John Sebastian

just knew there were occasions. These were more before I was putting out a solo album where people would see that name and think, oh, gee, Mr Sebastian is sort of slumming now, isn't he? And and you know, so that was really the stimulus. And what is the B stand for Benson Benson? Yes, if your father was John and you were John, what did they refer to you growing up? As I would be John Benson, John Benson, yes, or I'd be j b or Giovannino in Italy because I have a kind of a checkered past. Uh. And

when I was in Italy, I'd be Giovannino. Okay, A couple of questions. There is the Benson Benson your mother's maiden name, you know ben No, No, the her maiden name is Bisher b I s h I R. And I was only recently, uh explained to me before my mom passed that she didn't know why my grandfather had that middle name, except that there had been an Ohio senator of that name that she thought maybe the folks were nam me after. I really don't know. It's it's

a little mysterious. And you mentioned spending time in Italy. What was going on there? Well, my dad had a career that started in the United States. Uh, and as time went on, he began to be able to travel, uh and tour. He was a classical harmonica virtuoso. I can only tell you that, Uh there's been nobody since uh maybe Buon Fido a little bit, but this guy really had a remarkable uh sphere of abilities, and people like Villa Lobos were writing for him. Cherubin N wrote

for him. Uh. So this wasn't just a you know, peg of my heart type harmonica player. So okay, but I haven't gotten to it, have I. Uh So, what what happen is that most summers, as time went on and my dad started to get a reputation in Europe that became a primary a primary source of income for him, so that he would go to Europe most summers, and his solution for not being an absent dad was he would take the family and parked us in this beautiful little red towered villa outside of Fez. I mean, if

you were gonna have an ideal place, it's ridiculous. I should be ashamed of myself. At what a good age, five to about eleven. And so every summer we would go there after my schooling was done for the year. That was the queue, and uh we would go and sometimes Dad would go before us, but most of the time we'd get on the boat and go to Geneva. You would go by boat, not by plane. Correct. Wow, I was a little kid. You know. Good experience, bad

experience on the boat, fantastic experience. All the Italian guys love you. I mean, it's it was it was too it was great fun. Uh yes, seven days. And you know the larcenous quality of the Italians was so evident because uh, I would go up to the first class movie and try to get in and inevitably, the the Italian guys that that we're working at would go okay, yeah, yeah, they get in there, and and so I had really

full run of the boat. So one of the reasons was that my dad spoke fluent Italian, uh the kind that you really can't detect as an American. So uh so he just really had carte blaunch on the boat and really in Italy and in those remember it's in Italy. Oh my god, everybody looks like Anita expert. Okay, you're only you know, you're less than ten years old. But it's as right. But it's also five years after the

Second World War? Correct? You know we saw movies they were made there in black and white about the aftermath. Did you experience that or you were just a kid you didn't know. Okay, I was just a kid and didn't know. But my friendships were all with people of lower Uh how can I say this? They were It was a lower class background that I was immersed in. I was hanging out with farmers. I was hanging out with the cooks and the cleaning ladies, because that's what

children of that era did. So I did have this this experience of understanding a certain sorrow that I that I couldn't really uh, I couldn't define. But I was aware that Paolo and Paula, the two the two farmers, the farmer and his wife were experiencing hardships. Okay, did you learn a tow in fluently fluently just by going every summer? Oh? Yes, see, don't call me so no Borgino Medicant's saying. I have some flatterers who tell me

that I'm fairly undetectable as a Florentine, but not everybody. Okay, so you know, I need to say a lot of years have gone by. How do you keep up your Retalian or once you have you can't lose it? Well, it does stay with you, but I do occasionally. I mean I've been over there for these week and a half visits, not nearly enough, but I would always feel like I was struggling my way up a ladder with missing rungs, and I was trying to get all the

way up the sentence, you know. And then did you have the experience of going back years later after you had a certain amount of fame and success and interacting with the same people. Yes, I did manage to uh go back to um adjoining. The little vila that we were living in is a hotel. The pension Benshista and uh, it's been there forever and it's all ex pats and it's it's just it's a little slice of the nineteen forties that's just sort of still there. And uh, that

experience of of of being there was it was amazing. Okay, where was your father born? My father was born in Philadelphia? Okay? And how many how many generations is he removed from the old country? His father was born in Italy? So yeah, we were all Abrutzes, uh by background, and how does it become Sebastian or that what it was? Okay, here's how it goes. Uh. We we start my father Giovanni bot now, so he's going to have Herford. He's Magna

cum laud. But they keep calling him Puggles. Now you know, a guy can be patient about that for a while, but after a while you start to go, is it so far off that you couldn't pronounce this? So there was a point and he tells the story. Uh, well, actually I had made the inquiry at one point because I saw, uh, you know, uh his name on a billboard or something, and I said, Dad, you know, how come our name is different than Grandpa? And he said, son, Here,

here's what it is. Polis is a name that Americans have a lot of trouble with. And uh so that's uh one strike. Then I'm a classical harmonica player. That's two more strikes. So at that point I decided that Polis could go. Because John Sebastian looks real good on a on a marquee. You know what an amazing story. Well how about your mother? Where what's her background? Oh? Man, and this is the one that nobody gets to. I'm very glad because my mom at sixteen, uh, became an

amazing writer for radio. It's it's really it's Tina Fey story. It really is. It's the same story where this young woman comes in and just kills it. She writes funny and she makes up crazy stuff. Uh. You know, there's an Amos and Andy show, so she does and just an amy and it's about stupid white people. Uh, and she does a show uh uh, father is an Idiot was another thing that she did. So she's always punning

on existing radio material. But what happened was then she got the job at at the big the big station, the big town. She went to Cincinnata. So she works there for a while at NBC, and NBC finds out about her and they go, oh, you're going to New York. So at the end of her sixteenth year she is she comes home and goes, so, uh, they're gonna hire me,

and I'm gonna go to New York. And her father, my grandfather, says, that's wonderful, honey, And you know, I'm coming right along with you because I'm gonna be your roommate. And that's what he did. For the next couple of years. Uh was sort of zip back and forth between Dayton, uh and UH and and New York. And then eventually, uh, the grandparents on my mother's side moved to Florida. So that was another wonderful little visit that I could make

in the winter usually. Okay, so how did your parents meet. Well, I'd say that they probably met um in in New York society. Uh, in the life of professional artists. They crossed paths. Um mom had a couple of dear friends who met dad and said, oh, you have to meet this guy, and uh, people like Vivian Vance who were just like blood sisters, Jane and and she and people like Oh, there were a few great sculptors and people like Garth Williams who were sort of pals with them,

and somehow or another they all met through those channels. Okay, you say your father was magna come loud. So he was educated, man, He graduated magna cum laud from Haverford. So then he goes then he gets a scholarship to the in the Versadroma, and now, uh, what about twenty he's living in Rome and he's living there with the cats. I mean, you know, Casals and Picasso and and Garth Williams and all these cool guys who I would later meet, and you know, it was just such a wonderful, uh

a little mini society that I was dropped into. I mean, if I hadn't done something constructive, it would have been a real mess. Okay, So how does one become harmonica player on that classical level? And where was he traded? So it starts in Philadelphia. Um, he gets a job, Well, he becomes the soul list for um, the composer of every damn march we we use? And yes, okay, so Dad was a uh a player in that harmonica orchestra, and then he became the soloist. So by sixteen he

was the main soloist for that band. It was his Philadelphia group, and they toured quite quite a lot and and quite far in there. Well, you know, in the rock era, most harmonica players herself taught. Did your father have formal lessons? You know, I really don't know some of this because Dad was the guy that was giving

people formal lessons. You know. We'd have Johnny Palo over at our house and you know, two or three harmonicats, and they were all trying to learn, you know, tongue blocking and and some of the advanced techniques that my father really had under control. So how did your father feel that you didn't graduate from college? You know, it was a great disappointment to him and all the pouliasis.

I must say, yeah, I was fighting an uphill battle for for respect because as dyslexic as I am, I just could not pass an ancient history course and so so really I was a poor student. Um. But luckily my dad started to see it somewhere around eighteen. And my brother, my little brother, always quotes him because he loves the quote. Because people would say, you know, your son has a number six record on the billboard, Sharks, and Dad would look into the near distance and say,

I can't understand it. He always lands on his feet. Okay, So how many kids in how many kids in the family? Just to me and my brother Mark, he's seven years my junior. Okay, you grow up in Greenwich Village, Yes, sir, you were literally there and it started and long before it became penetrated to the rest of society, late fifties and early sixties. What was it like being a city

kid in the village. It was so great. I mean, part of it was that this was the this wonderful neighborhood where there's like multi culty couples and every LGBT undeclared person at that point. Uh. They also all my dad's friends and and and so we were experiencing you know. Uh, Burl Lives is over at the house one one evening, and he's the one who gets Dad talked into the idea of you gotta let this songwriter guy from Oklahoma, you gotta let him stay with you for a couple

of weeks. He's kind of out of sorts, and it turns out to be Woody Guthrie. Uh. You know, this was going on. This was going on pretty regularly. I remember and I do remember distinctly lying in my bed and remember it's practically a crib. I may have been four or five. And uh and uh, there's this guy in the other room. He's have ye seen that virgility? Man? And I'm listening and I'm going not not as good

as Dad. That was my conclusion. Okay, you know a lot of kids grow up in the fifties and sixties. They have sports center. But you're living in the city. Are you playing any sports or you're entertaining yourself? What is your passion growing up? Well, uh, you know, the guitar started to be important by about thirteen or fourteen, and then I spent five years where all summer I would be at a really great comedy summer camp, and then all winter I would be at conservative old Blair

Academy in Blairstown, New Jersey. So I was having this. I mean, it was a great contrast, but it was very difficult because I had very little patience for you know, I mean Blair Academy at the time. Their their main concern was that I cut my hair because when I came from Italy, I had an Italian haircut. That's called a good haircut. But no, Yeah, I had to go and know be a have butch haircuts and that kind

of stuff. You're growing up, Are you a member of the group with a million friends or you're more of a loner. What kind of kid are you? Yeah, I'm I'm I'm not the guy with a million friends. But what did start to happen was that it was kind of like a miniature fan base over the five years. Remember I've got a lot of years at that place, so they had time to like, see me bomb and then actually do something good and then play with the

Fearsome Foursome. Wow, the do wop group. The Fearsome Foursome needed a guitar player, and I became one, even though I was a freshman. Okay, wait, let's go back a few chapters. One, what greed? Do you go to New Jersey to Blair Academy eighth grade? Eighth grade? So before that you're living in the city, going to public school. Coupley uh well no, uh friends seminary Okay, and what do you have to say when your parents said you got to go to boarding school? You know, it seemed

like a natural transition. My uncle had gone to Blair Uh and I also was watching my parents marriage fall apart, and I could see the logic of getting me out of the house. So there was a sort of a yeah, I could be good to do this. And the other thing was, boy, it could really be good for my parents to be because I knew it wasn't gonna you know, it was gonna take a dive. But but you know, if they could do it with as little screaming as possible, that would be great. So like that. Okay, So how

old were you when your parents got divorced? Uh? For did my fourteen? About fourteen? Okay? You usually that fox people up? How how was it for you? Uh? You know, uh, for one thing at a time when nobody was smart about divorce, my parents were kind of smart about divorce. Dad took an apartment up at sixty seven Street. I'm living on Washington Square West. I can walk up to see him if I have the impulse, and so I must save it. I suffered less than than a lot

of folks. Okay, So how old are you when you pick up the guitar? About about twelve or thirteen? Okay, before you go to Blair Academy, or when you were a Blair Academy slightly before. Okay. Now I'm of a slightly younger generation where the Beatles were on TV, everybody picked up the guitar, and there was the Folk movie before that, so maybe we played with nylon string guitars. What inspired you to play the guitar? Um, That'll be the Day by Buddy Holly. It's little things, you know. Rumble.

I heard rumble, and I went out of my mind. I said, what are those chords? Uh? And in years, in later years, when I got a chance to talk to Pete Townsend about this, we found that we totally agreed and it had the same exact experience where we heard it one night in the evening on the channel and just stayed on that channel until three or four in the morning on the off chance that it might play again. And it did. Okay, so you were definitely

a did you pick up? That's I don't want to make an incomplete impression here, because the other thing, remember these same five summers, I'm going to this summer camp where Pete Seeger comes and visits, where all the cool girls know every damn folk song in the world. Uh. There's two sisters there and they both know how to

carter pick, so I'm learning folk music there. Uh. The other thing is that the woman that ran the camp quickly put me in a little sugar house and said, your job is to teach the kids folk songs and maybe make up little plays. And that's that's the thing that I did for five summers, and Matt really honed my uh whatever craft I have, uh more than almost anything I think to be to try to hold eight to fifteen year old's attention for forty five minutes. Okay,

ever take any guitar lessons? Uh? You know it was no. I guess it's the answer because I um. I had a friend who had a beautiful sister with a classical guitar who I talked into borrowing for a week, And I started off with an E minor chord and by the end of the week I had invented d Okay, needlet's just say, when we first see you on television, you're playing an auto harp. So your father is a musician music. Did your father teach you the harmonica the auto harp? Was he too deep into his own stuff?

What was going on in the house? You know? I think fit part of my father's Ethos came from going to school with a tremendous number of lawyers, guys studying law, and he he explained it years later when he would visit these guys and there'd be their son, and the son is already in school to be a lawyer, and doesn't seem that motivated, you know, And so he said, I don't want to do that with music or the harmonica or any of that. Uh. You know, you're you're

gonna fly your own your own ship. You know it's it's gonna be uh, your your impulse. So although how could I not listening to a man rehearsed for six to eight hours a day, and that's a real number. Uh, some of these buccarini can share those that go far and by so fast you have to practice for years to be able to do it. My dad started adapting a technique with vassoline that horrified the owner company completely. But you know this is this is what some of

these uh disciplines demanded. Okay, so your father never taught you how to play harmonica, never gave you any tips. Correct. However he did he did a better thing. He came home with a sunny terry silver acetate and I put that thing on, and I was mystified because I had never heard the instrument that way, And it actually was a good half a year of trying to figure out and then I suddenly realized, oh my god, the time that court is on the inhale. How could I have

missed this? So so then really from then on, a part part of the my background at that point is that I start meeting Sunny Terry fairly regularly in these folk clubs, and I'd go in there, and by the second time I went, I go, Sonny, Hey, go is that Johnny's son? So it was very fast. Uh and he and Sonny in many ways was sort of a conduit into what would become really a focus, which was Sam Hopkins in years later. Okay, let's go back to Blair Academy. You said there were five years there that

you were the musician. You're kind of playing in bands, So tell me more about that. Well, Uh, there there was a great incentive to play in those bands because those bands would go to dances, and dances required women, and there would be, you know, your loan opportunity to

actually hold a woman in your arms. And so uh, me and one of my roommates caught onto this very fast, and he was a piano player or sort of learning, and I was, you know, playing straight aids on the guitar, and so that really was really all about that, uh,

that that those band things would form. And then there was this even dozen thing um and said there was this uh fearsome forsomething and that was a a do op group, fairly tame, but but you know, it was the perfect moment because that's when all of those da da da da da da da da da da da da da da, all of those tunes were on the air and we learned everyone. So did it work for you? You were in the band, the girls were there? Oh yeah, I got kicked out once because of that. Okay, what

happened there? Hey, I'm not going to tell you no no, I you know, it was so innocent that it's really it's a sorry tale because uh what happened was, uh, I went to a dance. It was a younger classman's dance and they had asked me to come and play, and I did, and I pulled a very nice girl who was very happy to go out and see what the golf course really looked like. In the evening, and so we did, and we were caught by a history teacher.

And you know what's really tragic is I was suspended for two weeks and that girl was kicked out of her school. Wow, that's talk about you know that difference, Well that sexism. Okay, you graduate from high school, then what I go to n YU for a year because it's across the park. Okay, I had no other reason. And and my dad, uh, he took me up there at Washington Square North and we we we go up and get to the door, and I said, well, this is gonna be great. Dad, come on in and we'll

check in. And he goes, no, no, no. From this step you take by yourself because I can lead a horse to water, but that's all I can do. So I thought it was pretty real. And uh, I was a bad student for a good three quarters of a year. Uh. And then I think I came back the next year for maybe a couple of weeks before I just see at the same time, there's all this other stuff going on. I'm in Greenwich Village, my god, six blocks away. John

Dangelico was making arch top guitars. Uh, and a much more modest endeavor is uh Tom Fincy making classical guitars. At the time, I wanted a classical guitar. I went to this little shop on Broadway, and UH realized that they're all up rutzes. So I quickly start speaking Italian with my grandmother's accent, and in an hour or two, I'm sweeping up. So that became the next thing that I did, really was sweeping up at the shop and

standing down guitars and tuning. They found that I could tune a lot of guitars and in a short amount of time, and so it was. It was completely absorbing. I was meeting some of the great guitarists of the era.

Um uh Raimo Palmierti, uh the guitarists who played for Arthur Godfrey and was the number one call at the NBC Orchestra, a remarkable guitarist, and his brother Paul Palmieri, who was the If you ever wanted to say, this is why I should be a musician, it was because every week Paul Pomierti would show up with the beautiful Japanese girl. Next week it's some kind of multiculty who knows what girl and he just had He was say, uh,

what do they call that a sequential whatever? Uh? But I just said, Wow, you can have this many girl friends if you can play guitar. Well. So, so I was watching all of this and that really was the end of UH of n y U. But I had met a key person in David Grisman, who still tells the story of seeing me in the n y U elevator with this uh twelve harmonicas on a Holster arrangement that I had had made at Tandy leather U because I realized I needed more than two or three harmonicas. Uh.

So there that that became a real, a real focus. Okay, so we're like sixty two sixty three. The folks scene is big. You talk about going to a club, you're working in the guitar shop. Yeah, but what is going on in the culture at that point. Were you're going to clubs every night? We're going occasionally? Were you playing with other musicians you'd played in groups in high school where you're trying to for Max? What was happening? I was beginning to haunt Bleaker and McDougal, And it happened

for two reasons. One was my own uh desires, but also I had become a mini me for one Paul Rothschild. Rothschild and I became very tight in the process of making a Fred Neil album. Uh, and I suddenly was getting work as a studio musician as a result of Rothschild. Wait wait, wait a little bit slower. You meet Rothchild? How ow and you get? And how does he realize your guitar player? And he says, come to my sessions? You know a little bit. How does this happen? Okay? Um?

I was hanging around with David Grisman a little bit and Uh. At one summer I came back from summer camp and my mother is holding the phone as I walk in the door. She says, it's Stephen. She says it really bored because Stephen and I are haunting each other's houses all the time trying to figure out these various finger picking things. And Stephen gets on the phone and says, so, uh, we're forming a jug band and it's gonna rehearse on fourteenth Street and oh yeah, and

you're the harmonica player. And so I say, what is a jug band? And Stephen says, just come to four Street and and uh, we're gonna We're gonna rehearse and will show you. So I go to that rehearsal and one of the people that's there is Paul Rothschild, who I don't know, but Rothschild and I begin a kind of we're jabbing at each other in a very New

York way. You know what this is, of course, and and so, but it's very friendly, and the conversation turns to marijuana, and it is quickly clear that both of us are fans and uh, and Paul is now trying to make this group of kind of random blues kids into a jug band, his logic being this Jim question jug band thing is taking off and and there's room for a New York jug band and and why don't you guys do it? And uh, all of a sudden,

we're working Carnegie Hall. This was what parenthetically, I would say. I go up to sixty seven Street to visit dad. Oh, yeah, what you're doing us? And blah blah blah, Yeah, trying to work and so and said, what we do have a couple of gigs? Really really, where are you working? Well, we've got a gig at Town Hall and then we play Carnegie. This was another time when my dad was I think the reaction was, I don't know how he

doesn't he always lands on his feet. Okay, but whatever, you know, we know you get to Carnegie Hall by practicing, but we also know there's more than luck involved. So Rothchild puts together the band. How does it all come together that you end up playing Carnegie Hall? Well, because we had begun to play together in earnest and we had a couple of wonderful people in the band. We had David grismand we had Maria Muldor, we had Stephen Grossman. You know, these are folks who in this little world

of of fingerpicking and guitar and acoustic playing in general. Uh, it was it was our it was becoming our our home base. Okay. Rothchild was a record producer, so there were the recordings of this act. So yes, So what happened was Rothschild uh puts us into the studio and we record uh an even dozen jug band album, uh, which was nicely received. You know, remember the scale for success is so small. If you sell more records than

Billy Fair, you're you're really rocking. So uh. So that was the process of making the record, I think is what tightened us up to where we could play some actual venues, and for a short time we were managed by Israel young. Is The Young's Folklore Center was the Greenwich Village home of of this dawning folk music obsession. How does it work economically in making any money at the guitar store? Are you still living at home? How does it add up? Okay? Uh, A recording session is

fifty one dollars. I can get at an apartment for less than that at that moment in time, because I speak Italian, and remember I'm living two blocks from the center of Little Italy, and I quickly realized that so many uh Italian widows are in control of these apartments there. You know, Pops has passed and the it's her thing. And I would go to these various addresses and I would listen as the woman spoke first, and if I

could catch the accent, I would imitate that accent. Because I had spent a winter in Rome, so I knew how to turn it into a little more guttural Italian. I knew how to do brutz from my grandparents, so you at the idea I was being. I was able to get apartments for very cheap because I would do whatever the lady wanted me to do, and she could explain stuff to me that she couldn't explain in English.

So uh, these things were tremendous advantages. Uh. And so the other thing is that the answer for the the the even dozen jug band was no, no money at all. My The entire thing really was uh these uh recording sessions. And that was what was keeping me able to be a little bit independent from my parents. I remember independent like your twelve blocks away, Wow, stop by to do your laundry, get a meal? Oh exactly exactly. So what

happens after Carnegie Hall? What's your next move? Well? Uh, I had been doing these various sessions, and uh, I start to wow, this is hard to encapsulate. All Right, my father got a television show, Sunday afternoon television show. It's sort of before there was really uh public television, but it's very much that flavor. And there was a show called Robert Harridge Presents, and uh this show. UH engaged my dad to play on this show. And I get there and the people doing the show is an

Englishman reciting Shakespeare. There's Lightning Hopkins, there's my father, and there's a girl that I have met before. She's barefoot, she's about seventeen, and when she opens her mouth, you cannot believe what's coming out. And of course it's Joan Bias. Well. I watched this entire afternoon unfold, and to me, the thing that was most impressive. I mean, Joan is of herself just really impressive because she really has control of her guitar now and and and plus this remarkable voice.

And I'm thinking, wow, this is really one of the coolest women I've ever run into. And then Lightning Sam gets on and he starts tapping his foot and all of a sudden, he's singing something about did you keep on but be that that they ain't bound? And she starts laughing, and I go, wow, you can make this woman laugh because she's so serious, and you know, it's a big surprise, and and so, uh, I was so

impressed with Lightning and Sam. So the television show ends and I'm standing there and Dad is talking to Lightning Sam. Sam likes Dad because you know, it's like, yeah, this guy does something weird and unconventional and he's kind of on my side. And so they're they're talking, and uh, while they're talking, I walk up to Lightning's guitar case, and I think to myself, as a fifty percent I won't get hit. So I reached down and I pick

up the case. Enlightening turns to me and I say, Mr Hopkins, I know the subway system, and I can get us downtown to within a block of the club that you're gonna play. Uh and uh uh you know we we and if you need a spot, uh, we live four blocks from there. So Sam as I suddenly become like a lead boy for somebody that isn't blind because Sam of course understands the value of having a little white kid too I don't know, uh talk to the club owner or whatever, and and so he likes that.

So I become a regular. I'm carrying his guitar most of the time. And then me and a layer roommate get a little apartment over on the extremely side, which we pretty much turned over to Lightning Sam because there's only one bedroom, and we go, I ain't going that bedroom now, SAP's here. We're gonna sleep on the couches. And that's exactly what we did. And we get up in the morning and get sam Is two eggs and a jelly glass full of gin and be ready for

the day. And that was a remarkable period. And Sam would sing at night or he would just wrap. It was essentially wrap that was happening, and it all rhymed and we would go, how does he do this? You know, it was a real miracle to see it happen in front of you. But so I take Sam down to the club pretty pretty frequently. One day, when I ache lightning,

Sam down to do his gig. There's an opening act uh called Valentine Pringle, and Valentine is a protege of Harry bellefantas and he is trying to get with this uh kind of a folk program because he's a guy from Washington. He's an enormous baritone singer. I mean, he's his voice is marvelous. But you know, I think his main experience had been uh in, uh in, uh in

in musicals and plays and things. So uh, Harry Belafani starts coaching him, and so all of a sudden he knows a whole bunch of chain Gang songs and he's got a whole act. And uh, I watched this act, and I start to watch it pretty regularly because I'm bringing Sam in. So then on this particular evening he gets up there and he's got a different accompanist. Now I happen to know that this guy, his name is

John Pankin. He uh sometimes masquerades as one Sastre or one somebody and pretends to be a Flamenco guitarist, which I don't care about that. But when he plays with Valentine, he makes a few crucial mistakes, and the big one being he starts the battle him of the Republic, which is Valentine's killer you are not going to be able to survive, and he starts it in the wrong key. Yeah. And then there was another thing where he started a

tempo completely wrong. So and and this is the only time, Robert, that I've ever done anything like this. I went backstage, attend to lightening, say hi to Valentine and say, you know, val if I was your guitarist, I wouldn't be starting Battality of the Republic in the wrong key. And if you you know, I just I did the list of the mistakes the guy had made. So Valentine is trying to assess this who is this kid, you know? And so he then actually moves over to the other dressing room.

Enlightening is reading the paper and he says, Mr Hopkins, I just interested in this, uh young man, uh guitar player. Do you know? Do you know how how he plays? Lightning looks up from his newspaper and goes, well, he's bad, He's bad that. And he went back to the newspaper and and so Valle is left going is that bad good? He's trying to assess what he's hearing, and uh, well, what did happen? Was within a day or two I

was his accompanist. Now this is a long way around, but I'm glad we have a lot of time because this is where my professional life really begins, because I get a gig with Valentine out of town, unbelievable. We go to Washington, d C. And we play a place called The Shadows, and uh the Shadows. Uh. He goes out there and he's a pretty good opening act. And then oncome the Big Three. And the Big Three is cass Elliott, James not Jimmy Hendrix, and Tim Rose, the

guy that wrote Hey Joe, Yeah, Hey Joe yeah. So this group is, you know, a real conventional commercial folk group and they're playing for pretty much Washington Upper Crust. Uh, this is a fancy club. It isn't really folky, you know. And uh but as we finished the show, and uh uh I think I was coming downstairs as Cass was coming up, and she's doing Valentine's act, all the slave songs, and it's it's so uh un pc that I just I just was. I was laughing for the next twenty minutes.

Well that was all that Cass needed, and so she starts engaging me. We become friends. By the end of the week, she's saying, oh, man, you gotta meet my pal Denny, and you gotta meet Zally. Uh we gotta hook you up. And so I go back to New York and I'm doing you know, I actually got a gig in Toronto with Valentine. A couple of other things happened. Then I get a call from Cass. She says, you know, uh,

this thing is working out. We've actually got uh you know, like a nice hotel rooms for each one of us and everything, and uh, we're thinking about changing our thing. Well a little while later, and I really can't go into too much detail because we'll be here all night. But essentially a friendship that forms both in Washington and at the Albert Hotel becomes uh a new focus for Cass. And then she invites me to come to Washington to a company, this new group, the Mugwumps. Okay, and would

you please bring a kilo of pot? I say, thank you, I will, and so that's what I did, and uh we had about two weeks of gigs at this same club, at the end of which I get called by the assistant manager who says, I'm afraid that you know are the manager? Uh doesn't want you to continue with the group. I said no, I certainly could understand. He says, because you know you're a You're a bad influence on your

nasi And I said, I know, I am. He says, like, every time you play something, Yanovski echoes it on across the stage, and you know, we want to stick to these arrangements. Well, of course this was exactly what was wrong with this group was that it had an arranger, and it had musicians to play with it, and it had people like Timmy Harden and Freddy Neil and even me writing songs that they were doing. So uh it it was this Uh it was a dinosaur and it would eventually die when it tried to play a real

rock and roll club. They came to New York, they tried to play the Peppermint Lounge. People didn't even turn around. I mean, you know, this is followed by Joey d on the Starliner Bad but you can imagine. So they that was sort of the end of that group. But as a direct result, me and Yonowsky start poling around in New York City. Uh and we're all living at the Albert Hotel, and so is Cass and so is Denny, and we're all trying to figure out what's gonna happen next.

I remember we were thinking, ge, now Cass is gonna she's gonna find, you know, a solo career, but we're worried about Denny. You know, you would make more money than me and zall put together. So uh so it was a wonderful close bond that we all had. Uh. Eventually, zol and I start to concentrate along with an important and important person in this equation is Eric Jacobson, the the producer for The Spoonful, who really had a very clear vision of what the Spoonful could be. It was.

It was quite remarkable. I mean, he really had an idea, and my ideas ran similarly enough that that we were suddenly making toy records. Uh. And that was what we were calling them, because they're One would be a a like a surf wreckord, then another would be uh, lady goodive, I got a thirty eight Ford now powered by a Chrysler that's stroked and board now and you know all these funny things that they weren't New York City Norwegian American guy. You know, it was this wonderful, funny attempt

to get into pop music somehow. And uh, I think Eric saw what I saw, which was me and Yanovsky. We're starting to be joined at the hip because we have, you know, enough ideas that are similar. And uh, after a little bit, uh, we find out that guitarists that worked in an adjacent band had a younger brother who was coming back from a motorcycle trip in Europe. And I remember me and Yanovsky kind of looked at each other, going, yeah, that would be good. Yeah, Uh, let's let's see what

this guy's like. Well, of course, Steve Boon shows up and he looks like Fritz Richmond, who was one of our heroes the jug and washtub player for the question jug band and Uh. But also he's a real bass player. He isn't a folky guitar player attempting to get around on a fender and so that really made a big difference. And it wasn't very long before Uh we had Joe Butler, who was also had worked with Steve before, so it didn't require too much jostling to get this love and

spoonful thing going. Okay, how many bites you got the four members together? You're making the Toy records. When do you make a real record and how do you get a record deal? Etcetera. Well, we got turned down by every record company in New York City and Robert, that's a lot of companies, and we really did go to everybody. And it was only after we hooked up with these guys that were essentially mainly concerned with ripping off our publishing uh, and they said, oh, well we'll be a

record company. Yes it will be uh Stallion Records, that'll be it. Well that lasted about a week and a half and they connect up with the guys down the hallway. You know, this is when the record business was like this, and the guys down the Hallway are already rip and uh Karma Sutra, and Karma Sutra is the only record the only company that genuinely went nuts. Uh. You know, most of these guys have like a Voice of God speaker under their desk, so when they're demoing stuff, it's remarkable.

And remember when they started playing our records on this system, I go, my god, we're giants. So so uh. Really that became our record company, really to our our disservice, because we had been offered uh Electra because you know, as I said, I had been Paul Rothschild's mini me, and part of what that involved was going up to

electrac Records almost every night. Uh. And as we began to work together and he began to mix the first Fred Neil and Vince Martin record, this was it was just increasing the amount of time I was spending in Electric records. But as it turned out, when Jack Coltsman offered us, we said, no, now, these this is a folk label. This is Ceo Bickel. I mean, come on,

we're we're trying to get into the dirty business. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if we even used the term you know that like no no, we're not fake pop were we want to be pop music, you know? So that was okay. So let's let's stop here for a second. Yeah, the songs and you wrote some big ones. Yeah, who owned them? That? And then? And who owns them? Now? Okay? Uh I still own them and BMG owns them and they publish and I write and that that's okay. Let's

talk about the spring. You make this deal with Stallion Records when you write these hits, who owns the publishing then? At that point, Uh, it was a compliman in Reuben. Okay, how did you ultimately get full ownership? I don't know what. Was it part of a really the reversion a handful of years ago, or did some transaction happen decades ago? So? Boy, I I was running too fast to be paying any attention to the to the the mechanics of the business deals.

And I have suffered proportionately for that mistake. But yes, I I really all of this stuff. We didn't and and our manager has since said I didn't know what I was doing. You know, he's so apologetic. Because this Bob Cavallo, he becomes the president of Warner Brothers and Walt Disney records and all of this stuff, and and he I still talked to him frequently, and he his first thing is always Johnny. How could I be so stupid as to not understand what I didn't understand back then? Uh.

I'm very touched by his reaction. And in fact, I can't say that I was unhappy with any step of that process, because what was happening was what we wanted. We were becoming a rock and roll group that people knew. Okay, some of these hits are in excess of most of them are in excess of fifty years old. Have they

sustained you over the fifty years? Strangely enough? The uh, Well, I'd have to say that the record that for the Spoonful that was the most effective, of course, was somewhere in the City, and that certainly did very good things for me, my brother and Steve Boon, because all three of us contributed to the composing of Summer in the City. But the big one who could have predicted that a little television theme that I got involved in when I was wildly unpopular in the nine seventy six would be

It's like, that's the one right now? And of course unfortunately I know part of this to COVID. Uh, you never know how things are gonna play out, Okay, just to put a cap on it, the original songs, you ended up owning a percent of Yeah, and then you sold part to be MG or you still own them, or you sold all of it. So I eventually sold all of it to be MG. And did you keep your writer's share or you can? They gave you a check. Okay, so you sold the publishing, but you still you still

get the writer's share. Okay. Did you ever get a record royalty? Do you still get record royalties? You know, I probably do somewhere. I mean I do have an accountant to it kind of supervises this stuff. But it's a it's a quantity that's been halved so many times by our modern way of listening to music that it's almost nothing. Well that's why I mentioned. And if it's not nothing, they say you're in the hole. So you

make this deal with Kama Sutra. Tell me about making the record and making the hit, Well, uh, we had made Do You Believe In Magic? Going into a studio independently and Eric Jacobson foot of the bill, and that was the record that got turned down all over And every time it got turned down, Yanovsky and I would go, you know, you'd think we'd be discouraged. We go. Of course, they didn't understand that they're they're they're looking for Fabian,

They're they're not gonna find it in us. And so it was a kind of a bizarre twist that we saw every turn down as yeah, we are that cool. We're just that cool. So you make a deal with Kama Sutra, what's the first thing you make an album? Where they put out do you Believe in Magic? I think we were on about making the album. Uh, and I don't remember whether Magic got out. I think Magic got out before the do you Believe In Magic? Album? I believe this is summer sixty five. How long after

they put it out does it become such a big smash? Uh, it didn't take long. It was amazing once it got out there, Really how fast it did happen? Um? And and also it didn't exactly happen on the East coast for us. Uh, we sort of had to go play the Trip and the Tiger Tail. Uh, those are all the same club and uh and UH find a little success with the California disc jockeys. They were probably more enthusiastic about it. I mean, except for cousin Brucie, who's

been our ally forever. Uh, it was really it was, It was like that. Okay, so it becomes a hit. What's it like for you when you have a hit and all of a sudden you're playing these clubs, but ultimately there's television, there's recognition, you hear the song on the radio. What was your in tonal experience, mm hmm, Well, of course it was joyous when we actually landed in California and we turn on the radio in the rent a car and we here uh California Girls, followed by

do you Believe in Magic? At which point Yanovski starts hitting me all over my body. We're both in the back seat, and then we start hitting each other, and then Steve and Joe start hitting us, and so all four we have to pull over so that we can more thoroughly hit each other. And and so it was absolutely a wonderful moment. And uh, nothing, nothing's gonna compared

to that. Okay, you have the hit, right even at that era, following up the hit is very, very difficult and very important, and there was a thing that the Spoonful was really driven to pursue, and that was, we want to sound like a different band every single because the same old way of having it be the same thing for three or four singles that that era is gone now and so we have to make sure that

it sounds different. And uh, I probably couldn't have come up with you didn't have to be so nice by myself. That was a fragment that Steve Boon brought in one evening. We're playing a kind of a topless club and and he shows up in my dressing room, in my in my uh uh, in my hotel room with this fragment, and that became our second single, and uh, things really

did go that way. You know, I forget what the sequences, but daydream and make up your mind or right in there, and and uh, these are all different enough that that or at least we think, you know. The funny thing was we're saying, hey, man, they'll never guess. It's like, this is so different, jays man, you didn't even play your guitar. You played my guitar for that, they'll never guess. And then it goes on the air and the DJ goes, well, here's another example of that great spoonful sound, and we

go damn it. Okay, what was driving you at this point you talked about earlier it was girls. Then you have the excitement of meeting and playing with Zal. Needless to say, you make it, their money comes in. What was pushing you forward? Well, some of it was just the fact that we were such underdogs, even though we had the approval of several of our English contemporaries, rolling Stone for whatever, one was not on the case for us. Uh and uh so we had to kind of inch

our way up. And uh, I think that that was its own its own driver. Yes, but you have hit after hit after hit in an era where there's still a ton of one hit wonders. I mean, at some point you must have felt good about what you were doing success wives. No, no, I certainly I was feeling very good about it, No, no doubt out about it. I probably got a real swelled head right around then. But the only thing was that you had to keep

at it. Uh. You couldn't stop and think. Um. I mean, I'm very glad that I had the partners that I had, somebody like Yanovsky who would crack up when I wrote Nashville Cats and think that, uh, pal, the thing I wrote for Woody Allen was the funniest thing in the world. Uh. You know that was also driving me the approval of Yanovsky, who was really important to me. Okay, you have all these hits in the sixties, and you have Welcome Back Hotter in the seventies. He dries up. Why were there hits?

Needle to say, music is constantly evolving, and you had an incredible success. But was it you were working with those specific partners, or the sound changed or somehow you couldn't do it anymore. Well, I had a wonderful time working with those partners right up until it was gonna be impossible because after Zali got busted, he started, uh drinking a lot, a lot more, and that was really disappointing.

And uh you know, uh, also we we were starting to have our own separate lives and and you know, obviously Stephen was entering into a kind of a dark period where he wasn't really available. Uh And uh so there was a point when it was obvious to me that and I was afraid to do this for the longest time because I believed that people could not just transition from a group and suddenly be a solo artist. That that seemed like a real far stretch. Well, as

I say, the hits dried up. Do you believe if you were still in the band the hits would have continued? Or everything runs its course? I? I I think it probably I'd go for the everything runs its course theory, because again, surrounded by all of that approval and surrounded by a good band that that had provided a tremendous amount of satisfaction. But it was also obvious now that you know, the

grooves were different. They were more complicated grooves that our rhythm section didn't really have facility with UH and and they're really I was busy enough because I started recording with Paul Rothschild UH to make a solo album. Okay, before you get there, I vividly remember you being on TV playing that auto harp. We're talking about it in high school the next day. What was it like being

on Ed Sullivan? I mean, this is when those shows had reached nothing has that reached today, Absolutely absolutely, And it was remarkable and we were all ready to diss it because we're Greenwich Village puppies and we want. We just want to be counterculture every chance we get. And so we're going, oh, you know Ed, you know, he doesn't have any idea what we're about. It's great that

we're on the show. We'll play the thing. And like that, Ed Sullivan comes out and does the introduction for The Love and Spoonful, in which he pretty much says, this is the American answer to the English invasion. And here they are and they write their own songs and they

do their own ship. And you know I'm paraphrasing, but we we were standing there about to play, and I mean, I don't know whether my mouth was still wide open when the cameras came on us, but I was still recovering from oh man, we're gonna have to We're gonna have to reassess our our assessment of of Ed, you know. And he persisted every time we'd come on, he'd he'd

be that same guy. Um. I heard that that later from Denny Doharty that he seemed like he wasn't as able when the Mamas and Papas played it, but boy, when The Spoonful played it, he was right on top of it. So what is it like being on national television and then walking on the street. Well, you know, don't think you're gonna get recognized right away, because for one thing, Yanovski is gonna get recognized several hours before

you are noticed. And and so I'm I'm used to that because Ali's he's got the Borcellino hat and the whole rig, and you know, he's obviously a rock star. Remember again, it's it's Greenwich Village. Everybody's being cool. So it isn't the same thing as returning to your high school and coming in with a hit record, you know, where all of a sudden, the cheerleader likes you. You know, it was different, Okay, and in that era because shortly

thereafter there's the rock star lifestyle. Are you partaking of the drugs, the women? What is your life? Like? I got lucky a few times, but I was not an abusive rock star. Uh. And so like I say, uh, it was it was not going to be my incentive, uh to try to engage a underage girl or something. Uh. Luckily we had our girlfriends by that time and they were appropriate ages. Uh. But you know, as time went on and a few years went by, then those temptations

became a little stronger. Uh, the girls became impossibly good looking and uh uh so so yeah to that extent. Uh, like I say, but it was it was good luck, wasn't force. You know, you gotta make the distinction between that period and you know what would you know, I don't know, led zepp. Uh. You know that era where girls who were like klean x and and life was beautiful and the champagne was flowing. We we didn't really

get there. We were too busy doing gigs. Sometime, for your own amusement, I'll send you the Loving Spoonfuls schedule. It was documented by an Englishman who's a nut for the Spoonful and I look at that and it's unbelievable how many gigs we did. You know, Hey, it still doesn't compare with Fats Domino, but it was pretty good for some white guys. Okay, let me talk about a couple of my favorite Spoonful tracks. Give me the backstory. Six o'clock. Six o'clock came about because I was mourning

the loss of a beautiful redheaded girlfriend. The tune itself, uh, somehow evolved from hammering on a new instrument from Honer called the clavinett Uh. And there are people on websites still trying to decide whether six o'clock is the first use of the electric harpsichord, UH, which we have no idea, But that was, that was the way that that UH emerged. Now, remember we're in transition now, Zali UH will occasionally visit

our sessions. It's not like, you know, we This is the other thing that was so different for with our band. You know, we took eight by ten glosses with the new band member. But if you look closely at the glossy and you looked in the trees behind where we were standing, you'd see Zali looking forlorn and it's sad, and you know it was it was Yanovski all the way. But I mean, in some ways it's it's separated us

from ever being that perfect. I don't know, Uh, you know, money making band that UH does no wrong, Darling be home soon. It came about because I was listening to a lot of songs on the radio that went, oh my honey, I love you so much and now I have to go on the road and it's so hard and it makes me so unhappy. And I was going, wait a minute, and maybe this is partially having a musician as a father. I said, well, this you got this wrong. When you get this going, that's that's what

you want to have happened. Keep it going. Uh and uh So I thought maybe it would be I could sort of write that song. Only what if I took it from the other partners side? What if you know the song was really being sung by whoever stays at home? Okay, what do you think when you heard Joe Cocker's version? I loved it. I went nuts. Uh And in fact I would see him occasionally because we'd get paired in these various uh sorry, yes, Woodstock imitation shows in in

subsequent years. But I loved that man, and he and I spent a considerable time in in in dressing rooms not talking because he was glad to have somebody that didn't want to talk to it, and I was glad to provide that. He was a delightful guy. Okay, I have to ask about Summer in the City. Yeah, it was an iconic record, came out during the summer of the late spring. Had had that sound? How is that created? And what is it? That's a staple that has never

gone away? So tell me about your experience there. Well, the song really began with Mark Sebastian, my younger brother, who had come up with an idea of you know, summer in the city, you know it's gonna get hot, the shadows of the buildings will be the only show shade spot. But at night it's a different world going. I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's that? And what are

those chords? And my brother showed him to me, and I said, man, that is a fabulous chorus, and that it made me want to create tension because it was such a good release. It goes to the sub dominant chord, then it goes to the sub dominant chord of that and it's like a double wall. You don't know where you are for a minute. And and and to me that that had this wonderful quality of release, that it made me want to, uh increase the tension in the beginning.

So I, instead of what Mark had written on that beginning, I started. I started with an idea. I said, I wanted to have tension. I wanted to be like Night on Bald Mountain. Okay, one of the things that scared the living p out of me as a kid was Night on bald Mountain and to me, that thing in the beginning where you you hear the strings come in very quietly at first, donn bah pap pap pa papa, And you know that that remarkable piece of writing. And so I want to imitate that somehow. And that was

all it was. Was bad, you know, I don't know, kind of underachieving there, but that was the goal, and that was you were the producer. That was me. Okay, just jumping forward one song from your soul. Oh wait now, but but there is there is production detail here worth mentioning, Which was that? Again? It's Yanovsky starts the trouble. He goes, I don't want the drums to sound like drums. I wanted to sound like a garbage can fall down an

eight story stairwell, metal stairwell. So we're working with Roy Haley for the first time. Uh, he's a guy in a white lab coat. You got to remember the era. And once Sally says the thing about the stairwell, he goes, well,

you know we have an eight story metal stairwell. Really well, in no time, we are pushing a voice of the theater speaker on onto the ground floor of this stairwell taking a microphone up eight floors, and it's recording this enormous echo of the of the snare, But of course it's decay is way too long, so Roy ends up wowing the cap stand that controls that echo so that it will go and then disappear. Well, of course you know that that same stairwell was then used twice more

for the Boxer and for Bridge over Troubled Water. It's that stairwell. Wow. You ever tire of you? Ever tire of hearing Summer in the City? No? Really, not, Okay. I want to mention one other song that not everybody knows, but it's a big favorite of mine. It's after Tarzana Kid album, but that's not where I discovered it. Valerie Carter does a great version of Face of Appalachia. Oh She Kills. And of course that song You're Tarzana King is now available Tarzana Kid is available online. Tell me

the backstory on that record? Well, Um, I had become friends with Lowell George and we found each other very amusing, uh, And we started to spend a lot of time together and we started to just call each other with hey, listen to this kind of phone calls. Well, one day, Lowell calls me up and says, hey, listen to this, And what I hear is it's an acoustic guitar, but it's so smeared with compression that it almost doesn't sound like uh that that instrument. Well, I say, man, that

is so cool. That sounds like, I don't know, like the face of Appalachia or something. And he goes that, yep, that do that? Yeah right that. Uh So I started working on it, and uh it took me the whole summer, Robert. It's the only song that took me a long time. Uh and it really uh it. I just kept working on it all summer. It's a song, as you can tell, about my grandfather and how he had dreamed of making

this trip with me, of walking the Appalachian Trail. And so it was the combination of the nostalgia of the contrast between my background, you know, being born in blocks of buildings, and and his vision that he wanted me to see, of the Coltrane's wailing banjos, frailing and all of that stuff. So so that really that was it. And I would have to mention that Lowell, George and Ry Cooter both played on that record, so you couldn't

get you couldn't get slide here, that's for sure. Okay, you end up working on Francis Ford Coppola's first movie, You're a Big Boy. Now. How does come together? You know? It was fairly fairly mechanical in that my manager, Bob Cavallo, nw uh, the the team that was making that movie, and somehow or another, I really don't know how Coppola came up with our name as the guys that should do the movie. But we got the call that, you know, go over to path A Labs or something and and

talk to this guy. So we go over there, and you know, we don't know from Francis Coppola. Nobody does. But one thing was obvious. This guy's he's got this New York Italian thing that I'm immediately drawn in by this guy. Uh and and he has a wonderful funny way of presenting stuff. And uh, there were things that he would say like, Okay, so I need I need a song for this, uh, this couple. And they're there.

It's a it's a kind of a a strange pairing now and they're gonna be a couple though soon and uh, I'm gonna play a song that's sort of like the vibe by one, and he plays Monday Monday. Well, all I took from Monday Monday was the tempo. But but it was an obvious Oh yeah, I can see how this kind of a mood would be good. Uh. Other things, like he'd say, Okay, now I need a song for Amy the girl. And she's the good girl. But you know, John,

she's not quite as attractive as my bad girl. So I need a song to kind of kind of inflate her a little bit, make her more important. So I write a tune called Amy's Theme. And uh, as soon as he hears that, he goes, oh yeah, and you know, I'm gonna do a thing here. Uh. So you know, when the guy is wandering around New York City by himself, Now we've heard Amy's Theme with Amy in the picture, but now I'm gonna use that theme with her out of the picture. It's gonna be just him, and you

know what the audience is gonna be thinking. And all of us gotta go, no, we don't know. He says, they're gonna be saying he's thinking about that girl, And I go, wow, you know this is, you know, writing for movies, and I did it by accident. So it was that was the experience. It was really informative. I learned so much and just disappointed he never called again. What do you think where the Godfather came out? I mean, come on, I can write you in Italian. No, now

he's got his dad. The dad kills it. Yeah, you're not going to improve on on Mr Couple, I'm afraid. Okay, of course you Then you get huge exposure a year after it happens in August sixty nine, is Woodstock gets a lot of press, not that it's focused on you. Then there's the triple album set, and then there's the movie becomes a phenomenon. One other thing we know is a lot of the stuff on the original three record set was it actually recorded it Woodstock? So why did

you go to Woodstock? What was up with the tidy? Tell us your experience and then the aftermath of having all that visibility. Okay, so by this time, um, I have divorced my first wife and moved out to California in a kind of I don't know what I'm doing kind of a way, and and who but Paul Rothchild says man, you've got to be out here. Look all of your brothers, they've all moved from Greenwich Village and

they're all out here. And this whole sensitive singer songwriter thing you can dive right in here, So come on out. You know that. That was kind of the way it began. I moved to California. But while I'm out there, I stay at the home of a guy named Cyrus Farrier who was in the Modern Folk Quartet. And one of the things I learned there from a woman named Annie Thomas is tied dyeing. U Uh. You know. It starts

with underwear and socks and things. But after a while, I go, I'm gonna actually buy a white leave jacket and actually have it be purposed to be a jacket that has all these colors on it. So, uh, you know, between uh, tying and sewing and various things, I get this thing. And it takes it takes weeks because I'm I'm dipping into these various buckets and the buckets have to be hot, so there's a time limit. Uh, and

so all of this is part of the process. Okay, But then I get the jacket and again Rothschild is saying, you know, I can't do this, but this would stock festival thing. It's it's sounding like it could really be something cool. So maybe you know, if you can take get there, you ought to try to make it well. As it turned out, I was on the East Coast in that general time, and so I made my way

to the Albany Airport. I'm and I'm standing in the Albany Airport looking out the picture window another era of airports, and I see a guy loading a helicopter and I look closely and it's Walter Gundhi, the original The Love and Spoonfuls First road e And so between gesturing and so on, I get his attention. He points to a staircase that I can come down on the tar Mac with. So I do that. I go down on the tar Mac. He says, you're trying to get to Woodsuck. I go yeah.

He goes to get in the helicopter. It's the only way you're gonna get there. I'm roadying for the Incredible String Band. So uh, that's where I'm going one okay, So that's how that's how the trip began. And me and a helicopter. I see that same view over the site that is so famous in the movie where there's there's no ground. You just see sleeping bags and tents

and and Volkswagen busses and so on. So I pretty much I just showed up and U there were things that were that were going on that made it easier. One of them was that there was a yellow Volkswagen bus tent right in front of the stage. Well, as it turns out, I had been living in a yellow Volkswagen bus tent in Los Angeles because that was what was available to me at that at my friend's house. Remember me, there's very little security or anything. You can

go where you want to go. So I've I circled the entire site with with David Brown, wonderful bass player for the Santana and uh. By the next day, I'm

on stage uh fairly frequently. And at a certain point it begins to rain and I'm standing there with the promoters and and Chipmunk and we're sort of talking and Michael says, uh, you know, uh, what we need is the guy to hold them for long enough for us to sweep the stage because we can't put electric instruments, so we can't put any electric band on Uh, so we gotta have a guy who can hold um, you know, maybe with some good songs. And I'm I'm staring out

at the audience at this moment and I'm shaking my head. Yeah, that's that's that's free. That's what we need. And uh then I realized that they're looking at me, and I say, fellas, I didn't bring I may have a thumb pick, I didn't bring any instruments. I didn't I'm not prepared to play. And they say, well, you actually have a couple of minutes to go find a guitar. And so I end up down in the sort of underground of that hastily assembled stage and who's down there relaxing but Timmy Harden,

who had been a frequent uh you know. I played with Timmy a lot in in Greenwich Village. And so I said, tim could I borrow your harm any sovereign? And he says sure man, and I I'm back up on age. I'm tuning as I run up the stairs,

and uh. From there, I walk on stage and dan it was pretty remarkable experience for a guy who played mostly to audiences of maybe three hundred, you know, the spoonful you gotta remember, this wasn't the scale of rock and roll that everybody thinks of when they think of, you know, the sixties and rock and roll. Yeah, it really was a smaller scale operation. So when you suddenly have that many people in front of you, it is

it is startling. But the thing that I rarely get around to Robert and I'll tell you is that everybody that played there had had success in rooms with forty people in the audience, and that's where you learn how to do what you do. And really Woodstock was a very intimate half a million people. I can't quite describe how I I never saw it happen again, but oh my god, they were quiet. I mean, who knows how to quiet half a million people? So it was as much of of a remarkable experience for me as as

for everybody else that got the opportunity to play. Okay, you play, Yeah, When when you're done, what kind of high do you have? Pretty pretty strong. I think it'd be several days before I can get my head through the door. Uh. That was a remarkable feeling, no no doubt about it. Yeah, how do you end up on the record in the movie, Well, that was just because they were wording and filming, so they had me, and uh, I I wasn't going to turn it down. Uh. I

felt like, okay, I went up once. I forgot a verse, but it wasn't terrible, and uh the audience seemed to like it. I guess they be okay. Well, I had no idea really the scale of acceptance and what that movie became. Um. And one of the things, one of the outgrowths of that was that for another three years I rarely played inside. One thing, and the other thing was that I played every one of those lonely ass wanna be Woodstock. Uh we we charge money kind of shows.

Everybody had the same idea, only this time we have an actual ticket booth and they go by the ticket booth. And you know, so I did. I played every one of them. That's where I got to know Joe uh Cocker and a number of folks who were, you know, pretty pretty much regulars. Uh. As a result of that movie, you became known as the tide guy. I'm happy. Were you happy with that? For a while? I was happy?

But I actually can date it from a television show I was watching where Cheech and Chong are the guests and they come out and they sit down and and Cheech is sitting closest, and he's got a tie dyed shirt on. And uh, the the uh announcer says, well, though, that's just wonderfully has a fake name, and and tell me, uh so, uh did you tie dye that yourself? And he says no, I threw up. And that was when I knew. Oops, it's the end of the tie dye era.

Now it's funny. And it wasn't long after that that I started wearing black clothes for a couple of years just to shake it off. Okay, you have a new album where a lot of your classic Love and Spoonful songs are re cut. It's an interesting project because it's with Arlen Roth, the guitarist. A few of the songs were instrumentals. Tell us how this came together, Well, it came about completely as uh Arland's idea. Originally. Uh. He and I had known each other chiefs me. We probably

go back thirty five years. Uh. And you know, we would cross paths frequently because both of us were accompanists before we were you know, the guy under the spotlight or whatever, and so so we we had been friends a long time, and also we would cross paths. Woodstock has frequent uh, small events that are usually benefits or something, and and it's a kind of a clotch where everybody gets together in place. And I'd end up playing with

Arland fairly frequently. And so UH came a day when I had been listening to Arland's c ds that he had cut things like acoustic rolling Stones and uh, instrumental Simon and Garfuncle. Of course, he's completely savvy because he played with both guys together and separately, so he has the background. And he says, so, you ever made one of these kind of records, And I said no, I I was always afraid to touch any of the material. Uh, and he said, well, you know, we'd have half of

the arrangements licked. Was how we put it, so Uh that just sort of started it off, mostly in living rooms, and uh we began playing the material. And one of the remarkable parts of it was that his knowledge of Zalmayanovski I really hadn't I really hadn't taken it in, but it provided this wonderful framework, and we just started

doing instrumental versions of tunes. Uh. And in some cases they made it in some cases we'd say, now we can't touch the original, and in some cases, uh, it would become an instrumental that then we'd add vocals to and go, hey, it's better with the vocals. Let's let's leave it that way. And suddenly we had the fourteen

or fifteen tunes that it took. Now, part of our goal was not to go nuts and put a whole bunch of nonsense on it, because we had been getting this very good vibe of the two of us playing together. Then we go to our separate studios and maybe add one other guy and and that would be the arrangement. Uh. So with that as a framework, UM, we got pretty close to the end. And I had a couple of extra little things in my pocket. One of them was that I could call Maria Muldoor to do a uh,

to do a stories we could tell together. And uh, A fairly remarkable thing that had happened, uh starting about five years before we started this project, which was that I got a call, you know, I got an email from a guy who wanted to uh play a little what would we call it? A film of two young women doing daydream one guitar, one ukulele, it was beautiful I and I wrote back and I said, this is sibling harmony. You can't imitate this, and and I really

went nuts on this email. The next email comes back from the Mona Lisa twins, who that's who it is, and the twin are saying, oh, we're so happy and could you maybe uh be on our album? And I said, of course they're there. Uh uh they're they're just uh remarkable little Austrian people and played and sang and I ended up for in two different occasions playing harmonica on their records. And then they started a record where they

were doing their own tunes. This was a first for them, and they called me in on that and this is all by remote control. I'm working from Woodstock and they're in uh they're in England. So another half a year or so go by may call again and say, now we have trouble figuring out how we're going to do a video without you. Would you come to England and

do a video with us? So I end up on a Icelandic flight to Manchester and we end up in this three hundred year old bar doing a very cool By the way, if you get a chance, go look Mona Lisa Twins. Uh. Waiting for the Waiter is the title of the tune. But they had me kind of be a like a kind of a bad guy or something. Uh and and it was lovely fun and uh so then they were all ready to pay me, and I said no, no, no, no, wait, I said, I don't know what I'm doing next, but whatever it is, I'm

going to draft you guys to do background harmonies. And so that was the agreement. And so so it is that on several two I sent Arlen and my work off to Manchester by now I think it was Wales. They they're they're a moving group. They uh and uh they uh and it was a wonderful uh experience. They you know, I'm still in touch and uh, I'm sure we'll do something else. Okay. It's fascinating to me that both Maria and Jeff Muldaur on the album they've been divorced.

I know. I consider it one of my great great victories as the because I'm I'm the younger brother here, maybe not so much for Maria. Were about the same age, but Jeff's kind of you know, he was in the real jug band and there were things about him I was blatantly imitating him on day dream, you know, trying to get that honk that he has in his voice, and and so uh and I think I called him first. And then it's just because he was living in the

adjoining town at the time. And very shortly thereafter, Maria, who makes periodic trips to Woodstock, was nearby, and I said, hey, come on over to Chris Anderson's studio and let's get this thing where you sing, uh, you know with me on stories we could tell so uh so it did. They weren't in the studio at the same moment, but they can be. Uh that era of where they were still angry at each other, I actually was. I lived through that, and you know, it was made me very

sad for a couple of years. But they they have managed to to get past that and and enjoy each other's company and laugh at each other's voibles. And yeah, it's so that it had become nice. Okay, a couple of things wrapping up. How do you how do you write songs? Do you wait for inspiration or do you literally sit down like with a puzzle. How do you

do it? Well? The puzzle part usually comes after a good idea because you know, very often it will be something as simple as a title or a chord sequence, uh, And maybe the chord sequence makes you feel a certain way, and so you might get a line or two out of that, or your circumstances that you're living in might give you an idea. So it just that's that's the way it it happens. Okay, a lot of these hits

were in the sixties, which were over fifty years. Did you do this ever affect you financially or been okay?

For these fifty years, I've had periods where I was struggling a little bit, uh, you know, by making jokes about being wildly unpopular in the nineties, and so I kind of went sideways, hooked up with a bunch of guys and made a jug band and sort of turned my fortunes around because I wasn't making money, but I was having so much fun playing with Jimmy Vivino and James Wormworth and Fritz Richmond and oh Man, Paul Rochelle

and Annie Rains. I got to really play with some remarkable folks, and in fact, this very jug band, unfortunately, except for Fritz, who isn't with us, is going to reunite in uh month or two and UH have a little a little play at the Bearsville Theater. Wow, that's very cool. Now you're an upbeat guy, I'm talking to you. But you've lived a long on time. Have you always been an upbeat guy? Or you're prone to depression? What's

your mood like? Um? I I think, uh, I probably am a pretty upbeat guy, but I can get taken down. You know, there are times that that in my life that have been really depressing. Where you know, Rolling Stone and the whole of the whole world of of reporters had a kind of a miss fire on what had happened with zol and Stephen and yeah, okay, so now they were finks, but everybody piled on two that to

that uh, and it was virtue signaling. Half of these reporters were so anxious to alive themselves with the pot smokers and not the guys who busted the guy. But what they know, what he reported was the amount of effort that the band and the whole team put into getting this guy freed. And I won't go into it too elaborately, but unfortunately the guy wanted to have his own lawyer who wanted to make pot legal in nineteen sixties,

six or whenever it was. And uh so, uh he he Actually I think he served some time and it was gruesome. And uh this is a selfish me. But I didn't want to be associated with this. I was not in I wasn't even in the town. Understand, this happened in San Francisco. I was in Los Los Angeles. So if you want to look for a depressing era for me, that was it because there was no there was no explaining it just it looked bad, no matter

what attempt you made to explain. And it didn't help that there was all of this what I described in modern times as virtue signaling. So many reporters were so anxious to vilify us and make sure that everybody knew that they, the reporter, were the cool guys. So that was painful. Okay, are you a social guy? You're living in Woodstock, relatively small town. I know when I've lived in small towns tend to know more people than the city. Do you connect with people from your generation, the music,

other famous musicians, what's your life like? Well, I am very lucky in that regard because there are wonderful venues and wonderful musicians in my town, and I do socialize with them when possible. Now we have to kind of x out a year and a half here because nobody was allowed to do anything. But no, uh, we were managing. I was wearing a mask and going over to Larry Campbell's house and he had COVID and I was bringing him chicken soup. There were there were funny things happening.

Me and Happy Troum playing at twenty five ft away because we just said, I can't stand it not playing with anybody, and we did get together and just have a fun little little plate. Uh. Okay. You know, a lot of years have gone by, You're at an elder age and a lot of this has been written. Are you comfortable with what's happened? What would you like? Were you wish you had another chance? You don't get a chance to do over in life. But you know, looking back at this age, how do you feel about all

of it? I was a very lucky guy, and I had a lot of fun, and there was involved in that fun a certain amount of tears and a certain amount of pain, but it was all part of the package. And you couldn't extract one from the other. Okay. And in the time you have left, which could be a minute or could be twenty years, for thirty years, anything that you still want to do, want to accomplish, you know.

I just still enjoyed the same stuff I always did, which is playing with other musicians, learning material that I didn't know, Uh, finding out details of jug band tunes. I've played for fifty years and suddenly I'm finding out, oh that's that was a box factory outside of Memphis they're talking about, or you know, things like that, little details that that's what's fun. Okay. And you play the guitar every day, Uh No, I don't think I do

play every day. I end up uh maybe every third day. Uh. You know, I've it's kind of I I get favorite guitars and so then I'm kind of concentrating on that instrument a little bit more so, you know, it's it's ongoing. But I am I'm not a player unless there's another player or an audience. I'm not a guy who played or you know, my grandchildren. Fine, you know, I'll play

all day. Uh, but it it it does need to be something I think by myself I'm I'm more or less maybe I'll get some crazy idea and and see if I can develop it a little bit. So all day you read, you watch TV, you're in front of the computer. What's your average day looking like? Well, you know, a dog walking saves me from just sitting in front of a computer all day, and that that's a big thing.

But also, you know, I have I have nearby friends like Happy Troum and Cindy cash Dollar and uh several Luthier's, Harvey Citron and Joe Vayette who are really important friends to me and I really enjoy, you know, an occasional meal where we go out and and take life in hand and go to a restaurant. Uh, you know, it's it's pretty pretty normal stuff. Yeah, any significant other, any romance, I have, the same romance I had in and Catherine Sebastian has been a remarkable creature and uh and still

a hottie. So well, what are you gonna do? Hey, listen, it's all good, John, This is fantastic. You know, I think we got some of the history that people don't know. We still would need to delve more into your success in the sixties and what you've been doing for from the seventies until this new album. But I think we've come to the end of the feeling we've known. I think there's only so much time. So I want to

thank you so much for doing this. This is a thrill for me because you know, it's funny talking to you and you're saying, oh, you know we were doing it. You know, we were living in Greenwich Village. Everybody knew each other. The gigs weren't that big. I don't think you have an idea how iconic these songs are. Like maybe some are in the city because it's constantly used, and they are like you talked about the Spoonful. You talk about doing things unique. Okay, No, they did not

seem repetitious. And I cannot sit here and say, oh, this is like the Spoonful. It's its own vertical and therefore it stands alone. It's not like, oh, it's part of the British invasion whatever. And you know therefore I was dying to talk to I mean, this stuff is iconic, Robert. I love it when you say it. Can I tell you? Okay? In any event, until next time, this is Bob left Sex