Paul Rappaport

my original chapter. It was called Gliders Over Hollywood. And he liked it because it connoted, you know, the fun that we had, you know, back in the day, and and and in some ways, you know, in an odd way, all of us in the business were maybe sort of like Gliders over Hollywood, like you know, dropping our little promotion bombs or music or whatever. He said, Look, he just was enamored with it, and he said, I would love to make this the title of the book, and

then we'll give it a subtitle. So, you know, the subtitle says Airship's Airplay and the Art of Rock promotion, maybe you get a better idea of what the book is about. But he said, look, I really want you to think about this title. And the more I thought about it, I really liked it because you know, if you look at it, you kind of go, huh, what is that? Like? What is that about? Right? And then if you look at the book cover, those guys did an amazing job at that at this company's job on press.

And you know the guy that did the cover, Paul Palmer Edwards, you know, put an airship coming. It looks like it's coming over the Hollywood sign. It's perfect. Whole thing worked out great. I'm pleased as punch, you know.

fucking manager. We can we're cursing, right, that's okay, right, the fucking man. I mean you're talking about a business. This is business right where Okay? The manager of Journey big band. Okay, Herbie Herbert. I don't know if you ever met Herbert. Okay, Okry, I know them, Okay, okay, fine, okay, gets on a Yiddish kick. You read about it right

in the book. You know he's not even Jewish. He gets on a Yiddish kick, sends Yiddish for Dummies books to the whole industry, and says, if you want to talk to me or they had a famous road manager still with us, pat Bubba Moro, because if you want to talk to me or Bubba, you have to speak a couple of lines of Yiddish. So I get the book. It's cute, great, fine, I'll never forget this. It's a Thursday. Okay. I get a call Herbie Herbert, Herbie, how you doing?

Voshmachs too? You know, how are you? He's talking to me in Yiddish. I'm saying, Herbie, I got the book. It's cute, it's great, it's Thursday. You and I have to decide this new single for this Journey record. We're selling fifty thousand albums a week, and Bob, as you well know, it's all about momentum and your timely releases of singles. I have to tell the rock stations one is coming out. We have to put the single in production. We're down to a deadline, and I'm telling him we

got to do this now. He keeps talking Yiddish. He doesn't stop for two minutes. Finally stops and he goes rap raps my nickname because I'm lost him to rap aport right, so Rap, What the fuck? A nice Jewish boy like you ken't learn a couple of lines of Yiddish. I'm like Hermie, I got it. I got the book. It's cute, it's great, but this is important. We're selling fifty thousand homes a week. We're on a deadline. I know. Learn your Yiddish and call me back. Click ock, Bob.

This is rock and roll business in nineteen eighty five. I have to get the YIDDI if I want a Journey single, I have to get a Yiddish book and learn two lines of fucking Yiddish before I can talk to him. This is real. This is not made up shit. Okay, that's just a tip of the iceberg of all this stuff you and I experienced. And I just somebody. You know, I'm the guy that got the call. Great. Thanks. Somebody had to write it, somebody had to capture all of

this because it's totally unbelievable. I don't know if it could ever happen again. It's this magic time. Uh. And it took six years because I wanted to get it right. And look, you're a writer, You're a natural writer. Okay, I'm not you. I had to learn how to write. I wrote a blog for ten years for a website.

It was a promotion company that my friend Judy Lebaux owns, which you probably know her ex Atlantic exec Rights, Yes, Right Classics d jor So we work together for ten years and there's a website that goes along with the promotion we do. And I did a blog called Backstage Access for ten years. And I learned how to write in those ten years. And finally when I got to the end, it was like, I think I'm good enough. I found my voice. I found a writer's voice. I said,

I think I'm good enough. And the book had been calling out to me to be written for years because I love telling stories and I'm a natural at that. I think I got it from my dad, but I'm not a natural writer, so I had to learn that craft. And then, lucky for me, there's a big time ghostwriter in my town as a list guy, writes for presidents and you know, movie stars. And he looked over my shoulder and I would send him stuff and he'd say, hmm, that's serviceable. And I'd say okay, and then you know,

another year, lext year, I'd send something else. He goes, this is getting better. Finally, I think by the third year, he goes, this is actually entertaining and enlightening. He says, I think you're good to go, but I just wanted to make it great. And in order to do that it takes time. Writing is rewriting and rewriting and reworking and throwing stuff out and putting stuff back in. I

went through four editors that helped me. The last one, well, the last one was Tom Seabrook from Jobbone, who's like professional and he got this and he said, you know, this writing's great. He goes, But they're like producers, right, He goes, like a producer. Hey, you got fifteen tracks, let's cut it down to twelve. I'm going to re sequence your album. And here's a better baseline, like for this track. Right. So he's like that guy. So he suggested all these things, and all I could do was say.

All I could do was listen and say thank you, yes, thank you. Yes. This is not chapter one, this is the prologue. This is books top heavy. I want to move some of these chapters around. He goes, hey, look, it's your book, but this is my suggestion. Okay. I know from being a professional, I wished some of my younger bands would have listened to me. But you know, I'm smart enough to understand this is what this guy

does for a living. And it took a second because the book was a little different, but I digested it and I went, oh my god, this guy's made a good book into a great book. I know I'm the guy that wrote it, but it doesn't matter who wrote it. This guy did this, you know, and so, but that's why it took so long. And you know what, and you know, Jim McKeon, right, of course, good friend, Look mack. Okay, turns out the guy's an editor who knew the guy's been one of my best friends my whole life. I'm

writing this way. He goes, oh, you should work with me. I'm an editor. I was like, since when he goes, no, no, I was in Catholic school, I learned from he's not not at it. See, this guy is an editor, he bob. This guy worked with me, I mean painstakingly, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word. You know, it was like fucking Bruce Springsteen making a record. I mean, the guy so cerebral. Right, this is what it felt like. It was like, crap, there's a better word. This is

not the right word. You know, this is not you know, it's not if you walk Paul McCartney down the street, it's not a it's not a dangerous crowd. It's it's going to be a challenging crowd. That's a better word. So then I'd go ask my wife, Sharon, Max says, challenging, What do you think? Yes, listen to Mac. You knows what he's talking about. So it took a long time, but it's I think. You know. I worked for a lot of presidents and one of them was Don Einer.

And Don had a lot of wisdom. And he used to tell artists, new artists who wanted to get their records out right away. He'd say, listen, I want you to go back and work on this. I want you to make it right. Nobody is waiting for your album, but once it's out, that's it, and you're not going to have a second chance. And he would tell all these young artists, you know, you know, nobody's waiting for her.

I'm just wait, wait, and and that was kind of reverberating in my head, honestly, because I knew that and I needed it. I needed it to be great. I mean, I just look, you read my book. I'm competitive, and I wanted you know what I wanted. This is going to sound like an ego thing, but I wanted it to be the best. I wanted to be the best

fucking book you could read about our times. And then some guy named Bob lefts Sets actually wrote that like, I was scared to death when you sent me there email, because you're an opinionated fellow, so you know I was. I was, I was frightened. And so then I clicked on it and I read this line, this is the best book about how it used to be and I read that three times in a row and then I thought, I'm done. I can retire now because it's you right, It's like, it's do people know you?

in the fucking desert. But there's a guy, Bob Blust that's has this Left Sets Letter, and all of a sudden we can talk to each other, and all of a sudden, the letter gets even bigger, and now it's about politics. And now it's about all this stuff and and and now there's a podcast. You know, I'm one of your biggest fans, but it's not it's people need to know, Like how do I say this? I mean, just like how important you have been for the music industry,

you know, and just in general. You know, God knows how many people read the Left That's letter now, And I don't know if everybody listens to this podcast reads it, but you should read it because there's no nonsense, there's no bullshit. You say exactly what you want to say, and you take a lot of heat sometimes, but it's glorious. That's what you want. I don't I don't want people pulling punches. Tell me how you feel. You know, you've been able to make this yourself.

if you will. So in my thanks to him, I said, if you wish you could have read about my romantic world when drug induced five days text marathon with a renowned La rock DJ. Blame Bob, who ditched the entire chapter rap nobody cares So.

can't tell you about that because it's bribe. But you know, so I don't know if anybody else gives a shit about that. But but you know, look, you can't shoehorn all the stories you want to tell in thirty plus years of working for Columbia Records. You can't put it all in a book. You got to pick and choose. There's so much, so many more stories, and they're wonderful stories, but you just you can't put them all in. So yeah, you know, yeah, you know what, you want a good one.

I'll tell you one that that that I wished I would have put in. Okay, you know, I'll tell you one that I wish I would have put in. I'm pretty easy going guy. I mean, my whole way of promotion is is just learning people, learning how they think, you know, trying to to you know, make them understand, you know, how open their minds to listening to to

new music, you know, and in a certain way. Like you know, if you have somebody who's who loves the blues, right and you want to get them to listen to some music, you don't you just never send anybody like a file or you know, play somebody a record, what do you think, because that's you don't really want their opinion, you know, you're trying to you want the opinion that you're going to try to shape. So if there's you know, somebody's into the blues or whatever, you might say, oh, look,

I've got this new artist. Chris Whitley's not right down the pike rock. But this guy is the real deal. This guy's playing resonator guitars. This guy is a real job blues guy. No, So all of a sudden, you know, this guy already knows you know that he's going to maybe like this music. Or you are taking somebody to see a band, or you're just being friends with people and you're just you know, playing music for people. That's that's the style of promotion, you know, person that I am.

But sometimes you have to wield a hammer. It's only a couple of times in my career where I had to get heavy, and one was during Springsteen's Nebraska record because it was different and it was sparse. And I remember specifically, excuse me, because I was taking three radio consultants, three of the biggest radio consultants. One was in charge of sixty stations, one was in charge of thirty, one was in charge of twenty. I was taking them one

was a week. It was like three nights during a week that I was taking them to Billy Joel's house because I wanted to introduce them to Billy, because in their minds they thought Billy was just this balladeer, lightweight guy. And I got on, this guy's a rocker. You gotta go see this guy's You need to meet this guy. So Billy, Billy actually made dinner. He said, I'm going to make dinner for these three guys. I was like, well, that's nice of you. It was funny because Billy's part Jewish,

but Billy's all his bands are Italian. Billy likes to think of himself as Italian, so he would tell me, rap, I'm gonna make a the pasta like Bill, come on, But anyway. So he was me. So I figured, this is great. I'm gonna put him in a limousine. I'm gonna take him to Lloyd Neck where you know, Lloyd's neckwork, where where Bill used to live at a nice house. And you know, it's a long ride and we're in

a dark limousine. I'm going to play in Nebraska. There's like, there's no better place you could play this music for someone. And I played it for each of them and they all said the same thing. As soon as soon they heard it. They went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wa wall wait a minute, wait a minute. You know, rap rap. You know this is different. This is we're gonna have. We're gonna have to like spoon feed this to our listeners. You know this is not you know, this is not

born in the USA. This is not darkness. This is something very different. And I and I and I and I said the same thing to all three of them. Uh, I said you, I said, you're kidding me, right, I mean, like, at this point, Bruce Springsteen hasn't hasn't earned your respect to give him the benefit of the doubt, Like, are you kidding me? Uh? And they were like, well, well, you know, oh it's it's very different and I'm not sure about it, and I'm going to have to spoon

for this. And I said the same thing to all three of them. I said, look, I'm not going to make you put it in heavy rotation because I know that's not real. I said, but you're going to give this record a good shot, and you're going to let the people decide. You're going to put this record in medium rotation at least three times a day. And if

you don't, you're going to lose my phone number. And that means if you lose my phone number, that means you're using losing Bob Dylan's phone number, Big Floyd's phone number, the wronging Stone's phone number, Elvis gos Stella, you name it, because that's you know, I'm the guy. They need to give them tickets and promotions and backstage meet and greets. And all three of them said the same thing. They're going rap. This isn't like you like, are you going

to hold me up? And I and I said, for Bruce Brinstein, I will not for everybody, but for this guy. Right now, in this guy's career, this guy's becoming the Elvis Presley of our times. He's a exploding Yeah, I'm gonna hold you up for this guy. And they understood it and they complied. And that's not in the book, but it happened, and I didn't write that part of me.

I don't think in the book that heavy handed approach to It's not I don't like it, uh, but uh, you know that was a case where I had to be different.

And I'm trying to remember who the original players were. I think I think Prairie Prince from the Tubes might have been the original drummer. I think Rossvillong was the original bass player. And he said, I want to build a band around you. Now the original oh no, it was prey print but no, it's no. When I met up with him was Ainsley Dunbar. Ainsley was already the drummer. But they, you know, and I would call them progressive. They were progressed. I mean they were progressive rock, if

you want to call it that. I mean, you know, long jams, and Roley was seeing the vocals like he did for Santana, and we were doing okay. Uh And I promoted both those records and we were doing okay, but the label wasn't quite sure if they wanted to continue, and Herbie told me this story over lunch before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Uh lunch when when when uh? When Journey got inducted, and he said he went to New York and he wanted to up the

uh they're contracting. They had two albums, they were getting ready to do a third album and and he was told they weren't sure they wanted to continue. They had seen the band and they they I think it was Bruce Lunvall at the time, was the president and a guy named Armaanden who was the heead of marketing, and they said something's missing and at the the and they they wanted something more, and they suggested to Herbie then maybe the band needed a frontman, a traditional front person,

traditional front man. And Herbie said, okay, well, let me listen to what you're saying. And at the time, Arma was working with a guy I got to come up with his name, very good singer, you'd know him, and his name escapes me at the moment, but they were working with him, and Arma was working with him and suggested, let's try this guy. And they did for a little while and that didn't work out. Then they had another guy and didn't work out, and somebody had given Herbie

a tape of Steve. Steve had been trying to make it in the industry and he was having a hard time. He just gave up, so he was he was working on his I think it's I think it's a step dad. I'm not mistaken. His dad had a turkey ranch and Steve was literally shoving turkey shit like and the dad's ranch. And Herbie heard this and he called and he and Steve's mom was on the line, and he goes, I really want to talk to your son, and she said, Nah, he's done. He's his heart's broken, he's done. He's not

going to do this. Herbie had to beg his mom to get Steve on the phone, you know. Finally Steve gets on the phone and Herbie's like, I'm Herbie Herbert, and you know I've heard your tape. I know you had a rough time that just would you go with me on this? Just come, you know, come out to San Francisco wherever you wanted to come, He said, just, you know, just just be with me, be with the band for a little while. You know, you can come as a guest, you can come to help on the road.

You can come as a sound man whatever you want and just be part of this. I think there's something here. I just just please, please please. And so Steve did, and Steve went with the band on tour. And this the one lead singer who wasn't was really not getting along with Herbie. And as the story goes, and again, this is a story told to me by Herbie. So you know, in case anybody has any bones to pick this, you know, Herbie told me the story. The singer that they had was getting a big ego and it was

just driving Hervey crazy. And finally he just had it and he told Pat Morow. You know, I don't know if you ever meet Pat Morrow, Bubba, you ever meet his famous road manager, said, Bubba got to take this guy somewhere. I want him to miss soundcheck. He said, I just just have him miss soundcheck. So Bubba said, fine, so soundcheck comes, no lead singer. Herbie's you know, looking at the band and goes, hey, well, you know, Steve knows all the songs he's been he's been touring with us. Okay,

now here's a little backstory. I got to tell you this. Okay, Bob left. That's exclusive so okay. Because Herbie liked the tape so much, he'd sent the cassette to Neil, Sean's wife at the time. And this is a beautiful story. He said, Listen, don't play this for me. Ill just put it on in the background. I just want him to hear it in the background. Don't even tell him who it is. Do not say this is a guy.

He just play it. She'd been playing this tape for Neil's just in the house, right, okay, fast forward back know the singer. Herbie talks to the band. He goes, look, Steve's here. You know, he's been traveling with us. He knows all the songs. Let him just do the soundcheck. Perry gets up to the sound check. Okay, boss, everybody's mine. Sean knows it's vaguely familiar. He doesn't know why. He just know he loves it. He doesn't know why he loves it, but it's already in his head. You know,

it's like McCartney writing yesterday, Like who wrote this? I don't know? Well, somebody tell me who wrote this same thing? So Sean likes it. They like it. Lead singer comes back. Herbie says, a lot of explatives to him and says, you're fired. And that's how Steve Ferry got into Journey.

He shoves me off my seat. Boom rap rap. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? Is Herbie give me a fucking second?

a thous notes a bar. That was this thing right, And Greg Raley told him, he said, Neil, nobody cares how many notes you can play in a bar in music? Do you want to be remembered as a guitar player? Play songs within songs, play melodies, playing notes that people will remember, and then you're going to be meaningful. Okay, this is Greg talking to Neil, and Neil listened to him.

And that's why you can sing all the Journey solos right because Neil, you know, serves the song right that this is this is you know, first of all, Neil Sean is one of the greatest guitar players on the planet. And a lot of people don't know what they should but he's he's never leaves the mother ship or rarely, but he has solo records. You know, if you want to hear some great records, get Neil Sean solos. This guy's an amazing guitar player. But you listen to Greg

and what do you get. You get you get people that are are working for the same you know, they're working for the same goal. So now everybody's working to make great music, great records, great everything. You got the best players, the best producers, and one of the best managers in the business, Herbie Herbert, just you know, to put it all together to make this and it was it was. It was a marriage made in heaven. I mean, I mean, these songs are in everybody's head. We're still

singing them. It's you know, it's it's you know. They would consistently sell more catalog than anybody. It just is right. It's like queen, It's like, come on.

music people. If you're a music person, you go listen to those first two Journey albums, right uh, and I can't remember that the titles of some of the songs, you know, you know, but it's great music. It just didn't you know, it just they weren't hit records. It wasn't going to resonate with the masses. But if you you know, go to somebody and just say, hey, this'sten

a Wheel in the sky man, are you kidding? It's like so, you know, that was easy peasy, and then and and you know, and and and then you know, after that is doing promotions and the things that you do. You get people to meet the band, and you know, you're you're on a different level. But it was the music. The music was just the music being so good.

and I was promoting all formats. But FM radio was building, and as it built, the record label understood they were going to need people that were just going to be, you know, experts at promoting rock radio. You know, this was going to be a specialty. So I got the nod to try it, to be an experiment. So I believe I was the first FM promotion man in the country that solely promoted that format. So literally, I don't

even know if it was. A year went by and they went, oh my god, we need more of these people. So we need a regional you know people. We needed somebody in the East coast, somebody you know, and it grew exponentially, but it began with me on the West coast, somebody on the East coast ahead of album promotion. Mike Plott and Epic had the same thing. McKeon was working at k West Radio. He had started k West in LA and he was going toe to toe with k MET.

He had made such a great rock station. Anyway, the owners were starting to give him trouble and he didn't want his art messed with. So I asked him if he wanted to join the Dark Side because I thought he'd be a great record guy. And he did, and it turned out he was. So he became my epic counterpart. Okay, so now we're in La working together. So we shared an office. Actually, I have a great story to tell

you about that too. Anyway, so we shared an office and so we go to the Cariboo Meetings, which is a ranch up in Colorado where James William Gercio had built a recording studio with the money he'd made from producing Chicago. And everybody recorded there because there were no unions, you didn't have to worry about shutting down at a certain time. You could work twenty four to seven. The studio was state of the art and it's beautiful up

in Colorado. Meetre up up in the mountains and everything and everybody, I mean, you know, Michael Jackson recorded there, Joe wallaceh Edgar Winner, I mean, everybody. So we went up there to have meetings and you know, look, meetings were fun, you know, in those days. What are you going to do. You're going to listen to music, talk about music, and then you're going to talk about how you're going to go out and shout about it. That's what promotion people do, right. I love this music. I

need the world to know about it. Get ready, world, because this is coming at Okay. That's what we do. And then we have to get through the gatekeepers, which are the radio people and the press people of you know, we need to get the music to the public because the public has to decide. Right. A lot of people think, oh, the record business decides everything. We have priorities, we think we know some stuff. But your job as a promotion person is get the music on the air and let

the people decide if they like it. And if they like it, then your job is to put the pedal to the metal and go make it happen. And I don't you know, you read my book. I don't hear everything. None of us hear everything. But your job is to

make that happen and then we'll all know. And if listeners respond, great, that's the one and they're you know, a handful of bands that I thought we're going to go all the way and Bob, I don't know why it didn't happen, just couldn't, just didn't resonate, you know, So I don't know. But anyway, so we're so we're at this famous meeting and we're having a lot of fun. I mean, you know, we're a bunch of hippies, were smoking dope. But you know, I mean, it's you know,

in Colorado. What could be better? So we're all playing music because the idea was, Okay, whether you were Epic or Columbia, the idea was, let's all get together and play music for each other, and we'll cross pollinate because we all were creative people, we'll have different ideas on how to get this music done right. So, you know, Colombia's playing Columbia stuff, and this guy Mike Shavelson, who was the head of a promotion for Epic, was playing his stuff. So he plays us a band called Mother's

Finest Great Band out out of Atlanta, Georgia. I don't know if it was Atlanta, was Georgia. And he goes, yeah, and I got this new thing called Boston puts it on, plays more than a feeling. Okay, A lot of us in the music business heavy ears like like we know shit, right, Like, you know, we here, Okay, he plays more than a feeling. We're like stunned. We're like, we're like what why are these guys? Like, we'll play it again. So he plays

it again, right, and we're like, holy fuck. So because he has to toe the line, right, he's you know, there's got to be priorities going, oh, don't get excited, don't get excited. You know, you know, the priority is mother's finest. You know, they're blowing people off the stage. The priorities mother's finest, you know, So let's not get

too excited. So like I'm sitting next to McKeon, right, Well, look at that Harvey Lee's was there, you know Harvey, Right, So Harvey's there, Harvey's at this meeting, right, you know, there's a whole there's a bunch of paragraphs just about Harvey Lea's in my book because people have to know these characters, like they got to know these people existed.

So so Harvey's there, he's smiling near to ear And now I can't get in trouble because I'm the Columbia guy, right, So I raised my hand, right, Mike, with all due respect, Okay, and I and I'm aware of Mother's finest and I and I know they're blowing people off the stage, Mike, I said, but really, Mike, we've just heard one of

the greatest things we've ever heard ever. Okay, somebody has reshuffled the deck of riffs, guitar, riffs, and vocals to make this thing and we haven't even heard another track. We only heard one track. I said, when this thing gets played for radio people, Okay, Mike, it's it's going to be a forest fire. It's gonna explode, and overnight, your priority is going to change. Right, It's just gonna happen. Right,

It's gonna go bonkers. So you can decide now whether you wanted to make the number one priority or not. But I am just telling you, as a guy that does this for a living, watch the fuck out because this thing's gonna go nuts.

it used to be. Right, guy's got a small apartment. In the apartment are two giant JBL's, giant fucking jbls. Right, so you know, it overtakes the apartment. But that's how things were then, right. So we go, hey, we want you to listen to something. Sit down in a chair. Right. If there was ever a record made for JBL speakers, it's Boston. Okay, it's the perfect fucking record. We put on more than a feeling. We crank it to fucking ten. His hair blows back like in the Maxell commercial. Right,

his brain explodes. He's like, what the fuck is this? When can I play this? Who is this? He's out of his fucking mind, right, So, and we tell him who it is, and we tell him, you know, he can play it tomorrow whenever the fuck it was, you know. And and that's what happened, I mean overnight, you know, fucking pow, you know, and then it just went on from there. You know, Bob listened to Boston. You tell me what's better the guitar, of the vocals, the Brad

Delt Come on, I don't even know. It's the fucking Boston. You know, it's the fucking hit machine. It's rock, it's it's it's messages. I mean, you know, it's piece of bond me and it's everything you know, you know, the people living in competition. All I want is peace of mind. What the fuck? I mean, it's everything you'd ever want. You know, let's go back.

but sometimes there's like not how do you handle that, Steve? Like, how do you I have to have credibility, I have to go to these radio people, they have to you know, they believe in me. I have to have credibility. And he said, you know what he said, rap, he said, You'll always find one thing. It might not be the song. It might be the production, or it might be the vocal, or it might be the song. There'll always be one

good thing. Just talk about that, just you know, just go in and say, hey, look, you got the other production on this. You don't have to lie. You don't have to. You can't because no one's going to believe you. Said you need your credibility, he said, just talk about about one thing. Sometimes it was what we would call a fire drill, and I'll never forget one of them. Okay, okay,

this is a good example. Steve O'Rourke, who is a good friend of mine, managed Pink Floyd, great manager and I can't remember the name of the band, but he decided he was going to try something else and the record was terrible and uh but we knew with Steve's uh and uh, so I wanted to do it for him, and and the and the and the big priority came down. It's like, you're gonna do this, and it's okay, we know how to do it. So what you do You go to all your friends or rock radio and go

da da. You know this is important for us. I'm not sure I hear it. Do me a favor, have your night, guys, just spin it once or twice, like, don't don't even have to add the record, just just just put it on the edge it just so we know. I need to know because we don't know everything and maybe I'm wrong and who knows. So was a fire drill, right, that's what we called it. And you'd go out to

your friends because they were This is a family. We work together, you know, even though it's always this uh thing about the you know, the radio people and and you know and and you know and the record people, and we're trying to get our music played and they're trying to tell us why they don't want to play it, and there's this give and take. But but there is, uh,

there's a relationship there in this beautiful relationship. Uh. And and people help each other, you know, someone does me a turn, and it's like, hey, listen, man, I really appreciate the times when you were there for me when I needed you. So you know, I'm gonna go borrow the Pink Floyd Pink from Pink Floyd and I'm gonna fight over your radio station. I'm gonna put two Kleig lights on it and paint your radio station pink. And it's going to stop traffic, you know, in front of

your radio station as a thank you for that. That's the kind of relationship it was. So that's how you did it. So you so, because we need to know. I can't know everything. You read my book, I'd love herboy. I didn't get it right away. She didn't get it. I don't know why. It's a great record. I put it on, you know, I sent it out. I did what I was supposed to do, and lo and behold. You know Gloria Johnson from you know cagu And in Portland. Great just jockey calls me up. So did you have

a hit on your hands? You know with turn Me Loose? You don't hear them all, but you need as a professional, it's your job to let the people decide, and that's what you do. One of my favorite stories is is it a great promotion? Man in New York guy named Maddie Matthews. Did you hear about Maddie Matthews? Maddie Matthews. You know, it is completely out of his mind in

the best of ways. Maddy Matthews had his own glossary. Okay, if you wanted to talk to Mattie, you had to understand how he was speaking, because it was you know, all these people, they had nicknames. You know. It was in Jiva, in Jinkeda, you know the people. You know, the weather's on a wing. I mean it was. It's a complete glossary. And everybody loved him. This guy was

all the time New York guy. Uh and uh. He had an incredible, incredible relationship with Richard Near at w W and he and this is a famous story in New York. And he brought this record into Richard and this you don't talk about the give and take relationship between you know, you know, record people and radio people. Gives the record Richard and he goes to leave, and Richard looks at him like Maddie, and he looks at

he says, Maddie, are you kidding me? And Maddie turns around and looked at Richard and said you'll find something. And then he left. And that's all that Maddie had to say. Because Richard Near loved Maddie Matthews so much. We all did. Right that he knew that it was a fire drill, and he knew that Maddie needed it. Otherwise, you know, he's going to get shipped from his bosses. And so he took care of Maddie. And you know a couple of nights, you know, somebody's going to tune

out at ten o'clock at night. No, So that's you know, that's how you do.

And they saw, even if they just agreed with me, or if I pissed them off, they saw my work ethic. They watched me do what I could do. I got big compliments from record company presidents, even the ones that I was, you know that would be upset with me from time to time because they saw my work ethic. It's one hundred and ten percent, it's tenacious, don't stop. They saw my creativity. I think I had a different

vision honestly than a lot of my peers. The way I approached things, the way I approached artists, the way I approached music, the way I approached promotion. And then there's little tricks. I had a president, I had my boss at one time was having a problem with album Network, which is a tip sheet in town of local tip sheet nice people. Steve Smith telt me to ask and asked, you know, they're nice folks. For some reason, you had a bug I was asked with them or whatever. He said, Okay,

we're going to do a power play. I go, what's that? He goes, you don't call them, you don't talk to them, and they're going to wonder where you are? Got it? And I said yeah. I don't want to say his name, so I don't want embarrass him. I said yeah, but I said, with they're friends of mine, they're gonna They're not gonna it's gonna be weird like they don't They're not. It's not gonna work, right. He goes, He goes, you work for me, and I'm telling you this is what

you're going to do. I said, okay. Uh So the first thing I do is I call Steve Smith from the Album Network and I say, Steve, it's rap. I'm not going to call you for a while because my boss just told me blah blah blah. I don't know what's going on with you two guys, but I need you to know that I'm not going to be calling for a while because I've been told not to. And then you know, whenever you want, you'll call me and go, gee, rap, what's up. I haven't heard from you, And then you

guys make up and they'll all get better. Right, I would get calls, you know, you have to be a good soldier, but you have to you have to work in between the lines, like I would get calls at home from the Rolling Stones. Right, they're telling us all this shit, like okay, listen, listen, listen, listen. Just they're just telling you this stuff because they're telling you this stuff because listen to me. Okay, they're going to tell

you this. It doesn't mean anything. Okay, you say this, this and this, and then you'll get what you want and it'll all be fine. And so you Sometimes I'm a good soldier, but i'm you know, it's it's like, what do they call it, back politicsne yeah, back channeling. So I'm I'm working for everybody. I'm working for the artist, I'm working for the manager, I'm working for the label. But I need to make sure it all comes together, like I'm in charge of making sure everyone understands each other.

At the end of the day, if someone tells you to do something, you I mean and you know you want to keep your job. Yeah, I mean you have to do it. But there's like so I explained, there's one way that you can do that, but I some people couldn't handle the heat. Some people left, certain presidents, people are people that you know, big time record business is. I'm not staying. I can't take this. I'm out of here, and I'm more resilient I think than I knew. I have mental scars because of it.

that's you. And you have to make sure that this music stays on the air and goes up the charts, and that in any given week you need x amount of new stations, you know, adding a record, and there's lots of unknowns, and at most promotion people will tell you if they're telling you of the truth, have a lot of Sunday night, sleepless nights, because Monday's is your last day to get done what you need to do, get done, you know, whether you're prepared or not. And

it's like taking the hill. I mean, it's like the Marines. I mean, at Columbia Records, there's no number two. There's only number one. Okay, just tell me how you get into number one because number two isn't good enough here. Okay. I never told anybody this, well, I have told some people. I didn't write it in my book because I didn't want to dwell on this part of it. I just

wanted to celebrate the shit that nobody will believe. I mean, for a good easily eight years after I left Columbia, I could wake up in the middle of the night with a nightmare, like freaked out of my mind that I wasn't prepared, or I just wasn't Eddie, or you know, a record I needed to go to one wasn't getting there, and I'd have nightmares. If you want to know honestly, how the pressure was I withstood it. I didn't. Some some people turned to alcohol and other things. I didn't.

Thankfully lucky to have a good life's partner, my wife Sharon. I could talk things out too what you read about in the book. But but but you know the man you're talking about. You're in charge of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd and on and on and on. It's a lot of pressure.

I know that you know how to do this, But if I were you, I would do it this way. Meaning there's two ways to promote a record. You can get everybody on board and blow it out, or you can build a record little by little by little with credibility. Right, you can blow it out if you've got the goods, especially you know, you know, obviously a band that's already established.

You can try to get everybody in one week. But it's a mistake if you do that trying to build something, because say you get sixty stations the first week, and the next week people are still trying to figure outf they want it, and now you've only got five and then the next week you only got five more and it doesn't look good, right, you don't want to do it that way, So and I'll you know, And so if you work for Donnie as it looks like that.

If you do it your way because you know how to do it, and you get the record top five, right, top five, number three, whatever, but it doesn't go to number one, Donnie will call you into the office and go, see, I told you should have done it my way. Now if you do it Donnie's way. And this is true story, guys. I had a record that you know, I don't need to say the name of the band. And it stops at twenty two. Donnie will call you in news office and go, s rap, how did you fuck this thing?

And you can't tell him I did it your way, right, you know, it's like you can't you can't win. But I will tell you. I'll tell you one very heavy story and it's and it's also a Don Einer story. And you don't need to know the president's name. But I became known. I wanted to be the best, Okay. I wanted to be the Michael Jordan of rock promotion. You know, I need it to be. That's just that's how I am. I just wanted to be it, and

I tried to be it. And as you read in the book, there's a lot of things I do that no one ever did because I wanted to make headlines. I wanted, I wanted that's just me. I just you know, I don't know if it's an ego thing or probably think. Whatever it is, it's just how I am. So So I was known in the business as this guy. I was known by managers and my peers and uh, you know, I got voted that once by my peers. It was very heartwarming. This but this particular president and I were

just it was like oil and water. And I did not quite understand how to just just manage upwards with this particular guy. And I was doing great things that he was more of a numbers guys, not a music guy. And he was signing a lot of acts that just you know, you could put him on rock radio, but they just they wouldn't stay. It's they're not they're not made for you, you know. And he signed some acts that he thought were cool and they were just posers

and whatnot. But you know, for the acts that were working, it was fantastic. So, but I would be in meetings with him and I'd say the wrong thing because I you know, I was as a rebel and I didn't know there were two truths. Okay, there's the real truth, because he'd always say, no, tell me the truth. I want to know the truth. What I finally learned was there's two truths. There's the real truth and the truth that he'd like to hear. There's a way of telling

a truth. But you can be artful, and you know, well, at that time, I wasn't artful, so I would just tell him the truth and it could be painful. Sometimes he didn't want to hear the truth, so then he would explode and then you know, I could feel this pressure and you know, you don't give me a hard time. So one day things weren't kind of going his way and he goes, come here. He goes, I need to talk to you in the head of promotion, and I'm not going to mention names because it doesn't move the

story forward. It's just I don't need to embarrass people's families. Head of promotion walks in, Just me down, he goes, listen. He goes, I just want you know some of these records aren't happening, and I just I want you to know something. And he also used the babe ruth analogy. Okay, I know you're the bab ruth of rock promotion. You know,

I know that you're the greatest blah blah blah. He said, well, you know what, rap, sometimes the greats have to be traded, like, Babe Ruth, they had a trade, Babe Ruth, I didn't want you to think about that. And I'd had it with this guy, right, And I'm telling you, Bob, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. If I get well, if I get mad, you don't want to see it. I mean, but it takes a lot right to get me excited. And I finally had it with this guy and I

just exploded in his fucking face. It's just me and him and had a promotion sitting across the table, and I'm like, what the fuck you like, are you fucking kidding me? I go, I do this and I do that, and okay, so you signed this partner's effront. Could it be the fucking records? Is it possible? It could be the fucking record? And I'm screaming at him. I mean like, I'm in his face. Right, I'm done, I'm gonna quit. I don't care. I had it, Okay, nobody's ever seen

the head of motion was freaking out. He was. I'm looking at him. He's turning green purple. He's like he's never seen anything like it. And I'm in this guy's face, I'm like, fuck you you have no fucking idea. Is it possible? Is it possible? And and it's more animated than I'm telling you now. I don't want to get there because it's it's it's you would think you would put me in a rubber room. Okay, I've exploded at

this guy. It's insane. Okay. And the guy I just had it and he looks at me, he goes, oh, whoa, come down. I think he thought I was gonna have a heart attack. I was that that was that fucking nuts and he and and he said, who whoa whoa whoa wrap rap rap whoa whoa whoa whoa. Just hang on. I got to think about what you're saying. Just just hang on, like I gotta think about what you're saying. And he and he and he looked at me, wrap, please just take it easy and let me think about

what you're saying. He left, and the head of promotion said, I want to shake your hand, and I go why And he says, because I never seen anybody go at that guy like that, and I've never seen that guy back down. So he said, I want to shake your hand, and I was like, fuck shaking my hand. I'm out of here. Fuck you, fuck him. I quit. He's chasing me down holiday. You can't quit rap, listen to me, he goes, you can't quit. He goes, it's three o'clock. Go home. Trust me, there's what you need to do.

Go home, talk to Sharon, have a drink, report back the next thing in the morning. And this guy was a really good guy. Wasn't the great promotion met of all time? And he said, look, just just just do me a favor, like calm down, go home. And he was right. I went home, talked to Sharon, had a drink, came back and it was fine, and the president was better towards me. And in a million years, I never thought I'd go off at anybody like that, especially a

record company president. So he could get to I mean, so if you asked me, did it ever get to me? Okay, that's the that's the one time where you know, God, he could get to you in a different way it would frustrate you. But I but I never was that so upset. Was like I've had it, you know, and you know, I don't know, like you said, how did I survive? I don't know, By the grace of God, because that guy could have left right away and wrote

me off. You could have. He could have. He could have went back and said, you know what, just just give wrap his papers. But he didn't. And I think he didn't because he knew I was a winner. And here's something else. My wife asked me, why do you want to stay there? And I said, because even though this guy is breaking my balls daily, he is a winner, and I have to be with a winner and I and that's why I didn't leave. I said, I'll take it, I'll take the heat. I'll have this leapless night. I

need to be with a winner. I would tell her, Sharon, he's that, So I'm going to stay, and I didn't. He left, you know, so not gone to the next president.

they're friends of mine. I know be personal stories. So my question is, as this is going on, and once you hit the eighties and especially the nineties, promotion people everybody at the record company has a lawyer. To what degree did you negotiate your salary and what were those experiences like.

was amazing. He beat the Bank of New York for sharing in me. I mean, the guy beat the Bank of New York on the situation we had. So so he would negotiate for me, and it got so amped that the people in business affairs would call me and they say, look, rap, we got the message. You got to ask Gary to back off, you know, just because he knew what I did and he wanted me to

make more money. He said, rather, they're not paying you what you're what you're you know what you deserve that I know what you do, I see what you're doing. You know for all these acts you know, and I said, Gary, great, you know, And then what would happen is then you'd walk in and then you would see Donnie okay, you know, and Donnie would and Donnie would say, look, Rap, it's a corporation. It's a it's a it's you know, it's

a grid. You're not the head of promotion. You're ahead of rock promotion, you know, which is even one step down from the head of top forty promotion. Because, as you know, most of the music, most of the money is made with you know, big hit records. Even though we're making a shitload of money on rock radio. I can't give you what Gary is asking. I can't, but I'll give you this. If I give you this, will you be okay? Or are we going to have a problem? And then I'd look at at you know, you know,

at Donnie, and I'd say, Donnie, thanks very much. That'd be great. I appreciate it, thanks, and we don't have a problem. I was always about longevity when I would be asked every once in a while to leave, you know, for another company or some new company that wanted to sort of poached me from the label for a lot of more money, because that's how it was like, if they wanted to get you, they'd have to give you tons of more money. And I got offered tons of money.

But I never wanted to leave, because how do you leave this roster? Right? They're all there. I became friends with all these people.

giving you know, early retirement packages. You know, I just stayed there as long as I could. You know, in fact, I told him, I said, you guys are nuts. I said, right now, in my life, if you want to, they didn't. They just couldn't pay us the salaries that we were

making anymore. I said, you should go to people like me and Don de Vito, who was Springsteen's and Bob Dylan's and really Joel's A and R got famous an R. I said, you should go to people like Don and me and say, look, we can't pay you this money anymore, but you know what, we'll give you a contract expansion, a contract, you know, extension. We'll pay you this but for longer, just because we want you guys to stay here. I said, you guys are making a mistake. I said,

I've had the right of my life. I'm ready to go. It's okay, I said, but you're making a mistake because what's going to happen is all these bands that come in, because every band that ever came in, they wanted to hang out with me and Don because they wanted to talk to the guys who worked with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd. You're going to be left with kids and you're gonna have an imprint, it's gonna be a red label, but your heart's going to be gone, Like,

don't you get it? And they told me they My boss at the time said, you know what, we even know it and you know Midst the corporation and we work for them. And I said, fine, you know, you know it's up to you. I said, I've had the right of my life. I said, but you know it's I wouldn't do it this way.

is no Saturday Sunday. It's just it never ends. They're all the same, you know, except for obviously Tuesday's air play Day and you know the business week. But you're without people. You're out with people all the time. So I am. I tried to walk a fine line, and we made a deal. I said, look, there are certain

nights I have to be out. There's certain nights that I'm going to want to be out, and I'm going to have to because I remember when someone had called me to the Troubadour to say, hey, there's this new guy out in John, I have a seat for you. You need to see this. You know, those kinds of things you'd want to be at. So I said, look, it was easier before we had kids, of course, because she could go everywhere with me. So we went to all the parties together, we went to all the shows together.

So she was part of the life style. Even though if I had to work late some nights, she didn't want to go. When we start to have kids, it's different, okay. So I worked twelve years on the West coast for Columbia, and then we move east in eighty for me to run the rock department. So now you know, I told her, I said, look, this this obviously, this gig is more amped up, and I don't know if I'm going to be home. Well, I know I'm not going to be home in time to put the kids to bed. I'm

going to see him in the morning. I said, tell you what, though, you take care of them all week, on the weekends, I'm going to take over. You do whatever you want. I will completely take over. And it would be kind of comical sometimes because you know, i'd be on the road for you know, four days, four nights without any little sleep. I'd come home, I'm totally trashed. Open the door. She's got these two little you know boys. She holds them out to me. She goes here, I've

had them all week. I'm like, Ahi, guys, it's your rock and roll dad. Just I just need a cup of coffee. Just give me a second and I'll be with you. So and then they didn't understand. So on the weekends, i'd be with them. But but but then i'd take a cat nap, you know, every so often, like we'd be in the basement playing or you know, whenever in the front line. They'd see me take it. Catch cat nap Dad. And they're they're three years apart.

Two boys, right, why are you? Why are you always sleeping? We don't understand why you're sleeping. I go, well, it's because I work really really hard. Well, we don't understand it. I go, like, come to work with me one day and then you'll you'll get it. Okay, Oh yeah, okay, So I take them. They're little, like Amra all they were, but they're you know, I don't know, they're like eight, and you know, they're three years apart. So they're eight and five or whatever they are, I don't know, six

and nine. I take them to work, I go home. I go, okay, so do you get it? Nah? Dad, we don't get it. All you do is play listen to They said all you do is listen to records all day, and then you get on the phone and yell at people. And I go, no, no, I don't yell at people. I'm not that guy. That's our vase off. He's the yeller. I'm not the yeller. I'm not that guy. Oh no, Dade yellow people. Oh no, no, I'm telling you, I'm not that guy. Yeah. So no, we don't get it.

You you you you you play records, you dance around and then you get on the phone and yellow people and so there was no you know, and then what am I gonna do? Take them to shows? Which I did? Does is that helpful? Not really? You know, Hey, look you know yeah this is Pink Floyd. Yeah, you're backstage eating the ReBs. Cool. Right, It's like you know, but it was, it's it's it is very hard. Uh and uh, I to be honest, I would say that there was a time that it took its toll on our marriage.

It's just it's just it's it's it's just got so big. But if you know that, you'll sit down, like you know, if you have a really great life's partner like I do, you'll sit down and go, look, since we're messed up and we got to fix this, you know, and if we can't fix it, let's go talk to somebody that'll help us fix it. But I think if your priorities are correct, you know, and my porties were always my life and my wife and my kids, that's reality, right.

This other thing is Disneyland. I'm having fun in Disneyland, but I saw too many people live in Disneyland and then when their job was over and they lost their job for whatever reason. They try to go back home, but home's ruined. They try to call their friends and nobody picks up the phone. You know, a lot of in this business, a lot of people think, you know, your colleagues are your close friends. It's not always the case. So I think from the get go, my priorities were correct,

and I tried really hard, you know. And yeah, and when it came to that time where I knew it wasn't right, you know, we said on and had a long talk about it.

on him, he called me up. Yeah, it's in my book, right, I want klos and I want to know, right, that's all he said. That's five times lear up the fun, you know. But I understood his His MO was he's going to just get everything he can out out of you, and he can go back to his artists and say, look I got everything at him. But you don't have to be that way. But I would say that the best managers were the managers that brought you into their world, made you a part of their family, made you a

part of the gang. Okay, Herbie Herbert, whenever you went me and the guys are doing this. You come here, we're in Hawaii at a convention. Come to our house. Steve Ororke, Pink Floyd made me feel like part of the family. And I got to know David Gilmour and Nick Mason and Roger Waters in intimate ways. Right. That wouldn't happen if they didn't open the door. And I'm sure he told him, this is going to be good for you to get to know this guy, right, Bruce Allen,

tough guy, but but great guy, right. Great makes you a part of that, makes you a part of his team, makes you want to kill for him because he's just a great fucking guy. Right. If you're a manager that would come into my office, and I had some big time managers who didn't have the gravitas of IRV as off or the respect from me because I saw they stepped in shit or whatever that you know, you know, IRV has always had my biggest respect. So yeah, ever you want to call up and let's go at it, fine,

I don't care, because you know I have respect. But these people would come into my office and we'd come out of a meeting and you know, everybody said, we're did this, this and this, and I'll never forget this. One guy in particular, big, big, big uh, you know, English man came into my office and said, so you wanted to pin me, so you're gonna do all this right? Like got it? It's like this is what you have

to do. You got it right? And then he walked out of my office and literally out loud, I said to the walls because I knew he was walking by. Fuck you see you in my rearview mirror. Lose you know, I don't even want to talk to you again. And I did the minimal, minimal amount because that guy was such a fucking asshole. I was like, yeah, okay, well you're not a race off, so guess what. You don't

get to talk to me like that. So h But I think that the best ones were the ones because Bob, you know, one of the reasons I wrote the book I want I wanted people to know the family. We were all a family. Oh yeah, we have fights, you know, like a family has fights. We'd all get along, but this is a family, Okay, you got I'm trying to think this is Herbie. I mean, my favorite managers are Herbie, Herbert,

Bruce Allen, Steve O'Rourke. They're interchangeable in different ways, but they all made me feel like, you know, like like okay, it's this give and take right. The guys in Pink Floyd. By the time I'm working with them, they're elite. They don't need to do anything, they don't want to do anything. They don't want to do interviews, they don't have to do anything. And I'm telling them, guys, listen to me. You could be bigger. Believe it or not. You can

do more, we can reach more people. I'm going to ask you to do some things. I know you're not gonna want to do them, but I'm just tell just take a step my way, you know. Go meet Jim Ladd, do an interview, Meet some radio people. They're gonna love you. They've been playing your records their whole life. I want to borrow you know, your your giant pig and flight over radio stations. I want to do these things for you because I love your music. I mean, I'm a

guitar guy. I mean me and Gilmour would spend all kinds of hours just talking about guitars. It's a family, right, Okay. You tell me you get close to a band like that, they know that you're killing for them, right, they know it? Okay? Oh, well and you read about it my book. Oh we have a Christmas present for you. It's a thank you for all you did you know on Momentary Labs or a reason and frankly for all the things you've done for us over the years. We have a you know,

a thank you President. You know what's that? Oh, you come and play with us one song live with Pink Floyd And I'm like, oh, a rehearsal right, that'd be great. They go, no, no, proper gig. I'm like, what in front of people? Oh yeah, I know in London, proper gig, London arena. I'm going to play a song, like you know, and I talk to the manager because you know, God, don't talking to Gilmore talking to Magic Steve, you know, Like, I'm a real guitar player, Like, I'm not going to

go I'm not a poser. I don't want to go up there and pose. It's not that's not my you know, No, no, he goes rap. Don't you get it? Yes, Gilmore knows you. You guys can talk abot guitars all the time. That's the gift, don't you get it? Like, yes, you play You're in ping Floyd for seven fucking minutes, don't you get it. I'm like, holy shit, Okay, Bob, who does that? Well,

how's that going to happen? Who does that? Okay, it happens because of of the band and the management and you know that whole family of people who you get to know. You get to know Storm Thorguson the Great Graphic Designer, you get to know the roadies, you get to know the guitar tech, Phil Taylor, you know everybody. You that kind of management. How do you think I promoted them after that? I just traded like so with David Gilmore in the London Arena. Are you fucking kidding me?

Come on? You know that's the best kind of manager because you're taking the hill. You know, John Landell, Bruce Springsteen Okay, okay, in my top five. Okay, he's in my top five. Same thing. Now you're part of Bruce's camp. You're taking the hill together. You know, it's beyond celebrity. It's it's not about rock star. It's about it's eye to eye. It's guys, guys, we're working together, take the hill. We're all trying to do the same thing. You know.

It's it's it's uh, that's that was the most fulfilling part of it, right. These people make you a part of the gang. You just you feel like you belong. So yeah, you're going to kill for those people, Bob.

I didn't want to push it. You know, it's not you know, like, if you want to be friends, great, I don't you know, I didn't like need to be friends. I enjoyed our friendships. One guy who I'm believing or not, who I'm probably the closest with right now is Bob Geldolf. We remain friends over the years. I don't know why. We just would see each other or you know, he had some legal stuff then you needed help on and we just remained buddies. Got invited to his wedding south

of France, you know a few years ago. I mean, he's he's a he's a he's a he's a crack up, you know, but you know the other people. Let me just say this because I just want to say this about certain artists. Okay, Oh, the Bloyster called guys are very close friends of mine. For a year, I live in this town because of the lead singer lives here and he kept me coming out for barbecue. So I live in you know, Port Washington, New York. Okay, so,

but but I just want to make one point. Okay, I write this book, you start to reach out for quotes. I don't know if you know if I'm going to get quotes. Okay, here, Hero, I'll write you, you know, if you want, I'll write you what I wrote about you, Like, what what do you need? Right? Nothing? Nick Mason two days give me the best, most beautiful quote was the first one I got. It was like if I stopped right there right Elvis Costello, Hey, do you want me

to send you the book? Do you want me to to you know, to to do you need to see what I wrote about you? Nothing? Next day quote, Bloyster, call it next day quote. You know it's not even if we're not friends. There's so much. There's so much, you know, brotherhood and sisterhood in all of the stuff that we did together. They're there immediately there, you know. And for whatever reason, Bob, you know, well.

you guys are a lot alike. You have no filter, right right, right, So Bob is the same way, and and look Elvis Costello. I would have to pull out sometimes say, oh, look, you're not helping yourself if you have certain feelings about certain bands, tell me, don't say this on the radio. Is not helping your career, okay. And I would have the same conversation with Bob Geldoff. Talk to me, do not say this ship on the radio.

But Bob is a rebel, right, and Bob likes to push buttons, and I think in his mind, excuse me, he was just giving them a head butt, right, Okay. So for those who don't know, there was a big consultancy run by Lee Abrams. It was called Superstars. Lee Everyone's in charge of sixty rock stations, and he had a convention, and you know, we thought, as we usually do, Hey, first of all, the Boomtown Rats are amazing band live.

We said, man, all we got to do is have these guys play in front of you know, these programmers that they're going to go, holy shit, this band's a real band. Let's let's go easy peasy. It was the days of the satin jackets. Everybody had satin jackets for bands and whatever. Bob's playing a great set, and Bob's playing a great set, and he looks out and he sees he knows why he's there. He sees all the

radio people. But Bob's you know, I mean, you're talking about a guy, you know, who got in a fight with fifty thousand people at you know that, you know, the World Music Festival was Like Bob, it's like you read about it, write in my books, like so he once again in my head butt, Hey, what do you think of radio today? Where he goes the audience, what do you think of rock radio today? Well, what do you when a guy like Bob Geldoff, you know, the rebel punk guy is saying, what do you think the

audience is going to go? Yeah, Well, if you have a problem with that, all those guys in the back, they're the guys that are running your rock stations today. And if you want to change it, you go talk to him. Well, Bob's always trying to make the world a better place, you know, repair the world. Takun alam great, Bob. I like it, you know, But I think he just thought he was giving him a head butt. I don't think he realized what he had done, because he did

do some damage that night. Because those guys have egos and they're like, oh, really, you know, we're in charge of your career. And there were guys that were grumbling as they left, you know, and Lee Abrams himself, you know, came up to me and Jonathan Caffino, who's the boomtown Rats marketing guy, and going really, and I'm like, Lee, you know, it's Bob. It's like, you know, come on, you got to expect he's just giving you guys a head butt. You know, Lee, smart guy like Lee knows

what's up. So he goes, I know, but not the greatest thing you could have done. I said, I know, you know, but I said it'll be okay. And it was. And I know, Jonathan, our next stop was in Seattle. Never forget it keme to we got to do a live broadcast right now. We got to we have to counteract what just happened. I said, no, no, no, I said, John, just just leave it alone. You know, these guys, I know, these guys. Just let some space happen, just let the air out. I'll talk to these guys one by one,

you know, and it'll be okay. And it was. I mean, by the time, you know, artist Surfacing came out, It's huge so it wasn't you know, it wasn't that. It was it was just more or less not having you know, the records after that or whatever else was happening with them on the road or whatever. No, no, there's no permanent.

I will admit to being starstruck. I mean, I don't know how you couldn't be. It's you know, But once I would get used to it, then you'd have real conversation. I mean I used to have love talking to Bob Dylan. I mean we we'd have conversations about just being dads. You know, how is it being a dad? You know, I'm like Bob, and I don't know what to tell my kids, Like, you know, guy, I have this whole history,

you know. And he was like, well, you know, you're lucky, you know you can, you know, just don't don't you know, you don't have to tell them everything rap, just you know, just just tell them some stuff. He goes, look at me, man, he goes, My whole life's in the press. Man, my the you know, the you know, the women, the drugs. I'm busted, you know, like but you you know, and

we'd have these great conversations. I would love to have conversations with Keith Richards and David Gilmore about guitars, because these guys are guitar guys. They're rock stars. Second, okay, they are guitar players. They love the guitar. It's their friend. It's their lover used to talk to guitar guys. It's we're like this giant family of people. No, you know, Keith

Richards is a really cool guy. Okay. I have a picture of my book of me and Keith, and I took out him when he was you know, however, he was eight years old or somebody to see the rolling Stones. Right backstage, we're meeting the guys who wanted them to meet Keith Richards, and I'm like, I need you to meet this guy. This is like my all time favorite. Like I learned how to play guitar. List into this guy, right, So introduce him to Keith. I'm going, this is the

greatest rock and roll guitar player in the world. And he's like going, ah, don't listen, dear old man. Don't believe everything he says. So we're gonna take a picture. Keith looks over to me, he goes, hey, we should kneel down. Your son's like little right, you know, like we should kneel down. The reason we're kneeling in that picture isn't because of me. It's cause of Keith, because he's a sensitive person. Because he knew it meant a lot and he you know, we should kneel down to

take a picture with your son. So you know, not everybody is the same, but these people are people, and you can have real conversations with them, you know, after you get over that starstruck part. And then yeah, because at the end of the day, you know, it's it's so it's they're overwhelmed with that stuff. You know, it's it's okay.

know him. Yeah, blah blah blah blah, I'll never forget this. I was pouring some wine and we're all learning how to, you know, drink fine wine. Then got on an expense account and I was pouring some wine and I guess I part a little too much, you know, because you have to be careful. There's like dregs, you know, and you know, what are you doing? What are you doing? You're letting the drags out. I mean, when I was done with the promo tour with this guy, was like,

I never want to talk to this guy again. You know, it's like, just get me out of his life. But most people who are trying to get somewhere, if some of them are more stubborn, you know, some are could be frustrating, but most of them would listen. They could be stubborn, but they would listen. If I was strong and said, listen, you can get away with this, but this is not going to be good for you, right,

you know, just please listen to me. So I never really I worked with cerebral people that would drive you out of your fucking mind, but you it was okay because it was like you, they're not us, they think different, They're not if they wouldn't be them, right, if if they if they saw things like we see things, but they don't see things like we see things because it's imagine the universe and it's the Sun and all the planets, right, so we're the planet's going around the universe, and we

see the Sun. We have great perspective. We can watch it. We can see when there's you know, you know, explosions on the Sun and everything. They can't see it because they're the Sun. They can't see it. And so if they're smart, they listen to people like me, like you, like any of us who could help them through certain parts. You know, in my book, you know, there's things. You know, there's a Roger water story where I had to just say, look, Roger, you need to listen to me on this, right, And

he did. You know, Bob, don't. It's funny, Bob. He has no idea about promotion, right, it's not. He's like Percasso. He just paints and he would see me from time to time and he say, rap. When I started doing marketing. After I did the promotion thing, I was doing creative marketing stuff, had a radio series, at a TV showt all this kind of stuff. He goes man man, he goes, you have all this great stuff. Why don't you and I ever do anything? He goes, you do all this

great stuff. I was like, Bob, you know I'm your biggest fan. You're this yeah, I mean, you know a guy, you're like the Shakespeare of our time. You're fucking Bob Dylan? Are you kidding me? Every time you put a record out, I tell you twenty things you don't want to do him. He doesn't like to promote himself that way. He's just not that's not him. He just you know, you can tell him twenty things and he'll say, Okay, I'll do this one, you know, and I admire it. I mean,

here's a guy from the old school, right. How's this quote unquote Paul I don't like to push my music that way, Bob Dylan, Okay, big respect even for little things look unannounced. I'll just take you to Scott Muni show at night on n ADW. Just show up. Nah, I'm not doing it. How's this. Here's a great one, mid mid eighties. He's huge, early eighties right, he's on fire, right, Bob. I just got a call from CBS two hour primetime television. Oh your show? Do whatever? You want. They're not gonna

tell you what to play. Which Bob had bad experiences in the past with censers and all this shit. Right sures done two hours prime time. It's your show. I ain't doing that, man, Like, what are you talking about? No? No, no, man, you know you nobody's gonna watch that. You know you need you need a hook, man, you need like live it or farm it. You know nobody nobody's gonna watch it. You need a hook. No, no, Bob Dylan, No, I go Bob. You're Bob Dylan. You know you're the event.

You get it. You don't need Live It or farm It. You're fucking Bob Dylan. It's like it's not what you think. It's like you're it. No no, man, I'm not doing that. Nobody's gonna watch that. So he doesn't some things he knows some said, but you know what he has done? Great? All right? What are you gonna say, Oh, big mistake, you didn't do the television special. Come on, tell me you tell me who in their latest years could put out Time out of Mind and rough and rowdy ways and they still.

And even though we wouldn't do stuff. Was he completely removed or was he involved in the process?

keep going around. Bob goes, I'm not writing it. I'm not I'm not writing the song for the radio man, Like, what are you doing, like what you're like, what are you talking about? Bob just paints, right, Bob's Picasso. He could care less. That's why he's one of the greatest artists they'll ever be. He's just Bob, right, he just paints right. But he did ask me once, you know I wrote I wrote this in my book. He wanted

to know. He goes, Look, you got to tell me something, man, Why is it no matter what I do, I can only sell a million records. Fleetwood Mac they sell like six million records, right, No matter what I do, I can't only sell a million. And at the time it was similar for Bruce Springsteen. He was like known as the biggest cult right he could sell a million of records on rock radio, but without a hit single. Not right, It's just it's it's just the way it is. So

I would try to explain it to him. I'd say, Bob, look, Fleet went back. They go into the craft hit singles. They go into a studio for six months, they overdub and overdub, and they produce and they edit and their crafting hit singles. This is their craft. Okay, you go into a dentist office and you pull up you know, a remote truck and two weeks later it's roll at Bob and that's your album. It's fucking brilliant because it's

Bob Dylan record. But you see the difference, right, And he looks at me and he goes, well, I must admit we're off the beaten path. I was like, Bob, off the beating fucking path. It's like, you know you're in the darkest chungles of Africa, but it's like, you know it's nine Days of a Bob. But Bob, you're Bob Dylan. It doesn't matter. Because I wanted him to understand they can no matter what they do. Don't be a numbers guy. You can You're Bob Dylan. You'll they

can never be Bob Dylan. Saw all the artists I work with, they wish they could write one song like you. One blown in the Wind, one times they were changing one subterranean home, six blues, one hurricane. They all wish I could just write one, And you've written hundreds. But Bob, you know, it's like it's you're a poet. It's an acquired taste. Right, This isn't this isn't you know jingles? Right,

this is poetry. Same with Springsteen. You know, he wasn't a fan of it at the time, but you know, but I said, Bob, you know, it's just how it is. But but and you know, and he walked away and he understood it. I don't think it made him really happy because he's thinking, well, if I'm Bob Dylan and I'm so great, can't I sell you know, one million, five hundred thousand, you know, you know, records at least once. But look, it's like the Velvet Underground. How many records

you think the An Underground sold? Right? Not that many? Seminal lou Reed, Are you kidding me? These guys change the face of rock. Well, who are the important people? You know? People? That's part of the eighties downside was everybody became numbers people and then in the end of the day, that's what ruined our business. The music business became the money business, and that's what ruined the record business. Right. But you know, you want to talk about art and

things that matter, things that move the needle. A guy that changes a generation, which I know he doesn't like that handle. Sorry Bob, but not sorry. You know Bob is and Bob Dylan, you changed my life you did because I listened to you and I was like, oh my god, this guy's telling me there's a new thing I can be this. I don't have to live in this square world that I'm growing up in the fifties because I can't relate and I don't know if I'm

going to make it. But this guy's coming along and he's making it different, and he's changing my life and a whole generation's life. And it just happened, you know, because you know, the times helped make the man. But you know what are you know, civilis rights movement, you know, civil civil rights movement, and you know Vietnam and everything else. The times do help make the man, but it doesn't

matter Bob Dylan, you know Bob Dylan. So you know, I mean, let's you talk about things that are important and the important things. This is what's fucked up with the music business now. The important things aren't always about the money. It's like Willie, you know, some people, somebody's

got to figure this out eventually. The important things that things that move the needle aren't always about the money, and it's not always about the units, and it's not always about oh we sold you know five million, And it's not always about that. If the art's good, yeah, you can sell that. But that's but the money is not where it's at. It's the messages. You know, what do you have to say to me as an artist? I got the young bands talking to me all the time. Okay,

oh Paul, you did this all your life. Tell us, tell us the secrets. Well, how do you do it today? Is it TikTok? Is it schmick talk? Is it this? Is it that? No, it's you. Look at yourself. Why didn't you get an Encore? I just saw you play. Do you ever think about that?

I am? No? No, they're not there for you. You you have to be there for them. I'm shocked at how many people don't understand this.

Work on your songs, work on your material. Your job is to be great, and don't stop until you're great, otherwise you ain't gonna get there.

Pink Floyd I can be. Right. Keith Richards rehearses the hell out of Rolling Stones. How do you think they're so good? They just don't do that right? Bob Dylan's touring endlessly. They're driven. These people are driven to do this. Bruce Springsteen, you read in my book, I've never seen a guy work as hard as that guy. I have never seen anything like it. You go to a rehearsal. The guy's got a wire down the center of the arena.

He's playing his guitar at the sound bowl while he's rehearsing the band for two hours and most soundchecks are twenty minutes. Does it sound good? Yeah, we're done. He's doing he's rehearsing the band endless rehearse, rehearse soundcheck. He's twisting the knobs so he gets the best sound that he can get. That he wants to know about that, Right. I once saw soundcheck that lasted three hours. Then they take a break, then they come out, they do a

four hour show. Then after the four hour show, Bruce days and talks to everybody that wants to meet him. And he doesn't rush you, he'll talk to you. So if you're going to meet him, talk to him. You're going to wait in a long line because he's gonna take a second. Okay, guy goes home one o'clock, you know, not home, but back, you know, back to his hotel room, gets up the next day, does the same thing, the exact same thing, every single day. Right the work ethic.

You can't get there and you can't stay there. I loved reading Keith's book. My favorite Rolling Stones record is Exile on Main Street, and he writes about rip this Joint, which is one of my all time favorite songs, and he writes about how hard it was to get it. You know, it's very fast and he had to it was really hard to just get it. But I loved it because it was like, yeah, it's not easy. If it was easy, everyone would do right. This is a work ethic, This is a love for the instrument. Right,

I'm going to take this instrument to another place. So I would say that the thread is being driven and the work ethic to be great.

they're supposed to do. But you have ears like you're used to it, right, So I mean you can tell you can tell him thirty seconds, I can put any music on right now. In thirty seconds, I can tell you, you know, and maybe maybe I have to listen to thirty seconds more, just if it's something different. But you can tell in thirty seconds. There are people who know. There are people who smart enough when they don't know tell you a great story. It's not in my book, Walter,

you're getting the cough. Great president, right, he had to walk the line between being cool with the artists and talking to the CBS, you know, corporate people. Okay, get a call from him from his office, Walter, Actually I think it was him. No, he called me. He goes listen, he goes, rap, I need you. I think it was John Faggot at the time. Great promotion man. So I need you and John to come up here because Mick Jagger's up here and we have to pick a single.

I'm not good at it. He's the president of a whole giant CBS. I'm not good at that stuff. But you guys are so come up right. I thought that was one of the greatest phone calls I ever got. This guy is Mega. Okay, this guy is CBS. This guy is pick anybody on CBS. He's Michael Jackson. I mean, this guy's barbarous straw just like everything. I'm not good at picking singles. He knows he's not good at that. He knows he's good at negotiating for artists and being

their buddy and making it right. Fine, Me and John go up with Mick. Hey, Mick, how you doing. We listen to a few things and we go I think it's this one, and Mick goes, yeah, yeah, I think so too. I think that's the I think we have a chance with that. And notice, Mick Jagger, you want to talk about a guy who knows the business. Mick Jagger. Yes, I think we have a chance with that quote Mick Jagger, I think we have a chance with that because he knows.

It's all a chance. He knows because he's been doing it his whole life. Right. Yeah, you hang around guys like that, you'll learn stuff from guys like that. Tony Bennett. I learned so much from Tony Bennett. They'll teach you things that you don't know because they're older than you, and they got there before you, and they've been around the block, you know, and you learn from listening to them.

broken through from the inside. Did you just know they were going to hit a certain level or do you really never know?

But until I saw Bruce live, I didn't know. When I saw Bruce live at the Troubadour, I was like, holy fuck, it's the next big thing. When I saw Elton John. It's not even on my act or not even on my label, right, I saw Elton John. Somebody told me this is going to be the next big thing. They were right. I went, holy shit. Psychedelic Furs got their record. I love their record, But when I saw him live, I was like, oh my god. And the

biggest one was Alis in Chains. Because, as I write in the book, that music for me didn't I was discordant. I did. I didn't, you know, I'm not ashamed to say I just didn't understand it. I mean, I'm used to Van Halen, right, I'm used to you know, Eric Clapton. I'm you know, these are the records I'm promoting Rolling Stones. This is music is so different sounding. But I saw him live in New York, Bob. I saw the next led Zeppelin, the future, you know. I saw that everything

that came after them, which is now called grunge. Who cares what you call it, but you know you're talking, you're talking pearl Jam. Nirvana Alice was the first one out of the gate. Not the first one out of the gate, because there was the BlimE. There's some other really great Seattle bands, but they were the first band, you know, you know, with my help to get to the main stream, Okay, to to really be to be heard by the mainstream public. Okay. I saw them, and

I mean it rocked me to my core. And as you read in the book, I was having a tough time because we had some music that just wasn't made for rock radio, and I thought I was losing my touch. I was. I couldn't sleep all night. I was like, oh my god, I just saw it and it's ours, like we have Alice in chains. I'm going to go out and I'm going to do this and I'm going to make this happen, and it's going to fucking blow

people's minds, you know. But from the from the record, not because it was new to me, which you read in the book, it was new to radio that nobody wanted to play it because they didn't it was odd. It's an odd sound. The Seattle sound is completely different. They didn't want to know about it. So it took some really strong effort, you know, to get that off.

But I think if you see someone live, you'll know, you just know, you know, And sometimes you think you got one by the tail and it just doesn't happen, and you I don't know why. I had a I had a band called Human Radio Man. I thought they were fantastic, they made a fantastic album. I saw them live. Just didn't resonate, just just you know, just just didn't resonate.

Lover boy. Okay, you're reading the book. I promoted it and then as soon as I you know, Galla calms, you got to hear it like I'm on fire, you know, to make this thing happen. I go see them live, same thing, Holy fuck. And you know, I know they're like a sort of rock pop act. Doesn't matter their rhythm section, okay, their drummer, they're bass player, like you know, they were you know, Reno's a great front man and you know, you know, and Pauldine's a great guitar players.

But this was a real band. This was a band that was gonna go go long right. It was like, oh no, it's the whole band, It's Matt Fornett. It's like these guys, like, these guys are making this thing work. And then when we saw that, we were like, holy shit, we have a tiger by the tail. Okay.

fish in a small pond. And there are a certain number of cities there's just we could probably name them and we don't even live there. So to stay alive you have to play.

get me out of there. Okay. He was in judis Priest by necessity, and I wonder if it's because it takes them a hard long time. I don't know. Maybe it's Bruce Springsteen's worth taking because he's a blue collar kid from like I don't know. I don't know.

the Beatles in Hamburg. I had not discussed that with Paul McCartney, not that he's my best friend, but I did discuss Geezer, Butler playing in Switzerland, etc. There was no money. They were playing night after night. No one was listening. You really learn your chops. I mean, this is let's go somewhere else, Sam Smith, Okay, this is something we never saw in our business. You're playing arenas on the first tour. You know, used to be at the record company had a subsidized club tour. Then maybe

open up for somebody in theaters. Then maybe you headlined in theaters. So everybody is so hungry. A lot of these bands, you say, they look like he came from nowhere, but you went to see him and you're, holy fuck, these guys are incredible.

do I be better at this? How can I make this happen? This is like this work ethic that I'm talking about. You know, look, you know Midnight Oil they come from that cloth. I loved min On Oil. We were great friends. I'm a surfer right there, surf you know rap combed dolls. You know you've got to come. You know, don underlon have a surf right They would send me wetsuits. I had Midnight Oil wetsuits. They were purple with shars whose green Midnight Oil. They're great people.

I'll tell you about the Australian bands. There's no ego. Men at work, there's no ego. Doesn't matter how big they get. I don't know why. They just don't have an ego. They just are thankful. I you know nothing, just hey, tell me where to be. We're working hard. And the Midnight Oil guys, oh my god, one of the greatest, greatest drummers in the world. I mean, what a band, you know, and they were great. I had so much fun with those guys.

so you're well, I'm gonna ask you a question. I'm gonna tell you what I feel, and you tell me what you feel, Okay, because I because I tried skiing once and I almost killed myself. Okay, So so okay. So when you're surfing, you are riding a wave, and so you begin to feel part of the Earth's energy. You you feel part of the planet. Every wave is different, it's a dance. You're looking at the wave. How is it gonna? Is it gonna hike up? Am I gonna have to couple take take a couple of steps on

the board to gain speed? Am I gonna have to do a cutback and do a turn? Left to get around? How am I negotiating my dance partner? Okay, if you do this for an hour, an hour and a half, which is your general surf sessions an hour and a half. Right, Uh, when you come in to the beach, you are zend out. You are totally zend out. I don't don't know if it's from the swoop and glide. I don't know if it's from all the negative ions because you're in the ocean. I don't know if it's the sun.

potato chip. And those guys are doing aerials right, they're doing you shoot out of the way. If you do an aerial of three sixty you come back down. It's like circus tricks. I tried it. I didn't like it wasn't It wasn't for me. So I'm still a longboard writer. It's elegant. It's a swoop and glide. I'm a swooping glide guy. You know what. I've surfed big waves not my thing. Mickey Door one of the greatest surfers in the world. In his book, he says, I'm I can.

I'm a confessed three to four foot swoop and glide guy. I surf those big waves in a way because I had to turn my stripes. I don't like it, you know. You know it's a different kind of thrill ride. You ride a twenty foot wave, twenty five foot wave. You got to get to point A to point B without getting killed. Okay, that's that's it. And it's yeah, it's exhilarating your heart's and your chest. I've done it. That's not fun for me. Swoop and glide, you know, it's it's like you're in a jam session.

on Long Island. I surf in Long Beach, go to Montauk, which is a reef break, which is kind of like a California wave. And I make sure that I go to California at least once or twice a year because that's where the best surf is. And I have boards in California, so that's heaven because those surf breaks. Like people always want to talk about Hawaii in this place and that I have a friendly traveling well, I'm going to Costa Rica. Fine, go to Costa Rica. You ain't

gonna find better waves than in California. It's the Disneyland of surf, and it's every kind of break you want, you know, from from up north to down south. Ventura County Line, long green, beautiful waves, glassy because there's all these culp beds. You're like riding on a mirror Malibu Point Break. Go down South Huntington. Forget Huntington, go you know, to past Lagoon to beach. I love down South Encinitas. There's a place called Swami's Pipes is my favorite break.

Right below Swami's. You're sitting out in pristine, beautiful water and the waves because there's like reefs out there's like rock reefs right, so the waves are perfectly shaped so they're breaking behind you so you can ride the wave and not worry about the waves, like you know, breaking in front of you. And all the way up and down the coast of California. It's the best surf there is. So I plan every year to at least plan a surf trip in July, you know, or August. Both of

my sons surf. I have a granddaughter who surfs. Now you want to talk about mind blowing, Bob, I tell my kids to surf. I surf this place Swamis when I was eighteen. I remember, I'm eighteen years old and I'm sitting out at Swami's. I'm going I wonder if I'll ever get married. I wonder if I ever get married with five kids, And I wonder if I have kids, would they ever serf? And so when my kids got older and I wanted to take them to all my favorite surf breaks, I took them to Swamis Paddle Out.

I'm sitting in the exact same spot. I'm flashed back to eighteen years old. Same cliffs, same waves, same palm trees, clientele has changed, but it's all the same. And I'm thinking about, man, I was just sitting here and it wasn't that long ago, and I wondered, you know, if any of this would happen. And as I'm thinking this, my oldest son paddles by, Hey Dad, how you doing? And then my other son to my right paddles by, Hey, pops,

what's going on? And I'm having one of those moments, you know, like like like like the Field of Dreams moments, like the fuck you want to have a cat Like every time I watched that movie, I tell myself, you're not gonna cry, You're not gonna cry, don't cry, And every time I see that scene, I fucking lose it. And I was having one of those moments, right, and I just looked up. I'm pretty spiritual gym me. I just looked up and said thanks, because you know how

much fun is this with my kids? Okay, Now I have a fourteen year old granddaughter and last summer, I'm out at my favorite break which is just south of Swambia's with just pipes. It's a great wave and she and she calls me, well, I'm Jeep. I'm Grandpa Paul, so I'm GP, and Jeeps for short, Hey jeeves, start paddling. We're taking this one in together and im and I'm going,

oh my god. Now there's a granddaughter. And she gets it, like she gets it's in her, like the surfing thing, like it's in her right, and I start paddling, and again I look up and I'm just like overwhelmed. I'm just like thanks, you know, thanks for her, and thanks for letting her understand what surfing is. So I go as often, honestly, I go as often as I can. And look, Bob, I'm getting older. Every summer I go out, I paddle out, see if I can do it, and I do it, and I step up, you know, and

then when I get into the beach. I look up to the Evans and I thank the man above. Thanks, I got another year. I'm going to do this another year. My dream, well, my dream was to surf until eighty only because I met a guy who was eighty one and he was surfing and he said, you can do it. You can do it. But now I have a new grandson. He's only a year old, and I'm like, oh shit, now I got to push the Now, I gotta push the envelope. I need to be there for him, like

when he's like at least five or six. I just want to paddle out with his little dude. Right, So I go as often as I can. But let me ask you a question. And this because I want to know you're an avid skier. I'm always reading about your ski trips. When you ski, is it like, okay? I just talked to you about like what surfing feels like.

Freedom is the only thing that means a damn to me. It's relatively slow swall and I remember standing at when I used to live in Utah, standing in snowbird. You're there in the elements. It's just you in the elements. In addition, the terrain is always different, so I ski for the sensation. And let's be clear, I skied so much this year. I'm almost embarrassed tell you how much. There are days I don't want to go out, but because you just burnt. Yeah, I mean, how many stays in a row of ice skied?

she came back with Donnie. I know Donnie's story. She wouldn't be on SDL because of her weight, forget all that. But it unclicked me in that this crazy political era. All of a sudden, the door opened and I felt like myself and I could see where I'm doing. I mean, we all have obligation, so you can't always do what you want to do. I mean, listen, I could go on about this forever. So what are the important things?

I don't have any children, You have children, family, whatever, Okay, eating sex, that's and reproducing that That's just about it. So anything you put on top, I mean, okay, let me switch throw it back to you. You take the buyout from Columbia, how long does it take you to emotionally adjust?

and it's gone. The priorities are different. I had to produce three DVDs for this TV show I had live by request. They just wanted to get them out. I said, no, they these have to be special. They have to have they have to have extras. I was tell you know, I was taking, you know, cues from watching movie DVDs. I know, we have to have extras. I want to do an interview with the band, or I want to do something special. These DVDs have to have extras. And they were like, I don't care what you do. Make

sure you get them out by Christmas. That's what I need you to do. It was changing. It was like that's I can't like, so no, I I it you know, hey man, thanks for thirty three and at theirs years, you know, like I did it, I didn't miss it.

and and you know, breakthrough. Other than just getting records played on radio and doing big promotions. I have some other ideas. And he was great about it. You know, most people would just say, hey, wrap twenty two years. Great, you know, here's your out, you know, check and thank you. He was wonderful. He knew I had vision, he said. I told him about some of my ideas. He said, if you think you can do this, make up a title for yourself. How's this, Bob, make up a title

for yourself. I'm going to give you three hundred thousand dollars budget, give you a year. See what you can do. Who does that, Bob? You're any record company presidents that do that? Most of them just write you off.

of marketing. So things did change for me in nineteen ninety and I could be home to see the kids at certain times. It didn't have to be out every night, and that was a pleasant change. You know, you know, I had my fun, Believe me, but that you know, that was good and and everything I did past that is still if you're in the music business. It's still a lifestyle. Even in today's music business. I mean, it's still a lifestyle. So it never ceased to become a lifestyle.

But but the idea of you know that this constant you know, Sunday night pressure, this Monday night pressure, this every week pressure. That kind of pressure was lifted and I would only have pressure like before this next radio show, before this next television show. What you know, you do a life television show. There's a lot of pressure live without a net, right, But it's different because it would only last for that project and then it would go away and then you'd have like a vacation for a

few weeks. So my life did change.

you segue to where you are now? Oh?

you for this entire year. And I had another friend of mine, Ron Hartenbaum, who's ran Media America and you know it's in the communications industry. He said, rap, you're an entrepreneur, somebo are you talking about because all these things you do, you're an entrepreneur. I never thought of myself as that. He goes, No, you do all these things. You come to my office I'm going to give you a free office and a telephone. See what you can do.

Just I know your mind. He goes, just come over here, and I began to think, well, maybe Ron is right, and I thought, well, what can I do now? I had done a radio series for Columbia called the Columbia Records Radio Hour, which is I'm really proud of it. You go find it online. There's some great music on there. And I had created a radio series. I'm not the retiring kind. I mean, Bob, I wrote this book, but after I promote this book, I'll do something else. I'm not.

I'll never retire. I can't. I need to do stuff. I'm just built that way. So so I started immediately. I didn't take a break. It was just like, I'm not doing this anymore. What can I do? Okay, well, I'm going to let's I'll do with the Columbia Records Radio Hour, but I'll just do a different name. And I called all my friends in radio and said, hey, hey, I'm going to do this, and they said, we're kind of over that thing now and we don't want it

to be at an exact same time. Because I was doing live radio that was a live radio show on Sunday mornings, a singer song of radio show. You tune in live. They said, but if you want to create radio specials, we're all about that. And I went, okay,

I'll create radio specials. And I I took this friend of mine who had helped me do all the stuff at Columbia, the radio show and the television shows, fabulous engineer, producer guy named Mitch Mcatanski, and another friend of mine who was a scriptwriter, and I said, we're going to We're gonna do radio shows. And I have all these connections, so I just go to the record companies and go, hey, you want a radio show for a new album coming out?

And we produced radio shows for three years. The company name was Trey Sombres because I'm a big Zzy Top fan. And there were three of us and our company was Treys Onmbres and we produced radio shows god at least six years, if not longer, and it was lucrative enough for the three of us to do it. Mitch also ran a business. He's like the mobile truck guy. Now, if you want a mobile truck, you call three M that's him, and he was doing that. But that was

lucrative enough. And then when that tailed out, I got a call from Judy Lebau, who you knows ex Atlantic. She wanted to do independent promotion for classic rock. Right. There was a guy, Paul Yeskell used to do it. He passed away. She bought his business. She said, do you want to do this again? I said, I don't really know because I'm kind of tapped out, like I feel like I did it right. And she says, well, just try it with me. We had a really good time.

First of all, I saw re I got to work with all these characters I worked with the first time. I'd be on the phone with Journey. Have you on the phone with Neil Sean's like rap is that you? I go yeah, I go yeah. He was like holy shit, really, I go yeah, you know, And so I would, you know, and I and I so and again I would. I worked really close with David Gilmore and Nick you know, for any Pink Floyd box sets, I would go over and interview David. I mean again, you go back to

the family for a second. Right, new manager Steve o'rourck passed away, sadly, new manager Apollo's but you got to come over here and interview Gilmore for this box set. I go, I'm not an interviewer, Like, that's not what I do. Like I'm behind the scenes guy. No, no, we need you. He is the only guy who wants to talk to right, He's just you know, just do it, you know, I said, okay, you know, so I did the best I could. There's interviews with me on YouTube

interviewing Dave Gilmore. By the time you get to the third one, I'm actually okay, right, but it's not what I do. But so these things would happen for me just just by reputation, right, And I would do, you know, guitar things for you know, the guitars or whatever. So I did, Judy, and I did that for ten years. And I wrote a blog which I had a blast writing. I'd talk about new music. I got to be you man, I was dissing everybody. I was like, I didn't care.

You know, I don't care anymore. It's like, what the fuck is this shit? Right? Are you telling me? This is you know? I mean, i'd get hate mail, right, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Right, Wait, wait, Bob, how's this? I interviewed Gill okay, if we're on YouTube. Oh shit, people fucking comment. Right I interview Gilmore. I get one comment, Oh god, this guy rap Ward's great. He's asking him every question I ever wanted to ask him. Well,

of course I'm a fan. I'm asking him those questions. Right, next comment, this guy rapping Board is a fucking idiot, Like, doesn't he know that Comfortably Numb has been played millions of times on radio. It's not three hundred and you know, fifty six thousand or whatever. I happen to research, you

fucking idiot. You know, it's like, do you think I come in to interview David gilmert, I don't know what I'm talking about, you know, so you know, so you know it's you know, so I did that for ten years and then and then six years ago I told Judy, I said, you know that this book has just been

it's calling out to me, Judy. It's like someone, someone has to document this, someone has to talk about these characters, the Herbie Herbert's, the fucking Sandy Pearlman's of you know, Bloyster called when the fucking flash plots go off with too much powder, and I thought we killed the fucking band and took out the first three rows of audience, and all Sandy's like fucking mister Peabody and Peabody and Sherman, and all he does is look out and go positively nuclear. Right,

I'm Sandy, and we might have killed people. He's, you know, like the Bob you know you're talking about. Someone had to capture this bob you're talking about, you know, bowling in the hallways in the afternoon water gun fire. I had a fun fucking fencing duel with with Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden down the halls of Columbia, you know, businest meetings about how we can't set our table on

fire anymore. Someone had to fucking put this down. Because you want to know something, Bob, we are getting older and when we're gone, if nobody writes it, it's gonna be gone. And you were there, Come on, man, it's guys and dolls only it's the record business and we have all we have, all these fucking characters. Somebody's got to write about these fucking people. Forget the artists. What about fucking what Johnny Baggs, right, John Babcock. All this guy ever says is get down Hey, John, will you

approve this? Get down? Okay? Do you smoked a lot of dope? Needs to say quaylas, But everybody loved him. Okay, it used to be out in John's road manager. Then right, if he really wanted to make a point, get down, and then oh no, then this one. Get fucking down. Somebody asked her, this guy's real. Okay when this book. After I promote this book, I'm going to TV Bob forget Vinyl. What a horrible show. It's not a fucking documentary. This is a fucking sitcom. This book is a sitcom

and all the characters are already written. They're written. It's a great jumping off point for any Hollywood writer. You couldn't make this shit up in your wildest dreams. These are real people and this is how they really were. So yeah, So six years ago I said I gotta do this and I just started.

David in the Winos. I heard from Harold just before we started it. So, okay, in case you don't know, Harold Bronson one of the Rhino Brothers, known to a great degree for musical comedy and a lot of innovative ideas. By time I became friends with Harold, Mogan David and the Winos was in the rear view, Mirriort. Not that Harold did not talk about it and talk about you. I always though it as more of a lark. I mean,

Harold's got his own sense of humor. But in the book you said when the Ramones hit, we could have had that slot. So tell me about Mogen David and the Winos.

Look e Q, what does that mean? Like? We didn't know. Consequently, the record sounds like it sounds I don't know if you write record, but okay, sorry, But we were creative, I'll give us that, and we were rehearsed, but we did wild shit. He wrote a song for Stan Berkowitz, who was the editor of The Daily Bruin. We were going to college together at UCLA. It's a blue song. It's called the Burkowitz Blues. So instead of me playing a pentatonic blue scale on guitar, I said, Harold, I'm

going to play a typewriter. So when you hear the solo, you hear like a blues thing, like you hear click click click click click click click click, like talking with the blues guitar. But it's a typewriter, right. We had inserts because we saw our whole album cover is a takeoff on Savage Young Winos. It's a takeoff on the Savage Young Beatles. The album cover is a knockoff of their cover. We had inserts because we saw Who's Live at Leads. We loved it the fold out right, so

we made we copied it full down. There's there's there's nine inserts right that you get. Okay, you get my flunked music final. I flunked music one at UCLA. Okay, because I'm not a math guy. Math and I don't get along theory is all math. I fucking flunked music one. I almost didn't graduate because I didn't realize I didn't have enough credits and they said you don't have enough credits and I said, no, I I only have one D and that was in logic, and you know, was

that prepared me for the music business? But you know, I said, they said, no, you flund a class. I didn't flun the click. I said, you flucked music one. I go, no, that was a joke. Well you might think as a joke, but you need the X amount of credits, right, So you get my f one. You know, my flunk music. Finally you get a cartoon. You get all these kind of things. The liner notes are hysterical. Forget listening to the record. We the liner notes, Harold's

fucking great writer. Right, So I thought it was fun and I but I didn't think we were that good. Now here's an important point. Okay, what did we not know in the early seventies, Bob, We did not know that there was something called the Wrecking Crew? And so what I would listen to records and go, Beryld, We're just not good in it. We're not good enough. We're not those people. Well guess what, Bob. Neither were they. You know, they were making it up as they went along.

But we didn't know. If we would have gotten signed, we might have been something because somebody has said, hey, rap play it this way, or if you can't, I'll get somebody to play it. We didn't know. So I told Harold and I'm you know, I'm I'm an adventurer, but I like to come home at the end. I mean, I knew wouldn't I wouldn't make it on the road. I wasn't going to survive. I'd be a road casualty. I know me, I couldn't do it, couldn't live on

the road. So I knew it early on. As much as I would like to be a rock star, this can't be a vocation for me. But I'm just going to keep playing guitar because I love it. But I you know, the Columbia job came up. Harold was the college rep. I'd hired him when I got the real job at Columbia to follow me, and he wanted to take the band on the road. And I said, Harold, you know, we're having fun. We made a record, we made a thousand records, we sold a thousand records. We

sold records world over. I have reviews from Japan and from France. I don't know what they say because I don't know if they liked it or not. But Harold made a little folder for us. I have reviews from all over and we had friends in the press right They loved us in La. You know, I got a great compliment from you know, Harvey Kopernick about my solo and you know, communication breakdown, all this kind of stuff. So but I did not think it could go past

that now did Okay? But then he said to me, well, if you're going to get a real job at Columbia, I'm going to go work with Richard Foz. He wants to start a label, which was Rhino right, which he did, and he did fine. Right, he's not complaining and I

did fine, So neither of us are complaining. But then when the ramones hit, because Harold and I have been friends for years, he called me and he goes, you see, he goes, this could have been us, and Bob will never know because it could have been We will never know because it's not like we didn't have talent, and it was not like Harold wasn't writing really good songs. He wrote teenage tanks. I mean, this guy's you know,

he's got it. So I don't know but that. But we had a lot of fun, and I just didn't think it was going to go that far. And so I did what I did, and he went to Rhino.