Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sutch podcast. My guest today is the one and only legendary Mitch Wider, who has a brand new album with Love produced by Don Was. Mitch. How did this album come to be? I called Don and he agreed.
As a result of I signed a new recording contract with a German label, which we'll get into probably a little bit deeper as we talk. But I signed the contract and I had choice of producer.
So when did you meet Don?
Oh? Gosh, I want to say seventy eight. He hired me to do a voice for something and then we established a relationship and I ended up being a guest on one of his albums called Was and that Was and then we cut a dance single and then I did two tracks for one of my German albums with him as producing. So we're entrenched in LA and recorded a really nice album out there called The Promise.
Okay, what makes Don the producer he is? How is he different from the other people you've worked with.
We have the same sensibilities regional with regard to music and our exposure to him and the cultural differences inside the community. And I mean the guy he's produced the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. He got Grammys for for People. He's just very, very talented man.
So on this album, you wrote all the songs. Did you write them for the album or did you have them ready?
I wrote them for the album, and it's kind of either autobiographical because of the actual experience or the observation, but it is what it's about, is my life really, and segments of it little visual you can imagine you know what they were by the lyrics. But I love it. I love it. I think it's a beautiful album, and I'm very proud of it. I think it's really really high on my chart of expectations for myself as a writer and a singer.
Now we're doing this podcast, but we live in an internet world. It's hard to get the message out to people. What are you doing to make people aware of the record?
Pretty much leaving that up to the record company. It's their responsibility. I put out quite a few albums on my own label, but I never did have the funding or the budget to go out and do it the way it's supposed to be done today. And that was frustrating because there was some remarkable music that went unnoticed. So I'm doing what I can. I'm doing every interview I can get, and I'm honored to be on your show.
But that's what we're doing, and we're doing just interviews, interviews, and we're making Last night we were we got home about four o'clock am. We had done a shoot, a video shoot for the the existing album, the new one, and we've got a couple more of those planned. We've already released two, so we're doing that the right way. But you can't really there's a whole bunch of issues that would explain why we're having a problem breaking through.
And since you're the guy with the questions, I'll just wait for you to ask the right one.
Who is the record company Roof Records RUF? But do you tell me more about them? It's a small label, but not the smallest I've ever signed to, but they're very, very good at well, here's what they did with my live recording with double Vinyl that debut at number three, I believe, on the Billboard charts, on the Blues charts, and the existing album, the one we're promoting now, that debuted at number one. So he clearly knows his business with
regards to the Billboard Blues charts. What I need is to make that transfer over into the we used to call the hot one hundred if you remember that, of course, And you know what was beautiful about that.
You really had a microscopic picture of the nation's needs for music and what made them feel good. Because the way they formulated it was they would take every week the existing amount of radio play rotations and sales numbers, combine them and you end up with a top ten where you could have a country Western song be number one, a polk on number nine, and Mitch Ryer is somewhere in the middle there. And that was a reflection based on that week's activities in the business. But we don't
have that today. We have a million different categories.
Well, the other difference is you knew every song in the top ten, whether you liked it or not, because you were listening to the radio and you heard it.
Oh, you could turn volume down if you wanted to, you know.
Yeah, better than the news, the monitor news on NBC. My father would want to listen to that in the car. So what kind of budget did they give you for the record?
I don't know that there was a contract developed between Don Was and Thomas Roof, the owner of the Roof Record Company. So I'm not privy to that.
Okay, you talk about Don Was also being from Michigan. Does everybody in Michigan in the music business know each other?
We know enough to not step on each other's toes. You know, this is an interesting musical city, Detroit, and the talent comes from all over Michigan. Really, when you think about it, I'm not sure why it's that way, but I know that there are a few cities that, over the decades have established themselves in one way or
another for being a musical city. I don't know if you remember the Chicago blues wave, or if you remember the Boston the music that came out of Boston for a while, or the music that came out of Atlanta in New Orleans that goes way back to New Orleans thing, and you know, it's it's like example, the group Nirvana,
I mean they brought to life Seattle. You know, it's and once that happens, once somebody breaks through in any city, the record companies, it's like watching a carcass on the desert floor being descended upon by all the creatures that are to eat it. They just milk it dry, sign up everything that can move or pluck a string, and then go on to the next fortune. De choice less because we had Motown, which was just a hit factory, and we had it that way, but we were frustrated
as young white rock and rollers. There was no outlet for us. Nobody had broken through nationally. It was just totally controlled by Motown. But my personal experience in music never went into that rock and roll cave. I kind of nurtured myself, fed myself and gave myself what I loved and needed out of the black community, sort of an urban setting. At at a very young age, I started to transporting myself down into the forbidden areas of Detroit, working a lot of places I wasn't supposed to be.
In fact, I was even hitchhiking down. I wasn't old enough to drive when I started going downtown. Yeah, it's beautiful, that experience. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I couldn't trade anything for it. It has too much value. It's priceless. It formed what I learned about music. Originally, I had a vocal instructor in high school and he was putting me in classical tournaments at Tri County competitions, and I was winning a lot, and he was very sad. And in fact,
he's still alive. His name is Dell Towers. He's about ninety four. I just speak to him every once in a while on the phone because I love what he taught me. He taught me how to read and write music, and he helped me develop my singing. But when I broke away from the classical the journey that he was leading me on and started. It was a real slow sort of transition in the beginning, because then I fell
in love with the voice of Johnny Mathis. But after that I began looking for something with a little more energy. And it occurred to me one day. I was listening to the radio, of course, and I hear Pat Boone white shoelaces or something like that. I'm not sure he did white shoelaces, but it was some sort of moody, mellow, really milky, watered down thing. And right after that they put on a little Richard and I just about lost
my mind. I mean the energy, uh yeah, the energy and the attack and the and the little Richard saying I want to be here. I am here. You know, I am the best, and he would say things. It was like a young Muhammad Ali, you know, whom I had the good fortune of getting to know over the years. So it was easy for me then to make that transition from classical into rhythm and blues. I had the ability to do it. And it's just simple. It's basically, as a singer, what you're doing is less breathing from
the stomach and more meddling with the vocal cords. It's not a sound, it's just it gives you a better command over the over the words in my mind.
Okay, let's go back a step. When did you first become aware of botown?
Jeez, I don't think I was. I might have been a freshman in high school. But Smokey Robinson was the very first one I heard. Or no, I'm sorry, Jackie Wilson did reap Petite before he signed with the label he signed with in New Jersey. But Smokey came out with a a song called way over There and that was the first motown record I heard. And his voice was so beautiful. You know, there's I identify other artists by they become timeless to me, not for what words
they sang, but their voices. I fall in love with that immediately. First. You can go a lot of places in the world and you know you'll be hearing the Wreatha Franklin. It's the same as listening to Nat King Cole. Those are very distinctive voices. They they have longevity, they're they're different from other voices. It's frustrating because a lot of the young new singers that try to get to where Aretha was, they may have the talent, but it doesn't seem like they have the passion for it. So
you know, you run into that. You hear that as you listen. And I listen to everything. I love all kinds of music, and I've made a career out of cherry picking. If I go to write music for an album, I really do explore. I want to touch everything I ever heard, and I want to own it for a little while, and then I want to move on to something different, something new. It's just an amazing world. This lifetime dedication to music, what it's done to me, I'm thankful. I'm very thankful for it.
So you know, those of us who did not grow up in that area, there was the Motown House and there were all these acts. Were they accessible? Was out someplace you would drive by, or they were people you just saw on stage and hurt on the radio.
No, I worked with him. I worked on the stage with a lot of them.
But when you first before you became a star, or did you work with them before you became a star?
Yeah? Yeah. There was a dance hall near Detroit, and that's where the kids would come to to really party and dance. And what it was was all the lonely people. They sat against the wall in this big circle, and then the dance floor, of course, was in the middle, and you'd make that long sort of journey very slowly to the other side and asked a lady or a man if they wanted to dance. And that's how it was. But we had developed a show. We are jumping ahead of my career at this point.
Let's not jump ahead, let's go back.
Okay. Well, I started recording when I was sixteen, but my first single out.
Let's go back even before that. So who were your parents? Where did they come from? My dad was an only child and he sang on the radio. That's back in the day, you know, right before the war. The second World War, big band music was the thing even through the war. It was the bit of the thing, and you had all these all and he sang and the band was hired by the radio station to back the performers. And he told me stories about like Danny Thomas before
he was Danny Thomas. He came through and he sang at that studio was in downtown Detroit, and so that was what he was going for. He was going to be a singer. And then the my mom, she was from Tennessee. She made the journey up to Detroit near the end of the depression, right, you know, when the war was starting, and because she needed they needed work, they needed to live, and there were jobs of plenty
up here, you know, in the arsenal of democracy. In fact, we grew up by a tank plant where they manufactured tanks. And my mom heard him on the radio and she wondered what face was attached to that that voice that she was attracted to. So her and one of her girlfriends went down to the studio to be in the audience one night, and that's how they met a little bit. Do you know the story, Specifically, she's in the audience, he's on stage, how did they actually meet.
Well, nobody's ever told me, but it was in the studio. That's the place where they met. I don't know what kind of communications they were and what kind of what kind of pickup lines she might have had her he might have had. You know, that's even too old for me. I mean, the earliest part of my life that I remember.
One of the things that's really funny was when Dwight Eisenhoer was running for president, they gave out swag and he was given out lucky strikes which had the red circle in the white riding, but the package itself was military green, and that was a promotional item for his election campaign. And my father was like bringing stuff like that home. Stuff. Anyway, she had to leave the South
to get a job. But before she left the South, it was only her and my uncle Paul at that point, and she had to put school in the sixth grade to go pick cotton to help the family because my grandfather was just a drunk and he was a horse trader. That's what he did for a living. When they finally moved up to Detroit, he became an automobile salesman. I guess it's the same kind of deal, you know. Yeah, it was. It was rough for her because she had to witness her original mom died right in front of
her eyes and my uncle's eyes. She got caught on fire from this weird stove they had down there, and nobody could help her put it out. She was a frail lady, and that had to be tough. And when I think about my mom and what I know about her history, it wasn't pretty at all. You know. There's
a lot of poverty, a lot of tragic accidents. And then finally my drunk grandpa remarried, had two more children, or three actually, and then the whole bunch of them were living now in Detroit, I think on Third Avenue, and I went I went there to visit a couple of times, and it was a time when they let you behind your apartments or your whatever you were living, and you were able to burn leaves. They allowed you to do that, so they even provided you with little
ovens to do that. I'm trying to remember because I was young, there were so many images that were flashing in front of me, like my uncle George, who ended up marrying a woman from Germany when he was in the military. During the Korean War. He was an MP and she was a farm girl and they met and married and brought her back to America, and it was my first dose of German, you know, I guess you
can put it that way. And she was sort of a little bit timid and shy, because of course you and I both would be if it was a foreign country for the first time. If not shy, I'm afraid at least really amazed. You're going to have to help me walk through this.
Okay, Okay, you're telling such great stories. I don't want to interrupt you.
Yeah, but they're not connected to you.
Know, they are connected in my brain. We're starting the meeting. So your parents get married, Then when does your father stop singing?
When he got drafted? And when he got drafted. They're out in Lincoln, Nebraska at an airfield there, and he was his assignment at that time, was a tail gunner and they be twenty sevens seven it sounds right to me. And he was feeding his machine gun and it tore off two of his fingers and so it was bye bye. You know. He had no more military career, but he thought he could get back into the radio thing and Unfortunately this country moves so fast, always has that wasn't
available anymore. That wasn't what was necessary, that wasn't what was rock and roll. Was just starting to kick his heels. You could feel it down south and you could hear it up north. Yeah, so for him it became really really crazy and frustrating because he knew then that he couldn't, especially with the physical missing two fingers. He felt a little bad about that, but he's it was a beautiful singer. You would keep us little kids awake at nights, singing
love songs to my mom in bed. Yeah. He didn't want to give it up, you know, but he did eventually when I succeeded, he started living vicariously through me. So I had done what he started to do. What did he do for a living? How did he provide a tool and die maker? Working over time whenever he could get it? Never really home. I remember many occasions where there was they had called Grandma so we'd get the lights turned back on. It wasn't enough. I mean,
we ended up having eight kids in that family. So you know, it's a challenge for sure, especially if you're Catholic and you don't want to if you're deep into it, you know the Catholic Church has changed. I'm kind of excited about this new pope from Chicago.
So with area of Detroit did to grow up in?
Well? I was born in ham Trammick, which is a Polish enclave almost one hundred percent so not today it's heavily populated by a lot of different ethnic cultures, but back then it was totally Polish. And it's curiously enough, it's one of the popes visited there. All the places in America you could go to, he went to ham Trammick, Michigan. I have no idea it was okay, but we were Italian and we were surrounded by Polish people, so we
moved pretty quick. After I was born. I pretty much think that's when that doctor made that mistake with my circumcision. That was a joke.
I wasn't sure. You never know, but yeah, not till you look. So you're going to school, What was school like.
School? Well, I tested out my wings early. When I was three years old. I ran away from home on my tricycle. I remember going past the tank plant and I got about a mile away from home and a cop car pulled up and took my tricycle and put it in a trunk and discorded me back to my crying mother, who was desperate to know why things were so miserable that I had to run away at three. So I waited a while, and then when I was
in kindergarten, I did it again. I just started walking home, remembering the route the bus had taken as best I could, and my uncle Bobby Joe come scouting for me and found me and then took me home and I had to face my crying mother again. Tried to enlist in the Marines twice before I was seventeen. That didn't work because my Actually it was funny for me to watch. But in the beginning they called me to tell me when to report to Fort Wayne for induction in the
morning to sign up. And he said, who are you calling? And they said WILLIAMS Levice. Is that you? He said yes, and then he stops for saying, looks at me. He says yeah. He said that's also my son's name, and so he had figured out that I had the Marines were calling for. He said, I fought in a way he needs to say it fought. He said, I served and I was discharged with honorable discharge, and I think I know what's going on here, and so I was grounded.
You know, I couldn't go anywhere because I tried to run away from home again, just how it was, and it was never I never felt fear out of running away. It was more like an adventure. But I have to say my parents, they weren't the most intelligent people in the world. They were smart. My mom was smart enough to teach me some things that I should never never forget, and one is, do not talk about politics, do not talk about religion, and you'll get along fine.
Okay. What kind of kid were you growing up? Were you good in school? Did you play sports? Did you have friends?
At the age of four, I had rheumatic fever, which left me with a heart murmur for the rest of my life, even today I have it. So in the early grades one, two, and three, they wouldn't allow me to play sports with the boys because of the heart thing, and I ended up learning how to play jacks and babble about nothing forever, just sitting with the girls, you know, and trying to understand what they were talking about, why they were talking about it. And so I had a
preview of what makes little girls turned into women. You know, I'm talking about personality wise, and yeah, I'm not trying to describe women is anything less than we certainly were equal, especially when it came to marbles. So that went on for some years and then the doctor finally said, okay, you can play sports. And when I got to high school,
that's exactly what I did. I tried football, but I was skinny and I was My assignment was the running back, so they hand the hand off the ball to me and I tried to cut through the slot that was supposed to have been open for me, and I came through in my pants, swear on it anymore. I was standing there in the football field in my jock strap and no cheerleaders are going what you So I chose track and field and that was my pursuit. But I didn't really excel at anything. I did get a medal
for cross country, but my love. The things I gravitated to in high school were essentially music, and thank god we had a music program and art. Mister van Zant was my art teacher in Dell Towers. As I mentioned in the opening, he was the music teacher and I was like a straight a student in those I guess my next best thing that I did was grammar. I love the written word. I'm very very passionate about it.
And when I write songs, it's so tempting to play, to play with the words, to look for the ambiguities, to look at how many ways can you use this language? But that didn't. That disappeared just recently because I have learned this as well. When you start speaking legal language, you don't you just stop trusting the English language. You absolutely lose your trust for it. And you've got all these right boys that went to schools to learn how to twist words. And in a way, I guess we're similar.
But I don't lie, and I'm not calling attorney's liars. I'm just saying it. You know, if you come to a signpost and it shows I got three under my this way one hundred and fifty, if you go that way, you know, they just parse words and just clog up the court system and get it's like getting away with murder. And you know you need them. You certainly need them when you need to be defended. And things are changing, Bob so quickly that I really don't have time to
ponder on that. What I do is I continue to dream about tomorrow and what I want to do tomorrow, what I want to create new things that I've not experienced yet. And I've done this. I've completed in my home. I have a completed album that's never been released. I have two books that have been authored by me and never been published. I have a musical stage play and
I have to find right now. I'm looking for an accomplice, if you will, to help me set this for the stage, because not like the movies where you can get a different image every two seconds and still understand what's going on. On live stages, you have to have sets and you can only have so many set changes in a play. And it's things like that that I'm not used to because I didn't take drama. And I'm looking for an accomplice.
I'll call them an accomplice. At this point, we don't know what we're capable of.
Let's go back to school. Did you graduate?
Yeah? Of course. It was really cool because the principals pull me when you're handed me in my diploma. He pulled me close to him and whispered in my ear. The only reason you're getting this is because I don't want to see you here and this that's what he told me. I took him to heart, you know.
Okay, so when did you start going to clubs and when did you start performing in clubs?
In clubs at fifteen years old?
Didn't tell me how that ended up happening.
Well, I kind of did. It was the radio. I wanted to go where that music was emanating from, and of course I couldn't go to New York at the time anyway, and so I just sought out Detroit. That was where the music that I loved was. And I ended up making a lot of friends. And I was surprised because I never felt racially intimidated by by my
black friends. They just didn't do that. And I remember also as well, neither of my parents ever said anything that would come close to being bigoted or racist at all at our home, and so there was no foundation for preconceived notions of what the urban life was like. I walked in, people greeted me, I made friends, we started working together, and it was like just living everyday life. There was nothing about skin and that's another thing that
I loved music about. There aren't really color barriers there. It's all about the music. And I think the world cannot live without music. In fact, I'm sure of it. But I would be interested in me witnessing what the first drummer used. I would like and I'd like to know what he was beating it on. You know.
So when you started performing, what were the circumstances did you form a band? Were you singing soul music?
I was solo and my father wasn't in some ways trying to still tried to make a comeback. I remember him there was a casting call in Detroit for a showboat, and he got dressed up and went downtown and auditioned for it. But he didn't make it. But he had a friend at his tool and die factory where he worked, a black gentleman whose wife played keyboard and a choir
at this black church. And the church was run by the reverend James Hendricks, and he owned a record label called Kerrie and my father wanted to get signed to that label. But I'll be darn I stole I tole his I stole his job away from Kelly. I just thought of it that way. Yeah, the reverend wanted he looked around him and saw what was happening in the music world and figured with a Okay, I got a white kid here, but if you listen to him, he doesn't sound white. I think I better sign this kid.
And he did, you know, And and we put out that first single, but it was a nickel and dime operation.
How successful was that?
How successful was it? I lost my interest in it because it was my very first time into a radio station. And as we were leaving and this jockey, I think it was popcornwile it was his name, he took the record, said turn on the radio when you get in the car, I want to be playing it. And then when they shook hands, I just happened to see the palming of the money, and every bit of joy I was feeling
fell to the floor into a muddle of tears. I guess because I so new to that that industry, seeing that happened that you had to pay somebody to play your record. But it didn't stop me, because you know, the sun will come up tomorrow. And so I'm working at the village it was called on Woodward Avenue in Alexandria, and I'm performing with acapella with the PEPs the black group I was a part member of. And every week the Glands Brothers owned the building and they would hire
a house band. You would audition to be a houseman, and so it was difficult because you got new guys coming in. They have to learn your songs and they have to learn them in like a day, two days, so you could get ready for the shows. And what they would do the Glands Brothers would then tell the band after the week's performance, nah, we don't think you're what we need, because nobody paid them to audition, right, And that's how they would get their bands in there.
They just would keep rejecting people and having auditions for new ones. And so on one given weekend, these three young white boys come in and they consisted of Earl Elliott, Jimmy McCarty and Johnny Badangic extremely talented guys for sure. So they backed me and we liked what we heard because they're like they were like a rock and roll group and that's what they did best. And I was
strictly into the rhythm and blues thing. And we found out that when we put those two together on our song list, it was a new it was a different sound. It wasn't what was out there, and we were right, but we didn't know it yet. So we put out a single in the Detroit area on Hireland Records and we were called Billy Lee and the Rivieras, and it didn't really do anything except for our live performances were so so crazy. At that time, you had the beginning
of the British invasion. And this one radio station paid a lot of money to hire this dic jockey just because he had an English accent. I thought that was stupid. But this this jockey that was there, his name was Dave Prince. He said, you know, you guys are different. And I got a friend in New York and would you make it like a tape? Can you guys make a little tape that I can play for him, you know,
so he can hear the band? And we did, and he took it to New York and a producer named Bob Crewe, who is most famous, I guess, doing the Four Seasons songs. He loved it and they called us to New York and we took a really cheap hotel there called the Colisseum House. I had the occasion to be there a few years ago and revisit. It's not. The structure is still there, but it's it doesn't have any more cockroaches, cleaned up and you know, it's been
sanitized and gentrified. And so that's where we stayed. And there were only two bedrooms and there were five of us, so somebody had to sleep on the couch and we take turns doing that. It was really boring is waiting around for the producer to get his himself in a position where we could go in and record. So we started working at some of the local clubs in Manhattan.
In the village, there was a joint called Trudy Heller's, which wasn't a folk club, but we did work some folk clubs too, and didn't go over too well with the folkies. That you know, hard electric pounding beat. That rhythm we were using. We spent our time doing that and guy came in one night and he came to me because at that point I had been married and left my pregnant wife in Detroit while I ventured out into New York to await my fate. And he comes up to me and says, hey, do you want to
make fifty bucks? I said, well, yeah, of course, he said Okay, can you play hobn Neguila. I said, yeah, I need to do that because my first wife was Jewish and so our children were Jewish as well. Oh man, this just popped into my mind. My legal name is Levice L E V I S E. But Nay Briath didn't think so they thought my name was Levine. So I started getting all these male for contributions to all these different causes. And so the kids were going to school,
I was learning Hebrew, I was wearing the Azusa. I was thinking of converting. And then it happened success, And it happened in a very strange way. The producer when we all arrived in New York. First of all, nobody was old enough to sign. Our parents had to sign
our contracts for us. And we sense that Bob Crue didn't want to accept the whole group because the very first single that he put out was one of me alone singing an R and B, a very good R and B classic, but you know, it appeared on the Rhythm and Blues charts, but nowhere else, and he had a failure with it using studio musicians. So he said, okay, get the band together. We're going in the studio. I
want you to play every song you know. So he had also at that very same time acquired the publishing rights for the Rolling Stones catalog, and so subsequently we're doing this session, one of only three studio sessions we ever did for him. He called all of the music for all the five albums he put out on me from those two sessions except for what Now I Love album and two of the Rolling Stones, and they were hot. They had made it already. We hadn't. They were in
the studio because they they love music too. And I think Keith told Bob Crue, if you want a hit out of what you've got going on out there, you might want to bet on that, Jenny take a ride, And when he did, you didn't have the dismal failure of that single by Mitch Wrider, but you had a hare record by Mitchwriter and Detroit Wheels, which was full of energy and that special sound I tried to describe to you earlier, that sort of cocktail, that rhythm and
blues mixed with rock and roll. At that point in time, it was different. It was very different. I kind of have an understanding of why people liked it. I heard it really hurt it because we had an alarm clock that would wake you up with music and Darren, it goes off and they're playing Jenny Take a Ride, and I'm listening to it laid in bed like it's foreign to me, like I heard it for the first time. I'm saying, damn, that's a really good song. You know.
It was churchy. It had a gospel feel to it, but it had those hard electric guitars going, kind of like drunken people that staggered musicians that stagger into a Salvation Army band. But it was cool. And that's you know, We're in Messina, New York, working a club six days a week, three shows a day, seventy five minutes, and we're just waiting and waiting and waiting, and we get a phone call and said to simply, all right, you guys, you're all done there, pack up your bag. You're going
on tour tomorrow. And that's exactly what happened. And the money we were making for an entire week, we made double that in one show for fifteen to twenty minutes. And we worked all those weeks to get that money. So that's how quickly things change, how they can change.
So they put out Jenny takes a ride. You have success, stay on the road. How long until there's another record?
Wow? Everything was done within a two and a half year period, everything the recording, as far as recordings go. And then you had the lack of their what now my love, which I sang on because I was contracted to. You know, I came from an age where my parents were good parents. You know, they did teach me right from wrong. But at that time in our American history, if you got a girl pregnant, he had to marry her. You know, you didn't have say in it if you
were a righteous kid. But that's one of the tragedies of my first marriage because the kids were wonderful success coming at that very moment when I'm needed to be a father and you can't say enough about that. I know what it was like to not know my dad because he had to work so hard, and I just didn't want that to be for my kids. So I had a pretty hard choice to make. But we didn't get you know, we got married when we were eighteen,
so we didn't know what love was. I mean, the underpinning is what it really took to be in love, and that's one of the reasons the marriage didn't work out. We were just and so much was happening so fast, and the demand of my time and that machine that wanted to make as much money as it could. They didn't leave me a second to spare. I was lucky
to get home and see my kids. I was if you're going to be a musician, think about it deeply, if you want to have a family as well, because I've seen it cause wreckage wherever it goes.
So how did it end with your first marriage?
Well, she was a very good woman. She allowed me to be with my kids and have my kids with me when I wanted them, because I hardly got home anyway at all. I mean one year, we did two hundred and eighty nine performances and I ended up being sick. I had to go to hospital. After that, I was just playing more out. I was working for Premier Talent in New York, ran by Frank Barcelona, and they were just starting to bring over English acts to help the
English breakthrough. The Beatles had already done that, so had the Rolling Stones, but there were a million others to follow, like the Dave Clark five and anybody you can name that was from that sixties period that were British. A lot of great groups, but in the beginning, for almost every one of them, they did cover songs of black urban music. Listened to their early stuff by the Stones or anybody else for that matter that wanted to break through.
Early on, they were cover songs of black American artists. And I was a headliner at that point. We had already had a couple gold records of the top tens, and I was headlining a theater. And because I was a headliner, my contract said that I could pick the artists that were on the show. So I picked the Who and the Cream, and damn if I didn't cut
my own throat. They are amazing. But Peter Town said, when I went to England for the first time to be introduced socially and publicly as an artist, he sponsored me. The British were obsessed with this notion and they just almost everyone to a man came up with the same question, how do you sound so black? And I was offended by it. I almost lost it on one I just wanted to call them an ignorant asshole, but I didn't, and I mean their view see that's how you go
about colonizing a world. You don't care. You know, they're nothing if they're not white and bright, they're not shiny and fun to be with. That's why it was easy for the Brits to conquer the world. They just simply didn't care. But they were the only colonials expansionist country. You know what. The history of the world is just like I do, and it's cyclical, and it just keeps
repeating itself. I think currently we're headed for another Gilded Age, only one hundred million times worse in terms of the divide between they have and have not.
So tell me about Bob Crue.
Okay, he was overtly gay. He didn't mind that at all. And he was a showman, he was a seller. He was a star in his mind. And what he had in mind for me, though, is different from what was going on in America at that time. He thought that working seven months stays at a Las Vegas hotel was the top of the world. Went all around me, It wasn't. All the other artists were trying to conquer the entire country.
And he's trying to get me to get us stay in Vegas for God, knows how long, and it wasn't going to work, so I sued to break the management contract and he sold my contract to Paramount, which wasn't so bad in the beginning because we had artists like Billy Joel was at that time on Paramount before he made his moves. He also stole my drummer. People keep stealing my drummers. It's crazy. They just offer them a little more, you know what, I can't pay them. They'll
just pay them a little more. And then these guys go and they go with my blessing because they gave me what they had when they were with me and I. It gets complicated, Bob.
Well, that seems there's a story there. It gets complicated. To tell me a little bit more about that. Well, which aspect of it, Well, you're saying keeping a band together, that must be a really hard effort.
Not if you're having hits. Because I've seen bands that actually hate each other. They'll perform. They don't even talk to each other off stage, but they'll perform. Because that's it's all about money. That's if we wanted to, you know, say good night, that's all we have to say. It's all about money. So that's in everything we do.
When do you realize the hits have dried up and it's not going to be so easy to have a new one.
When he put out the What Now My Love? Album, I was calling radio stations asking him not to play it because I just didn't believe in it. It wasn't I did it because I had to contractually, but I didn't like it. And well, Dell Towers, the guy I was telling you about Taughty Classical, he loves. He loves that album. It's like a bunch of French ballads like what Now My Love? I don't know if it's French of it strings. Utch Davies was the musical director. I don't know if you know Hutch, but he did a
marvelous job with those string arrangements. I can see where a certain part. Well the record got. The single got to number thirty seven, which would be hard to believe if you were a hardcore Mitch writer Detroit Wheel fan fan. And yet it's just a very uncomfortable place to be because no, that's not what I wanted. I loved the idea of a big band, but you know, Bob Cruise mission was to separate me immediately. With that first record, we spoke of from the group and make me into
a soul entity. Each of us had our own individual contracts What Now My Love? And then the pursuant lawsuit that I filed to break my management was the a
downward spin for me. But Pure Amount knew how much, the exorbitant amount of money they had paid for my contract because at that time, when you count them all up, we've had like seventeen or eighteen songs totally in the top one hundred, I guess four and top ten, and then you go to five, you go the top twenty, you get another five, and so it was well in such a short period of time because it's from those
three sessions. Play everything you know, Bob cru said, and we did, and he taped everything we knew, and that's where he do. Look, you had all the Great Hits by Mitch Ryder, which was just a repeat of everything that was a hit. You have Mitch Wrider Sings the Hits. That was another album he put out, which was the same material with different packaging. You had the What Now
My Love? Album, and you had Genny Take a Ride, and you had Breakout, and you had Socker to Me baby, which was incredible because I'm with my wife, still married to my little Jewish princess, and we're shopping and we go buy this cart and they're selling little Mitch Ryder dolls. Who has bro is selling Mitch writer dolls right next the mamas and the papas and crazy crazy stuff. I didn't. I guess my wife bought a couple and stuck them
away because my daughter still has hers. But I went looking for him one day, and not too long ago, I maybe five years ago, and I found one. But they wanted a lot of money, and they had taken this stage costume off the doll. It was just a nude little doll, and and and in my private parts it was just plastic. And I had a lot of mental problems over that. For a while, I didn't know what what gender I was, you know, I was a little confused.
So emotionally, how do you cope when you realize, man, the hits are no longer coming.
Oh that wasn't a problem because I was always just about being able to sing and write. It didn't bother me. But you're asking how did you stay alive?
I think well that too. I was going to go there next Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, Well I took whatever they gave me. I didn't have a manager, I didn't have a br association. I didn't have at that time, they didn't have such a thing as influencers. You know. It was a different time and it was hard, and I went through so many different booking people that promised me they could get me work and stuff, and I ended up with one group that got me worked for a while. When I say work, I'm talking about good work. It was middle
class at least. And then they started putting me on these package tours, which were lucrative for the promoters because you had all these stars with all these hits. But that's all they do is come out and sing the hits and nothing else. They wouldn't do a show. So I was tied up in that for well over a decade, maybe two. But every year that passed and you're getting further and further from your core audience and there was
no new music being made. But Polygrim did manage to get me a dream come true, and they arrange it so I could make a record called the Detroit Memphis Experiment with Burger T and the MGS, with the original band and the Memphis Horns, and that was thrilling in so many ways. Started a relationship and knowledge of Otis Redding, for example, was one of their stars. Interesting label. There's some stuff on TV I saw about it, how they got ripped off by Atlantic Records and so on and
so forth. I'm not saying anything liable. I'm just telling you what I saw on TV. Gosh, that was fun. That was fun. But after that I got a new manager.
I wanted to take another chance at a manager. And his name was Barry Kramer, and he had created a magazine out of Detroit called Cream Magazine, which he wholly intended to go head to head and compete against Rolling Stone, and he signed a deal with Curtis Publishing in New York, which brought up is you can find his book everywhere because prior to that, we were taking his magazines on tour with us in big black garbage bags and dumping them off at different bookstores and newsstands that he said
were important to do that. So we were kind of like doing our tour and selling his publication at the same time. So Barry became my manager, and he drafted a new contract with Paramount and we birthed the album called Detroit, which was produced by Bob Ezrin out of Toronto. For those of you who don't know too much of his work, he was, uh, the group, well, the guy that did taking care of business, for example, the guitar player.
I'm trying to remember his names with Burton coming, Yeah, Randy and then Burton was a singer and.
Golly we did Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd the Wall.
Yeah, yeah, he's a I don't know what he's doing now.
He's living back in Toronto. He's producing records, produced Fish record, Andrea Bocelli still working.
Good good. I wonder if he still has the same publishing company Nimbus nine.
Nimbus nine. I think Nimbus nine was Jack Richardson's. He used to work for Jack Richardson in New York, that's right, I mean in Toronto. I don't know who owns Nimbus sign.
Well, they own some of my songs. I can tell you that.
Well, let's okay, you sit at home now this lead date. You get any royalties.
We're having to fight that very issue as we speak. We're getting some today. I got three different checks from three different collection agencies, so it helped, but those weren't ours. In the beginning. Crew never intended to paying anybody anything. In fact, he bragged publicly. I don't know how high he had to be able to say this, but he bragged about spending about seven million dollars just on cocaine,
and it made us wonder why we weren't getting any royalties. Kelly, you know, it's really hard, Bob, because when you people say, Okay, yeah, you got screwed, but that was how they did the business back then. You were lucky if you didn't get screwed, and we just you can't complain too much because at some point, if it wasn't for Bob Crue, there wouldn't be a Mitch Rider. So I can respect that, but
I can tell you this as well. I'm sure it would be under a different name, but I still would have made it because I was determined to become a star, and whatever circumstances I found myself in, I'm absolutely certain I would have done that. That was the easy part. That's not the hard part of my struggle. The hard part of my struggle is to establish myself and keep chasing the dream. I love all these kinds of music, but I want to go deeper into them and bring
more of myself into it. The new album that we're creating to be recorded next year is probably as close to my inner self as I've ever allowed myself to be. This one the latest Woman we're promoting now. It's a good album, but we're striving for something a little different than that, and new and a new experience and some you know, beautiful music. And when I say beautiful, I mean stuff that you just want to listen to over
and over again. And last night we did a shoot for a music video for the new album, and I mentioned it to Josh. Anyway, we were up till four a m. This morning, and we're deeply involved in it. You know. At some point, I want to talk about why we feel a need to sort of cast raise an eyebrow when we ask ourselves, how are we going to deal with our aging population, How are we going to deal with our elders? How are we treating them in this country? And I'm here to tell you that
it's a big difference in cultures. It is not this way around the world, the way we treat older people here. But I want to table that for a minute to try to keep this trade on, to make every stop that we can make.
No, no, no, no, no, you no. Tell me, tell me more about the aging people, the aging population.
Well, it's a lot of ways to look at it, Like if you can afford to put mom in a home, you know, it really depends on what kind she needs. Do you need assisted living? That happens sometimes they just send them to like a morphine house, where when they decide they can't handle it anymore, they just they're allowed, without much discovery, to in their lives the way they want to. And I think they should be allowed to do that. They've spent their whole life. You know, life
is not easy. That's the first thing you want to teach your kids. It's not going to be easy, kid, but you know you'll end up loving it. So what do you do in a family that doesn't have the money to put mom in assisted living or into a morphine house or take care of her? You know, then you take on We used to have in this gun what we call generational homes. Nobody can I don't know if they can't afford to have a generational home. Because both of the principal, the daughter and son of this
woman or man. They both have to work. There's so many different interchangeable parts in the financial situation that it directs you to what your choices can be and what they will be. I don't know. If you start taking away safety nets, then that raises another problem because you've got people now, not now, but gosh, fifty years ago started learning how to game the system, you know, and raise families on government money instead of doing work for it if there was a job to be had. And
that's what's so frustrating about everything is happening today. But you know what, it's cyclical. It's been done before. It's coming back again, only this time it feels like it's coming back a little harder. But we're all going to live through it, you know, unless something, Unless God wants to call you in. So I wouldn't be afraid of what's happening now. I know that's easy to say because
I'm still being productive. I'm still hiring lighting people and audio people and gaffers and humpers and putting people to work contributing to society paying taxes. So I'm still viable. But what do you do with people that can't and they're suffering a lot of them are suffering. They can't they can't work because they can't physically do it. They'd love to work if they could. And eighty years old or whatever age you want to put it at, where
you think they're they're no good for society. You need to relook at that and see where you can find the value that these people are still willing to give but have no opportunity to do it. So, you know, it's messy. It's messy to describe. It's messy for me to even dissect it in front of you because there's
so much emotion involved in it. But I do know that if you've done done it the right way and you played by the rules and you did what you thought was right, only to find out that it didn't matter one bit what you were doing right or wrong, because in the end, there's so much greed in business, in capitalism, there's so much greed tied up there to very few that you can't really it's hard to fight
the machine. And what do we do. We're living through, like I said, another Gilded Age, which was interesting following the reconstruction period in the American history, and that fell apart, and then you go, you know, into the roaring twenties, all this while the Industrial Revolution is just making itself more viable and more and more and buying up things and consolidating and looking for a bigger check for everybody
that's lucky enough to be employed by them. And I'm sitting here wondering about what happens if they start to privatize our social security? And what happens when they hook you ira and you're for ones? What if they hook them irrevocably to the stock market? I mean, is that how it's going to turn out? Who knows? Seems like right now we're capable of doing anything.
So how's your financial situation? And what's your plan going forward? Assuming you know, let's say you live another ten twenty years.
Wouldn't that be something to witness? I can't. Even when I close my eyes, I can still see it. Anyway, I'll tell you when it's too late. If you're a man is loose skin, if you sit down on a toilet, your gonads are floating, you've got problems anyway, you know what the heck? My financial situation right now, we're rolling with the wind. It's not easy because there's very little work in America. For me at this moment, and that's what we're trying to do with this latest recording. We
feel it's a worthy record. It needs to be heard. You know, when I was passionate, not as passionate as I am now, but when I started really liking music, I just when I heard something on the radio and it sounded good, and I like the way it sounded, I didn't care. I didn't think about age, I didn't think about color, I didn't think about those things. I've thought about how much I liked that song, and I
don't know. I think maybe that's some kind of mentality we should at least give another chance to because there's a lot of people, elders that are quite capable of still contributing valuable and entertaining things into our culture, but we don't do that. We're like a fast food restaurant, you know, give me the next thing that's going to sell. And I had a conversation a couple of years ago with a record company and they were quite honest with me that we love you, we love your music, we
love the music we just heard that you did. But it would cost us, starting at half a million dollars to re establish you in the in the consciousness of the of the country, to to to get that much information out there, to get you set up on social media, to get you all the things you're going to need to return as a star. I said, well, what about if I don't want to be a star. I just want my records to be played, you know. That's that's kind of what we're facing right now. We've got a
great record. I love it so much, and I'm just trying to come home. I've been recording in foreign countries for so long now that and people don't even know I'm alive. I mean, I've had nothing for them to hear. But it's not because I wasn't producing. It's not because I wasn't creating. It's because I never had the power or the push to open the doors I needed to open. I did have a very interesting management agreement with a wonderful man. His name is Brett Steele. He's a manager,
and unfortunately that had to fall apart. I think for a couple of reasons, but it doesn't matter. He's talented. I thought the roster was a little too full. I felt like I needed somebody to give most of their attention to trying to resurrect me, and so when you had a larger roster as he did, it was difficult to want to stay with him. And besides, it was one of those situations where, you know, we talked about management contracts and he said a handshake will do well.
I don't know about a handshake doing because you know, I've gotten stabbed that way before, not that he would
do it. He's a marvelous guy, and I'm happy for the artist that he does manage, but I can't give up the power that I'm going to need to reintroduce me and somebody say, hey, you know your home kid, you did all that stuff, you know, whatever the heck way you were doing over there because we didn't hear it, but you're home now, and that would make a nice ending to that day, and then they you know, then you can rest easy when you look forward to what
are you going to do tomorrow? And my idea what I'm going to do tomorrow is continue to write and records. That's what I want to do. It's getting harder to play because I have severe spinal stenosis with scoliosis, and so walking is difficult. And get this is I don't know where this woman came from, but I'm going to describe it to you now. We were performing on a cruise ship and I'm walking around with a cane because i have to at this moment. I can walk, but
I can't. I can walk without a cane, but I can't walk far and I can't walk long times. So we're out there, we're enjoying the music with all these hundreds of other people on the ship, and we leave the area where everybody's congregated, and we're going past some open hallways, empty hallways, and we turn a corner to go around, and there's this woman and I'm struggling at this point because I've been in the sun for hours
in the standing and I'm struggling to walk. And this woman just ambushed us, jumped out from behind a pillar and started videotaping my struggle to walk. And I'm wondering to myself, well, why would you do that? Why would you want to have that on tape? You know, what is that going to do for you in your social media world, showing somebody having a struggle. So maybe she's like, maybe she likes those national geographic snuff films where you
watch the animals kill each other. You know, I don't know. It's a funny world.
Tell me about your world in Europe and your career in Europe.
Very different, very different. I was this coming year will be forty eight years of non stop touring every year in Europe, with the exception of one COVID year where they wouldn't allow us to travel there. It's a market that I built over a long time. The first seventeen years were in West Germany before the wall came down, and then we slowly got invited by the government in the East to perform. And I did a performance on a show called The Rock Palace, which was sent out
to one hundred and thirty million. At that point in the morning, they said there was one hundred and thirty million people probably watching. I was on a bill with Nil's laughkra and Southside Johnny, and they had those sons of guns. Nobody had told anybody what time the headlining was going to go on. I wasn't headlighting, I was opening,
and nobody had told me that. When Southside found out and Neil's found out that the headlining would be going on at two in the morning, all of a sudden they wanted to Hey, Mitch, listen, man, we love you. Would you like to close the show? And I'm going what headline the show over you guys? Of course I would, and it's because I didn't know about the time. So we were going to open. So we were having in the early afternoon. We were having a few drinks and
we thought we'd be going on pretty soon. It wouldn't be long. Well, then nobody told us about the change. You know, they told me that I would be headlined, but nobody told us about the time. So as we're sitting there waiting, we're continuing to drink and by the time it comes me to be on stage. They had a pre interview where the other bands had their interviews after their performance. They had a pre interview with a drunk who hadn't gotten a chance to put his music
out there yet. Well, by the way, I haven't had anything to drink for over twenty years now, and same thing with the dope. What messes it up for me with my back is they screwed up to begin with with the cervical. They fused the cervical and the medal wasn't quite right. Now I kind of see everything from my dog's perspective. Whatever, it's on the sidewalk in front of me, that's what I'll look at. This show is
called the Rock Palace. So we go on. In the interview, I said some things that the government didn't like, and my record company didn't like, and my manager didn't like. But the kids loved it. And during the show, my show wasn't like anybody else's show. I got off the stage, I went down into the audience. I sat next to the to the attendees, and I talked to him. I sang with him, and I was moving all around, and the band was just roaring, and we did this remarkable show,
which they're calling the best that they've ever seen. For that for marketing purposes, maybe, but that drew my fan base, and that's what allowed me to continue to go over to Germany for all these decades. In the beginning of the transition from West to East, where we started going into a whole Germany, I continued to bring American players over because of the lack of knowledge of not blues but sort of rock and roll stylings. Because the East
Germans were heavy into blues scene. I would too if I was, you know, I would be very bluesy in a communist country, and we worked it. We worked it, we made it into something. We molded it. We dedicated our lives to it and did so many great shows, but never once having to do any of the American hits, and no requests for him wow, doing two hour shows with no intermissions, no opening acts, all material that I created in Germany or France.
Tell me about East Germany before the wall came down.
Well, we happened to go over. There was no neon that was immediate once you went through checkpoint Charlie. There was no neon at all. And we asked our guide we wanted to go to a bar. He said, well, let's just keep walking. I said, well, do you know where you're going? He said, no, we will. I said, what do you mean we will? He said, when we come to the door where you hear music, that's going to be a club, Let's just walk in. There was no out signage outside or anything. It was all like
known to the locals, you know what was happening. And so I got invited over a couple of times before the wall came down. I recorded over there same studio that you two and David Boy used beautiful studio. In the middle of the studio was an old ballroom where the Nazis would have their ballroom dances. But I'm straying, as I have been for the whole interview. So we do this thing and we get invited to play a soccer field. Okay, when's the last time I saw a
soccer field in America? So considering, you know, my last big hit was like sixty nine, and now we're deep into the eighties, not deep into the eighties, but we're in the eighties and all those years. But things did happen in America for me. But let me set that aside for a moment and finished this East German story because it's cute. They would didn't. They didn't want to pay us in the East German marks because of the embarrassment, uh,
the valuation and they so they wouldn't pay us. I remember the marks were green colored to a sort of light blimey green. So they paid us in hardware. We got two grand pianos. We got a Trebbe, their little national car, the East German car. I got a generous tent, had like four different rooms to it, a huge tent. And so what did we do with this stuff, you know. Well, what we did was we took it back and we sold it in the West and made our money that way.
But what we discovered as well is when you're traveling between those two borders, they'd make you get off the bus, leave all your belongings on the bus, go inside for your paperwork, and then say all right, get on the bus and leave. And so you did, only to discover that your cassettes were gone, your radios were gone, your instruments were gone, you know, I mean, they just outright stole from you. So it was the culture in East Germany was certainly different from West Germany. And that's why
I was so shocking for the West. When the wall did come down. There was a lot of traffic heading to the west, a lot of traffic, but the only people head into the West that I knew of at that time were the banks, and they were going to rebuild. The Soviets never gave anything, They just took, took, took.
So when the wall came down, these cities, famous cities, big cities in the East had to be rebuilt, from the sewers to the streets, the electrical grids, to everything that you could think of that you need to run a functioning city, had to be replaced by Western tax dollars in Germany, and so that's where that resentment came from.
Okay, you're a saft spoken, thoughtful, intelligent, educated guy. What was the twenty something Mitch Ryder like? Same or different?
I was just watching an interview at some New York club, New York City, when I was hot, okay, and I was I was polite and respectful. I don't think I carried myself. Only later on after I started getting mad, angry at myself for choices I had made that sabotaged my career. So I started drinking heavily. Only then did I realize what a fool I had been. But in my twenties, I was, you know, pretty reserved guy. I mean, the American Heart Association made me Prince of Hearts for
a year. Just tons of stuff like that, charitable causes doing everything I had learned, you know, being a Catholic. Not that they don't teach in goodness anywhere else, but the Catholic Church is famous for it. If you can't understand them, whip it into you.
So tell me about getting angry and feeling like a fool.
You don't know what your age, what that's like.
Well, I know, but my light history is different from yours. You know, I didn't have this ubiquitous fame. I wasn't ripped off for all this money. I didn't hit a peak and then, you know, have a hard time reclaiming that peak.
You're absolutely right one point. So which part do you want to hear? All of it? All right? My wife's turned to poison me, I'm sure of it. The water is different today. Well, as I said, the most regrettable part of my career is, uh, how I managed to hurt myself career wise. I'm simply a dreamer and I need leadership that's not going to try to hurt me. What would do me, what would serve me best right now would be probably a six year old billionaire with
a devil make air attitude. I just, uh, I think what could look? I'm going to end up happy when when the end finally comes anyway, because I'm happy. Now. We're talking about things that are uncomfortable, but I am a happy guy, and I do expect the sun to come up tomorrow and I'm working on new projects. Complete needed many projects that aren't for sale yet, and I'm still ambitious that way. It's not comfortable being disabled slightly, But you know, they don't come to see me dance,
they come to hear me sing. So it's simple.
Well, how long did it take you to get all over being ripped off?
I think when the Appellate Court in New York State ruled against me in my lawsuit, there was a finality to that. I didn't feel like appealing to the Supreme Court in New York State. And so one of the curious things, do you mind if I continue to call you Bob?
No, that's cool, that's my name.
Okay, okay, So Bob Crewe, like I said, was from an earlier age. I told you the Vegas thing, which was an example. But he also had his own little tin panelley right in his offices, and you would go in there and he owned everything. You know. He just simply hired people to write songs for him and they would get credit and a small royalty. And when I say small, we're talking about one or two cents a record five cents at the most if you're a really
big deal. So he dissuaded us at a time. See I wrote my first record, I wrote my second record. All before I went to New York. My mom used to sing around the house all the time. My mom used to write music. She'd take me a little preschooler, and she'd read and sing her songs to me and asked me for my opinion. She valued my talent that much, I guess. But it's always been about for me that
that creative progress, the evolution. I started out being a writer, and that's what I wanted to be, and I wanted to be a singer, which of course I'm good at. But at a time when everybody around us, their managers were pressing them hard, especially the Brits, to write your own music so we can establish a catalog. Bob Crew was saying that, no, no, no, no, no no no, don't you worry about the music. I've got music for you. And that's what we ended up doing, or a lot
of covers. So you know, I wanted to, after that experience, at least for myself, get to a position that reflected who I really am as a person. And how different is that from anybody? If it's different at all, it's just part of the discovery process, you know, And to become a better writer. And that's been I've been chasing that forever and I'll be chasing it tomorrow. I want to make another new album, you know. I want to
write better songs. I've been told that I've written great songs, but I have no proof of it because I never I haven't been with the machine for a long time. Contracts I sign in Europe, multiple contracts are usually with smaller companies, have no power, have no push, have no connection. At least roof Records is getting me on the American charts, but it's just a little glimpse of me, you know.
So our if we want to be heard, we need to What I need is a benefactor, I think, and I can together with somebody that's intelligent, that's self made, that's comfortable in their lives and wants to dally and prove a point about aging Americans and what their value is to us. Give me a call, you know, and we will make it happen. We'll turn the world upside down on his head and say, hey, you know, I'm eighty years old and I'm doing music. It's just as
good as what you're doing. So let's take that argument there instead of sending our seniors off to places where we'll never see them again, you know, and the ones that are suffering, there's no need for that.
Let's talk about life experience. You've been married three times. What did you learn and what advice do you have?
Well, if you're a musician, don't get married. That's what I learned. My children are from my first wife. My second wife, I woke up one morning with a very bad headache, only to come fully conscious and realize that she had a loaded handgun pressing against my forehead, and it did disturb me a little bit. I talked her down by offering her some more drugs, which I didn't have, but it was long enough to get that gun out
of her hand. And then I filed for divorce, and I thought I had substantial cause she ended up dying, unfortunately as a result of her drug use. And then I met my wife, my current wife, who is just absolutely my savior. Yeah, she's an incredible woman. I've never
known a woman like that. When I met her, I was still I was coming off the heels of the John Mellencamp produced album Never Kick a Sleeping Dog, and so I was in Detroit anyway, reborn as a star, and not that you would know, but that song we covered, the Prince Song, did chart, and it was the first time I was.
That's my favorite song on that album. When you did a cover, I woke right up and said, wow, And it was a great cover.
I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, I saw it in a movie called Hot Dog or something, A bunch of skiers, right, yeah, a nice, nice groove and you know, a great experience. And then thanks to John believing in me. So I've had help along the way.
But you were telling me about meeting your third wife.
Yes, so I'm hot again. And the higher the record goes in the charts, the prettier the girls get every week. Okay,
it's just a fact. She was different because I was getting divorced and she had been divorced, and she had two little kids in a shopping cart and we're in Kmart and we both end up at the flower shop together and I'm looking for roses, and I asked, do you know anything about roses, kind of offhandedly because I saw the kids and I wasn't really ready to mess with any of that, And she said, yeah, in fact, I'm looking for some stuff from my garden as well.
I think what you're looking for is over there and whatever. But anyway, it sparked a conversation, but not too many details were forthcoming from her, and she we ended up in line together, and they pushed my stuff through. She's behind me, and the lady sees her stuff on the counter and thinks her together and starts pushing her stuff through as well. And she stops the lady and said, no, no, no, no, no, that's that's not his. Those are my belongings. And I said, well,
you know, hey, I'm sorry she did that. If you want, you know, I can help help you. Because she didn't look like she had much money. In fact, she didn't, so she wasn't enjoining, she wasn't getting into that. She didn't like to pick up line, she didn't like any of that stuff. But one thing I realized about her was, and I swear to you this is the truth as I know it, I did not want She's beautiful. She's a beautiful woman physically, intellectually, morally, she's industrious, intelligent, as
they say down south, she cleans up well. She if it had been any other woman, Because I was out of that marriage and I just would have wanted to take her to bed, but I didn't want to touch the woman. We corresponded, We telephone called, We went on dates for a year and a half before the thought sex even came into my mind. I mean that was
something absolutely I had never experienced before. No, she was this woman so whole, uh and and honest and industrious and you know, I mean she put she changes electrical sockets around the house, she runs wiring, and she she does all the technical stuff and then she has these beautiful gardens. She she makes and designs, and she loves a clean house. And she's uh, she plays pickleball every day she can, and she's really good, you know. And she's see she is seventy seven years old, or not
seventy seven, sixty seven years old. I'm eighty. So you know, the big big drama here is I'm going to be leaving probably if things go according to the plan before she does. And it's it's brought some deep feelings between us. We bonded, I think even closer than we thought was possible. And here's the woman that we did get divorced after three years, and we took those three years to understand that there was nothing out there that satisfying the two of us as much as we satisfied ourselves on all
levels of thought and action. The trick about sex is that's usually the first thing that people use as an introduction card, and that's no basis for a relationship at all. So I think we did it the right way. We studied each other for that year and a half before I married her, and the divorce came and we realized that we couldn't do it without each other, and we wanted to be back together. And we've had some hard times,
but we've had some grand times. And I took her to see the world that she wouldn't have been capable of seeing. She's got friends all over the country. She's been to eighteen year nineteen different countries, and she's got friends in all of them. This is a beautiful woman. Her name's Megan.
So tell me about fame.
Oh, it's one of the most destruct It's one of the most misunderstood aspects of American culture. It changes people, so normally it changes you know. I had this discussion with a high school buddy of mine who's still alive. I don't think I changed. I became just something for all these different people that needed different work and different jobs, a new piece of meat to hang your hat on and make some money. And I was following directions and
orders and stuff, and their perception of me. Well, he's a star now he You know, he's got to have changed. No, No, if anything, No, my buddy's and kids from high school, they've changed with their regard to their attitude towards me. I know this because I've sat and talked to the old buddy I was telling you about, and his idea of what's happened in my life is way different from the reality I'm living through. So famous, it was harder
to get back when I was looking for it. I just it's not that I don't understand what's happening now.
I do.
I simply am not in a position of power to make the moves that have to be made.
But is it an advantage or a disadvantage of both being famous? I mean, if you go out to the grocery store, you go people to people recognize you. Do you ever trade on your name and say I can't get a reservation, but tell them I'm Mitch Ryder stuff like that.
Well, these days, yeah, that still works in Detroit because I'm a Detroit boy. I remember they did a special on me with one of the local TV channels and they put us in Washington, d C. And they asked ten people on the street, have you ever heard of Mitch Ryder? And only one person said yes out of the ten. So you know, but in Detroit, everybody knows the name. If not, they can ask their grandma. She'll
tell them. It's famous. Corruptive, you know, if you're not careful, it can lead you into believing that you're something you're not, other than a human. I don't put cabinets together. I couldn't build you a chair. I couldn't There's a lot of things I can't do. But I do know music because it's been the only pursuit I've had.
And to.
Understand that these other people I'm talking about, with the different occupations, they're no different from me. They're going to have success or failure too. And I think essentially all a man wants in this world is to be able to have his dignity and be able to feed his family and keep him in shelter and keep him healthy. That's all anybody wants all over the world. But there's so many greedy assholes out there that are just making it difficult for people to get even a living way.
And I just like I said in the beginning, this is the first time this has happened in our history. It won't be the last, But what you're seeing is an erosion. The only people I believe when they swear an oath to the Constitution are the soldiers, the frontline infantry, people of the men and women that are willing to give up their lives. I'll believe them when they swear to the Constitution. But it seems to me like there's a lot of people lying about it right now.
So in your regular life, are you Bill or you Mitch?
It really depends on how long we get to know each other.
Well, what does your wife call you.
Idiot?
When she's happier with you? Does she use Bill or Mitch?
Billy?
And on your passport, what does it say.
William s Leviice jor And let me ask you a question. If you're a junior and your dad dies, are you no longer a junior?
That's an interesting Okay, So did you contemplate naming your child the third?
No? But you know one of the original names they wanted for me in New York when they were searching for one was Michael Rothschild. At least you be rich, right, like I'm gonna like, you know, I'm going to diss a whole financial establishment in Europe. That was crazy, vincent.
How did it end up being Mitch Ryder?
H A finger fell on a name in the phone book, and there were five of them, And I felt so bad about it that I literally called all those people and apologized to him for whatever problems I had brought into their life.
Wow, So there there were five people named Mitch Ryder.
No, there was like an m writer, there was a miswriter, there was a Mitch writer. One Mitch writer. And did you know that? There was a rest but he died recently. He called himself Mitch Writer too, because he appeared on Google once when I punched in my name.
Okay, Billy, you dropped a lot of wisdom on us. It's great to hear that you're so optimistic and driven for the future, still dreaming. Too many people get up the dreams. I wish you luck, and I wish a benefactor find show.
Yeah, that's not so important. It would be helpful but you know, you know how life is.
I can't believe that you have a smile on your fee. You've been through a lot and not all positive, and the fact that you have a positive attitude is really pretty enlightening and a beacon for those of us who can't always stay so positive.
But you know what, look at what choices we have. You only have two choices. Why would anybody want to waste their life regretting the experience? We all knew this is how it worked. You start dying from the day you're born. So life is not easy. And believe me, this is not anything to be ashamed of or feel sorrow about. Yeah, you don't want to leave the people you love, but if you're in a place where you're not having a life that is enjoyable and you're suffering,
there's really why do you want to be here? Why do you want to stay in a place where you're suffering and you cannot get rid of the suffering? And they you know, I've asked myself that question, but fortunately there is an answer. You look forward to waking up and seeing that sun the next day, and that's all you need to know that you can carry on. You can realize whatever dream it was that you haven't found, and you now found a way to look for it, Go for it, you know, just do the positive stuff
and forget all that. I could talk to you for hours about it, but my wife warned me in the beginning. No politics, no religion, and those are just like a tinder box waiting to be lit. We could expand this conversation into some deep intellectual, thoughtful properties and meanings and things, but I don't choose to do that. That's not what I do. You know, I don't ask myself when my audience walks into a venue to see me. I don't
ask if they're a Republican or Democrat. That's irrelevant. They came to hear music that they love or they wouldn't be paying, and so why why muddy the waters with something that they didn't want. If I feel like grand standing, I'll take it off the show stage and put it on a street corner. Look at the problem that Bruce Springsteen's going to have now when he comes home. Do you understand what I'm talking about?
I do, But he's in a slightly different financial and career spot than you are.
Yeah, you know, true enough, and you.
Know, listen, I could go on about this forever myself, but if you're trying to please everybody, no one can do that. Even if you get on stage and you just do your music, they're going to be people who dislike you or dislike that style of music. You're right, so you make choices. And the artists that we became enamored of when you were so successful was because they took a stand, whatever that stand might be, and they
were speaking their truth through the music. It was different from you know, as you put it, Tin Pan Alley, But you know, I think that's also a difference between yesterday and today.
You know, one of my heroes is I have very few of them. I have the greatest love and affection for Bob Dylan.
Tell me why he is not.
Afraid to talk about any subject. He's just simply and he does it with such ambiguity that it's it's clever because you you, three different people could listen to a line from one of his songs and come out with three different meanings. You know, That's why he's so damn cool. Is he still working? It's something somebody, I mean.
He's been working. I respect I respect Dylan for everything he did in his work. But one thing I respect him for is he goes on the road and makes it interesting to him. I don't want to go see it. I have seen it. But you go to see Dylan, he rearranges all the songs to the point of unrecognizability.
I know what you're talking about because we went through that experience. It's my wife and I three years ago, I believe. And he had been on the road so long that first of all, the first thing you noticed was that he had lost his voice. Okay, everything was like a growl. And then suddenly you'll put put in the name of the song right right where you can tell what song it was. But in spite of that, he did write those wonderful, wonderful.
Song No listen, I could quote that stuff ad infinitum.
Who were your favorites when you were a teenager? Who did you like?
Oh, come on, okay, I mean, if you want to start, you know, I'm younger. I'm ten years not ten, but eight years younger than you. So the first stuff you heard, all that Beatles stuff whatever, I mean, all the eldest stuff was really before my time. And then Babying and Bobby were aware of the first stuff that resonated in the other than the novelty tracks were the Beach Boys in the Four Seasons, and then of course the Beatles
hit and that was everything. And you live in the New York market and you had all the FM radio, so you know Quem Hendrix, I could go on to who all that stuff.
I knew all those guys. That's crazy.
And you know what people don't realize is it was different if you wanted to know what was going on, if you were younger, you turned on the radio. Not only did you get the songs, you got news, it applied to you, et cetera. And there's always been music. There was music before the Beatles. But just like with tech, from like nineteen ninety five to like five years ago, we were all focused on it. That's what it was like with music. It drove everything, just like today it's
like politics. You opened the paper every day and you see a story that causes an emotion, whether you disagree, whatever, there's a passion That is not what we're getting from music. Music now is more entertainment, more commerce. And I'm talking in generalities because there's thousands of acts doing all kinds of music. But as you were talking earlier about the Hot one hundred, you know, we know those songs by heart.
And the other thing was, yeah, they talked about turntable hits with the reality was it had to be really fucking great in order to make it.
Yeah, you know, Barry Gordy said, it's what's in the grooves that comes absolutely.
And you know, the other good thing is that you know, for a while there it was how you looked and whatever. Now it's you know, because you know now it's based back to the record. Yeah, people want to be able to see what you look whatever, but that's not the number one thing you're selling. One more question for you, though, because what did you think when you found out Springsteen was doing a medley of your songs?
Well, he invited me and we did perform them together here in Detroit, But when was the first one. There was a funny part to that though, because I got so involved in the show. You know, I hadn't played a venue like Cobo Hall where he was in such a long time that I was very excited and we started doing my songs and I actually just it's so insane and embarrassing to talk about Bruce laughed about it,
but I was so into the show. I turned around to Max, the drummer, and I signaled him to turn down, and he just he looked at me with these like a deer caught in headlights, and then looked at the boss and you want to know, what do I do? What I do? Oh? You know, it was fun. There was, you know, a kick ass performance.
But when was the first time if you remember, you were aware that he was doing that medley.
When he called me to come and rehearse it. Really, we went in a day early and he said, I'm coming to Detroit, and I wondered if you'd be kind enough to come up and sing your songs. I said, well, not all of them. He said, well, no, just too in particular.
Okay, of all of the people you know in your book, you list all the musicians you've met, tell me one or two that lived up to the image, because they usually don't.
Lived up to the image as projected by them or as perceived by the public.
I would say, it's really a combination of both, but it's what in your mind they represented.
Wow. Well, first of all, one of the most heart rendering voices I got fell in love with was Otis reading. Did you ever hear cigarettes and coffee by him? I don't remember it at the top of my head. No, no, okay, but okay. He was very emotive. It was very very capable of making you hear him cry if he was crying. Just a good natural connect with that voice. And I remember doing this TV show. It occurred like the night before he flew out of Cleveland and died in Lake, Michigan.
He was a tall man and at the end, while they're rolling the credits, we were closing the show, he put his arm around my right shoulder, and he's a much taller man than myself, and he started rocking, and every time he rocked to the left, my whole right leg would come up off the crowd. So I was like, it was like he was a puppeteer, you know. I just I enjoyed meeting all of these people, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of all these people that are stars
that made it. I've spent time with him, I've you know, shared. Yeah, Yeah, it's been wonderful. It's been a remarkable experience.
To what degreed did you wrestle with imposter syndrome?
Imposter syndrome where you say.
I'm not worthy. They're on a different level. I don't deserve the success. Maybe you didn't wrestle with that at all, but a lot of people do.
I'm honored that people think that way. Are you talking about people giving me accolades and stuff.
No, it's like being on stage with another ract and saying, Oh, do I deserve to be here? Do I deserve the way people are looking at me?
If I was invited up on that stage by the headliner, I'd have to say yes. Why else would you put them up there to embarrass him? No?
No, it's good you have that confidence. Okay, we're gonna leave it here. It's been great talking to Mitch Ryder. Till next time. This is Bob Left said's