Jim Guerinot

raised in Rochester, New York. Yeah, My both my mother and father each had one job and they were worked for Eastman Kodak. Really did they move there for the job? They were raised in Rochester, New York. We moved out here in seventy two for eighth grade. When I was in eighth grade, my dad got a transfer. He sold X ray film for Eastman Kodak. I often think of Eastman Kodek as the original, you know, company that was digitally disrupted. You know, of course that's a story, but

a while you're from Rochester. And but the reason I mentioned that is whenever we talk, you talk about your sister turning you onto records. That's true, It's true, I'm and I uh. I don't remember watching the Beatles. I remember the reaction of my parents watching the Beatle, which was what they just stood. They stood and watched from over in the corner and they did not like it at all. I know they didn't like it, and they complained about the hair um. And I remember my sisters

records and I still have some of them. I just showed my eleven year old an old Herman's Hermit's record and an old Holly's record that that has my sister's name on it, that that I still have. I retained somehow. Well, it's funny because somebody sent me a turntable replace the one that I had was kind of sketchy, and I whipped out some of those old records and you always wrote your name on it, even had Dimo tape and you stuck it right on. They couldn't believe what was

written on the back. You know, whoever wrote those bios, you know, because they are so corny and say you know, but there's a charm to it. You know. It was of the era. Since we're talking about the Beatles. I just remember my mother left in November six to go out on a Friday night, she said, you have to watch this band on Jack Part Jack Part, the Nightly Show,

the Tonight Show. But now he had a Friday night show that I have this band from England, the Beatles, And what it was was a video shot from the back of the theater of them doing she Loves You, which of course we couldn't understand because there was so much yelling. It was we I thought it was we loved too, and of course we laughed. And then in January, all of a sudden, I want to hold your hand hit and it was mega. And I remember watching on Ed Sullivan where we took out our brownie cameras and

we shot pictures of the television. People may not know, but what you get is a blank screen. I didn't know that, no, because the reflection from the flash you get nothing on screen. I mean, everything is much more sophisticated now. But did you know you were a music fan? No? No, no. But one of the little anecdote about my sister in the Beatles, she bought me a black light poster Sergeant Pepper right on Sergeant Pepper came out and they hung it in my room. She hung it up in my

room and at the same time. I was always a newspaper reader. I read the paper every morning. I always read the because of the sports scores, probably the sports scores, but I remember, you know, we had snow days, and I remember I would go downstairs and and and the heating events were on the floor, and I'd sit in front of the heating bed and i'd I'd read the comics probably first, and then kind of venture into sports

in order. But I read an article about LSD and it talked about I couldn't have been more than nine, but i'd read and it talked about a guy. It showed a picture of his face kind of haywire like you'd be tripping, and that he jumped off a building.

And I remember I went to bed and I had read about the Beatles and drugs, and you know, I knew what was I had some idea what was going on, and I'm not sure exactly how I knew, but I woke up having nightmares and my dad had to come in and take the black light poster of Sergeant Pepper down was terrible. Did you have a drug career yourself a career? Did you, I think? Did you ultimately take LSD? And what do you worry about jumping off a building. I probably worried about it. Yeah, you know, I mean

that was heavy stuff. It really really was. That was you know. I always used to kid with the guys that we would do took a day to prepare, a day to do it, and then a day to recover from it. You know, we would we would find ourselves, you know, at Disneyland on Pirates of the Caribbean or the or the mon Santo where it was shrinking, you know, and things like that. That was kind of the Remember going to the cable car Disneyland. That's we used to smoke dope, okay, because you went from one end to

the other. Oh yeah, the people mover. So in any event, you're in Rochester, you're reading the newspaper. What else. Yeah, I am big sports basketball. I I had that that. Uh you know, our block was here, Our church was the next block. I went to a Catholic school, you know, tie dress up. I served Mass in the morning, would walk there, had a paper route in the morning, trudging

in the snow, doing all those kind of things. I remember vividly going next door to Kevin dowt Our next door neighbor's house and I would open the porch and you'd smell the newsprint and you had to take the wire cutters and pop and it would go bam and it would explode. And I'm telling you, if you were

anywhere near, it would take your eye out. And you had to fold the newspapers into thirds and put them in your bag because you had to open the storm door and throw the paper up and then get the door shut, because that they didn't just throw him on the driveway in the snow, you know, you had to deliver it inside the storm door. And so he would leave me three rows of numbers. The first row of

numbers my street, totally comfortable, no big deal. I know that second street, Verena Drive, I kind of knew it was okay. The third street, glenn Ellen Way, kind of terrifying. It's still dark, I don't know the houses. You have to kind of navigate to find the number, and it was a little bit scary by the time I would

get there. But I would finish up on glenn Ellen Way and it would end right near this bar, and I remember the smell of the bar and that alcohol on the ground and it's stunk and as I walked behind it, I would cut and there would be an opening in the alley and there was Dunkin Donuts, And if I had a paper to left, I'd stand out front Dunkin Donuts and I'd sell the paper and I go sit at the count and have a hot chocolate.

And I thought I was grown up. Did you get a paper route because your parents told you to earn money or you wanted money? I wanted money. I wanted money. They didn't. I never got an allowance as a kid. You know, paper route you can actually make some decent money. And so what did you do with the money? I saved it. I remember I bought a Shwin ten speed that it was a hundred five dollars. I said, saved

all that and bought a Shwin ten speed. My parents, I never felt wanting for anything in terms of the necessities. But they were never going to give you the stereo like the other kid got. There was no way, you know what I mean? What about your own kids? You make them work? No, no, they do chores and things. But I'll tell you the interesting thing. I've had this conversation with quite a few people about raising kids who

have a lot of stuff. They want their money. You know, where they will I think find their ambition and motivation is they do not like to come to me to ask for stuff, and they don't like being told no, and they don't like they don't like my input. They want their own, you know, And I can see it where that will be the motivating factor for them. You know, you think that, well, gosh, if a kid got a car when they were sixteen, how are they ever going to be motivated to do anything in life? Why about

the car? When they want another one, they're gonna buy the car. And they don't like coming to you and asking, That's the thing, you know, they really don't. And I see it with my two oldest ones nineteen ones almost seventeen. They want the autonomy and the independence of not having to ask their parents for stuff. So we'll see that's a big experiment parenting and we could right. So when you hear that you're going to be moving to California, is that a good I'm super excited. The Los Angeles

Lakers are my favorite basketball team. It's the Wilt Chamberlain Jerry West seventy two season where they go sixty and thirteen I'm a huge Wilt fan. I remember the game he played against the Bucks with Louell Cinder and it goes into overtime and he's got five fouls and he blocks Kareem shot, and he has one of the greatest records of all time. He's never felled out of game in high school, college, or his professional career. And he's still on the court and he blocks a shot, and

that's an incredible statistic. So I was a big fan of his. He could rebound, he could do assists, he could do anything. I loved Will And I'm coming to the land of the Lakers. Did your father take you to the game? Never? Never took me to a game. Did he come to your sports when you were growing up? Occasionally, my dad traveled. He spent about ten days a month on the road. Later on, when I was at one of my son's baseball games, he said, I really regret

not having done that. I said, Dad, you were born. He was born on his kitchen table. My father was raised with two foster kids in his home. He had two brothers, but his parents took in foster kids to make ends meet. My mom was raised off and on in Catholic orphanages and foster homes. So they had a tough you know. And I said, Dad, your point of view was not, Hey, how do I go hang out and do all the contemporary parenting things. You're concerned? Am

I gonna have enough money? Get my kid to school? We're gonna have clothes? Are We're gonna That was a legitimate concern for you. And because of that, I said to him, I don't ever think about those things. I always know I was gonna be Okay, that's a gift. You didn't have that gift. So you moved to southern California. Were exactly do you move? Fullerton, California. Now that's far

from the beach home of the electric guitar. It's a straight shot down brook her Store Beach Boulevard on the O. C. T D by the way, So it's not horrible that gets you into Huntington Beach. Okay, So how did you get into music? Really? My sister played a big, big part.

I was really really a fan. I remember going to singer you know, the sewing machine shop, and uh, I want to say, Easy to Be Hard was my first single that I bought, you know, And and I started collecting singles, and she had her record player, and I had a record player, and uh, I would connect multiple speakers to it, so I'd have like eight speakers in

my room. I thought I was like creating some sort of audio system, you know, but it was just I just remember, you know, I really didn't know a much about electronics, right, And I hooked up the external speaker without an Apple fire and blew out the whole house. Did you really? Absolutely? Oh, I have a photo I'll show you when we take a a moment. You can see basketball posters in my bedroom, and then you see a David Bowie poster and Jimi Hendrix, and the transition

is coming, you know what I mean. You can see the the sports stuff moving off the wall and the rock stuff starting to happen. Okay, now, but you say that you grew up with these people and you were part of the punk rock scene. Well that's that's years later. Okay, So then a little bit slower, So you suddenly are getting into music. You're in a high school, you're just living a regular high school life. Or does music become

your passion? Music's everything? Music is? You know, when when you want to say freshman year, was the first time where all of a sudden, buddy of mine looked and goes, you want to try pot? Yeah, what do we do?

You know? In your fourteen your kid, let's talk to this guy, you know, and you go and and you get your little yellow zigzag papers and your four finger bag of really bad you know, but I remember when Bucks was the good stuff in You know, when you talk about this a lot, and I've talked about this with you a lot, all of a sudden, you're part of a community. There's something going on. You're bonded to somebody. Because in three it's still a criminal offense. It's not

been decriminalized. This is a This is not an era where people are saying, oh, I smoked, but I didn't Inhale or multiple presidents have admitted to it. It's like a problem. You're bound to that community and you find that when you go to a concert, that whole community is there. You're all together. Okay, So where did you go to concerts? Oh? You go to Anaheim Convention Center. You know there. I remember seeing Crosby and Nash there and James Taylor there and Peter Frampton before broke out,

and it'd go to the Long Beach Arena. I remember going to Long Beach Arena for the Forum, right, and where did you get the money? And how did you get there? There's always somebody that could drive, you know. I remember going to see Queen and Thin Lizzie at the Forum and I had no ticket, and we walked up and we thought we might be able to get one because we've seen that happen. And there's a guy standing on the corner with the tickets. It worked out

really well. I had many that did work out as well. But I walk up and he's trying to sell the tickets and a cop walks up and grabs the tickets out of his hand and says, are you scalping these? No, sir, And I said I was getting ready to buy them at face value, officer. And the cop looks at me and I'm a kid. I'm dealing with, you know, older kids, so you know, I mean people in their twenties, you know what I mean. I'm just a kid, and he goes,

do you have the money? I go right here a game and we got like twenty throw seats to seek Lizzie and Queen, and it was fantastic. I think that time of my life was. Everything was just a brand new experience. It was amazing. It was amazing to go see the Who at Anaheim Stadium. It was amazing to all of it. I just I couldn't get enough of the live music thing. The live music thing was extraordinary to me. How often did you go to shows? Don't remember? You know what I mean? As often as I could.

But I was a kid. I was in high school and I could only only do so. Did you have any lightbulb go off in your head say this is something I want to make a career out of. I never thought. And that's where punk rock comes in. I would read the Sunday calendar section, of course, and you'd get it was the tabloid it in the Los Angeles times. You go to the Pacific Stereo ad in the middle, of course, and then you'd turn and you'd start to read, and it felt so distant, and uh, I didn't have

a great high school career. A little deeper. That means what I was truant frequently. And then where I went to school, you couldn't get away with that. How did you get away with it? Well? I didn't. By the halfway through my junior they wanted to send me to the continuation school, and I dropped out and I took the g E D. And at this point, I'm moving out of my parents house. Okay, wait, wait, wait wait. Your father comes from a background that's somewhat hard. He's

got a good job and he's on the road. How are you getting along with your parents? Not well? And the issue is what well they had? At one point, my mother moved my dresser and I would always take out the bottom drawer and that's where I would keep all my you know, hash pipe and my rolling papers and everything. And she found it, and to someone in my parents era, the difference between marijuana and heroin was

non existent. She thought I was a drug addict. And my father approached me and said, we're going to the police right now, or you're going into therapy. And I said, well, this is an easy call. How old were you? And I'd gotten in a couple of scrapes similar uh with the law, but like what well, when I was fourteen, I was learning to drive, but I hadn't taken driver head yet. I just used my parents car and I

got caught and I got arrested doing that. And then when I was sixteen, I was smoking some weed with a buddy of mine and got caught doing that, and it just turned out he had some cross tops and emphetamines with them, and I was like, oh god, this isn't good, you know. And so that was, you know, high school was chaos for me. Okay, But these are choices you made. Is that part of your personality? We say,

what are you a limit tester? Are you willing to do the thing that other people might pooh pooh or be too scared of. I don't know. I don't think that was the reason I was doing it. I was doing it because I was having fun. I mean, plain and simple. I was just having fun. It was like, let's let's smoke a point and go see altered states. Let's go. You know, you know, what are you doing? You know? After school? I don't know what do you

want to meet and go? You know? It was just what I was the nineteen seventy three or seventy four. It's just what you did, okay. So you felt like you went to the therapist. What did the therapist saying after why? I said, you seem like an okay kid, you know, And and he met with my parents. He said, you seem you seem okay, you know, but but I definitely was straining. There's no question that I was experiencing the generation gap. Everything my parents stood for. Everything they

liked I didn't like. They didn't like long hair, they didn't like the fact, you know. They just didn't like how I addressed. They didn't like how I conducted. And there was a point in our relationship where there was a break, I mean a big break, particularly when it came to curfews and things like that would be like I'm going out. When we would be back, I don't know, and that would be Friday night, it might be Saturday

afternoon I had come back. And it got to the point where I think they would define it now is incorrigible, where it was just like I wasn't going to be told to do. And I moved out of my parents house once when I was sixteen, and then for good when I was event where like an apartment with what money I was working now I left school at that point. I think I was a Mason's tender. Where's what It's an awful job of something that that really no one

would want to do. But I moved all the stone and brick off of trucks for the mason to set around pools. And I made the cement and would bring it to them, and it was backbreaking work. And I was seventeen years old and a d thirty five pounds and I'm dealing with grown men with beards. And I eventually got the clue and said, this sucks. I need to go back to school. I'm never going to meet a girl any girls. I would finish work and I would just have one beer in my apartment, go, oh,

this is wonderful. I have my own apartment, and I would just fall asleep. I was so fatigued. Okay, so the school said, hey, you're not going and you literally dropped out and took the g ding And how long before you went back to school? Within six months. I went to junior college as a seventeen year old, and you're still living in your own apartment and you're paying for yourself because it's cheap. Then it was really cheap. It wasn't bad at all. I mean it wasn't. It wasn't.

And and college at this point, within college, within the community college system, you paid a five dollar health fee and your books and you're in and all those units. Uh, you know, I transferred sixty units to U C Irvine and got my degree from U C Irvine years later, many years later. So how many years later, Well as it would have been if seventeen, that would have been

U seventy. So I didn't graduate college till eighty five. Okay, so you're still living in your own apartment, you're still paying your own bills, and now you're going to community college. And what are you doing for work? Then? Just a hodgepodge of different jobs. I went back to work at a supermarket. I had worked at supermarkets. I had worked at Ralph's when I was sixteen years old, and Fullerton I went and started working for Vaughan's, you know, at

that point. And these were great jobs because it was a union job, you had health benefits. Uh, they paid time in half on Sundays, and and I could make enough money working part time to pay my bills. But nothing had really started to come together as it relates to music yet at this point, I'm still going to a lot of shows. Punk rock has hit and now all of a sudden, I'm starting to go to clubs,

and that's a big shift. At least it was for me when you've been going to concerts and concerts and they're big, and then you find yourself in a club and the music is much more visceral, and you're right there and the local Los Angeles scene is exploding. Of course it's going. It's amazing, you know. And I remember I spent the night on Lancashire Boulevard and saw Elvis Costello at the Palamino around the Armed Forces tour. I spent the night on Sunset Boulevard and saw Tom Petty

at the Whiskey. I I was there the night that Excine's sister died, when X released their debut record. This was so exciting to me to see music in that small format. And that is where I all of a sudden got in where all of a sudden, I'm going to Shifted and I'm going to Fullerton Junior College and I ran for student office, something I'd never done in my life. I've never been to a dance in high school, like I literally, what was your motivation? I wanted to

bring bands to school. I wanted to be able to somehow bring bands to school. And I made really cool posters. I used pop art graphics. You know, Beatles jumping in the air vote for gym. It was really embarrassing. I felt, you know what I mean, because promoting yourself is really it takes a certain kind of person that can do it. Well. I'm not that person. I felt like a colossal douche bag the whole time doing it and I lost. But the guy who became president said, hey, you know, there's

a stipend position for an events director. I've never even heard the word stipend before, and I said, what does that mean? He goes, you can bring concerts here what you wanted to do, and we'll pay you fifty a week to do it. And you can have access to the phones. And I phone is a big deal. That's what people don't understand, long distance calls. It is a big deal. But there was a nightclub called Ichabod's in

Fullerton on Sunday nights. They were dark. Occasionally they would bring a band in and I approached the manager and said, can I do the bookings? And I got to do the bookings. So I'm booking the cramps, I'm booking suburban lawns and booking. I told Social distortion, wait, wait, wait, wait, you're living in your own apartment. Do you have any contact with your parents at this point? Okay, it's kind of normalize. It does what goes off in your head. You're saying, I can be a book or I can

do this. Well, I had had done a T. S o L show at my college, and so he did college shows before the Ichabod stuff. Yes, had done one, just one. It was a nightmare, but by the same token, to do one in the college, you're talking to so many middle agents whatever. You learn a lot in that one show. Yeah, Well it was just T. S O L. And they were local, and I forget how I made contact, but it was interesting, you know, I made I made some friends in that situation. And then I had seen

Dennis to L, the guitar player of Social Distortion. We were both in court for something. I don't know what I was in court for, but I remember seeing Dennis. He was wearing a green suit, he had saddle shoes on, and he was reading up and down with the rolling stones. And I'd seen Social d and I love Social Distortion. I thought they were great. They were very Lodi. They reminder me much more of the Buzzcocks than thrash music.

They are Generation X. They were very melodic, and I approached my said, can get you a gig at Kabots And he said they won't let us play there because they wouldn't let punk bands play. And it goes, I can get you a gig there, and I got them a gig there. You'd already spoken with the guy at Nikabots or you said if I have this in my pocket, I'd already spoken, And so I was starting to do bookings there and it was great because it meant I got to see the shows for free. It also meant

that I got to hit the bar for free. I got to by my friends drinks for free. It was like it was It was amazing. So you book a social dy, that's your first show at Nickabo. No, it's not my first show. I don't know what my first show was, to be honest with you, were they all successful? Yeah? I never lost money? And how did you get the

word out Flyers? You just did Flyers. The punk rock thing was very rapid community because there was very little that you were permitted to do in terms of venues, Like you couldn't go and play at the Rock Sea.

And I remember I started booking bands. Up and down the coast, and in different places, you couldn't get to the stone in San Francisco, Bill Gret they wouldn't let you book these so you wind up calling as you started booking around the country, you call the Victor Brothers and Phoenix and they would put you with the Knights

of Pitheus Hall. And then you'd call Tom bunchdown in Texas and he had a place where and you started networking all these people because they all had these scenes and they knew how to where to put the flyers. Thanks for joining me on another episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast. I hope you've enjoyed going down the rabbit hole with me. You never know who's gonna stop

by the studio. I've already had the chance to talk the legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk, Grammy nominated songwriter and bal Oscar nominated songwriter Diane Warren, and we're just getting started. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on tune in, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Back to my conversation with Jim Garrino. Okay, so let's go back your bookingabas. How do you then morph that into booking

up and down on the coast. In other so, what winds up happening is I wind up transferring to UC Irvine. And at the same time I meet Gary Tover. I'm blown away. He's got this thing called Golden Voice, and they're doing shows on a much larger scale than seems that one should be able to do. Like, you can't do shows this big punk rock shows. You're gonna get shut down, Like I feel like I'm getting away with

something doing an Ichabod show here and there. Jerry Roach has already had his troubles with the Cuckoo's Nest that's been shut down. Everything in Orange County has been shut down. And I meet Gary and I don't know how I weasel my way into it, but I get Gary to let Mike Vrainey, who's the manager of the Dead Kennedy's and t s o L and me I'm now handling Social Distortion, open a booking agency for him. And so we book Agent Orange forty five Grave the Dickies, Dead

Kennedy's TSL Social Distoration, and we start booking him. When he would bring a band in from England to do his concert at the Olympic auditorium. We would then book them up and down the coast for him. Okay, how do you become the manager of Social Mike? The band breaks up, the manager leaves for Las Vegas, he splits the rhythm section, leaves the band. Mike. I don't know the exact sequence, but he winds up coming to live

with me when he gets clean. He winds up, you know, Dennis and I have found him o'ded a couple, you know, many situations where there's big problems and he's having serious, serious drug problems. But he gets clean and he comes to live with me, and he's trying the whole time to do the band. We go through four or five drummers, but it's really not coming together until he gets clean.

And then we kind of get an established lineup and I'm managing them, and I put together a distribution deal through Enigma Records, Bill Hin and we pay for and record this record, Social Recording. It's not there's another one that came out before that that that this is their second, you know, full length album, but it's the first word Mike's claim and where we end to have a cohesive thing going on where we can say we're gonna be somewhere, Mike. Let me tell you. We book Gary Tovar book Social

Distortion in the Olympic Auditorium. They do five thousand people. Okay, we're probably eight three. We get there to do the show, we have no gear, Mike's pond at all. It's gone. It's gone, and we're headlining. Okay. And I remember seeing this guy, Don Burnett the band plane wrap and said, I think he was the opening act. He might not have been, it may have been a different act. But we say, we'll give you a hunter Bucks if we can use your gear. You're applying. We'll be here late,

you know, Yeah, no problem. We give him a Hunter Bucks. Now we have a gear to play through. End of the night, we're all hanging around partying. Guy walks up and goes, hey, where do you put my gear? Fucking Mike has taken his gear and hocked it and it's in the pawn shop. Just like that, it's gone. He's stolen the gear again. And that's what it was like, you know what I mean. Meanwhile, this guy is selling five thousand tickets. You can't get a major label deal.

So when he cleans up the band records this record prison Bound. The song goes number one on k Rock. It literally is number one. We put the record out through Enigma as a pressing and distribution deal, which was the only deal you could get. Back then nobody recognized the brilliance of it, that you own the masters and

that you get the lions share the money. It was just like, well, nobody will give us a deal, so we'll just make it ourselves, and you know, do that and they would do the pressing and they charge you back. But it turned out to be great because they wound up owning owning their masters. It goes number one on k Rock. Epic winds up signing him. But that's you know, Okay, you're the manager, you make a deal with Enigma, You and Bill hind sit down, or you get a lawyer.

At this point, I do everything. I have no lawyer, and I have come out of you see your vine. There's a little bit of backtracking. I meet Steve Rennie at u C Irvine. He has a company called Steve Rennie Presents, which we affectionately used to call Steve Renny Resents because nobody wanted to do much bisy this with him. But he gets hired at Avalon. At the time, they're doing four nights of Bruce Springsteen at the Colisseum eighty thou.

They're the biggest there is in l A. They own l A. And Renny gets hired by Avalon, and we've been doing concerts. I'm at u c Irvine. This is four. I don't graduate till Lady five. So we bring Wingo Boingo for two shows in one night. We bring the Cure in two shows in one night, turned the house. We do all these concerts, and he realizes he can rely on me. So they hired me for two fifty dollars a week to drive from Coasta Mesa to Encino when Bruce is coming to do his four nights at

the Colisseum. They called it the Bruce Excees. We'll need a little extra help, and so I get I get hired to do that. Uh, and so you know, all this is kind of going on. At the same time, I'm continuing to do work for Gary Tovar. I was doing his graphic arts. I would do his l a time Sunday calendar ad with rub out letters, throw a few skulls in there, take it and get a line stat v locks and then I drive it down to Bobs upreds In at the l A Times and Gary

give me a hundred bucks a week to do that. Okay, but let's go back to socialty. If you're selling five thousand tickets forgetting that Mike's not clean, there's a lot of money somewhere. Is any of that money floating down to you? Oh yeah, I'm getting fift at this point of that, you know, but it's not a lot of money. In in four it was a flat guarantee. It might have been three four thou dollars. Ticket ticket prices were not what they are. You know, we're talking about keeping

ticket prices under ten dollars. When I started managing the Offspring in ninety four, they wouldn't go over a ten dollar ticket. That's nine four. This is ten years before that. So okay, so you're slapping up to the cino. You're working. So that was only for the four days with Bruce or did you can? I worked the entire time from the literally the moment I graduated. I started the following Monday. I never had to do a resume. Started. I sat on the couch and I would go up there. They

have all on office and CEO Brian Murphy. I thought was the coolest guy I'd ever seen that works at a G But it's a long time at L a promoter, and Bob, you can't imagine seeing this guy sit there on the phone. And I've told this story before, but I'm gonna tell it again because most people haven't heard it. I'll never forget when he's getting ready to announce Bruce Springsteen, his tickets are going on sale. He's calling Cynthia Fox at Camyte and he's going to go live on the air. Now,

that's just unbelievable. And I'm sitting there watching a little bit of Remember I mean, I'm sitting there watching him, and I'm like quiet, like I gotta be U watch. He's got his Diet Coke there in his Marlborough lights, and he's got his jacket on, jeans, white tennis shoes, and Murphy looks cool as hell. And he picks up the phone. He gets ready to do the phone call. It's a couple of minutes before he's going to go in there, and and I just remember him going, Hey, Fox,

what's happening? And I'm just like, oh my god, this guy is so cool. Because yeah, we're bringing Bruce l A And I'm just like, this is the greatest thing ever. I'm just in awe of it. You know, there's nothing like being on the inside. It was, and I'm just you know, I'm a week or two out of school and he let me sit on his couch in his office because there's no desk for me. I mean, he was very I'd met him over the years because I had interned and done stuff and helped out. But it

was really really cool. And what was your theoretical job? I did store reports. I would call Moby Disc and I would talk to Bob Say and I would say, hey, what's selling this week? You know, what do you got going? What's going on? And a lot of things were you know, again, it was kind of a for me. It meant a lot to all of a sudden be able to say, Hey, the Smiths are selling really well, that's gonna that's something we should book, or this is doing well. This is

something we we had to deal with the palladium. So we're doing the Palladium shows. And we had a venue in San Diego, the open air Amphitheater at San Diego State about a four thousand theaters. So you know, I'm calling all these records store, I'm talking to X and I'm I don't know what I'm doing, but people are talking about music and they're telling me bands that I like that, how they're selling and what they'll do, and and they'd say, I'll never forget any saying me, so

what do you think the Smith's Palladium? Is it one or two? And I'm like, you're asking me, you're asking me, this is awesome, right, how long are you I beend a couple of years there, and uh, we start managing Drama Rama, Steve and I and at this point Moss Jacobs is still there, and we would split the money four ways. So I did a P and D with Important Now and they had a blowtorch hit called Anything Anything on k Rock. It was huge, and I start

booking the band. I do all the booking at this point, I make all the calls, college bookings, and we split

all the money. And it's like I have to ask you a license agent at that time, not at all, of course, No, not not at all, you know, And and that's going on, and I found another club in Orange County that very similar to an Ichabod's Thing, and I changed the name of it when I book it that night, and I call it pretty vacant after a sex pistol song and book Jane's addiction in their Red Laura, Yellow Lauria, a bunch of Geiger bands and uh, that's mark now ahead of music and very pivotal in my career.

But Reny decides that he wants to form a management company within Avalon and he's going to be the head of it. Now, all the money has to go into this management company, and I don't like that very much because well, because we're splitting it four ways, and at this point I'm doing the bulk of the work. It's like, okay, but you know, I'm young and arrogant about it, like this is bullshit, you know what's going on? Okay. Also,

I'd gotten a raise. I went from two fifty dollars a week to something more, but it amounted to thirty three thousand dollars a year. And they had given me that raise four months before, but I hadn't seen it yet, and I complained to complained the complain They said, Okay, we're gonna do it, but it's not going to be

retroactive to the time. Well, right around this time, Mark Geiger has put my name in with Larry Vallen who turned me onto The Left Sets Letter and Ja Marciano, and they invite me to the Hamburger Hamlet and I sit down and they say, we'd like you to come over to the Universal Lamp Theater. I'm like, wow, because the Universe Lamp Theater, that's to me, the big time, like I've seen before. They put the roof on, I've been there. It is veep to me, preeminent music venue

in Los Angeles. And they explain what it is and how they do their thing different. Do you remember what they said that was different. Well, they booked a venue and I had been in the four wall business, which as we go in, you know we had irvine meadows, but we treated it like a four wall business. We

would go in explain what a four wall business. You basically go in and you rent the four walls and you charge let's say ten dollars at the door, and a hundred people show up, you have a thousand dollars and you have some to pay the ban or whatever is left over you keep. Well, they own that building now, so there's the parking, the peanuts, the concessions, and they're running a much different operation. It is truly the contemporary

concert industry. And I feel like wow. And they're getting ready to build one in Denver, and they have one Atlanta, and and Irving, by the way, is running it right. Of course, Irving had left management after the Eagles broke up. That's Irving as off and he got hired to run m c A Records, which was a dump at the time, and he started this concert business and let Ja Marciano run around the country and building these venues. That's right.

And for those who don't know, Ja Marciano now runs a g one of the two concert powerhouses in the world. That's right. And they bring me in to do what to book the new bands. I'm the new band guy. Whatever that thing is that you guys do at the Palladium, we needed to bring here. And I'm going to tell you something. Larry Vallen, in as many chances as he had, would always say, Jim came up with the idea of

party in the pit, take the seats out of the pit. Really, he would say that he would give me credit for having done that, so that there would be a general admission to give some of the stiffness of the universe lamp there. It was never my idea. It was always Larry's. And I'm telling you the guy, I'm like, Larry, this is You're the one who came up with the idea, you know. But He's like, yeah, we came up with it together. And then it would be you just came

up with it alone. The generosity of that guy, he was fantastic to work with, you know. I mean, he was really, really, really terrific. And Jay Jay had a vocabulary of music that was foreign to me. He would be booking Stephanie Mills and he had booked the the Theater on and he had a musical vocabulary that was

four to me. He would just sit there and these guys the Beverly Theater, right, And so they would sit there and they do five nights of Earth, Wind and Fire, and they bring in George Benson, and they bring in the Whispers and Stephanie Mila and Larry was doing all these Latin things and I started to go, Okay, they're doing things that are outside of just my sphere of understanding.

They know how to do the business and I started to grow up a little bit, you know, and uh, and that's when he gave me my first left set. So I'm like, what is this? Okay? So how long do you work at Universal? Ten months? I hate it. You hate it because because it was very corporate and the guy who was the boss of Larry and Jay I had booked you Be forty into Fiddler's Green, the new venue in Denver, and I did it with Ian Copeland, who ran the FBI agency. And they had a lot

of acts. Everybody from the police and Squeeze to the go goes, all sorts of different acts. And Ian was a great guy. He was one of the pioneers of music that I loved recently to see. And the show wasn't selling great. And he said, you go back and tell him what if we were giving him X. He said, give him half off X. He said, I can't do that, so you gotta do it. I know I'm not gonna do it. This is the corporate guy. Yeah, and it just really was awful. I haven't heard from him in

thirty years, probably heard about him for thirty years. But it just wasn't comfortable, and so I wasn't willing to do that. And at this point Mark Geiger shows up again and he goes, wall, wait before you get there, the show played. How did it do? We made money? We made money. So Geiger at this time when he shows up again, what is he doing? I think he's he's the hot guy at Triad probably, which is another agency that morphs into some other agency and you know,

kind of repopulates itself. But he shows up and he goes, hey, you know A and m is looking for somebody, and I'm like, what is that? What was the job description? It was the head of artist development. And so Michael Leon, who's the head of the East Coast office, comes in and he says, I want you to meet Gil Freezing. We'd like to talk to you about this job. And I'll never forget that because if there is a mentor for me in the business, it was Guil Freezing for sure.

I go in, I sit down, and and I say, what is artist development as well? Jim, That's how Gil talked. You'll tell us now, won't you. That's so guilt. So so the Gil unfortunately is not with us either. But and I was like, this guy is just weird, you know, just so uncomfortable you know what I mean. And uh, And my experience with record companies are you'd call somebody in the promotion department, because I'm a concert promoter, to say, hey, do you want to help promote. I didn't realize promotion

was they call radio stations. I was like, we're going to promote, and they wouldn't help you at all, and they'd be there the night of the show taking pictures. I didn't like record company people as a rule, but I was not happy where I was and I wanted something new, and I went to A and M and I took on this job. And at the time when I start the job, it's primarily making copies of videos and sending them to the local video shows. Artist development

is video promotion. You remember the year that you go to work at and I'm like, this is videos, making videos. I didn't understand that as artist development in my mind. But I also controlled the promotional budget and the tour support budget, and I see that as as something. And we're signing bands, and I remember eight is when I

met Tony Hawk. I took Social Distortion up to Seattle to do the Gotcha Grind and we had just signed this band called Sound Garden and the manager called me, Susan Silver, and she said, I'd like to talk to you, and we're going to go to the new music seminar and we like to see if we can open for Iggy Pop. And Iggy Pop at the time is on A and M. And I said, I'm gonna be in Seattle.

Why don't we meet each other in person? So we do and she shows up with this long haired Hessian and of course I don't realize it's Chris Cornell, you know. And I meet Chris and Susan for the first time. I'm with the drummer of Social Distortion. I'm there is the A and M rep but also managing Social Distortion. They let me keep Social Distortion. That was a big thing. Gil said, yeah, you can continue with them, because nobody

thought they were anything. That didn't matter. It turns out they signed an epic and you know, I'm not managing a band on Sony, you know, from like that's crazy. So anyway, it's eight and I start to encounter these younger bands. This is pre Nirvana, whether it's Soul Asylum, Sound Garden, but bands that they're not getting a lot of attention at the time. There's a general manager there by the name of Bob Rightman. He's like, Sting doesn't

need your help, don't worry about that. There's somewhere that find the bands that are excited, that want to talk to you. And I thought it was really good advice because within a label, which is pretty big, there are these little orphaned bands that are kind of just lingering. And I needed something to do, and I need somewhere to hang my hat and something to to work on. And so these bands start to become important. And I remember having a meeting with Sound Garden and Susan and

we're sitting there. I had suggested that they bring an extension cord and clip on lights when they go on tour, and I'm like, why, I said, your T shirt sales will go up. And that was like the moment where I realized this is what artists develop him in. Is this is where you shift away from sending videos out and all that nonsense to you're gonna do this like a concert promoter. You're gonna try and you're gonna try and build bands on the road. So you knew that

about the extension corp. From being a promoter, from being a manager, of Social Distortion. That's how we sold more T shirts because we did all our own merch And I'd done that now with Social Distortion for five years. I'd managed them through the clubs, through the all the places. I'd done what these bands are getting ready to do, I've been doing for five years. And I said, if we can grow you at a certain point to where you can tour on your own and make money, at

some point, you'll have success. Now, I didn't know what it would become. I you know, I mean, it looks great in hindsight. Yes, the market moved a little bit. Sound Garden has black Hole, Sun It Works, Blues Traveler,

you know a number of bands. But I knew that the touring thing was going to be very important, and it seemed to also correspond with the kind of artists that I liked and that could have long term success, that would create catalog and all the things that felt like buzzwords for this word label that I'm starting at. You know, I saw with the Police that was the kind of template. Okay, so at this time, a lot of crazy stuff happens at A and M and M

is sold to poly Graham. Jerry Moss leaves not right away. Jerry gil leaves right away, but Jerry and Herbs stay on. They run up for about a year, and at this point there's heavy turnover. And I've been there for a few years now. I had become the head of marketing. I think at this point Alcaferro had been the general manager. When Jerry leaves, he becomes the president. I become the general manager. And we had been really cold for a long time, like it had been been bad. But we

start to things start to happen. We start to sell some records. We start to have Amy Grant, Brian Adams goes on Fire and Aaron Neville. We have the C. C. Peniston single, the Gin Blossom. Zo and I had had a discussion over Temple of the Dog, Sound Garden Blue. You know, Cheryl Crow. We get hot, you know, we get hot. And like everybody, any any executive, you're only as good as the clients you have and the people you work with. That's what you do. And so Al

goes away for six months. Okay, I'll len Leavey who runs PolyGram sends him to Harvard for educational purpose, Harvard Business School, and I get to take over for six months and I've got a great group of people, but it's uncomfortable because I'm young. I'm without question have the shortest tenure in the record industry. But I just say that to everybody. I know, this is uncomfortable. I got the shortest tenure. But we got a job to do. We got we gotta get this done and we've got

to nail it. We've got to keep these PolyGram dogs at Bay because they're very corporate. Now it's simultaneously it becomes a big factor. You become involved with the offspring. How does that happen, Well, that doesn't happen until and at this point, my feeling about A and M has gone sour. I've been approached by Sony to come work there. I've had a couple other approaches from some people. I don't take anything, but I'm not happy where I'm at

because the PolyGram influence has really come in. It really hits uh a point. First off, I have to say Alc Farroll gave me a tremendous amount of just latitude. He gave me. I don't know why, but he did, and and we had success. And so he continued to but theyre reached a point where he was spending so much time dealing with PolyGram, and they were interfering so much with our operation. I was starting to lose people. I was starting to not be able to pay people.

I was starting not to build bonus people. They came up with a certain point where they weren't honoring contracts, and it hit between Al and me when we had our Grammy tickets. We had fifty tickets and I had made the list of who they should go to. I sent it to him for approval, and all of a suddenen day calls because they want forty six of them back. I said, for what he goes for Wall Street people, he can't let him do that. Now he's dealing with

PolyGram directly in a lan can't him do well? We have no choice And I said, then you got forty eight tickets. I'm not going. And I said, and you shouldn't go either. And that was kind of arrogant, asshole move on my part, but it was what it was at the time, you know. And I realized that my time was up there and I was ring to have this sense that I just don't want to do this anymore.

I'd gone from that point where you're making two fifty dollars a week and loving every minute to making a lot more money than I ever thought I would make, and just not enjoying myself. And I wanted to change my life, and so I quit bob here. When I'm not interviewing industry titans and learning about how they made their mark in their fields, all write about music, tech, current events, and everything in between. Subscribe to the Left Sets later at left sets dot com to find out

what's on my mind. Back to my conversation with Jim Garreto, I thought that Offspring had success before you quit. April of ninety four, I start managing them. So what had happened is in I get a phone call and I'd always been taught. I don't care whether it was Bill Elson or Toma Ross. You return every phone call. And this guy calls me and it's Dexter Holland and he explains he's in a band and he's going to USC and he's this, and uh, do I want to manage him?

And I said I can't. I'm the general manager of Van m you know. And he goes, can you help me get on a Fugazi show at the Palladium with Golden boys, and I said, well, here's Paul Toilett's phone number, you know, reach out and he got on the show. And the following year he calls me because we've got another record and it looks like A Rock is gonna

start playing it. Larry Weintraub was my assistant at the time, and I was like, dude, this record is amazing, and I'm just uncomfortable enough of what I'm doing that I say, you know what, I'm gonna have this guy come in. And so he comes in and I love him. He's a real genuine sweetheart. He's a gentleman, he's polite, and the records amazing. You know, it's amazing, and it goes through the roof at A Rock and I say, I'll start managing you. So that's April ofission. No. At this

point I really don't care. I wind up quitting in July. Was there any pressure this this was literally the biggest hit on K Rock at that time. Was there any pressure for me? And Am absolutely absolutely? And there were pressure from internally. Bob Score Mercury want to sign him. I'm hearing from Danny Goldberg. He wants to sign everybody, all all the people I know want to sign them, And I'm saying to the band, They're like, we don't want to meet anybody. We don't want to meet anybody,

we don't want to talk to anybody. We're not going to take a meeting. We want to be on Epitaph. They turned down Saturday Night Live, they turned down all these things. They're just like, we don't want to participate in any of that stuff. We think that's all lame and don't want to do it. In retrospect, good or bad move? In retrospect bad move, because um, well, I'm sorry, it's a mixed grade. They weren't ready for it. For sure. Had they been where they are were several years later,

they would have been able to deliver the goods. But at this point they've never even sold out the whiskey. They're not at that point where you need to be at the premier television show playing because it would have been too soon. They would have tanked. Frankly, I don't think they would have been very good. You know, they're they're just getting ready to go out and do their first real touring and start to develop their chops. And in a weird way, that's the irony of a band

like that. They kind of broke off a pop music model more than a mat Alica model or social distoration or sound Garden. They almost broke more of a pop model where the song got huge. They sell eleven million records on Epitaph, and they're just growing into being a good band. They haven't fully realized that yet. Well, it's fascinated because it's today's marketplace. You know, it used to be up until like five years ago, cream would rise to the top on the Internet. Now there's so much noise.

So the question is do you take the opportunities do not take the opportunities. It's more gray than ever before. But I think these are important questions. I think they are too and I'm not sure whether it's the cred question that would be each specific situation, but you definitely have to be able to be ready when you do get the shot. You can undo your shot very quickly

if you suck. It's funny because I've been living through this with Greta van Fleet, which the label is Jason Flom and the agent his guide whether you push the button or not, and whether it eventually happened. So how does it ultimately go down with a and M I decided to leave. I decaid I'm gonna move to Laguna Beach And they say, what would say? You're gonna leave? Really you're the gentleman, like why? But at this point there's enough strife between Al and me. Then he's like, yes,

probably time for him to go. It's probably time for him. You know, we're we're definitely butting heads, you know, on a pretty regular basis. And again I say that with all due respect because the guy gave me such a shot. But subsequent to that, they really never had another hit. Who's that? And m Cheryl continued, you know, I'm talking about a new act. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure we could go through, but relatively speaking, they got colder and colder. Yeah,

I think so. I think that that that the the PolyGram influence was inevitable, and sooner or later it just choked him off. And I really do think that. You know, at some point, you know, you've got to have the spirit. I remember going in Dalla's office say I want to spend two hund fifty thousand dollars on Cheryl Crow TV. He's like, really, yeah, I think it's time. I think we gotta go okay, and I brought him Bill Gilbert, who was the Grizzly sales guy from Boston. He was

like twenty years older than May. And whenever Billy and I walked in Dalla's, obviously just threw santhem because lee me alone. Guys, whatever you want, you know what I mean? It was, and it was great. Once Billy left, it really changed for me. You know, when Billy left, the whole game really changed because there was nothing in between Al and me. You know, So when you go to Laguna,

if you already have a deal with Clive, what's the story. No, No, if this goes you go to Laguna, you're just gonna manage social Dan, You're just gonna be in the draw offspring. Not that there's not enough money there honestly, but my calculus was, you can either make more money. Okay, you make more money, you get more stuff and you create your own prison, or find a way to live off a hunter Grand. And that's what I was saying to my friends at the time. I'll find a way to

live off a Hunter Grand. You know, I'm single at this point, I'm thirty five years old. Move, I'm gonna make it simple I'm gonna simplify my life, you know, I want to have fun again. I don't want to approach the music industry like it's a chore. We all know these people, you know, you reach a certain age where it's like God, all they do is complain about there. I didn't want to be that. I wanted to make Flyers again. I wanted to get involved with the video.

I wanted to do that, and I just wanted to enjoy myself doing it again. And so at this point I moved to Laguna. Did you immediately read the office you ultimately did? Oh? No, no, no, not at all. I stay at my house in Sherman Oaks until September of ninety four. And then Peter Harper, who now works a ticketmaster, had found a two bedroom house down on Victoria Street, and we took one of the bedrooms and converted it and I slept in the other bedroom. And uh, I didn't even see it. I was on tour at

the Offspring. I come home, directions to my house or my new place are are on the seat of my new jeep, Grand Cherokee, which I had bought before I left, and sitting in my garage in Sherman Oaks. I drive down, It's like, Wow, this is it. And it was challenging because all of a sudden, you know, I would come home from work and it would be quiet, and I've done one of these guys. I was out every single night now VISU and I don't know where to go. And it was what I needed at that point in

my life. If I wanted to change my life, I knew I wanted something different. I didn't know what it was, but I knew if I just kept filling that void with activity, it was nothing going to change. I was just gonna keep doing the same ship over and over and over until I was in my sixties. Okay, So was the next step the deal with time Bomb with Clive Davis. The next step was Michelle Anthony, who had been Soundgarden's lawyer, had gone to Sony and she said,

Donny's gonna call you. I said, what She goes, Donnie and Tommy want you to come to New York. They want you to be the president of Columbia Records. I'm like, oh, wow, you know, I mean, that's a big gig if you've been a career music person. It was a This was sixty three days after I moved to Laguna. I'm like, and at that point, you know, I've got the offspring. I had had a good career as a record guy.

I'm having my moment and Clive wants me to come in and I had met with Danny about some stuff and it's kind of going like you know, I mean, like I'm I'm in the mix. And this is the point where I'm kind of quasi down shifting, you know, And all of a sudden it's heating up. And they fly me into New York and I go to New York and I sit down and they tell me what

it would be to be president of Columbia Records. The youngest president, you know, and the biggest label, and it's Yankee Stadium, it's Harvard and you know, like in the five Madison building, you know what I mean. And it's it's impressive and I go right along with it. And

Dave Johnson comes in, he starts writing the contract. And I get home and I tell a friend of mine, this girl I worked with it and m Emily Kay, I tell her, yep, I'm gonna go be the president of Columbia and she goes, what is wrong with you. She goes, that is just the opposite of what you said. I didn't picture you being doing something like that just for the money. And it's stung because it was true. It was one of those roads not taken moments where you go, you know what, I'm doing it because I

think you'll think it's cool. I'm doing it because they'll think it's cool. I don't want to go to New York. My mom and dad are probably in their eighties at this point. You know, they live nearby. I've got a phenomenal relationship with them. I love living in Laguna Beach. I've got a life. And it was just enough where I called Michelle and I said, I don't want to do it. She was really and Tommy called mint it, I can't believe this is the stupidest thing anybody's ever

done in their life. And I said, it may be, but it's what I need to do, you know. And it was really, really, really a big moment because it was also a moment where I said I'm not going to live through my business card. I'm going to have an adult relationship with my job. Up to that point, my job had been my life. My job had been who I was and how I was defined, and at that moment it was like, you know what, it's time to put the big boy pants on. You know, this is a good job. I like what I do for

a living, but it's just a job. It's no longer going to be what it was when I was twenty one or fourteen, when I'm listening to Quadraphini and it's my religion and everything rolled into one. And I think that's what happens is there's attention as you get older where it's like, Okay, that doesn't feel right. I have other things that I'm growing into that are interesting to me, Like I like to read books to you know what

I mean. There was a point where it's just I just wanted to go to a show every night, and if I party three out of five nights a week. When going whatever, it was just life on the run. Well, now in thirty five and I don't want to do that anymore. But you move to look at a beach and you don't have any solill infrastructure, have no social infrastructure, and that's when the walls come in and all of a sudden it's like, Okay, I'm not going to rely

on that anymore now concurrent with Sony approaching me. Clive had approached me, but he had said, you should just do your own label. And Sony had told me I can have my own label too well being the president. Um. But once I told him I didn't want to be president,

they weren't putting forth the idea of a label. And so I agreed to do with Clive, you know, and I wasn't sure about it, but I had seen what Brett Kurwitz had done with Epitaph, and I was very impressed with Brett, and I was just the way he talked about it, the way that you when you start a label. Again, this is gonna sound goofy, but I didn't have my own assistant. I didn't need an assistant.

If I'm gonna book travel, I'm gonna use the travel things on the internet, in which is all new, and I'm gonna compose my own letters, because to write it out longhand and then have somebody type it and then correct it it was just inefficient. So there was there was starting to be this shift where technology would create these efficiencies if you're starting your company now, and so I figured I want to adopt what Brett's mindset was,

and I want to do that. And we signed a bunch of great bands, you know, whether it was Social Distortion who came aboard and the Vandals we put out in Amazing Crowns and Sunny Day Real Estate and Death in Vegas and all sorts of great x. But none of them hit. You own those records. I was a joint venture, so I owned half of them. Why do you think they didn't hit? There weren't hits. It wasn't a matter of not having enough infrastructure to promote them. No,

at this point, here's what infrastructure looks like. Okay, what is required. You call Kevin Weatherly, if he agrees with you, it goes on k Rock. If it gets hot, it picks up ten markets the next week. Once you get those ten markets, you call Rick Krim and he's like, if he agrees with those ten markets, you're on MTV. Wait, we did that gag over at A and m over and over again. You know, but you had to have reality.

And the beauty about what was going on in the record industry at this point was what Mike Chalotte had created with sound Scan. You now knew when something was real. You now knew right away you could see that thing that would happen. If Drama Rama had hit in ninety four instead of eight five or eighty six, with anything Anything, you would have seen the sales explode out of Bob Says store, and and it would have been more visible, it would have been more more legible to the powers

that be that controlled the media. And so those just weren't hits. They would get on the air and they would be passive. What did you learn in that process? I learned having hits is very, very hard, and when when you find them, you know, it's it takes a certain genius to find acts, or be patient long enough for a black hole sun to come along, or for social distortion to have a These are years in the

making these bands. You bet on the band and then eventually, but at this point things are starting to turn into a bit of a microwave in the record industry, and there's an expectation of it happening a little bit quicker. Certainly there was for me. How long did you do it with Clive Well, through him leaving, you know, through him leaving you know, I mean I was still with BMG at the point when Clive left you're talking about when he left Arista informed J. Yeah, So how many

years was that? I don't remember exactly, Okay, but today do you remember presenting my time bomb stuff right after Puffy one time at a BMG thing And it was torture because he was so big and it was such a monster, and I'm coming in with all these little indie bands being like, oh gosh, and it owns those records today now Concorde owns it. At some point BMG wanted out and they said, you can keep the Masters, but we want to terminate the deal, and so I

got the Masters, and then years later sold him to Concord. Okay, and how was your experience working with Claude Davis? Well? He was a trip. What I was trying to do. I don't think he understood really, but he gave me a lot of room to prove that I was right, and I didn't prove that I was right many people from the rock world because splitting his ten ures in half, you had the era of Columbia. Then he went to aristad Face soon after Patti Smith and a few of

the Kinks whatever. He went very pop sure and the people from ROC and went to work for Clive ultimately complained that it became a pop sensibility where's the hit micro management? And they were not happy and they were not given much leeway. But it seems that your situation was different. It was much different. He gave me a lot of leeway. He was very curious. I remember one

time him grabbed me in the elevators. Time Bomb is not the right name for your label, you know, And I wanted something that evoked the stacks vault, you know type thing. I wanted something like that that you can make a great T shirt out of. And and I've got the great time Bomb logo and it looked really really cool. I'm like wow. But that kind of was was a bit of a non secret of the conversation. He gave me as much room to operate and resources to operate. I just didn't hit it. I just didn't.

I failed at it. You know. I would love to have had one of those records hit and been able to say, ah, proof of concept, but I didn't. But the deal, if you were there that long, how to be renewed. It was renewed. So thank you. You know, he gave me a great oportunity. So at what point

do you start picking up other acts from management. Well, at this point I had become very very close with Chris Cornell through Sound Garden and he's getting ready to leave Sound Garden, and I don't know exactly how it came up with Susan, who's still one of my best friends, but she says, I'm not going to manage your solo career, Jim should do it. And it was like the three of us, you know, I mean like we would meet and talk about them purchasing their first home, like this

is how you're gonna do it, you know. I mean we're really really, really close. And so I'm like, yeah, okay, you know, and and so I start managing Chris and then I take on Ran said they're on Epitaph. They were getting ready to leave to go to Epic Records. Michael Goldstone was signing them, and ran into them at a Fillmore show that the Offspring were doing. And at this point, they're kind of personna on Garrata at Epitaph because they're leaving and they're really unhappy, like you could

just see the strain on them. And I see Tim and I see Lars. I'm like, guys, what's the deal and just you know, this is hard and while then why are you leaving? You know, clearly the Offspring have shown you can have success, and they're like, well, it feels like we're too far down the road, and I'm like, never too far. And so within a month they had had reached out to me and said would you manage us?

And I said, yeah, I love the band. I think they're great and I love the guys, and um I called Brett up and I said, hey, listen, they're not going to go to epic. Do you want him back? And he was are your kidding? Because he was heartbroken. I think it was his favorite band of all time on epitaph. And I said, yeah, here's you know what it would look like to do, and if you're agreeable to that, let's meet with the guys in the next

couple of days. He's like, you're not joking me, and I said no. I said, We've seen through the Offspring that anything that they can have success. You guys have sold a lot of records on a worldwide basis. There's no reason, you know. He goes wow, you know, And so it was a really great moment where they kind of returned was that the right choice, no question, because they're still there by the way, and they've had opportunities to leave. You know, that's where they're kind of heart

and soul is. You know, they were that kind of band. So we complete that record cycle, record called Let's Go, get a video called Salvation on MTV, come out without an outcome the Wolves, and it sells two million copies. So it worked, you know, and they were doing really really well. Okay, So now you have RANSD Yeah, and then Chris Social Distortion in the Offspring. Suddenly you're a manager. You're comfortable with that because you're someone who's always evaluating

your direction. Yeah, I am. I'm I'm okay with it because I love the bands that I'm working with, and I'm comfortable with it. By this point, I've I've gotten married. I get married in ninety seven and we start having kids. We have Jessica in October. Uh, and I'm a dad too. So life is kind of all all over and and and changing for sure, and I'm having a I'm having a good time with it. In the back of your mind, are you plotting it all saying this is where I want to be next, but this is what I want

or you're just going with the flow. I'm going with it at this point. I'm really, you know, trying very hard to remain in laguon a beach somewhere between Crown Valley and Broadway, you know, and like I'm really trying not to travel. One of the things that I would say to everybody along is getting big z easy. Staying small as hard. Saying no is hard to do because what do you say no to at that time? More opportunities, more bands, because everybody wants you to manage a band.

You can only do so much before you lose a connection with them. So I think it's ninety eight that I pick up No Doubt, you know. And what is the status of No Doubt at that time? Well, they they had Tragic Kingdom and they sold b zillions of records. Tom Attensio right, right, So how did it end with Atensio? I don't know exactly. I think they mutually agreed to part ways, is what I understand. I've known Tom because he was managing New Order back in the day. Geiger

was the agent. Tom was the manager, and I was promoting the shows. Uh. In a lot of instances, uh, And you know, Tom was a very capable guy. So but at that point, they're on the open market. And I've met him over the years just because I grew up in Orange County and I've done social distortion, the Offspring John Boyle. You know, my first meeting with boy Hill is Offspring sublime, no doubt. You know, Big Snow Show in ninety four or maybe it was early, you know.

I remember Gwen coming back and thanking us for having them on it. She was really really polite, you know, And they were great, great guys. So they become available, and every single manager is in the hunt. I mean, it is ridiculous. Like every manager you name a person, they were in a meeting with him. And it came down to myself and Andy Slatter, and I think there were a little resistant to me because I was the Orange County guy. Because of those things. It felt like

tow Sammy Sammy. Yeah. But I felt like I also was able to communicate my experience to Gwen working with Cheryl Crowe and the amount of time I'd spent with Cheryl and what that looked like and being able to work with a girl and and understanding that and and uh. And I think I proved that pretty quickly. I brought in this really terrific publicist, Luke Berland. When got her lane, I said, Luke, I've got to give this girl her lane.

She's like busting at the seams and it's a problem with the band, and you know, Gwen getting her solo. It's the traditional thing that we've all seen a million times. She's oh, this is easy. I'll just get her in all the girls magazines and all the fashion magazines. The boys don't want to be in those anyways. And I'm like, oh, my god, your genius. And that starts Gwen down that road. It doesn't mean to say that she hadn't had any fashion, but that really gives her lane independent of the guys.

And so we're managing them. And then I take on Beck and it's like, wow, we're a real management company. You know. Isn't this fun? You know? I had a great time, but I'm starting to get a little older. I'm starting to have more kids. And another one of those pivotal moments, as I said, I'm gonna be home at five o'clock for dinner. I will be home every night at five o'clock for dinner. And I make a point to be home every night at five o'clock for dinner. Nless I have to be in New York or you know,

there's something going on, you know. But I say that's going to be part of my daily routine, and I start moving my clock back, and I start getting up earlier, waking in the morning and taking care of New York and Europe. But five o'clock and I give, you know, the receptionist, the list of these people. If they call, call the house, no body else, just send an email and I'll check it at the end of the nine If it was urgent, I'll deal with it. And that was good for you. Do you think it hurt your

business at all? I don't think it hurt my business. Initially. I think it probably contributed to losing nine inch nails. I think it probably contributed to losing, no doubt. And those were the first jobs I've ever lost. I've never been fired from a job before. And I realized afterwards, when somebody would say, like, wow, what they're going to come back. You did a great job for those bags,

never come back. I remember saying, they can offer me double And it wasn't because I was angry at them, because I'm not angry at them, but I realized I no longer was that guy. I wasn't the guy that was going to eat, sleep, breathe, snort, rub into my belly, do everything possible for a band. And they need that and they deserve that, and so I kind of went like they did the right thing by getting rid of me.

They did the right thing. I think I did a better job than anybody else could have done for them. Don't mistake me. I don't think anybody you know, and I've had many people come to me and say, oh, you do such a good job. Yeah, I think so. That isn't what was on the list of needs, though. The need was. It had to be everything, and they deserve that. This is their one career, and I wasn't willing to give that. I couldn't divide my loyalty by the same token. It must be quite a blow when

these bands move on. It was initially the first time, particularly with Trent, because he was like a brother. I talked to the guy every day, you know what I mean, I talked to him every single day. I love Trent. I think he was the real deal, you know, I mean, I think he's extremely talented, he's unbelievably funny. I mean, I had so many great times with them, and it stunned. But as I said, you know, it's his name up there, man, and he's got a feel that he's got somebody who's

he's comfortable, is giving everything. And I don't think he felt that way with I'm guessing he didn't feel that way. Now a couple of questions in retrospect. Were there signs that these acts were going to move on? For sure? Absolutely? Any time you have an argument over money that you're being paid with a client, that's a tell. And I walked in the very next day and said, we are not going to be managing Gwen. I knew. And then the next thing becomes any contact with these acts thereafter. Yeah,

actually both of them. In fact, I just heard from Trent right around the holidays, not for a long time and not consistent. I heard from Gwen and I said, I just want to thank you for everything you did for me and my family. I thought it was very, very nice. And I heard from Trent recently said, you know, we should get together. It's been a while, you know, So now those two acts are gone. Social distortion, you're not as involved. I'm not involved at all. I had,

I had stopped managing them. There was a point where, after twenty six years, I just said I had spotted in myself what I would ultimately spot post nine inch nails and and no doubt where it's time for them to move on. It's time for Mike to assert a greater role. It had always been like, you do everything on stage, I do everything else. Well, he started having opinions about the business and I resisted that, like, I don't know, I don't think that's a very good idea.

I had spent so much time with this guy. I just wasn't willing to alter my mode of how I was going to do that at this stage of my life. And I said, I think it's time for us. It was at my uh suggestion. My son boxes over at this gym, and Mike boxes at the gym, and he's amazing with my son. You know, he gives the T shirts, he gave him some boxing shoes, and I've stayed very close contact with him. And a guy in my office who was the day to day guy started managing them.

So in your office, now your peak, how many people were working there and how many people now one you well, one more Larry, okay, and so what are you guys working on now? Well, we continue to manage the offspring. If Robbie ever has anything he once done, I'm always available to Robbie because I love Robbie. Um. I'm getting ready to teach twenty four ap US history courses UH to eleventh graders at a UH school in Orange County, and I love doing that and that's my third year

doing that, so I'm preparing me. We've talked about this. Tell us a little bit more about what the course is about. Well, it's based on the sixties, and it's a p U s history. So it's not like, hey, tell me what Donovan meant when he said, you know, electric banana. You know what I mean. Although that's part of the sixties and you have to understand that, but

is not the core thing. I start off in the fifties, and I start off, you know, really all the way back in when when Russia gets nuclear capability and what the flip was, how did they become not an ally and they became that? And how the Cold War starts. And I take through the Cold War through sput Nick, through ury Gagar and through the fact that they can put rockets in the air and we can't. What does

that look like? In nineteen sixty, when John Kennedy is elected by point, most people say he stole the election out of Chicago. And you know, I say this to my students. He won by d twelve eight hundred boats. I'll do this with you. I'll play the gag with you. He wins nationally by a hundred twelve thousand, eight hundred boats. Cook County, one county in the US that houses Chicago. How many votes does he beat Richard Nixon by there? I would guess a hundred twelve four hundred and fifty

thousand and one county. So you've got a guy coming out of World War Two where it's not nine eleven worth three thousand people die, or San Bernardino where fourteen people die World War two or somewhere between sixty and eighty million people die, and you've got Isis on steroids called Russia with nuclear weapons, you know. And so do you go to Vietnam or not? And that's why I say the kids, do you go to Vietnam? And that

which looks like an inevitable thing? In nineteen sixty how does it become a big mistake by nineteen sixty sixty seven? And so we have a lot of fun doing that. And I love doing this the same way that that I probably, you know, obsessed over the B side of an import Jam single in nineteen you know eighty. I love being able to do this and and use media and and and how to do all those things. So I'm having a lot of fun doing that. Also, you

did a book with Robbie Robert I did. We did it with Robbie and his son Sebastian and Jared Levine. And uh, when I did that book, it was interesting. We had the Scholastic book fair at my kids school and the person who was running it came up and said, hey, we have authors. Come, You're an author. Like I laugh, because I don't feel like an author, do you know what I mean? Like I just did that, you know. And it was legends, icons, and and rebels, twenty seven

artists that changed the world. And you would talk about these artists in the context of what they were doing, you know, and what why it was different? Why Sam Why? Yeah, Bob Dylan going electric is a big deal. But Sam Cook leaving the church why is that so big? Way, he goes on to form a record company before Barry Gordy first, you know, African Americana doing that who by the way his an arguiser, Lou Adler and Herb Albert,

you know what I mean. And he starts a publishing company and the night before Ali defeats Listen, he's in a hotel room with Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali and they're talking about and and you know, you kind of put them in in the context of that. And so I went and did the presentation for the book, and I decided I'm gonna do it kind of rock and

roll stone. So I do a bunch of media, and so I have video clips from Louis Jordan and Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday and Elvis and Little Richard and the Beatles, and I take people kind of out of end of century marching band John Philip Sousa all the way up to Bob Dylan and the band and I and I talked about the book in that and that became a forty five minute lecture that I've done probably

fifteen of them, you know, at various schools. Bring me in and and I'll do these lectures separate of the A. P U. S history, But I love doing that too. So I'm finding a little little niche of fun stuff for me to do. And and it may only be that I sit in front of fifteen students and talk about this, but it's mine, you know what I mean.

It's mine. It may not be on a scale of seventeen million records sold, but it's mine, and I feel proud of it, and I like it, and I feel that that when a kid comes up to me at the end of the year and it was my favorite class I took all year. Yeah, okay, I remember various points in our relationship. You were really the first person to talk to me about the potential of the internet, both in terms of communication and distribution. You were always on the tip temple of the dog. You turned me

onto that, you know, before it came out. You gave me the book Generation X. And the reason I put all those markers in the landscape is where this is. We'll get a little deeper. But where do you think we're going now? I would argue that the baby boomers are still alive. They haven't passed away, even though as we talk here that Neil Diamonds now got Parkinson's going off the Road. We have a lot of classic rockers who are dying or can no longer perform, but the

people who lived through that era are still alive. And what do we know. In the sixties music drove the culture. There were very few outlets. Most markets only have three television stations. You live by the radio. Uh, there was being in the sixties. Music was the equivalent of social media. But my kids can pull up today and kind of network was you hearing? Ohio? That was our connectivity, that

was our social media. So the music is intertwined in that time and Needles just say it blew up financially, etcetera. Music has had a couple of ups and downs since then, certainly the CD era than the MTV era simultaneous with that and the napster going up and down. Now there are many people who say today's music is just as

good as the music before. I don't really want to get into a debate of that, but culturally, where is music in this great pot of life where there's so much else in the landscape, and as a culture, in youth culture in it, where do you think it's going? What do you think are trends that are going to impact the future. Well, that's a lot of a question. I have four kids nineteen, seventeen, fourteen, and eleven. Music is so important to them. And you go, oh, well

that's because what you do, Jim, And that's true. Okay. So they can tell you Ray Charles songs and Otis Redding songs. But lilus e virt I don't know. I didn't turn them into it, you know what I mean? And and every one of them knows lit lousy vert, you know. Or I remember three years ago going to see Flume. I'm like Flume, it's the guy with the computer wave in his hand. Really it was amazing and it was really really exciting to see. So I realize I am exactly where I need to be. As I

turned fifty nine this year, I have no idea. I have no idea where it is my kids. I can't believe hip hop is rock and roll period. The rockers can't handle it. They can't handle it, you know what I mean. And that's just fine. That is okay, you know what I mean, because it's a shift. Sorry, get out. You had your time, Dad, you had your This is theirs? Is it? My No, I don't go home and throw hip hop on. That's not what I do. I'd rather hear it Joe Cocker sing Darling Be Home Soon. But

do you think the times were friend? But we're investigating a little bit where the music when hand in hand with anti Vietnam were peace rallies, etcetera. We have not hit that moment in an era of great discord. And you think that was a moment in time when we haven't found the right record. It's not necessary now. It was necessary then because when you and I, and you're just a few years older than main, when you and I we only had those three stations. That was the

modus operandi of communicating between people. How do you raise the consciousness? Well, now you have this the phone since two thousand seven. You know you have better vehicles for that than than just music. You have things that are far more immediate, that are visual, that are communicating. Back then, the best you had was to communicate the alienation of somebody with their parents. Is is she's leaving home by the Beatles and you go, oh, I know that feeling.

You know, fun is the one thing that money can't buy. I relate. Well, now you can have that within seconds. Okay, you don't have to wait for a record. It's been displaced. The need for it has been displaced. It doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means that the need for it it's not as pronounced as it was for us. For us, the only thing we could count on I was putting that needle down. We couldn't see Wizard of Oz unless you wait until Easter. Okay. You couldn't watch

a movie, you couldn't do play a video. You can do anything. We could control that. We can put that and if we're really clever, we take the arm off and it will play it a second time. That was the best we had. Okay. So last night I was comparing the media based charts, which are the radio airplay charts, to Spotify, and in many cases they're different. In our era of the business, radio drove consumption. Okay, now where were they different? What was that? What was the I

know what the Spotify looks like. I have no idea what radio looks like. Things. Certainly, if you look at the media base top forty, it's more pop. But there are records in all of their charts that are very successful that are not in the U s Top fifty on Spotify. So my question ultimately would be, what do you believe the future of the paradigm is relative to radio streaming on demand? My kids, my two older kids, have never heard KROK and they have never seen MTV.

I have no idea what it is they get in the car. What do they do for entertainment? They put something on on their phone through the system, whether it's SoundCloud, which my older daughter has turned me onto so much music through SoundCloud. She finds stuff on SoundCloud or through Tumbler, you know, all these different places. But who wants the commercials? Who wants I'm with you totally, I mean. But the

reason it's fascinating to me is two fold. We live in a disinformation community where a lot of traditional outlets focused on these old things which will ultimately be decimated. And of course we've also learned in the Internet world you can be too early. So the key is making that transition. But it's fascinating because we have a major media that missed the nationalistic uprising which we've seen around

the world ultimately resulted in Trump getting elected. Shifting to another gear because I know you're a student of this In terms of the tech, I would say for the last twenty years tectro of the culture. But I believe that is done. We have four major companies, the whole thing of you know, a new app every week, a new device. We don't have that. What do you think drives the culture or what the next thing we're going to be rallying around is. Well, I really don't know, Bob.

I mean, I really none of us know. But you you tend to be a student giving an opinion. Yeah, I mean, you know, I love the marvelous Mrs Mizelle. How am I sitting there watching a television show on Amazon Prime on my iPad? Well, I'm on a recumbent bike and having a great experience doing it. You know, you hold your phone two inches from your eyes. It's as big as a sixty inch television set. When you're sitting to anything away, you know, people are like, oh,

it's too small screen. I prefer to watch on the I I find it more intimate. I love it, you know, I mean, and I can choose to do it when I want to do it. So I think our our consumption of media is going through the roof. It's going through I'm watching more than I've ever watched. But it fits in the niche of when I can watch, you know, whereas previously would be just like, oh no, I haven't seen that yet. Oh I have a chance, you know.

And so I don't think any of that is necessarily really going to change, you know, I really, well, do you find yourself I don't want to box you in a corner here, but you find yourself keeping up more on TV than you do on music? Yeah? Probably? Do you keep up on music? I do? But I am unique in that I have three teenagers and I am spoon fed NonStop of of what we've got to see. Brock Hampton at Coachella. Okay, you know, I mean I better check that out. I better get the Coachella playlist.

I better sit there and I just sit there and I'll review all that stuff because once the Coachella set times come out, I gotta make my because I got to overlap. I gotta see the ones that I share with my kids, which ones they'll actually let me see with them, and which ones I'll have to go stand alone. You know that's cool. I'm okay with that. Why, as I say, the music that can be overwhelming. There's a station on the satellite serious x MU, and you'll tune

that in. You'll here's something good, and then you'll say to yourself, am I the only person who ever heard this? It's a very weird experience. We want community, which is what you know. It costs much more to make a television show than to make the average record, so there's a limited amount of product, but you can discover something, own it, and discuss it with people. It's an amazing community. And you know, to what degree has television usurped the

power of music? Yeah? I don't think so. It's interesting because I see it with my again, with my kids, with me for sure. Not with my kids, no way. Now they appreciate television, but music is portable. It's on the go. They can do this, and their community is much more activated around music experience. They're going to shows, They're unbelievably active. But it's a world apart from me. For sure. I want to see Kodak Black. They come

on at you know, really, Okay, what's Kodak Black? I have no idea, Like, I literally have no idea, idea, and then I have to go check it out. It's like, oh, it's hit hip hop thing, you know. But they're all over it, you know what I mean? And their friends are too, They all know it. How about the identity, since you're the expert, certainly, I don't have any children. Um, when we grew up, there was a very clear delineation

of who was talent, who was famous, and who was not. Theoretically, you could try to jump through hoops, get a record deal, you could try to be an actor on television. That was very rarefied here, whereas today, you know, they're Instagram stars people. To what degree do you feel that your kids or kids in general, adore the anointed stars or want to be stars themselves. I don't see them wanting to be stars themselves. I don't see them falling for

the quote unquote anointed stars. But I see them all over social media picking up on people. If somebody tells them it's cool, they sense it right away and smell a rat there's something, you know. But if all of a sudden, there on Instagram and they see stuff or on a snap story or something that they're following, like, how do you know this? Well? I follow on Instagram and the one that I discovered this year the fence to account. You know, everybody has a fence to account.

Really yeah, fensta fake in? Okay, Okay. So if you had to do it all over again, and although I think I know the answer, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, would you do anything differently? Well, of course not. But the one thing I regret is what I put my parents through. I made it rough on them. They had a rough time. Forget now that because I'm a parent. I felt this way before I had kids. You know,

they were overmatched. When you talk about that generation gap, you know, I don't think it's easy to convey to kids today what that look like, where there was such a splinter where they looked at you, like, where did you come from? What happened? You were? We were good parents, We we we did right, you know, and and you're just off the rails, you know. And I think that's really a sign of what the seventies look like, not

just the sixties, because the seventies. I always used the example of Silence of the Lambs where the FBI agent is talking to Claris and he says, remember the first thing they do is covet So go to the first thing. And I think for people like myself. I coveted the sixties. I coveted being in Orange County, Hollywood, in l A. And so your passion gets kind of turbocharged for those things, you know what I mean? And I think people who were teenagers in the seventies very much wanted to be

kids at the sixties. You really are, like, I missed it. I can't believe by that much, you know, I missed that the greatest ever. I never saw the Beatles like I can't believe. I've still pissed at you for seeing Laura Narrow a few times. Okay, And in the thirty odd years you have left hopefully anything you'd want to achieve. Do I still think there's something here having to do with education and the passion I have for education. I

like that. I like being able to communicate. I love when you can sit there and still have those moments where you get excited about ideas and things like that, and to see people come up with different ideas. I never want to be that guy on the other side of the glass where Matt Damon slaps the thing or the is the Harvard guy who just uses information to club other people over, you know, and he goes, what's wrong with you? Do you have an original idea? You know?

I don't want to be that. I'd like to hope that I find a voice in all this where it isn't just regurgitating it. You know. It's funny, Bob, this is a great time where all of a sudden, it's like, I don't know, I don't know. I'm open to a new idea. I'm open to something new because if I use what I've got, I'm in a feedback loop. I'm just self referencing again. I need to be open to the idea that I don't know what's next, you know.

And if I close myself off and say here, this is what it needs to be, I'm just using the experience i've already got. I want to have a new experience. I'm not done. You know. Well, this has really been wonderful for reasons that were unanticipated by me. Because I've had interactions with a lot of these people and sometimes

acted differently. And I'm running through my brain. I remember I was at Beverly Hills Hotel and a bungalow with a meeting with Donnie Ironer and Michelle Anthony, and I remember they showed me a video for the Bob Dylan under the blood Red Sky out and I said, it's a staff and you don't tell him what to do. And then Donnie called me like a week later and said, you really fucked up. You were there, We were gonna offer you a job, blah blah blah. I didn't even know. Okay.

And as I've gotten older, you know, you think of how to play these things. But as many people we discussed here, so many are out of the business. Okay. It's like Donnie, I used to interact with him about ten years ago, and then he ultimately retired, and you make the choices, and then there are other things you're saying, and I say, okay, you know, these are spots that maybe I would have wanted to have been in or been a little bit said my personality never could have worked.

So this has really been you know, insightful, edifying. Thank you so much until next time. Is That was Jim Garanto on the Bob Left Sets podcast. Thank you Jim, Thank you Bob. That concludes this episode of the Bob Left Sets Podcast. It's really been a thrill learning how some of the biggest acts of our time broke through and hearing directly from the movers and shakers who made it happen. I hope I've been able to add a little more context to some of your favorite music memories.

Thanks for listening, and catch you next time on the Bob Left Sets podcast