Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Stats Podcast. My guest today is drummer extraordinaire Steve Farone or Feroni Steve? Which one is it?
Well when people, when people read it, they say Farone, right, But if I if they asked me my name and I say Faron, they go what, So I say Feroni. It's actually Italian Ferone. So I answer to anything. As long as it's close one of those in there, it's still good for me. But Fi, my mom used to say for him.
I always heard it was Feroni, but I didn't know whether that was just amongst players. You know, it's like sort of a nickname. And I know I you pronounce it, but the e I think I have it now. So in any event, in preparation.
Do you know, there's a very I got a very interesting story about that. Actually. Yeah, when when I was born in nineteen fifty, right, my father was African and my mother was English, so you can imagine it was it was a little bit sort of scandalous. He was considered scandalous back then, and uh, and so I was. I was born in my in my home, in my house, and we had a midwife. Yeah, so when I when I came out, I didn't have color that I have now. I came out and I was very very old. I
looked kind of swore. Actually, they thought I looked Italian, so so they took that because my mum wasn't married to my dad. There was another thing that was like a scandal as well. Back then they this woman had been to see some movie and there was somebody in there called Feroni, and they so she decided we call
him Feroni. So they actually wrote on the birth certificate f E r O n I. Then a few days later, when I took to color, they felt stupid, so they just took an ink pen and they altered my certificate with an ink pen to f E r O n E and pronounced it fern because they thought it was a bit crazy having the black man money around with an Italian name. But everybody called me Feroni anyways at school, Oh a Fona, go get Feroni, you know.
Okay, so your parents weren't married. What were the last names of your father and your mother?
Well, I came My mother's name was Banks, a maiden name was Banks, and my father's my father's name. I came to find out that. I didn't find this out until I was about forty seven years old that it was was Nicholson. No relation to Jack Nicholson, but Nicholson.
So you're going to school, you're like the beginning of the line. You're the first farone Feroni.
Yeah, that's right, correct, Yeah, yeah, for on the number one and the last. Actually I mean, I mean yeah, I got nine grandchildren and the only one that carries the Feroni name is the goal.
Wow, you have nine grandchildren. How many kids do you have?
Four?
Four kids?
Yeah, two boys, two girls.
And how many times you've been married.
I've been married four times, but my but I only had children with one of my ex wives. It's complicated, not that complicated because many people it's multiple ex wives.
Okay, are you married now?
No, I'm engaged. Actually I stopped I stopped getting married when I stopped drinking. And then and then and then I had a friend for twenty years. In twenty seventeen it turned romantic and uh and uh.
So this will be number five, right, Yes, tell me about stopping drinking.
Well, uh, you know, basically, it stopped. It just stopped working for me. Really, I mean, I had I had a lot of I had a lot of problems I had. I looked at these children actually were the were the problem?
I mean I had. I had two children. I had two children with with with my wife, and then another child showed up with and this was a nine year old that was actually in between the two children that I had with my wife and sewed up with a with a with a with a uh a lawsuit and uh and and and basically, you know, because I worked with Eric Clapton and and you know, average white band and and a lot of high profile durand Duran and u uh uh uh and Tom Petty, they thought that
I had their money. You know, I'm just a really well I'm a well paid side man, but I don't make I don't make that kind of money. So they actually came after me with that. And and the way that I would hide out from that stuff was I just get drunk and go out and get get and hang out in the clubs and don't forget about it, you know, and and uh and then after a while
they just stopped working. So I decided I was out here in Los Angeles and I did a late show with Brian Ferry, like a late late show, and I was over at nathan East house and I was in his kitchen and he was cleaning the kitchen and I was doing drugs and swinging Bokra out of a bottle and I just said to Nathan, I said, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna stop. I'm going to stop doing this now. And Nathan said, great, that's fantastic. Swear off of swear
off now, swear off now. And I'm like, wait, slow down, cowboy, I'm going to finish this first. And uh. And That's what I did, and then uh. And then I got on a plane the next day and I went went back to New York. And a couple of weeks later, I started to go mad. That was basically it. And I was in withdrawal. I was in detox, and I had no idea what was going on. Uh, And all I knew was that it was it was just craziness.
It was just I was I was just going I couldn't all I can think, this should not be happening to me. I shouldn't be having these nightmares. And you know, I guess kind of like uh, I mean, I guess I'd have these vivid dreams of a drink, either drinking or using dreams and and and it's actually just I couldn't when I woke up coming in swept, my heart pounding, terrified, thinking have I done this or I did I do it? Or what?
What?
You know?
Uh, I couldn't tell if it was real or not. And it was just Man. All I could think I was I'm not that bad. This shouldn't be happening to me. And that was it.
Okay, a couple of questions. The person who was suing you, did it turn out that they were your biological kid? Oh?
Yes, as a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, when well, first time, the first time that I met met her Whitney, her name is Whitney, and uh and the first time that I met her, was was down getting the blood test and uh and and.
This little kid walked up to me. And I looked at this kid, and it's like, oh, ship, that's one of mine. And the woman and the woman who actually did the blood test, she said to me, she said, you know, there's really no need for me to do this, to do this test. Your two peas in a pod, you know.
Okay, Hey, you stop drinking and drugging totally by yourself. Oruld you go to the program or any of that.
Well I did. I did about six weeks on my own. Uh and and uh, like I say, I was just going, I was going. I was Actually I was in a losing I was in a losing battle. I was. It was. It was kicking my butt, it was gonna, it was beating me. I knew what would stop it. I knew what would stop all this stuff, which would just have a drink or go go go, just go out and get get smashed. And you know, but I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to. I didn't want
to do that. And a really good friend of mine I used to used to be in cahoots with with with this stuff. It actually stopped, uh four years before he stopped. He stopped drinking and using it. And he just told me, said, I don't do that anymore. And he and he and he come to New York and he visited me and we go out to the clubs and we'd out and he was his name was Stephen Bruton.
Of course, yeah, you know Stephen interactive just a little bit. I certainly know.
Well, Steve Stephen. He was what they called us the Steve brothers, and well, you know what he looked like. Yeah, we said that we were the Steve twins like the Schwarzenegger movie. Yeah, exactly exactly and uh and uh and Stephen would just you know, he just got me up with that drawl of his that say that texted, ah, my brother, how are you doing?
You know?
And he called me up when I was just in the middle of this mess, sitting there like getting punched in, just looking like I've been you know, a few rounds with Muhammad Ali, just just as like stunned that's had that sort of stunned uh look on my face, just punched out, you know, just just been destroyed really and uh. And I told him I giving up everything. Yeah, and he said, what do you mean You're giving up everything? I said, no more boots, no more drugs. Yeah, how's
it going? Totally the whole story? What's going on? And and that was the first time that he actually he actually mentioned a A to me. You know, he said, you he said, you have you try going to And my knee jerk reaction, as bad as everything was, was, I don't want to go down there. I'm not that bad. So he said, just stay where you are, and he got on. He got he got on a plane in
Austin and he flew to New York. And he arrived that evening in New York, and he came to my house and hung out with me at my house, and all he said was me, I find a meeting for us tomorrow. And I thought, well, you know, he's come all this way. You know, I'm a nice guy. I'll go with him my humor room. And and he took me to this place that's called Midnight Madness down on Houston Street. He found that meeting when they're twelve thirty pm.
And walked into that meeting and there was a guy doing you know what you see guys doing in AA, sitting up there telling the story. He was a marine. And I felt better than I'd felt in the three the three previous weeks. I was just sitting in that room with those people, and and that was what kept me going back in the beginning, because I didn't want to. I didn't want to do I didn't want to do any of that stuff, get a sponsored, you know, whatever the steps were, read that book. I didn't want to
do any of that. They gave me a copy of Living Sober that was and I've read that. I read that bit and that that was pretty that was pretty cool. But I like to go and listen to people talk about the war stories. So I go into the meetings that I sit there and they tell all these stories about what they did and they'd laugh and I think it's funny. And then somebody would get up and start
talking about recovery, and I think, boring you. They said, I'd like to do you a story, give me, give me a war story, because now it is that you know, that was thirty years ago and uh, and now now I like to hear the recovery more than I do about the drinking. We will know about that and the drugging.
I stopped drinking before that, and that was before it was cool to have like a perier or something. That was when you still went to the bar and people say, hey, come on, come on, have a drink. So, being sober, after experiencing all this other stuff, how hard was it to live your life?
Well, I used to live in the China Club in New York. Right, guess what all the bombing They were all aa oh, they said what. There was one that wasn't, but he wasn't. He wasn't anywhere near being an alcoholic. Yeah, name as Jack. He passed away a few years ago. But the other guys, the other guys, they they're sober, still sober today. So I didn't really have that much much of a problem. And my friends, my friends were
pretty encouraging and uh and uh and uh uh. I mean that I never told them to stop, to stop drinking and you know, doing, but they were always really nice around me. There was the odd one or two of course that tried that I'll come on have a drink, and they became they became an acquaintance, like really quickly, they got dropped in the on the on the on the other side of stuff. For me, I didn't, I've
got no time for that. Yeah. So but but most of them, i'd say, the majority of my friends, even though even though that they they still they still drink. And they, I mean they've got families and stuff that they you know, they've got children and now you know, one of them, a couple of girls had just qualified, just graduating from college. And yeah, you know, he still has a drink every once in a while. But he's not nowhere near the crazy man that he was when
he hung out with me. But I don't you know, I say that, but I don't know. If I was maybe the crazy one'd maybe he didn't do quite as much. Well, I know he didn't do it quite as much as I did, because you would always say, you know, guy, you guys need to slow down a little bit. He would do all that sort of you'd say that to us, Yeah, yeah, you need to go you need to show show some restraint. And I was like, what's that.
Let's go back to the beginning. Yeah, So you're growing up in the fifties, you're half black, you're half white, your parents aren't married to what degree? Is that a stigma or everybody just treats you normally?
But everybody treated me normally. I didn't have I didn't. I didn't. I mean, you know, my mom lied to me, my grandmother. I live. I live with my mother, my grandmother and my grandfather. Uh. I mean they lied to me. They said, they said, you know that my dad was away, and and they give sometimes every once in a while they give me a present to say it was for my dad. Huh and uh and and and I just, uh, I didn't think there was anything unusual. My mom went
out to work. She was more the father figure than than than you know, she's a father figure than I had that I had, not my grandfather. But my grandfather was a miserable, untreated alcoholic. He didn't know he was a milkman. He actually my grandfather used to work at the brig was a brewery right down the street from where I lived, called Tamplin's Brewery, and he used to work in there and get free beer and come home drunk.
One day, he came home drunk and he raised his hand to my grandmother, and my grandmother sent my mother up the street to go and get my uncle Ted. Uncle Ted was uncle Ted Harmon. She's a champion boxer, and and Ted came down and gave me a boxing lesson. And so he gave him such an ass whipping that he became a milkman. It started delivery milk.
That is really funny. Okay, So you're in Brighton, Yeah, and you know, what do we know? Because I'm an American, we hear about the mods and rockers and all that stuff happening in Brighton in the sixties. Exact they were exposed to.
Oh yeah, I was there. I was in the midst of that. I was in the middle of that, as a matter of fact. But I was playing in a band and The Who used to play this little club, and I think it was called the Florida Rooms, and it was down in the aquarium where the aquarium is in Brighton, as a matter of fact, where you go to buy your ticket and to get into the aquarium. If you look to the right, this is a little stage and that was that was the club. It was
tiny that it used to be packed with mods. When The Who used to play in there, it was fantastic and my and used to open for him.
Okay, so you're growing up in Brighton. Okay, you're a little younger than you know the first generation of rock stars. So by time you're growing up, is England still in black and white? Or is it really kind of like America a few thousand miles away.
Well, you know, it's it's I started when I was twelve. I tap danced. I used to tap dance. My parents noticed, my mom and my grandma, they noticed that I had that'd sit in the high chair and we listened to the radio and I banged my spoon in time with the music, and they said, you know, he's playing in time with that stuff. So so they said, we've got to do something with that. My grandmother was a huge Fred Astaire and Jim Kelly fan, and get him go
tap dancing. So pretty much as soon as I could walk, they took me to tap dancing school. Uh. And so I did that and I was really good at it. I'm twelve years old, and they and as soon as I was twelve years old, you could actually perform in the theater. And there was a summer show and they had they had auditions for a children's chorus. So I go into this. I go into this children's children's chorus.
I get I get to get the part in that I get to play in this in this summer show with this guy Max Bygraves, who's an enormous star in England. And uh and and uh and I'm out there on the stage with the kids chorus. We're doing the twist and see, let's twist again like we did last summer. And I looked down and looked down into the orchestra pit and I see the drummer and he's going, hell, why is this usually his hands. How's he doing that
with his hands? And and uh. And then I'd go upstairs the dressing room and I'd practice, get those motor skills together, and then i'd go down on the stage. Next night, I'd be down there and be looking down there in that pit. What's he doing with his feet? And so I learned how to how to do the stuff. And I just learned how to do that with their knife and fork and stuff. And then then Take five came out and I heard Take five, and oh, let me see, how can I learned how to do that?
And and I had pretty much and good ideas about songs. You know, I'd listen the Beatles were coming out, and I'd listen to listen to their songs, and I knew new sort of song construction from all the tap dancing. So one Saturday morning I go where the little kids go to the the the ballroom and in the day the in Saturday mornings that have a place where parents could drop their kids off, go do their shopping and
then come back and pick them up. And we'd sort of act like we were big grown ups in this little dance all and that night Manfred Man were going to be playing for the grown ups in the club, and uh, and they did a sound check and they played for us little kids, and and you know, being a dancer, I go, I got to go out and dance with the girls, and they say, oh, thank you very much, and then they just walk off.
You know.
Now I'm twelve years old and my hormone is the guy. Now I want to be James Bond. I want him to at least adore me a little bit. You know, nothing, nothing a good dancer. But that was it barely talk to me. All my friends who are all just in the same trouble. Manfred Man comes down. They play. They played three notes and every little girl in the place is screaming and going crazy over manfred Man. And they said to my friends, that's it, no more dancing. So
one of the guys he had a real guitar. He stayed on the garage and so he had money, so he got him in like a real guitar and he made it, made it go a record player and sort of Jerry did up to so it had he could plug into it. And they have a little amplifier. I had a toy drum kit and we go and we play We play sauce standing there. We had the other guy.
He had a te chest with you know, like the skiffle thing with the broomstick and sticking out of it them piece of string and boom boom boom boom boom, you know, and uh and uh we play sauce standing there. That was about the only song that he knew. But he he used to hang out in the in the music stores. Because he had a real instrument, he was allowed to hang out in the music stores. And the older kids that had bands used to go in there,
and nobody had telephones back then. Everybody you put you put a notice in the paper, or you put if you wanted a musician and you wanted to find another musician, you got to a music store and you put up a notice drummer wanted, a guitarist, wanted bass player, wanted you know, or you put in an add in the New Musical Express or a melody maker or something like that, you know. And these guys were in there and they were putting up an ad and they were talking to
the owner. He said that their drummer, they had a gig at a youth club and their drummer had to have his appendix out, and so he couldn't do this gig and they needed a drummer to sit in. So my friend took his life into his hands and said to these eighteen year olds, hey, I know a drummer. And they're like, who's that. You know? Really he's good and they were a blues ban too, and he said, he said, he's good. And he's black guy too, you know, So that that was my first reference. So they said, well,
tell him to come to this address. They gave him address, and tell him to come here and see it in like six o'clock and we'll try him out. So this gig came around to my house and he said, you know, there's the big kids and they got a band. And I told him that you play for him, you know, and I was, well, said the drummers. Did they want you to just play gig? So I said, well, okay, So he gave me the address and I went over.
There's over on mon Peleia Road somewhere, and remember them went to this place and I went in there and they had a drum kit set up and they said, okay, sit down and they started to play the blues and I started to play with him, and I jammed with him. They said, well, okay, you can do the gig. I did gig, and then they fired the drummer.
Now, so.
It was my It was my gig. So now I'm wandering around a twelve year old terrified that I've stolen the gig of some eighteen year old drummer who if he comes face to face with me, it was my butt and now. And the other thing was I wasn't too difficult to find, you know, the only black kid for like fifty miles in any direction. So it was a pretty scary time. But they used to take me down to see all the blues tours that used to
come in. The Chicago blues guys used to come to Sonny Terry Brownie McGee, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Waters, all those guys used to come through Bill dog It. They'd come and they play at the Dome, and they would take me down and see these people play, and I just loved it. It was kind of just knew that that was what I wanted to do when I left Scores. I wanted to play the drums.
Okay, you went to the gig as a twelve year old, you played their drum set. When did you get a drum set?
Wow? You know I had I had this sort of makeup drum kit. It was it was like the bass drum was as big as I was. It was like a big, huge march in basic bed. I actually have a photograph. I have a photograph of my first gig. And I wore a little bow tie. My mom made me dress up and put a bow's eye on, you know, it look smart and uh. And I had this, and I had this, I had this. They had a snare drum, a skinny snare drum, and I liked the skinny snadrow. And my grandma bought me a big thit snare drum.
So I took I took the snares off and I used it as a tom tom and they put it on the sand and they use it as a tom tom. And I had really you know, crappy symbols. When I found out how much you know, good cymbals cost, it was like helmu. You know, back then it was probably like twenty pounds. Yeah they were free, but it might as well have been like, you know, two thousand pounds for me, But it was. It was just a lot of money.
Okay, so you have the gig with the band, they kick out the other guy, they put you in. Then what happened?
And then they got me They got me a drum kit. They got me a they got me a a an Olympic drum kit which was an entry level. Well no, the entry level was a gigster. Premiere that they had three a gigster which was really crap awful, and then they had the intermediate which was so so if you found a decent one, it was okay Olympic and then Premiere was was the big one, which is what Keith Moon started playing after they stole his love wig, and and and and so I had this a little Olympic
kit that really worked out all right for me. But the great thing was was that when when I used to go and open in this little club for like for the likes of the Who, that they'd let me use their drum kit. Wow, so I you know them was like the Hollies and all these bands used to get all the Mersey bands and the London bands used to come down there and they didn't want to have
to take off because it was a tiny stage. They didn't want to have to take their drum kit off and to put mine up there, you know, and there was no room otherwise up there to do it for anything, you know, So so they'd say, well, just use your own snare drum and put your own bass drum pedal on there, and then you can play. And I'd sit there and I'd play all these. I wouldn't move anything. I just I wouldn't dare move anything. And I just sit there and I played these. I played these, you know,
these eyes came down. I had like love with kids and tricks and kits and Rogers kits. I never saw a gretch, but I heard about them as I got there.
Okay, so we're in America. We're the lead like about year and a half. The Beatles don't hit here until the beginning of sixty four. Were is it hits in England? Sixty two sixty three? It's a menia in America?
Yes, What was it like in the UK? It was the same, you know, it was. It was just a great But okay, so the Beatles were the principals, Beatles and the Stones And actually I was more of a Stones Stones fan because of the blues connection that I had with the band. There was the Beatles and the Stones, right, and then there was all these other bands that were you know, like the Mersey, the Mersey Sounds, you know that the Liverpool sort of became like a fashion a center.
So and then you had the London bands that that were that was sort of modeled themselves sort of the Who sort of stuff or blues bands, and and so there was there was a lot of bands. It wasn't just the Beatles, but the Beatles were the were the were the the superstars because you know, all the girls used to chase them about all over the place and scream at them all the time and make a lot of noise and and and they made they make you know,
it's funny. I'd listened to the Beatle. When I first heard Hey Jude, I was like, what the hell are they doing? You know, I didn't get it. I thought that they you know, they sort of messed up. They they sort of left the you know, where's the pop song?
I don't This is a weird song, you know. But then it sort of morphed into becoming Hey Jude for me, you know, and and oh really, you know, and then I started to get into like Sergeant Pepper and their stuff, and and and and that was a whole that was a whole different experience.
Okay, so you're twelve.
Yeah.
A few questions combined her. How long do you stay in school? When do you decide? When do you decide you want to become a professional musician? And what path does that do?
I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you. This afternoon, I was out there at this college. I'm doing this, doing this orchestral thing. And I walked into this class and there was a couple of guys in there and I said, is this the green room? And they said, oh, no, this is a classroom. We're changing that. We're changing the carpet. And I looked and I said, you know, I hated school. I hated school and I still do. They started to ask me when I was about thirteen or fourteen years old,
what do you want to do? Is the school leaving age was fifteen? And I said, I want to be a drummer. And they said, well, you can't do that, and I said why not? I said because it's not a real job. I said, ringo star does it?
Yeah?
And they said yeah, but you ain't Ringo star And I said no, but I can hang with Ringo. Yeah, I was really cocky, cocky little kid. You know, it's pretty pretty sure of myself. And and and so I rebelled. I just stopped studying all together. I did nothing I used to I used to play football. I used to box at the school. Uh, I was in the A stream and I sort of hovered in the middle of the A stream. I went out of that. I just stopped. I mean, I wasn't doing any of that. And all
I did was go play with my band. I go and play youth clubs with my band and come in all bleary eyed the next morning. And uh and uh and they called me. They you know, they mocked me. They called me Ringo at school?
Was he?
And I was like, yeah, okay, I even went I even went to this to this teacher because I knew that I wanted to travel, and they had a French class. And I said to him, his name was Savell, And they said, mister Savelle, what would it take? How could I get into your class? I want to learn how to speak French because I knew I wanted to travel,
and I thought I'd better get a second language. And he looked at me and he said, I don't want you in my class, and I said, okay, fine, and then I went off and I taught myself French.
Okay. So in this in this period, yeah, you stop going to school of fifteen, I assume.
Yeah, okay, as I could get out of the way.
And are you continuing to live with your grandparents? Are you making a living drumming or do you have a street job.
In addition, I have a I had had. I had a numerous ever worked in a car washer a bit. I worked in a building site. I was a paint sprayer. I did all kinds of I did all kinds of jobs, you know, anything anything to pay. I mean I had a good job on the building site. You know that the owner of the of the company, you really liked me, and you wanted to put me through school to make me, make me become a site agent.
You know.
I just wanted to make music, That's all I wanted to do. And the paint sprayer guy, he you know, he'd been in he been in the says in the war, and he actually he actually I said, when I got the opportunity to go up to London, I said, I got this opportunity to go up to London, go and play some music. And he said, take it, he said, you know, he said, you can always come back here
and work if you need to. You know, I'll always give you a job, he said, But these opportunities to do something that you love only coming around once in a while, So just go up there and take the opportunity and do what you can with it. And I went up there, and I did the starving musician thing, you know, just.
Before we get there. You know, the train from London to Brighton is not that long, no, and it's not that different from where I grew up in these you take the train into New York City. You're living in Brighton before you moved to London. How often would you go to London?
I went a couple of times with my parents.
That was it. That was it?
Yeah, okay, So what was the invitation, What was the opportunity that got you to London? Well, there was a there was a answered an ad in the back of the New Musical Express for a drummer and and there was a guy who lived in North London, and he said that he was managing this band, and would I go out? Would I go up there and and and try playing with him. So I went up. I just went up to London and I started playing with these guys, a guy named Calvin Bullen and Hugh Bullen and some
other guy that was a singer and Hugh. Hugh died a couple of years ago. Calvin, I'm still in touch with his guitarists and and anyways, uh uh. We we lived in the guy got us a one room. There was like this room in the basement, I guess what they call a garden and room, and and we we robbed it. Used to have to rob the gas meters so that we could get hot water.
It was.
It was pretty It was really bad, you know. And we go and we rehearse in not not In hill in Notton hill Gate. We go down there and rehearse, and you know, go up to clubs and tell them that we were poor musicians. Would they let us in? And the dormant would let let musicians in sometimes and go and play, you know. And I remember one Christmas, I had to get a job delivering delivering mail as like a Christmas mailman, so that I had a bit
of money, you know, to live. We rely on We rely on on girls that we met in clubs that would feed us, you know, and there was we met West Indian, a couple of West Indian girls, and and they gave me. They gave me, They took me the house and they cook cook curry goat and rice and peace. As somebody who's used to diet of fish and chips and roast potatoes and roast beef, curry goat and rice and peace wasn't very appetizing, but I was hungry, so
I learned to eat it. Now I love it. Yeah, and uh, and that's it was.
It was a rough time. Well, okay, what's the journey from there to a big break for you?
Well, I just played with a lot of different bands. Got with the band that went to went to Italy for a week and and we got into a car crash in a blizzard in Belgium, put all the equipment on the train and went down went down to Italy to play in this club called the Titan Club. And we got there and we set up and we started playing, and this American guy named Ronnie Jones, who was a singer in Italy, asked me to stay. And you know,
we got down to Rome. It was sixty degrees, which for me was boiling hot, and I loved it in January, so I'm not leaving here. I'm going to stay right here. And I stayed there and I worked with RUnni. I stayed there for I went for two weeks and I stayed there for three years in Italy and just work with different bands. And that's where I met Robbie McIntosh from Average White Band and Alex lidget Wood. You used to sing with Santana, and I followed Robbie into another band after.
Oh okay, but well that's a little fast for me. So you're in Italy that is not the epicenter of the music world.
No, but there's music there. No, No, come.
I'm wondering what's going on in your mind? Are you saying I like the weather I'm playing, or you're saying shit? Am I ever going to break through here? Do I have to go back to London? No?
I didn't even even thinking about that. I was just thinking about that. You know, I was meeting lots of gals, Italian girls and Italian girl that that's nothing to Tonian. I was up at I was making music, I was earning a living. I was I didn't have any responsibility to go home and be with my parents or anything. I was having a ball and I was playing playing music with these great musicians. You were teaching me stuff.
Okay this late date. You know, like Kenny Aronoff, you went to ah the school and he can write music, et cetera. You where are you on that spectrum?
I started that at twenty one with this with this French band, and they were going to go and they were they were they were real musicians. They knew how to read music, they knew how to do all that stuff. And I knew and all I knew was was that if I wanted to be a professional, I'd have to learn to do what they did. And they all went to this music school in Nice and Andy. They approached me they I was playing with them in Italy and they said, listen, we've been off of the residency in
a casino in Nice. Would you come and do you want to come and stay there for a year with us to get your work permits and everything. It be on the up and up and you'll make earn money. And I said, well, I was. I was kind of in that space where I was like, Okay, I'm twenty going to be twenty one, I got to do something. I'm either going to go back to England and go back to school. And I met some of my Americans that messed around with computers and that kind of interested me.
But I knew what it would take to be a musician, and either one involved school, the nemesis of school. And so they offered me this gig and I said, well, can you get me into that music school that you go to, and they said, we should be able to. Shouldn't be a problem with that. So I went there and I started to work with them in this casino and the percussion teacher from the Conservatory of Nice came and saw me play and he said, he said, oh,
you said, I just turned twenty one. I was twenty one when I came here to Denis the day I went to Nie, it was on my twenty first birthday, and he said, well, you're too old to get into the music class, tool to get in the percussion class. The eldest that they would take somebody for the percussion class as fifteen. I said, what can I do? They said, well, we're going to make you a teacher. And I said, well, what do you talk? Are you how can you make
me a teacher? He said, well, you play modern drums. And the only thing that we teach in this conservatory is classical music. To teach classical drums, we don't treat They don't teach meat and potatoes drums. And we got a lot of young kids, and they want to learn to play like Bernard Perty. They want to learn to play like Billy Cobbram, they want to play like Ringo Star, they want to play like Charlie Watts, they want to play like John Bonham. And you know how to do that,
you know. So they said, you teach them to do that, and you're in the school and we'll get you into the soul fish classes. So I said, okay. And my first thing was the first thing to do was that school was to put on a concert with these kids and play some jazz with these kids, and for a radio show to publicize the school. And they did that, and then I started teaching these kids, and they used to pay me private lessons and everything to teach them how to play modern drums. And then I go sitting
in the selfish class. Selfish classes meant, this is a great thing. I'd have to write out stuff for them for them to practice. It was simple, very simple stuff like straight up, straight down, drop a beat here, and I'd write this stuff out. And these kids have been learning. They knew how to read music since they could walk. So they would look at me and they say, no, mister FERRONI, that's not how you write that. You write it this way. So they would teach. They were teaching me.
They were teaching me how to write stuff out. It was the best deal. And I was making money in the casino. It was just the best I had, the greater. The three years of that, I did, okay.
So what happened after three years of that?
After three years of that, I got the phone rang in the casino and they said, there's a phone call for you from England. And I thought it might be my mother. I thought it might be something wrong going on at home. And I picked up the phone and it was Brian Auger and he said, do you want to come to a marror work with me? And I was ready and I said yes, I want to go. And he said you got two days to get to England. So I sold all my stuff, got on a plane and flew to England.
And how did Brian Orgar know you or you know him.
Robbie McIntosh and he he come.
He'd been in.
When I was in Italy working Robbie who used to play with the Piranhas. We all went to see Robbie play with Brian Orga and I sat in with him. They let me sit in. They asked me to sit in, so I went and sat in and play some music with him, and he remembered me. So when Robbie left, he said, I need to get another drum. And Robbie said, once you called Steve. Remember that guy Steve? And he said, yeah, so yew did I get old of him? And he
tracked me down in the in the casino. And that was when I made my first trip to the United States.
Okay, two days you're in England. You fly to America. Good experience or bad experience with Brian Auger.
Awesome experience, awesome and and and I remember like we're driving driving up we get you know, I arrived with the cart with my drum kit on it, you know, And and the guy said, what are you doing here, I'm on vacation. I'm on vacation And he said no, I said, you're a musician. I said, yes, yes, I come here. I want to play music with people. And he said, ah, he said, you got any drugs? And I said no, so, no, so I don't have no drugs. And he said, see that door there, that door was
New York City. There's all the drugs that you want in there. Boom stamped my passport and then I went that was it. And then riding up looking at those skyscrapers on Sixth Avenue, he was like, oh my god. And the smell, just the smell of the city was like amazing. And opposite the hotel where we were at was a New York Jazz Museum and you go over there and people were just sitting in there playing jazz in their little concert people sitting on the floor listening
to people played that girl. That was heaven for me. Heaven.
Okay, you were in New York and how long were you in the US.
For that trip? I think we were here. I think we were here maybe two or three weeks because we played. We played in New York in a club in New York. It was up in mid to up up on the Upper East Side. And then we went to Boston and we played in this club called Paul's Mare. Did you ever? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And we played in Paul's More and then and then we drove from Boston. We drove three or four days across the country to Los Angeles.
You drove.
In a couple of station well, and the first part of it was really boring, right, But then we got to the Rocky Mountains and I remember coming round on this road going up the Rocky Mountains and there was a huge moose standing by the side of the road and that was the first toy o. Oh, this is We're getting into the West. Now, this is great. And then driving through the desert and being terrified that we were going to run out of gas. And I remember stopping at a gas station and there was near Vegas,
and there was a slot machine. I put a quarter or something in the slot machine and I won two silver dollar pieces and I've still got them. Wow. Yeah and uh and and then finally getting to Los Angeles and playing at the Whiskey of Go Go. I mean, it was it was everything that I wanted, everything everything that was it was. It was fun, it was music, it was I was just playing great music with a great player, Brian Olver, And he's still still my friend,
still a great player. Yeah, here's the eighty something now and he's just as in Uday say to Brian, Hey, Brian, you want to play, but I'm there. He's there immediately there you know, and and it was an amazing, amazing experience.
Okay, so you go back to England, then what do you do?
I started playing with with the with some local guys in in England, the studio studio musicians. They had a band called Gonzales. Uh and and I started to do record dates and people started to ask me to play on on records. Gonzales. Gonzales was a band that if if you if you were a musician and they and they knew you and they knew you could play. It was sort of run by a guy named Mickey's. He
was a saxophone saxophone player. Uh So, what would happen was you get asked to go and play that seat was then yours until you had a conflict, you had a gig that you couldn't be there and play with the band. Then somebody else, somebody like Richard Bailey would come in and be would be would be the drummer and it was his gig until he couldn't do it, and then somebody else would come in or if you were available, and they just called around and find out
who was there. And that was we actually opened for Average White Band at the Townhouse one one Easter Easter Bank Holiday, and and I was hanging out with Robbie. Robbie and Hamish and Alan and those guys, all of them were hanging out with everybody. I was hanging out with everybody there. And that was a great gig at the Roundhouse. So so you know I started. I got
this guy Mike Vernon, yeah, a producer. He called me up and well, actually he came to see the band play at Ronnie Scott's and he said, I'm doing this album with freddie King, and I want you guys to play on this album with Freddy King, an album called Burglar. And so that was my first full album, like first first real studio musician gig was was that freddie King album? Pretty good start?
Okay, freddy King a lot of Americans, no One from the Grand Funk Railroad song We're an American band, and he never had a hit on the rock charts, and now his reputation keeps going up and up. So what was it like working with Freddy King?
It was amazing. He was He was quite a character. You know. He'd wear these jumpsuits, his big white jumpsuits and he had a huge belt buckle with FK on it, you know, and the studs all around it. Sort of Elvis Presley out sort of guy. And he was loud and he drank gin. He liked to drink gin. Yeah, and they were what they were doing with this album was they were trying to bring him a little bit more into the R and B area, to make him a bit more popular with this with this record. So
that's why they had us play on it. But he insisted on playing straight, straight blues every single day, and he would wander down to the studio usually with a buttle of gin and he's hand and it's like it's time to play and we just sit down and play a blues. But he's a what a player. God, he is just a great player. What a character. Excellent.
Okay, So you know where you're hanging in London, you know everybody, you're doing some sessions, you're working with Freddie King. Yeah, what's the next step for you after that?
Well, Mike Vernon said, do you want to, uh, come out and I'm doing a record with this span Bloodstone. They're doing a movie. Would you come out to Los Angeles and and and and work with me with them? Yeah? Sure, So I came out to Los Angeles and ended up recording with with with Bloodstone working on their movie. And it was at that point that right then that Robbie died.
Was Robbie came in. They were playing The Average White Band were playing in at the Troubadoor, and I spoke to Robbie and he said, once you come down on Sunday night. We hung out a little bit and he said, once you come down on Sunday night, it's going to be a big party. It's going to be a last night. And I said, I got to work on this movie. If I get through, I'll come down. And as luck would have it, I couldn't go. So next day my drum tech guy named Terry Merchant called me up and
said Robbie's dead. And I said, what, they're drunk and he said, no, man, Robbie's dead, and and that was shocking, shocking to me. Robbie always said I'm going to dive before I'm twenty five. I never thought that was going to happen to him. I thought he was indestructible. Robbie could drink, God, he could drink. He could drink like a butler of Voca, and then switched to Scotch and he'd never get sick. He'd just pass out, you know. And I think that's what happened. Somebody gave him this.
They said it was cocaine and it was heroin. It was cut, was strickening, and it stayed in his system and he killed him. Yeah, did that stop me? No?
But well, I mean that's when I first became aware of you. Yeah, they came to La. I was in La and the album had just come out. So how do you become a member of the band so fast?
Well, it wasn't very fun. I mean, you know, I was. I went down when I after Robbie had died. I went to the hotel they were staying down here on just off a venture of Boulevard, in this hotel, just off a venture or and doing what scotsman do when they were having awake drinking and I was down there with what are you guys going to do?
You know?
Yeah, And nobody really knew. Everybody was just a mess. And then I would say, I said, look, you know, Robbie, Robbie wouldn't want you guys to stop right now. They were just starting to get airplay with it, pick up the pieces were just starting. I said that that's like, that's that's that's not what he would want. I said, I'll tell you what if I can help you out, if I got time, I'll help you out and I'll
come and play with you. And then Stick Super offered the same thing from from the Crusaders.
He was.
He was like, yeah, the same same deal. So if I couldn't do it, Sticks would do it. So they were going out and doing like the odd weekend here and there.
Uh.
When I started playing with them, they were they were opening opening for Billy Cobham and that's when I first met Mike and Randy Brecker who was playing with them, and uh and and uh uh uh pick up the pieces. All of a sudden was like boom bang number one and then Billy Cobbin was opening for us. Yeah, but
I was under contracted, Bloodstone. I was contracted. I mean I signed a contract and they you know, they gave me a car and and they gave me you know, paid me money every week and just to work with this band. We did a gig down at the old Long Beach Arena and we're down there and we played this gig.
And uh we finished.
To give us a great gig. Everybody every started. Everybody started off a little bit skeptical. I was this band, you know, and then when they realized that we were authentic, and then they all started dancing and the place just went wild and it was really great. And they came off the stage and this little guy with a goate, very dapper, like a sports jacket, I think like a shirt and instead of like they speaking a little bit like this. Ah. He came walking up to and he said, ah, yeah,
you gotta giant in the band. You gotta be in the band. And I said, I'd love to, but I can't. I'm in a contract to this other band. And he said, you're out of that contract and you're in this band. And then he turned around and whooked a white and Bruce McCaskill, the manager of the Bad Spanager, was there. I said, who is that and he said, oh, that's aw'm I herd again.
Heard that coming, and I was that was it. I was out of the out of that contract, and I was in Average White Band. It was that that's simple, Average White Band. They have that huge album, you know, yeah, so many great tracks. I love the cover of Work to Do.
But uh yeah, okay, they do that.
They do the Cut the Cake album.
That's what I did.
That was my first So, although not quite as commercially successful as the previous album, where does this leave you, because you've been doing a million different things at this point, do you say, I'm just a member of the average White being. This is all I do with us?
I mean, that's kind of what I was doing, you know. I mean I was I did Average White Band and that was it. And and uh and we recorded Cut the Cake. And while I was in you know, if if if if I played something and a Reef said, uh, so I first met a Reef Mardin, he said, I really like that. That's I like that pattern that you're playing there. Just keep playing that pattern that that's that's the groove that I want, so that I can remember it. So everybody was talking while they were called it. I'd
write it down. I write write out what the pattern was, so I wouldn't forget it. Yeah, because I could do that forget get stuff and uh and uh. At the end of cut the cake, a ref said to me, he said, listen, I noticed you read music and I said, yeah, a little bit. He said, he said, uh, would you would you? Would you like to do some sessions for me? Would you do some sessions for me? So I said, oh, yeah,
I'd love to, you know, so he bought me. I think the first session that I ever did and was was a bet Middler song, like a bet middle of sort of dance song that I did. That was the first session that I did from And then he started to use me on Sha Ka Khan and all the Shaka Khan stuff started to happen. And then other producer Zarif was such a hot shot producer. Other producers in town suddenly started hearing, Hey, you know the guy who's
playing with the average white man, he's doing sessions. And so I started to get these calls and I went to what I what I call the the the the school of Local eight o two in New York with all those wonderful studio musicians, all those guys that that that became my friends that still today my friends. And they taught me. They taught me everything. They taught me what worked, what didn't work, and and and they they even let me try stuff out. And uh ref Mardin,
I owe so much to a Reef Mardin. A Treasury's memory is just a wonderful, wonderful man.
So what was his magic? What is it that he did?
He he he.
He, Okay, you could sit and you could play. You could run down. You're running down a song and you're sitting down and you're playing a song and you're trying to find a part, and you're trying to get this thing, and you'll play, you'll play. And then he would come in and he'd say to me, says, Steve, come here a second, and he take me in into the into the into the into the control room, and he would
have the engineer. He'd say, just play from number five twenty right, and so he he's u and then he get to this area and he say, hear that that's what I want. I want that all the way through, you know, and I get it, I get I get what he was talking about. You that that's that's the groove he was looking for. And so sometimes it was it was difficult to grab that and sort of hang onto it schoolboy crush on.
On.
I mean, I came that. I got credit, rid a credit because that was that was my group, you know, that was that was my thing that made that come together. And we must have done like twenty six takes of that dang thing that one day, I mean, and it just did not hang together. And the reef said, okay, everybody go home, come back tomorrow and we cut it first thing in fresh and it'll be okay. So we all go out go do what we go to do that evening' get a get up. The next day, go
to the studio. We walk in and said, well, let's let's run it down. Just make sure we got the form. And we ran the song down. Okay, let's go for a take. We do a take. We go in and we sit there and we listen and it didn't hang together again. It was like god, no, here we go again. And the engineer, Jean Paul, who was Les Paul's son, is less Paul so much to say. Jean Paul turns around and said, you want to listen to the run through?
You'd hit that button and boom there it was. It's uh, you know, a reef had a really great sense of of of of.
Uh.
You know it's only like with Shaka, come uh. We'd have a song. Shaka always showed up late, always late, right, So so so we're in there and working the work in the rhythm section, you know, all this like Richard T. Cornell, the Prix were all these great players, and we were sitting in there and we learn our part and we let we get this whole thing. We get okay, this is how the song's going to go right perfect, and then Shaker would show up about two o'clock in the afternoon.
She walk in that vocal booth and she'd open her mouth and everything would change. Everybody would just adjust to for this, for this vocal for this vocalist, you know. And a Reef was big enough to say that's great. No, that's not what I taught you. That is great. That stuff is great, and and he just knew his stuff if right right, string arrangements that were just there was there was so cool with you know, with lots of stuff going on, but the never get in the way
of anything. What I found about a Reef was when we recorded average White Man, we we could we could, we could he could add horns. I mean we had Brecker Brothers would come in and and and and and we'd have like a horn section on certain stores, the Brecker Brothers coming. We we we'd add string sections, uh a reef of right string arrangements. We'd have all this stuff, but percussions. Ray Bredo would come and play with us, you know, all these people would come and would come
and play with it, and we'd make this album. We'd make this thing. But we could always go out a six people and play that album. And that wasn't the case with other with other producers. We'd have to augment the band with like and that. Later on we started having these other other producers that were coming, and they're great producers, but just not I don't know if they knew how to produce a band, you know, because we'd have all this with a reef, we'd have all this
other stuff on there. But we could still go out with six people and just play this, play these songs. With these other people, we'd have to have the background vocalists and add another piano player. And and and I was sitting out there playing it was like where did my band? Where'd my band go?
You know?
And with some other band, Now that's not average white band, this is this is some other band. And that was kind of like when things started to go downhill when we when we when we left the Atlantic and went to Arista. Okay, let's stop there for a second. You said you learned something. You learn a bunch of stuff from all the studio musicians in New York. Tell me
a couple of things you learned. Well, I think the most important thing was not to be afraid to ask about something if you saw something that you didn't understand, to ask. Asked that. I remember I was doing a session one day with Marcus Miller and and and and there was this thing that was on that was on the on the chart that they that they give me and I didn't know what it was, you know, and Marcus, what's that like? You know barfi what is that thing
at bar fifty seven? And he said, oh, that's oh okay, got it, know what it was? And Marcus said, turn around and said thank you. I said what he said, thank you, thank you for not messing it up and blaming somebody else. He said, it's always great to ask stuff, you know, ask about stuff. And yeah, he was wonderful. And so I mean I got to play stuff that was that for me was really difficult. When I played
with the band. I played with this band with Anthony Anthony Jackson, Uh what was what I forget what they called the Dang brand now, but it was Michelle Camello was was in the band. Gordon Gordon gott Lee was who was a New York Philharmonic percussionist was in the band. Peter Gordon was played french horn in the band. Uh and and and when Anthony couldn't do it, will Lee
would do it. But the music was just really difficult stuff and they they would teach me how to do it, how to play it, and I'd have to figure out ways to play things that was kind of out of my out of my out of my domain, you know, Uh, these mixed measures and stuff that they were playing, and I had to figure out how to play my simple stuff through there to make that, make it speak properly.
So if they didn't call you, who did they call? And how competitive was it?
I never felt and he and he sort of competition at all. I mean, there was there was the cats, and there was there was those people that were the cats, and there was those that weren't, you know, I mean, I go and see like Steve Gadd play with stuff all the time up at Michael's. Chris Barker was a good friend of mine and Steve and Omaha Kim was was a friend Lenny White. I used to see him around. We'd run into people in the studios.
There was.
There was just lots of lots of I mean, I mean I used to come out. I used to come out here and out to California and hang out with Jeffercaro who's a friend of mine. So there was enough with his brother this afternoon. We just was just just playing with his brother this afternoon.
Okay, So tell me about going to rist and how that kills the band.
Well, I think Clive had ideas about what he wanted the band to be, and he sent us these songs that frankly there they were just awful. They were like songs that Barry Man and I didn't want to put on his record. I think Clive I had this vision of making average white Man into the next air supply, and for me, there already was an air supply and we didn't want to be that anyways, And and it just sort of got there. We started making records that I still I still listen. I tried to like him.
I just don't like them. Cupan's in fashion was just awful. H and uh we started to do that, and then it's just sort of like, man, you know, this is like they're dying. I'm going to leave before I don't want to see it dead. I'm just gonna leave. Mhm. And you left it and did you have enough studio work or what were you thinking? When that's what I went, That's what I went to do. I just went back to doing studio work. I just did a lot of that.
And when did you start going out on the road again.
I did a little bit here and there, I mean a little bit with a little bit with with with the Chaka Kahan. Not much, just very very I spent all my time in town. I would travel a lot. I traveled a lot. I started to travel a lot to England and uh and uh Los Angeles. Did a lot of work in Los Angeles, and and then I
got I got this. I was in London and and I went to Bob Goldoff's I was playing with Deran Duran and and I went to Bob Goldofs Knighthood party at the hard Rock cafe and and I was sitting there and Phil Collins walked up, tap me on the shoulder and said hey Phil. He said, have you ever met Eric Clapton? And I said, well, I met him. I met him once. He showed up once at a an average white band show and I just meant just to say hello, meet meeting, you know. He said, uh,
he said, well, come over, come with me. Come and come on, I'm sitting over there with you. Come over and come over and meet him. So I go over and I sit at the table at Clapton's there as someone else is there to and I'm sitting there. We're just talking, make small talking there for a little bit and I say, okay, well then I go back hang out with my bunch and my my crowd over there. Nice to met you. And then a couple of weeks later, I got a phone call. You want to go play
with Eric Clapton. Yeah, yeah, I'd like that. And it's a way. He's just playing a couple of gigs. You know, he's playing a little club up in Boston, and he's going to play another club in New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's in the band. Well, Greg Felin Gains and Nathan East. Oh perfect. I had done dates of them out here and get I knew them doing record dates to reproduce them for record days. Great players, and and so I
went and did did those those gigs. When I did those gigs room and that, they said, well, you know, what do you want? What do you want to go and do it? Eric Clapton at that point, I hadn't done a lot of you sort of like, oh, he'd been off Maradar for a long time. Yeah, a little bit of money enough to sort of cover cover the week, you know, just have some fun. I was just looking forward to play with Eric Clapton, you know. And and and then I I I get back, had a great
time playing with him, and did the rehearsal. I think I think Eric actually got drunk in the rehearsals, had to go in the hospital for a couple of days and just sort of left us to rehearse on our own, and then sort of came back out and joined the band a couple of days rehearsal, and then we went and played these two gigs, you know, and we had a great time playing those gigs. And uh, and then I got this check in the mail. For like three times four times as much money as I'd ask for,
you know, and I couldn't. I said, I think I think he made a mistake. And they said, no, no, no, no, that's a miss clubs and wants you to have that. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed playing with you. Well, I really enjoyed it too. And then I started to
get these calls it comes to England. So I got to England and work and we started to do these runs with the Royal Albert Hall, you know, started with three days, and then seven days, and then a week, two weeks, and they think, you know, twenty four nights and working up to twenty four nights. And then record companies started to learn that we were there and they would say call us up and ask us if we
could go do session on our day off. And it was the boom years, you know, and I was doing this Saturday night live as well at that point.
Okay, well just let's slow down, get a couple of things here. You're playing with Clapton. Clapton's had many different periods of his career, different music, up and down. It was probably the first guitar hero and rock, but his audience is so primed for Clapton, you're on stage, Does it make any difference? Does the audience know whether you're on or your offer? It's just Eric clapped in their satisfied.
My job with Eric Clapton. Eric told me was I got to be up there be Eric Clapton every day, make me play Wow, that was it. So I just I sit there and and sometimes you have difficulty, you know, it's not easy to be out there to play a great solo every time. You have to be inspired. You know, sometimes you're the person that he's the person that inspires, and other times he needs a little kick in the ass to do that.
You know. And and.
It was just a question of knowing when he was just trying to figure out some way to get in it, or to give him like a big opening, something to do like really big, or even just like break it down so that he got really loud and found himself out there on his own. And I had no other choice but to play, you know. It was it was a great band of doing that. It was was. It was really a great band for playing that rock with Eric.
Okay, let's go back to Duran Duran. Duran Duran had all their hits in the mid eighties. They were incredibly cold and I remember K Rock Acoustic Christmas in nineteen ninety two. They were the headliner. The album hadn't come out yet and they played Ordinary World and what the the other big hit off that album which you were involved with, So tell me about that.
Well, yeah, I mean I did. Notorious was the first the first album that was when they first started to get back together, and Notorious sort of was sort of an icebreaker for them, you know, getting doing this stuff. And that was sort of like there was that one year where it was Eric Clapton and Duran Duran and I got to stay home for like three weeks out of the whole year. Yeah, and uh and uh and I was just loving playing with Clapton's and and and I just sort of, I mean, it wasn't even like
I'm not going to play with anymore. It was just all I went off and I was just I spent more time playing with Eric and that and that was that was more more of my gig. But uh, so'm I'm in London and uh to do George Harrison and George just hired Eric's band and uh uh to go and do this concert tour in Japan, and uh and and I get there and and because I'd stayed at the Royal Albert Hall, I mean I used to. I rented an apartment on Sloan Street and I would just
walk up the streets sometimes. And they get on the bus and ride with the fans up to were you going to play the night Steve? And I haven't seen the set list yet, know, And uh, I ride with the fans on the bus up there. And so I had this apartment on Sloan Street. I used to stay in there like that. Side I go in there with with George. I had rendered a car and I would have to drive out to Bray and rehearsal George. But uh, so day one I'm there and then take a ride
down the King's Road. Just have a look around the King's Road, see what's going on. I drive down to the kings Old and I'm driving along in traffic in the King's Wold very slowly, you know, And I look on the on the sidewalk and I see this guy walking and I say, dang, they looks like Warren Cook Carrillo, you know. But he's got all these muscles, you know, it's like muscle bound. It's like a body build a
sort of guy. And I said, but the last time I saw war and he's like skinny mister skinny guitarists, you know, missing person's little skinny, skinny skinny guy. And uh and I look and hey, we Warren and it's and it's it's Steve. You're in town. Yeah, yeah, he said, I need you to do a session for me. And this is I'm still driving along now very so, and I said, I don't know what my schedule is. I'm
doing this thing with George Harrison. And he puts his hand in his bag and he pulls out this cassette, throws the cassette in through the car. Win call me. We set it up when you get time. And I drive off and I take this cassette and I put it in the cassette player and listen to it. Ordinary World, a demo of ordinary World. So I get back to the hotel, I call up Warren and I say, listen,
you don't need me on this song. You know, this is a hit song like this, just like this is got a little drum machine on there that they did the thing too. I said, you don't he said, no, we really want you to play on it. I said, well, I said, this is this is a great song. This is a hit song. Ifever I heard it. What a great song that is. I watched last night. I went, I went onto YouTube and I watched the I watched the band, watched them. They had like a new one
of their late latest concerts, Taylor playing. I watched them play Ordinary World. This is just a beautiful What a song, What a great song.
Okay, you've worked with all these legendary guitarists. Is there one that you prefer to play with more you were more amazed by? Or are they all unique? What's your think?
I'm a you know, Mike Campbell never ceases to amaze me. Is that the most underestimated guitarist?
You know?
Anybody to talk about Mike Campbell? They are people that talk about Mike Campbell are great, great, what a great guitarist, But they I don't know. Maybe he's not as flashy as like some of these other guitarists are, but he just has a way of being as some of those solos that he plays, I mean, that's just no composingness. So that's what he plays. That's how he plays, Yeah, when he sits back in the band, the tones that he comes up with to fit in with the band,
that sounds that he comes up with. He's just a phenomenal, phenomenal player. I love playing with Mike Campbell. That's that's for sure. But how do you how do you how do you compare Eric clapped better? How do you put them on a scale? Eric? You know George Benson. I played with George Benson. He's a pretty badass guitarist. George Benson, you know, but he doesn't know. He doesn't know, he doesn't know how to reader. Note George, you got no idea,
and then you get guys like OSNOI. He's just phenomenal. That I mean, just crazy is the stuff he comes up with, and and and his stuff. He first time he called me and asked me to play with him, I said, he said, will you play with me? I'm going to do this gig out in Los Angeles?
And I said no.
He said why not? I said, because your stuff is too hard. It is not hard, it's in four fourth. I said, what planet are you from? Your stuff? Your stuff is so difficult, you know, and it isn't FO four But it's like where he puts the accent away with me, and it is pretty once, you know, once you find it, it's not that different. But I mean he has some stuff. I still can't even figure out how he gets that phenomenal guitarist Humor Kraken. What can I say? No more? You know? Uh uh oh god,
uh uh He's what I thinking of. I mean, there's just so many guys, all these guys in New York, the studio guys, Michael Thompson out here, Yeah, David Williams from from from I was sitting listening to students your your show that your podcasting you did with Steve Lucath, and he was mentioning all these guys, Paul Jackson Jr. All these players, you know guys. A lot of people say they, who the hell is that? Well, you don't know, you know, how come you don't know who David Williams is?
You know?
I mean, you know if you go bug a Darren do bugger dar David Williams, you know, and that just didn't happen. That was David Williams playing that did that? Uh yeah, Lucas, I mean, all these guys, I mean, I don't know I can't really.
Okay, wells which gif? How'd you end up in the s n L band?
Uh? I gotta, I gotta call I just I think I got a call. I just got a call. I got a call from who. I forget Who the musical director was at that point was g Smith g g g was was was the was the musical director of the band. But but the but uh uh was it?
How was not?
How? No, it wasn't how. I forget the guy the original guy. He does a lot of movie stuff. He was he was the guy that sort of would pick out the band. Uh And and he asked me to come and during the new season when Lawn Michael Lawn Michaels came back, they asked me to do the Saturday Unite Light Band And that was that was a thrilled too. That's really well, Leon Pandalvis.
And who what was it like?
It was fun As a matter of fact, some of the jokes that went on in the band were actually funny as in the show until until Lovetz came up with the liar. It was kind of we sat up there and we've grown at some of these jokes. That is awful. And then and then all of a sudden, John Lovitz came along and started doing that liar thing you know. Yeah, my wife Merk Morgan Fairchild, and it was like, oh, this is good, this is really good. Okay.
Traditionally the drummer is the business guy, is that you or not?
Well, well, you mean doing the business of the band.
Yeah, and making sure it goes forward and getting the gigs and being on top of it and being the driving force.
Oh no, no, no, I'm pretty I'm pretty lazy. I don't want to have any any kind of responsibility like that. I would say the best I'm a good, a good, a good sergeant arms uh to have around, uh, to hang out and and keep the camera to you of the band around. I mean, Jesus, like, you know, there's all these people out there writing books at the moment, you know, and and and you know, Tessa and Iles
from from Merrick's Band wrote a book. Uh, Phil Palmer wrote a book from Merrick's Band, And and I feature heavily in all of these books. And there's yeah, jan gay Marvin Gaye widow, she she she wrote a book. And I mean that Rick James wrote a book. And I mean and I mean that book. I was like, jeez,
I'm gonna have to write my own book. A lot of a lot of the a lot of these they call me up and they say, well, you know, we've written some stuff about you in in the book of some of some of the adventures that we've had with you, and do you want to read it and see if you want to take anything out and that? And you know, my life's pretty much I'd say, pretty much my life's
and open book. Really. I mean, I know they love me and I love them, and they would never intentionally write anything that was that was going to be considered harmful. So just just put it out. I trust him, and then when I have got around of reading it, it's all as awful as it is sometimes. When I got arrested once for trunk driving and ended dub calling Roger Forrester's phone of Eric Clapton's manager calling call in the
office and see I got the phone. Nobody answered the phone answering machine, So nobody knows the trouble Tess and ours. But Tess and Arles put that in the know. You just just wait until I write my book. I got some stuff on YouTube, but no, it's it's.
Well that's a you know, the promoter in Montreal tells a great story how the who got busted and he went to the mof you to get the money to the cash to nail him out, and he went in there all in jail and they started singing, don't fence me in? So how did you end up in Petty's band?
Well? That was you know that when when after we finished the tour with George in in Japan, Yeah, I came back and and George caught me up and said, listen, I'm gonna do this other gig. When one other gig and the one more gig at the Royal Albert Hole, you know, you said, can you come and do it?
Yeah?
I love to sell problems. It was a couple of problems. He said, Eric, Eric, Eric's not going to do it. So I'm getting Mike Campbell to come and do it. And I'm like, who Mike Mike Campbell plays with Tom Petty? Oh okay, I don't really know too much about it better other than I'd seen few videos on on an MTV, you know, And and he said, he said, he said, he said, who could I get to play play bass?
Who? You know?
Because Nathan can't do it. He's going out. He's going out. I think he's doing something with Phil Collins. And I said, well, that's simple. Will Lee call Will Lee because Will Lee's a huge Beatles fan, you know, and uh and equaled Will and Will came over and did that. Anyways, were there? I get. So we did the gig and and and we did the rehearsals and everything, and I noticed that this guy, Mike Campbell, he just had this way of fitting in that was you know. And then he would
play some really great stuff. And when George went to a solo, he would just step up and play something incredible, right, And I'm like, who the hell is this Mike Campbell guy? And Will Lisa and he plays with Tom Petty. Don't really that for me? So I used I took the habit of walking up looking at Mike and going fucking Mike Campbell, looking right there, fucking Mike Campbell and uh.
And then we went out and had dinner. A couple of times we went out and then sort of end up sitting around around Mike and we ended up doing some talking and it's very nice. Didn't didn't exchange numbers or anything that was it finished. No, after he went back to America and we did that gig in it and it was it was maybe a month or so month or two later that I got this phone call from from my answering service radio registry. Wouldn't I used
to everybody had a radio Radio Registry telephone number. Now you call in and they'd book you for stuff. And they call me out and say, Steve, you're you know, you're open next week and you go to Los Angeles? And they said, yeah, what for? They said, Oh, it's top secret, geek, top secret. Can't tell you who it is?
I do.
Who's the booker? So they put me to into the booker and and I say, who's this kid? Who's this gid for? Sorry, Steve, we can't tell you. It's top secret? Okay, triple scale, mister mercenary, no problem, Okay, all right then? Yeah fine, So they flying me out and they put me in the Sportsman's Lodge, right, which was I never I mean, I'd seen it, but I never really taken that much notice of it though. Sports I mean I was staying at four Seasons or something like that, the
High High House. I stayed at the High House. I never stayed in the valley, and so I check in their first thing that happens. I'm going there, I check in. I just walk in there and I signing. The thing is this sort of half talk to the person behind her, and they look up at the person behind the desk, and it was Fluff. The girl used to be the cash here at the at the at the Roxy. Fluff, Steve, what do you do? This is gonna gonna gig out
here in some secret gig. So she puts me in a suite, and and and and and and and then I found out that they had the i'd say, the second best swimming pool in the hotel in Los Angeles. Over there, it's a great swimming pool. And uh, and so I the next day, I have to go out to Sound City and get a rental car and drive out there. And as I'm as I'm arriving, Kenny Arnos drum kit in his flight cases. Kennyanos names on it coming out. She is still not unusual, you know. Uh
and uh. I mean, because sometimes people hire you to play on certain songs on a record. I want this guy to play on that song. He's really good at playing that kind of style. Something so I didn't didn't really didn't think too much of it. And I walked inside and Russ was setting up my drums in the studio and they said to me, I just just go
through into the control room. And I walk in the control room and there was Tom Petty and Mike Campbell and then like fucking Mike Camera and Tum Petty and then just the three of us went and we went and and uh sat down started to play you don't know how it feels?
And that was that.
And we we went into into the control room and I was standing behind the board and they were standing in the front with the engineer listening, listening to the listening to the take that we did, and and Tom turned around the mic and he said, well, what difference of drummer make sir? Now I'm like, what the hell does that mean?
Right?
I mean it could mean anything, right, right, Like, well, this this guy, yeah, I mean, this guy's useless. Get rid of it. What do you bring him out here for? And then Mike Tom looked to look right at me and he said, oh, don't worry. You won. And that was it the start start of Wildflowers actually start twenty five years I didn't know. It started twenty five years and and when I finished, I did two. The first time I was out there, I was I was drinking. And the second time I came back out to do
the second half of Wildflowers, I'd stopped. And there was only one person that noticed that I'd stopped. Really yeah, and that him You'll have to find out yourself, because I don't. But he said to me, have you stopped drinking? I think we only went out to dinner once. Yeah, and so yeah. So so it was uh and so and and and uh and then and then the next thing was like, you know, I mean, I just went back and started doing my stuff. I was working did
some stuff with Brian Ferry. But I really loved the way that the Heartbreakers worked in the studio. I really loved the way that they went after a take, and they went after and then and they had these great songs too. I mean, Tom was just such a great songwriter. You know, we had such good stuff to work with, and and and the other thing. The thing that really impressed me was Wildflowers was so much different than the
other stuff that Tom had done before. It was it was like, I mean, even sometimes we'd play a song and I say, oh, here we go. Now this is this is sounding more like this is more like Tom Petty a Tom Petty song. And he played we play about three times and then Tom would say, you know what, we've been there before. Next we'll move on and do something else. And he would just and I'm like, what
are you doing? And some of that stuff got on to Wildflowers and all the rest, and he found it like later on there in twenty seventeen, I guess he started going through going through that that stuff to do that album with Wildflowers and all the outtakes. And he said to me when they said you know, he said, I was. I was listening to these songs. There's a couple of songs that didn't get on the record. They sound like real songs that they're really good. They they're
pretty much ringing. I don't know how they didn't make it onto Wildflowers. And I said, well, you didn't want them on there. You said that you've already been there. Who visited that place before? You remember you saying that about a couple of the songs.
How do you end up in the band you're working on the solo record?
Yeah, then they well, so they finished their they finished, they finished their record, and and.
And uh.
I was working with Brian Ferry. Brian had a way of working. He had these guys that weren't musicians that were sort of advisors, right, and and so they'd walk into the dressing room and Brian would feel there was something wrong with a song. So he would say what was what was wrong with that? Love is a drug? And they say, oh, it's too fast, Oh too slow? No, no, it's too fast or it's too slow. He said, we'll go and talk to God, talk Frony about that.
Right.
And so these guys would walk up to me and they would say, Steve, Brian feels love the drug is too fast or it's too slow, one or the other. And I say yeah. They said, well, yeah, could you do something about that? And I said, well, I'd love to, but I don't start it. The bass player starts it, you're talking to the wrong person. I just played whatever is. But whatever temper starts whatever it does, and it always feels all right to me. So I'll tell you what,
why don't you just fuck off? So they kind of got used to this thing where they come up to tell me something and I'd sit there and I listened to what they had to say, and I'd say, you know what I'm going to tell you, right the fuck off? And I said, yeah, that's about it, and they would leave. So I really wasn't that that that. I always felt that it would have been nice if Brian had come in and as a band, talked about the stuff as a band, and then then sending these guys who really
didn't know what the hell they were talking about. Yeah, so as manager asked me, you know, he said, would you go out on the road with us like next year and do some stuff next year? And I said, no, no, I'm actually I'm kind of busy. I didn't really just didn't really want to do it, you know. And and uh and uh and and I called my girlfriend and and I said, you know, they asked me to do next year and I didn't. I didn't really want to do it, so I said, and she said, what, well,
what are you going to do? You know, it's a gig. I said, yeah, but this is not really a gig for me, you know, I'm something I happened. I just make you go back making records whatever, I do something and uh, and she said, well, what would you like to do? I said, in truth, what I'd really love to do. I love doing that record with the Heartbreakers, you know. But I said, but that ain't going to happen. That's standing in She's gig. Yeah, I said, that's not
gonna that's not going to happen. But something to show up, I said, I had so much fun playing with those guys. It was really terrific. H So that was the end of that, pretty much the end of that conversation. The next day, phone rings. She calls me up. She said Tom just called her. Who wants you to call him? And they said what? She said, Tom? She said, I think he wants you to do a tour with him. And I said, well, I said, I don't let me make a call, So I called Tom. I called Tom
up and Tom. Tom said to me, he said the listen. He said, what are you doing next year? He said, would you like to come out play with the Heartbreakers? I said, well, I'd love to. I said, well, first, let me just tell you. I'm really flattered that you're asking me to do this, you know, I said, And and I'd really like to do it. However, I've been in bands and I know that they're like they're families, and they're usually dysfunctional families. Have you spoken with Stan
yet about this? And he said, well, no, I actually I haven't. I said we have. He said, we have some issues between us and they're not getting to go. And I said, well, I'll tell you what I said. Let's leave it like this, right. I'm really flattered that you ask me, why don't you talk to stand and if things, if things work out, if you can work things out with them, that's great. And if you can't, if things, if things don't work out, come back to me. And i'd and I'd love to and I'd love to
do to do it. And he said, oh, okay, fair enough. I hung out the phone. An hour later my phone rang. It was tell me, said you're working next year.
That was it?
Now I was in the band.
Okay. So you're in a band that's been in existence for the better part of twenty years and they play all kinds of stuff. How do you catch up with that stuff? Do you listen to the records or you can just tune into anything the rehearsal? How do you end up fitting in? Because in the Wildflower's album, they're creating that stuff from scratch.
Right, Well, okay, those difficult things for me to learn was the stuff was the stuff their songs there, there, there, there there song. I mean, I knew I won't back down. I'd heard that, I knew a great wide open I'd seen the video right, all the stuff that was on MTV. I knew all those songs. I knew those songs. I thought it was a terrific song. But there was other songs like the deeper. Well I considered deep, deeper tracks, and I'll give you the example of what I considered
the deeper second of it. Well I did. That was the most difficult thing what I came to find out about the Heartbreakers. They're living in Gainesville, Mike and Tom nineteen fifty, same as me, same year as me. They're growing up. I'm growing up in England. We're listening to the same stuff. They're listening to the English stuff. I'm listening to the American stuff. Elvis. You know all these blues guys that used to come through that my, my, my, my, my teenagers guys took me to when I was twelve.
We're all listening to the same stuff, except Tom's living in the same town as Bo Diddley, you know, you know, I had to go. I have to go and see him play at the dome, you know. But we're listening to we know the same songs. We knew the same songs. So when when they would they would say, well, let's let's play that, I'd know it, you know, I just know it. But I didn't wasn't familiar with a lot of heartbreak and stuff. So to go out and do
the Wildflowers to it. I had a list of songs that they were going to do, So I the wildflower
stuff I recorded that. I pretty much knew that, But the other songs I had to sort of, you know, learn them and figure out what what standard played or whoever it was that played drums on the seat, what what was like the the stuff that was ultra necessary, like certain fields that people need to hear, certain feel that people need, and other ones I could just take complete advantage of and do whatever I want, like don't
come come around here no more. I could just make up my own stuff, you know, and and uh and and so that that was. That was well, we were So we're out on the road and we get to Chicago and We're playing that big stadium where the Bulls play right packed to pack to the scene, people going crazy. We finished the show, we come off stage. We're bout there having a couple of drinks while the crowd's just still going wild, getting ready to go and do the encore. And Tom looks at me and says, do you know
breakdown And I said no, it wasn't. It wasn't on the list. He said, Okay, boom, check them scat, boom, check them scat. Do that they're going crazy. Follow me, and we walked out on the stage. We will down on the stage and that's what we did. Wow, And that was that was my rehearsal. That was my rehearsal in front of like twenty five thirty thou people.
Okay, when Tom Pitty and the Heartbreakers was like twenty fifteen somewhere around there, you played like a week at the Fund. Then there was different stuff all night. Did you guys rehearse for that?
Were we rehearsed, uh for the funder the funder here, Yeah, somewhat. There was a couple of things that we that we that we that we rehearsed. One of the things we kind of went over was that Mystic Eyes. We kind of jammed that a little bit of the rehearsal. Some of the things that we just jam. I just think that we were playing for fun. And then he would just say, Okay, well we know that that's good. We don't know Tom's even done. We don't want to over rehearse,
you know. And Tom was a very very good leader. You keep your eye on him. He tell you where you want the song, where we want the song to go, you know. And uh. And so some of the things, some of the things that rehearsed, and some of them I don't even remember rehearsing. Sometimes it was kind of like the the film or show where we we'd rehearse something in the afternoon and then play it that night, and and and and and then not play it again.
So some of them, some of those songs, like like from like from the film or Exile on Main Street, I don't I listened to that. I mean, I'm completely surprised because we must have rehearsed it, learned it that afternoon, played it that night, and then never played it again.
Okay, I saw you know Petty many times, but I wasn't in the band. Were there good nights and bad nights. What was the band like? Were they always good? It was? Yeah?
I think you know, I don't remember a bad night with Harb. I mean there were some nights that were that were just there was other nights that were magic, of course, like every band has that, but I can't say it was just okay. The band was great every night. It was a great band. And I think that the reason that the band was a great band was because Tom used to rest the band. He didn't he didn't work the band into the ground. He would he would. We worked a couple of nights and then a night off.
We always traveled. We had our private jets, so we would stay like in Chicago, fly out, do a gig, and fly back, and some nights were we'd play one night and then we'd have two nights off. So so we were every time that we that we went to walk on stage, we were eager to play. Yeah, and we were fresh. We were rested, and uh and I think that's what I mean. I know I played with excuse me, I played with some people that just want to play, like, you know, five or six shows in
a row and it's you get down. I get to the fourth show, and it's like, I don't want to be there. I just want to know. I want to lie off and I need to rest because I don't. I don't when I when I play, I don't. I don't cruise. You know, Uh, I burn energy. I like to put everything, everything physically, everything physically that I have into playing the playing the drums might not look like it, but there's there's a lot of work going on back there. You know, there's a lot of drumsts getting worn to
pieces up there. I don't break them that much, but I'll wear them out.
Okay, needless to say at this point in his career. At that point in his career, Tom was going on tour, not every year, and he wasn't working six months eight months in a row. What were you doing with the downtime?
Well we we uh that that that but that that was the way that it was all the time. You know, Tom will go Tom we go out on the road and he and he'd finish the tour. What we do maybe three or four months that just and and every three weeks we go home for a week to ten days. Yeah, And and then because he liked the band, wanted to be out there. Didn't want to have to kick the band out there when he would have a band wanting to go home. He wanted him to want to be
out there. So we would all, you know, we actually get to the end and say keep going for another week or something, and and then we'd just go about our stuff and then we'd look forward to getting back out on the road.
Uh uh.
He was a very wise man when it came to that. You know, he he he watched his ticket prices so that people could get in, you know, his fans could get in. And uh, he was he was really concerned with with all that.
Did it take up all your time? If there's twelve months in a year, were there time we could do your own things?
Or yeah?
I did?
I did.
I did my own things. I mean playing playing with Tom Petty allowed me to build the studio, so so.
Uh I did. I did.
I did my own stuff. Once I called up Mike Campbell and I said, I said, what are you doing? He said nothing, Just I said I know. I said, look, I know you got some songs, right. I said, why don't you call Ron Blair and that Ron come over and we we'll sit there and and we we we'll play some songs down. He said, you do that. I said, yeah, that's I just want to play. And he said okay.
So I go over to go over to Mike's house and the Dirty Knobs started and we started, you know, I said, We started playing with Ron and and and then they got Jason Sana. Mike found Jason Say and got him to come and play with the band, be second guitar. And we we would we would cut a song. If we'd learn the song, we play it once and then move on to the next song. Wouldn't even listen to it. And then and I got these the tapes that said it's really great, it's really exciting, you know,
and and Mike was loving it. And then he took it, took it to Tom to listen to and Tom Tom said, this is awful. It's horrible. What are you doing this for? You don't need to do this. Yeah, And Mike was like, listen, you don't like I like, the songs are awful, horrible stuff. Mike. Tom was in the defense boat. I don't want to lose Mike Campbell.
Right right right, right right right.
So he turns out the turns around to Mike and he says, he said, it's ship And while we're at it, you know what, because by then, how he had died and Ron was back in the band. He said, And by the way, in case you didn't know this, that's my band that you're using.
Wow.
Mike was so upset, he was so upset, he called me up you Steve. Tom just doesn't like it. Just he just my brother wants Eve and listen to the stuff that I'm doing with you know, And and I can't have you in the band anymore. He said, he'd fired you and run and just so so Mike had to go out and find another band. A few months later, he'd left, he'd left the house so upset that he'd left the c D. Tom had one of those hundred CD players right he'd left. He just left the house
completely distraught. Tom's walking around in his house and he's got the thing on, like, you know, just automatic, just play something here there. This thing is whizzing around and playing all these different songs. And he hears this song and he says, that's a that's a pretty good song. Who the hell's that? Just can't stop the sun, can't stop the sun from from shining and and so he called up Mike and he's like, I want that SOUD And he said, who else is on there? The other
nub guys that take that guy off? And I'm going to put the put the guitar on there. And he changed the guitar and uh, and then he put it on the last DJ. Wow.
So you know, everyone knew that Tom was hurting. But you go on on a run, it's incredible. You finish up at the Hollywood Bowl. Yeah, and then the next day, okay, what they say, you know, disgusted some with Tony, but who knows what the truth is. You know that ultimately fentanyl was the cause of death, and fentanil. Although there's legal fent nail, there are other drugs. It's a big issue now lace was fentanyl?
Was this?
Did you know during the tour he was taking drugs that were not like pharmaceutical drugs.
I No, he wasn't taking I don't personally. I don't think Tom was taking drugs that were known that were non pharmaceutical. I think what he was taking on the tour was was was prescribed. He wasn't dirty.
You know.
Yeah, Look I think i'd seen Tom uh when he went to a period, a drug period. It wasn't pretty, you know, and uh and and and he kicked that, he stopped it and uh and uh and and uh and he cleaned up Tom uh the last the last years, I would say, you know, basically he would drink Coca cola and he didn't even seem to smoke as much, but that is what he had a certain points that I'd say, you have a joint once in a while, just seemed not really within the problems as normally, you know.
And he had a lot of pain with that hip hop. Is because I used to help him up onto the stage. And I think he I've said, I've said stuff before that got me in trouble with with with with people. But I think that well, I know that he had said stuff about it to other people that he would take he would take some moxie cotton that would get him through the show. And but I think that that's the only thing other than that I never saw, I never saw any indication that Tom was using anything to
get high. He was using it for what it was for, and that was so he could get through that show. And then it gets you know, I wish, I wish like I think a lot of other people had that he had stopped the tour and uh and and got that hip fix and then you know, resumed later on. But you know, he was very loyal. He was He's very loyal to everybody. He was loyal to us. He was loyal to the crew. You would think a lot about them, you know. Uh. I think that when at
the point when he's hit broke. Uh, that's that's when the illegal the illegal drug came into it. That he was in so much pain when that happened. But uh, uh, I would, I would, I would state anything on it that while we were out on the road, he wasn't recreationally using anything to do anything. And I'm sure I'm pretty much sure that fent mold didn't come into it. It was just something that would get him through the show, Okay, either either an orco or or like I had for
my knee I needed to. I'd have Norco every every six hours for my knee when I when I did my knee replacement, and then i'd have oxy cotton for for for a bridge and uh and I gave it to Julia and she come in say what's your what's your pain level? On and I'd say it really hurts, and she give me something. Well, I'd say, it's not too bad, and then she give me something. I had no idea at the end. One day I turned around her and I said, have I had any painkillers today?
She said, you haven't had any painkillers for three days. Yeah. So I think, having been around enough, I've been around this stuff, I can say that. I would say that my guess was pretty educated that when we were out on the road, Tom was using drugs. He was in enough pain that he needed something for sure, Because, like I say, i'd have to. He put his arm around me and we'd walk up those stairs to that stage. And sometimes we'd stop halfway up and I'd say how
are you doing? And he say, just get me up there and I'll get through this. Yeah.
And so.
Some nights when we came off for the when we came off of the on core, he'd need me to help him back up to the OnCore. Other nights it was working just fine, the stuff, and he'd walk up the stairs on his arm without any help. But that was few and far between. Most times he'd need my help to get up there. And uh, and so, uh, I think you can tell, well, I think I can tell. I have enough experience with that stuff now that I can tell if somebody's using something recreationally or if somebody's
using something that they shouldn't. And uh, and he was definitely within the realms of prescription what I could from what I could see.
Okay, how did you find out? And then it was a loss for all of us, in a shock for all of us. But then as time goes by, how long did it take you to put the pieces back together yourself? You know?
I remember it was. It was such a shock when when and when I found out about Tom I was I was in San Francisco, and I did I'd done a gig up in San Francisco, and and I had a really early flight back to Los Angeles, like six am flight the next day. So I went to bed
about nine o'clock at night. I woke up about one o'clock in the morning, and uh and uh and and I turned on the TV just to have something to look at to go back to sleep, and and uh and and and the the news was full of the shooting in Las Vegas, the people getting shot in Las Vegas. And I was sitting there and I was listening to the sound of those machine guns and I couldn't I couldn't believe that that was that was going on.
I was just it.
It must be like shooting into soup, those guns, you know, just all those people and just firing into those people. And I couldn't believe it. And my phone was on the other side of the room, plugged in and uh and and it started to ring and I thought, Ah, it's just somebody from England calling. They've seen this thing. And I wondered, some somebody panicking. Oh, Steve, and Steve's there. Let me find it out. No, just let it, let
it ring. And I was watching this thing and the phone stopped and they started ringing again, and I thought, who the hell is that? And I go over and I look and it's Benmont. And I answered the phone and say, hey, but how you doing? And he said and he and he talked about somebody somebody being gone, you know, uh and and he said and he was he was like crying and shaking and and and and ben Mont's wife was pregnant at that time. And I thought, this is how far away it was for me that
it was Tom. I said, I say, I say. I said to Ben Ah, muh, your wife state and he said, no, no, no, she's fine. Tom. Tom's gone, you know. Uh and uh and that's when the nightmare started.
Yeah, okay, well it's a whirlwind week and then it's ere quotes returned to normal. How did you ultimately adjust and move forward?
I don't think. I don't think any of us did. I don't think any of us. I still think that we the Heartbreakers really has a special bond with this crew everybody. I don't think. I still think that any given time, Uh, it can it can overwhelm us. The loss of Tom. Uh uh huh uh. The day the next day, I got up and I flew until six o'clock flight, and I flew and I went straight to
Tom's bedside. The whole band was there. Everybody was there, and we we we spent all day waiting for Tony to show up, waiting for Tom's brother to show up, and and finally we were all in the room when he died. And I never forget the sound and what that, what that room was like. I never forget that, and and uh and then we all just sort of went out of ways. You know. Some some months after yeah, and Mike was really every everybody was grieving in their
own way. Everybody was going through their stuff. And I remember going to to the funeral memorial service and and uh, uh I I got, I got, I got put into the rock will fame in Brighton, in my hometown, and uh and Julia uh decided to do something for me. She got in touch with a lot of people, you know, Nathan Easton, Eric Clapton, and and I mean just all these musicians, you know, all these musicians that I know and I love all made a little film and she
edited the whole thing together. You know, congratulations Steve are getting into the rock, Will you deserve it? That sort of stuff, and and and and and she tried to show me this film. She tried to show me this film through about a week. And I'm getting ready to go get We're getting ready to go to England, and and I'm like, I haven't got time, I haven't got time. Take a minute, look at it. I haven't got time to do it. Now, I've got to do this. I've
got to do that. I've got to get this. And finally we get to the airport and we're sitting there waiting for the plane and she pulls out a computer and she right, now you've got time, and you never look at this film, and I see all these people go through the whole thing with all these people, all these people saying, you know what a great guy I am, you know, And the very last thing that she put on that reel and sorry, yeah.
Yeah, yeah yeah, the very last thing she put on the reel was Tom Petty introducing me at the Hollywood bot.
H And I did what I just did. Then see what I'm talking about. He was a wonderful, wonderful man and great songwriter, great great a great human being. Yeah, miss him and we're still missing.
And uh.
Thanks. That feels good to do that, to know that I could have that kind of capacity of love for another human being. And five years later I just started talking about it.
Yeah, yeah, Okay. The past five years have been crazy for all of us with COVID, etcetera. Although everyone's kind of in gear. Now you talked about this school thing you're doing. What's been keeping you busy?
Now?
Well, I was in in New York when when COVID hit, I was doing the Seth Meyers Show. I was the guest drummer on the Seth Meyers show, and the last day they canceled it, they pulled them plug. And the next morning I got up and walked to an AA meeting across Times Square at seven o'clock in the morning, and there was only three people in Times Square, and I was one of them. And I said, this is
gonna be something else. And so I got back here and I called the guy that puts all my stuff together in here, and I said to him, how can I what would it take to make my studio so that somebody can engineer me remotely? And he said, oh, eight to ten thousand dollars, And then he came back and just to put all the new stuff in. And then my good friend Eric tongran Et, as he's known, he's a great engineer. He lives down in Long Beach.
He came up here and he set everything up, gave me a quick crash course in how to how to adjust levels and and to get to do stuff. And then we we do zoom and uh and and I've
learned how to make make little adjustments and stuff. I started to do my own radio show here and and we kind of worked through the We just worked through the through the through the lockdown every every every once in a while, a couple of guys would come over and we'd cut something live and put put a little band together with some friends that I knew were prudent,
and we'd all stay. It's not very big room, but there's enough to keep six feet between everybody, and we wore masks and we we'd make some music and do a little recording, and we did. I'm glad, I'm glad we're all back back together now. I did just did a couple of days, did a date in a couple of dates in the in in Nashville, and we're all in the same room, a bunch of guys playing again instead of just being me overdubbing something.
This one, Okay, I see behind you a Gretch kit. Yeah, it's a nineteen How many sets of drums do you have?
Oh? I quite a few. I don't know. I got mainly I got maybe like five or six gret drums sets. And this one is a it's a nineteen nineteen fifty Gretch broadcaster. It's the same age as I am, except it's in a bit better condition.
So let's assume you get called to go to Nashville you got a set of drums in Nashville, yep. So if I call you Nashville, New York, London, there's a set of drums in all those places.
Well, I have.
In New York.
I have a friend that lived out here for a while, Dan Stay because and he was my drum tech and he well he will he lived out He actually lived here in my house. Is he had a roommate. He's a young guy, you know, And and he had a roommate that he was living with. And he came home one day and his friend that hadn't been feeling very well found his friend dropped dead. He had an undiagnosed heart heart problem and uh, and he found his friend there.
So I said, well, he couldn't keep the apartment, so I said, we'll move in with with with me and Julius. He moved him with me and Julia and was my drum taken and uh and and he wanted to get himself a set of great drums. So I helped him get a set of dreat drums and broadcast as the reissues and he loves them. And then he moved back home to New Jersey. And so whenever I go on the around New York area. I called him up and he brings his kit in and uh and and I
play that one. So that's pretty cool. Why gretch best sounding drums and on it? Because they just got away of you know, they have they have a motto, the the great greats, that great, great sound. They have a tone that I don't I don't think any other drum kits that ever actually managed that. People aspire, they say, people will come up to you from other companies and they say, we make drums that sound like great drums,
And I say, but I play great drums. When when when I was a kid started playing, I asked around, Yeah, what's the best drum kit?
Right?
I mean it's like if you if you, if you, if you're gonna, if you're going to play cricket or you know, play baseball, you say, what's the best back right?
Right?
What's what's the best what's the best glove? Yeah, because there are degrees of good in everything, and everyone would say great drums And I never saw I never The only person I saw playing great drums was Charlie Watts, and he has a great sound.
You know.
Everybody else was like lovewig or tricks and there were people playing trickson when I was growing up singer, and then they make good drums too, that they all make good drums. But this everybody said there was something special when I started with average white Man and I could finally get my own afford to buy my own drum kit. And that's what I bought, was a great drum kit.
Now with guitars, even though they look the same, everyone is different. Yeah, when it comes to drums, is everyone different. You have to play them.
Every one of those drums back there, every one of those snare.
So people can't see we're audio only. I can see about twenty snares there they go, keep going up.
Yeah, that they all have different characters. Uh, you know something like this.
This week.
I was in Nashville. I have a signature model that they don't make anymore because they said it was too expensive, so they stopped making it. But but uh I have I had the Singing Great chickenature model and and it's very versatile. But uh, what I had to do was when when I listened to a song, it depends on how how how I want this imagine the song sounding each one of these drums there was a different sound there was different quality and some I just drag one out and put let me put this up in see
what this does to this song. Yeah, like you'll see you know, people with guitars. The player of the other day, Mike was playing, uh and his band and Chris and the other guitarist in the band in the in the dirty knobs he was playing. He said to Mike was like, no, he said, here, take use my rickenbacker and he and he gave me a rickenbacker and which is still a piece of wood with the same six strings, but it has a tone that suddenly made everything pop to life.
Well that's what what drums do. Yeah, And who are your drum heroes? Well, uh, okay, let's start with We'll start with with with Bernard Purdy. Was the first guy that that I heard play syncopation like that was just amazing, amazing drummer. I love Bernard. I saw him. Uh. I saw him a few weeks ago, and I think NAM Show. I saw him down in the Nam Show. I hadn't seen him for a while. Uh. And and I really like.
Uh.
I like the older guys Elvin Jones, Max Roach uh uh uh uh, Blakey uh uh uh a another guy at sam Woodard. He used to play with the bassie Sorry, Duke Ellington. Just an amazing swing swing drummer. There was a uh, what's that guy's name? Michael Michael the Silver was the drummer that really impressed me when I was little.
We played with Sammy Davis Jr. And UH and he would Sammy Davis Junior would sing like day in day out with just Michael Silver playing some songs with some some toms, with some mallets and google and uh and Sammy Davis Junior would would sing day in day out. That was very impressive for me. Very melodic player. But my favorite favorite favorite player of all has nothing to do with the way that I play. And Uh and uh as a gentleman by the name of Jack de
Johnnett right, just an incredible player. And the thing that I love about him is that he's so musical. The way that he listens, the way that he listens and and and and and accents draws your attention to other players in the in the other people as they're playing things that they're playing. I first became aware of him playing with the Charles Lloyd Quartet on an album I think it was called Live at the Live in the Soviet Union, which was recorded at the height of the
Cold War. It's like, I got to say that, how the hell did you do that? You said, well, it was a state department thing and that Russian American were fighting and every time they went to walk on stage, some international incident would happen, and in the Russians saying yet, yeah, you can't go on. Finally they got the idea that you know that had to wait to get. As soon as they got the all clear, they ran on stage
and started playing. Before before that they could, you know, they get something else could happen that they get stopped playing for and that the excitement on that record is just amazing to hear guys play modern jazz like that for a bunch of Russians who really had no idea at all what that was. Uh, And it's pretty impressive.
And we were talking on the phone, you were talking about practicing to what degree do you practice? And do you play every day or if you're out of town you might not play for a month, but your situation, No.
I'm not a woodshed person. The only thing I like to do what I what I consider I like to sit down and play with people. That's why I got like piano here, I got guitars. I got guitars and basses on the walls. So when my friends come over, but let's jam a little bit, you know, and we just come in the studio, we start messing around and start jamming. And that's the best. That's the best practice that I can do. But I'm not one to sit and practice rudiments or try to find stuff. I like
to be challenged. When Osnoy asked me to play with him, he sent me this stuff, and the charts that he sent me didn't make any sense to what I was listening to, if you know what I'm talking about. It was so I said, well, you know what, how would that tear up the chart? I'm going to learn it? And I and I had to come in here and uh and wood shed the piece by piece to some
and then tie it together. And then I had him come in a few days early and make sure that I had that I've done it properly to check my homework. But he's, yeah, it was it was, I know it now. I got it.
The stuff that I learned with okay, So in a perfect world, and we don't live in a perfect world. If you could play as we disagree, I disagree. Well stop there is that a joke? Or do you have a philosophy on this?
I have a philosophy on that.
We'll lay the philosophy on me.
I just think that nothing would be as it is as things weren't as they were. That's all. We live in a perfect world. Everything's perfect, we just don't see it yet. That's all.
Well, that begs the question. Do you ever get down and frustrated yourself? Oh?
Hell yeah, I just I just remodeled my house.
You ever done a after me.
A nightmare? Yeah? Uh?
Nobody works in a contractor.
And you know, and and and the other thing too is that you know, I mean Julia came came here to live with me in twenty seventeen and we went through COVID together. Yeah. So so yeah, we had three years of three years of bliss and then we had to we had to figure out where she's here all the time now. Yeah, so so so that was that was something too. We came to that. That was that was pretty good. But uh, I mean I've been when I looked when I came in, when I got sober.
But when I got sober, my life was just a mess. I thought it was over and never no way out of this and never they never go never going to let me go there. I'm never going to own a house again. I'm never going to do this again, never going to be able to do that again, never going to be and and and and I got a sponsor, a guy named Bill Summers passed away last year October the nineteenth and and uh the best part of of
twenty five years he was. He was my sponsor. And uh and uh and he told me, you know what, one day, all this is going to be over. You just ain't seeing it yet. It will be over if you stay sober. And so that's what I did. And uh and uh and now I look back and and and you know, the persons that were that were my biggest what I considered my biggest tormentors. If they hadn't have stayed with it and can continued to torment me,
I wouldn't have found it necessary to stay sober. If they just if they have eased up after a year, I just said, well that's that I can go back to I can go back to to drinking. Now everything's everything's good. Yeah, and and yes, sometimes I got some friends that are going through some stuff that that's seemingly overwhelming. Yeah at the moment, but I can talk from experience that I've been there. And uh and uh, you know what.
Sometimes I found this. There's a little booklet that I found that I haven't got one out here, but I got it on YouTube. If I need to listen to it. Uh, a little booklet called the Golden Key. We've telling it just stops thinking about the problems, start thinking about God and it will heal itself. And and and it got me to to my problems. It really did get me through them. And it does work if if you work it. Yep.
So so yeah, I hear people say that you know a lot in a perfect world, and it's like things are perfect, you're just not seeing you're going to grow. You're going to grow from from whatever problems that you're going to I mean, would it be desirable not to
have to go through those problems? Yes, But what would you do if you if you, if you, if you didn't have any problems, Ah, life would have carried on being one big party for me, and probably I probably wouldn't be here now, okay, it is the perfect one.
Let me reframe the question. If you could play any kind of music you wanted, what would that be.
Good? Good music? Uh? You know, I just got back from Nashville doing some recording with the guy named Ira Dean, who introduced me to some players that were down there. Uh, guys like like a Pork, the bass player named Pork and and and a keyboard player named Moose uh who just like incredible musicians that I'd never heard of before, I never met them before. Yeah. Uh uh, That's what I love to do, is to play with with with
great players. There's there's nothing like it. And this thing that I'm doing with this uh, this orchestral thing that I'm doing with all these I've seen these players, these orchestral players, I've been down I've been down to Disney and I've and I've seen them. I've seen them play play stuff that I wouldn't even attempt to attempt to play,
some Beethoven stuff. That's just it's so difficult, such such hard music to play, you know, And they're going to be over there playing some Chicago, Chicago songs and that have been orchestrated these you know. Uh, and and and and and a lot of times I've sat there and played.
I've done that stuff before all over the country with Jason and Jason Cheffin and uh, you know, some trumpet players they come up, especially trumpet players, they come up and say, man, it's really great to play with you and really know where I am with this backbeat yours. It's really it's really nice to have that, you know. So they like, these are the guys that can play anything, you know, but they like they find a good, good musician, a guy does what he does well, and they dig playing,
they dig playing that stuff. It's just it's just wonderful to be able to play with all these players.
And it's been great to talk to you, Steve. I could go on for days. We just hit the highlights, so many stories in between, but I'm gonna let you go now. Thanks so much for making the time and making this.
And thank you for taking your time from writing all the writing stuff that you write. You know, I read that stuff. That's good good.
It's like in the it's like being in the eye of the hurricane. You know, I'll go somewhere, so know, I was just talking about you with this pretty much I don't know. I just wrote and said it out there. It's kind of weird, you know.
I really I really enjoy like sometimes, you know. I mean, I I do my research and I hear you talk about a musicians that and and and and and and and and I researched for my show. I said, let me have a listen to this person, you know, and and and then usually when I'm reading about them on Wikipedia, they say that they play with somebody else and I
never heard of them. Who's that? And I start to feel my way around and I find find something that's that for me is obscure, but from other people say, oh, we knew about that all the time, and uh so it's uh it really helps me, uh to read, to put my put my show together, gives me stuff to listen to with something fresh, and it's funny our popular my radio show has become. I was walking to an April the other day and they said, oh, you're that drummer, right,
the one with the radio show new Guy. You're the new guy I used to.
Be on KLSX on Sunday nights and it's radio, you don't know anything. And I was backstage at the old Universal the Amphitheater and John Boyle. In the record, Bruster says, you want to talk to Timothy Beachman. They said, I don't like to be introduced to people who don't know who I am. It's like a waste of time. I
don't want to waste their time. And then Timothy comes up independently, like fifteen minutes later, and the goes, good to put a face with a voice, and I say, I literally had no idea, what are you talking about. We've never met before. Bla blah, goes, oh, I listen, I'm careless X every Sunday night. It's like you don't even know you put it out there, and yeah, I tell you.
You know. I was in New York, working in New York and there was a jingle guy and he he said to me, I think it was Bernie Draken. He said to me, you know, Steve, He said you should check out the Reverend Milton Brunson. He says, a great choir and they have great voices, right, And he said it's really well recorded. So so I go out and I find this, this this record, Reverend Milton Brunson, incredible stuff.
Start reading the names on the back the the the orchestra leader, musical director guy named Percy Beady, and he sings a song on there. And he's got a great voice too, you know. So I start buying stuff music when they when they have and and and I find out that there are church in Chicago. So I'm in Chicago with the Heartbreakers, and first time I've ever had a Sunday off in Chicago, staying at the Four Seasons. I called downstairs to the concierge desk and I say, listen,
do you know where this re? Milton Bronson's churches? And hold on, We'll get back to you. So they come back and they say, we don't know anything about that. And I said, look, look, look, I know this is the Poor Seasons, but I know you've got a black person works in. I know you've got to have a black person working the here somewhere. Ask them. So they said, okay, So they hang out the phone. They come back. We
got the address. So it's on the and the outside of outside of the loop, you know, outside they want to. I go out there and I'm sitting there and I'm watching the choir and they're just rocking the joint right and there's this woman, an old woman, sitting in front of me, and she is like alumni of the choir. So they say, please come up and sing. So she gets up and she goes up there and she sings this song. She sings her ass off and she comes back.
Everybody's clapping her. She comes back and she sits down in front of me. And after the service has finished, I say, do I say that was?
That was?
That was really wonderful? I said, it says, excuse me, I said, it's Percy Bady up there. She said, yes, that's him at the organ right. So I walk up and he said getting these music together on top of the organ. And I say I walk up and say. He looks up and he looks at me, and he goes Steve Feroni and I say, Percy Bady, And how do you know who I am? I said, I'm a fan. That's why I'm here. You never know, right, No, that's you know.
What I tell my girlfriend is you never know what's going to happen when you walk out the front door.
Yeah.
It's like if you stay at home, I mean now, in the internet area, you can hear from people, but once you get out there, anything can happen. That's one of the great things about life. M Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, Steve, I think we've covered it in any events.
Have been enjoyable meeting you start face to face.
And absolutely ditto.
Let me know if you ever want to come and see the Dirty Knobes or if you want to come and see this symphonic thing.
Oh okay, but let me be clear. I talked to Mike my end to uh, you know, you don't go on the road with them.
Right, Yeah, I've been doing it. They asked me. They asked me to go out, uh and play with him on the on the last two. So I did the I did the West Coast and and Mike said, well, you want to be in the.
Band now, but let's be clear, if fire me and you get me back now, they're not staying at the four seasons.
No, no, no, So what's it like starting all over?
Oh it's fun, man, I'm telling you, it's great. It's yeah, it's it's it's like it's the Heartbreakers. It's playing with the Heartbreaker. I'm playing with Mike. Yet we understand each other. Yeah, I give him credit. You know, he'll go out and do that stuff that he did. Yeah, Cole Sung, I don't even know. It's like, what's ups that? Three?
Four?
Uh okay, it turns out pretty good.
Absolutely well. People can't see you got a smile on your face. That's the most important thing in any event. We're gonna wrap it up until next time. This is Bob left. Six