthew and I moved at the same time in seventy eight, Clive Davis put us up at the chef to Marmont for six months. We've produced a number of interesting projects for Clive and then I had a falling out, which I talked about in the book. And I don't mind discussing that if that's what you're looking for.
So tell us. Yeah.
Well, you know, we were sort of Clive's fair haired boys, and we were doing some nice projects, including an album for Randy Edelman, and Randy had been signed to Arista because of his writing a song called Weekend in New England for Barry Manilow, and so we did a new album with Randy once we got to LA in the summer of seventy eight, and in the middle of the album, we got a phone call. I should say I got the phone call. It was an early morning phone call
at the shot to Marmont. I got it, and it was Clive saying, hey, listen, I want you to stop working on Randy. I've got a smash hit from Melissa Manchester and I would love you and Matt to produce it, but you have to stop everything on Randy. And that sounded wonderful and I literally just said okay, Well, will you call Randy and let him know that things are postponed? Or should I? And he said, you don't get it, and he hung up, and then he called Harry Maslin.
Harry Maslin had a hit with Don't Cry Out Loud, and I love Harry, so, you know, I pat him on the back. He did a great job, but we lost out because I didn't understand. What I should have said to Clive was whatever you say.
So how did it literally end with the STA.
Shortly after? You know, we were asked to, you know, find a home in LA and finish off the projects and then say Levy, bye bye. That's life.
So you go back to Toronto. Do you feel like you have your tail between your legs? What's your state of mind? Well?
I spent the next couple of years in LA. I married my wife from Toronto in LA and then we did We had a nice time, and I was busy as a producer, but nothing particularly exciting. And my partner at that point, Matt McCauley, decided not to produce anymore because he had married someone quite wealthy and so he didn't have the same passion I had for working with artists and making their records sound great, so we decided we want to have kids. So in the winter of
eighty one, Dina and I moved back to Toronto. And I wouldn't say I had my tail between my legs, but I was certainly hopeful that I had become a hometown homecoming hero. And I don't think I was. I think it was sort of, oh, you're back, you know, So it was it was a little bit of a rude awakening, you know.
So how did you restart?
It's amazing what drives people. We had our first child in eighty four, so I spent a couple of years back in Toronto, you know, getting a few projects here and there. One of them was great fun, which was producing Ronnie Hawkins, and just for the laughter quota, that was really I mean, I'm good for the next two hundred years. So you know, I did some cool stuff, but it, you know, but it was intermittent. It wasn't like people were knocking down my door to get the
guy who came home. But I think the thing that really drove me was my first of all, my passion to keep working musically. And secondly, we had our first child in eighty four, and I just looked at my little baby and I just said, I cannot let this kid be worried about money. So I got to find an answer, and I would, you know, I just put
it out there. I fell into a couple of TV movies that I scored, and you know, that's when I went to Robert Mogan asked for her as while at a discount, and all of a sudden, by eighty five, I had fallen into composing for TV and film in Canada, doing us work a lot of the times because they needed Canadian content for certain parts of these Canadian American productions.
So at first your thrilled just to be paying the bills. But then you wake up and you're a film and TV composer. You talk about it in the book that it's basically a lot of work alone. What's your state of mind? Then?
Well, I think initially the money was good and the back end of airplay is wonderful. It gets paid by at Skapper BMI. And in those days, you know, it was in Toronto, probably there were about ten other composers I'd be vying against, you know, and competing against, and it was just really challenging. Bob. I mean, I liked the challenge of all of a sudden writing music for TV. I felt that it was a good instinct.
I had.
It helped my keyboard chops because I would do everything on the keyboard and improvise and use the Kurzweilds multi track sequencer. And I was started doing orchestral scores, just learning while I earned, and the earning was good.
Okay, there's a hierarchy. It's an international business. There are household name composers. Once you're doing this, you're saying that's my goal.
No. I had such a tremendous respect for the true top echelon, you know, the John Williams and the Jerry Goldsmith's, and you know, and of course Randy Newman's brilliant scores and Thomas Newman, all these wonderful people who I wouldn't even want to consider myself a film and TV composer
compared to them. But I think where I was working, which was in TV mostly TV series, dramatic series with sometimes a lot of horror elements or sci fi elements, I think I was pretty good for what I did, but I had no belief I could ever step into those big shoes.
So you do this for a number of years. Are you muddling along or you feel like, oh I'm mistending what's going on career wise?
These are good questions.
You know.
My again, the money was really good, and it was stable money in the sense I didn't have to depend on a record label and their unique ways of making sure you didn't get paid how much you really earned. You know, you got your money from as gap every quarter, and you got good money for doing the shows by the productions. So all of a sudden, I was lifted into a really good level of success financially and had two kids by eighty seven, and I was just enjoying
everything about life. And even though that it was a lonely occupation, you know, I worked out of the house, so everything worked out really well. And I don't think I muddled along. I think I really tried to do better each time. But again, you know, I have a certain amount of belief of what I'm good at and what I think I'm not quite as good at. But I think I was good at what I did, and I tried to please my producers.
So you start off going to John Hammond's office trying to be James Taylor singer songwriter. Now you're doing film scores, definitely faceless behind the business, maybe an end credit in many of these cases. Sometimes up front now you say, oh man, I'm thrilled to be in music, or how the fuck did I get here?
I think if you look at my career, there's just these incredible sort of left turns, you know. And when I fell into TV and film, what really made the difference was I was a new dad, and my record career had really been very, very minimal compared to what
I hoped it would be. When I moved back to Toronto, and all of a sudden, the money was coming in and I just became a human jukebox throwing music into the computer, and you know, and I was doing three series at once generally for about fifteen years.
So there are other rock musicians who've gone into this scoring and done even Mark Mother's Law of Devo never mind Danny Elfman, etc. Is there a natural connection or is just pure hard work?
Well? I think someone like Danny or Mark Mothersbow, I think those are wonderfully talented guys who clearly I think it was very suitable for them to do that work. For me, I was doing it against the fact that I like being around others. I like to work in a team. When I produce a record, I like to be with other musicians, and I like to work with my artists and my engineers. And so when you're doing TV and film score, you're basically by yourself, staring at
the screen all day under deadlines. So for me, I think what I would like to be able to say is I think that people who worked especially on certain projects, if you were a songwriter or understood good songwriting and you were a film composer, you could write really hooky
music because that's what you felt in your head. So, for instance, if you're writing a theme song, like for instance, Danny wrote the Simpsons theme song, that's because he's a wonderful songwriter and he knew how to make a simple phrase da da da. He just knew. And by the way, that reminds me of the Jetsons. I think he sort of got that good help from the Jetsons. Hey, here's
George Jetson's meet the Simpsons. It's sort of liked that, and I think that, you know, but it takes someone like Danny, who who was an Oingo blanco artist and a great songwriter. I thought, unique songwriter, and I think that may be a skill that I had which made some of my music for certain TV series better because I could write music that actually had more melodic hooks and more interesting production because that was my background.
Okay, you go on in the book saying if you missed a deadline, you were out. Are the composers really that fungible or they say, oh yeah, we like Fred. You know, hey, he's got something going on, he's overloaded. What was really the situation there?
Well, first of all, I was doing three series at once, and you never wanted to tell anybody else you were doing those other two series, so you know, you're always exclusive, and even though contractually you weren't, but you you know, it was like having three girlfriends. You don't want to tell the other two. But you know, Randy Newman once told me, and I've spent a little time with Randy,
but only a little. And when I was in the midst of my big TV in film years, he just said to me one day, he said, you know, Fred were just lowly dogs in a film. And I said, you know, you're right, because we really are just part of a team. And what really matters, is you know, to get to that broadcast date without any problems. And yes, if you got sick and you fell off the treadmill or something happened and you fell off the treadmill, they wouldn't blink an eye. It was like, Okay, gotta go.
Someone else has been hired and a way and you're done. So that kind of sort of damicles pressure was really hard, but I got through it. I don't think I ever fell in the fifteen sixteen years that I did it. I don't think I ever missed a deadline.
How much of getting the gigs is hustle? How much is waiting for the phone to ring?
Well, you know, in TV and film you have an agent, and I've had different agents, and they're all people I've really loved and they've done good things for me. But their job basically was to let me know what was out there, and then they might make a phone call about it and I might have to audition a demo of ideas musically, and that would be then I'd be competing against other composers. So the phone didn't ring generally with a phone call saying hey, Fred, you're the right guy.
But certainly it did happen to some degree, but it's a combination of everyone's efforts. Keeping your ear to the ground and being tenacious.
Yeah, okay, you meet a woman, you chase your to Paris, you leave your wife. Oh, Bob, you go to therapy, and you stop composing. Walk us through this.
Well, now, Bob, come on, now you know phem the book? Yeah, I know, we're only human. Well, I make it a very short part of the book. You know, the truth is, the book isn't about me. It's really about the people I've worked with and the projects I've worked with, and my life in music. So you know, the actual personal stuff is only there to help the depth of it. But I did. I'll tell you what happened simply. In
nineteen ninety eight. I had been scoring film relentlessly, TV and film relentlessly since eighty five, so you know, that's a long haul, and I continue to do it till two thousand and one, actually, But by ninety eight I
was starting to get pretty pretty burnt out. And I met this lovely girl who was quite young, I mean, you know, legal but young, and my marriage had been sort of becoming quite you know, not ugly, but not comfortable, and I clearly was having a midlife crisis and I fell in love with someone and left the family to be with that girl. And it was interesting two years that we were together. And I don't recommend it for people, but I mean I sort of had to go through
what I went through. That relationship ended because I couldn't find a way for the new relationship to ever work out and be part of my children's lives, and there was my responsibility was the children first, And so that ended that relationship. And you know, I tried to get back with my wife. We both tried. I failed and decided by two thousand and one that I needed to move out of Toronto. I needed to go to Nashville and go back to making records, which is what I
frankly thought I did well. And I was pretty tired of the life of a TV and film composer.
Okay, let's go back a couple of chapters. If you're working around the clock, how'd you meet this woman?
Just happened to meet her. And I have a home in Martha's Vineyard that I had for years that again was you know, bought by the great money I was making a TV and film and you know, she was a friend of the family. Basically of this family we knew and we just met her one time and there was some initial sparks.
And when was the last time you had contact with her?
I saw her with her child on Martha's vineyard, probably about eleven years ago.
Okay, you buy a condo in Toronto, do you go to therapy multiple times a week? What do you learned when going to therapy?
The first thing you learn is that in Toronto, your medical is free. So I had a great psychiatrist and I saw him five days a week for probably five months, and it was absolutely wonderful. I mean, I really got myself back together, you know. I mean, by the way, I was still working the whole time, but I just I had Brian McDermott as my doctor and he was lovely. And after that, you know, as I said, then it
just came. I just came to the realization that I, you know, I spent two years from ninety eight to two thousand and one, and then that relationship ended. And once once I decided to make a change, I also wanted to make a change and go back to making records.
Walk us through that a little bit in detail. You have a career, you can continue to work, you have a desire. That must have been a very hard decision.
I don't remember it being a hard decision. I remember it being something that was so pleasurable in my head that I could be living in Nashville, which I had spent some time in and really loved it, working with the greatest musicians that have ever been in the same place together. And I loved making records, and I wanted to see if I could go back to making records full time. So I was excited. It really wasn't a
hard decision. And plus Bob, I was so tired of my years of TV and film score I really had. It was like a fastball pitcher who lost his fastball. I really could not pitch that that way anymore.
For getting divorce and splitting up the assets after seventeen years of doing this, theoretically, could you have retired and lived off the money that you'd made. Was it that lucrative?
No? No, but it could have taken good care of me if I hadn't gotten divorced.
Possibly, And so just on a divorce, how do you heal the family.
With my son? It took longer and with my daughter. For whatever reason, she got it and she was easier.
And your ex wife we're.
Still great friends. My daughter now lives in Tarzana and she moved from Toronto with her husband and her two children, and my ex lives in the guest house than I see her all the time. She's great.
So your ex never got remarried.
She's with other men, but never married.
Okay, why move to Nashville.
It's because it's so close to the ocean. Yeah, no, I wish it was. Why Nashville, Well, because there were one hundred studios and the greatest musicians in the world. So for me to make records with them really upped my game and gave me such pleasure that to this day, every day I'm in the studio is a blessing. I just love it.
That's why. Okay, Nashville has evolved in the last twenty five years. You know, in the first decade of the century, a lot of people in La saying, hey, yeah, you know, I'm going to start over in Nashville. Now seemingly everybody moved there. There's a lot of traffic. What was it like moving in two thousand and one to Nashville being a Long Island Jew.
Well probably you know, as goofy as it was for Long Island Jew to be in Toronto or you know.
There are a lot of Jews in Toronto.
Well, yeah, they weren't Long Island though. Believe me, it's a different Jew.
You know.
I can tell you that when I moved to Nashville in two thousand and one, it was a sleepy town still and I had been there over the years and had always enjoyed it. It was quite foreign to me, but fun, and I just, you know what, I was welcomed there. I've never had one moment of in my face anti Semitism ever in Nashville.
You know. Okay, so you're now in Nashville, how do you get work?
Well, I would bring work there. You know. I never fell into the world of country music. I did a few projects here and there, but when I got to Nashville, I was already doing work for Disney Records, So I had kids music I was doing, which was a lot of fun, generally attached to a big Disney animated feature. And I was also doing some singer songwriters that I liked who liked me. I had just come off of doing a Christopherson album, a Jimmy Webb album, and a
Barry Man album. And so I guess my cred was good with the kind of artists that I wanted to produce. So I brought work to Nashville. Nashville did not give me the work.
Okay. So when you're doing the Jimmy Webb, Chris, Christopherson, Berry Man records, you're still living in Toronto.
No, No, I'm well, okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, did Tennessee Pieces for Jimmy in nineteen ninety six, did the Austin Sessions for Christofferson in nineteen ninety seven, and did Barry Man's Sole In Inspiration in nineteen ninety seven. So yes, I was living in Toronto and hadn't left my marriage yet.
Yeah, So tell us how you got those records off the ground.
Well, you know, the longest client I have as a producer is Jimmy Webb. I've been producing Jimmy since nineteen seventy eight. He was a hero of mine, and I actually loved his soul albums and his solo voice, and once we had some times when we touch. It gave me the ability to reach out through twentieth Century Fox Records. They reached out to Jimmy in seventy eight and we met my partner Matt McCauley, at that time was still
working with me and Jimmy. Matt and I just fell in love with each other, and Matt and I produced an album called Angel Heart seventy eight, and then when Matt walked away from producing, by nineteen eighty, I still was working with Jimmy and continued to this day, and I've been his musical director at times and his record producer over seven albums.
Okay, you're a wet behind the years guy. This guy has gigantic kids. How do you convince him to work with you?
Well, we had the big hit, we had some times when we touch and we had Harvey Cooper at twentieth Century Fox Records telling Jimmy's manager that we were geniuses. I don't believe we were. I think we were really good and we were very precocious, Bob. I think that that's how we I think we perceived ourselves as really good, surprisingly, really good as a team to produce, but also I
think we were just really good for our age. So it was thrilling that Jimmy Webb looked at us, and don't forget, Jimmy's biggest hits happened when he was twenty twenty one and twenty two. He looked at us like, you know, I get these guys.
They're like I was, Okay, Jimmy has these iconic songs. Yes, he has these solo albums that have not been as commercially successful. Is that because his voice is not as good, the times have changed, the songs are not as good. You've been working with him for almost fifty years. Give us your take.
Well, again, this is an interesting question. I think a number of things hurt Jimmy, which shouldn't have because I think he is probably one of America's greatest songwriters, along with the top five greatest songwriters. I think his voice
was really good. It was raw and lovely. And I think that the problem was is that Jimmy was perceived by the public in those days, and I'm talking about the early seventies as the guy who wrote for the Fifth Dimension, the guy who wrote for Glenn Campbell, who was Republican, the guy who wrote for Richard Harris, who was a British theatrical guy, and it just seemed to
be his perception by the public. The perception by the public was that he was a square and a Republican, and of course it couldn't have been further from the truth, but that perception hurt him. And then on top of it, then he would do his solo albums, which were really creative, soulful singer songwriter records. They weren't produced so well. I mean,
Jimmy produced the first couple himself, and they're raw. You know, I love them, but they're raw, and you know, I just think that he They people couldn't make the translation that Jimmy Webb, this wonder kind who did MacArthur Park, could be again a vital singing, singing songwriter, autobiographical songwriter, and they were wrong because he's one of the greatest.
How he ended up working with Chris Christophers and what is that experience.
Like, well, that was one of the great experiences. You know. I had done ten easy pieces for Guardian Records, which was a part of EMI Records. And Jay Landers, who's been a great support to me all of my career, literally as early as seventy eight. You know, Jay called me, you know, sorry, I called Jay let me go. Back in ninety six, and I'm going to tell you a story which is true because everything I'm saying, you're getting
the truth out of me. And I like that. Jimmy was having a very hard time in his life in ninety six, going through the worst divorce I've ever seen. He had six children, he had an irs attachment that was millions of dollars, and he was extremely depressed and there was absolutely alcohol, etc. That were causing problems because he was so depressed. And I loved him, he was
part of my family. And I convinced him to come to Toronto, get out of ground zero, come to Toronto and we would make a quick little album of Jimmy doing his most famous songs, but for the first time him doing them, and to do them in a very sort of intimate, unplugged manner. And I had to really convince him, Bob. He was very, very adamant. He did not want to do it. Finally I convinced him because I told him that he should do it for his kids, just to have it on record, and we went to Toronto. He
went to Toronto. I put him up in a hotel, got him out of the fire, so to speak, and we made ten easy pieces, which is really one of the greatest projects I'll ever be involved with, and that because it was such a cool idea. I called Jay Landers, who was at Emi at Guardian, and Jay said, I love Jimmy. If you'll do it for twenty five thousand, I'll give you the green light. And I said, I'll take it. And at that point I was doing my
TV and film score years. I was making good money, so God, if I needed to not get paid, it's fine, I do it anyway. So I brought Jimmy in. We made the record and it got incredible response review wise. It didn't sell initially, but then Jay was able to then go, who do you want to do next? Let's take a look, and we sort of talked about different people. Barry Man definitely, who I had also spent my adult life I'm working with, and he said, what about Christofferson?
And I said, oh, yeah, that's a cool idea. And I had known christ Dopperson's work. I didn't like his old records that were like the monument albums from the seventies because they put him with the same Nashville musicians who were doing Conway Twitty the same day, and the music sucked and Chris was crooning, and he's not a crooner.
And I also remember Bob. I'm sure you know this is that Chris loved Bob Dylan so much that in the early days when he was in Nashville, he actually got a job as a janitor at CBS Studios just to be close to Dylan, who was making Blonde on Blonde. But that's how much he revered Dylan. He would literally empty out ashtrays just to catch a little bit of the music. So we presented this to his manager and then to Chris, and I said, I'd like to make a record that sounds a little bit like a Blonde
on Blonde vibe of all of your great hits. So literally, you know, bring four or five great players in just you know, let it be sort of somewhat free in the arrangements, and you know, if you need to talk through the songs, you talk through the songs. But I wanted him to be something he would want to aspire to, and blonde on Blond were the three keywords for him.
You make the record, you have an ongoing relationship with Jimmy Webb. Was it one and done with Chris? Christoph person or do you have contact with him after.
I had some contact with Chris after. He has always told me, and I know he's passed on. He he always told me that the Austin Sessions was his favorite record, and I've seen it in Prince I know it is true that he said it to other people. And we tried to stay in touch here and there. I actually had him guessed on a couple projects that we were doing, and I loved him. I mean, the guy was just
one of the most amazing people. My memories of Chris are so full of love and such and I have such gratitude that I had the chance to work with him. But we never made another album again.
No, Okay, Berry Man with his wife Cynthia Well have iconic kids in the league of Jimmy Webb. You work with Barry Man. What is the magic there?
What is the magic of Barry's writing?
Yeah?
Well again, you know, tenaciousness, a drive. He's a sort of a Brooklyn guy who you know, had to get out of Brooklyn and like Carol King and Jerry Goff and Barry Man and Cynthia while were products of the even though they didn't work at the Brill Building, it
was during the Brill Building years. They were actually at sixteen fifty Broadway, but you know they came out of a place where they got a phone call sitting at the publishing office in New York, Connie Francis needs a follow up to such and such, and they all all these right would sit together and then they'd go into their cubicles apart and try to write the follow up
for Connie Francis. Let's say that kind of training along with a gift, which Barry had and Cynthia had, and Carol and Jerry had, and all these wonderful writers from you know, from those Brill Building days, what training that was if you had a gift, it was amazing. And
so that's the magic that Barry had. Its just it was a combination of just being in the right place at the right time for what he did, which was, you know, he could just sit the piano and just come up with a great melody, and Cynthia could write a great lyric and it was just bang, bang bang.
In a sense, they were doing what I was doing in my TV and film years, in the sense it was an unrelenting you know, every day, you know, just writing music, writing you know, and that's thrilling on some levels, but even more thrilling for them because they were seeing their records go to the top of the charts, and they were also working with other people and it was
you know, I imagine it was great fun. Although interestingly enough, and Barry is truly extended family to me, when I asked him one time, you know, if that was the happiest time of his life, he said, that's the worst time. And I said why. He said, because as good as your hit was, you had to get the next one. And the pressure was terrible.
Just staying with some of these iconic writers. Most of these people have a very hot era and then they don't have the same level of success. Why do you think that is?
Well, you know, this is again it's a great question, and I write it. I write about it in my book. That especially the what I call the autobiographical singer songwriters, you know that we've mentioned before, the Paul Simon's, the James Taylor's, Neil Young, all these wonderful writers who Jackson Brown, etc. You know, they give so much in the early part of their lives, and I think it's an understandable thing that they just probably get somewhat written out after ten
or fifteen albums of brilliance. It may just be that the well is dry comparatively. And you know, you had a great piece about the Elton John Brandy Carlisle album. To me, that's the great example, because Elton John is a god to me. But I don't think there's any gas in the tank anymore to be able to write the brilliant songs he wrote. And I think it's just it's an emotional situation, but it's also just the fact that you you know that part of you may not
be there anymore. So I know that it's different when you're looking at someone like a Burt Backerack or a Barry in Cynthia. You know they can still craft a song. But I don't know. I don't know if a great songwriter, you know, who gave us so much can continue to give us that much every single time into their seventies and eighties. I don't think that's possible.
Okay, needless to say, you're a ficial.
Are people gonna hate me now? They're gonna hate me now for saying that.
No, I don't. I have my own theories about it. I wanted to hear your theory my theory, and I don't say yours is wrong, but these artists tend to be maladjusted, alienated people, and they believe that this success will make their lives work. And when they have their success and their lives still don't work, they can't do it anymore. Yeah.
I think that's a great element of it, you know. And I think what's another great element is that And something you just hit on is that I think the great singer songwriter is the autobiographical singer songwriters. They generally had some sort of real sadness or trauma which they work out through their writing of songs. And like you said, once that trauma's gone down the road, maybe it's not
quite there anymore. But you know, I actually sat with Sting one day and I only sat with him once in my life, and we were sitting at a bar with Rita Wilson and a few other people, and he and I sort of, you know, started talking about something, and I just, you know, I didn't know why I felt so bold, but I just said, you know, I have a feeling that, you know, we were talking about songwriting.
I said, I have a feeling that your background contains some trauma or real sadness that your songs help you work through. And he said, you're right, And I said, well, you know, I think it's very common that, you know, James Taylor had a rough teenage years. You know, we know all this. Joni Mitchell had polio, I mean, you name it, they had it. Neil Young had epilepsy and other stuff. And all I'm saying is and Jimmy Webb his the wind beneath his wings was his mom and
she died when he was fourteen. And so all of these things make the Jimmy Web songs brilliant, and sometimes they make these other people's songs brilliant. That's why James Taylor can write a fire and rain that still is amazing.
Today, let's witch back to you. Yeah, you're a film composer. You go to Nashville, you're making records. The business changed along the way. Okay, needless to say, there's Napster, there's the iTunes store. Now they're streaming an on demand thing. In the old days, the record companies would pay more to record, the records fee for producer. You make a record, the odds of consumption being so large that there's a big win or low. So what is your perspective and how does it work out financially.
Well? When I make records, and certainly ever since Napster and then of course streaming, well, first of all Napster, then downloading, and then streaming, we saw that the album as a way to make money in royalties was going to be really jeopardized. I'm not in it for the money, so it does not cause me a lot of duress that a record I'll make ninety five percent of the time now will not sell. But if it makes people happy or if it gets a certain amount of streams,
I guess I'm okay. I just have to live with what it is. You know, you can't really fight technology, and I can't be a naysayer about it. I wish things would have gone back to the way they were when music wasn't free, but it's just the way it is. And so you know, Bob, it's my love of music that makes me do what I do. It's not about making money. If I wanted to make money, I would have done something else.
Okay, so you make these records, how much does it cost to make them?
You know, every record is different. Sometimes we have a great budget. I meaning a great budget could be, in my opinion, one hundred and fifty thousand. Sometimes you have a budget of thirty five or forty thousand, you know. I mean, you make them work, You make your deals with the studios. You you know, everyone wants to work. That's what happens now. You know, in the old days of Nashville there were triple scale players. That's never going
to happen again. Everyone gets a single scale. You know. That's just the way it is. And you know what, I used to get great production fees. Every production fee now is different. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's you know, I want to make this record, so I'll do it for that. It's not what powers me. What powers me as the music.
And in most cases is it a label paying or is there a vanity project or a deep pocket.
It's all the above.
Yeah.
I mean, if you look at my schedule over the past year, you know, I did a wonderful album with Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers just came out in February of Bill doing iconic old country songs done in a very sort of intimate and Americana style, and I'm so proud of it. That record was commissioned eventually by Curb Records. I had the idea for it, and we were trying to shop it, and then my Curb got involved and said I want this record, So that was
a Curb record with Curb paying the bill. But then the next album I did might have been a project for Brooke Morriber, who's a great New York artist, completely self financed. So it really runs the gamut.
And are most of these records you do idea, you pitch, where someone comes to you again.
It just there's no rhyme or reason. Certainly I have ideas and I'll pitch those, and I'll have certain artists that I might know. I might suggest a concept to them or again, or an artist just happens to email me or call me, or a record label emails me or calls me. It just where you take it, wherever it comes from.
Okay, you are in living in music city. You are not the only producer there. What's your special sauce that someone should work with you as opposed to anybody else.
Well, of course you know I'm the best. That's the first reason. No, that is so not true, because there is no best. I think I'm really good at what I do. But I think I'm particularly good at making records. But I'm an artist producer. I try to fulfill the artist's vision. That's my job. Ego is not involved in making a record, but I want to make the record that the artist wants to make. And sometimes the artist knows exactly what to do, and sometimes they need my
help on every level. But we do it together until I fulfill their vision. And that's what makes me a producer people want to work with in all different genres.
You know, there's been an evolution in producers. Without going through sixty years worth of history for a while, they're engineers to this day became producers and that is not that that's an important skill, but not the same skill. So are you someone who's gonna say, give me the demos, maybe move the chorus to the front, maybe need a bridge here, or you that kind of producer?
And that's exactly the kind of producer I am. But it's not me telling them what to do. It's me saying, what do you think about this? I like this idea? What do you think If they say it's great, we do it. The artist has the final decision every time, and so if they say, oh I love that, Fred, then we make that change on the bridge. But yes, I'm a musician and I'm I'm an arranger, and so
my engineering skills are zero. So I have wonderful engineers that I work with, and they really allow me to be even a better producer and a better person with the artist.
Okay, I call you, Fred, I want you to produce my record. I want you to produce my record, but your book for a year solid? Who do you tell me to go work with?
Hmm? It would depend on the genre, you know. But that's a good question. I have people I love, who are you know, the right the right call for the job. One of my great pals is Kyle Lenning out of Nashville. You know, Kyle can do country really well. He can do pop really well, you know, in the sense of singer songwriter stuff. I like Kyle. You know, if I was too busy to do something, I would give Kyle a call. He'd be someone. There's other people as well.
No one comes to mind immediately, and luckily I haven't had I mean, I guess or unluckily I haven't been booked a year in advance in a while.
Okay, if you just said I'm going to rely on incoming. Are enough people looking for you to keep you busy? Or do you have to hustle to a degree.
What I'd like to say is is that I wouldn't use the word hustle, but I would use the word I'm still driven. So I'll create concepts and make those calls. And sometimes I don't like to just wait around for the next thing I want, you know, I'd like to be purposeful. I mean my home listen, I look at you, and I look at everything you're doing on how many hours in the day, and how many of those hours
are you working. I like to be purposeful too, you know, And so I try to make things happen if things aren't happening.
Okay, So in terms of music today, you're in music City. A lot of you know, countries cut there. It can be cut a few other places, but it's not only country. What's your view of the music scene today. Let me set it up a little bit. We're of the same Vintage music really drove the culture in the sixties and said, if you want to know what was going on, you turned on the radio, you got the music, you got the news. Okay, we had in the early nineties hip hop.
You know, fuck the police that we found out what these rappers were saying was true. Now we have a mortgage board of sounds. Where's the excitement and where is the business going?
Well, I had a feeling you'd ask me that kind of question, and I don't really have an answer. I think that where we're going for me is not a direction that I particularly enjoy, because I like, again the quality of someone's personality and gift to come off on record or live. And when I see a lot of records that do really well now, especially in the pop realm, are generally you know, the seven songwriters on one record, there's four programmers and two this and that, you know,
and it's much more about you know. It doesn't feel melodic to me. So I can't tell you where it's going. But I know one thing, and that AI can't possibly be helpful to give us the kind of soul of a Ray Charles or a James Taylor or Paul Simon.
I would agree with that you're in Nashville. To what degree is there cross pollination in a community in music?
I don't feel there is. I feel that the country world really is quite there's a fence around it. I've never been able to cross into that fence. But that's okay because I don't really love a lot of pop country, so I don't really feel like I should be a part of it, although I could have done it, especially ten or fifteen years ago, but I think the cross pollination. I don't feel as there within the country world, and that's pretty well their own world, and it's a boys
club to a great degree. But I also feel that there's so much music being done in Nashville that's not country, that's everything else that that area is quite fluid and quite lovely.
So let's say I came to you, I'm a developing artist. You know, are you so network? That's got a bad connotation, But is the community such they say, oh, this is a guy you should co write with, or this guy's got a band. Do you tend to know everybody in your world?
In my world, yes, I don't know the worlds that are the more processed, you know, pop stuff that's out there.
And to what degree are you actively following the scene, whether it be the music itself, where the business, or you and your own little niche and your sort of focused.
I'd like to believe I have one foot looking around and listening to everything, and clearly my other foot is just very much about the music that propelled me, that came before me and during my years.
And what do you have coming down the pike for you?
Well, right now, I've got an interesting project, which is the Gena Cecilia album on Blue elon small label that does a lot of cool things. And Gina is a wonderful blues singer that I met and we had some mutual friends and we did a gig together. I occasionally do a Fred Mallin and Friends night at a Nashville club,
which completely saves me and replenishes my performer part. And she sang a couple songs and we did a couple of Sam Cook songs, and I said, We've got to make a record together of Sam cook songs, you know, one of my greatest inspirations. And no one has really done a good covers album of Sam and we just did one. It's coming out next month. The singles out already, but it's just a beautiful record of of of really cool covers of the great Sam Cook stuff.
Anything else you can talk about.
Yeah, sure, I mean I'm there's another Jimmy Webb album. We're signing a deal next week to finally do the first album of Jimmy of new material of Jimmy's since two thousand and four, So there's a lot of songs to choose from, and Jimmy and I are both absolutely thrilled to be back in the studio.
So tell me a couple of artists in a dream that you would like to produce.
Well, I'd always want to produce James Taylor. I mean, you know, I still think there's there's gas in that tank. That's amazing. I would always I always wanted to produce Elton John. I'd love to pitch Elton John on One More Album, which is an album of his favorite songs, covers of his favorite songs. I think that will be the record to do. And I also would love to do Mark Knopfler in the same way I did Jimmy
Webb and Barry Man and Christopherson. And I've talked to Mark about it and he's into it, but he wants to wait a little bit.
Let's just assume you were producing James Taylor.
And by the way, I have to interrupt, I've got to say it now here it is. I wrote a letter to Bob Dylan. I'm sorry, I just hold that thought. No, God, I have to tell now. I have to tell you that a year and a half ago, the Bob Dylan book came out, Philosophy of Modern Song, and in the chapter about by the time I get to Phoenix, he picked the version that I did with Jimmy on ten Easy Pieces, and I was app gobsmacked that Dylan would
know that. And I wrote to Jeff Rosen, Dylan's manager, and I said, oh my god, you know, I'm so touched and Jimmy and I are so touched, and can you please thank Bob. And in the letter I said him, by the way, and I was joking. I said, you know, when Bob needs a new record done, you know you want me to produce it, I'll be open twenty four to seven. He wrote back right away saying, Bob knows you. He wants to know where you'd want to do it
and when. And I literally had to take my car off the highway because I was hyperventilating because I saw it on my on my email on my phone. And then the next question was from Jeff Rosen do you hear covers or do you hear Bob's original material? And I talked about doing it in Nashville with the New A team, so he'd come back to the to the Blonde on Blonde, you know, to where he started with
Blonde on Blonde, and they loved the idea. And sadly, Bob's been on the road now for probably ten out of twelve months, and so nothing has come to pass on that. But you know, that was one of the great moments. And I have the letter. I printed out the letter on the email and hung it in my studio that Bob will work with you wherever you want, whenever you want, because yes, I would do anything to produce Bob as well.
Yeah, I have to move on because there's no response to that. Yeah. So, assuming you work with James Taylor had a long career, what would you bring to the picture that another person would not.
Well, you know, as much of a fan as I am, I'm also understanding of what brings out the best in him, and I would be the one to sort of say, Okay, you know, let's let's make this. You know, you're Joni Mitchell Blue, you know, let's make it something that's so profound and so musical and so emotional, and I just think I could take the emotional angle as well as the musical angle, and and and give him a lot of joe and a lot of protection.
Well, Fred, I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with my audience. If you want much more depth on the stories that have been told in news stories, you can read his new book, Unplugged. It was great talking to you.
Thank you, Buddy, I appreciate it.
Until next time, This is Bob Left says