Snuffy Walden

be interested in scoring film and television? Ry Cooter priced himself out of the business, so I said, sure, why not? And Uh, I went up for a couple of films and couldn't get him because I had never written a queue for music for film. And then I got this opportunity to go audition for this little show. And you know, it's a long story, but we'll tell the story. That's why this is your great day. Well, I got this upper.

This agent approached me. I was playing with Michael Ruff and friends down at uh a place called at my Place in the leventhon Wilshire and on New Year's Eve six and the agent walked up to me and said, would you be interested in scoring film? And television and told me about Ray Couter that he priced himself out of the business, and I said, you know sure. I mean, at that point, I was envisioning holiday in at age sixty five, playing for a proud Mary, and it didn't

look very promising for me. I was I was thirty six, almost thirty seven years old. So I just said yes to everything, and I went up for a few films and it didn't really go well because all I had really recordings were guitar solos. I differ other people's records because I hadn't done anything since the seventies my own. So I got a call and they said there's this TV show and it's a pilot. It probably won't get picked up, but they want something different, and they talked

to everybody in town. Would you go talk to him the way I just saw a little bit slower. Is this the same agent that came up to you at my place? Absolutely? Same agent that came up to me at my place. And they sent me over to this producer and I met with him and I asked him what he wanted and he told me, and I took him at his word. I guess everybody else was telling him, No, here's what you want. But we listened to a record called Penguin Cafe Orchestra, which was acoustic guitar and cello

and hear and accordion. So I went, okay, I got to play acoustic guitar. And I didn't own an acoustic guitar, but I borrowed one and spent two weeks trying to write some cues. I talked to him out of some film. Spent about two weeks trying to write some cues, and then I would go back and work from my garage studio to my bedroom with the sheets over in my head because I knew what I was doing was awful, and I knew nobody had ever listened to it. And finally I wrote, I wrote these three or four ques,

and I didn't have a studio to record video. So I called all of my friends who had little recording studios. They could lay it back into tape, and I said, if you can help me, i'll split the show with you. Everyone said no, except for a guy names except for a guy named Stuart Levin, and he said, yeah, come

over on Thursday and we'll do it. So I took this film, which was a little show called thirty something, and I took the film over and we recorded these cues I had written, and we put them into film and sent it and I didn't hear a pete for I don't know a month, and I thought they must have just hated it. Turns out they only met with me because they wanted to see what again named Snuffy looked like. And when they got the video, ah, they

didn't even bother listen to it. So right the day they were going to sign somebody else up to the up to for a deal, they popped the audio cassette in that I had sent along with it, and they went, oh, that's that's interesting. Then they put in the video cassette and they really liked what it did with the show. And they called me and said, would you and and Stuart because Stewart's name was on it too, at that point,

would you all come down for a meeting. And we came down from a meeting, Bob, and we spent the whole time they kept asking can you do this? Do you know how to do this? And and we kept going, well, I don't know, you know, I didn't know if I could do it. I had no clue and Finally ed's Wick and Marshall Herskovius, who were their creators, left the room and the producer I met with, Scott Wyreant, said

just tell him you can do it. So we told him we could do it, and we got the pilot and the next thing you know, the party got picked up and it turned into thirty something, and that year it won the Emmy for Best Drama on Television and the first time I was doing it, so it was really I look at it as this, I really think because in sobriety when I when I quit drinking and using, I was willing to give up my music to live and I believe that was just the cosmos giving me

back times a hundred what I was willing to give up. And that's kind of a metaphysical way to look at it, but that's really the way I see it. Okay, let's go back to your deal with Stewart. Okay, thirty something was on the on TV on ABC for a number of years, So what do you do about your deal with Stewart? Well, it's funny Stewart and I got thirty something out there. People were really responding to it. Then I got a call from a guy named Neil Marlins

and his wife Carol Black. They said, we're doing this little show for ABC. It's going to premiere after the super Bowl. Would you do the music? So I think, gosh. Stewart and I were doing great. A second show that was a show called The Wonder Years. We did six episodes of The Wonder Years that year, and that year The Wonder Years won the Emmy for Best Comedy. So

the first year I was in television I had. I was doing the Emmy winning drama and the Emmy winning comedy, and Stewart and I also took on another one, the Dick Van Dyke Show, which was a half hour sitcom, and we did a library for that. And what happened was over the summer, Stewart didn't like the way I worked. I worked fourteen hours a day. Stewart liked to work and I did. To me, we had to it. I figured I had to work twice this hard to be

half as good. So Stewart and I didn't mesh well from a work ethic point of view, not that his was bad or worse, it was just different. And that summer he went to the producers and said, listen, you know I'm the only one who really knows how to score, because he had scored a television before and he said, I'm the only one who really knows how to score, and uh, I think I should do the show. I'm going to break up the partnership. I was actually in England courting my wife to be, so I didn't know

about it this until I got back from London. And then when I found that out that he had gone to the shows, you know, of course I called him and we had discussions and we decided to each take a show besides thirty something. He took the Dick Van Dyke Show. I took The Wonder Years because The Wonder Years was all acoustic guitar and he was a piano player and thirtysomethings that producers decided they were going to

alternate episodes with us. For the next four years, we alternated episodes, and he had a great guitar player who learned to play just like me. Because Stewart had all the masters, you know, we were doing on sixteen track, I think then maybe if but he had all the masters of me playing, so his guy just played the way I did and that worked in the beginning for him.

What happened was they didn't grow because they were he was kind of doing what I did the first year, and I was forced to grow because I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Didn't I didn't know what I was doing. And I ended up getting the relationship with the executive producers and the creators and have done every show they've done on television since. So that

worked out well for me. Stewart did me a huge favor by kicking me out of the nest, so to speak, because you know, that's what it took for me to grow and to figure out what this job is. And I'm still trying to figure out what it is actually about thirty some five years later. But he really did me a huge favor, and I didn't feel that way in the beginning, trust me. Okay, but let's go back to the beginning. We know what you provided. What did Stewart provide? Other than the studio to sync to tape?

Student Stewart had done a cop show, so he had acted, and he worked in the studios as a studio musician for my Post and other people, so he understood the process. He also had a recording studio and he was, he could record live to to film. We had all the links and everything we needed in those days to lock it up. So Stewart came in with an understanding of what the job is. I had no understanding of what

the job was. I was just as guitar player who wrote a few songs and produced a record and you know, got got a break. So Stewart and I in the very beginning, Stewart played piano and I played guitar, and we did it kind of as a duet. It was predominantly acoustic guitar because I had written the original cues to set the style. But you know, keyboards and sometimes sampled Chelly and different things. You know, we were doing it that way and using accordion and um percussion, hand

percussion shakers and stuff. It was just really kind of a real small ensemble thing. And he brought all the knowledge of what works in film, what doesn't, how to put it together, how to lock it up, how to uh not really how to follow a scene. I learned that from Ed Marshall, but he knew the mechanics of how to do it. I had no idea. All I could do sit and turn the film on and play until something happened emotionally, and then I developed that We

came from two totally different schools. Okay, so now you're separate, but you're working on thirty something where there's a you know, a sound that has been employed. Do you then hire a piano player? How do you get up to speed doing it alone? Well? That was interesting. I hired a guy named Jay Gruska. I brought him in to work with me on my half. Jay was a wonderful piano player.

We knew each other John Williams, son in law, great musician, and I brought him in and h and we had a great relationship, you know, for the three or four years we did it. He did it all the way through with me for the next four years. It was a little different because I was predominant in it because it was my gig. But so Stewart had his guitar player who had learned how to do me and I had Jay Gruska, who was very talented in his own right. So Jay had a record background. He had a background

that was when he came in. He was doing what Stewart and I did. But because we were both learning and growing in this film genre, Jay had done it before too. We were changing and we were growing during that process, and I believe that's the reason that I ended up with a relationship with ed Swick and Marshall, Herskowitz and Stewart didn't uh because I adapted, I learned, I grew, and those guys really gave me a master class in scoring. They made me do cues two or

three times every week. You know, I'd have to rewrite CUsing and they really, although they beat me up, they taught me so much about the arc of a scene and the arc of a story, in the arc of an episode from a writer's point of view, from us, you know, an actual scriptwriter's point of view. And you know, I'll always be indebted to them because they broke me in and taught me what I've really used for the last thirty years. Okay, obviously they taught you these things.

Tell me how you grew. Are you talking about just with thirty something or just for just for thirty something? You were saying you got the gig continually because you grew doing thirty something. They were constantly morphing and getting into deeper and deeper story. You know, originally we started thirty something, it was all about a stroller that was two seventy, you know, But once we got deeper into it, we were dealing with cancer, we were dealing with divorce,

we were dealing with all these heavier approaches. And you just can't play a shaker and accordion an acoustic guitar bopping along too that. So I was I was faced with much heavier, dramatic h I guess you'd call it really uh the canvas really a very much heavier canvas as we went through the show, growing over the four years, and I had to learn how to adapt what I was doing to that. I had to learn much more about melody and and playing around the moment and not

just underlining it but commenting on something. And I had to learn how to almost become a like an extra character and and and I learned that from trial and error. I also learned it from getting beat up a lot. And I was just stretching, you know. I was an electric guitar player who also picked up an acoustic guitar. And I was doing hammer ons and guitar electric guitar technique on an acoustic and it hadn't been done on television before, so I had to adapt and you know,

so I learned a lot more about melody. I learned about pacing. I learned about timing. I learned about color, how important it is when you know you don't need to say. I learned about silence, about silence is so important. You can be playing a queue and stop and and make that moment the most dramatic moment of the scene

because you're not playing music. And so all these techniques I had to develop on my own, and Jay helped to Jay had a good film since, but I was developing mine from zero, and so I just kept expanding. I really thought when I did this that this is gonna last a couple of years, and they'd find me out and I'd be out of a job and I go back to you know, tour and with Shaka or

whatever I was doing. And what happened was I learned enough in that first five years and doing one to years on the other side where I was doing it completely by myself. I just learned enough to start getting calls for other things. And the next show I got was a show call I'll Fly Away, And I knew if I did one more acoustic guitar show, I would always be the guy who does acoustic guitar scores. So I bought a piano and I scored off fly Away from a piano basis. Did you have any history playing

the piano? No, not past it five or six years old. You know. I could bang out a triad and active in the base, but no, I wasn't a piano player. But I had to learn. I had to grow. So I kept getting in these positions where and and challenging myself where I had to grow, where I had to learn, where I had to be a list, where I had to become something that I wasn't. If you'd have told me the first year when I was doing thirty something score West Wing, you know, you could have put a

gun to my head. I couldn't have done it. I just couldn't have done it. It would have been impossible. Yet twelve years later I did. So you know it was a huge uh growth right for me, and a steep incline really, But I just I dropped everything. I dropped all the rock and roll. Uh. I got married and had two kids, and my wife said to sheer time, just go do it. And I worked fourteen hour days every day, seven days a week, let's go back to something you said color. Can you define that? Wow? Color

is hard to define. Or it it can be anything from using a volume pedal on the guitar, through delays, or using a some strange synthpad. It's just a way to create or support an emotion. And for me, color can be you know, it can be anything from the palette you're of instruments that you're using, to the way you approach them, whether you you know, you can use a string quartet or you can have a piano playing one

note with delays and it will create a feeling. Now, it may not create the feeling you're looking for, but that's what you've got to kind of work on. Uh. You know, color was expanding my palette, expanding myself from just an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar, getting into other instruments, understanding other instruments. I started working more apt

in the first seven or eight years with Woodwinds. Fellow named John Clark, who don't know if you know, but played with Loggins and Messina and the most brilliant double read player I've ever come across, as far as emotional. Randy Cerber as a piano player, you know, I used Randy for years and years and years because he just approached the instrument with such grace and emotion, and those are the things that mattered to me. It wasn't the technicality.

And I'm still that way. I can go here somebody and if they got chops for days, I can listen. But a couple of minutes in, I'm no longer moved. I'm impressed, but I'm not moved. And John Clark, Randy Cerber, Mike Fisher on percussion. These were the guys that I called into my my little army, my little small ensemble army that that I was scoring with and really utilized the or really unique talents. And and for me now

I do it with George Daring. George jarring Is plays on every episode of every television show I do, even if there's no guitar in it, because he just brings such beautiful music and such a musicality to it always makes it better. Okay, you're talking about the producers of thirty something teaching you about television, about art, etcetera. Can tell us some of those lessons. You know, I didn't understand story. I wasn't a big story guy. I had never gone to movies and said I want to do that.

I kind of didn't even know it was a job when I got this offer. So what they taught me was that you've got to find the arc of a scene. What is the emotional arc of the scene, So what is the pinnacle the turning point in the scene, and you lead You've got to either not do anything and comment after it, or you've got to lead up to it and open up for it, or you've got to do something. Whether you're dealing with action, primarily, I do

small character driven dramas. That's what I really gravitate towards. That's what I was trained in, That's what feels natural to me. It's the same with action. I mean, you have to you have to have a shape, you have to have a build, you have to have an arc. But what once I got that, I thought, Okay, well I've got this thing down. Then they said, no, you know, you don't understand. You're peaking the episode. Two fit quickly, there's an arc to this, not only this scene, but

this whole episode. So I had to put on my thinking cap and go, Okay, how whom I build the story to a peak? And how do I find the peak of the story, the pinnacle of the story, and build to that. And I started figuring out how to do that, and I would judge everything. I would go back and look at the whole episode once I'd written queues to see how it built in the episode. About the time I got that kind of under under my fingers, they said, oh, but you're not building an arc of

the series. You know, we're building an arc of the series. So all of a sudden had to put it on again, and then I had to stretch it over five years. And you know, they they were so patient. They never threatened to fire me. Even though I made every mistake in the book, they would have me ride it again. And as much as in the young composer haste to

hear this, it served me greatly. Getting couched and getting schooled by guys who knew how to tell story is absolutely the one piece that has been instrumental in all my work. Okay, let's talk a little bit about process. So just in general, on a series, what is the schedule for you? The scheduling of television used to be a couple of weeks from the time they would lock the film to the time they would dub the film.

In other words, from the time they quit editing, you got the picture that was going to stay that way until it got to the dub stage to be added with effects and dialogue picture. What slowly has happened as the advent of technology came across Within twelve fifteen years, I was getting twenty four hours to make that same turnaround a show like West Wing h By or three. I was sometimes getting one day from the time I saw the film to send them the music. So originally

you would take time. You would you would meet with the producers and you would watch the episode and decide where they wanted music and talking about the nature of the music, and then you go off for a week and write it, and then you'd hand it to orchestrators and copyists and you'd go into the studio. That's the way it was before I came on the scene. When right when I came on the scene, everything was getting

smaller since we're happening, computers were happening. So I dialed it down to I write it as I go, I perform it as I'm as I'm playing it. It never went to paper, so I missed that whole other step of getting booking a session and getting twenty five players and having it copied and orchestrated. So I skipped that a whole step so I can do it fast stir, which in some ways was great, but it also gave

them license to give me less and less time. And over the years with the AD Uh, you know, we ended up with avid instead of cutting film, and we ended up with all these technological things. It now is to the point where you may never not you may never get locked film. It may never They may still be adding it on the dub stage and changing it because you can do it with the push of a button. So it makes scheduling. Yeah, you've got to be quick

on your feet. And because I was always doing small ensemble, that was easier for me. When I moved into West Wing or something like that, where I had a fifty sixty players, it got a little trickier. But that didn't last long because they couldn't get me the own fast enough for me to do those kind of sessions. So what's that it's compressed over time. I would think now they'll probably give you five days unless they have a

real big problem. Uh five maybe six days normal, But they still might ask you to turn half that music around and in a day and a half. So it depends upon the production, it really does. It depends upon the people and how organized they are and how clear their vision of the story they're telling it. Okay, you get let's just assume it's locked. You get locked. You have a brief period of time. Tell me the process of coming up with the score itself. My process is

pretty much stayed the same, Bob. It's what I did in the beginning when I was first writing those first few fews for thirty something, was sitting in front of the film, running the scene and just playing until something started happening emotionally, and then I would go back and play with the idea, develop it a little bit, and put them film up and then try that against it. And it was really hit or miss once I started.

Once I got off the acoustic guitar and got on the piano, even though I was playing acoustic guitar samples, I was able to lock everything up with MIDDI and which allowed me to sit down and just play freely to picture, and then the stunting started to develop it. I still had the same process. I'd stop and developed the piece a little bit more and then see how

it fit with the scene. But once we had the computers, you could move a piece of music two seconds or make it faster here or there, so you could make it breathe with the scene, which is I think one of the things that I did well. I didn't get in the way a lot because I was so I was taught so much to let the story unfold rather than tell people the story before it happens. So that process still is the same for me. I now I'll

choose a separate palette for each show. In other words, I'll choose a set of instruments that hopefully I haven't used before. Because I've done seventies maybe the eight series. You know, I've used up a lot of my palette, and I have to find something new that's fresh, that gives me a fresh take and also doesn't sound like ten other things I've done. So whatever I start with, whatever that decided palette is, then I move forward starting

to write with that. And you know, once again, it's still sitting down and playing to picture and finding something that touches me. If it's if it'll touch me, it will probably touch you, and and directors, Bob, they just want to like their film better. You know, they just want to love their film more. They want to feel the places where they felt they missed, and they want

to heighten the places where they tear up. And you know, Steven Spielberg always says, uh, Stevens that, uh, he said, I can I can bring a tear to someone's eye. John makes the tear fall talking about John Williams, And you know, I think that's a beautiful cinema. Okay, So do you decide where the music goes? Or when you get the locked picture, do they say we want music

here there? Boy, we are getting technical. Generally, we do what's called a spotting session, which is we sit down with the producers and view the whole film, watch it as an episode, stopping and starting and saying I think music should start here, and then we'll go back and look and scene and we'll go, well, maybe we should go in a little sooner, maybe a little later. We decide in that spotting session basically where the music goes and what is trying to accomplish. Are we trying to

create tension? Are we trying to create drama or are we trying to have a release, we are we gonna cry here or and so we would decide the basics of it. But once I got it in my lap, you know, it was up to me to decide. Well, they wanted music to come in here, But I think what they really mean is melody should start there, and I should glide into it invisibly so that when I hit that first note of melody, it creates something. And

and a lot of time that's what happens. They want an emotion at a certain point, so they say music should start year And unless they're really astute at doing it and and really good at it, then a lot of times that's not the moment you're looking for. You're looking for a moment to glide in before you're looking for maybe something after it to start creating. It's and it's it's totally subjective. A hundred guys can write a

hundred good cues for a scene and they'll all be good. Uh. Also, a hundred guys can write a bad queue and they'll still be bad. So okay, let's talk a little bit about foreshadowing. I mean, people were just watching films think that it's all hard cuts, But a lot of times dialogue music starts before the next scene. Can you tell me about them? You know, sometimes you want to have music in a scene, but to hit it musically on

the cut isn't always right. Sometimes you want to get gracefully up in into the music, so it's called a relapse. Uh A lot of times with small ensemble. I do that with a pad or electric guitar, volume, pedal, swell or something to take me into the cut. If I wanted to go from a bedroom to a busy city, then I could swell into it and get busy right on the cut. On the other hand, if you're going from a bedroom to the baby's room, you want to

ease across that cut and and be invisible. You know, our job is to suspend disbelief, you know, we want people to feel the story. If you're listening to the mute to the music, I probably haven't done my job. Well. Listen to the music the second time. But my job is to really propel that story and move it in the best way possible. And and and Stravinsky wrote amazing music, but it's not going to fit in a going from two lovers in the bedroom to a baby's baby monitor

in the baby Room. It's just not gonna work. You know, it's brilliant music, but it's not right for the moment. So you know, you you have different everybody's got a bag of tricks that they use a lot. I have my style. I like the pre lap a cut and maybe start some some movement on a cut, depending on what I'm going into, or start a theme on a cut, or sometimes you don't want to touch the cut at all.

Sometimes you want to stay as far away from the actual edit point as possible so it doesn't feel like we're it's two pointed, than trying to drag you into the next scene. I I learned from Ed Marshall that I was way better off commenting on a scene, commenting on something that was just said, rather than saying it at the same time. You know that they used to

call that underscoring. AH for me, Ed Marshall taught me how to comment on a storyline or a scene, and it made me more of a player, like like an actor. It made music more I don't know, but you know, one of the characters that's kind of okay. So let's go to the process, and you know, I know there's a learning curve but let's talk today when everything is relatively compressed, so you essentially write the music in twenty four hours, what's the process from composing to laying it

down to delivering it. I'll give you an example of the frightening one when you when you have to turn it around in twelve hours, you have no choice but to perform it as you're writing it because you don't have time to go back. So you've just got to work your way through the show performing it at the same time that you're writing it. So although I might have somebody come in and clean up the MIDI when I was doing West Wing, that's pretty much what I

was doing. I was writing it except for the first six episodes that were went to orchestra and the main title theme. I played every instrument on there. I had one guitar session on one queue in the whole seven years we ran. And it was all about performing strings and brass and percussion and all that stuff on on the spot in the moment, so that it that's the way it was going to go to the dub stage. So I really I learned to do that. I learned that there's never a demo, you know, the demo is

the master recording. It's just like in doing records, you know, you try to chase that demo once you've created the idea. And I found for me writing the performance as the cue and doing them at the same time was the most fruitful for me. So that's the way I learned to do it. Of course, if I'm doing an accoust the guitar thing, and I'm writing at home, I can do one or two things. I can play an acoustic guitar and a mike here in my writing room, which

is matched at my studio. I mean, whatever I play here into into my sequencer comes up exactly the same down there. They're totally matched. We have three match studios. Patrick Rose has one too, and we can move things around like that. But once I perform it here, if I have George darn coming, then we'll do it. Have somebody do a takedown as I'm writing queues and give me a three line sketch, or if there's actual guitar,

they'll write out the guitar part. So that by the time I'm done writing and I go to sleep and I get up and go to the next session, all the paperwork is prepared and George We've got a three or four hour date, maybe a five hour date with George where he stite reading everything and sometimes you stite reading no guitar, just looking at it a three line sketch, you know, strings, pads and percussion. But he gets the idea of it. And and that's a little bastardization of

the process of doing it yourself. But I love having George on everything, so I always go to you. You know. Sometimes now on Seal team we have cellist, but cellist come in. Sometimes we go to a dub stage, we go to an actual film stage. Although Patrick does that, I don't do that. Uh So the process can be varying degrees of of right as you go and perform as you go. But for me, that's been my process and that's what I stay with. Okay, So there's one a civic studio that is not in your house where

you essentially do most of the work. Yes, I have a writing studio in my home where I write. Now. A funny story, when when I built the studio, we lived in the front house in front of the studio down in Woodland Hills. When I moved up to this house, I was still working and writing down there. One day, my son came home with a picture and I said, well, what's this. He said, well, this is our family picture. He said, that's mommy, that's me, and that's Connor. I said,

where's daddy. He said, oh, Daddy's at the studio. So I built a riding room at my house because I didn't want to be that daddy. And uh. And I've worked doing the core writing at home ever since. I go down to the studio if I'm recording live instruments that I'm doing string ensembles or woodwinds or George or whatever. But the whole studio is set up for producing television scores. We're everything's plugged in all the time. You know, if we need to add drums. George is a great drummer.

By the way, George plays everything. He plays piano, he plays everything. So if we need some color, George will play whatever's sitting next to him and he's happy to play it. So I keep that studio so this all the music for these shows is made essentially in a home studio at your old home. Yes, who does the engineering. George Landrus has been working with me for ten twelve years now. Before that, it was a fellow named Abby Kipper who worked for me for fifteen years before that.

I be came on really early on h I guess I was maybe been scoring four or five years and Obve came in and started working for me, and we set the studio episode fit his style. Then when George started working with us, we set the studio episode. It works in his style. The actual console, maybe there's still a writing station down there. If I wanted to, I could go down there and write just easily. It's home, but there's so much easier to walk out in your road and turn the computer on that it is to

get you go all the way down the hill. So okay, so if you're doing a show now, you tend to be writing it at home and then recording it at the other studio Woodland Hills. That's right. What we do is we as we do the core work in our home studios. It's either Patrick or I on Seal Team. It's Patrick and me me less and less. And what we do is we write our core music and that is the performance of the core music. Then we we uploaded at the studio and add Sweeten Nerd to that.

We had you know, cello or George or percussion or whatever we add to that in it. The technology is so good now that you can actually sit at home and record George Deering at his studio in real time and give notes in real time and then handed off to the mixer and you can listen to him mixing it in real time at home. I mean, it's the technology has moved that far now so that you can actually record people anywhere in real time. You don't know if you deal with the lag. We used to go

to Bratislava and stuff to do string sessions anywhere. Was there always two in the morning and there was a five second lag? And huh? But it's it's the technology is just zoomed forward. So now are you personally also a good engineer and can you read and write music? Know, I'm not a good engineer. I trust people to do that for me. You know, from playing years of rock and roll, my hearing is not the greatest. So me on a mixing console you're liable to get an awful

lot of triangle and I strengths. But as far as being an engineer, I don't do that at all. And your other question was writing and reading music. I never learned to read music. I still don't know how to read music. I went to u c l A after the first year of thirty something, and I said, and I took an orchestration class, and I said, can I get somebody else to write my parts? And and he

looked at me like I was crazy. And the next couple of classes I brought somebody else's transcription of what I wrote in and he pulled me aside, he said, listen. But then he knew what I was doing. He said, you you have what we all want. You have a job. When you run out of jobs, come back to school. And I ended up hiring that teacher to orchestrate from me three years later. So I've never run out of job, so I've I've never had to go, and I never learned.

And I can't. I can't follow a score that I've written. I can see basically where the movement is and keep up with it if I count bars. But I'm way better at just closing my eyes and watching the film and hearing what's coming at me and judging it or changing it based on that. I'm not a paper guy. I always looked at a piece of paper and said, you know, I can play paper like a chord chart, or I can play music. Which one do you want? Okay, let's go back. You're talking about with Marshall and Ed

making you redo the cues. Is that still a thing that you've experienced, and what is it like when you do experience? Absolutely? I think younger guys go through it more than I do, because number one, I've listened to them enough to kind of know what they really mean. They may say one cloud with two doves, but what they're really talking about is a sweet PIANOICU. I've heard it enough and chased enough of those clouds and doves to know what they're talking about emotionally anyway. But yes,

all the time they will. They do what's called a preview now, where they're so used to you being able to ride at home, mock it up and before you adding the instruments to it, send it to them and they look at it locked to film and they decide, well, you know it's good up to here, but I need this here and that there, and you've got to go in and take it apart and restructure it. Or they'll say, you know, this is perfect, which is good to hear, or they'll say what were you thinking? And then you

start from scratch and have to write it again. I've written queues for some shows six seven times and and a lot of times go back to the original cue that I wrote. Okay, when the show is done, When your work is done, do you end up watching the finished product and be do you since so much as it's done its speed? Do you watch and wins say I should have done this or I could have done this better? Boy? Do I watch it when it's done?

It sounds the best when it leaves my studio because music is loud and proud, and I'm not fighting effects and I'm not fighting the helicopter and I'm not doing all that. I don't watch my work for two reasons. Ah. The main reason is it makes me uncomfortable if it's too soft or if it's too loud, unless it's right in that middle space and it's really working well. The

other thing is why did I do that? Right? You know once you watch it, and what I had to do in the beginning, probably the first ten years, was watched them on television as they aired. Because they're compressed, they don't sound the same as when they leave the dub stage, and I always felt like going down to that to the mix put one of two things into play. Either they were nervous because you were there, so they turned music up too loud, or they were piste off

because you're there and they turned the music down. So I found it was best for me not to go and put myself in that situation unless it's just a playback, and if it's something important regular episodic. We were doing twenty two episodes at that time. You didn't have time to go down for a playback. You were busy right in the next episode. And from the time I started up until a year ago, I've been doing multiple series every year. So I've had at least two series on

every year since. So I don't have that kind of time, you know. Uh, But the other you know, I don't like. I learned from watching it on the air. I learned what works and what doesn't work. I don't like watching it. I mean, I've never watched The West Wing and people say they just love it, and uh, I'll watch it someday when I don't. Probably when I stopped doing it. I just I've never been comfortable listening to my work. I never wasn't the guy who carried a cassette around

in my pocket. Go listen to my new song either. So I was just not that guy. Okay, So how did you meet Aaron Sorkin? And you started with him in the beginning of television and you grew together. So can you tell us that Aaron. It's interesting story. Aaron watch thirty something and really loved thirty something. So when Aaron put his first television show on, uh, he called my agents and said it would Snuffy be interested in

doing this show? And I was up in Mammoth skiing with my kids, so I wasn't you know, Dad's at the studio. And I got a call from my agents and they said, listen, this guy, Aaron Sorkin done some movies, really good writer. Wants you to look at this script and would you be interested in I said sure, send

it up. So they messengered it up or fed exit up or something, and I got the script and and I was used to looking at scripts and just flip into the back page to see how long it was, because I will tell you it's an hour and a half hour. And I flipped to the back of the page and it was sixty pages. So I got a less an hour drama. So I read it. It was wonderful. It was so beautifully written and such a great piece.

I said, absolutely, I'd love to do this. Only two weeks later to find out Aaron writes sixty pages for a half hour show most people. And so I learned it was a half hour television show and it's called Sports Night. And we did one year of Sports Night and it was kind of a funny show because it was half hour, but Aaron really nixed the laugh track and so, you know, some people got into it, but it wasn't really big. Aaron had in his back pocket

at that time West Wing. He had the idea of show about the West Wing that was really about the people, not the president, and he had shopped it and it hadn't been picked up. And so once he was on the air, Tommy Slammi was doing the directing to which was phenomenal. Tommy, you know, created this whole thing of walking through the giant sets with moving cameras and did that on Sports Night, and so there was a lot

of credibility for the quality with Sports Night. When Aaron came back to John Wells with with the West Wing, and at that time. You know, I've been doing this electric guitar show all you know, all of my roots, you know, playing bluesy stuff and slide and all electric guitar and and Aaron came to me said, listen, I have the script. You know, it's about the West Wing. Would you be interested in doing it? And he sent me the script and I read it and there was

just incredible. Aaron had a way of making the first five minutes riveting of any show you got of his. Every pilot I did with Aaron was that way that you couldn't walk away from it. It's like Social Network is a great example of of that kind of writing, where it's just it just goes. And so I read this and I said, yeah, I'd love to do it. What are you thinking? He said, well, I'm thinking American acoustic guitar. I said, great, I don't how to do that.

About two months later, after they shot the pilot, they're starting to edit it and they started putting John Williams up against it and it worked really well. So Aaron came to me and said, listen, I know we talked about acoustic guitar, but we've been putting this big orchestral stuff up against it. Would you be able to do that? And the only answer you can give if you're about

to be out of work is yes. And I went to a friend of mine, James Horner, and talked to him about what I wanted to accomplish, and he pointed me to some areas and we discussed how I would do it and what the process was, because I had never worked with a big orchestra at that point. I've worked with some string sections, just doing strings on some guitar music, but the first time I've ever worked with big full horns and everything, and so James helped me

a lot. And then I studied Aaron Copeland and I boiled it down to well, really, he's just playing a simple melody. It's just but the orchestration's lovely. So I got a great orchestrator, Brad Dector and who was doing all James Newton Howard stuff and and I I brought him in and he brought in a couple of other guys because you had to put out so much music, so it took two or three orchestrators just to get it orchestrated and prep for the orchestra. And the funny

thing about it is. I was. I was writing the whole first full first episode, part of the second episode, and a couple of is for the third episode because they didn't have the money to do fifty six pieces every week, so I was writing two or three episodes and doing a session. Ah. But they were going to Randy Newman and all the Carthy, Stills and Nash to do the main title. Everybody was you know, everybody wanted to do Aaron Sorkin's new main titles. Uh. And they

were telling me about it. I was going, yeah, Randy Newman, now, how would you complain about that? And I was. I was working on the third episode and Tommy Slimy came over to my writing room, which is not this one but the one downstairs, and I played in the queues and I played in the end queue and he said, that's it. I said, that's what he said, that's the main title. It took me fifteen minutes to write that queue.

But that que turned into uh to some music that I want an Emmy for the theme the third theme to West Wing, and Tommy recognized it more than I did. I was just writing as fast as I could and trying to get something together. But Tommy recognized the emotional content and with his visual content of what he was going to do because he was already shooting the credits. There are the opening credits, and I give Tommy a lot of credit for that. Certainly did me a good

one there. So you're a rock and roller at hard So where did you grow up? I have Bonouisiana, raised in Texas, went to school in Texas. You know. I had my parents split up a lot, so I would follow one to the little rock and then found the other one back to Texas and then they get together and then we'd all be together in Houston. So I grew up kind of. I went to twelve different schools

getting through high school. So I was always trying to fit which which helped me as a composer, by the way, because I also knew how to you know, kind of fit into a piece. And I started my rock and roll career plan at a strip joint I had. I was going to football before that. How it was there music in the home? How did you end up even playing? Oh Wow, You're gonna go way back? You know? When I was about five, they gave my parents gave me

a Hawaiian steel guitar. Gave me lessons on that. But I lived in tech in East Texas, so you know, all was there was country. So I was basically playing learning how to play country music on a Hawaiian lap still. And then I learned a little piano and play. We had a Hammond cord organ at home. I kind of learned how to play that. In fifth grade, I went out for band. This was exciting because the guitar didn't stick. I was doing tap dancing too, so you know, they

had me involved in everything. Were you the only kid? No. I had one brother two years older, same birthday. We were born two years exactly apart, and I'll get to him because he was the gifted one of the family. He's gone now, but he was the really gifted musician in the family as far as I look at it. So I got a traumbone. So I started playing traumbone in the fifth grade. In the sixth grade, and then I wasn't good enough on trum bone, so they moved

me to baritone. And by the time I got through eighth grade, I was I was just done with band. I just I couldn't do it anymore. So in the ninth grade, we moved down to Texas and for Christmas that year, my grandfather got me and my brother both electric guitars little Fender music Men or whatever. They were a single pick up little Fender, and we started playing electric guitar in The first song played was Misty and

the second song I played was long, Tall Texan. And that's about those wider ranges I was ever going to get. Pretty soon, my brother took off two strings off his and started playing based on his, so he ended up getting a base. We put a band together, of course, in the night. It was summer of between nine and grade for me. We put a band together called the Showman. And you know, we had one guy in the band

because he had a band, so he played tambourine. We had another guy in the band because he had a twelve string and we wanted to play I wanted to play the twelve strings, so we got him in the band too, So you know, there was about three of us core musicians. We also had a guy named Turkey who would bring a little Hammond cord organ around to every gig. I don't know why his father did that, but they did it. And we played, you know, school dances in the local tiki club Quantza Time. Okay, you're

you're in Texas in the northeast, Northeast. You know, it's tough forty radio first Folk, then Four Seasons, Beach Boys, then the Beatles in British invasion. Texas is its own country. So how important were the Beatles to you and where you grew up and what kind of music were you playing? Were you influenced by local music and country music? You know, I loved the Beatles. I bought all the Beatles records. I loved what they did. But we didn't play an

the Beatles. I never worked up a Beatles song. We were kind of we weren't that good, you know. We we could play uh animal songs, we could play some Stone stuff, we could play some basic twelve bar stuff and you know, Kinks. Maybe it's about as daring as we got. So we didn't. We weren't recover band because we weren't that good. We weren't good enough to reproduce those records. So we just kind of play, but we

could play. I was listening to a lot of chet Atkins in and we were listening to that songs like Tellstar instrumental records and so we just kind of did a hybrid. We just got together and played really and that's kind of all I've ever done, as it, and it turns out I've never done. I did one casual gig in my life where I played at a wedding and they fired me the next day and never called me back because I didn't know all those songs. I never learned anyway. We had a cover band then then

we decided to release the record. My grandfather was pretty impressed and he built he opened a record label, and we cut a single and it was on one side, baby let Me Take You Home by the Animals that my brother sang, and the flip side was Bald Headed Woman by the Kinks, and Doug and I traded off vocals on that. Doug, my brother, and I still have that record. And we changed the name of the band

because the Showman didn't sound cool enough. We called it ps Y one to three for Psychedelic because the elevators and all of that was just starting to happen in Texas. Wow funding to go back to that, and and we kept that band together for about a year and a half and then it disbanded because my brother got sent to military school and he got my my he got my girlfriend pregnant, so you know that was that was fun. Uh, and he married her, so we the band kind of

broke up and I didn't. I kept playing in the in my bedroom, but I didn't really play in any bands. In my senior year, I went to four different schools because I got kicked out of one. I went a wall from a military school. I got barely through the asked one, but I didn't have all the credits I needed, so I had to go to summer school. So that

was my final year. And that year was spent for me going out to the black clubs and seeing Sam and Dave and the Impressions and uh, you know those acts of that time in nineteen sixties sixty seven and drinking beer and hanging out with the guys. It was like junior frat guys. So I didn't play it all that year. And then when I graduated and I started going to college, I was friends with this guy who had FM underground radio show on this little tiny FM show FM station called k r b E, which is

huge now in Houston, and I got a job. I got my second I can't remember what degree it was but basically an apprentice license to be a DJ. So I was going to college, going to on a double major premat premit Math. I was working at this little underground radio show, doing all different sometimes the morning shows, sometimes the late night shows, whatever they could give me. And I was playing in a strip club called the Seller, where they sold fake boost to the clients, trying to

tell like was uh bourbon flavoring in coke? And the girls all wore broad panties and they would dance and they would strip for tips, and when they had stripped, they locked the front door, and you know, it was just really sorted. It was dark and sorted. What made you pick up the guitar down? You know? I always

gravitated toward it. I remember that senior year, Sergeant Pepper came out, and I remember being so impressed with Sergeant Pepper, but didn't have any Connation played, but Fresh Cream and Hendrix came out. Those two records came out, and that brought me back to the guitar because hearing Clapton and Hendrix were like, whoa guitar can be like this? And I don't remember a moment that where I picked it back up and said I'm gonna do this. I never really intended to be a musician. It just kind of

happened that way. Now, but in your documentary it says you slept with your guitar, and I think the images of a less Paul. What's the reality there. It really happened. I that was where I did. That was the time when I was living in Memphis. I had already had three or four bands in my Well, then let's stay with here. You're playing the Strip Club, Give me to Memphis.

I've got a I got a band that I joined called the Deep Elm Blues Band and Little Screaming Kenny still lives in Houston and plays gigs all the time. He was the bass player and the singer and Rick I can't remember rex Rick's last name. We were a trio and we played this place called the Seller, and if somebody got up and started stripping, you weren't allowed to stop playing. If you did, you were fired and barred. So you had to learn how to improvise. Always had

to learn how to improvise, which worked for me. It was it was our music school, really, and when it whenever we'd switched bands, the other guys had come on stage while you're playing and switch into your amps and so the music never stopped. You just kept going and going and going. And you know, they paid like eight

bucks a night. I mean we were when we went to the fore Worst Seller, we had to get to hotel rooms for the band, and every other night we had to move everything into one hotel room because we could only afford three hotel rooms. Every two days we couldn't afford for So that's just how low paying it was. But I was living the dream. I was playing guitar. I was having a great time. That's where I first did L s D. I mean, you know, I was

just living the dream and didn't care. I didn't care that, you know, I was having to hang mayonnaise in the back of the toilet to keep it cool, you know, so we'd have turkey sandwiches. I mean, it was just it was really funky. But you know I learned a lot there too. That's one of those places that I really consider my schooling came from. So anyway, when that band broke up, I I had a little time that I came out with my brother. My brother had come

out here and gotten record deal with Metro Media. I think it was at the time, and I came out and joined his band for about three months, and then their manager got arrested for drug dealing. So I went back home and I was living in the park, but I had a roady in the park and a guy named George Maxi. The only thing that that I'm missing is there was a band called the Grits that we

kept together for about a year. That personnel changed a bunch of times, but we played a lot at the Balkan Gas Company which turned into Armadilla headquarters later, but the Elevators played there, and you know all these different bands, uh, and we played that circuit. After I dropped out of that, I went to Dougs band, and then I came back to l A. And I was living in and came back to Houston living in the park, and some guys asked me to come over an audition. Now they were

way older old guys. They must have been twenty six or twenty seven. I was nineteen or twenty. They felt like they were playing like the old big band clubs to me, and I joined that band. It was called the Silver Spoon, and we moved to Memphis, and that's where I first started my real recording and studios. That band ended up disbanding, but uh, Jerry William H Jerry Thomas,

who was b J Thomas's brother, was there. And I had actually had backed b J Thomas up on two gigs in Louisiana when I was about fifteen um and he didn't even hurt for the band. He just came on the stage and said Barefoot and two three four, and we all just sat there. You know, we knew Animal songs, we knew Stone song, but we don't know Barefoot and from Adam. And it was a pretty unsuccessful little stint we did through Louisiana, but I got to know his brother and and I got to work in

the recording studio. I remember one night we were at American Recording Studios and there was this big commotion. We used to get downtime around midnight, and there was this big commotion and and everybody starts whispering and Elvis walks in with his crowd talk about floored. You know, this is nineteen sixty nine, I guess something like that, and that was a big deal. That was a real big deal, and you know, but that kind of stuff was going

on in Memphis and places like that. Nashville I spent virtually no time, but Memphis I spent a lot of time. And that's where Rodny Millsap came broke out of And there was a band called Flash and the Cadillac Kids and a lot of local bands. Same state to two totally different mindsets. Really, well, there was so much. There was a lot of blues and Memphis and that kind of stuff. You know, at that point, Nashville was just

pure country, at least from my point of view. So you're telling me about sleeping your guitar and how you ultimately get a record deal. Okay, Well that has to do with Silver Spoon. When I was living with them, I was that was when I really started my drug intake. And they had these pills that were one half speed and one half Downer, and you were supposed to take them together, but I would split them and take the

Speed all day longer than the Downers all night. And I would lay in bed with my guitar and drink coffee and play until I fell asleep. And I sleep on my guitar. Didn't have a girlfriend, didn't matter, And I get up in the morning and first thing I do is just play and that's all I did all the time, was just play guitar. So I really did sleep on my guitar. That's a true story that it was a blacklist Paul, and uh, you know, I had it in battled with me all the time. Huh. We

that this band. Slowly we went back to Houston. Uh, we're woke up. And then one of the songs that we were that we wrote was recorded on Johnny Winner's second Winter album called The Good Love, but the bass player took all the credits, so we you know, we were all outset of him. He's long passed away. I don't have any issue with him. Uh, But so that was you know, I was starting to go, Wow, if I do something, somebody can like it. And I joined this.

I had a bout of hepatitis and living in fort Worth and I would you probably know who Jerry Williams, don't you. Well? Jerry Williams was living in fort Worth then and I joined him Linda Wearing and Randy Cakes and we formed the Jerry Williams Group and we played local clubs and everything, and we were getting ready to come out to the West Coast for a record deal. You know, it was all going to happen, And three days before we were supposed to leave, I came down

with appatitis. So I got stuck in the hospital. They told me I couldn't play music anymore. Uh I didn't. I didn't go with Jerry, and then they came out. They got a record deal. Jerry did a bunch of acid and took a left turn and that record never even came out. But I got sick, and when I got out, they told me, if you get back into music business, you're gonna be dead. And this is from taking all those drugs and all that stuff. It just so. I got a gig in a music store and lasted

about three weeks and I just couldn't do it. So I moved to Colorado with this other band that I knew from the Fort Worth area, and I do one gig a week and then rest the rest of the time. Then I built it up to two and built it up to three. That was a little band called Aphrodite, and we worked out of Denver. That's the band that when Emerson Lake and Palmer came through town. The old crew came down to a little club we were playing at and we're just knocked out, and they said, we're

going to get you a record deal. And they went and finished the Immerson, Lake and Palmer tour, came back to Denver and put us on this circuit where we were saying, last gig before we go to Europe and before our European tour, and got us, you know, endorsements for ants and all this stuff, and all of a sudden everything grew big p s and uh so we raised a bunch of money to supplies to England and we went over to England. It didn't go well in England.

We were there about six months and at that point my girlfriend was having helping support the band. We lived in just this awful flat that you needed shillings to get hot water or propane or gas whatever. And then we cut an ascetate. We were still aphrodite. We couldn't

ascetate at the play is called que Bridge. It was a little live room, but they also could cut an asset take there, and somehow we got it to Greg Lake and Greg listened to it and he liked it, and he called us up and we went into the studio with Greg for a day and cut three songs and After that, Greg called me over to his house and he said, listen, I love what you do. That he was the problem with the band. The drummer would get better every take. I was good first take, get

a little worse, second take, third take. The fire was gone by the sixth take when he got good. So what Greg said to me was, listen, I'd love to work with you, but I can't work with you with this band. If you want to stay with that band, then you should go on, and I wish you good luck. But if you want to work with me, I'll help you put a band together and we'll make a bad and around you. So that's what I did. I went to my drummer and I totally said you gotta do it,

you gotta, you gotta do it. So the bass player state Al Roberts and and we went on a quest to find the drummer. We had Cozy Powell and you know, all these different people. We went all around England, couldn't find anybody, just auditioning people who came to America. I went to New York, went to Houston, we went to

Denver to try somebody out. We ended up in l A for our last a bout of tryouts and Nold Redding was in town rehearsing with his band, and we got his drummer to come over, fellow named Less Sampson, and it was magic. And that's when we put the three piece bands Straight Dog together. That recorded on Mantical Records,

was my first record deal. I was twenty three, maybe twenty four, you know, seventy three when we recorded the record came out and seventy four, so yeah, I was twenty three and and I had a record deal with a big label and it was Manticore Records released by Atlantic over here, and they were going to take us on a world tour as their opening act. And you know, the truth of the matter is I just couldn't handle it. We were great musically, we weren't songwriters, so we got

no airplay. We only got underground FM airplay. We had a real cult following, but we didn't weren't songwriters, so we didn't get airplay. And we My alcoholism continued through that point and was getting worse and worse. And then we started a tour. We toured all of Europe with Lake and Palmer are doing you know, everything from fifty tho sedar stadiums to the Olympic, Holland and Munich, and

then we came to America. We did the whole East coast of America and we ended up that tour and there's a lot of sordid stories that go on through all that with my drinking and stuff. But we ended up playing two nights in Madison Square Garden before Christmas four, I guess, and they rolled me back to the hotel. I was so drunk and in my white leather ballero suit, and two days later I got the word that, you know,

we no longer need your services on this tour. So we moved the band to l A. Ended up doing one more record in l A. And then basically something happened where I had to come home and I called everybody. I said, I'm gonna come back tomorrow, and they said, well, if you come back, the whole band, Squitty So Stray Dog broke up. As far as I was concerned, I was no longer in the band, and they broke up.

Six weeks later. We were on tour Dave Mason at that time, and there was a fight between the bass player and myself and I ended up in the hospital. So but you know all that comes under the heading of my alcoholism. Dude, you got that story. That's how I got my record deal. Okay, so how did you How did you get from being drunk, kicked out of your own band, two, getting sober, and then being a road guy and studio guy. Well, you know, I was

doing a lot of studio work. I did a record was free, you know, when coss Off was was too in his disease to do it. I played with the guy to keep Sinfield. I did a concert over there as Bill Withers guitar player one time over in London, you know, because I was a Texas guitar player in London. That's the way I looked at it. If Hendricks could go from from New York to London and be a hit, then maybe a XS guitar player could come to London

and make some noise. So you know, I got a lot of opportunities, but I just I didn't have the wherewithal and the solid background, you know, the upbringing and and all that stuff to be secure enough to go from nothing to playing at fort SA gigs. I mean, you know what happens is your egos on one side and your insecurities on the other side, and they slowly diverge and get farther and farther apart, and you're left

with the hole in the middle. And that's what happened to me, and so I tried to fill that whole with alcohol. And you know, when the band moved to l A and then it broke up. I had a band called the Walton Olsen Band with Mark Olson, Rare Earth. UH toured with different people, Alsta Haley, who's got We've got a record coming out from the Evan Deeson And then I started playing with Eric Burdon and that turned out great. I toured with Eric Burden off and on

for the next three or four years. And you know, I could drink successfully with Eric because everybody else was crazy too. So you know, we had got Ronnie what was his name, amazing Louisiana piano player, Ronnie Baron. I don't know if you've heard of him, you know, dr John kind of guy. And that was the band, and then Rabbit joined the band. Rabbit who played in The

Who for twenty years and played in Free. Rabbit and I were friends since Houston, so we've known each other and Uh, Rabbit came into the band, and then Tony Brownegle and Terry Wilson came into the band, and they were also from Houston. So we were a core four piece behind Eric with a couple of extras, with a sax player and another keyboard player, and we became his core and and we toured with him whenever he toured.

We were all nuts, you know. I ended up doing a record with Terry and Tony when they had a band called Backstreet Crawler, when cost Off was too sick to do that record. So I did that record for I was always kind of behind Costs, you know, filling in for him when he when he wasn't well. And so I did all these things, and you know, I was toured with Eric Burden and in I guess it was January. Yeah, I went and saw my dad Christmas of nineteen nineteen, and ah, he looked different, and I

asked him what he did. He said, well, you know, I read this book and I stopped drinking. And I said, let me see that. I talked to him out of the book he had read, and ended up coming home deciding that I didn't have a problem with alcohol. The problem was my wife wouldn't let me drink the way I wanted. So I came home and drank like a man for two weeks, kind of came out of a blackout and knew I needed trouble, and I made a

call to get help. And so for that first year where I was trying to stop drinking, I was still touring. I was going out and doing gigs and we did a film over in Berlin with Eric, and then I had Lost Week in the Lost Week in London, Ah, and then I came home and you know, bouncing around. I got asked to go back out with Eric, and I did. And at that point I was telling everybody that I wasn't even drinking because everybody knew that I

had tried was trying to stop. So I'd rush into the dressing room after the gig and knocked back a couple of Tikito Sunrises and uh, and then just drink my orange juice like everybody else. So one night I had a bad night in a love with drugs and alcohol, and I hit and run five cards and go through security gates in my hotel and ended up in trashing my room. And the next morning it was a dear friend of mine. Michael Ruff. I don't know if you

know him. He wrote for Bonny and different people. But Michael was in the band with Eric at that time. And I was down in the dining room trying to force some food down, and Michael came and sat down next to me and talked to me a little bit, and then he said, Stuffy, I love you too much to watch you kill yourself. When we get back to l A, don't ever call me again. And that really rang from me. And I stayed there another six weeks,

touring and producing a record. But I ended up in the Sydney Australian Airport Christmas Eve and I looked in the mirror behind the bar after I ordered a few drinks and I realized that I really was an alcoholic. And that's when I first did made it to my animal self, and I believe I entered the Stacey Grace there. I didn't expect to stop drinking, but that's the last drink I ever had was in that bar in Sydney. So that's close to forty years ago. So how did

you stop and stay off? Well, you know, I stopped h I worked with the Fellowship, I read the books, I learned how to be of service rather than to serve myself. What happened was after that Christmas, then I had a New Year's Eve gig where I started playing good, but I couldn't play, and I finally walked out of the session and said, don't pay me. And then on January eleven two, I got a phone call to go back on the road with Eric, and I got off

the phone. I said, I'll call you back, and I got off the phone, and I panicked because I knew I had to choose life or music, because I had been trying for a year to do music sober and I couldn't do it. And so I just threw myself into everything I could having to do with recovery. I never went to rehab or anything, but just bare knuckled it and had you know, still had friends who were sober, and I just hung out with them and quit playing music for a year. I didn't expect to ever play again.

Got a job doing phone sales and this set and the other, and then I got asked to come sit in for somebody, and I went and sat in with them, and I was afraid nothing was going to happen. No music was going to come out, and yet when I

started playing, it did. So that kind of got me into doing those night gigs around l A, which kind of brought me to doing some bigger gigs and playing with Michael Ruff and at my place, and then touring with Shaka and then musical director for Laura Brannigan and you know, it was just going up, but it was all Sideman stuff. And that trajects me into where we started this conversation where I was playing with Michael Ruff New Year's nine and got approached by an agent. So

I don't know if that's short, but you get a synopsis. Okay, let's go back to the wife you came back. Is that the same wife you're married to now? No? I had? Uh? That was wife number two? So Hi, wives, have you had three? Uh? And I'm not probably not going to have more? Uh? Now? The first wife was my agent who who took care of us over in London when when Aphrodite was trying to get together, and then I

came to l A with her. We moved to l A when she came out here to work with Jerry Goldstein she goal, and that's how I ended up knowing Eric and getting in that band, but I followed her out here and then I tripped off for a while with this other girl, and then I came back with her and married her. And then two weeks later the girl I had tripped off with started throwing rocks at my door. And so I mean, I was a mess. Let me tell you, I was a mess. I ended

up only staying married nine months. I had like an emotional breakdown. Then I got a divorce. Then I married the mistress. That lasted nine months. When I came home from my dad's I was living with my second wife, who promptly left me two weeks after I got back, and we lived together just for a little while, and then she just bailed because I was a mess. I was just a mess, And so that marriage lasted as a marriage nine months. So you know, I didn't have

a very good rick coming into this deal. The year I started scoring television was also the year I met my wife. It's the year everything changed for me. I was five years sober and seven everything flipped and all of a sudden, I was scoring a hit television show. I had met my wife to be, who was going to bear two kids, and and I've had the last twenty nine and thirty one years with them. I mean, my life totally changed. And you know, I really believe

it wouldn't have been possible. She'd have had nothing to do with me if I'm still drinking, and I'd probably be dead by the end of anyway. But so for me, getting sober was really the mechanism that brought me a whole second life, an entire second life, separate from the rock and roll thing that I blew because I had an opportunity. You know, if I'd had my head on straight, I could have turned that into a successful career. But so five years sober, I got this whole new life. Uh,

and it's all because of sobriety. How did you meet your second wife? And you also said just before we started that year, her health is not good. You know. It's my third wife and she was diagnosed with all simmer five years ago. So we've been married thirty two years, been together thirty four years. So I beat the nine month thing I did. My second wife actually was the mistress from my first wife, So you know, I just kind of went a ping pong back and forth. I

didn't know what I wanted. I don't know what I was doing. But you know, to me, everything pre getting sober was a different guy. I almost feel like God kind of reached down and took out the damaged soul and put a cleanman back in. I really do. I I feel that strongly about it, and my handwriting changed after I got sober, so I don't know take it as you want people listening. I really believe it was an actor grace, and I'm gonna go with that story. So how did you meet your third wife? I met her.

She would come down into at my place and when we play. We started out playing with Michael Rough, my friend down there, playing just Sunday nights and I was two years two years sober. We built that up over a couple of years to where we were playing weekends, four sold out shows every time we played, and she would always come second show, second set, second day, second set, Saturday night, last set. Because the band was so musical.

It was, you know, Ralph Humphrees drums and Jimmy Johnson on bass, and we had Cheryl Crow, Vona Shepherd, Leslie Smith on background vocals and that it was a four piece corep and we were selling out every show we booked there and she used to come down because the music was great, and it wasn't a meet joint, you know, it wasn't where you hit on girls, so she could

go and and and do that. At that point, she was working for Steven Spielberg as his assistant, and somebody introduced me to her, and I just remember looking into her eyes and going and when she walked away, I couldn't have told you if she was five two pounds, I couldn't have tell you anything. I just connected and then I chased her. That was in June probably of that summer, and I chased her until I finally got her to go out with me in November, and she

wouldn't have anything. She kept saying, I'm too busy, you know, Stephen takes all my time. And I finally got her to go out with me, and but I called her and she said, also, I don't I don't date musicians. And I finally called up. I said, I'm a composer, because thirty something had just gotten on the air, and so she said, okay, I got an opening in three weeks. So I waited three weeks and we went to sushi

and she sat me down and she said listen. You know what, if you're just interested in a little flank, I'm not interested. We might as well have our tea and get up and go our own ways. If you're interested in a serious relationship that's going somewhere, then then I'll talk. And we closed the sushi choine and we were together from that moment on. So what's the state of her Alzheimer's and what's it like for you? You know, it's been the roughest thing I've ever gone through in

my sobriety. We just she had early on set. We just moved her to be a resident in the memory care facility two weeks ago. So it's very us, very raw um. But she seems pretty happy. I went out and had an early Thanksgiving dinner with her yesterday and we spent a couple of hours just laughing and talking. You know, she doesn't we don't have the sadness besides the fact that it happened to her. It was not in her family that we knew of it all, but

she had it was gene. She got a gene on both sides, so that's why she got the early all summers in the sixties. The thing that's really sad. Besides the fact that she's slowly disappearing, is that all those shared members, we had, all the little things where you had drive by a hotdog judge, remember when we were over there with so and so. Those are all gone. Now that's there only with me. And you know, when I went and saw her yesterday, you know, we we

don't talk much about the past. She was talking about dogs that are like it died thirteen years ago or something. That's kind of where her memory is right now. So she's she's in a safe place. We had too many instances in a row where it was unsafe for her to stay here. And my agreement was that I keep her safe, comfortable, and as happy as I could. And when I could no longer keep her safe, I had I had to make a change. Does she know who you are? So? Oh? Yeah, she she Most of the

time she knows we're married. Sometimes she thinks we're having a fling. It's kind of cute. Okay, how does the money working? Composing and you talk about your hiring these different people amplify that. When I started television, the primary model was you got a fee for writing the music, you got paid for orchestration, separately, and the musicians were all paid for separately. All of that was paid your fee, the orchestration and the musicians, and all the things going

into the recording, we're all paid by the production. When I came in, the concept of a package had just started. They give you one fee, and you spend whatever you want and keep whatever you want, but you've got to produce something we love. So I came in making way lower on the wave scale then Mike Post because my post was had been doing it for ten years already, and Mike was doing that that model of a session. The fee, the orgustration, and the and the session fee

all get paid separately from the production. So when I came in, they offered me a package which is X amount of dollars, and out of that I covered my musicians, I covered my engineer, I cover uh any extra costs of workers. I never put anything on paper, so we didn't have them any costs. So our costs early on were very small, and the packages were healthy compared to

what I was making as a sideman. You know, all of a sudden, I was making like whoa thousands of dollars a week for just writing music and having my name on the screen too. And then I found out about B M I and royalties, and that was like whoa, Now they're gonna pay me royalties for this too. It was like I died and went to heaven. But the package came more and more and more into play over the first five to seven years I was, I was doing it. I've never worked under the old structure of

composer's fee, orchestration and and musicians. I've always worked under a package. Now sometimes I augment the package. I say, listen, I'll only pay for three musicians out of my package. You need to pay for the other ten twelve if you want big strings, if you want orange. West Wing was the one thing that paid me a package and paid the extra musicians with a large group. But we

did that because we wanted that sound. So I've worked on packages from and a package can be anywhere from you know, for a half hour three thousand dollars to five thousand dollars for an hour our drama, go anywhere in there, depending on your credits, your president, your hotness at the moment. You know, if you're the hot young guy, then you can ask for an extra five bucks, you know.

But so I've always done from the package, so I pay all the costs, but I've always believed never to scrimp to make an extra thousand or two thousand dollars. Put your best foot forward all the time, because what you only have at the end of the day is your body of work. So I never well, I don't want to spend that for an Obo player. I didn't have that mindset. You also got to realize I came into this so green. I believed I had to work

twice as hard to be half as good. I said that earlier, and so I believed I had to put twice as much in to get you know, a half decent uh product. So that's the way it worked for me, and I've done that so long. I can look at a project and once we set the palette, I can I know it within five percent of what I'm gonna earn for the year because I can just ballpark and I'm just so used to doing it right. I have a separate set of books for every episode of every

television show I've done. That's the only way I can build it, you know, because you can't admortize it and average it out. So that's the way I do it. And what about now that we've moved to streaming and total buyouts, etcetera. Has that affected your work? You have an opinion on that. Well, you know, one of the things that I didn't realize when I first got into it was that there's no union for composers, which means there's no medical insurance, which means there's no retirement plan.

There's nothing. As a composer, you're on your own, so you only the only thing you ever got was what you got as a musician, and of course I was a musician. On all I said, they'd go in the contracts, but what happened is the b M I royalties of the ASCA for royalties became that money's that I could spend for my retirement and for my insurance. And and those moneys are pretty lucrative. If you've got three or four shows running in prime time. You know it's not

pocket change. So you know, I was able to put myself in a position where I'll probably outlive my money. I mean where my where my money will outlive me. And I don't have to look at the bill for a price when I want sushi, you know, I can just buy whatever sushi I want and not worry about it. So it's been great to me that way. I've generally lived on the money I made on packages and put the be and my money away. So that's just what I tried to do because to me, that was my

retirement account. But now the changing with Netflix, ETCeteras, that's something you're thinking about or the shows you're working on, that model is different, so you're not that concerned. Well, the model is different, still a royalty stream, but it's it's minimal, and were talking to you know, you talked to record people all the time. There's no there's no living to be made in songwriting unless you're writing big rapids. I don't think. I know the songwriter friends of mine

are are really struggling. And that's not the case for television because primetime television still pays and reruns and there's reruns all around the world and they all pay royalties. So my income stream from network, from from the network shows I did, it is just out there in the pipeline working the Netflix stuff. They're actually changing it. A good friend of my works there and they're changing it to up the royalty structure for composers. They've done mostly

buyouts and the royalty stream is virtually nothing. But now Netflix is stepping up and going, you know what, composers are important. They do make our product better, and so they're upping their game and upping that what they're paying composers, which I think is great, not only in packages, because they always pay good at Netflix of the packages. But I say that without having ever done a netflixing, but

I'm aware of all the deals. But now that the royalty structure is going to start to come up, other other streaming services are going to have to look to Netflix and they'll come up to I mean Netflix is they hunt in town guerrilla right now, and you know they have more product than anybody, and they're doing quality products. I have to ask. Your name is Garrett, and then you ultimately got the nickname which stuck Snuffy, and it's all everywhere where you can get that. It's not like

a hidden reason why someone's interests. They can look it up. But there's a famous record producer named Snuff Garrett, you know, which it's hard to keep you straight. What do you think about that? That? Well, that's Tommy Garrett and I wish I got all of his royalty checks and I used to say that at being my Uh, Tommy Garrett was h I had one of his albums years and years ago, the fifty thousand Flamenco Guitars of Tommy Garrett. You know, he produced all different kinds of stuff and

produced I think, every which way but loose. I mean, he just was so in the circuit, so but in a different genre than I was in in rock and roll. I got the name the same way he got. The biggest manufacturer of snuff in the South is a company called Levi Garrett and Son. My mom's maiden name was Garrett, so my grandfather was Garrett. Uh. They were both Garretts, and they were nicknamed Levi or Snuffy when they were

growing up. I got it when I was five at a co educational camp pair send me to every year and during the summer as I was Snuffy, and you know, during the school year, I was Garrett. And then music took over the summers in my life, so I just stuck with Snuffy. Somebody calls me Garrett, I know they're from high school or before, so that's kind of the way I gage it. So do you ever meet Snuff Garrett? I never did. I never did. He's past now, but uh did you know? But you know, first I used

to confuse you. You see the credits back at thirty something. You know, you couldn't think there would be two Snuffies. So how much longer are you going to do this and anything in the horizon you would like to achieve or do before you leave this planet. Yeah, we've been kicking around during COVID this idea of myself, a friend of mine, one big actor, and one huge rock star, and I really I can't talk about it, but it's

really interesting thing with four of us up front. Uh, everybody is a singer, a songwriter, and you know, and every some people play drums and some people play guitar, and we would switch around, and we've been kicking this idea around and throwing some songs around. I'm also going to do another Snuffy Walden album. I did one in two thousand, two thousand one for Windham Hill, but I based it on my television work and I want to

do an electric guitar album. So what we're looking at Chris Kimsey, the guy who produced my original record, who produced the Stones and all these other people. Uh, Chris, and I want to do it. I'm just gonna go to London and cut half the record there with some guys he knows, and go to Nashville and go to Frampton Studio because Peter is a friend, and and and record the other half there and get an English flavor and get an American flavor, and you do it. A

vanity project you have records for not gonna sell. Now, I'll fund it. I just want to book end what I've done. I don't want to just kind of fade away like all that sold guitar players do. I really want to have this is my ending thing that that doesn't mean I'm not going to compose. I mean, honestly, with what's going on in my family, in the last few years, I have not pursued work. If anything, I've

stepped away from it. The last thing I did, uh that was fresh, was a West Wing special we did when when Biden, you know, we were getting out the boat from Biden. That was fun, but that was in Now it's been almost a year since then, and now that things are changing around here and the dynamic is changing. H I want to play, but I want to do projects I love to do. I just want to do things that I have passionate about, or I gotta love the project, I gotta love the people, or I've got

to love the money. And it's got to be two of those. So if I love the people and love the project, I'll do it for no money. I don't care. But uh, it's got to fit in, you know, if that whole thing. The road in front of me is a lot shorter than the road behind me. And what do I want to spend the next ten years of my playing on till I'm eight one? What do I want to do? So? I want to do what fun? I want to perform live more. Uh. You know, we talked a little about the documentary it's coming out. I

hope that gets to people in recovery. That's my goal for that. That's why I did it. When they asked me, I said I wouldn't do it, And when they finally said, you might really be able to help somebody understand that there is a life after you stop drinking. You can have a whole another life. And from that point of view, that's the point of view that I believed him when I told the story, and you know, that's just my story, It's what I got it's the only one I got.

So what am I gonna do go forward? I don't know. Bring me something, tell me something you think's exciting. Uh. If I'd love to do an electric guitar score like I did with Stephen King's with Stand, I mean that was so much fun for me, and yet electric guitar scores don't fit very well in television drama. You can use it as a color, but not as a main voice. So I'd love to do that, but it would take the right the right piece of material for that to work. Well. Snuffy,

you tell a good story. You tell a story that tell a story that's not been told by many, both the recovery in the second life and going from a hardcore, hard party and rocker to a guy very successfully scoring television in his own unique, identifiable So I want to thank you so much for taking the time, Bob. It's such a pleasure. I was just tickled when who we decided to put this year. Thank you so much. Until next time. This is Bob left six h