Leo Sayer

in Australia. Why astral h good question. Well, after I had made my first record and silver Bird my first album in I went straight to America on tour because things were happening on a lot of a lot of interest in America, and you know, we signed up with Warner Brothers for the USA and Canada at that time, and South America, I guess, and the rest of the world was Chrysalis Records in England. Um. And after the American tour which went fantastic, um, it was just a

huge success. Uh, there was a call for me to come to US Astralia. So I came down to Australia. And when I came, it was by this time and a buzz had already really started. So I arrived in Melbourne, I think it was arrived in Melbourne to absolute well, it was like Beatlemania. You know, the airport was jammed with people. There were people waving at the plane as we came in from the observation deck of the airport.

And journalists were immediately, you know, beseeching me, and I had lots of stupid questions asked at the airport, you know, like why did you come to Australia, what do you or even what do you think of Australia. Well he hasn't even got it yet, you know, so it was crazy. And but this tour was just amazing and I fell in love with the place. And we had a a sponsor, a wonderful guy called redg and Set who ran an airline which is now defunct called and Set Airlines. And

Bob had his own private plane. So he said to me, Um, do you want to what places would you like to go to in Australia Because we'd had an incredibly successful to us sold out everywhere, so he wanted to give me a gift and he just said, look, I'll fly you to six places you choose. Just put a pear on the map and we can get there. There's air there's air fields everywhere. So yeah, I went to the famous airs Rock you know, which is now Ulura Uluru

as it's called the area you Laura, um. And we went to Northern Cans and we went to Broom where they shot the you know, Chariots of Fire movie, and you see those guys, you know the Endless sands. That's that's this incredible place. And we went down to Tasmania. We we flew to all these places, and I made myself a vow that one day I was going to come and live in Australia. I don't know why I

made it, It was just an instinctive thought. But when you see the beauty of this place and you feel the space and you feel the you know you can be lonely here and yet happy. How can I describe that? It's it's it's it's solitude that you can reach in this place. Um and and a little bit less bs than the rest of the world, you know, they're a

bit less hype. So I kind of over the years, I started coming back and coming back and coming back, And when I finally moved in here in two thousand and five with my lovely partner Donna Teller, who was also a man my manager at the time as well. UM. When we moved in, they asked me how many times you have been to Australia then, you know, this is the immigration standard question. I said forty five, which was the absolute God's truth, you know. So so hey, it's

my it was my second hand home, you know. But but let me say as well, I've always loved working in exile. I mean when I lived in when I lived in the States, in in California, and in briefly in New York, made all those albums during the seventies. Yeah, I felt really good at being away from home. My father was a merchant seaman, so basically he sailed around the world as a ship's engineer, and I suppose I followed in his footsteps. I always loved traveling, and I

love being away from home. It pushed me more, you know, And I think being here it pushes me to prove myself all the time. Even though I'm seventy four in May, I still feel I've got a lot to prove. Okay, I've been to Australia a couple of times. I know most of the people in the industry there, and they talk about how far it is from everything. They are thrilled when you actually go there, kind of like what you're saying your first time in nine Oh. Yeah, absolutely,

but they also talk about the distance. It's certainly well known in terms of bands Australia has the best live bands because they're limited number of markets they have to play all this time. But do you feel somewhat disconnected from the business, from the news, from anything. No, No, not at all. And I think that, you know, I mean, look at here, we are talking on zoom and we're

able to reach the world from wherever we are. I mean I follow Formula one, you know, Grand pre Racing, and most of the journalists who work on that, um that business was always centered around England, around Britain, rather like my version of the music business was always centered around Britain. You know, it had to be Britain first. That was the where you know, you've got the best equipment for the studio, and that was where you kind of that was where you worked. If that was your

that was your field, your place. Now, all these guys in Formula one, they all live in Spain, they all live in Italy, they all live in Germany because they don't need to be in in Britain to do their work. So just like that, I mean, I think I've talked to a few rock journalists who live in the Demonic American rock journalists who live in Dominican Republic or Mexico, you know, or Canada, because we now have linked the

world by technology. So I think you don't and I think you know if you if you follow some of the the news media to find out about what's happening in the business. Like this morning, I was looking at Mixed Magazine, and you know, they're they're blog and finding out about some new studio gear that I'm interested in, and I feel like, yeah, at that moment I'm reading Mixed Magazine, I'm I'm in California, you know. So so I I think the world has got small and got closer.

Air travel is easier as well, you know. I mean, COVID's put a spike into a lot of what we do, traveling wise and international wise. But I think that I don't feel disconnected, and I wake up every morning feeling at home. You know. Let's start at Formula one. They were just in Melbourne, did you go no, no, no, I'm I'm a bit off it at the moment, although I talked to about six different friends who are down there,

you know, so I get the inside track, you know. So, so yeah, and I over the years, I've just become a little bit less of a racing guy and a little bit more of a more of a chronicler. And I mean, I'm writing my book at the moment, Bob. So I'm one thousand, four hundred words into the book and chasing my chronicling my life. And I've got a vast amount of material here. I'm working on everyday research, you know, research, research, research, find out what I was

doing on June the eleven. You know, You've got a couple of things. Let me ask. Yeah, George Harrison was famously into Formula one. He was a good friend. You were into Formula one? But what was the appeal back then? I think that we all grew up. You know. Look, boys grow up to either want to be racing drivers or fighter pilots. It's the fantasy when you're at school. Maybe soccer players or American football players, or baseball players or tennis players. But mostly I think boys, you know,

like that dare devil sport. You know that that that devil may care kind of dangerous thing that you do. You know. So I grew up with motor racing. I used to follow Phil Hill and Sterling Moss. My father raced motorcycles, so you know, just as a spare time kind of thing until his mom, until my mom stopped him because it was too dangerous. Um And I remember him taking me to the Goodwood Race Course, which is

very famous now for historic events. Um And we went there and Sterling Moss crashed and right in front of us, and it was a crash that nearly finished his career. And I it was just one of those moments when I just I thought that the smell of the petrol, you know, the whole kind of screeching of tires, the whole dangerous excitement of it, I just found very compelling. And you know the most beautiful part of that story is that Sterling Moss became a friend many years later

because I met him through you know, Formula one. Of course, now he knows I'm Leo say I'm not Jerry Sarah any longer. Um And and we became pals and I used to go to dinner with him all the time. So it isn't incredible that you meet your heroes and they become your friends. Okay, staying with Fromula one just for another second. Yeah, why are you off it now? And what do you think of the Netflix series? If you've seen it? Can I say the word crap. Absolutely,

you can use if you want to. It's fucking crap. No. Um, I just think it's all become a little bit less Vegas, you know. Um. Of course, the Americans group, you know, big group have taken it over, and of course they want you know, you know, lots of lots of bodies at the track, and they want to appeal to young kids and girls and all of this stuff. But it's not as pure as it used to be and the rules are starting to get fudged around to kind of make the best, uh, you know, the best result and

netflix the series. Although it's very well done, of course you can't say it's not. Um. It tends to kind of bring up kind of you know, it makes it makes stories that aren't really true, you know, I don't know, fictionalizes it and sort of dramatizes it. And I think over dramatization, life's exciting enough, isn't it, Bob? You know, do we need to have a dramatist kind of rescript everything? I mean, it's it's a bit like when you watch a biopic movie. I can't watch the Queen movie or

the Rod Stewart movie, whatever they are. You know, I just can't watch them because you know, they're just kind of you know, enhancing all the details to to cry and try and create something that somebody who's just not interested in the subject of, say Jim Morrison, will be attracted to. But I mean, anybody following the life of Jim Morrison, boy, that's exciting enough as it is, you know, I mean, I agree totally. Let me just ask you one,

why dramatized Janice Joplin When Janice Jock it was Janis Joplin. Man. Well, that's one of the things that we've lost. Of course, when you went to go see these acts before YouTube, etcetera, and you experienced it live, it was something transcended. They cannot be replicated today. Just the final note on Formula one, Yeah, I got into it. But the final result last year with Verse stopping taking over Hamilton's in the rules, I'm eating out dreadful. Well, that's that's what's kind of that's

what's led me to this position. I mean, I gotta say, I mean, it's really a shame when you get your best protagonists a bit a little bit like you know, um, some fights are coming in in Muhammad Ali's Prime and with four hands, you know, and you know, four arms, and they let him box and he beats Ali of course because he's got four arms. Um, and you're going to call that legitimate, you know, it's the same thing. Really, I mean, it's just I think it's kind of cheating. Personally,

I think that guy had that race one. He driven brilliantly. His story is the story of the greatest of all time. And I'm going to be controversial here and I'm saying, is it because he's black? I don't know. I mean, you know, it's a really it's a really difficult one to get into. But they wanted the young, the Stapend

to win. They got for Stappen. I mean, the first thing he did was put number one on his car, which I think is kind of gratuitous, you know, to say the least, because they all have their numbers and their logos going with that. And of course you've got the right if you win the championship to put number one on your on your team, but on your car. But I mean mostly those drivers, they don't race on those kind of ego principles. And and here you've got

an ego guy. Well you know, well, we'll see what happens. The best news of all with to close on Formula one is the Ferrari now looked like they're they're wrapping it up. So that's fantastic that the oldest team, the most traditional team. UM it's too young, wonderful young drivers. UM is doing what it says on the packet, and I think that's beautiful. If the Red Car wins, I'll be very happy. Okay, let's go back to what you said being in exile. Now, let's just talk about recording music.

So do you find it's easier to do in isolation and exile? Yeah, well, I I've developed a way of making records completely by myself, and I'm very proud of it. I'm It's taken me a while to get there. But you know, if I go back, I started as all I wanted to be as a painter, an artist. I was into you know, people as various as as as Marcel Duchamp and Mark Rothko and and and Henri Russo and and Van Gogh. But I mean I wanted to be a painter. I at school, I was great at art.

That was my great ability. I was a dyslexic kid, so I leaned towards the creative side because I was no good at the practical. My father was an engineer. He was ashamed of me because I couldn't add put two and two together. And I mean until I was nineteen, I couldn't even tie my shoelaces. I didn't know what left and right worth? Could you really not tie your shoelaces? I really couldn't. I really couldn't. I was I was. You know, I'd bulk at anything technical like that because

the laces would go in different positions. So my brain told me, you know, left and right position, all this stuff. I mean, I still can't play drums. I can't coordinate one hand on the other, so going you know, having those disabilities leads to incredible mind and creative abilities. You know. So I could imagine things. I could I could see things. I could work out perspective and distance in my head. So I was born to be an artist. Now I

went to art school. Um, my parents argued with the the art school uh burses when we got in, you know, so to say, he said, I don't want him be in a bohemian and get him a job in commercial arts. So you know, I went into a commercial art course, you know, to do that, which was very frustrating. But I would bunk off all the time and go to the life drawing classes and go to the art classes and hang out with all the fine artists. You know. So I was already a rebel in that time. But

I don't know. I I just had this creative brain. I've always had that, and that that I mean, I could sing. I sang in the church choir. I had a wonderful priest who taught me to sing, so I always had that in the background. And apparently I have perfect pitch, so you know, that gave me the gift of always been able to know what note I was singing and tune into the sound of birds or whatever in the background, you know, So I could find those things.

So when I actually got to the studio and I did working, of course, nobody would let me near the control desk and that they just put me on the microphone. But I mean they were amazed that I could walk, I could go out and have a sandwich and come back and sing in exactly the same key as I had left the room singing in you know. So I had those gifts. I had those abilities and I was

a quick learner a good observer as well. So all the years that say, from seventy four, seventy three, maybe seventy two, all the way until um, I was working with other writers and other producers and learning their craft by just observing them. So now I've got to this

finite point where I can do the lot myself. And so I believe, going back to the art theory, that if Van Gogh and Picasso and all those guys didn't need somebody in the room to do the blues and the reds for them, why can't I do the lot? If I call myself an artist, I should be to make the whole thing, so I should be able to

learn the technology to make it. Slave to me absolutely, So, you know, based on our discussions and preparations, it seems like you're very technologically savvy intuitively, so I think I think it's an intuitive thing. You know that I honestly I read manuals and I don't know what the hell

I'm reading. And sometimes my engineer, live engineer, Damian Young, great guy in Melbourne, sometimes has to do a screen time thing with me, you know, with team viewer and come onto the screen and sort out what I can't do. Oh no, Leo, you do it like oh, I'm going,

Oh my god, what a klutz. But but we get there, you know, because I'm determined, my determination, and I can't believe I'm seventy four in May and I'm still this ambitious, determined guy who's got to prove all these things to himself. But that's how I am, That's how I'm built. Okay, So how much equipment do you have in the studio? How professional is it? It's pretty pro I mean I work with a computer which is kind of highly boosted.

I've got a whole server system in here, about twenty one terror bytes of memory, and it's a whole radio system with backups. If the power goes off here, which it often does because we're in the country, um, I've got a twenty four hour backup, so everything just clicks in and works. I've got accelerated Internet as well, which which helps me stay on touch with it all. I

have a necessar desk, some beautiful mics. I've got a new mic by a guy called Lowton who's built this incredible mic which David Crosby as well uses, and Dave Crosby's engineer was a guy that I knew, so I quizzed him about mikes and he said, throughout your name, throughout you annoymans, get this one. So I've got this amazing mic that just makes my voice sound really sweet. I've built a booth in my studio all on wheels where I sing in. So i have a big open

space barn here. I'm speaking to you from one side of the barn, and I'd say it's about a thousand square feet and it's all open. But I've got these things called clouds, which you know, basically give you acoustic treatment over where the monitors are and everything. I use Miller and Cries or monitors. I use Crane Song, which is Dave Hill who created the Summit brand, and then Crane's song. I use his mike PRIs which are fantastic. And I've got a lot of expensive equipment, um incredible

electrostatic headphones and these these Planar Dan Clark Audio. I'll give him a plug from California. And you know, I've got all the toys, Tina Turner's old Newhiman microphone and some beautiful A kg s. I've got all the toys and I can basically, you know, start a project by myself and not bother to call anybody, which is great and that's what I love. Okay, So you have a new record, Northern Songs, which are covers of Beatle records.

Did you play all the instruments, do everything yourself? Yeah? Everything? So how did you do it? I mean with the Beatles, I always imagined how I would treat those songs, being very cheeky, you know. So it's a kind of it's an interpretation first off. So you know when people hear it, they won't hear direct covers, you know, they'll hear um leo leo phid versions, you know. So we've changed the beats and we've changed the field and all sorts of

things like that. So that's the first point. So I heard these songs in my head, and I hear things in my head sometimes from dreams as well. I've write songs in dreams. And then I just I mean, I have seven studio here, let's say, because basically I've designed it so that if it's the winter, you can instantly turn the it's it's hot here in five minutes. Big radiator hydroponic system in here. Great air conditioning for the summer.

So I'll get up in the middle of the night, straight from a dream or straight from some imagination, run and immediately come in and just start working on something. The fact that I'm not using another studio really helps because everything is ready to go all the time. So wherever you were last into a song, say working on the base, if you leave it alone and you go away for a few hours, you can come back and just carry on. And I just hear all the lines

in my head. I've I can dissect all the parts of a song in my memory and just work on them and put it all together. Um, I've just got this, found this ability. And I suppose the dyslexia has helped in a way because I'm able to kind of really dig into my imagination or my mind and and use that for all my work. You know. So I start with a basic template. I'll put down a drum beat a keyboard. Go. Okay, just to be clear, you said earlier, because you're slexic, you couldn't play the drums. So these

are electronic drums you're putting on the record. Everything is played from a keyboard into the computer. So every note relates to a keyboard. I don't really use pads. Some people use pads, you know for drums and everything. I know, I don't do that, and I tend to cut and paste a lot of stuff, so I tend to I have a vast sampler library, you know. My my, my, my computer is relying on about eight terror bytes of memory, slaving to it from various things and from various other

outboard uh memory units, you know. So I've got all these samples, and somehow my head always manages to find the right sounds and the right um, the right grooves as it were, you know, on the drums, to to give me the field. So I'll use lots of different elements to get there. Sometimes some loops as well, so I mean get back on the record. Is just the drum loop that I found from some guys that work with in Denmark, and he gave me a CD of all of his drums, and bang, I'll put it all

together from there. Um just added some symbols in the right places, you know. But I just love that feeling of control. You know, you can do things yourself. It is possible. You start off with the drums, told us how you built the track from there. Yeah, build a track basically, put down a keyboard. It's it's it can be a tiss in process because you're writing a song at the same time. So I'm I'm writing lyrics at that moment um and and you know, working on a

vocal line. Um, I don't know, it's it's it's just it just comes, and it comes fairly easily. I have to say, it's hard to describe the process. I'm supposed to do something soon for I think it's Mixed magazine actually, um where they're going to look at my studio and the way that I work, and and they said, they don't know anybody who works like me. I mean maybe Todd Rundgren did when he was doing his a cappella record and a few things like that, but they don't

know anybody. Stevie Wonder of course does everything himself, and Prince did as well. But at the same time, Prince would bring in musicians to work with an engineers, he would always have around. I have nobody. So I think what I'm doing is pretty unique, you know. Okay, how about acoustic instruments. Do you play guitar? Do you play all these other No? But they're all available as samples now, you know, I mean wonderful program called Native Instruments. UM.

Just to name one of them. They can give you strummed guitars. So basically you can get a guitar which will go ding ding ding ding ding. Now, you might not like one of those beats, so immediately you go onto the screen and cut that up and then get it to work in the way that you want it to work. I mean, when I'm working, I often start off a song. I'll be completely in the wrong key, so I'll have to move everything, so it becomes an extraneous process, you know. Um, But that's that's okay. I

mean anything to get there. And I gotta tell you, I mean Northern Songs. It's the second album that I've made like this. So I made an album called Selfie, UM, and I called it Selfie because I was doing it all myself. UM and I that came out a couple of years ago or so. UM. And they can be a long process. I mean, I don't care how long it takes. The Beatles projects started ten years ago, so um. And I have an engineer, an amazing engineer that I use for mixing and and also, you know we he

does the market mastering as well. He's called John Hudson and he used to be an Olympic Studios who ran Olympic Studios, a very famous studio in London. And he's the guy who recorded that brought all the Bryan Adams songs. You know, um he recorded Tina Turner, he recorded He's got Grammys for Tina turn What's love got to do with it? All those tracks? We don't need another hero. John is probably one of the best mixing engineers in the world and he started mixing me way back in UM.

And you know, when I was working with this guy Alan Tani, we did more than I can say, and Richard Road and a few other songs, and John was the mixing engineer and I always got on well with John. And one day I moved in here to as I say, two thousand and five, and in two thousand and seven I got a call out of the blue. Hey, it's John no Going, what what are you doing? And I noticed it was an Australian number, and of course his

wife is Australian. He said, well, I packed up the studio, I got out of there, got fed up with it. There are a few complications. I'm here in Australia, so I said great. He said, look, I'm looking for a studio to work in. I said, well, I know there's a studio here called three or one Studios, which is linked with Abbey Road. It's my studio down here, is quite beautifully equipped and everything. And On is the genius with SSL as well, you know, always has been one

of the best mixing engineers. I mean, I mean he did he did the the the Live Aid song, you know, and all of that stuff. You know, so he's he's the genius with SSL. So when I told them John Hudson was down, they said, oh, bring him down, bring him down, and they gave us a room in there, and with we only had computers in there and a little mixing desk. But that's how the project started. Just literally he was off the plane but a jet lag and I played him these songs I was working on,

these Beatles songs. I played him Strawberry Fills, Forever Um and Norwegian would eleanor Rigby with the Michael Jackson kind of beat to it, and and he said, great, let's let's mix them. He mixed them straight away, and those are the mixes that are on the album there from ten years ago. Okay, let's talk about the Beatles. When

did you first hear the Beatles. I think I think give Us Love Me Do, which was the first really real proper single that they made, and I was at school, I must have been about fifteen sixteen something like that, and this song came over, and I've got to say I thought it was pretty cool because, um, I like the way that the guy John Lennon was I'm just

checking the time I had thirty two minutes. Um, I liked the way that the guy it was playing harmonica because I was playing harmonica at the time and I was playing, you know, I was just learning the harmonica, and hey, this guy with the Beatles was playing the harmonica. That's pretty cool. So that's what made me listen to it. I mean, I was much more into Buddy Holly and Elvis and and blues music basically, and folk music, you know,

Woody Guthrie and things like that. I hadn't quite discovered Bob Dylan yet, which was going to be the big one for me, but but yeah, I was. I was intrigued. I loved Lonnie Donnie Gun and you know, and skiffle and and pure music, you know, Sunny Terry and Brandon McGee, all that stuff, and here comes this guy making this pop song but he's playing a harmonica, so it's pretty cool. I think that was the first time I noticed them. So what was it like experiencing the Beatles in the UK?

We know ed Sullivan Beatlemania and the United States. What was it like in the UK? Well, I think that we were watching them develop, you know, and that was what's interesting because they were based here and you see them on the streets. I mean. I used to work in the design studio when I was about eighteen and left art school. Um and I was in a design studio in London and John Lennon used to visit Yoko ownA who had an apartment on the top. That was

when they were first dating. Um Well, she was in the apartment with her then boyfriend, so John would come and visit. Now, the the art gallery guy that Yoko was with didn't like anybody smoking upstairs. John smoked like a chimney, so he had to smoke down in the yard where I had to smoke as well. Because basically we had a lot of chemicals in the in the

art room, and you know, you couldn't smoke there. So I would go down to the backyard and there's this guy was turned up with the white suit and I knew who he was, um, but I couldn't really sort of say hey, Mr lenn and I just couldn't bring myself to Oh I'm a big fan, you know, I couldn't bring myself to do that. So I just said,

had I mate? And uh? And he said hello, mate, back, you know, and we shared Siggi's together, and sometimes he'd roll a joint and with our smoker joint together, and you know, we were smoking companions and it's really kind of funny because you know, you know, he said, what's your name? I said Jerry, And I said, yeah, what's yours? Oh, John John? And I think he kind of got a kick out of the fact that I wasn't John Lennon and him or beatling him, you know. So so we

we became hey, how are you today? Yeah, good mate? What's up to? I'm just visiting Yoka up stairs. You know, I'll be here for a few hours anyway, you know, tell me what you're working on today. I'm doing a cover for this band, you know, and he said yeah, he said, I know a bit about music, you know, and we'd we'd play this kind of decoy game where you know, we just wouldn't admit who he was, which

was very cool. Years later, Okay, spin years forward, I'm making my first album, silver Bird, Um and Adam Faith who's managing me and producing it with David Courtney, my co writer as well, but co producer with Adam. They decide that we've got to go to Apple Studios. I mean, Adam is a complete beat or nut, you know, so we've got to go to not Abbey Road, sorry, so to Savile Row the Beatles, the Apple Studios to master

the record. And there's this great guy there called Porky Peckham, George Peckham, who's probably one of the great mastering engineers. He was used to He's known as Porky and he you'd always his ascetates back. I've got a couple of them, and he'd always scratched Porky into that, you know, or else a pig sign so that, you know, very collectible

items now they go from thousands hundreds of thousands. But anyway, Um, we went down there to see to see George and you know, get on with the master and you know. And I was allowed to come along that day to

have a listen in. And I walked through the door and this burly guy kind of well I thought he was burly anyway, sort of pushes me out the way as he's coming, rushing out the door, and then turns around and apologize and said, I'm sorry, man coming just a clash of two people coming in the same door. And it's Lennon and he told me and said, oh my god, it's you. He said it's my smoking buddy. And I said, yeah, Leo and he said, yeah, I

know you're. Leo says, said you're you're down in the cutting room today he said, He said, I'm so glad things happened to you. He said, can we finally can we finally face up? He said, I'm a beatle, you know. I said I know. And he said, good to see you. Man. He gave me a big hug and went on his way. People rushing him out the door and come on, John, come on, and he's saying shut up and turning around to give me a hug. It was quite sweet. You talk about how influential Bob Dylan was to you told

us that, Yeah, I think I think. You know, I had a cousin, an older cousin. Um, I'd never experienced Bob Dylan before, but I loved Woody Guthrie and you know, uh, all these people that you know, Bob loved, you know, the folk musicians. Um, I love what they were all doing, rambling Jack Elliott, I'm I'm remembering all people like that who were in Dylan's Psyche phil Oaks. You know, I

love what they were doing separately. And then my cousin, my older cousin, went to stay with him in the Midlands, in England, and he pulled out two records and he said, because he had a record player and he was collecting stuff, and I'd heard Bill Hailey and Elvis Presley with him, you know, okay that was great, but I could hear them anyway on the radio. And he he just bought this record and it was Bob Dylan, the first Bob

Dylan record. So this is three well, I think sixty two was the first one in America that was mostly cover sixty two. Yeah, yeah, no, that's it's sixty two. And so here's this record and I'm about fifteen sixteen and something like that, maybe even younger. And he had that record and he put it on and the voice and the whole kind of I don't know almost the anarchy of the whole thing. I mean, the guy couldn't really sing great, but the voice was obviously put only

trying to sound like an old guy of sixty. Um. But there's something gripping about it. And the songs, I mean, fixing to die, Please see that my grave is kept clean, the House of the Rising Sun. The songs were amazing,

and his songs as well, about you know about Woody Guthrie. UM. So this this record just kind of stayed with me, and I asked him if I could borrow it, and he let me borrow it, and I take it back and play it on Dad's radiogram, you know, those old kind of systems that we had, and and listen to it and listen to it, and it got into my bloodstream.

And then when the second record came out, which was Free Wheeling, I was straight to the record store, you know, using all my pocket money, all the money that I I gained by getting paid for delivering church leaflets from from the church, all that sort of stuff. You know, I I um, I went and put all my hard earned into buying that record. And it wasn't a disappointment.

He was even better because now he's writing more songs, and or at least that you know, he's putting more of his own songs on there, and he's got a story to tell, and he's writting about Hattie Carroll and people like that, and you know there's the protest songs. Times were changing blind in the wind Man. This next series of records that I had, every single one, brought

them all on the first day. I was absolutely totally gluten and I thought, that's the man I want to be, you know, when I finally grow up, that's who I'm going to be. I'm going to get on the road. Through him. I found Jack, Carol Akin and Alan Ginsberg and you know all these great writers Steinberg, Steinbeck, you know, John Steinbeck and Cannery Row. You know you're reading all these things, Albert Camu, the outsiders. You know. I don't know, I I just it opened up a whole world for me.

It opened up the world as well. That told me that the spoken word, the poetry could be great as music. You know, That's what it opened up for me. And and I was trying to be a poet at the time, you know, I was always writing down, you know, everything that I thought of and trying to kind of wax lyrical into these lines and on the page. And suddenly, I don't know, some time later on, I think maybe even when I was first working with David Courtney, come

right there. I would look at these old old lyric books, these old poetry books, and David would say, hey, I've got an idea for a tune, you know, and and he'd be playing away, you know, dump dumped, the dump dumped, and don't don't don't on a piano, and I go, I'm a one man band, you know, so and that would come straight off the lyric sheet, you know, or the poetry sheet. So I was using what I've written

between twelve and sixteen. That's was the first album that was all of my poetry from those days, the basis of those songs, the basis of the lyrics. Let's go back to the beginning. Where did you grow up? Shore on My Sea a little town between Worthing and Brighton in Sussex, right on the English Channel, fifty miles south of London. Yeah, on the coast. How far from Brighton? It was in between, I say, about seven miles from Brighton and about six miles from Worthy. The whole Branton

Mods and Rockers thing. Was that amplified in the media or was that real and something you were aware of? Oh? That was truly real? Yeah, yeah, I mean we England basically had had of you know, after the war, which costs England all its economy, you know, because it puts so much into it. Even though your Yanks came over and helped us out, we still had to pay for

so much ourselves. So I mean I grew up when when I was fourteen years old, I still had a ration car really, so there was still rationing of some things. You know. I grew up without sugar. I've never had very much for sweet tooth, so I think I'm getting one hour's I'm getting older. But we didn't have candy bars and things like that, you know, so it was all very basic, rough stuff, and our our politics became

very safe, you know, very authoritarian. This is where the Conservative Party came in um and basically you know, trying to tell everybody we're so lucky to be free from war. Uh, that we must kind of be prepared to do it hard. So you've got a youth that came up in the in the fifties, i'd say, and then into the sixties

that was very disgruntled. You know. They didn't understand why when all the American kids had drive ins and and rock music and and you know, girls were allowed to wear bikinis, we didn't have that, you know, so they they kind of, I don't know, they felt that they were left out, you know. I mean when Rock around the Clock with Bill Haley came out in England, it was this phenomenon, you know that all the kids would go to the cinema to watch it. Now, wow, can

they really get away with that? You know, so everybody's dancing and jiving. Nobody would dance and jive in a in a concert or anything in England. You know. It took a little while and visits by Bill Halian, Eddie Cochrane and gene of Vincent before that happened. Um, and that was into the sixties, you know, fifties, the fifties, none of that happened. So the early sixties descent in the youth was growing in England and I suppose the Mods grew out of that. I mean I was on

mod um at school. Uh, and then the slightly older guys would be the Rockers. They had all the motorbikes, you know, the Mods took on the scooters just to be different than than the rockers. And in Brighton, you know, as the Mods came into being bands like the Small Faces, the Kinks, um, you know, them playing the music that the Mods liked, Um, the the there came a clash of culture with use. You know. The rockers were teddy boys,

you know. They they kind of like live life, loud and rough and very leathery, and the Mods were kind of really stylish and bespoke, a little quieter spoken. I mean, later we got skin heads out of Mods, but that's a kind of different thing because that kind of almost leads you to punk. But basically us Mods, I mean we went to great tailors and had fabulous looking suits,

you know, in silky material and really cool shoes. We wanted to look clean and bespoke, you know, rather than the rockers who looked like they were covered in oil from their motorbikes. So you had this clash going on, and it all happened in Brighton, and the who I suppose was the big mod band that I left out there, and and and the who are kind of you know with my talk about my generation describes it all. Really, you know. I hope I die before I get old.

Did you have a scooter? No? No, I couldn't have had one. I mean we had no money. That was for rich mods. I had a bicycle. You're singing in church? Yeah, Yet you want to be a fine artist. How do you ultimately get into the music business? Happened really by accident. I had a pretty good career as a graphic designer, commercial artist, illustrator, even designed type typography. UM. I had a pretty good career. I left art school after only

one year of a two year course. UM. I was supposed to Uh, I was supposed to do longer and I didn't, um I I. Um yeah. I cracked out of that and got a job straight away. And all of my friends at art school, UM were They was still working around a very boring what I thought were very boring graphics scores. Uh. And I had a job amazing. I'll probably digress for a moment here, because I've worked

in a studio in Brighton. I had this gorgeous girl that I fancied like mad in the studio who came from Detroit and one day said her American boyfriend was coming in to town. So she said, I'm going to London and I said, what can I come with you? And she said, yeah, I was looking for some companies, so I'm thinking I'm in here. Of course I wasn't. So we went up to the Strand Palace Hotel um in Covent Garden and a big wooly head guy, tall wooly head guy opened the door and immediately hustled her

into bedroom. I just sat on the sofa, I got my harmonica out and started playing. And he stopped what he was doing and rushed into the room, picked up a guitar and started playing with me. And that was Jimi Hendrix, who's just a little bit. What was Jimmy Hendrix's girlfriend doing working with you in the art studio, I don't know. She'd kind of come on some bad times with the family and decided to move to England

and she was working very studios. She was pretty good, good designer, good good illustrator as well, and we did a couple of projects together, so you know, we got on very well, and she just said, yeah, I used to go with this guy as a rock as a rock guitarist, but he had no money, so I gave up, you know. But he was a good lover, so you know, that was that was why she wanted to see him again. And and so anyway, so me and James Marshall Hendrix as he announced himself to me, or James Marshall, I

think he just called himself. Um, I didn't know who he was, but we were we were playing. He's a really good guitarists, great blues field and you know, and we just play some blues together and he reckoned. I could play the harmonica pretty good as well. And you know, so we jammed away while she sat frustratedly sat by the door until she dragged him back in the in

the bedroom. And then we we went back down to to to Brighton, where we worked and where I was living at the time, and she said cheerio, and I

didn't even get a kiss. And and and about four weeks later, because he told me he'd come into London on the invite to make a record by this guy who was the bass player of the Animals who have seen him play and all that, you know the story, and so he made this record and I went to my favorite records store in the in the in Brighton, in the this area called the Lanes where she's just walking streets and record shop called Fine Records. I remember it so well because that's where I picked up most

of my material, you know. Um. I and there's this massive poster on the on the on the wall, and you know, and the record cover. I'm going, that's that guy, and there he is, Jimi Hendrix. And about a week later, I'm in London and I go with some friends to a club called the Speakeasy because i've I've just done the record cover for a group called Humble Pie, which was Peter Frampton and and uh Steve Marriott from Faces from the Small Faces and I think it was Greg Ridley,

the bass player. When I've done the you know, did the cover and the photos of the cover, I kind of got chatting to him and he gave me his his we didn't have mobiles in those days, his home number, and I phoned him and he said, oh, if you in London, you know, let's hook up. And and then he said to me said he you know, we all go into the speakeasy. Do you want to come? And

so I said, yeah, yeah. So I went down there and walking onto the stage, there's all these guitarists, They're all the major guitarists are in the room at the time, I'm going, wow, you know, that's Sarah Clapton over there, that's Jeff Beck, and that's Steve how from Yes and all these guys are there, you know, and I'm you know, just constract. I think it's Harry Nilson who was doing the Big U. But halfway through Harry's set, on walks Jimmy and I'm in the front row, you know, and

I'm feeling kind of embarrassed. And I look up at him and he recognized me, and he jumped off the stage and gave me a hug. And all these guys, I look at me, who's he And I just say, yeah, I know him, Yeah, yeah. I remember Jeff Beck sidling up to me and said, hey, do you know And I told him the story. He said, you lucky bastard, and that was it. You know. There you go, being in the right place at the right time. Sorry, I digressed and digressions digressions of the space of life. Don't

worry about it. I'm a famous digressor. You played the Harmonic with Jimmy Hendrix. Ya. How do you ultimately start a music career? I was, as I say, doing commercial art. I was in London. Um, I took on a studio in in Hammersmith and and you know, we rented it big studio space, and I had a lot of artist friends, mostly illustrators. You know. I should say that I did some record covers in this time. I did uh, Bob Marley covers, clubs, scar covers, yeah again for Humble Pie

and people like that. You know, a lot of Ireland Records traffic a lot of those bands at the time, you know, so I kind of and every now and then, like with Greg, I'd get to meet some of the guys in the band, you know. So, so I was kind of close to that. But anyway, I booked this. I had this huge studio and I had a lot of artists who were working with me. And I wasn't very good at collecting money. I've never been a good businessman in my whole life, which comes to another part

of the story later. But uh, and I ran out of money and I couldn't pay for the studio and I couldn't pay the rent, and it was up to me to do that. So I don't know, I just kind of I left the keys on the doorset one day and I just I left. I left it of the guys left them a long note saying, you know, if you really want to carry on with this place, you've got to come up with the rent, and up

to you. You know. I think that they they caved in and didn't bother when they found out how much the rent was, you know, because they've been all there on the cheap. They were just paying me, you know, a smidge in to be in there. And I was just gladly giving them a space because it was a creative hub. And I got work out of it as well, you know, some work. But as it was drying up, you know, there was no option and no money, so I had to leave and I packed up my flat.

I went back to my hometown. I had some friends who had a houseboat. They lived on a houseboat um on the River Raida, the river that went through Shoreham and just near the sea the mouth of the river. This is lovely houseboat. And I stayed on the houseboat for a year. I had a nervous breakdown. Really I I couldn't draw and paint any longer. My graphic abilities just passed me by. But luckily, at the same time as He's marvelous cusps in one's life happened a bunch

of friends came to see me on the houseboat. One of them we lived on a houseboat a little bit further way of the mate of mind from school, and he was now long haired and planning guitar, and so he said, oh, I've got a blues group. I said, oh, that's great. I play harmonica, and so he said, yeah, well, why don't get together for a jam next week, you know? So we did and we started a band immediately, and because I had its loud voice, I was the singer.

And we went from band to band to band to band, and eventually a guitarist who I really liked working with, who was top notch in the local musicians um, who also wrote songs, came and lived on the houseboat with me. He was he had the next the next room on the boat, big old boat it was, and we started writing songs together and we decided to go. We had a band and we decided to go to an audition, and we went to the audition. It was for the you'd have heard of the Melody Maker of course in England,

the famous newspaper. So they had a battle of the bands going on. So they did it as areas and so southwest. I think we were called that area, which was Kent and Surrey and Sussex um and we won. We won our heat. But the thing was so badly organized that in the end I think that they they press gained a couple of bands from London and forgot about our heat that winners, you know, and we got to have pushed out. We never even went to the final show. So frustrated with that, we saw another ad.

We saw an advertisement um in the local paper, the Evening Arcuts, and it was saying, you know bands, bands, acts, artists, comedians, conjurers, whatever, you know, a new talent agency is starting. There will be a big audition at the Pavilion Theater on Saturday that da da da da da dah. This is in. And we turned up at the audition and we went

on stage, probably the last people to go on. There were lots of bands, uh, no audience in the theater you know, just all the bands watching each other, and we went on last, and the guy was holding the audition ran over and just said, you're it. And we sang a song I remember called Gypsy Dancer that me and Max Chetwynd, the guitarists, wrote together, and he stopped us halfway through and just said start that again. And we started again, and then he stopped us halfway through

and he said start there again. And I think he was checking that we could play it, you know, and he just turned around he said, I'm going to give you a job straight away. I want to manage you. Your voice is amazing, you know, And all of the other people just sidled out the room and it was left with us, and there we were, and Patches was the name of the band, and I don't know started getting talking to David's and he told me he didn't really want to manage a band. It was just his

dad's idea. You know. His dad was fairly wealthy, and his dad wanted him to do something legitimate. And he'd played drums before for this guy called Adam Faith. It was a pop singer. So one day he said, after we'd tried a few different avenues, and David and I had started writing songs together, me all based as I said before, on those old lyric books, those old poetry books,

you know, putting my lyrics in there. And he had these kind of beach boys kind of come Beatles kind of pop uh melodies that I would put my acerbic lyrics to, and and we had something. And I was a ying and yang kind of thing. It was very interesting. There was these kind of very almost sad autobiographical lyrics going with these bright kind of um but very dramatic kind of melodies. So we had something I think that was quite unique. It was a bit like I suppose

Bernie Taupin and Elton John could be. Because again you're meeting I suppose I had some eloquence to me, and David was had this kind of pop musicality, you know, which is very much Elson and Bernie, you know. Um. Anyway, we went to see Adam and I thought he wasn't very interested. I was left to sit in the car while he and David pow world. And then he came running out to the car and he said, right, I've booked you in the studio tomorrow. That's it. Get the

band together. So I went straight back, got all the guys together, said come on, we've got to get the van. Mike the drummer, had to take a day off work and get the van kind of filled up with petrol, which was quite a job in those days because we didn't have any money. Throw all the gear in the back of the van and straight up to uh, straight up to Olympic studios and yeah, and then we were making a record. You know, we're not knowing what we

were doing. I think the drummer turned out to be pretty app And in the next room the Who were recording, and I don't think Daughtry was there or Towns was there, but Entwhistle and Who and Moon were there, and Adam called Mooney in during a break and he actually played the drums on that first single while So and Meet the drummer came in and listened to it. You know, Keith wasn't there, but he's listening to a Playbank going yeah, I did pretty well there. It was the same part,

but it was much better played, you know. So um, I don't know, it's it's kind of it's funny when you look back at those times. We really didn't know what we were doing. I mean David and I. We sang a song on the B I sang a song on the B side that we've both written together. The A side was David's song Living in America. I think the folks in America they got it good in America. Not my lyric, you know, but it was it was fun. You know, here we were suddenly you're looking at another

career because Adam. You know, one of the powerful things about Adam was that if he said something was going to happen, he had the ability to make it happen. He had incredible contacts in the in the in the business, in the whole world of show business, and in the media. You know, he could just open doors. Remember once with him, just after Patches had been a single, Living in America had been released, we strode up to Radio one. Radio one was the big sort of you know, the big

real McCoy BBC. Radio one was was the biggest broadcast broadcaster, biggest station. And on Sunday they used to read out the charts. Everybody would tune in the whole country. The audience ratings were off the wall, you know. So Alan Freeman is upstairs halfway through the charts, when Adam turns up with this young aick um and and his new album and his new single sorry and meets the job's

worth at the door. We called him job's worth, it's more than my jobs will to let you in here, Mr. But but no they actually Adam faith and well, I'm going up to see Alan Freeman and said, well, of course, of course, go on up, so he knew where to go. We walked straight in the red lighters on on the door outside and his producer is kind of looking at us rather alarmed, but we breathe in and Adams says, take that rubbish off and put this on. This is

your next and that was it. We get our first airing, you know, on on the Alan Freeman Show Sunday night with the biggest audience in England watching. Okay, that's relieve the fantastic. But then the record stiff, the record still stiff. Yeah, I mean I think fifty copies. I think my mom brought twenty. Um, yeah, fifty copies were sold. I think fifty. It was on the Warner label, um, Warner Brothers label. Uh.

But but Adam wasn't daunted. I mean, the whole thing was not happening, but he just said, let's go on and make the album. So he'd met Richard Branson, you know, the Virgin guy of course. Um, of course was just I mean Richard just had a record store in those days and a record label that he just started, and he bought this crazy studio, this manor house with a barn next to it in Oxfordshire called the Manor, and lots of people recording up there, you know, Van Morrison,

the Grand Bond Organization. Uh. And he had an engineer, Tom Newman there who was working on a little project by this unknown guy called Mike Oldfield and it was she ended up being called Tubular Bells, and that was going on at the same time, and you know, Mike was in the studio when we weren't in the studio, and me and Patches were in the studio most days and then Michael take over and do the Witching Hour at night. We were all staying at the place. You know,

Michael was very friendly. Um, I didn't really understand his record. It sounded very a bit silly to me at that stage, but of course, you know, when it was finally finished, it was awesome, you know, changed the world kind of thing um. But you know, sometimes when the records being made,

you don't understand it. Likewise, Michael would kind of come into our sessions and say, said, your band is not very good, are they I say, yeah, I know, but I mean we we're learning, you know, we're learning, and Adam's going to sort it out. Well. About four or five days in Adams sacked the band and broad in session players. And this was awful for me because my friends were leaving out the door and you know, and I'm sitting there on my own with David. Of course,

David's my friend, but these are all new people. You know, Leo, what are you doing? And I'm trying to be Leo Sarah at the same time, because we've come up with the name Leo. So Jerry has become Leo Sarah And okay a little bit slower. Why not Jerry because I as known as Jerry the harmonica player. I used to sit in with bands with Georgie Fame and you know, and I play with people like Ginger Baker and in in in Alexis Corner's blues band, and I used to

see Bill Wyman a lot. I sat in with so many bands, you know, Um, there were the you know, in the rhythm and blues time. I once got up with John Mayle. I played with Muddy Waters and a folk club, you know, um, and everybody, oh, there's Jerry the harmonica player. And I thought, oh god, I can't be known as Jerry the harmonica player. And I was and I was going into a new world, you know. Here I was suddenly with this guy who was a bloody pop star, you know, a huge star. I was

doing television series at the time, Adam Faith. Everybody knew Adam Faith, and already there was an article in the press about this Adam Faith that discovered this new talent. And of course, a few weeks later, you know, the Roger Daughtry album is released. So but that's a very significant but that's later. Yeah, that's later. I'll get into that later. And of course, you know what I was gonna say is, eventually Daltry will be selling Leo Saya as his coat, as his songwriter. You see. So that's

kind of relevant in a way to mention that. Now. But I had all these people around me that were really believing in me. So here we are at the Manor, I've got all these session guys come in, they play amazing. Suddenly the songs are soaring. Suddenly we're really doing well. And then Adam Face just turned around and said, look, I can't afford to do any more recording. Um, you know, I just don't have the budget. So we stopped. And

then we were down in Brighton. I think I put on a gig and and and Adam brought a guy along called Keith Altham and very famous music writer and publicists later publicists for the Beatles, the Stones, the Trogs, Jimi Hendrix, of course famous for being the guy that persuaded Hendrix to set light to his guitar. Um. Keith came down to see the band. He was writing an article about me in the New Musical Express and which was a fabulous article, which again it was a little

bit of a thing to live up to. But he saw the band and he said, look, Roger Daughtry, he was looking after the who at the time. He said, Rogers built a studio and he needs a guinea pick to try it out. You're looking for a place to work. Let me give Roger a call. So he gave Roger a call and he came back and said, yeah, Roger says, you guys come up to the studio, you don't have to pay, you know, It's like you can have it for free. He'd just be delighted to have someone try

out the room. So and you can stay next door. There's a little pub called the Kicking Donkey, and you can stay at the Kicking Donkey, which we did, and we went up then started recording, and the second part of silver Bird was made in that way without Adam having to shell out any more money. And you know, everything was kind of he's and breezy and and it was lovely working at Roger's. And it was also great spending time with this rock icon who turned out to

be the nicest guy, you know. I mean, there was a connection you see, with Adam, which was very good because Adam Faith and Roger Daltrey were born on the same street in acting. You know, Adam a few years older of course, so these guys will be had lots to talk about. They talked the same language, they had the same accent, you know, so that the connection was a dream connection, you know. And then one day Roger just turned around and said, look I love these songs.

You know, um, before you finish it all up. Have you got any more songs that you haven't put on the album? And and David and I said, well, yeah, we've cut loads. You know, we're we're even writing for the next album. He said, could you give me some of the songs? And we said what, and he said, yeah, I want to make a solo album. Roger Peter has made a solo album. Big Townsend has made a solo album, So I want to do one. I want to show him he's not the only one who can go solo.

So he said yeah, right. So David and I looked at the list of songs we had and we got the tapes out, the old Grundig tapes that we've made of these things, and yeah, we we decided we had quite enough and we talked to Adam about the idea and he said, it's great, it's a good idea. I'll produce it Roger. Roger wanted Adam and David to produce it, do it in the same style, and do it there in the studio. So that's how they started off, and they made the Daughtry album. Decided to hold up my album.

So my album is already a year old when the Daughtry album came out, decided to hold it up because, as Adams said, and Roger agreed, Look, you know you can do more good for Leo by telling everybody about this songwriter. He said, yeah, if it's a hit, everybody will want to know anyway, and Giving It All Away hit the top twenty I think on top forty or something in America, went into the chart there and when is the charts in England? The album went into the

charts in England. So everybody was talking about Roger Daltrey's solo album when it came out, and and everybody was talking about this song right, and so was Roger. And every interview said, wait, do you meet this guy. He's fantastic, what a talent, great voice as well. His songs are fantastic. I just had to do them, you know this, This was it. So I had Roger Daltrey, the lead singer of the Who, probably the biggest band in the world at that time, you know, as my publicist. Not Bad

Ain't That's how I found out about you. I bought that album Giving It All Away one and bad That's why I don't buy your record, absolutely really yeah, So so that all kind of opened up the doors. And then when we released my record, the reaction was fantastic. So you could say it all happened overnight. I mean he didn't, as he's can tell from the album being held up a year the longest station took towards it. You know, it wasn't all that simple, but when it

was released, it all happened so quick. You know. I went on tour with Roxy Music supporting them. We want to tour in England? Who put that bill together? Because I don't see the music as being in the same spectrum, well in a way, you know in England, Um, you had let's take it. I always use that term rack jobbing, you know, when every everybody's in the same I mean we live in a rack jobbing world, now, don't we. I mean your radio show would should not appeal to

someone doing heavy metal and vice versa. But in the seventies in England, if everything went together, you know, there was no categorization. Um, people wanted variety. You know, England had grown up and think as well. And it's an important thing to say this, we've grown up. All of our American acts that came over came over in package

to us. So you know, you'd get Freddie and the Dreamers on the same bill as Eddie Cochrane and Buddy Holly, and you'd get Desert Connor, who was basically a crooner, on the same bill as as Buddy Holly. You know, Daz has got Buddy's last guitar. Um des sadly has died. Now I think the guitars belonged to somebody else, but you know, Buddy gave him the guitar. They were on tour together and you'd get these package acts, you know,

so we saw everybody together. So I think England was really into you know, a variety show kind of you know, live thing very much. Comedians on with the Beatles were always opened up by comedians, you know, and the Beatles would open up for comedians or classic singers like Shirley Bassie, you know, people like that. So our radio wasn't so uh kind of programmed out to kind of think that a novelty song would be played right next to Status

Quo or something like that, you know. And so I think in the English audience is wanted to be surprised on stage and we were. That bill was put together by a chrysalists agency. We were with Chrysalis Records, and the Chrysalists agency looked after Roxy music and me, so they put they put it together. After after one show where I wasn't getting really much reaction, I decided to dress like the record cover, the Piero, the white face. So we had the same team who had helped me

get that image together for the record cover. The back of the record cover inspired by this amazing movie called Les Enfante Parody, which I had loved as a as an art student, where this guy, director Marcel Khan, had got John Louis Baptiste, this amazing French actor, to portray himself as the Piero, like Piero and and Harlequin, the famous French stories in this movie made during the last year of the German occupation of Paris of France, and it's an amazing movie. Um, and I love this character

and when I I'm digressing again. But I'll give you the background to how it no no keep going, I keep going, and how that came about. Roger Daughtry had a cousin, Graham Hughes, wonderful photographer who shot the Daughtry cover. UM, and Roger suggested I went to see Graham, which I did in London, and I went to a studio and he'd just been doing a photo shoot, a fashion photo shoot for Vogue magazine. And in the background, well, there

was a girl that remember the Rocky Horror Show. There was a girl called Little Little Nell who was this amazing actress and character in the Rocky Horror Show. She was in the shoot. And that guy played Frank and Furter Um he was in the current member his name of the actor, you know. He was in the shoot with these models, and in the background was a piero.

And Graham's straightaway. For those in America, we're talking about a clown, a clown, yeah, but but the French piero is different than the happens for those out of the loop. Absolutely yeah, yeah, Well, if we talk about clowns, you've got two different clowns. You've got three clowns. Really that you've got Ill Paliarchi, okay, is the white faced, sad narrator of most of those operas. Ill Paliarci is kind of he's a fool, but as well, he's a wise fool.

In France, Piero is the moralizer, he's the teller, of the story. Harlequin is the bad, mischievous guy in England. You've got Coco, the clown as famous for all the circuits. So he's just there to entertain the kids. He's a guy with makeup on, basically, not much more than that. Um but Piero is a very serious character. He'll tell you a story and you you're inclined to believe him because he's he's expressionless in his face and he usually

tells the story and mine ala Marcel Marcel. You know, Marcel Marceau took on the Piero character and basically told his story and mime. He was a mime artist. Um so, so I loved Piero for this kind of blank faced guy that you would listen to what he'd say. He would the storyteller, and I was a storyteller. In my songs, they were all about me, you know at that time, they're all about my life. Um silver Bird and Just a Boy are basically autobiographical albums. Yeah, they were all

Leo telling you his story. Okay, so you got to the photo shoot and you see the Piero in the background. Yeah, I see this picture, and Graham says, at the same moment, So how do you see yourself then? Because he knows all about me from roger Um And I said, like that, I don't know. I just instantly reaction and point to the piero and he said, great, that's Julian. He said, he's from Belgium. He's a street clown and basically he's here for a few days. Why don't I bring him

in tomorrow? And he said you could try on his outfit and I went, well, okay, yeah, you know, it's I mean, it's just a fad of company, isn't it. You know. I wish I had my big mouth. But and he's got this makeup girl called Kirsty Climo, who was, Ah, she's one of the best theatrical makeup girls in the world. And she was a friend of his, and he said,

I'm going to bring Kirsty. And I knew of Kirsty already because of friends of mine who were actors, and I went for Kirsty client he said, yeah, yeah, she's great, I'll get her in. She can do the makeup. She she knows how to do Piro because she'd done Pally Archie for the opera, you know, so hey, come on, you know, so I had her, and I had this wonderful beautiful guy, Julian with his with his suit. The only glitch was he was about six ft tall or so.

So basically most of them. You see the gatefold inside cover if anybody's got that of Silver Bird, and you'll see me kind of crouching down, and that's because the trousers are pinned up, you know. You can't see the pinning for the sort of like the bodice over the top covering it, you know. But but that was it. Um, and I was in his suit and they wouldn't let me look in the mirror, okay, until it was all done.

Kirsty was about an hour putting the makeup together, and Julian was kind of fussing with the suit and getting it right, and they found me that somebody went out and found some white dance shoes from Cabizio and they put on me and Um, Kirstie had developed this black bathing cap and cut with the little pointed bit in the middle, you know, perfectly to fit. So all this is I think they brought a hairstylist to make sure that the hair was all pinned in because I had

a huge hair at that time, you know. So finally Graham is all a jumping up and down. He says, this is incredible. You look at me. I can't see myself. All I can do is feel this awful white Lechner panstick makeup all across my face, and I know my hands are in gloves. I feel like my body has been taken away somewhere. You know. It's like weird, weird, weird weird, but it's exciting at the same time. And

I've literally metamorphosized. I mean, you're talking about Jerry becoming Leo Sayah, he became Leo Saya at that moment, you see, because there's no way that Jerry could ever be recognized again. So I walk out. They right, Grahams has finished, and I walk out, and I walk out in front of this full length mirror, a whole huge, great, big mirrored glass plane pain and I see myself and I just said, yes,

that's it. I can go on like this. And it was just incredible that we did the photo shoot, and you know, afterwards, took off the makeup and Cursty said, he looked amazing. She said, when when you decide to do it for real, I'll be there. I said, for real, I thought we were just doing the photo and it was clicking with me that I was, yeah, becoming somebody else. So we did the first Roxy show and I was just went on in jeans and nice shirt, you know,

all that stuff. Nobody really noticed. They all talked and waited for Roxy to come on. You know, Brian Eno had left the band, by the way, at that time, he was the very much I suppose in a way, Brian used to dress up in a similar kind of over the top way. So the so the glam rock crowd would like to come for him, you know, um, but Roxy would being a bit more serious. Now. You know,

Brian was in a white tuxedo. They're all looking very sophisticated. Um. And the second gig, I'm in my dressing room, I'm making up and we're putting in the outfit. My wife, Janice now has made the suit for me, um, and she's a really good seamstress. So I had this fabulous kind of satin silk suit with the little you know, the three velcro stuck on bobbles, you know that you've got on the front, the red spots for the cheeks.

The eyes were dramatically done, the black bathing cap in place, well pinned, and the gloves on and the white shoes and I walk out in front of the band and there's this reaction from the audience. We're playing Sheffield City Hall. I think it absolutely packed because Roxy are a big band. You know, they don't know who LEAs Sarah is really. But the moment I woke up, there's and someone shouted he knows back and the I played five songs in silence.

There wasn't applause, there wasn't anything, and there wasn't a murmur anybody. Nobody was talking in the room. Everybody was just craning their eyes to see. And I didn't say a word. I just sang five songs and with the mime and the hands going all over the place, just like you've seen in the videos. And then I said thank you very much, and all of a sudden, the place broke out into applause. All of Roxy music or on the side of the stage watching this, by the way,

and the chance started. They started shouting Leo, Leo, Leo. This is all on the first night of the clown. It was just incredible. And they were still shouting Leo when Roxy went on, so they weren't very happy with me, but I carried on the tour. Brian actually thought it was great. He kept coming up to me and saying, fabulous image, fabulous image. So we we went on the tour and we went, you know, we completed the tour

almost we gone into France. I think we played a couple of gigs in France, we played some in Germany, and then the management just turned around said you've got to get him off the tour. He's getting too much applause. And my record was rocketing up the charts. The show must go on, and their record was not doing so well. So yeah, but that was my That was how it started. Okay, so you finished the tour with Roxy Music. What's the

next step. Well, we went on a tour. You know, now we're now we're appearing as the Piero and everything's going well. The records are hit, the album's are hit. So I toured England and then we just got this invite from already we were we were with Warner Brothers in America, so we just got this invite from I think it was I can't remember the agency, but to come and do do the States and arrived in Los Angeles. Um, we had all the makeup and the outfits of course

ready to go. And Terry O. Neil is my photographer by this time. So the first thing we did was go down to Santa Monica Pia and do lots of show, lots of shots of the piero and and I think that they used that as publicity because nobody knew what I really who, what I really looked like, which was quite interesting. In America, they'd never seen Leo Saya apart from the record cover and and and of course the piero on the back. And I went straight to Memphis

where we started playing in a club supporting jjkle. Um. I can't remember what it was called the Mississippi something alright, just outside Memphis. And again the reaction just started went through the roof. You know, it's just incredible. Everybody's loving this thing. J. J kle didn't know what to make of me. He used to perform with hardly any lights on, you know, and we had to bring in lights for my show because he just didn't have enough. Um, but it just went mad. We had a week in Memphis,

then it was a week in Boston. And then it was just all over the country. We ended up going to the bottom Line in New York um and hit all the papers there. You know, the record started to be a success. At the same time, Three Dog Night have recorded The Show Must Go On and that's higher

up in the charts. Oh, they decided just not to release my single, I think because the Three Dog Night was version of The Show Must Go On, which still annoys me, because they were singing we must let the show go on, whereas the song is I won't let the show go on, you know in the chorus, you know. But there and they had circus clowns, you know, going back to Cocoa the clown. You know, they've seen me

performing in in London. I think at Top of the Pops they're probably on the same show and or else watched it on the TV and thought, hey, let's cover that song. So that's what they did, and you know, um, oh, well, you know it's they just didn't quite get it, I don't think. But it didn't matter. There was a hit, you know, and that was the American tour. We just

everywhere we went. By the time we got to Los Angeles and Robert Hillban was writing about us, and then San Francisco where Ben Fong Torres was writing and rolling Stone about me. You know, you couldn't climb any higher, really it was. It was quite an incredible um. I began a friendship with with with Ben actually at that time, you know, which followed me all the way through my career. So har does Long Talk Glasses end up becoming a huge check While we were there on that first tour,

I think we recorded one man band. I do believe that's Rykuda playing acoustic guitar on that Wow. Because Adam tried to do some recording out there, didn't tell me about it. Of course, this is typically what he'd do. He just went into a studio, here's this song. I'll play it to you and see what you can make of it, you know. So so, but we eventually came back and started recording the album. Uh, straight after that American tour. The rest of four was spent in the studio,

I think mostly recording just a boy. So and I Long Till Glasses were really me writing lyrics inspired by my favorite movie, The gold Rush Charlie Chaplin. What a great movie. Yeah, and you know the scene, the scene where he goes into the bar and he's got to dance. He's not really dressed for the part, but he kind of pretends he is, you know, And and I thought

about me. I was thinking about me in America. I was just I was shell shocked over the reaction in America because everybody said, you know, why do you need to dress as a clown? You can sing, You've got all the you're really talent. I'm going yet, really, because I was thinking, I'm never going to be as good as my heroes, my American heroes, Otis Redding and Ah, you know, Wilson Picket and even Bob Dylan and you know all of the great American artists, Sam Cook, Wow,

you know Elvis. I just thought I was going to be a bit player, you know, in the music scene. But they kind of thought I was really special, and they persuaded me, you know, take off the makeup, show your real self. You're a good looking guy, you know, come on, you can be a big star. So I was kind of a bit embarrassed by all of this, and I felt like the guy in the gold Rush who goes into the bar. You know. I was traveling down the road feeling hungry, and cold so or a

science saying food and drinks for everyone. Food and drinks is like, you know, the American riches. You know, all of this can be yours, girls partying, fast cars, clubs, you know, best hotels, fame, um, groupies, you know. Um. And and I didn't really know how to handle it, you know, so I I was very shy. Um. So the song is all about, you know, he says, Oh, I can't dance, like I'm saying I can't sing, you know,

I'm not really no, I'm not that good. And and the song kind of gets to a point where he just says, oh, he's just so fed up with this barracking going on from everybody, and he just turns out and said, oh all right, okay, hang on, wait a minute, and he says, you know I can dance, you know. So in other words, it's America. You see, if you believe you can do something, and you show the confidence,

then you can do something. You know, all you have to do is bullshit everybody into saying you're brilliant, and they all think it brilliant. So that's how it seemed to me. It was an easy ticket. Um. And that's what that song is about. It's about the metamorphosis to where you can actually think, why not give people what they want and stop being so petulant about it? You know. Okay, So ultimately you break up with David Courtney and you

end up working with Richard Perry. How does that happen? Well, Adam was always very crafty, he claimed. When we went for the third album another year, which I'm very very proud of. Um, he claimed that David wasn't interested in working with me any longer because basically wanted to do

his own project, which actually was patently not true. I mean, David wanted to do his home and album, but there was always going to be time for that because I wouldn't been away on a se x month American tour very soon anyway, second tour, and David had plenty of time to do that, you know. Um. And when I phoned David well, I found he changed his number. But Adam had set all this up, you know. He said to David, you shouldn't be working with him. You're good

enough to do it on your own, you know. He split us up basically, so I had a bass player I was working with as a wonderful guy. It was in you remember the band super Tramps. Well, Frank was a founding member of super Tramp, but he left because basically the band had no money. They weren't going anywhere. So Frank had to get jobs as a as a jobbing session musician, you know, and work with other bands

to to you know, to make a living. So he turned up in one of my roadies houses, um staying in a flat there, and there was a piano there and Frank was always playing piano and I thought it was great pianist. He was a bass player, and I asked him to join my band, and he joined the band. But it turned out he was really talented, and I was,

you know, I was frustrated with David. But I was coming up with all these songs, um and ideas for songs, and I'd start singing melodies to them, you know, and I and I played some to Frank and he said, okay, got onto the piano and started fleshing them out. You know. So I had a new writer, and he was taking my mellow melody, you know, my melody ideas and then taking them further. And then eventually, of course he would come up with some melody ideas but basically I was

much more in control. So even though I had lost David, I was very happy because I could actually kind of make the words fit the music, you know, because I can imagine what the music was going to be. I didn't have to wait for a for a songwriter to give me a melody to sing to. So the whole process became closer, you know. With Frank. So we made this record another year and I thought was great, but Adam was patently getting less interested in being my producer.

He brought in Russ Ballard. Russ Ballard was, oh god, I can't remember all the bands Argent there you go at that time. But in an earlier version, Russ was Adams guitarist and on silver Bird. Going back to Silverbird, he's the guy who plays the banjo on The Show Must Go On and most of the guitars on that record. Um So, Russ came in with Adam as co producer and Russ is brilliant, great producer and a fantastic pianist. You have no idea how a guitarist could be. I

think it was trained on piano. Um So, he's playing piano on the album. Didn't play any guitar. Frank's playing piano on the album as well, and we've got a great bunch of in the band, some of the guys that have been on the first album. We you know, we we we made another year so quickly because Adam he said, I just want to do it in two weeks because I'm busy. So we made the whole album start to finish in two weeks and no chance for

retakes and anything. So I kind of I suppose a rough and ready approach, and the mix isn't perfect, but we did get some great strings on there, and I think it's one of my finest albums personally, So okay, close that out. Um. For some reason, I think I had wisdom tooth operation. I failed to make the American tour so we couldn't promote it, and Adam I think influence warners to kind of like go quiet on the

album dot spend much money. I think at this time he was discovering that he could actually get them to pay a lot of money out and put it in his pocket and not give most of it to me. So that was basically the most opera endi that he discovered he could make money out of an artist you know, so that's what he started to do. He's a bit of a rogue like that. So um, so there we were. We went to America to talk to producers because he was wanted a new producer. I I wanted Jerry Wexler

or Ralph Warnaker. Those two were the guys that I liked, or maybe even Tom Dowd. Although Tom Dowd's record of Atlantic Crossing was a little bit too mainstream for me, you know, I didn't although I'd heard, of course what he'd done with A. Wretha and all of those, you know, those great acts that the Allman Brothers and everything Tom had done, you know. Um, but Adam just came back and he went and did all the meetings, and he came back and said, look, I don't nobody's interested, only

Richard Perry. When Richard Perry, Um, okay. Richard Perry is a very glossy producer. You know, he makes very sophisticated records. He makes records are almost a pedantic And the only one I really like is the Neilson Schmilsen album Schmilsen in the Night, you know, the orchestral one which is which is glorious, which they made a movie off, you know, and the video is fabulous, and I don't know something about that record, and of course Harry's great talent, you know.

I thought that that was pretty good. But I didn't like his record without Gulf Uncle, and I didn't like his record with Barbara Streisand and Martha and Martha reeves Na not very much. So I went in there kind of thinking is this all there is? But Adam had very carefully shoehorned me into working with Richard. Richard had seen me apparently play at the Trouper Door when I went there in and fell in love with the act

and just wanted to produce me. So he'd been badgering Adam to get to get get me together with him. So we met up and I didn't take to Richard very well at first. He was a crazy guy. There are a lot of drugs around. It wasn't my kind of scene, you know. And I wanted to do my own songs. I mean, that's all I did was I was a singer songwriter. And he turned around me and said, I don't completely hear I don't like your last album, and I don't I don't hear you just as a songwriter.

In fact, I think your voice is the best quality you've got. I went, what so he said, let's find some covers. And I'm in this situation where I'm kind of thinking this is I'm going to pack this all up and go home. This isn't working. But we both agreed that we like motown and soul music. So we ended up going into the studio and cutting Tears of a Clown Um Reflections the Supremes Um what becomes the broken Hearted? I believe um. And it was a fantastic

session because he brought in the best musicians. Wow, the a team, you know, I mean really Larry Carleton and all this great Mike o'mardian on piano, Wow, you know, Jeff Picaro on drums, Will he Weeks on bass. You know, there's an incredible band. The vibe was great. All the guys loved me, and I loved working with the band, so you know, jamming with them was was a pleasure.

And then every now and then we just had to serious up and do a song for Richard uh And I think there was potential, you know, I saw the potential like I saw that I could hold my own with great musicians. You know, afterwards, I'm out drinking with all the guys, and Willie's coming around to my house. Come on, car let's just do some Hendricks. Let's jam, you know, and I'm thinking ship. These guys are now my friends. So the whole project kind of took me over,

as it were, and we started off. You know, I'm semi happy because I want to do my own songs. I keep playing songs are Richard when he keeps nah, I don't see that. A bit too British, you know, all that stuff. And one day we're jamming in the studio in between takes for When I Need You, which we've been working on, you know, to get this song good by Albert Hammond and Carol Baya saga, lovely song. Um And and I'm I don't know, I'm just having fun because Jeff Picaro and I used to we lived

just around the corner. He was in Kirkwood Avenue and I was on the corner of Kirkwood and Laurel, opposite the County Store. You know that that spot, of course, um and I was renting this house right on the corner, and and he and I used to He used to pass my house and he took his horn as he came by in his corvette. And then I didn't drive at the time. My driver, David would be ready driving me.

And we're traveling together, you know, pretty much in convoy down the Melrose Avenue to Studio fifty five o five on Melrose. Now now, now, um, what do you call it? Um? Uh? What's that studio? Paramounts Now, Paramounts parking lot. Unfortunately it's not a studio any longer. And and on the way, you know, we'd listened to music and Jeff turned around it to me and said, hey, did you hear that's song today? I said, you want that? That one with that high singer. I said, yes, things just like you.

Shame shame, shame by Shirley and Company. And I started singing it in the studio and just playing the drums and shame, shame, shame, shame on you because you can't dance too, you know, with the falsetto, which I always had this great falsetto from being a choir boy, you know. And and we start jamming. Now the rest of guys pick up on it. Dump dump the Ray Parker Jr. Is playing guitar. Groovy guy groovy guy. He's playing this incredible rhythm guitar and I start, you get acute way

of talking, and it's just a jam. It's going on for about fifteen minutes, and I'm unknown to us. I mean, you know, Richard, it was a change tapes moment in the studio, track real to real. So you know you've got to wait till the next tape is on. Line it up and then you can carry on recording. But Richard had kind of I was I was thinking, he's letting us go a long time, you know, before he come on, guys, let's go back to the track. He's

going on a long time before this this eventuality. And of course in the studio, meanwhile, Howard Steele the engineers telling me, He's saying, this is great. Get that tape off, put a fresh one on, you know, start recording now now now get this. Don't lose it. Don't lose it. And we didn't know all this because in the end he just turned around to us. Okay, guys, very nice, but let's get on. We've got to cut this track today. Come on, time as money, guys, you know, we carry

on with recording when I need you. About two weeks later, he calls me up to his office and he's made put it onto a cassette and this jam session. He said, that is your hit, he said, on my life. I say, it's one of the biggest things I've ever heard. That is your hit. You know how we got to get a chorus, We've got to finish this thing. But that,

he said, is a crossover hit. He said. And the year before we've had Staying Alive, you know, the oh no no jive talking, the bigs jive talking and you know which a Reef Martine record produced, you know, with the bags, and he said, that is your jive talking. He said, that thing is gonna It's incredible. I can

really do something with this. So there was a guy called Vinnie Pancier who was producer and co writer with a lot of people work with Ringo Star on the records that Richard did with Ringo Star and and we called Richard called him in. He had a bad back. I remember he had some major problem where I've got to go and see my car practical Leo. You know all this American stuff that I didn't admit. This little

British guy didn't understand the pedantry of it all. You know, Richard's got to get his joints rolled just so you know, And and everybody's got these, you know, the chair and the studio is not right. I'm we have to take a day off so I can go shopping for chairs. These are the guys I'm working well. I just want to get on with this fucking record that I've has,

costing me a fortune. So we have five minutes to work, and we managed to kind of take it up to another key and we have the chorus, put it on the cassette, joined the two together and we've got a song. So next thing that happens is, I don't know. There's a call from Donald Fagan, who we both knew pretty well. He's got a great band that's come down from New York, but he's got a rights block. He's got nothing to record.

And Bill Schnay, his engineer who's sometimes engineered with us, has got producers workshop his own boutique studio up there with Chuck Rainey in town and Michael and Mardian and Larry Carlton and Steve Gadd has come down with Chuck Rainey from New York and he says, you've got this band is incredible. Donald's got nothing to record today? Do you want to come in? And Richard said, I think I've got the tune for that. So we went in and he brought it, brought in his reel to reel.

There were two machines going and they were spinning the two two reels together and dubbing onto Steve Gad's drums onto that. You know, I don't know how that worked, but the band is all, you know, playing and I

don't know somehow out of it. We just Steve had this incredible drag drag snare field which is famous for you know, He's playing away um and Bills recording it all and Richard's over the moon and and I'm singing next door to to Steve, and Steve and I are getting on like an absolute house on fire with all the musicians, you know, and and we come out of it. We've got you made me feel like dancing, And there's still a little bit more time to go. So Richard says,

can we do another track? And Bill says, he, I don't know, you know, what do you got? They play how Much Love? And the guys just say yeah. Actually, Richard t was was came down from New York and he hears it and it said, I was complete, bang out gospel tune, you know for for piano. Anyway, I've written it with Barry Mann who wrote he Lost that love and feeling, you know. So it was a fantastic little tune. Um. So Richard's on piano, and yeah, we got that done in an hour or half an hour.

So we came out of that studio with a three hour session with two songs, two hits. So you have this great success with Richard, you continue to work with Richard, how do you break off with Richard? They didn't want to do it any longer. I mean, he just he wanted to move on. Also, he was very expensive. I think that that was a you know a problem with for Adam. Although we were getting great success all around

the world. That you know, when you've got records and the producers taking twelve percent of the record as well, that was his fee. You know, he would take a long time to make records, a lot of editing. Uh, It's just it's something that we couldn't sustain. I think either side, he wanted to move on to other things as well. You know, he had a chance to um Make Records, also started his own label. I think he started recording the Point of Sisters and he had his

own label. He had his He moved to two Planet Records. Yeah, he moved. He put an office in Hollywood Sunset Boulevard, and you know, he wanted to go in a different direction. I think he wanted I think when maybe we couldn't pay him enough, you know, so he wanted to kind of like, you know, get people who would pay him more.

You know, he was very money oriented, Richard. And so then you go back with David Courtney while I was still in l A, you know, and I was now enjoying living in l A. And you know, the lovely thing about records is that you always kind of like reap the success a year or two years after you've recorded. So nineteen seventy nine, I'm still living off it. You know. I've got a great last record we made, just called

Leo said, because nobody could think of a title. But we've got Raining in my Heart on there and a hit in the UK, I Can't Stop Loving You, a song by this lovely guy, Billy Nichols that has really been a big hit there. And so we had a fine record, you know, to to live off. And I'm touring and David turns up again. He's living in l A. We're all talking again and becoming friends again. He comes to a few shows. He says, look, I'd love to produce you again. And I said, well, you know, you'll

have to square it with Adam. He said, no, Adam thinks it's a good idea. And by this time David's done quite a few records as a producer, and he's very in with Duc Dunn and Steve Cropper and all these guys. He knows all the guys I worked with as well. He hadn't worked with Jeff Acaro. But I brought Jeff in and Steve, Luca Thur and a few guys from my sort of side in Michael Amardian as well, you know, um uh and and we just we just suddenly got recording. We went to Sunset Sound and recorded

here very quickly. U Umberto Gatica was the engineer who famous Engineer later on was one of his first ever records he cut. But he was amazing, and you know, we had a fantastic team. I brought in Billy Payne to play keyboards, who was who I loved working with because I used to jam with him and Lowell George all the time, you know, up in the canyons. And so I asked Billy if he'd be like he said, yeah,

I love to man, you know. So David Lindley, we brought him pedal steel guitar, you know, and so we made a fantastic record. But I don't know why the record company wasn't really, I mean, they know. I suppose they'd spend a lot of money on the Richard Perry projects, you know, because Richard was very demanding producer director type, you know. Uh, and now David was a bit softer, so I think a little bit less money got spent

pushing that in a um. I thought it was a bloody good record really, So then you go to work with Alan Tarney. How does that happen? Well, running out of money and to live in America, you know, and me and my wife Janice were kind of thinking we can't keep this up, you know, it's just crazy. So Chris Wright of Chris List Records plays me this song by this guy Alan Tarni when I was visiting London.

He says, you should think about working with this guy, and the song was we Don't Talk Anymore Cliff Richard, and he says, you know, the great thing about this guy he plays everything himself, just him and the drummer, and it's got a unique way of working. And I'm kind of At this time, I'd started to build my own studio and I was going in this direction myself, and I was thinking, oh, this is interesting, and he'd

really love to work with you. So I met with Alan Tani and he had a couple of great songs that we went straight into the studio and recorded R G R G Jones Studio in Wimbledon, and they both ended up on the record and we decided to make an album from there. You know, we got on really great. I loved his technique, just him and me in the room. Trevor Spencer would then come in and play drums. One of the last things after, you know, we worked off

one of Trevor's drum loops. At the time, technology was in its infancy, but Alan was already mastering computers and there was this crazy system where you could put in one note at a time and it made a very interesting kind of sound. Because we were all discovering sequencing at the time. You know, there's this way of making records lynn drum machines and and and sequences, you know,

working off computers. And while it was all very metronomic, if you put human instruments to it, like guitars and bass and vocals, he got a great kind of sweat off it. I don't know how to describe it, but it's it's a fascinating thing, you know, that humanity and robots together, virtual AI, early AI, I think. And so we made this record and right at the end of it, we were we had an extra day of studio time

and we didn't know what to do with it. So we sat around watching TV trying to think of ideas we thought would do a cover. You know. First off, we had a slowed down version of Don't Be Cruel, Don't want to be a Tiger, you know, really slowed down like that, you know, Um, no, treat me nice?

Was it Treat me Nice? And one of those anyway, because Tigers played too rough whatever that song is, you know, um, so oh, it wasn't going anywhere, you know, And we were watching the TV and an ad came on for the Greatest Hits of Bobby V and Bobby V made an album when Buddy Hollyod died. They were both with

Coral Records, so the crickets. Coral didn't know what to do with the crickets, who are incredibly talented themselves, so they put Bobby V Meets the Crickets and made this record six and the hit out of that record was a song called more Than I Can Say. So, um, there it was on the TV. Well, yeah, I loved you more Than I Can See, and Alan and I both looked at each other. We both loved that song in our past, you know, and he said, let's do that.

So we went in about one o'clock. This one. We actually had to rush to a record store to find the original record, and those days you couldn't call up anything on the internet. Of course, there wasn't an internet. So we went to a record store and somebody found a shrink rack copy behind the desk and had just been reliving only only only just came out Greatest Shits of Bobby V. And they're on it. Track eight or so is more than I Can Say. So we spin it. We kind of get the cords down and you know,

and we started working on it. We find the right key for my voice. Um, and by midnight we've got it mixed, finished, ready to go, all the vocals on it, everything, and well it wasn't mixed. I mean, we still got it mixed, but there it was a great use of that extra day that we hadn't calculated. And I ad on faith and everybody turned around and said, that is your single, you know. So that became the first single, more than I can say, the only song on there

that I didn't write, and there it was. It became my comeback hit in America. So that to biget. How do you end up working with the Reef? I've made a Reef a few times in London and I really liked him. I mean we had mutual friends with some of the guys with the bigs and and he just

he was coming into London. I think a Reef was trying to find something new, so he was linking up with a lot of songwriters there and finding songs, you know, um, and I think I think he just kind of I was really into British talent at the time, and he made a call. I got a call, and so Reef Martin. I don't know if you'll know him, of course, I know you, and he said, Um, I am in London and I am staying at the Mayfair Hotel and I'd like to meet up and I said, great, come over,

he said now. So I went straight over and he said, look, I want to make a record with you. I love living in a fantasy, love all your records with with Richard. You know, Um, could we could we talk about a project? And I said, great, Well, I'll get onto the record companies. He said, I've already talked to them. And I said, I'll get onto Adam. He said, I've already talked to him. He said, we're starting now. He said, listen to these songs.

And so, you know, he played me a load of songs and I played him a load of songs that I had written, um, some with David Courtney that I hadn't got round to recording yet. And he said, I think we got an album. So we went to New York started recording. Then we went to l A and recorded some more. But this was a time when a few nefarious things were going on with Adam. Unfortunately. Yeah.

It was, like I said, he was trying to sort of get money out of the record company and money wherever he could and for projects that he wanted to do, and you know, it was not really there all the time as the manager. I was hanging on to him because I didn't know where else to go. Um And when it came to we finished the record and I was very proud of it. Barry Gibb wrote us a song hard Stop Beating in Time, and there was a lovely song by a bunch of guys in England called

have You Ever Been in Love? We had two major signal singles on there. The title track was the song David and I wrote David Courtney and I wrote yet again called World Radio. So the album was called World Radio. We took it to warn us and they said, look, we don't have any budget for this. I said, but I'm going to be on Solid Gold next week with Dion Warwick, you know, co hosting, and I can, I can.

They want me to sing some of the songs. They said, yeah, well good luck with that, but we don't have any budget for a single. So I go on this show and I sing these two songs and the audience goes mad. TV goes mad. In America, everybody loves it and they can't buy the single. What can you say it's like it's a disaster, It's really it was a really sad moment. Who do we blame? Do we blame Adam? Do we blame the people who Warner Brothers? Well, one is, weren't

that easy to get on with at that time. I mean I signed to Joe Smith. Joe Smith at this time had gone. It was Mo Austin. I mean, Moe Austin is the guy that in seven when I got my Grammy, turned around to me at the Grammy party afterwards and say, hey, Leo Seria or later, you're going to win one of these things. So, I mean, he didn't even know I had won a Grammy because it was so you know, in in raptures over all the

Fleetwood mac Rumors Grammys at that time. So I had a company that was a bit disengaged with me, you know in America, and you know, and then when I deliver something, they're just thinking of how much it's going to cost to sell. You know. I don't think there was a I don't think there was anybody really listening to the record, you know what I mean. Okay, but let's go back to Adam. Now, you believe Adam is stealing from you. You ultimately sue Adam. What's going on there?

Well eventually, yeah, it was a little bit later that I managed to extricate myself from all of that. And I'm thinking, if I just pack up with Adam, I won't get my properties, you know, I won't get my my master's, I won't get all the things that I should get. Because he had me on a power of attorney agreement very early in my career, so I signed away everything to him. He could do anything on my behalf without me even ever to consult with me. You know.

So I had my publishing, we had the same accountant, we had, he had my record rights, he had everything. So to extricate myself from this guy had to be done kind of carefully, you know. Um, And eventually I think he just gave up. And you know, I I got everything back, which was amazing. It's tough, but it was I got everything back. Suddenly. I owned my whole catalog, owned my all my songs. He just gave me the

publishing companies. Um, I I owned all the records. He gave me the record company that I was signed to, I mean production company, record company. You know that. Then leases too, of course you know, you know has done So I had all those companies. Um, I had all

those rights, and do you still own them? No? I met a guy Hi, I still had a problem with Chrysalis Records, where chrys Chrysalis Records in England had paid out a very large sum in those days six and fifty thousand, who enticed me to do another ten year deal with them when ten years ran out in around Yeah, so not in three I discovered, even though I extricated myself from Adam that I think it was but I was still signed to Christlis and under the terms of

the old deal, which meant I couldn't get anything back from them. So I questioned this and I got a lawyer. I found a manager in the end who got me a lawyer who'd done a lot of great stuff for else and John and he he managed to threaten um Chris Lis Chris right quite heavily into giving up Um. Yeah, those those rights, um and I got free of them. But the guy who introduced me to the lawyer turned out to be an even bigger crook than Adam was.

And he just said, Okay, now you've got all your rights back, You're really free, get on with your record. So I moved to the country in England. I was off far away from London all of a sudden, living in this beautiful cottage in seventy acres of land or so, you know, with the studio there and everything all going really well, planning my next record, writing my songs, not kind of knowing exactly you know, who I was going to work with, but basically getting on with it, you know.

And in the meanwhile, he was signing away all my rights with a forged signature, back to Warners, back to Chrysalis now with a label called the Hit Label, signing away my publishing rights. It was an absolute mess. I broke into its office one day because he changed the locks on the keys my office actually, and found out that he'd also managed to drum up about a hundred and sixty thousand UM pounds on credit cards to take his wife on holiday all over the world and do

things like that. So he was stealing money off me with credit cards and yeah, and signing me to deals that I couldn't get out of. So today, at this late date, you own none of your publishing, none of your master recordings. It was very interesting. We came to you do remember a lovely guy called Bob Emma. Of course, I'm sure. Yeah. Bob and Sue a lovely couple. I don't know if Bob's still around, but Bob was a

beautiful cat and he was with Warner Brothers. Okay, so he was one of the old school Warner Brothers guys still there. Rusty Ratte and all those guys had long long left, you know. Um and Mol Austin's there running the show, and his son is there as well. Um and Bob is still there, and I don't know. Donna Tell a marvelous Donna Teller Pigionetti, my partner, Um, who had seen me go through all this rip off. She was with me now, the new lady in my life

as it were. It's starting to get involved in the management. She's learning how to manage me, and she's learning how to because we're in a ship, you know, we're we're almost bankrupt. We had accountants telling us we should far for bankruptcy and just give up the business and everything, you know, and I'm thinking, no, I can't do that. So she heard from somebody in the business that Bob Emma was coming into London. So she managed to get

a meeting with him at the hotel. I don't know how she did it, but Bob sat down with him and she said, well you know Leo say, and he said, I love Leo. And Sue was there as well, and they said, oh we lovely or whatever happened to Leo. Well, Leo signed back with your label. Really they didn't even know. Um. And basically he gets no royalties. He's so his catalog to you what. I can't believe Leo would ever do that. He I saw a poster. Bob said, you know, he's

playing here in London. So they're in shock. And Bob just says, look, Donna, I'm going to get his royalties back. So and he did. He got a deal I couldn't get out of Warners. I'm still with Warner in Australia and still with Warner in America via Rhino. I'm not very happy about it because they never do a damn thing. Um, they never released anything. They're just you know, but they're just holding onto me. They hold onto those those rights over the last records. If I had enough money, i'd

be out of there. But I'd have to buy my way out, you know, so um so. But we managed to get royalties again. We got you know, suddenly, we didn't get back royalties of course in the time that Lynch had stolen them all. But this guy, Michael Lynch, that's what that's what his name was, the crook who

forged my signature. But we managed to we managed to kind of get that back, and then gradually, of course we got um we got an arrangement with Universal as well, where he'd sold the songs to them, and we got back publishing rights for them. They sold Universal sold off to another company anyway, who look after it now? And you know, the royalties are all pretty intact and since then, I mean, you know, the guys I've been approached with Pride By, I was approached by Primary Wave, and I

was approached by quite a few people. I had a very good friend down here, a wonderful music business lawyer here, a friend who who went to Primary Wave and represented me, and and now I share my catalog and royalties um with Primary Wave, basically my earnings. Okay, just so I understand, you don't own the records, you don't own the publishing, but your writer's share and your royalties are now with primary works. Yeah, split with me with still of about

my company. And did you get a good check to do that? Very very nice? Thank you. Okay, I've probably sworn to secrecy over the over the amount, but it's it's made life a little bit easier. You know. We've paid off the mortgage of the house and all this sort of stuff. You know. Okay, So now financially, how are you doing? Yeah? Very good, very good. Okay, yeah,

very good. I mean I'm not in the wealth category that I should be in where, you know, along with most of our contemporaries for what I've done, and I suppose I can't really choose, you know, if I wanted to, if I wanted to, say, play Glastonbury, I don't really have the kind of people behind me who could push that because I can't really afford to hire pr and promotion teams. You know, I'd love to be able to, but I work very independently because I work within my budget.

You know. So let's go Bakistan. What happened with your first wife? We divorced. She got fed up with being Mrs Sayer I think, and she was she was going for a tough time, and you know, we we split. That was it? And how was that for you? I promised never to speak to her again. We promised to, you know, to to not contact each other. What was

the basis, what was the inspiration for that? She wanted to go back to her maiden name and have a new life and not be Mrs Sarah any longer, you know, because it's a tough thing for the women when you know, we go to American or business meetings, you know, and they say, hey, Leo, nice of me. I said, this is Janey's my wife, and they say hi, Hi jan anyway, Leo, and you know, you're just She's She was a very intelligent girl, and she didn't like that, you know, she

didn't like that she couldn't get the respect. It's a man's world, isn't it, you know, and still very much yeah so so so she needed a change, and she'd been incredibly supportive of me in the time we were together. Also, you know, I must say that I had met Donna at this time and also was those you know, lining myself up for a new life, you know, with with

Donna teller Um, which happened by chance. I mean, Janis and I were going through a bad period you know, these things happen, you meet somebody else and there it went. But I'm glad to say I'm still with Donna and very faithful now, you know. And that's been thirty six years or so we've been together. Okay, so you ever want to have children or that was something? No, it never came into the equation. I mean, Jannis didn't want them when we were together, and we would rather travel

than spend the time to make babies. So that was the choice. And I think, you know, leaving that behind then and going into now. Um, I don't know. I've always been this very unusual operator. I'm very much, you know, an insular person working within myself. So I suppose really siblings. I never even thought about it. You know. I'm lucky that I've had women in my life have been very supportive to my lifestyle. Um, but basically I think the

buck always stops with me, you know. That's so that's it. Okay, let's go back. You're working with Richard than David Courtney again and Alan Tarney. You have some success, you're working with our reef. You realize you're being ripped off, like the story you're telling with Warner brothers where they're not going to commit even though you're on solid gold. What's it like to all of a sudden realize you had

your time, but you're not the priority anymore. And it's a really good question, but you know how this business works. You know, one minute you're thinking about that, going oh God, and you're talking to Janis and you said we've got to go home. Then the next minute the phone rings and you're on Midnight Special. What do you say? You know? I mean, I'm a very g garious guy. Everybody seems to like me. All the musicians that have worked with

still my best friends. I talked to rape Harker, I talked to you all these guys all the time, and we're all friends and we you know, I'm a guy who just looks for the positives so very stupidly. I wouldn't have put my books in order. I'd have just cracked on. I mean, many other people, I think Bob would have just stopped and said, right, you've got to sort this out now. But I never did. I didn't

do until it was too late. And then when I did sort things out and took on a different mindset with it all, I think that I would by this time had stated my case enough, you know, recording wise and live wise, that I had a real legacy that I could take a break from for a bit, you know, and sort out the business side. But I think when all that was going on, I was still kind of like feeling that I was half proven, you know, and there was still a lot of work to be done.

I mean, you're only as good as your records, you know, and you're only as good as your last live show. So I was feeling at that time that I still had to stay on the case and do the job. You know. Don't complain about these things. You're living. Well, it's okay. So how do you feel about your legacy at this moment in time? Proud of all of it, even the mistakes. I like the whole way it fits together, and I like being this kind of slightly obscure artist

as well. I mean, I'm not on everybody's lips, and I'm not um, you know, I'm not headline in Glassberry or Paying Maids and Square Gardens, where I think I should be. Part of me thinks I should be. But but I've still got a lot to you know, there's still a lot of leeway for things to come, and I kind of like that. I'm still hungry, I'm still ambitious. I don't know why I'm seventy four in May. I mean, I can't really be looking at another fifty years, So what what where do you go from here? But I'm

having a ball at the moment. I'm really enjoying it. I'm joining the legacy, writing my book and doing all the research and finding out that I've I've done more than I thought, you know, achieve more because I've always been looking at the ball right, you know, in player that at the moment rather than looking back very much.

Can you get a victory lap? Can you get a manager or somebody involved who will get you on the stage in Glastonbury, will get you one more time around because you still have your voice and you have all those hits? Well, who knows? Who knows? I mean the only problem is that most people in this in this game, at this moment, have such a vested interest in everything that they do or want to have vested interests. I mean, it's all about money now, you know, the business has changed.

So what's the manager going to do with Leo Saya? He's going to want to make as much money before the guy has a heart attack and kills over. He's gonna want because he's used to getting it from young acts. He's gonna want everything. He's gonna want total ownership. So where do I go? Who do I go to? That's not gonna suck me over, because that's the name of the game. We funk people over. Now, that's what we do. Well, it's a separate conversation, although your points are well taken.

So you don't have a manager today I do. I have a manager in England and a manager in Australia and they just get me work and look after the business as it were, and Donna Teller oversees everything. Then you have an agent. Who's your agent? Do you have a worldwide agent? Not? Really? Not really? We um I mean when we tour in England, we have an agent there that puts all the gigs together and does a very good job of that. He does a few other acts, but he's not the biggest um. And I'll tell you

what I do have. I have an amazing lawyer, an incredible accountants, both in England and in here, and I split my business North and Southern Hemisphere. So basically, if you like, when I play America, it will be with the English band and the English team, and when I play, say China, it will be China or Asia it will be with the Australian team. So I have a band in Australia and a band in England. And how many gigs a year do you do and how many do you want to do? Well, I'm just off to the UK.

We're finishing an Irish tour that first off that we started in but got broken into because of COVID, when suddenly, you know, you couldn't have more than two hundred people um in a venue at one time, So we had to scotch those rest of those gigs, postpone them, and then I'm doing the rest of those and a few more in Ireland in August, and then I'm doing a thirty six day British tour um and that's going to be from middle of September to November, and then hopefully,

with conversations going on with Primary Waive as well, at the moment, I'll be coming to America next year. Well, I certainly look forward to seeing you. Are you doing these live gigs to stay alive or because you want to do it. No, I'm doing it because I wanted to it, and also it keeps me young. You know, I've still got my hair and I've still got my voice, and I think working really sort of is import into that. I mean, we've we've all gone through a complete change

of life, haven't we. With the COVID times and everything has changed. I mean, you know, every every reliable uh let's say, everything that you could rely on was was carted away, you know, so you had to kind of change a little bit. I mean, I've been doing live link ups with my band on Zoom just to keep you know, us all kind of working together. I've been making internet songs and releasing a lot of stuff on Zoom I'm sorry. On on YouTube, I do a song

called white how did We get here? All about the pandemic, you know, because everybody's trying to blame everybody else. You can see that one if you like. It's on YouTube. And then I did a song from Melbourne because when that city did the hardest lockdown that anybody had known, um, you know, it was kind of completely decimated. And Melbourne is my playtown. I live in near Sydne, me but

Melbourne is the place where all the gigs are. And so I was kind of like writing a sympathetic song there, you know, almost a rap that was actually and now I'm just writing a song at the moment for the Ukraine UM, which is basically on the angle of what are we going to do with all the refugees, which is an important question. So it's done like footsteps, like

a walk. It's called take a walk with Me. So you take somebody through a song which is, you know, a very classic kind of UM styled song UM, and you're inviting someone to leave the city that's falling apart but below them and saying you're always going to look after them, never let them down. And I don't know where to place the song, but I'll probably just make a YouTube of it and put it out there and be nice if someone from UNICEF or someone picked it up and used it. But we'll see. I mean, I

work in a vacuum, Bob. I'm a very unusual guy. I work. I'm like you know, m yeah, I'm like vank gosh, I I work on this staff. I mean, I actually hope that my legacy is bigger when I'm dead than it is when I'm alive. Well, you're very optimistic, still working. We didn't plumb a lot of topics, like

your relationships with all of these musicians and stars. But I admire your optimism and the fact that you still you know, especially in light of the story you've told about when you leased the Big Space and then it devastated you and you had a nervous breakdown. Have you ever been close to that feeling again? Was that one and done? I don't know if you've heard of a

show called Big Brother, absolutely absolutely awful. I after chasing a record deal a band about two thousand and five or six, I um, I was invited to go on Big Brother in England celebrity brig Brother, and I went on there and they I just left England at the time, and I think I said some things about leaving England so glad to get out of here, so happy to go to Australia, and they really seized on all of

that and gave me a rotten hard time. And I ended up breaking out of there because I experienced incredible claustrophobia and the fact that when you go in there, they take your watch away from you, you know, they take your your your They don't give you any pens to write down with anything with. I was suddenly in a creative vacuum, and I can't honestly say that. Many of my fellow contestants were the most inspiring people to be with as well, so they just gave me a

hard time. So I did half the show in mine, which I thought was quite fun to do. So I was just doing hand signals, you know. The rest of it I wrote, and my breath on glass panes. Some of it I actually found a little piece of metal and revealed all the cameras to everybody by taking panels out. I went to war with the show basically, and I found doing that. You know, I'm such a rebel. I just I can't do anything like anybody else does. I

have to do it my own way. I'm born with this gene of having to invent myself and and do that. So I would actually say, I mean, my feeling is that I'm a true artist, and you know sometimes that people say that's very big headed or something you know, to say, But I know all the criteria that an artist needs to have, and it's not a reliance on corporates, companies, other people even it's basically it all comes from me. Everything I do is part of this vivid imagination that

was born with that I've always had. I can dream songs into being. I can create things from a blank sheet of paper. Um So I just have to follow that, and that's that's that's my skill set. My skill set is to trust myself, to listen to myself and to follow myself. And most of the people in my life now appreciate that and let me do it, and let me. Let me make a mistake. If I make a mistake, let me do something glorious. If I do it glorious. But they know the only way to get something good

out of me is to let me do it. I designed my own show. Um I I do everything. I'm an autobiographer. I'm writing my book completely by myself. Nobody's helping. I'm doing all the research by myself. It's been a monstrous task. And to find stuff that I didn't even know about. It's a revelation as well, you know. So I don't know. I think I'm I think probably when that book comes out and people hopefully get to read it, if I can find the right publisher, and maybe even

we can make a biopic of it. I think I've got to love a story to tell and the fact if I'm a little bit obscure and a little bit off the radar because of them, may I mean I'm not living I'm not with Live Nation, I'm not with Sony Records or anybody like that. You know, Um, I'm very much off the radar um. But if people want to discover me, they'll find something I think that is very different and very unique. Well, certainly your conversation with

me today has been different, unique and intriguing. Leo. I want to thank you for taking all this time with me. Thank you, Bob. And I've always been a big admirer of you, and I love the I love the column and and the blog, and you're one of the good guys. So it's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. Till next time. This is Barbed Worth Sex