John Waite

And we got talking and he said, you know, you've got such an interesting life and history and you're still out there doing it. This is making a fabulous movie, you know. And I said, well, you know, that's so very well. But who would want to make it? You know? And he called me back a month later with the backing and yeah, I just fell into it. I did. I just fell into it. It just it wasn't planned. It just happened. So how much money did it take to make the movie? I have no idea, you see, Um,

I know it's a consumerable amount. It's like a full budget documentary. But I had nothing to do with any of the personnel or the choices of footage. I just showed up for the interviews. Uh. It was simplicit in the deal that I I wouldn't ask to see anything before it was finished. I didn't want to have any kind of input on a on what it looked like. If it's going to be a documentary, and it's certainly's objective viewpoint of view, um or subjective. I mean, that's

what it is. That's a that's a documentary. And I had enough for expect for the medium, so no, I thought it would be ridiculous to get involved. You know, Well, it's interesting because, in the light of high deaf cameras on your phone, seemingly every musician has a documentary and uh, but yours is radically different. It's just not an embellishment of your career, really gets down into the nitty gritty

of your identity, your struggles. So it's a great watch, even for someone who is not familiar with his career. But since you had no involvement, now that it's finished, yet, what's your assessment. Well, it took me three months to watch it. It sent me a finished company and I just refused to watch it. And then one night I drank about the wine and said to nice tonight, you know, and I watched it and I was kind of dumb struck,

and I thought, well, what's that? And then the next day I watched it again, completely sober, and I thought, well, there you go. You know, um, I think it's uh, it isn't like it's like a nonlinear thing. It starts off uh in the present, and bounces back to the babies, and then it moves forward to my parents and he going to art school, my love of Western music as a kid, and then it's sort of it shoots too

bad English and then winds up in the present. So uh, it's still of a style that somebody's personality that I find it hard to critique. When he certainly makes a movie about you, you can't really say anything, can you, Bob? If they if they made a documentary in your life, Um,

how would you react to that? Well, you know, this is something that's interesting because John Winner, who started an own Rolling Stone, he hired someone to write a book about him, and then he wasn't happy and he wrote his own book, which really undercut his identity because if somebody else who writes it can say, well you have

plausible deniability. Yeah, yeah, the memory has us as some really convenient edit points, you know, And I've found that with with the documentaries I've actually watched, Uh, people skip over the dark stuff and it's all promotional, you know. I mean, it's the tool to sell more records. It's the tool to promote the artist. And I just said no interest in that. I mean, you know, I uh, you know how often this is happening in a lifetime. Somebody, you know, knock on the door at dawn and you

open the door and there's a film crew. You know, it's just the artest thing. I mean, I think anybody outside of the situation with know more about it than me. I just tried to tell the truth and keep it straight first, you know, Okay, having watched the MO movie, Uh, how's your state of mind? The movie was filmed during COVID when you weren't working, and you were not happy about that. It caused tensions in your relationship. Now that you're back on the road, is everything hunky dory or

you know, we live in a completely different era. You had great breakthroughs in the MTV era, and it's in the movie where you're a household name around the world. You almost can't leave the you know, go to the supermarket. But what's it like for you today? Uh? What you mean fan wise? After the Well, let's start inside your head. Are you depressed? Are you optimistic? Well no, I'm always optimistic.

It's the one thing that's probably kept me up and running is that I always think today it's going to be a great day, and I never even think about it. I believe in it, you know, and uh, you can stumble across something that makes the great or at least the best you can do. UM. I think the pandemic

was very difficult for everybody. Relationships, uh, the lot. I mean, when you're sort of locked into a life of um not being able to go outside and connect with people, or being a musician, UM, not being able to transmit all those ideas and have that exchange, it's bound to have a negative effect. I mean, it was very depressing. It's how to look back on it. Interestingly enough, I don't really remember much about it. It's like it's just the same day over and over again. So it was

a terrible time, you know. I but I think we came out swinging at the end of it, you know, I think it was it was great to be back. And we haven't stopped working since. We came out early like last July and played a couple of private shows and then we just hit the road and played right

through the rest of the year. And this year we started started off making up for the gigs that have been rescheduled, did a complete American tour, went straight from there to Holland, and came back like three weeks ago and played another show in Massachusetts and then we're off again, I mean St. Louis today. So there is something about moving and taking stock and re evaluates he what's going on and where the work is and what least to

to be done to move forward. You know, a lot of acts had financial issues, not working, the had overhead, they had bands. Was it a struggle for you or did you have enough in savings? No, I've certainly had nothing in the bank. I've been taken care to stopped by as much many as I can since I got control of my career to make up for lost time.

You know. Um. The unfortunate thing, just sort of like the sideline, is that now that Spotify is streaming artist music and paying such a minimal royalty, ya, the artist as usual falls back on working live to make up for that to get through, and with a pandemic that was taken away as well. So a lot of musicians really got hurt in that situation. But I was looking that I had enough royalties coming in and enough in

the bank not to worry about it. Okay, when Napster came in and royalty started going down in the earlier part of this century, were you still having a significant payment in recording royalties that fell off? It just maybe by about sevent I mean, at one point, you know, I had so many hits, like with the Babies and with the solo stuff about English and recently you know, with the with the stuff that's getting played on radio. But once uh Spotify came in, that was the end

of that. It was just like a piece of Peter Framptons said, if he's gets a million streams, he gets like a hundred dollars. You know, it's an absurd small amount that's been sort of but surely given to the artist. Okay, let's talk about all your records. Who owned those records? Obviously your recent solo ones I believe you own, but the stuff on crystalists and stuff with bad English are those still owned by the record company or those owned by you. Well, the baby stuff will always be with

Christmas and the first solo. Um, I've got the publishing back on everything forward of that, Uh I have, while I own with the rest of about English about English stuff. Uh, that will come back to me probably this year. I mean, so no letter he comes back to you. I mean I did try and get that. I did. I really did try and get some of it back from Christmas. But uh, it's just technicalsis. You know, there's lawyers involved, and it goes to cool and they have bigger lawyers

than I do. Okay, you know you made multiple records with Chrysalis, and the way the game works, many acts sell millions of records, but they still don't get any royalties because the record company says they're still in the red. Yeah. Do you happen to know if you're in the red or the black with Chrysalis Um And definitely as far as they say in the red. So there's a point

you get with that, we just say keep it. You know, I don't want to get down on that level where it's like, I mean, it's a squabble, you know, I mean, it's had its head day. We were all young and crazy. Me had careers out of it, and you have to be philosophical about it and say, well, it gave me a name and I was able to go forward from that point and and do very well. So at some point you just don't want to cloud your life with it. Really, well,

that's a great philosophy. I wish everybody had that. But needless to say, from when you broke in a mono culture to today, you know, if you're the biggest act in the world from that era and you put out a single, it still gets no traction. So how do you feel about making new music when it's so hard to be noticed? Well, I think honestly, Um, you spend six months right in a record and getting the right musicians, the band and engineer, the right studio. It's very hard

work and there's a lot of commitment to it. The songs have to be a really high caliber. You're not messing around things, and you spend all the money like fifty ground or whatever it is, which is a reasonable amount of money to make a great record. If you can't make a great record for fifty ground, there's something wrong with you. And the idea is to do first, second tax and fix things, but not do it like it used to be done, which is like recording every

uh instruments separately and all that kind of crap. It's just really and but you put it out and in this kind of day and age, it's only in the spotlight for like a week and then it's gone. And if you don't make records, your fans are kind of annoyed it you for not doing anything new. So um, it's a pleasure to make the albums, and it's a pleasure to play them to the audience. And that you really sell a lot of those albums at gigs, you know. I mean nobody really buys CDs anymore, but they people

buy them. It shows because there are thousands and thousands and thousands of CDs. It shows. But I think the music business, as that's what we thought it was, just simply doesn't exist anymore. It just does not exist. Okay, you go on the road at merch table, you sell c ds? What else do you sell? And do you personally get behind the merch table and sign it? It's all signed. We do a meet and great. I try and spend time with each person that comes that, I'll

just swheel them through. Uh, the very sincere, genuine kind of They always met their effort to meet you. So I've found that I could be quite social and put people at their ease and talk to them for quite a long time. And I can't imagine doing it any other way. If you get behind the merch table, you're gonna get mobbed. Oh it's going to get out of control. It's gonna but everything signed. We have t shirts, CDs, buttons, lyrics, pieces of art, I pen so you can buy all

sorts of things. We try and keep the price down. I will say that instead of it being a fifted on a T shirt, it's a twined on a T shirt. Instead of it being a forded on the c D, it's a twined on CD. And I think that's part of the deal with the audience come to see you and they stick with you to thick and thin, and I'm not going to gouge my audience to two make a profit. You know, it makes a profit, but it

isn't stupid, you know, but it's enough. So you're talking about these hardcore John Wade bands, Do you actually know some of them? Yeah, you know, over the years. You know, you do see those spaces coming um in the front row and you you know, give him a wink and a smile and say hello. But it really is, you know, it's like it's that thing I talked about the documentary about the exchange. It really is. It transcends just going out and playing and you know, being rock and all that,

there's something going on with music. You don't write music to put in a vault and nobody here is that you share it. In a perfect world, music really would be free. You know, you can't hire a band, take them out on the road and pay for the hotels and airplane flights and not charged people. But there's a middle ground where you can really bring it to the people and celebrate that thing, and there is a feeling of almost family about it. People show up and travel

from all of the world. You know, it's amazing. At least I can do is show up and and share it in a fair way. So prior to the pandemic, going forward, how many days a year do you work, Well, we were doing about seventy two a c days a year. But this year we went to Holland, we did a major American tour. We cliff the first half of the year making up days. I would say we're about seventy now and we have like twenty more days to go,

so we're probably about twenty more days ahead. As things are, I think with the documentary coming out, we'll probably do more days. Know, and you know, there are different styles of going on the road based on income. There are people who take private jets, there are people in station wagons, people people and tour busters. How you doing it these days? But we fly in, we're all flying from different places and we meet at the airport. There's a van. Tim

runs off against the van. He picks us all up. We thought the guitars in the back, goes to the hotel or find some Indian food, then goes to the hotel. We drive as much as we can. Everybody has to fly. Flying in the airport and security just kills the vibe of being out there. So we drive and if it's a five hour drive, we'll leave after the show and knock a couple of hours out and stay in a hotel on the highway and then wake up, only get back in the van and tracks the next game. It's

it's low impact. I think We've got it down to a science. I really do. Um, everybody gets on, there's always jokes, you know, everybody's sort of knows what to do. So it's the best it can be. It's really, Uh, of all the touring I've done, this has been the easiest, and in some ways it's open to the most things going wrong. But we we just seem to sort of

like roll with the punches. There's a movie Paul Simon made, I believe it was One Trick Pony and they're these seems driving in the van where they're playing games like Dead Rock Stars, et cetera. When you're in the van, is their conversation or is everybody in their own world? Um? Well, I hope they're not gonna play Dead brook Star because fairly soon it's gonna be me. Uh let me see no we we you know, it stunded off like a lot of chassis, you know, and then we were playing

like Bill Evans, which feel like Bill Evans. And then then it was Ell Fitzgerald and it was kind of like, you know, free, and then it got more obscure, and when it's cream and a bounced that we love. And now everybody's start of reading the book or sleeping. You know. I think there's a kind of nervous energy where you're trying to communicate all the time, and that can get in the way of the communication later on in the day.

I think if you if you can keep in your own space mentally, you're gonna go to offer when you actually get into that musical conversation on stage. Okay, so let's assume you do a gig you end at eleven o'clock. Yeah. What people don't realize is a musician is really wired after that because you've given it all. You're all So let's say it's a drive. So how long after the gig are you gonna get into the van? And how long before you personally can come down from the gig? Well,

that's you know, the adrenaline. Being a singer, me and the drummer have the hardest gigs because it's a very aerobic, kind of physically demanding thing. Yea, how it's going like a like a steam house. You come off stage, you shake hounds, people, signs, some stuff, get in the valan drive and you can still when you get to the hotel, it's a strange room. You know, you check into a different world. Um you can be awake till three in the morning. You know, it's just the way it is.

I listened to audiobooks a lot. Uh. You can't take anything to help your sleep because it's gonna affect your vocals. You know, it really gets in the way of performance. So you really can't um use anything to to knock you out. But audiobooks work, you know, they really do you. The moment you're in the book, you're asleep. Okay, since you're a connoisseury, give me two good audio books that you can recommend. Um. Well, I was listening to George Simono.

Um uh, the Magrade books, the French Detective they're very, very good and they're a different worlder in France. And the John Nesba Harry Hole Detective books that incredibly well written. And uh, you know Harry Hole, I mean you just kind of go with it's strategic, but it's very agergic. But you know, the French Revolution not getting you get into that young Stalin. You know these you know, it's anything that's gonna take your mind away from where you are.

The further away from where you are, it's gonna it's gonna open that door. And you're gonna crash. You know, it's great. Okay, let's be very specific, gig games to the leven. What time do you get the hotel on the road. Well, it could be if we're staying in the neighborhood within an hour, but if if you if

you have six hundred miles to go. He generally just pounded the van and drive for three hours, like I said, crashing in a hotel on the way, a holiday inn, and get up the next stage and finish the drive. But it's good, you know. I mean, what else you gonna do? You're gonna go hang out? I mean, you know, it's not you don't want to party do it? And all that kind of stuff. They haven't been really younger.

It doesn't work. I mean, I don't know how the hell we got through some of that stuff when we were kids, because nobody got any sleep and it was just impossible. But it was romantic and we all loved it, you know. But I think as you get older, the work is absolutely the first thing on the menu. The good time thing comes to maybe third. You know, it's you know, it's it's it's enough of a good time to rip out it with a great show. Okay, but do you end up getting enough sleep? Now? Never? But

you're running on empty. You know. The one thing, the two things on the road that you need more than anything is sleep and coffee, and the two opposite ends of of what it takes to get through. But we change during coffee, you know, we um coffee is just the thing. We just thought coffee up and you'd be surprised, you know, you could be. You know, sometimes to make it work, you do four if I gigs in a row, and on the fifth gig, it's like, Holy Christ, you know,

how are you gonna pull this off? You know? And your voice is scratching, and you walk out there and within ten seconds everything's in focus. You have all the energy in the world. The audience give you all this stuff and you immediately give it back to the audience and aware you go and it could be the best show you're gonna play off the five. You know, it's always that thing you walk out from the moment you leave the wings to walking towards the microphone too, holding

the microphone, plugging in the guitar. That something is transformative in those twenty paces and you just you're in flight, you know, it's it's why you can. Let's say you do a run, a date and you fly home. How long does it take you to calm down from those dates? That's that's a good one. Um, yeah, that's a rough one. Know I was younger, it was almost impossible. Yeah, you come back from a baby's too, and I'd just rattle, you know, I'd be looking for things to do, and

at night it would be just terrible. And you kind of sitting and watch TV. These days on the way back from the airport. Uh, me and my girl probably go and get a lot of Indian food and you know, eat a gigantic amount of food and have a beer maybe, and that seems to calm things down. I mean at some point, you know, you have to. You learn, really, you learn how to step back, you know. Okay, you live in Santa Monica, I do. Yeah, So where's good Indian food that you get? Uh there's one on Pico

There's I think India's other. It's like really just a small hideaway in a strip mall. But the great people, the seeks, the chef is were like a beautiful, bright yellow turban and stuff and that the nice people I know. But you know, you could. You can really fast good stuff and in the in the Sana Monica area, that's a very good Indian restaurants. Okay, do you own your own home Combomidium Red? Yeah? How long? How long did you buy? By? About twenty years ago? Good investment? Yeah,

I know, I know, I was. I was living in New York City, which is probably home, but I've been there quite a long time, living on Madison Avenue. And I had a record coming out. My manager was living in l A. And I thought, well, I'm going and spend a year in l A. And I went on tour and for some strange reasons made a lot of money, and I was like, what am I gonna do with all this money? You know, and being someone that's seen the bank account go down to you know, in the red,

I had enough sense to buy something. So I bought this really beautiful condo for the going right, which was pretty affordable, and you know, yeah, I own it now. One element of the movie is this girlfriend you have and she says that you've known each other the better part of twenty years, but you just started to live together.

What's the back story there? Well, we met um um walking through Central Park, she was on a soap opera called The City Janie Allen, and that she was walking west and I was walking east, and she asked me how to get out of the park because Central Park in the middle of it. It's like an obstunalely illusion. It sort of makes you think you're going in one day,

actual well you're not. It's very cleverly laid out. And you know, we were on and off again for years and years and years, and when I moved to Santa Monica, I was I was on the bike path going south. No, she was going to south and I was going north, and we sort of almost bumped into each other. So it's kind of like it's like one of those you know, it's a Tom Hanks movie, all you know, rock and roll. But she liked the idea that you that you said she was well endowed. She's just a very skinny do

better being better. But okay, I have to ask because the movie was shot during the pandemic, and there are a couple of moments where she's expressing tension in the relationship and frustration that you've internalized because you can't go on the road. Now that you're back on the road, how you getting along well with trying? I think with every every relationship, it never stops. You know, you're trying

all the time. Uh, there's part of me, to be really honest, there's a solitary kind of first, which is probably why I lived in New York City for so long and loved it. Is that you can just come and go and I'm always thinking about something of reading a book. You know, I can be further distant. So we always have to work on me being distant. But we're still together, you know. Okay, So you're a creative person.

You know. It's what people don't realize. It's the very outgoing extroverts who are the businesspeople, and the introverts are the artists. And it's a very different mentality even though they intersect. So but in music one has to network and work it. So how do you get those two sides your personality to work. One wants to be at home, internalized, being creative. The other one has to go out, get a job, get a band. Ether. Yeah. Yeah, but it's like I said before, but it's like you don't write

music to keep it to yourself. Um. Alison Krauss was told me we were both shy people. I was very shy as a kid, cripplingly shy, and I was a base player all basically as a kind of like that. But Allison Cross says she had to overcome a shyness to do what she loved the most. And I think that person that's kind of introverted or introspective is the word that writes that stuff, that performs those songs. Um, you can't just keep it yourself at some point, you have.

The whole point of music, of art is to share something. It's and you know, when I was in the Babies, I mean I didn't want to be sense of stage. I didn't want to be the singer. I was the only guy that could do it. So I put it all to once side said come on then now or never, you know, and I stepped into that persona and then it became easier and easier. And it's like I said about the meet and Greed. I can walk into a room full of people and I think, honestly put them

at their ease almost immediately. And I think it's a sincere thing to it. It's not like something you learn. It's I think I'm naturally friendly and I and I respect people, and I want them to have a great time when they come and see me play. If I can spend fifteen minutes to our nestility and it turns the world around. I mean, what a joke, you know, as answer the bird and said, you know what a jump?

I make people happy. And some of the songs are desperate and they're dark, and they're not something you want to listen to if you want to. You know, part of your brands up as people relate, you know. I think we're all going through the same things as we get older, and I think there's a conversation going on between the audience and the artist, and it's it's a worthwhile conversation. Okay, let's talk a little bit more about your personality. Hypothetically, I call you John, We're going to

a party. There's gonna be fifty people there, come along. Are you going to say? Give me the address? You're gonna say? I don't really, I just know I wouldn't go. I really wouldn't. Michelle Peiffer said once that she when she got invited to parties, she'd wind up in the garden playing with the dog, you know, And I thought

that was very endearing. But I'm like that. I mean, I like people, but I don't have to go out and hang around in Boston meet people and sort of you know, I I really value the time by myself. I read a lot, and I pin and I write a lot, and I'd like to keep the two worlds kind of separate. I mean, once you're on the road with the band, you know, it's Camaraderie's is a lot of fun, and then there's the show and all the people you meet. It's a very positive thing. But I

need to go back into my roots to recharge. I can't stay in the spotlight too long. So let's say you're in your house and you're in a room and you're painting or something and your girlfriend interrupts you. Are you cool with that? Or you're saying no, no, I'm in my zone. You got no no, no, no, I'm not. But it's it's I will be looking for something to do. That's that's kind of I've just recently started to write stories, like short stories, and I've kind of got a knack

for it. I just ran off something that was like just on a computer, just tapping out the words, and these things are not like, um, it isn't like I'm a boy genius. It's just what I do in my often time. Some people watch TV. I don't. I can't watch TV. I can watch a movie, but I can't watch I just I'm not good at taking time off listen doing something. So you talked about wanting to share your art. Now that you're writing these short stories, are you looking to share those? Well? I would like to

get better. I dashed up this five piece UM show story about a guy looking for his brother and he goes on a bender and so drinks hisself into the floor, gets on the d yet ferry to France, gist and knife fight with two apaches. The calling in France, uh the street because he gets killed. Um And it's a five part story, you know. I read reread it again

two weeks ago, and it's all sorts of editing. And at first I thought I've stumbled across some rare talent, you know, But I have nothing but respect for writers. That's a whole different thing. That's the command I mean writing songs is you have the chords behind it too, to color the words. If you if you say a certain word like trend and you play in a major it's a beat. It's a train, you know, train tran If you play an air minor, the train could be

going to hell, you know, it's like that. That's the different. There's a lot of things in play. But just to write this is why I'll never do a memoir. I could never do it. I could never get that right. Okay, let's just go back for a second to being on the road. Um, did you ever have a time being on the road using drugs and alcohol to calm down from the geleration of the show? Yeah? And did it ever get into a territory that you look back now and say, what the hell was I doing? Or was

it always under control? No? I think on the road if you start doing that kind of stuff. I mean we're talking about cocaineously, but I mean if you in the old days, it would be a couple of lines of glow and people would do it. They would have a shot of brandy or whatever, go to a club, get up and sing with the band. Anything at all could happen after that, and you would work up with

a hangover after travels for the next gig. And if the band is any good and you have any sense that, oh, the other three or four guys are gonna grab you by the back of the color and stay knock it off. This is how the lives too. You know. If you start self destruct, usually get bounced out of the band. It happens in a lot people drink themselves to death, and it's the time off that's the problem. Because you

looked at the film Disvoid with something that's electrifying, you know. Well, that is one serious moment in the movie where uh, there's an altercation with the guitarist who's ultimately fired. So give us a little bit more on that. Well, his personality was flamboyant to say the least, and uh, I'm sort of working class and he was very much up a middle class and had a whole different take on what he was there for. And he barely spoke to me.

I mean, I tried to write songs of him, you know, tried to buy maturing, you know, but he had made his mind up that I was the competition of something and I, just like I said before, I didn't even want to be in the center of the stage. But it all came to a head on one of the gigs when he smashed the guitar and screamed funk off at the audience, and we just like looked at each other, like we have no idea, at what point? How far

it's been so bad? For so long? I actually remember having a glass of grand Mania at the end of this table and smoking a cigarette. I mean, I remember thinking, just another day, you know, it's just what goes on. But it starts to get wilder and wilder, and by the time we got on the bus, he was in

full meltdown. And in the movie it, you know, we talked about finding stuff, but there was so much money riding on the band and investment, not only from the business spent, but from all of us, the hardship we've been through to get that far. And then one guy is trying to actually like, you know, really seriously injury with an instrument. You know, it's like kind of like, wow, know what is that? I mean, what is this bound worth to me? You know, I don't want to go

through life with no eyesight. I don't want to you know, maybe bleed to death on the floor because he's going to broken ball. But it's the point where you look at it, you like, Jesus Christ, ma'am, how do we get to this. We're all trying to get to the next level, and you're trying to kill me. I mean, I don't know what to say to that, you know, because I mean it's not something I enjoyed talking about. It's still a mystery to me that I put up with it for so long. But it did explode. And

when you fired him, what did he say? Oh, he thinks that he was like the record company fighting and but I mean that's like saying I didn't try and funk you up at the bottom. It's the record company. Don't like which that unreality thing comes into it, where you think you're really dealing with somebody that's got a different take on absolutely everything. You know, he was incensed, but that should show you where he was. I mean, at what point do you really try and mess someone

up with the broken body? Have you ever encountered him since? No, he's he goes off on the internet and he's like, you know, I'm a star, You're not all this kind of crap, And I just know at some point you just go, I did the best for you. I really did know pret up with that for years and years, and that's your answer to me. So what do I do Okay, you grow up in northwest England. What's that like? Oh,

it's beautiful. Lancaster is a castle and our school that was built that I went to to be it and our school as like glass roofs for life class and print rooms. It's not like that anymore. It's some sort of building for different things tourist board. It's a very very antiquated old city with the cobbled streets and houses from the thirteenth century at the priory church next to the castle, the foundations for a thousand years old and

it's laid out really beautifully. It's like a really incredibly strange, very very British thing started about fields and we had a university come about thirty five years ago and it's it's taken over the town, so it's it's kind of changed quite a long but Lancaster really is something. I go back there as much as I can. And how did your family end up there? Oh? They were born there. I mean, you know, in England could go back five hundred years. Do you know how many generations your family

was there? Um? Well, my my father's mother h her family Um. In the Doomsday book, that's King John's Uh, account of who owns what where the farm belongs to it, you know, Um, they we call AGM so they go back that they're like York, and that my mom is Lancashire, and there's Irish blood in me somewhere, um from my grandmother's mother. And there's some Maltese but apparently from a generation or two before that. But it's pretty much Church of England straight on, you know. I mean everybody comes

from somewhere in Britain. It's like you know, it's it's Celtic, or it's Norman, or it's you know, angloss action. And what did your parents do for a living? Well, my mom was a nurse that the piano could tap pants, all that kind of thing. She was great, she still is, she's ninety seven. My dad he was a mechanic, but there's also a chess player and extremely well right. He was supposed to be the most well read man in Lancaster. Also didact know because from the war camp you couldn't

go to university. But I think if the war hadn't happened, he would have gone to university. Was he was an absolutely incredible of the books and very smart man. And how many kids in the family. I have a brother called Joe. He was a really, really great guitar player who had learned an enormous amount from now he's all, he's all, he's four years older than me. Okay, So you start going to school. What kind of kid are you? Were you like the life of the party had outcast,

just one rob. I was pretty popular. I really was a popular kid. You know that the bullies would always come around and give you a really bad time, especially when he got about fifteen. You know, I had long hand, I dressed differently, and I didn't fit in at school, but the girls like me, and I had a lot of friends, you know. I would say I was a

really popular kid. I was looking back and it was really wonderful, you know, but there's always those bastards in the corner that I want to show you what'swa and I took it very hard in the last couple of years. It was just rough. Good student, bad student. Did knew anything I couldn't. My Matthew is almost nonexistent. I had dyslexia, so my bees and bees were backwards, which is ironic being a lyricist, you know. But I love to read.

I love literature and I lived out, so they let me just do art classes for my final year to build up a portfolio so I could gainst our school, which is very kind of it really was because I really was the odd man out of school. I was kind of the bohemian kid. But it was great and like I said, I was kind of popular, so uh you know, although there was a couple of moments of extreme craziness with a couple of the really big kids,

I mean I got through it pretty well. Really. Okay, so you're in the UK where the Beatles break a couple of years earlier. Were you a big fee of music before that or was it? So how did you get into it? Well? Yeah, you would just see a cowboy music, uh you know Marster Robbins trilled fighter bellas, uh couldn't fight a bellas and trail songs. That was a big album and I'd hear in occasionally on the

radio or in stores. We didn't have a record play we couldn't afford on, but my my cousin Carol at a radio gram and some records that she had Brenda Lee Everybody Loves Me. But you remember hearing that was about six and falling in love with Brenda Lee. But it was a little country in Americana, but specifically Western songs. I mean, Ghost Riders in the sky Man, you know,

it's that the barrettone guitar and cowboys. You know, he just got through being a kid listening to you know, David Crockett and stuff, and then it became the sexy

and things. You start to inch forward into being an older kid, and you'd see the symbol some and there was nothing more important than America when you're like five, and it's, like I said, Davy Crockett, Cowboys and Indians and then this music that could hear every once in a while, and that led straight into the Beatles, and from that point on there was absolutely no question about what I would do. Really, So how did you first hear the Beatles? Into what degree were you a fan

of the Beatles? Well, I remember, um, I remember, I must have been about eight, but I remember watching this TV show and they came on and they played Love Me Do, And then the next week I think it came back and did Please Please Me? But I saw it on Granada Television. We lived in a tiny cottage that first into the countryside. If you can imagine like some little kid watching the Beatles in this cottage with the trees outside in the fields. I mean, he said,

it's it's a it's a it's a strange picture. But it was like the Northwest. They came from Liverpool, which is only set in miles of Lancaster, and they were the most different thing you've ever seen in the world. But the sound of it itself, the sound was incredible and the songs were you know, as we all know, and it took us along with it. Uh. The next seven years were like um, I mean, it was like

being given something. Every album that came out you couldn't wait to hear it, and everything you heard made your hairstand the band, I mean it was the most incredible thing. And it was working class, which was really something you'd never really seen that before. Hardcore, working class, black and white Liverpool Lean and the best thing you're going to hear for the next fifty years. You know, you know,

I only have an American perspective. The Beatles came, and then there was so called British invasion, which was reething, you know, hard edged on one level, like the Stones, and then people who really weren't rockers like Freddie and the Dreamers. On the other hand, so how do you do you do? So? Were you a fan of all those acts or was it more like, you know, no, I just remember the other day, you know, people asking

me these questions. But I and I you go, like, yeah, the Beatles, yeah, you know, you know, go st yeah, you know. But I remember having a Pretty Things EP with Don't Bring Me Down, Big Boss Man. Uh right, last week City, I think it was on there. But

I remember having that EP. And I was only eight, and I haven't got a record player, and my mom would send me down to my grandmothers on a Friday to visit, you know, and um, I'd say the CP and I'm playing the Pretty Things at eight, So I was probably heading towards the Yardbirds and Free and the Jeff Bett Group and and all the and Jimmy Andrews, you know, I mean Cheese and but all those acts, you know, were they were more hardcore, but more importantly,

we were all inspired by African American music, blues and soul. And the really fascinating part about the whole thing is as I was singing as a kid, I was singing in a blue style. I didn't learn that from anybody. I didn't know about Muddy Water still as about fifteen. You know, I knew about Hunk Williams, but that isn't blue singing. But I sang in this and I phrased in exactly the same way as I do now. I

didn't learn how to sing. I've always sounded like this, and it's a mystery to me to know where that comes from. But maybe it's just something you're born with. And maybe I did hear something that was like just it all came from black music. I don't know. Okay, at what point did you learn how to play an instrument? And then how did you end up on the base? My brother had a telecaster, the first telecaster in the Northwest, really, he got it on on payments, and I was playing gigs.

It was a really good guitar player, still is, and I think I went to the base because, um, he was the lead guitar player. I probably boten prayer that would start about together, because when you sing with your brother, you really do sing like you harmony and stuff. There's a magical thing between brothers. But I started to fall a lit with the best when I you knows Andy Frazer and this Jack Bruce and there's Renis Garrison. There's just fine. The bass is like there's an instrument. It's

that the cello. You know, I love the cello. I love best notes. I like the way the best move behind the chords. I mean on the Beatles first album, you hear former Can't Go, How good a dass with another? And he was boat, the boat, the boat. It's like a passing note, you know, I was. I was maybe fourteen when I heard that. Blew my mind how anybody could be that clever to put a passing on in a rock and roll So nobody's ever done that. And it was just an elegant instrument, you know, and it

looked beautiful. dB three is still a thing of enormous beauty to me. Or they done electoral along Home. They were all beautiful instruments to base instruments. So when did you start playing in bands and what did that look like? Well? I sang in my brother's band when when he was about seventeen and I was thirteen. I'd go around to the rehearsals and seeing Walking the Dog, Blue Seal, Mabel, those kind of songs. Um And then when I was

at art school. We needed a band to play the Art school dance and I got my brother to get his trauma and we just played for like three hours blues and shuffles. That was my first time out. But from that point on, towards the end of my state at art school, I actually put it bound together. It was my own and we were out playing dates. So you know, I um man, when you get the bug, whatever you call it, there's nothing going to stop you.

You know, I've slept on floors and I've been in the back of a truck for like you know that was. But you do it and you love it, and none of its work. You're in the middle of a romantic thing. It's what you want to do. Whether you are pay to do it or it's not the matter, but you certainly don't want to be anywhere else. It's all the matters, you know. So how do you get from Lancaster to London by bus? But being okay, keep going. It's two hundred two miles. And the first time I joined the band,

there's a guy called Ali Alco. It was like a really genius guitar player from the Northwest. He played reading festival at a band called Universe. It was a big deal. It wasn't signed, but he was a big deal. And he saw me play and asked me for wanted to go to London. And I actually got almost arrested about six weeks before for a jewel robbery which I did

not do. But the police came to a sound check and the Seahorse bar in more com tapped me on the shoulder and then took me and my band down the police station and grilled us for like two hours, three hours, and they were they thought that I was a bad lot. The band was dealing hash. Me and this guy, Martin, the roadie was signed. This interrogation room and Martin, they leave us addressing all these questions and Martin pulls out a lumper hash and starts eating it.

And I thought, yeah, you know, I thought, well there goes my life. You know. I think I'll you know, I think I'll just get a job now or maybe go to jail whatever. And that accuse me of stealing Lonnie Donigan's drum cases when we played with Londie Donegan about three months before, and uh, what would I be doing with drum cases? Were the drummer was very light fingered, so I would think all fingers would point to the drummer,

but I think he was pointing at me. So this window opened for me to go to London with Ali on the old car and live in West Hampstea with the roadie and Ali in a room that was eight by ten and live in London and it was spectacular. You know, I had no money. I was signing on the door, getting like four pounds a week living off gun knows one. But it was fantastic London to the early seven He's going to the Marquee Club, seeing these bands that were just incredible, Stone the Crows and you know,

Humble Pie, Steve Mary. I saw Steve Mary had seen at the London Palladium, you know, I mean just just the whiless stuff. But um, that's how I got to London. Yeah, long story. And were you playing in any band before you join the Babies? Yeah? That was you know, that was with England. It was called who were playing festivals and the Marquee Club and eating of living out and uh, I went to America to join the band in Cleveland that look, we're looking for a bass player. That blew up.

I came back a little bit a little bit slower. How does a band in Cleveland find you in London and then you go? Well, the singer, the original singer from England, a Scottish guy called Phil Ray Jesse. Ray didn't work out with Ali, so he left and I stayed with Ali, and he somehow got to Cleveland. I was in a band, uh and they needed a bass player. And I left all this because we were going nowhere, went home and I couldn't get a job. I didn't want a job. My dad wasn't pleased to see me

coming home. He was starting to to get a life, you know, and I was just desperate. And this lesson came from Cleveland, do you want to come and play bass? So I I packed up the old kicked back and somehow got a visa and I went to Cleveland for like four months and we played all over some of the small clubs there and trying to get a record deal that fell through. And then I came back to London and the baby started. Okay, had you been anywhere other than you know, the UK? What was it like

being Cleveland? Of all? Remember that book um Diary of a Rock and Roll Star by Ian Hunson. Of course, yeah, fantastic book. On the bus home from London, I read that book and it was just about Cleveland, about the scene Um, about kid Leo, about MMS the bussard all you know. I was like whoa. And the scene that was happening in in Cleveland was a mirror of what was happening in London. Really, so when it came through that could go to Cleveland, it was like, wow, I'll

take a show. And there was a ballsy move, you know. But I wasn't done anything to be in a boundary. I just wanted to play. Okay, so that doesn't work out. You come back to the UK. Uh. You know it's talked about in the movie with Adrian Lilar, but a little bit slower. How do you end up in the Babies? Well? It was his mutual friend called Golden the Works Shaftbury Avenue,

a guitar village and he knew Mike Kobe. It was the guitar player and Mike had a manage your gold agent and they were looking for somebody they could write songs and sing and play bass. Would I be interested in taking a meeting? And would I you know? So I went for point a beer on a Friday night, I think at Sir Richard Steele's pub on have a stock Hill and we talked about it, and you know, it was like it could happen, you know. I mean, if you can get a record deal, it's unbelievable. And

I went home and told my girlfriend. I said, look, it's you know, painting the sky. It's just too much. But Asian was very tenacious, you know, and he must have seen something in me because it took about fifteen months, but we eventually got a record deal and I wrote songs and I sang them and I became person. You know. So in those fifteen months, what were you doing and what was the band doing to ultimately lead up to

this record deal. Well, we had a there was two artists from the Royal College that owned a warehouse on tool the Street, which is just south the Thames, and

Adrian knew him. There were eccentric guys that were great, but he had this rehearsal space called Base in the in the basement of this great, big tea warehouse, and we used to go down there and audition people or just you know, go to the pub next door and have a beer and talk about it even more it was all you know, it's like, um, we talked about it more than we were it. You know. It was like and I went home and wrote songs and then I came back in and we'd work them all up.

We got Tony down the drummer. It was a hot drummer in London, and then we had something. We had a three piece bound, so we were in the studio and cut demos. It was unbelievable, you know, it was actually moving forward in a sort of like it was weaving, you know, but it was moving forward, and eventually we got we got signed through doing a video, which was very unusual. And man, this is about fifteen lifetimes ago. It really is. You know, it's hard to it's hard

to look back without being misty eyed. But it was. It was rough. You know. We didn't have anybody to eat. It was all handsome mouth. It was desperate, you know, and London cold and rainy, no heating, no hot water. You know, it was kind of you know, it was it's chance in a million that it turned out like it. Did you signed with Chrysalis? Did you just walk in a room and sign or do you hire a lawyer

or how did that happen. Well, the band had a lawyer, but the band was certainly provided the lawyer by Adrian. I mean, I knew it going in. You know, if you sign on for something, you can't start blaming people. It was a raw deal for me and a good deal for them. But I came as part of the package. And but it was a huge signing and we got some money and an allowance. You know, this is a big deal too back then, and we got on with it.

We just I kept thinking, no matter what happens, if you just keep you know, punch it, you're gonna You're gonna come through somewhere. I just thought that was always going to be the way out. It's just stay with it. And it was fantastic, you know, coming to America St. Louis recorded St. Louis and seeing the arch and the whole thing, and and New York City in the seventies, you know, wow, l A. And then going through Cleveland where I just you know, cut my teeth and it

was all kind of meant to be. It was ridiculous for me. Okay. So one of the big points in the movie is you work with Bob Ezrin. It hasn't done Pink Floyd the Wall at that point. But did lou Reid's album, did all the Alice Cooper records, and you talk, what a bad experience that is. He just didn't get it. I mean you really, I don't want to, like, you know, make a meal out of it, but it was I don't I don't know how he missed it. But in the Andy stuff coming to the studio, you know,

it was we're being produced by the engineer. It's kind of unbelievable because I know he's got a great track record, but my experience wasn't good, okay, and he's normally in Toronto. Did he cut it in London or in Toronto? In Toronto? We went all the way Toronto to the studio, which costs a lot of money by time you're done, so you talk about the record, you're not happy, but you put it out anyway, So what to like starting with a record you don't believe him? Well, it's the weirdest thing.

We took it back to England. Everybody here everything about it, and I think the record company thought about it and decided just to go. I mean in London, those posters on the on the sides of busses. You know, we'd be talking to somebody in the street like in Pickadilly Circus and the bus that go by Young Ambazon you get out of the subway, the underground that posts of the battle that you know, and we were on the

major TV shows. It was like out of life of its own and I suppose you wish that people are gonna see it for more than it is, but I think we would have made a much better record with a different producer. Okay, Now, one other element in the movie is you're in the UK. It appears that Adrian Miller is going to fight with the label and he instructs all of you to come back, but you don't, right,

So what was the real story there? Well, the real story is that, I mean what was what what was going on with him in the label on it was being threatening. I think he based his life on being one of the greatest twins, you know. It was one of those kind of Eastern gangster kind of like alright, my how you do it? Taken facing tif in night

you do it all say? You know, it was like it was unnecessary, but that was part of his persona, and I think he went to talk with the company and wanted more money, and the company had already spent an aminal leg on the album. And then how does in America doing a twelve day promotional tour. We did all the major TV shows, played live, let the press, uh, record signings. We were in the middle of a whirlwind

promotional thing and it was going well. And we were at the highest in Westwood in a suite and the phone rang and it was Adrian and Uh, it was like, pack your backs, you're coming home now. It was like, what the fund are you talk to me like that? For you know, it's you know, I'm the singer, I'm the writer, and I've just spent two years living off you know, French fries and milk, and you're telling me I'm going to get out a plane because Shervan Arow

with the record company. Can't you sold it out? And he was just that. He went straight to Adrian number two, which is kind of like, you know, you'll do what I'm gonna tell you to Samuel manager and we just looked at each other. He got us all on the phone one by one and said, you know, you've got to come home now, and I just said, you know, I mean you can make that what you want. But if we had gone back, would have wound up without two the street, we wouldn't even a clubhouse, would have

all disappeared back into our lives. It was over. It was a hard decision to make on some level. And I never felt right about saying no suation because he was he was the guy without Asian. There had been nothing but this part of him. There was always about more money and we weren't getting any, you know, so it was kind of like survival, you know, That's what it was. It was survival. So what did he say when you I mean, you do you ever basically say

you're fired? How did that go down? Well, you know, we just the record company says us, what do you want to do? You know we could we're in the middle of this. Said well, we'll funk it. We're coming out. That's it. What what what do we do? And they put us in a house in Beverly Hills. Uh, and Adrian rang up the FBI or the police or something. But the FBI knocked on the door about four days later, um, wondering if we've been kidnapped. I mean, it was just wild.

You know, you couldn't make this stuff up, and we had Bill Graham and a least like really huge managers coming to the house to see if we're consider being managed by that and stuff. I mean, it was something a matter of a sign before it exploded anyway. But without Adrian, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I wouldn't be where I am. There'd be no solo career, missing you or anything. None, none of the big success of the biggest success to the baby said, none of it

would happen. I just wish you would be more amicable, you know, more more able to deal with other people to get what he wantsed you know, how'd you end up with Rob Stone? Um? He came by the house with Elliott Roberts and Elliott made me laugh. I mean, we had one guy show up. We looked like Perry Como and he had this like sweater on the button at the front and like a sports shirt and it's

really bad haircut, like a Republican haircut. And he said, and I said, well, you know, who have you worked with? You know, because I was pretty much the spokesman. This guy said, A little band you might have heard of him, the Beatles, And yeah, you know, so he was immediately shown the door. You know, it was like, get the fuck out, get away from me. But Elliott was funny and very intelligent and Ron me and Ron just we

just became great friends. We've been friends, I suppose on and off he is and uh, you know, and they were very connected. They had Neil Young, and Neil Young was to me like, uh he was my Dylan really at that point, and Joni Mitchell and they had the cars and I think they had Devo. But they were players and they were respected and we hit the ground

running with them and we really had a ball. And then there was an argument between them and the record company of the money and that was the end of that. So money kept looming. It's oh what happened between Lookout management in the label and how did you end up partying ways with them? Well, I think Elliott went then and said, listen, we can't move forward this motion debt. You know, let's just call the debt experience and let's kick it off for the new you know, we're in now.

And they had a big rather record company and it's just wouldn't work with them, and so that was it. You had to get a new manager. Yeah, and who was that manager? Well, that was Renaissance, manishment, that was Renaissance. They had Ray Davis, they had the Kinks, and we hit the road. I mean after the incident with the guitar player, we got Jonathan Cannon and Ricky Phillips expanded

the band. Bab became the singer. Just decided to do Baby Smart too really and went out and and toured relentlessly. Great fund that he went nowhere. Okay, so the second album, how do you end up working with ron nevison Um? He was He just came along when we got to l a We we were staying in l a Um after the Adriaan thing and doing the odd TV show and ron was a series of one of different producers that we were introduced to. You know, he worked with towns End. That was a big, big Townsend fan, and

you know he had an authentic rock track record. So now you're in the studio for a second time. First time, you have a bad experience. How is the experience overall? And there's a big focus on the making of Isn't

It Time? Well, isn't It Time? As the song we didn't write, it became apparent that we needed to hit single, or the company thought we needed to hit single, and Yon had this piano demo and it was we're all kind of good at arrangement, but we told we tore it to pieces and remade it as as what became like a soul Brittish rock classic. But um runket engineer, well, we had the big room at the record plant and we were using a mobile unit out in Malibu in

a in a ranch house. Um it worked. You know, it's still not what I saw as what we were, but um it worked, and those records stand up today. So how do you feel, and you know, you're a bass player, you're a singer, you're a writer, how do you feel about having to do someone else's song and that becoming the hit. Well, it didn't please me. I thought the songs were that I wrote were better. There

was a song on the third album, call You. It was like people still shout for it now and I wrote that one weekend, like and it's really well, I look at it, I think how did I do that at that age? But there every company hated it. You know, you go up against these people that think you should sound like something when you don't, and you're a drift. You know, you're just fighting the record company all the time. I don't know anybody that that hasn't had that problem.

So how does it end with the babies? Um? I left Jonathan can get off the trub With Journey, we hadn't had a hit record. Um the big record we had we said first the third record, and we had every summer I think of you and head first on a M and F M simultaneously. Was as big as we would ever get. It was fabulous, you know, and we were playing to sell that place. It's so opening

for bigger bands and leaving everybody on their feet. We were at the top of our game and the record company just couldn't do it, and I just wore out and I went back to England. Really okay before we get there, you worked with Keith Olsen. Yeah, of course is no longer with us, but had great success with the Fleetwood back with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Yeah. How was that experience relative to Ezra and Nevison, Well,

it was more me and potatoes, you know. I think at that point we were used to playing live on stage as a four or five span and nailing it. There were no effects on it. It was just like a really tough band and we wanted to sound like that in the studio and he made that possible. You know, he was passive, he didn't have a lot of input on the music, but he was there, you know, through the long hours of recording and getting it right. And you know, he was a good guy. So when you

go back to England, you're worn out. What's your plan? Well, I got married, I you know, and I lived in the countryside in a tiny cottage and I had no interest in coming back and doing it again. But it worked out that I would. Well what a little bit slower. The woman you married, how did you know her? Well, she was my girlfriend when I was seventeen and we'd come to America together with the babies. We moved to California and then she went back. She didn't like it,

and you know, it was just a natural thing. I've known it for ten years. Okay, and you're out of the babies. Are you thinking, well, I'm gonna have children, I'm gonna get a straight job. What's going through your mind? Yeah? I had no idea. I had like six grand or something in the bank and this little cottage and shared a job at local paper, and I just didn't Honestly, I never thought further ahead than two or a few months.

I don't know why, because you know, I'm cool enough to look forward, and you don't want to provide for a family whatever, But it I just don't know how we survived it. But I got off at a record contract with the m I and I went back and I have missing you, and everything just blew up again. Okay when you went back and got married, how much were you and out and how much were you disillusioned? Oh? I was through with it, you know, I was really

through the music business. I didn't ever want to sing again. But I did go back, and I say I made a solo record for Christmas. I moved to New York City at a small tidy crash battle sent the Second Street, made the Ignition record with Neil Geraldo and and then I quit and went back to it. So, you know, Bob, you should have done the documentary because you know this is like, you know, this is in depth. Man, I'm sure there's only you and I vaguely interested in the

past life. Well, you know this is I won't make it about me it's about you. But as I say, I resonate with a lot of what you're saying. I'm not a successful musician, but the internalization and wanting to be heard. But moving forward. Okay, you're when you were married, you've never had children? Correct? No, know, is it something that you thought you would have or you were kept kicking it down the road, or is something I'm so

dedicated to my career I don't want any Yeah. I think it was finding the right person at the right time when things weren't falling apart. I mean, it's a journeyman profession. You're flying by the seat of your pounts all the time and you're on the move, and it's a you know, I look back at it now, I go, how the hell did I do that? Or go without

this and do that and make that happen? And you know, I was in a relationship a few years ago with a girl that had a kid, and you fall in love with the kid, and we spent enough time around the kid, it's just a natural thing to start suggesting stuff. You know, you start becoming somebody's dad, and it's a it's a nice experience, you know, Um, it will never happen now, and I think long in the tooth now, So it's kind of like I wouldn't want to leave some kids alone. He was ten when I just put

my clocks, you know. Okay, let's go back to the woman you marry that's also in the movie. How does that end? It just endswered me being away so much that we became strangers, you know, and she the same thing. You start living different lives, you know, you really do. When I also have to ask, because rock and roll, were you being a bad boy. I was a young man and I was an idiot, you know, but I think, um, I think that the marriage was definitely on the rocks

long before we started full. I think we're just different people. I mean, I'd taken it to America and she really didn't like it, and what did you go home? So I think I was going to have to spend a lot more time in America. Let's do what I was doing, and you just spend You're just on the move. You're trying to make things work, send money home, the whole thing. You know, I just naturally he falls upon. Okay, so

now you're back in the UK. You've made this album that was not commercially successful with Neil Girraldo did you know Neil Giraldo? How'd you hook up with him? No? He he came forward at some point I was looking for producer and said I'll do it, you know, and we we had long conversations, went for a couple of walks at a few drinks. I was working with Ivan Kroll for Patty Smith's band and Iggy Pop and Frankie l Rocco Um had a really crack New York band.

It was. It was a edge, edgey band, you know, And I think, left to my own devices, I would have gone off and works with Chris Spenning. Me and Chris were talking about doing a band with Buster Jones. And but Neil what a guy. I mean, he was between me and the record company. It was all of lost sort. So she me in the record company. I hear they heared me. But we made a great record. It was really a record that stands up, you know,

and both power. You know. If it was good. So you go back to England, you think you're done, Yes, what is the trigger to come back? Well? I met this lawyer in tracks on seventy two Street before I quit, and he kept in touch and when I went back to England. But what's the name of that lawyer? Rick Smith? Okay? And then there was another guy called Stephen was shot and they became partless and they got me out of my deal with Christmas. They got me out of my deal.

It costs an armon of leg that I got away, and they got me signed to E M. I and everything just changed. The sun burst through the sky, you know. It was like they took me seriously amid the record of White to make. I produced it and we had number one single overnight. Okay, although you go into it, tell us here the story of writing missing you. Well, I was around at somebody's house. We'd we'd finished the record, and I knew we hadn't got the single. We were

having a bone in the studio. We were writing songs for me and the guitar player, Gary Myrick. We just storming. Wait, wait, I have to ask you something. I was a huge fan of that first record, She Talks in Stereo. I bought it. Yeah, I went to see him at the Roxy. How did you cook up with Gary Myrick through Gary Gersh at E M I. I think I think Gary Gersh was s tiking to Gary Myrick about doing a deal, and when I was looking for guitar player, Gary said,

you know, he should meet Gary Merrick. It might be interesting. You know, he's he's so out there, but he's great. And I said, okay, sure. I mean Gary showed up and we had the Trauma from Tom Petty's band sitting and Flee was on base Uh and Gary and we hit it off. It was just like magical. It was like, let's go, and we've made the record in record time, like in six weeks from meeting. Off the plane too mixing, and I knew we hadn't got a single. I knew.

I knew enough about the business now it worked to know that come and go so fast. You get a great review in Rolling Stone and then people go back to what they were doing. And I wanted a hit single. And I was working on this song with this guy in his studio and we've been there a couple of days while they were mixing, and he hadn't put any

colde on the tape. So he's hitting play and forward and reverse and play, and he couldn't find the song worked on the night before and he hit the playboaton at the wrong time, and this thing had been working on like an eight note field with terrible phony drums and some good guitar plan but it was the backing track for What's a Nice to Be Missing You? And I said, let me have a crack at that. Just let me have a go. You know, I'm always gamed

to do that kind of thing. I was good at that in the Babies, you know, I could make stuff upon the mic, and I got it. We ran through it once, he didn't record it, and then he read He recorded the second one, and I got the whole first verse, and of course, you know, I mean every road that I've been ever been on led me to that moment, and I knew it was number one. And that was my next question. People don't understand when you do something that's on the leven you oh, you know exactly.

You touch something like a microphone in its life, and you got like this, you know, it's like getting a shot. And I hadn't even it was like sleepwalking. I've used every time I Think of You as the first line because it was a baby sun every time I think of you, And so I had no idea what I was going to sing, and so I sang that first line and the rest of it just happened. I always catch my breath and I'm still standing here in your miles away, and I'm wondering why you left. And there's

a storm that's racing through my frozen heart tonight. You've missing you at all since you've been going away in one piece. And yeah, I always could do that. Most of my lyrics come from that place. Have just close your eyes, step forward, don't overthink, just open up. You can't count on it. It's a very feminine thing. If you go there too often, or you disrespect and thank god, I'll take care of that tomorrow, it goes away, it ignores you. And if you save it for the right moments,

it's almost like having a a secret lover. Is somebody that's just waiting for you. You know. It's intense, But I'm sure that something is brilliant as fast Car by Tracy Chapman. I'm sure she sat down. She's going doom doing doom ding. You've been a fast is it faster? You can find one? You know. I'm sure that all the really beautiful songs in the world that are really heartbreak come from that kind of and and the really

tremendous rock and our songs. You know, watching Paul McCartney right get Back in the in the recent mood, you know you can see him, you can seem like zoning out. The other two are looking at him. What was he doing? And the next thing, you know, get Back evolves out of like two courts, two courts. It's magical. Okay, you write the song, you know you have something. Are you worried about nailing it in the recording? Uh? I never worry about that. That would be I'd be making that out.

I really am in controlling the steet, you know, I really I know when it's not working, I don't know what it is. Um you know, I mean I was pushing myself so hard. Does it say one that rightcord? I would prob these same things twenty times. Oh so it was what I wanted it to be. So it's a completely different era. You have a new label, it's a new era MTV. You have a song that is obvious smash. Does everybody say get let's get behind this, let's make a video, or do they put the record

out and say, well let's see what happens. Oh no, Jim Marsa Jim Marsa was the head of the company. Gary Gersh was the n R guy, and French Shi Gautier the late French shiputy. It was the art department. They were they knew what they've got. I think it was a lot of good will towards me at that point. I think people would watch Christalists and they're like, oh man, And then with a solo album, I think there was a certain empathy, you know, people want to see me succeed.

What about the video, Well, I used the same guy that I used for Change, and I was very happy with that video, so I suggested him and he came along and made a great, great video. The to tell you about am I and Gary Gersh, I mean, I was in New York City mixing the record, staying at the Mareflower, and we went to see a David Bailey exhibition, me,

Stephen Michelle and Gary Gersh. David Bailey is like the premier photographer of the sixties, you know, and this is a crazy wins Paul mcconde and meet Chuck the Shrimp, you know, you know, it's just fabulous stuff. And I turned around to Gary and said you should do the album cover. The next thing. I know, I'm in the Concorde flying to London to work with David Bailey. I mean, that's that's what my life was like. I mean, you think you think this is like I mean, never, Sary,

you asked me a question. I can give you like four stories that led to that. You know the answer. But you know, hey, you know, Gary, you should do the album cover Concorde, here we go, you know, and working with David Bailey, he shot the album cover. I mean's just this times, just things cover less they do sometimes the only energy in the world that's that you've been looking for to to lock together like a wooden puzzle, you know, and it just clicks and it did. What

was it like seeing yourself on TV ad infinitum um. Well, it became a bit much because you know, I think Missing You was like number one on MTV for like fifteen weeks, and there's a point where you want to say, that's really great, thank you, you know. And I was still a bit shy about it. I couldn't do out in New York, whereas before I could go out, but now when I went in a bar would put Missing You on the tube box and started buying many shrinks

and stuff. It was just different and I didn't didn't really know how to deal with it at first. It wasn't that comfortable because it was really a step forward from being famous to really famous. You know, a different world. And the reason I love New York is that just disappearance the ground. So it's a different world for me. And how much pressure was there on the follow up album? No question? He offered me a large amount of money, which I needed better. I hadn't go any money. Um

as seen how someone it's to bias. It just gives a record and I just looked at my cattle and looked what I've got, went to work with Ivan, banged up some songs and made Damascus Smiles album. It's a different album completely. There's there's like four or five extremely strong songs on that one. But I wasn't shooting to replicate successive Missy. That would have been in basilic, you know, it would have been just stupid. It's like, write something

that sounds like missing. It wasn't gonna happen. Once you reach that pinnacle, to what degree are you striving to replicate the success And to what degree you're disappointed when you don't reach the holy grail once again. Well, it didn't bother me. I honestly thought if I could be and it's in the documentary, but I meant to, if I could establish myself as a singer, and right then I could make any kind of recordsitant to make every other year. I wasn't going to be on the Merry

go round. I could write my own ticket. There always be money coming in. It wasn't going to be do or die. It was just art, you know. I didn't see any reason to be Madonna, you know, I mean, that's that's a that's a whole different thing. Man. That's like that's a day job in itself. And you specifically said that's not me. Well, yeah, no, I honestly did. I want you to just make great records and have a follow me. I mean, what else is there? I mean, after a couple of years of being top of the pops,

if you follow that path, you usually finished. But if you do the Richard Thompson thing or whatever, it is, like it sounds and so well, you know, you try, and you know, give the best you've got for the period you're in, but it's it's if you can make it last for five years. You've done something almost impossible.

You know, I'm here after forty years. It isn't chance, you know, so I know chance to Emford's old is publishing your interest in missing you go with it or you still have I got it back in last year. I finally got the publishing back on Missing You last year. So now it's it's you know, it's it's really worth something there and you plan to hold on to it. Or if someone made as if somebody comes out that

would work in obviously twenty million for my publishing. I would certainly put down my coffee cup and and turn around and talk to him, you know, I certainly would, And at this point in my life that would just give me complete freedoms do anything. I won't really Okay. And so you're making these records with E M I America. And one other theme is on the in the movie is whenever you really are an inch away you have great product, something happens with the record company. So what

happened with E M I? And then certainly a mob go there after that field? So tell us about those situations. E M I. I had this record call will always returned. We have a number one single in our and our records and whatever it is radio and record Yeah, yeah, in the older and I went to Germany. Were run by Robert Kardashian. No, yes, the big Kig right special k but yeah, and I went to Germany to do

some TV to promote the single. I came back and the record had gone from number one to like And what had happened is the E M I man in My America and overnight become in my Manhattan. And they changed the head of the company, that changed the offices everything, and it was really great. I have nothing. Joe Smith came in. He was great. He tried to salvage everything. But the team gets broken up and you can't blame

on anybody. It just is how business goes. And they tried everything that made the right videos and I got truly grain to manage for me and it was like here we go, but he couldn't. You can't selve me something like that. It's a train wreck. I mean, even to get involved this heroic and I E M. I were nothing but great with me. They were just stupendous. The new regime was cool. Everything was cool. They were nice people. But yeah, sometimes it happens. You know, you

might go, I had a hit single. I had a song in the true Romance movie Quentin Tarantino. Uh Tony Scott shot the video filmmaker and Monument Valley, and that was really my best work, best fan I've ever been in, best songs, the whole thing, and a month out, imago folds. It just happens. All this stuff just happens. You can't take it personally. A couple of years later, I bought the record and re released it, so I own it and so I don't have to watch the record just

get cooked in weeds. I can still promote that record, and I'm proud of that record. Well, you're very upbeating philosophical about all this in the movie, you don't seem quite as settled. What do you want snow? That was the pandemic? How about anti antidepressants therapy? And they come in no no alcohol, boy, it's it's I think it's it's the pandemic. You know, when when you have that much time to think and everything's going wrong, I'm sure it's gonna have a shared let's do it. But you

get pragmatic when you go. You know, if you've been around the block a few times. You learned to live with the stuff that happens. So how does that English come to be? Well? I was. I went to Epic to get a record deal, and the A and R guy I didn't like my songs and I really wanted to be on Epic. And Trudy Green, my manager, would have liked me to be there. She was the biggest best brutalist in the classiest record level. And me and Trudy left the me scene and I was going like,

I can't work with that guy. You know, he doesn't even like me. And I remember walking down Madison Avenue and saying to Trudy, I'll start a band. I'll start a band and we'll we'll be on Epic, but I'll be the singer in the band. Was just starting the Richard Griffith R. Yeah, yeah, yes, it was. You said you're gonna start a band. Yeah. I went all of them. I went to England looking at guitar players. I was going to track down Johnny Mark to see if you

knew anybody, and none of that happened. I didn't do any of it night In the end, I I want to work with Jonathan Kane Neil Sean, Ricky Phillips, and dinkashanovo Um. It's said about five months to arrive at that point or four months, and from that point on he just took off. Well, you had a history with Jonathan Kane. How did you get Neil Shaan involved through Jonathan Kane? And Neil was just like, Journey is not happening. I'm in Well yeah, I mean, you know, I mean

I think they always had problems there. They're always seems to be very political, and nothing was happening with them. And Neil just wants to play, you know, he just wants to plug in and play. So now you go back with the band and what is what do they say? Yeah? I knew it, you know, you walk in with those guys and yeah, you know, guy, I'm gonna like to STWN And it was like, we love it, We'll sign it. He's a very large check, you know, and can we

have your publishing? And you know, how are you doing? Can we have dinners tonight? You know, it's just like it's certainly in a different level. And I got a huge publishing advance from Sony and everything was back on track, you know, And how did you end up doing the Diane Warrens song. Well, we've done the whole album and the this is a great story and the A and our guy left us alone. Who is they say in

our person? It was done Grayson, Okay, yeah with us, so you can sell I don't want to, you know, it's a nice guy. And and I went to the ban and said, listen, Don's been really great. You know, he staid out the way most of the time, and he's he's trying to be as flying on the wall as possible. And he asked his song, and I know, Diane, it would be great if you just tried the song, you know, at least you know, it would be just good. And he said okay, and so it went in at

the eleventh thound. Could when I see you smile just to sort of show the company that we were capable of working with them when we liked doing and everything was cool. And we just looked at each other like, oh no, you know, it's at it. And the big question was then at Frontline h K Management, was do we not do this song um or do we have a number one single? It was like that that awful folk in the road, you know, Okay, Well, it ends up being a huge hit. Yeah, but then the band implodes.

Why does the band implode? Well, I think it's a lot of tension, a lot of egos, a lot of um, too much business not of music, you know, and when the band falls apart, you say another day in music business or you're pretty disillusioned depressed about I went back to my house in pound Ridge and that was the end. I really didn't want to do anything else or ever again with the music. You know, I had enough money coming in at a lovely house in a wood and uh,

it was just like I just didn't care. It wasn't like, you know, it's sacrifice. It was like I just want to get out. And then I got, after about a year and a half, Agot offer to deal with him algo and I did all these songs, you know. So I went back in to make one lass solo record about New York City, and like I said before, Temple Bar was toldly my best record. Okay, but then the being the label blows up. Yeah, so how do you

get pulled back in one more time? Well, ron Stone, ron Stone, I I see making Temple Bar, it was like the watershed moment. I went back to be a writer. The slightly corporate element of bad English and nauseate me. But I was I didn't want to do with myself, and I thought I had to redeemed myself. That's the truth. And I saw. I wrote the record the Downtown out More in God's Shadow, Glittering Price. This this was like the best I ever got, and it reawaked my interest

in writing. I couldn't stop. I felt like I'd become an artist together, and uh, I wrote a record. I drove across America when the record company went down. I went to New Orleans. I drove in a cheap Cherokee down to New Orleans, sent up through Kentucky to Ohio, and then east to New York City back home. But I wrote most of that album When You Were Mine on that trip. And I've fallen in love with country music again, as with Temple Buds, a slight country influence,

baritone guitars and stuff. I'm so lons I could tries on that, but on When You Were Mine, it's really a bluesia, more folky kind of approach. And uh, you know, there's no choice. You have to make this, these these albums. It's not like a great. You know, it's not biblical, it's what I do. It's just making music. So how do you end up getting hooked up with Alison Krause which is in the movie but We Got You Now? Well? I, Um,

I was in Nashville, I was writing songs. I was doing a Goodest It's album and I was re recording some songs and I got to Missing You and I thought, well, I can't do anything else with Missing You that I haven't been already. And I thought, well, I'll do with youuet who would I like to sing with? And I was watching the American Music Channel and Alliston was on that with New Favorite when I became aware of them and my manager wearing her manager and said, John would

like you to sing I Missing You? And she said yes, Well she said yes. The record was very successful in the country world. But you continue to have a connection with Allison Ryan. Yeah, we're friends and um yeah, I mean we did another done limp so um laid down beside me and I was living in Nashville. You know we were close. Was it ever a romance? Um? You know that would be nice, okay? And then another big thing in the movies, you go out with Ringo. What

you said, one and done. Now, Ringo historically goes out with different people. Oh, the band is somewhat solidified in the last couple of years. So you got to play with Ringo and meet Ringo, which of course is amazing. But in the everyday experience of doing it, how did you feel? Well? It was tough. You know, it's extremely competitive with the All Stars. Everybody's trying to do the right thing and shine, I'm just trying to play bassis.

Shut up. I would have just played bass and not some if I could have, because if you look across the station there he is a strangoes stuff, you know. And it was stressful, you know. I mean, yeah, I mean I'm pretty I played through a high standard. But he played with Paul McCarthy and so I had to go back to playing the base and nothing but respect. I mean, how could you have anything? But I was nervous, you know, But it was it was it was very demanding.

It was really demanding. It. I think that the fact that there was Paul Carrock, Sheilary, Colin Hay, there's a lot of very famous individuals on stage, and I think we go there first to play with more musical kind of situations. That's what I think. And when did you realize you didn't want to do it again? What the ring? Yeah they won't. Well that's why I'm asking. So when I went through your head, you showed up a rehearsal and he said, what the fund did I sign up for? Yeah? Yeah,

you know it's tough. It's a tough gig. Everybody's like joking and everybody's like, you know, I didn't do that. It's like getting the funk out, you know, where I would stop a song and Sam, I, it's just the right note, you know? Am I playing the right note? Here in the bottom is this is this isn't the right key. People just walk away stuff, And I'm going, like Jesus Christ, can we just sit down and him through this stuff? But there's the thing about it being

um low impact. I think there's the thing where you're supposed to show up and play made people smile, shakegounds and walk off, you know. But I think he's he's got a really good cool band now and uh we was on a bit of a perfectionist. I would like to think that I'm a perfectionist in that situation. Okay, going back to the songwriting. You started out doing it yourself, but if you look at your credits, there's a lot of co writes. Was that something you were pushed into?

Is something you don't? You know? I found myself. I can write by myself standing on my head, but I don't really do a good trouble of it. I think that, uh is it a d D when you can't concentrate? What is what they call a d h D? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I think I've got that. If I have somebody in front of me and the only play like two chords, and I take everything from that point and run with it, do the lyric can write the rest of the song

of the mountain and the whole thing. As long as I have somebody in front of me, I'll write a song. It's either that are extreme lessons, you know, and it could be that too, But I need a sounding board. I need someone to bounce off to entertain. Maybe it's a show off too, I don't know. But if somebody plays me a minor chord and I play something in the base, that isn't necessarily what you would think was going to happen between the minor code and the Madge goode.

I'll suddenly have a song, but I won't get that input without the guy playing the minor chord. So it would much preferred seven days a week to write a song with somebody. Me and Glenn Burnar toll to till and write stuff that makes me wonder how we did it. But it's like completely spontaneous, and I am best at being spontaneous. I keep a lot of notebooks, write down phrases all the time. If I'm reading a book, I see a passage go by and go that's great. How

did you think you know? I'm very about words. I love them. But when I'm singing and when I'm writing songs, a lot of it just happens to the back of my mind. I must have made a mental note, or I must have keyed into some image that would go over another image. But you don't know that you start singing. But I get the melody the words at the same time, and I have no idea how I do it. I can't take any credit for anything I've done there was any good, because I'm just making it up as I

go along. I might take it home and finish it and polish it. I mean, sometimes the story songs like Bluebird Cafe or Masterpiece of Loneliness. They have real themes. And I don't know what's good and what's not anymore unless I believe it. And if I believe it, it's good. If I don't believe it, it's ships. Well, someone like Burton Dick, who played with sticks but lives in New Jersey. How do you hook up with all these people you

meet Bernick? I need Bernick for I needed a guitar player when I was in New York and Uh, he'd been a fan that he'd actually lived next to us me in l A when I was staying with the babies and never said alone. But we got introduced. There's a great guy, and we started writing songs and we wrote Downtown, which is probably one of the most penultimate songs. It was just like Downtown. We wrote that on a beat offul Steinway at Sony. He had cigarette burns on

it and he's missing. It's all attitude. And I was trying to write a song for true romance. I wrote a song with another guy, um Mark Spiral, called in Dreams to Go in the movie, but it was true romance the song and there's this beautiful irish, wasted lonesome East Coast, New York Manhattan thing on this Stein Way.

It's all otta tune and Glenn's playing these chords and I would just jump up and um the engineer with hippocorde, that's sing the first line, and then he'd keep playing the songs about how about you know the most and then I would just shoot out of my seat again. You you can find me in the temple ball and and it's not making a cheeksil really. Sometimes it doesn't come out in one piece, it's just lines. But this thing comes out of the mist and I have no idea.

There's no cleverness to it, there's no guile, there's no talent. It's just like completely it just comes out of nowhere. But at the same time you're editing, it's such a clear, focused way. I mean, I really knew where that song was going. And it's about scoring trunks, you know, and people think it's about all this sort of stuff, but it's a it's a very dark song. But you don't know what you've got, so you finished it, okay. So the movie has a lot of live shots from the

present day. How long is this band been together? How did you find them because you mentioned earlier they all live in different locations. And then sometimes it's acoustic and sometimes it's elected. So tell me about all that. Well, I met Tim Hogan, the best player in Carmines Italian restaurant fifteen years ago. Okay, on Santa Monica Boulevard. Yeah, well no, no, no, no, no no no, in Times Square, oh that car yeah alright, hey, more than one common

and uh yeah, And he offered me his coat. He was snowing outside and he said, to my coat, hadn't got a cold. And we became friends, and he became the best player. Uh, and became part of the organization and just to stellar human being. And then Mark was shouted was working in a guitar shot as a friend of Tim's, and we took Mark on. We couldn't get a steady guitar players, so I said, okay, let's you know, we have to play these shows. Let's give it all

to Markam Mark. It's given a huge amount big shoes to step into. It took him a while, but he arrived um in spades. You know, he's a tremendous guzapa and and he's he's gone from being a guy that works in the guitar shot to a tremendous guitar player. And Alan Chiles was in the no Brakes dound that you see um at the beginning of the documentary, a young Alan childs with Karmene Rojas and Elsli, Tommy Mandel. They were all in the North Breaks. But I met

Alan in Las Vegas a couple of years ago. He said, if you ever need a drummer, called me, and I called it. So that's it. And some of the days we do, like in theisis like storytellers and it's two acoustics, electric bass and drums, and you stop the show and you do requests, so you talk to the audience. You play these keys again, Downtown, Saint Patrick's Day, Masterpiece of Loneliness, Bluebird Cafe, in God's Shadow, in Dreams Missing You. It'sn't it's good, you know, I mean the songs that you

can really I know, it's not even singing. You sort of like sharing a story and people are like, you know, looking at you. Let they're listening to a story. And then the other version of the band, this would come out two fisted, all electric, and it's it's an entirely different anymore. But we do stop in the middle and do Bluebird Cafe Acoustic no matter where we are. If

they're gonna throw a ship, they can throw it. But we've tried that this year on to about seven thousand people at night and you could hear a pin drop, you know. That's that's why how I get out of bed. That's because that isn't synthesizers and bullshit and big drums and it's like it's a it's a simple acoustic guitar and vocal. And if you can get seven eight thousand people to go completely quiet and listen to that, then you're in the right place at the right time, you know.

And do you have a manager? You do it all yourself. No, me and Tim we have if work comes to me, have an Asian and they ring up and sim says johnah, go and play this gig for this much. We can do that. We can do this gig the next time and say yeah, oh no, can we go and do it? Who's the agent um Blue Raven? With Blue Raven at

the moment? So do you ever go to do you ever go to them and say, well, you know, I want to work from April through June, just book something now, it's not like that, you know, you you you can get to the point where you're just playing ridiculous places. You know, we want to keep it sort of classy. Want to play thesis and interesting listening rooms and sheds. You know, spent enough time playing out the way places.

I mean, I want to play like the City Winery kind of thing that those kind of gigs are great, But they know they can't just go out there and say, okay, we've got to book it right through tune in July and August. You know, it doesn't work like that. And you talked about playing the seven thousand people. How many to the time do you go out alone? Where do you go out in the package? Um, well that was

the package. That's Vix Strength fielding men at work. But we do a lot of gigs with Neil Gerraldo on pap bennettson UM and then we play like thousands seat headline maybe more. Uh, you know, it's it's not one thing all the time. You can maybe do four gigs being the opening act for a band that's really establishing your plans to Seventh Town some people, and then you can go on the next night and play a headliner. Uh, and your pens a fift hundred people and maybe on

the third night there's a six hundred listening room. It's like an art sense. So we can do the unflipped thing and you love all that and then you go back to the opening for somebody or whatever. You put it together. But the idea is to play the best places possible and bring it. You know, if you're playing so out the word places of God for a bit of club, a low club, you know, it's like, man, you're supposed to bring it, and you know those kind

of places you don't want to go there. So do you have enough money saved and income that theoretically you can stop working or you're working to live? Oh? No, I've got money in the bank. And like I said, I own my own place at publishing and we're working, and I own most of cattle. Like you know, it wasn't almost like that. I came back up from really being kicked out of the music business. I was. I was just stubborn. I wasn't going to go down and stay down, my dad. I'm always to write songs to

sing and here I am. Are you gonna die on stage or at some point, I hope no. People keep saying there's a great line in Steve Elle's song um fort Worth Blues, and he says, you always said the highway was your home, but we both know that that ain't true. That's a wonderful couple of you know, it's just really there are romance of going kicking the bucket

on the road to me is bullshit. You know, you want to be somewhere where you're really happy and look back at your life and said, okay, so what would it take for you to stop? I'll let you know. I think there's a moment, honestly where you put your hand up and said, thank you, it's been great tonight, and you walk off and yes you might change your clothes. You walk out, it's the parking lot, get in the van, and in your heart you know that's your last show,

and I don't want to be around you know. I mean, you see some of these pants. You know there's a same amount of sex in votes in rock and roll, and the only you get. I mean, it's nice, you know, to see all the people play, But I think that's the point where you know you just should make yourself scarce. There's a lot of people went to get on stage. So the movie opens on December six. Where can people see it? I don't know. Like I said before, I

had absolutely nothing to do with it. I did the interviews, I knew the guy that brew all together, but I I've had no input. Somebody told me that the different cable's stations it's gonna be on, but I didn't make a note of it. Okay, And uh, there's certainly a website the hard Way the movie something very similar to that. If you google John Waite in the hard Way, you'll certainly come right up. And I think it's gonna be

on demand on multiple platforms. And as I say, the movie is excellent, not because I'm blowing smoke, but otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you. And it's intriguing. One is with whether one is a fan or not. But in the back of your mind, do you think that this will be a boost for your career? Yeah? I think Like I said before, and you called it, how

do you over think was it? How do you say? Uh, what you wrote about it and what you wrote about constant so mar of the entertainment business and people getting ahead and the ephemeral thing that comes. You know, I couldn't have agreed with you more. If I was better with words, I would write all that down aside roads, I thought it was quite brilliant. And I'm not blowing smoky but but I thought, honestly, that's how I see it. And I've always had a pretty good fan base. I've

just been through I mean the shadows, you know. But I mean, I'm working a lot, and every time we show up, it's like, you know, it's great, but I suppose it will um, I don't know, you know, I don't worry about anything like that, Bob, I really don't. I just sort of like get up, have a goot of coffee and start the day. I don't plan ahead, and I saraily don't plan ahead moored than six months.

I have to a big point at the beginning of the movie is how difficult you are and it has to be your way and it doesn't uh bode well for relationships with our business relationships. I'm talking to you now. Oh, I don't hear any of that. So he said, we're not making We're not making art, you know. I mean, if if you were producing me and I had this song and I had this music in my head and I could hear this sound that I wanted, and I knew where the lyrics should go. And you're saying a hi, John,

nobody uses that word. Use something else. They go like, no, it's a beautiful work. You got, like, oh, come on, now, you know I go no, and then you know things go to the next level. But but that's you know, I don't believe in any of that. I think, you know, when you produce a record, everything live and let the artist have his head. If he's worth going in the studio,

he's going to deliver the goods. But I don't want to be the flavor of the week or or like somebody suggests I do a certain kind of song because it's like happening now and the kids dig it. I mean, I'm not interested. I'm just not And yeah, if that makes me difficult, and that's what I am, Well, you're having how thin. Seeing the movie, it sounded also the way it was portrayed that part of your personality makes

just everyday relationships difficult. I mean, are you the type of person who goes and calls friends, hangs with friends, or you're basically in your own head until you go out to work. Yeah, um, I think I'm pretty hot. Surrage. Sometimes there's a lot going on. I wish there wasn't, but I tend to be You know, half of my mind is writing a song all the time, always thinking about a line from a book, Oh, cowboy music, you know, and whatever it is. But half of me is always

away elsewhere. You know you're happy? Are you happy the way that things are? And you'll continue to do your gig until you have that moment referenced earlier or in the back of your mind. Is there one big goal or achievement that you still or a bar that you want to reach. I've been doing it all my life. I honestly feel like I've been a success at every step in my life, even if people were not there to witness it. Oh, he didn't sell a million records,

bout ten thousand records. I've always done what I wanted. That's been a success. It really is. I know it sounds like a speech, but I've been about the great luxury of loving what I do. Oh my life, and you can't buy that. And I've had a wonderful life. I haven't missed the bills I once, so I believe in what I've done all my life. I'm very, very lucky. Well, it's been wonderful talking to you. It's you know, you're very forthcoming and honest. You don't hold back. You can

feel the integrity and the motion coming through. So John, I want to thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you, Bob. It's um, it's it's um. Since you reviewed the documentary, UM, we've had like suonomi of interest because you have such credibility. But uh, doing the interview and reading your review, UM, I think we're pretty much alike mind and it's a pleasure for me to talk to you too. Well, I'm smiling and my shinees makes it hard to uh come back. But thank you so

much for that. God bless you. Thanks for everyone. Until next time. This is Bob left Steps