Stevie Salas

the beach in Oceanside, California. And there was no racism where I grew up because there was the Marine Corps base, and I had kids of every color and we all served and skateboarded and listened to music, and it was so I really didn't experience any of those things. A lot of my friends from the reservations have dealt with all their lives.

I'm a guitar player. I want to be a rock star. I happened to be a Native American. I was never I'm a Native American rock star. So if you ever look back at the old photos and things, you'll always see a little maybe I'd have on a little earring or a little bit of my necklace or something that was indigenous in my whole thing. But that was for me. That wasn't part of my like stage wardrobe, you know. But later on, around two thousand, around ninety nine, I

was really sick of the music business. I kind of felt like I'd done everything I could possibly do, and you know, working from everybody from justin timer Lake and in Public Enemy to mc jagger, and you know, I worked with a lot of Sasash Jordan, and all these different people were all divers diversified, kind of different artists, and I just felt burned out after you know, a bunch of solo albums too, and a bunch of world tours.

So around two thousand, maybe it was two ian and two or three, I went to open up for the Rolling Stones in Canada and I met this guy called Brian Right McLeod who was a Native American writer, and he was writing a book, an encyclopedia that covered every bit of Indigenous recorded music going all the way back to nineteen oh eight and wax cylinders, and you know, there was there was there wasn't too many Native guys with my my resume at all. He wanted me in

his book. So we sat down at his house and he started talking to me about Jesse Ed Davis and started talking to me about Link Ray and I knew, you know, I knew Link Ray was, of course, and Jesse had Davis. I mean, in sixth grade, I would read Rod Stewart's album you know, Atlantic Crossing, years before I was ever going to be his lead guitar player, and they would say Jesse ed Davis all over these amazing records that I used to read Lner notes. I had no idea he was a Native American. I had

no idea that Link Ray was a Native American. I had no idea that Robbie Robertson was a Native American. In fact, in nineteen eighty eight, when I first we played a three night run at Madison Square Gardens, I walked on the stage at sound check and I got on my hands, knees and I kissed the stage at Madison Square Gardens saying I'm the first Native American ever played Madison Square Gardens. I mean no idea that I

was not even close to the first American. So in two thousand and one I learned this about these guys. I realized that if I don't know this, and I'm in the business, I go, there's Native American people all over out there that don't know they have these role models.

And that's when I felt the urge that I should give something back, and I felt like I needed to help bring these people to the forefront so Native people would know they had role models that were from now, that had accomplished things that would seem impossible, and not have to go only back to one hundred and fifty years ago, to Geronimo or somebody you know, or sitting bul That's why I did it. I had no idea though, Bob, it was going to change written history.

with a guy called David Oh. He was in a band called the plim Souls that I really loved when I was in high school, right, and David Oh really liked the way I played guitar, so him and a guy called Rick Parata who ran Baby O Studios that ended up inventing matchless amplifiers, he thought I was cool. He so he said, why don't you help us clean up and you can help run the rehearsal studio and at night just sleep on the couch. And I had

all my clothes in plack, black plastic bags. And it was a horrible, horrible summer for me, summer of eighty five. But I'd go up to musicians and I'd go up to like Gene Simmons and anybody that was recording at BABYO, and I said, hey, my name is Steve Saliz. I played guitar. If you ever did they tell me to go f myself, you know, get out of here or whatever it was like, and I care. I had no prede.

One night I went up to David S. Bradley and George Clinton who had did Atomic Dog, and I said I played guitar and George Clinton just kind of said okay, cool, like he was cool, like no big deal. But at two o'clock in the morning, David S. Bradley came and woke me up and asked me if I wanted to try some guitar on some track. And I went down there and he had a guy called Jack Sherman playing guitar, who was then the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili

Peppers in nineteen eighty five. And I thought, God, Jack's playing some amazing stuff. He was playing like this amazing stuff. But George what he was I figured out later what he was doing was he he was playing exactly what he learned and worshiped about Parliament Funkadelic. So I thought George was kind of like he'd already done that. So I went bananas on this guitar funk Wang Bar Steve Stevens madness, and George went crazy. And so that's what

set me on this path. Then the next fifteen years, I got signed in nineteen eighty eight, put my first album, Mountain in UH ninety, and then I just did world tour, world tour, you know, then music direct, Turnstrant Derby and Duran Durant or go back out in another world tour and then go back out and write and produce in sas Jordan Rat's album, and then to a tour with

her and Arrowsmith. You know, it just never stopped. And the more the business kept going into the nineties, it stopped being about development, it stopped being about music, and it started being about how many times I could get played on K rock or you know all these and then all these rock and roll metal guys that I thought had no credibility were shaving their heads and pretending to be punk rockers and they'd get a record deal.

I just thought the whole thing was becoming bullshit, and I just I had money, and I just thought, I'm sick of this and I'm sick of the business, and I want to go surf. And I bought a bunch of land in Costa Rica and I was just going to go retire and surf, and and that's what I mean. I was just burned out on all the the insincerity that was going on by the end of the end of the nineties, with all the fake, fake everything, fake punk rock, fake this, fake rid and it's just nothing

that credibility to me. Anymore.

had to go back to work. But I was so down, and it was like I've always felt like I had like a horseshoe up my ass. I feel like I've always been so lucky. Out of the blue, I show up at Virgin. I had a deal then with Virgin by the time with Tony Berg where I could develop

and sign my own acts. If he liked the acts, they'd sign him and I could take him in development, because I mean, you came from the days of development when they'd rather give you ten grand and lose it, then sign a band and lose two million bucks or whatever. So I was one of those guys they'd let go develop acts, and I was developing Peter Cornell, who is Chris Cornell's brother, who's this amazing singer. But I was

also in this deep depression. And I walked by Jima Corfield's office because I knew gem would because I produce was and I was in nineteen eighty seven with Down, so you know, I knew her really well. And she goes, hey, I got a I saw a list today that you know, it was from Nancy Berry's desk, that Mick Jagger's going to call you to be a guitar you know, he's a guitar player. I'm like, what so? And I'd known Mick because I used to hang out with Keith a Latin,

Bernard Fowler and all the guys. So I got this call and it was like a gift from God. It was like, who else could get me out of that hell hole I was in then the biggest rock star in the world. It was like the gods were telling me to get my ass together and get my shit together. And so I got a call and there was five people that got that audition. That was me, Dave Navarro, Rusty Anderson, Doyle Bramhall, and I'm blanked on the fourth guy.

But the Corey I forget his name, but he used to play with More's Day in the Time and Michelle and Decachello is really really cool guitar player. And I got the gig and then then Mick made me as music director and it's the only thing that could have got me back out. And I got back out and I got and Jagger. Jagger was like Jagger was like

every detail mattered. And remember what I told you before in the nineties, when I felt like there was no more credibility, he instantly like made me believe in him because he would call and talk about this ship that I was hearing. That really made a difference to me, and I could tell he could hear it, and it was just the most It's the only thing that could have got me out of the hell I was in. And Jagger was just like young still even though he was old, and it was funny and it just it

brought me back to life. And that's when I started kept playing. So then I started doing more European tours again. I started accepting more offers, you know, I you know, if Wayne Cramer called and I worked with the MC five or whatever. You know, whenever it was something that was good, it got me back into playing and got me into actually trying to enjoy myself again playing me.

all bullshit. It's like if you got a great publicist and you hit at the right time and you ride this wave right. But the other thing I tell kids is this Boba I go, you don't have to be the greatest. You just got to be the greatest when it counts. And that's something I was great at. I could walk in the room and destroy and just destroy the room with an audition like Rod Stewart had no idea. I couldn't play slad guitar acoustic guitar when I got that gig, and it was too late for him to

fire me, although he almost fired me every week. It was like I wrote a book about it.

in my bedroom. Still. You know, it was like I was in. They used to call me young Eddie Martinez because in eighty seven when I was a staff producer for David Cushabam, when I scored Billing Ted Sex and The Adventure, I was also the only guy doing rap songs for those soundtracks because nobody in LA in rock and roll knew a lot about rap. But I was really into Eddie Martinez and run DMC, so they used

to call me a little Eddie Martinez. And now Eddie Martinez was in Rod's band, so the whole thing was just like nuts. So I think I was super immature. You know. One time at Miami Stadium, I was playing. It was only the third gig of the tour, of my first tour since my high schol band, keep in mind where I sold out Miami Dolphin Stadium, Joe Robbie Stadium. I saw myself on this giant diamond vision screen and I was starting the song first cut as the Deepest,

and I just stopped. I started prank, and I just froze, and I pointed at this thing of myself and I was like, oh my God. And then I realized Rod and I was staring at me. Sixty five thousand people there and I started the song again and go afterwards, I was like, what are you doing, you know, stopping to wave at the girls. And I told him, I go, wasn't waving at the girls. I frozen. He goes, that's even worse. I mean, I was almost fired so many times. But but I was also this had this young energy

that he loved that was unifying our band. And we became like a that band in eighty eight, if you recall that an order tour. It brought him back and we sold three or four million records and it was part of our band was like an army. It was what you dream of and you know, but but yeah, in the beginning it I almost got blown out, Like every every week was I was in trouble. And then I became the scapegoat for everything, you know what I mean.

It was like if somebody else made a clam they point at me, and Roderd think it was me, and yeah it was. It was. You know, I got hazed a lot. I got hazed a ton until on Rod's airplane, I started a fight with the whole band. And then after that everybody got cool. And because I was born

a fighter, you know, and I like to. You know, I used to punch people out open I was a kid, but because everyone did where I lived, surfing, and those guys I think were in shop because they're still musician musicians. You know.

you know about that stuff. And and the one time I get my clothes on the airplane, my bag and I go to open it up to get my clean clothes out because I'm all sweaty, it's stinky from the concert, and there's a bunch of squished fruit in my bag. You know, my clothes are you know, stupid shit like that, or you know, Rod Stewart used to paint penises like I like Kelly Emberg. We were all going into into uh Montreal and Rod you had to hide your passport.

That was one of the things you had to do in the Rod Street Band, And you had to hide stuff like that. Like so like Kelly Emberg left her passport out and next thing you know, she opens it up at the custom and there's a penis drawn next to her face. Or you know, I'd go to go on stage with a brand new white jacket and on the back there was a giant black penis drawn on it,

you know. Or one of Rod's friends would come on from a soccer team and he'd fall asleep and they'd fill his hair with shaving cream and cigarette butts and you know, put rigs and it chose. I mean, it was just like that kind of shit all day long, because Rod and them were still like, this is nineteen eighty eight, and you know, Rod was still a kid. He's still kind of a kid.

tell anybody. And then one day in Wisconsin, I'm sitting down having a dinner before a show backstage with Randy Phillips and Rod, and Randy Phillips goes, hey, I heard you signed a big contract with the Island. And I'm like, oh, you know, it's like I I yeah. And Rod started laughing at me, and I go, what's so funny? And he goes All my career, everyone in my band, they're always they're going to leave, They're going to get their

own record deal, They're going to do this. And because you're just like this kid and you get this huge record deal, and because none of them ever did, I guess you know what I mean. They all used to threaten to quit. I'm gonna get my own deal, and I never threatened to quit to get my own deal. I didn't even want to know I had a deal. But when I got done, you know, with part of the out of order tour, Island Records had said to

be you. And by then Bill Grahm was my manager, and there Mordy Wiggins, and then we're like, look, do you want to do you want to be his guitar player? Do you want to be your own artist. And I had to quit the band. But it was almost like getting a divorce. It was like leaving my family. It was. It really crushed me. I did not want to leave those guys.

Seminal hard Rock where I have a business. I have a sports music bar, and so I had the new Seminal Guitar Guitar Tower and Hollywood, Florida, and I was down there with my Seminal friends because they own all the hard rocks, and Rod was playing. So I goes, let's go see Rod. So Jimmy, Jimmy the sax player, was still in the band. He was in the band.

When I was in the band, Jimmy Roberts, and Jimmy came and met me before the show, said hi, and I had a couple of tickets and I didn't really ask for anything, but Rod found out I was there, and before I could leave, some guy came out and grabbed me because he wants to see you and took me and my friends all backstage, and it was like it was like he was I got the photos. He was hugging me and he kissed my kissed my head

and it was just like it was. It was the best because in a way psychologically he was like my big brother, almost like a father figure to me, you know, because it was twenty something years older than me when I was in his band, and for me it was it was beautiful. I love Rod story. I would take a bullet for him still to this day, even if he makes a shit record.

and Ted's Excellent Adventure. You know, I was there when Tracy Chapman walked in with her birkenstocks and an afro. You know, it was like I was around when this shit was happening. And Jamie Cohen loved me, you know, so a lot of a and our guys loved me and would take me out with them to see bands. And I had this already done. George Clinton R and B Skills Senens in the closet. I told everyone. Everyone thought I was George Clinton's guitar player, so they thought

I was famous already. But little did they know I was not from Detroit and I was not his guitar player. I just played on that record and so but they would hire me, and I would tell him I was double scale, so I did like that was a girl from Climax. I'm blanking on her name right now. She was the drummer that sing ladies, you know, they did Ladies Room and all that, and I did that. And then Dick Griffy asked me if I wanted to join a band with Babyface and La Reid, you know, because

they were artists before they became record executives. And I didn't want to do that. And then Thomas Dolby Andy Taylor called me, And it turns out that Andy Taylor was managed by Randy Phillips and Arnold's Arnold Arnold Stifeler, Steph Yeah, Arnold Steve for Sorry. So Arnold and Randy managed him and and Andy Taylor had just left Randa Rand. He had a big buzz in nineteen eighty seven. He

had a big hit going. It's called Don't Let called Take It Easy with the Florid EDDI singing backups, and he auditioned me and he thought I was cool, and I became his guitar player. But right before a week before the tour, we're opening the Psychedelic First Tour, and the first gig was the La Form and the second gig was going to be San Diego Opener Amphitheater, and I was my big homecoming and Andy fired me. It's like I've never been you know. I was devastated.

I was up in it. Man. I was like it was. It was Rockstar Central. But Andy like this is silly, Okay, I search the world. Randy Phillips said, you gotta go buy some amplifiers. Here's some money. You know, the good old days when you could go buy six Marshal stacks. So I ordered six Marshall stacks and I got Dave Wider made a guitar center to get him and find me Red ones. Okay, in nineteen eighty seven, it was hard to find red Marshall Stacks. Andy saw him. He

goes and he spray painted all of them black. So right away I was in a rub. I was in a rub. You know. It was like everything I was doing was wrong. And I made a joke about swinging from a rope from the top of my aps Ted nugent, you know, I was joking, but he freaked out, and I think that's why he fired me. But he fired me. I then got a call from Jamie Cohen to go to San Francisco and produce the tubes for Columbia. They

were doing demos. I was cutting demos on him because I wanted to see if they were going to sign him. While doing that, I got a call from Randy Phillips saying, Hey, would you want to come audition for Rod? And that was the dream, right, that was the dream Rod. People forget now, but Rod Stewart was a superstar and he rocked. I don't care what anybody says, you know. And I auditioned for Rod and he said I got the gig, and then they called me back and said I don't

have the gigs. They realized that I just didn't have any skills whatsoever. And I never toured. I only had good rock skills, so I just kept calling, and I kept calling Arnold, I mean Arnold's office, and Malcolm callingmore Rod's personal assistant. And Tony Thompson was the drummer who was idolized, and I called him and I said, hey, around anything going on, you know? And by then I was living with the Frank Shackler. I don't know if you remember him. He was an A and R guy

at Electra. I mean I'm at Aristas sorry, And we lived in this house of Nika Costa, nik A Costa's mom's house. I lived in the guest house while a Nica and I used to have to pick her up from high school. But I call and call and just I had no shame and I had no pride. Hey you They ever did me, and no one ever called me back. But all of a sudden, out of the blue, I get a called Stevie. It's Malcolm Rod would like

to see you. Could you come down to Audible And I'm like, I went to Audible and he asked me the audition again turned out Eddie Martinez decided to go back to Robert Palmer because he was Robert Palmer's guitar player, and I played a lot like Eddie, and I rehearsed and I worked my ass off and I got the gig. And Rod looked at me and he said, Okay, you got the gig, and this time I mean it. And eight days later we were playing higher on Bissom Stadium in Puerto Rico.

me to help him develop Melissa Ethridge. So we went, we got he got some money from EMI, and we went to the old EMI America studios right there on Sunset they used to have there, and I cut a bunch of demos of Melissa Ethridge and I was horrible. I produced him, but I was way off. I made a rock because everything in that part of the eighties was heavy bon joviature. So I made a rock and it was I was way off and it was awful,

but she was great. And there was one song, ironically that I didn't play on and I produced that Chris Blackwell hurt and he freaked out on her, and Chris Blackwell signed her. And so that Dino guy made me learn about making demos. So he introduced me to a guy called Carter who was his friend. And you remember Carter, I'm sure. So of course Carter.

or whatever it was. So I did that and I cut some cut some shit, and I came back and he listened to it and he go, aw, this sucks, and this sucks, and he goes, this one's pretty good. So he goes, why don't you go, you know, over to New York. Here's a guy's number. I wanted to work with you and work on something, work in this direction. So I went and did that, and I you know, he gave me twenty grand, you know. And back then it was the guy I can't even remember Glenn fight,

Glenn Fight maybe or something like that. I don't know, but it was like So I went over there and I did this, and then I came back and he goes, ah, it's all cool, but it's not for me. So then, you know, in those days, you take I owned the demos, they give him back. So I took the demos and at this time I started going to London. They started flying me over to London early nineteen eighty seven, so I started in the new was not was what Ap Dog album, but it was before Dawn asked me to

co produce the song Outcome to the Freaks. So I was playing guitar on it and we we were doing that, and then I was getting a call from the guy who one of the guys that worked with paul Oakenfeldt and invented acid house music in London, and they were They were saying, nobody plays guitar like me in London

and will you come over? So they kept flying me over and while I was there, I was working with a company called Park Music that managed these guys, but they also managed a young kid called Terrence trad Darby and his album hadn't come out yet, and they offered me that gig, but there was no rock guitar on it. You know, later I would become late Terrence's music director, but this is way early. This is eighty seven. Terrence's album comes out Hardline. According to terrorits Had Explodes, goes

number one, sells twenty million copies. I go back. I just get to put a band together. If it was and I was with Winston and Carla Zar who you know, all of us AMT Fiddler. We were all up up and comers, and nobody kN who were Amp Fiddler from p funk Me Carla Zar who became the drummer for Wendy and Lisa and the water Boys, Amp Phil you

know who took Bourney where else place in Funkadelic. And we put this band together around Don David and Harry and Sweetpeat from What's Not Was, And next thing you know, we have a number one record called Walk the Dinosaur, just number one, and we're just we're so we're doing top of the Pops. When in London, I mean a guy called Mitchell krass now Bob Krasnow's kid, who's a head A and R in London, and he thought I was cool. He heard my demos, he thought they were cool.

But he wanted me to go to Holland and play guitar on this record for this artist he was developing and wanted to sign. And I by this time I had just gotten fired by Eddie Taylor, and I said, no,

I'm not doing it. I go I'm only going to work on my own stuff and I'm never going to get myself in a position again where somebody can humiliate me like Andy did, because my high school friends and parents have bought tickets to see us in San Diego with the first and I was I've never been so embarrassed in my life because everyone thought it was a liar and full of shit, and you know, I wasn't there.

So instead of him saying taking no for an answer, he said, I'll give you five thousand dollars that you can work down downstairs on your own demos while you're working on this other girl's record. And I said, yeah, okay, I'll do that. So I went to Holland and def Leppard was working on a Hysteria album in one room with mut Lang, and I was working with the Zeo and these other guys in the room next door. It

was super awesome. I mean, I hate to keep sounding like this, but the late eighties and the early nineties was just the most amazing time to be an artist. It was just insane, that kind of shited it went on, you know. And so I'm in Holland and I'm doing that, and Mitchell hooked me up with a guy called Steve Pross in La at Electra Records, and Steve Pross had just signed the Pandoras. The Pandoras then got dropped. He

was really convinced that Pandoras were real. So I took five grand from Restless and I went and recut their record called rock Hard, and produced it. And by doing it and Steve really felt loyal to me. So Steve left Electra got fired actually, and got hired at Island and signed me to Island. And that's how I got my record.

I almost couldn't even I was I just couldn't were like, like I was a different person and we had to work really hard to I had to rediscover myself. I was become way too commercial. I remember Island's like, what are these crappy songs?

I couldn't do that. I just couldn't do it. I didn't I didn't have enough of the great songs I needed. I remember Tony Berg came over to talk to me at my Hollywood Hills house and and talked to me about producing my album. And I loved Tony, you know really, Tony was always nice to me when I was nobody, and he said to me, he goes he listened to the demos, like have you ever read a book. And you know what, he was right. I hadn't. I hadn't

been shit, you know. I you know, I was a surfer, skateboarder. It was full of my own bullshit. And and I had just been in a bidding war, okay, on my deal, and I thought about saying, off, Tony Berg, we can talk. Shut up, you know. I thought about my ego. Then I this might have been a turning point in my life. I stopped myself and I thought about it, and I said, maybe I need to shut up and listen to what he's saying, you know what. And he was dead right.

He was dead right. And that's that's that was a life changing move for me, because I could have just did my own thing and been my own bullshit and you know, followed me. Everybody's telling me how great I am. I'm the guy and Bill and Ted's you know, huge movie now and I did that and wasn't wasn't number one, and you know what I mean. It's like, but I listened to him, and so I found a guy called parthon On Huxley. I loved him. Jamie Cohen and David

David at Columbia, you know, David. Why am I blanking on his name? David the produce McCartney. You know, you know what I'm talking about, you know, David David, David David.

through that metamorphosis. Well, David Kahn, David Kahn. So, David Kahn had signed Parthenon Huxley, and and I used to hang out with Jamie Cohen and David Conn their officers were next to each other. And you know, I watched Fistbone, you know, record got me bone. And because David invited me to the studio in nineteen eighty seven, I sat in a room and watch watching or would play those

bass parts, you know, So I sit there. I got parthon On Huxley involved, and then I wanted to work with always dreamed of working in Australia with the guy who had produced In Excess and he had produced Midnight Oil, British guy. I'm blanking on his name right now, and it's super cool. I just actually ran into him a slim Jim Phantom's wedding party not too long ago. And I was going to go to Australia and do it with him because I loved those In Excess and Midnight

Oil records. But Island Records is like, We're not sending you to Australia for three months, no way. So Bill Laswell called he had mad credibility. He was considered untouchable. Like no, you know, you don't call Bill Laswell. He calls you. You know, record companies bag him to do records and he says no to everything. And he said, you know, Randy Phillips told me that he turned down four hundred grand to produce Simple Minds for Randy to do my record for forty grand, you know what I mean.

It was like, so Laswell called and that's why I went to New York and I recorded with Laswell in New York with that whole scene that you know he had did Public Enemy and I mean, I mean a Public Image and Johnny Lyden, all these different records that became my whole start as a solo artist or recording artist.

So I was on tour opening for Joe Satrianni, which was which was both a blessing and a curse because I was gone from doing twenty thousand seaters with rod full of supermodels and movie stars and people like screaming and going crazy to opening for Joe Satrianni in front of about three thousand, five hundred to five thousand people a night, sold out everywhere, and it was pretty much three thousand, It was pretty much four thy nine hundred ninety nine guys and maybe one girlfriend, and it was

dudes and they would just stare at your neck and they would stare at my fingers, you know, and then they'd yell, oh, he plays panatonics, and I was like, I don't even know what a panatonic is. I never took a lesson. So it's like it was no fun, but it made me a real It established me as a guitar player that was a serious guitar player in the world. And that's sort of like it was. It

was not fun for me. So the record didn't sell well because Warner's was losing it, so they couldn't the distribute distributor was losing it so they couldn't just shit with it, and PolyGram couldn't touch it for six months. So I really fell through the cracks in America and I and I never recovered, but I almost I almost recovered when Charlie Miner called me on my second album.

for Omaguy and the Derandauran tour and Charlie Miner. You know, he'd come up and it was like he was like the Godfather or some shit man mine was. So he was like, you know, the man, and so in dubious dubious of course. So I get a call. Charlie's wants to meet you. He's got some kind of production deal. He's going to sign you, and he's going to make this a number one record. And I'm finally nineteen ninety four, I'm going to break through. I'm going to get my

due in America. And I'm supposed to go see him on a Monday. And this is a true story about I call up on the Friday. I call up on the Monday and I'm saying okay, guys to his assistant and she answers the phone that she sounds really strange, and she tells me the story how that weekend, Charlie's girlfriend caught him with another girl literally and walked in the room and shot him dead. And do you remember when that happened.

assumed I bombed or you know, I don't know. Steve Luca there used to ask people because he lived up my street, or Stevie getting all that money for that Mercedes Benz or whatever, he thought I was a drug dealer. I think.

I would just because there's this huge I wish, I mean, like people ripping my hair out, and and I did well in Germany, and I did well in France and and you know, but it's just I would have liked to have I would like to have had that, you know, a couple albums that sold a few million copies in the States, because in right now I could probably go make you know, one hundred grand a night playing all the festivals still to this day, you know, and now I can only do that in a couple of countries.

But I wish that I could every summer go out and do my lallapaloozas and do all that shit, you know. And that's what not having success in America gets you. You don't get that ride where. But you know, I'll tell you something else. In the two thousandth fix, I started working at American Idol, and that's when things were really different because we would have an artist I remember doing Jordan Sparks. We sold two million albums and they drop her the next year, So things really changed later on.

So you know, you could sell two million albums and still nobody give a shit.

this stuff that I wrote back in the nineties. My dream is some country person's gonna cut one of them and it's gonna go number one, and I'm gonna get make up fortunes and leave my kid with a ton of money. That's what I's That's my dream.

lot of booze and a lot of drugs. And I had my friend and I used to go to Africa on Safari and she'd come and we do all these things together. And she got to the point where she was going to be too old to have a child, and she was going to have to maybe go to a clinic. And I thought to myself, when am I ever going to be able to get it together? So I said, let me help you, because I knew she'd be a fantastic mother, and and it changed my life. It saved my life. You know. I I work my

ass off now. And I love working, and I got a kid, you know, and to take care of it, I have to set an example. And and she's an incredible mother. And and we we know we live on you know, I got a house here in Austin. It's you know, five thousand square feet. And she was one side and I live on the other. And we're mom and dad. We do things together as a family, but

we're not a couple. But you know, and my kid's always known what's going on, and we have we have a good time, and my kid's doing amazing.

his mother was adamant. He had to go to a Waldorf School, And so we went and toured Waldorf schools in Toronto and Burlington and East Aurora, New York and places where. Because I lived in a place called Niagar around the lake, this little town where the War of eighteen twelve was spot and I was also then working at the Smithsonian. I took a job at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian where I created the exhibit that later would become the film Rumbled the Indians

of Rock the World. So I was flying in and out of DC, and I was shooting a lot of stuff that was ended up in the movie Rumble, and I went to Austin to shoot one of these Jimmy Hendricks experienced things and talked to Janie Hendrix about Jimmy, and you know, I talked to a lot of guys. Brad Whitford and they're all my different friends that I've had forever in the music business were there. And while in Austin, I ran into a lot of my old music business friends that were that, you know, chewed a

lot of the same dirt as me. And when you have somebody that really knows what you went through, it's a lot easier to communicate because a lot of people didn't get that life. So my neighbor's Charlie Sexton, you know who. Charlie and I were pal since I was in rod Stewart, you know. And Charlie was playing with Bob Dylan at the time. And I bought a house around the corner, and his kid was going to the

same school. And Marty, Marty McGuire from the Dixie Chicks, her daughter was in my son's class, and that Waldorf was happening and it was a great price in Walt and Austin had still had music then before it got the tech takeover. And I bought a house here right next to the school. We just said we're moving to Austin. So that's what we did.

And I remember calling Great Cabin, one of my Seinfeld buddies, and I say, hey, I just bout a house. It was two hundred and fifty three thousand dollars. He's like what, I goes, Yeah, he goes what He's like, he just you know, now that house is probably two million bucks. But it's like, you know, it was this little town that was so cool and every and there's all these people around and it was like they had great restaurants

and there's music everywhere. But all of a sudden, Allehandra Escaveto had to move out and Junior Brown's gone, and nobody could afford. The rents went bonkers. The rents were nuts, and then the housing prizes went nuts because the tech people kept coming in. And you know, tech people, they don't have a realistic idea of money. Someone gives them a ton of stock, and then they're like, okay, that seems cheap, and they have no A lot of them have no artistic sense. There's no style, so they all

look the same. I'm pretty soon every place you'd look downtown had every guy had a beard, and they sit there with an ipa and I couldn't even find a corona anymore. But my kid was doing so good in school. I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to get out of here because my kid is all about my kid. So I'm still here because he's now at sophomore in high school.

then you can multiply it by twenty. And I have no fascination with anything. I've never had a hard time with any stuff. So for me, when we're at home, we're all about being mom and dad, and I don't ask her what she does, and she doesn't ask me what I do, And my priority is him and her to make sure they're taking care of it. Everything's great.

I work, she stays home and she takes care of our son and he gets a full time mom and I work my ass off, and when he turns eighteen, I'll probably buy two houses and put him in a trust and she can live where in it as she wants. And everything's about him. Everything's about him. So we don't have any of those issues, and I don't at least.

when I was young. And later on he said, do you know David Kershenbaum And I said, I hadn't know the name from reading it on liner notes? You know me and liner notes? Did I read liner notes and liner notes life? I feel bad for kids today. They don't have liner notes to understand who's doing what. But David Kussebaum's you know Joe Jackson. The first two Joe Jackson albums are like bibles to me. I love him, so of course I know. You know David kushimbamb Is.

He wants to meet me because he's looking. He got a studio called Power Tracks on Kouwanga there next to next to the old Shandhara, and he was need some help and so he met me and that's when he said. What happened was they had known I'd played with Parliament Funkadelic. They there's a guy called Gene Page who used to do all the arrangements from the big Motown stuff. There's Geen Page was this Motown arranger. You know, he did Love Unlimited Orchestra, you know, for Berry White and all this,

do all the string stuff and everything. You know, he's a genius. And he had these sixteen year old rapper kids and they were called uh I forget what they're called right now, but there were these two kids. It's

sixteen years old and they rapped. And in nineteen eighty seven, I don't care what anyone says, no, not that many people in LA were knowing what was going on with rap music was much bigger in New York and nobody was dealing with Doctor Dray then, because he had a band called the La Dream Team and you'd listen to the Stevie Wonders station called kjla's Kind of Joy, Love and Happiness KJLH, and you'd hear the dream Team, The Dree dream Team is in the house, you know, and

they sampled. Everybody used the sampler. All of a sudden was new, the new sampler and blah blah blah. And I kind of got into that stuff because I liked one DMC. Like I said before, So David Kushier mom says, I need someone who knows about rap music. They to just call it rap music. And I go, I do. I got it, And I know these two kids Gene

Page introduced me to, so David didn't know. So David had me come in the studio and it was a movie called Big Shots and he was the music supervisor for it for Lori Mar I think it was or something. So I cut this song called put on the Brakes

with the two rappers. They used it in the movie and in the Atlantic signed I put out a twelve inch and so now now it's and it says produced by David Kirshienbaum and Stevie No Wonder Solace because my nickname was No Wonder back thanks Bootsy Collins used to call me Stevie No Wonder And and all of a sudden, David's like, come on, let's keep going. So then I start working. He's got in the studio at that time, he was doing what's his name, the guy with the glasses.

It's saying somedays some way, Oh, Marshall, Marshall Crenshaw. So he's producing Marshall Crenshaw. And he has me working in the studio from seven pm until you know, whenever. I drop all night every night on soundtrack stuff. So the next movie we get is this one called it was called Action Jackson with Carl Withers and Vanity and they need more rap songs, so I bring in bring in the boys again, you know, And I do another one and it becomes another twelve inch for Atlantic. It says

produced by David Kirshiabamb and Stevie Solace, you know. And so I this time, now it's eighty seven, I'm producing them there and I'm cutting my demos at night in the studio when it's empty. I can work there whenever I want. And uh, he comes to me one day, David Kushimbaum, and he says to me, we got to go see this band that we have to produce because they want him in the bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure soundtrack album. And I really didn't know much about Bill

and Ted's excellent Adventure. Nobody did. Really. It wasn't like some blockbuster budget or anything, you know, and uh, it was a Delentis picture and it got dropped. They dropped it, and I think Lormar somebody again picked it up or vice versus something like that was Lormar and the delarent just picked up with it. But we never even thought it was going to come out. But he made me go see this band, and I had to produce them. And I had no say in it. David said produce him.

I had to produce them. And it was a band called Warrant. You remember Warrant this they had worn Cherry Pie. Yeah, it was way before Cherry Pie. So the Warrants this big buzz band in Hollywood and they're you know, they're playing everywhere, and I kind of like poison or whatever. And I hated that kind of music because again I thought the eighties hair metal, you know, unless it was you know, I liked the bon Jovi, you know, because the songwriting was so good on you know, you give

love a bad names. But I hated the whole thing. There was a million of those eighties bands that are just horrible, you know, and they're horrible, and I didn't like Warrant, but I tell David, David, I do I got to do it, because yeah, you got to do it. So I go to the rehearsal with David and those kidchers my age, you know, I'm the same age as then, and I met him and I fell in love with him.

They were the most amazing, amazing guys. They were just wonderful, enthusiastic and sincere, and they worked really hard and they wanted to be great. They had no egos. And ironically, you saw the last week or whatever, I got to San Diego Lifetime Achievement Award and you're talking about at the music thing there in San Diego, like, and Jerry from Warrant showed up. I saw him backstage. He came to see me. Yeah, one hundred years later, right. So

I produced Warrant for the soundtrack for Kushimbaum. Aaron Jakovis was trying to sign him at A and M and Columbius came in and swooped up and signed him, and so we pulled them off the Bill and Ted's soundtrack. So now I'm not thinking about Bill and Ted for a while I'm working on another shit for David and my own stuff, and it was not was and I get it. David comes up to me in the office. I go in the office of power tracks and he goes, okay,

this movie Bill and Ted. They're realizing that the soundtrack the score, not the soundtrack. I'm sorry, the score. It's a story about these two kids that would want to be in a rock band and they play rock guitar, and it's all about this guitar and this rock and roll and there's not one ounce of rock and roll in the score. In the score, and Amos Newman's Amos Newman's brother I think did the score. It was either Amos Newman's brother or Amos Newman's cousin. I forget Amos

told me which one it was. I just can't remember. So they hired me. Stephen Herrick was the director and he'd only done one other movie, okay, Stephen Herrick that went on to do you know mister Holland's Opus, and I think he did one hundred and one Dalmations and he didn you know, Three Musketeers and rock Star. You know, he did a ton of shit, but this was he

was still young. So he had this soundtrack and this music in there, and it was like it was like a traditional score, and between me and you was kind of a crappy score. It sounded like something I could have done on a fair light, even though they used an orchestra. You know, it just wasn't great. No disrespect to Ames's cousin, but it just wasn't great. So I rescored the whole film and played guitar over the score.

I rescored over the score, which is really weird, right, And then I also had to do the score where they were jumping around and didn't know how to play you know, Bill AND's head, and I was really took. I took it very serious. Everything that I did when they were jumping around and the guitar and trying, and I saw, I'm so horrible. Well, everything I did it sounded horrible to me, sounded fake. It sounded like a cocky,

egotistical guy trying to play like a dummy. And I felt like I was making fun of Bill and Ted and I didn't like that, And I know that sounds nuts, but I felt like I was disrespecting them, those characters by just trying to be I look at how shitty I am. And so I ended up. What I ended up doing was I turned my guitar upside down and I played it left handed. So when you see those parts in the movie and it sounds I'm actually trying to play chords and I'm trying, but it sounds like shit.

And that's how I did the wild stallions. Okay, so then that's over, and i'd score over. I score over this Robbie rob song and do because they really wanted you too, and they couldn't get YouTube, so they got Robbie rob song called in Time, but they wanted me to put so I put all this guitar over the

top that was like like the edge. So it's only in the soundtrack that way, and there's no version of that that exists other than the soundtrack version, which became this cult internet cult classic of Robbie Robin Time featuring Stevie Solace. That version, I don't know why, so you can find it online. It's still like it's got a

whole massive fan base just for that weird version. But he says the movie's done, it not testing well, the ending's not testing well, you know, and I'm like, okay, I don't even know what that means really, because I'm stupid kid. And he goes, Steven wants us to go into the Palisades and on Monday night or so whatever it was, and we're going to shoot this new ending and I need you in it. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, they want you to play some kind of guitar solo. I go, okay, So we

go to the Palisades. They got somebody's house, and they got the phone booth in the garage, and they got all this. You know, the set decorator made this person's garage look like the set of Bill and Ted. It was in a garage, and and Keanu, who was completely unknown then, and the other guy I'm blanking on his name right now. They were all there, and George Carlin was there, and so they dressed me in George Carlin in a matching outfit. And I got to share the share of a dressing

room Winnebago with George Carlin. So me and George Colin would sit there all night, and he told me the most insane stories I asked him about. I go went out a little kid. I saw you walk out on like like the Grammys or Academy Awards or something, and they go, ladies and gentlemen, George Carlin, and he walked out and he stood at the microphone and he didn't say one word, not one word, and it was dead silent.

I mean dead silent for like at least it felt like an eternity, and all of a sudden, one person kind of goes, and then another person, and then by the end of it, everyone was laughing, and he just says, thank you very much, and he walked off the stage. I don't know if you ever saw that, but it was like an keep going. You got to find it. And he said to me, he goes, Oh my god, he goes. He goes, I had a plan, he goes, He told me the whole thing. He says, I was

going to try this experiment. He goes, but I had a bail at it one minute and he says, I was dying. I was standing there, just dying, because he was standing there at the mic just kind of looking at people, just kind of looking around, looking at people and not saying anything. And he said he was dying, and right before he broke he heard that first laugh. So he goes, hold on, just hold on. Then he heard the second he goes, okay, to hold on, and then he said he felt the confidence and just not

say anything. And so I was one of the most fascinating nights of my life. So then after that, Stephen Harrett calls they they stand me on a soap box and Keanu and Alex Winter and the two girls they stand around me and they're staring at me and they're shooting me from the neck down. Okay, now it's like September. So and I surf and I'm at the beach olch so my hands and I'm a Native American and my hands are dark brown. Keep that in mind. My hands

are dark brown. They shoot me from the neck down, and I go, what do you want me to play? And Steven goes, I don't know, just something crazy, and so I think. The first thing I think of is the opening chord to Eruption No I, A big a chord. And then I just go and I think this is a comedy. I don't take it seriously as a musician. I think it's a comedy. And I just start moving my fingers in the most crazy way and I'm playing air guitar. Okay, it's just air guitar and I'm moving him.

If you're look at like new stuff that you would never do. And it was like I was trying to be ridiculous. And then I finished that, and then they have George stand on the box and he holds the guitar, and then they picture his face. He's doing all his facial expressions that you see in the movie. And now if you look, now, George Carlin's neck is as white as a ghost, and so is his face. And then

look at the hands, they're almost black. Okay, now you'll notice it, and you'll be like, I never noticed that, And so that it's always been my big joke I laugh about. So we do this thing, and the next day I go back to Kirshienbaum's studio to power tracks, and I got a score ahead. I got a score to what I did. And so all I did was I watched my fingers and I played in this. I just tried to emulate exactly what I was doing and just followed my fingers. It was no no mathematics involved.

I never took a lesson, so it certainly wasn't I'm going to go from this to that to this kind of movement and nothing. It was just nonsense cut till the movie comes out. The solo at the end becomes the iconic thing. And now every Bill and Ted movie has like the next one with Steve Vai, and then the third one was just somebody else. And it all

started as a joke. Now I'm in London hanging out with Jimmy Dunlap, you know, I don't know, sometime ten years ago or twelve years ig, I don't know what it was been, and I'm having a drink in the afternoon and they had a barn and soho, and these kids came up and wanted my autograph from London and they go, we're studying at the Conservative yor some music thing there, and they said, our fine, our whole thesis is based on what you did in Bill and Ted.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, what did I do? And they go, well, you know, you go from a pan of time to a you know, mix, a loading to a blah blah blah and then back up to a ball and I'm like look, and I'm going wow. I didn't have the heart to tell them I just played air guitar, but they analyzed what I did, so again, was I smarter than anybody else? Or am I the

dumb ass and the jokes on me? Maybe I was channeling shit that was this cool and I had no idea, and I should just shut my mouth because they seem them they seem to think it's fascinating, and I was like, I don't even know what the hell it is. The segrets just purely so kind of like you become kind

of legendary in a funny way when I die. I was hanging out with Kunta Reeves just a few months ago in Austin, and I took Charlie Sexton, and I took the actor Graham Green to meet Keanu and went to a show and Kan and I were talking because they had just done Bill and Ted three or it just came out the year before them, and I said, you know what, I'm gonna do all these things like Jagger and blah blah blah and rumble and whatever they

and they're on my tombstone. It's gonna say I'm the guy that did Bill and Ted.

Terrence Trent Darby. His name is Sonona Maitreya now he changed his name and I actually just had lunch of them in Italy about three four weeks ago. But he he calls me and he's in La now, and so I go work on his album and then Michael Lipman says, you got to be Terrence's music director. We're going on tour Grand Rand and I'm like okay, So you know, so I go do that for a year and I'm and now I'm an MD. So I'm producing records and I'm a music director and I'm the guy in charge

of hiring people. So every musician's like up my ass because they all want gigs and it seems like I just had my pick of all the gigs, and I had had it this way for a long time. You know. It's just really lucky, really really lucky. And I have music directs still to this day, tons of stuff. You know.

of that shit. And so he arranged. Morty arranged for me and Ivan Neville to meet because he hadn't recorded his first record. If my ancestors could see me now, and then they saying that Dan Reid network. So they had all these diverse multicultural bands. Dan Reid had a couple African Americans in the band, and Ivan was an

African American, a part native played Creole. You know, they had all these people of color, and so Mordy started hearing my demos, and Morty signed me, and he signed me before I joined Rod Stewart and he started developing me. And so I was with Bill Graham, and I got to tell you, Bill Graham, there was only two people that I was ever starstruck around. Maybe a little bit when Bowie would come talk to me. I was a little bit because I was just love Bowie so much,

but really uncomfortably starstruck. I was always really uncomfortably starstruck when Bill Graham would come sit with me and talk. Because Bill was just like he had this in charisma. A lot of people hated him, like Rod stories to that guy's are very blaslah blah. But I thought he was the most fascinating guy and I thought he was hilarious and he would I felt just I was all geeked up around him all the time. He was like

he had so much star power, you know. And the other guy was really geeked up around was George Harrison. George Harrison sitting at my table and buy me drinks, and I'd be like, I just I just lose my cool completely. But Bill Graham had that effect on me.

like a bunch of dummies. And you know, now if you go see the Walk to Dinosaur video or spying a house eleven and all that, you'll see me back there going, oh fuck, that's Stevie.

especially for me. You know, rent back then in Hollywood was probably three hundred dollars for a cool house, you know. So it was I didn't know how much I wasn't getting rich. I'll tell you that I didn't start. I didn't have real money till I joined Rod Stewart, and then all of a sudden it was like, oh my god. You know, if you could make three thousand dollars a week. When I was a kid, it was like unheard of money, unheard of money. Then I found out all my friends

were making ten thousand a week. I didn't know though. For me, three thousand. I was out of my mind.

the only musician invited. And I became a part of this private little group of clubs and we were all inside it, and we hired each other and we only we John Mark's, you know, And I'm going to play Fuji Rock Fest? Can you can you help me with the contract? Yeah, I come over with you know. It was like that. It was like we were like goodfellas and we'd help each other. And I got a phone call from Stirling mclewain, who was managing He was already

done managing Hanson, I think at that particular time. He says, you know, I'm getting a call from from nineteen Entertainment and they want me to come over there and work with this kid called Daughtry maybe and manage them, and said And at this particular time in the early two thousands, I worked with a girl called Lamya who was in Duran Duran and she was in soulda Soul and Peter Edge att signed her and it was a Clive Davis thing.

And I had to go to New York and I music directed it, and I really got into this whole thing because I loved that Clive Davis would come into a room and he would talk to me about what we were doing, and everyone make tuckshit after he left. Oh what do you mean? Clive says, you know, take it up, take it up, and I go, you guys don't get it. I know what he means. You know, you know Clive. I loved it. I loved having that kind of power around me and I listened to I

never thought Clive was a goof. I thought clyd was amazing. And so all of a sudden, Sterling goes to Idol. He says, I need you to help me with Daughtry. So I came and I started working at nineteen and my first guy, I was a music director and a consultant for nineteen and a music director for Chris Daughtry. And we started to plan early. He started to planning, well, how are we going to market this kid? Where are the songs coming from, what's his band going to look like?

You know, who's just you know, all of that kind of stuff. How are we going to deal with this? And I was so I'd sit in and I was in all those meetings with the Imperia and everybody, and we come out with Daughtry and we sell five million records. And I put this whole thing together and taught them all how to play the songs because Phil X, and my dear friend Phil X had played did the album,

and he's an insane guitar player. So I'd have to teach these guys how to play the parts, you know, because they couldn't figure it out, because a lot of that shit was tricky, and Clyd Davis would call again all of a sudden, you know, I wouldn't want to do IDL And when it started, I thought it was lame. I hated and Mick Jagger wouldn't have called me if I was the guy who worked at American Idol in two thousand and three or whatever it was. But in two thousand and six, the writing was on the wall.

The music business was in a free fall, and IDOL was the biggest thing in town in two thousand and six, biggest. It was just big. And so I took that gig and instantly clid d you know, talking to Clive Davis again, and I'm talking to big guys again, and I'm back in that game that you know, well, you know, you got to do something every four years to keep in that game where people take your phone calls or they call you. And I was back in that game and

we sold a ton of records with Daughtry. So then I came back next year and I did Jordan's Sparks and we sold a couple million with her, and with her she was seventeen, so I actually played guitar in the band until I until she turned eighteen. Then I hired a kid to take my place and we went out with Alicia Keys. And then into the next year, I did David Cook, which was really fun because David

was just a sweet kid. It was like tried to make it his whole life, and all of a sudden he was the most famous guy on the planet, and you know, he was just like, oh what do I do? He didn't know what to do. And I enjoyed mentoring those guys, you know. And then the last year, I

took three idols. I had Alis and Irita, and I had Chris Allen who won, and I had Adam Lambert who was just a wild card, and I pretty much took over all of SR and I had all the idols in there, and I was running the whole thing, and that was a crazy year. But those four years and I was there, there was the highest rated show in the world, I think, And and the next year I left. The next year because all the winners were country, and I don't know anything about country music, but it

looked like and the ratings started going down then. So in the bullshit word of World of Hollywood, it kind of looked like Stevie Laft and are not doing so good now, right, you know people actually think stupid shit like that, And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know it is I'll ride that.

brought in Stirling mackawin. So I would come in about a first quarter of the series and I could go down on set if I wanted, and I could do it. But I hated that stuff, if you really want to know the truth, I just thought it was like it was like babysitting or something. It was like the TV show. But what was good about it was I could take people on set or I could do you know, being seen reminds people that you got power in that town.

And so on the final the Big Idol finales, when I could roll in backstage and you'd see anybody who's anybody, or I'd have my idol playing at the Jingle Ball and you know, all the heads of Disney and everybody and their kids are backstage. You know, I had power and everything in that town. You know, I don't know about now, but everything back then was about perceived power, and I had power. You know, I wouldn't have to sell millions and millions of albums and I still have power.

You know. MC Jagger would call me on the phone. I gave me power, you know.

and sing to him. He was a baby. We used to stop rehearsal with Adam Lambert so Adam could so my son could play on his drum set for ten minutes. You know. You know, it's like my son's like whatever. You know, he didn't give a shit. Steven Tyler texts my son and they talked about this his Skibbles commercial, and he's just like, yeah, whatever. You know, my son grew up in it. You know, he's got no fascination with it or cares about it at all. But so I started touring Europe. I'd go off and do gigs

like with Steven Tyler, with Billy Gibbons. They'd call me and I'd come play guitar with with those guys. When and then I was always pretty famous in Japan. So I got a call in twenty sixteen from a guy called Koshi Inaba and he's in a band called the Bees, and he's the biggest selling artist in the history of Japan. He sold over one hundred million records just in Japan. And he was a friend and he loved my records and I used to play on his solo albums and

we were just friends. And he calls me in twenty sixteen and he says, I'm really burned out. I'm uninspired. I can't write a song. I'm kind of depressed. He goes, you think you'd want to come over, you know, and maybe try writing some songs with me, And I'm like yeah. So I jump on a plane, I go to Tokyo and we start writing. And I said, let's not write Stevie solo songs with the Koshi Nava singing. Let's not

write Koshi Nava songs with STEVEE. Sauas playing guitar, because we kind of did that throughout our the you know, in the nineties and stuff, you know, we did that. I go, let's think about this, let's think about a concept. I go, and when I was in England, in eighty seven eighty eight, everything had this funk feel. Durand Tears for Fears. They all had slap bass, boom boom, you know, like it was not was the funk bass that slapped,

but it wasn't black music. It was like this pop swore of music that kind of rocked like Duran Durant, but it all had this synthetic synthesizer bass. It was kind of like fun, but it wasn't funk. And I had slapping bass, and and I go, let's let's write songs with that groove so the girls can dance. And I go, and let's make all the guitars sound like the Clash. It's just just go back, and let's make him sound raty, like we're in the Clash, because he

loved the Clash, and let's do what happened. So we started writing songs and it was really fun, and he started having fun. So we'd go to Nackville and we'd worked on some songs and we'd fly to LA and I'd have Taylor Hawkins play drums. I don't know if you know that, but I discovered Taylor Hawkins. I'm the guy that discovered him.

five thousand seaters. And they put the tickets on sale. We called it a Naba Solace and it sold out and I'm not lying every it was sold out within three minutes. And I went over there and so I got to put my own band together. So I hired Stuart Zender from Jamikoy to play bass, am fiddler again from Parliament Funkadelic, who was was not Wes and we

ever had to play synth. And Matt Sharad who I worked with a ton who was a remixer and a producer and he was the drummer for Beck and the drummers for Crowded House, and I put this super band together with me and I Naba and we went and played and people went crazy. So we came back, took a year off when he went back to his bad bees because they could do, you know, ten nights at the Tokyo Dome. And we came back and did another

album in twenty twenty, and we booked it. This time, we booked another tour, and this time it was multiple nights at Castle Hall, multiple nights. You know, it was twenty thousand seaters now doing multiple nights. We sold eighty five thousand tickets in four minutes and I go over I shoot the cover of Rolling Stone. So I'm under cover of Rolling Stone for the first time of my life with me and in Aba and Covid hits. Whole tour cancels. We rebook it for twenty twenty one. We

still can't do it. We ended up sending all the money back for the eighty five thousand tickets. It was a lot of money, Bob, a lot. I was like buy a new house money. And and we haven't remade it up yet and we're hoping maybe in twenty twenty five I'm gonna go back, so I'll have to lose some weight and to try to, you know, make it happen.

So yeah, that's what I've been doing. And that's big, big, big stuff because it's multiple arenas again, and you know, it feels good when you can sell twenty thousand tickets.

But I was really adamant. I had thought Wayne had put a band together with some really great musicians, guys you know from Soundgarden and a bunch other you know guys that you know from the eighties and nineties that were famous guys. But they all thought the MC five was it was just brutality and punk rock force. They just think that because it's one of the these one of the inventors of punk rock. They give him that credit, but if you really listen to the MC five, they

were they were trying to be a soul band. They were trying to be an R and B band with distorted guitars, and they were failing miserably and creating something completely new and original by accident. So so Wayne and I realized that nobody was playing the music right, and it bothered him. So him and I started going back to the actual original masters. And I had listened to to fred Sonicsmith's parts, and I'd listened to what Wayne was doing. And Wayne and I would sit there with

just two guitars like kids, not even plugged in. It was like going back to being a kid again. And Wayne and I would go through these parts and figure out why they worked and what made them work. And so when we went out on that tour, we really slam. It was amazing. I mean, people were saying, Mike Caller and guys like there was, you know, Stevie dan Zance was the best, one of the best shows they'd ever seen. Definitely the best MC vibe show they had ever seen,

you know. And so I was going to go back with Wayne. The album was getting ready to come out, and then, as you know, Wayne passed away out of the blue, just unannounced, fast, just like he was gone. And but we were going out this year and we're going to do tons of festivals and big shows. And it was a real shame because now he's going in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he's not here, and you know, it's it's a bit of a crush. But I do stick with them sometimes, you know.

playing in Paris. Oh my god, don't tell me it's empty. You know, those anxieties are real and when you know your shows are all sold out and you've got a captive audience that just worships you. I mean, it's a lot more fun. I mean, you know, the MC five we're playing small places, and there was MC five worshippers there, but it wasn't like We're playing like Lollapalooza or something. You know.

I really love developing television. I love developing films because I don't know what I'm doing and it's scary and it's therefore it's exciting. Where in music, I kind of feel like, you know, Bowie could call me and I know what to do, and I know what to do, and I really know what to do, you know, I know what the sound should sound like. And I know where the energy comes from. You know, I said in my speech last week in San Diego for that big award I got, I said, I never thought my job

as a guitar player was to play notes. I thought my job was to move energy. And I've always felt that way. And that's what I do when I play with these guys. I try to create energy.

That was his first movie he ever wrote. But he's done gigantic. He's a gigantic showrunner. He did the series Marco Polo on Netflix, and so he's the showrunner with me and my partner writing partner's guy called Kevin Monroe, who wrote and directed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Miramax, and he had done my son's favorite movie, Ratchet Klank. So I got this insane team of people, and as usual, I'm the shittiest guy in the room. I'm the stupidest guy in the room, and that's where I want to be.

These guys are beasts, and so I'm working on that right now or shopping that around. It's a series. It's like a Native American Godfather or the Sopranos kind of a thing about a family that you know, you know, can face down another season of being on welfare on the reservation and they discover what sovereign law means and they learn how to create their own tobacco supplies instead of smuggling for the big tobacco into Canada. They'd learned

how to do it themselves. And you know, it's like the Brofmans who were who were literally bootleggers and then became a legitimate business and became very powerful. And it's a story about a Native group that does this. It's called Smoke River and I hope I get to make that series, and I hope soon because it's kind of, you know, John Fusco said, as he said, it's a game changer. And I got a couple more things like that.

I work with Robert Stromberg, who directed in The Lificent But I actually grew up with Robert and Carlsbad, California. We had rival rock bands. And then you know, Robert did Avatar and all these other He got five Academy Award nominations. And so I worked with Robert and and when we work with a group, a lot of group of Native Americans. I had a new two films that premiered at tiff and you know, Rumble one Sun Dance, and I got nominated for an Emmy for Rumble as well.

So I'm an Emmy loser, official Emmy loser. Well you know what it is. And they saying that he's an Emmy nominated producer. That just means you lost. If you really think about it, people always say, come on, man, it's you nominate to lose. You know, They're like feel like, I'm like, I'm serious, and I'm like, na, Emmy loser sounds so punk rock. I just think it's so cool.

I was listening to Hendrix. I was listening to led Zeppelin, so ironically weird when I hang out with Jimmy Page, but I can still remember the day, being in the third, you know, first grade or something, whenever it was listening in good times, bad times, you know, hanging out with playing with Steven Tyler, and I can remember being in the back of the van and and my brother in law and his friends are all, you know, in their twenties playing me get your Wings into It's just it's

just all a complete mind blowing thing for me. That you know. When I got this award last week, you talked about Billy Gibbons, ro Robin xandervitt, Rick Nielsen and Sammy Hagar all made their own homemade iPhone videos and set it in and they put it into the the the video that they played before they introduced me, and it's like all of a sudden san Diego, like, damn you, there's some good star power. And then Matt's arm came

down to introduce me. And so having these kind of guys in my life that I worshiped as a kid that actually talk to me like a peer, now, that's to me the greatest reward of everything, better than money, better than than anything. To me, that's just like, that's to me is the dream. That's the real dream.

You know. I lived in San Diego, an Oceanside done, you know where Tony Hawk and the Flying Tomato, you know, Sean shown White and the greatest surfer Joey Brand who you know won the pipeline. I said, I was around all these kind of energy, that kind of energy, and my guitar playing felt like that same, like it all made sense with all of that, and so I kept playing. So then I got a band. I was in the band and I just played vis the guitar. But I was good. Wasn't great? It was good then that band

more when I was still in high school. All the guys were older than me, a year two older than me, and we became the hottest band in San Diego. I mean we would play everywhere and it was like high school dances and colleges and girls were screaming like We're the Beatles. And so I told my dad I didn't know what I was going to do with my life, but I said, Dad, I'm pretty good at this thing, and I go, let me give it till I'm twenty four years old. In twenty four I haven't made it.

I'm going to join the Coast Guard because I love the ocean, right. I'm from the beach, and I'm from the and I worked on fishing boats and I all want to join the coast Guard. So that's my out. And so my dad's like, okay, Luckily, I'm luckily I made it before the ad.

the marine base and he was in my life. And it was great because my stepdad was a hippie and my mom became a hippie and so, you know, we learned about you know, we'd go to the Paula Indian Reservation and they'd all everybody, all the families. We'd run around naked, and she was like hippie shit, you know, And I grew up in that. But my father was a disciplined man, and he was super cool, super cool. Not an asshole, but he he provided me with a

foundation of discipline. So when my mother and my stepfather split up when I was four years old, I was in fourth grade, I'm sorry. My mother went off the deep end. She had lost a child, and you know, and I and she went off the deep end and she was on prescription drugs and she disappeared. And I was a period of about four days, three days when I was by myself at the house because my older sister had left already too and and I was literally by myself. I have to dressed myself and get to school.

Was awful. And my dad showed up one day to check what are you doing? What checked on me? And I told him, whe's your mom's I haven't seen her, and he's get in the car. I moved. This is in fifth grade now. I moved to Oceanside and I'm moving with my dad. And we were like two bachelors, and he worked three jobs. And I never went back to live with my mom and she got it together. She figured herself out, and I bought her a house years later whenever he came and looaded, you know. But

I lived with my dad. My dad was really great for me. And then my dad ended up remarrying years later. And that's my stepmother who is still in my life. And my mom passed away at eighty seven, and my father passed away at eighty unfortunately he got cancer. But yeah, so I had him both in my life. And actually the combination of the hippie step dad and the discipline real dad was really fantastic. It was a really fantastic combination for me.

which sounds crazy now, but it's the fact. So nobody, nobody wanted to be a Native. You could be a Native in those days, and if somebody raped you, or somebody kidnapped you, or somebody killed you, it was not priority number one to figure out where you were. And essentially nuts to me. And I didn't know about any of this stuff until I got older and started learning about it. You know. So a lot of people, there's a lot of Native people like Robert Trhillo from Metallica,

Randy Castillo, who was in Rumble from Ozzie. A lot of US pat vegas from from uh, you know, saying come and get your love from from Redbone. A lot of US guys in America grew up Taboo from Black Eyed Peas. We grew up not really knowing who we were or a lot about our culture because we were in this mix everybody from the New Mexico Southwest area.

We're either trying to identify as Spaniards or Mexican or Chicano, and you know, you start to have to dig to make sure you know what Indian you were because because a lot of the older aunts and stuff. But deny it, I'm not a Savage. I remember my two aunts were arguing with my cousin Gilbert, and you know, she was one was saying we're Apache and the end she said, no, I'm not. I'm not a Savage. I mean and they were like losing their minds over this stuff. So it's

weird to think that this is still an issue. Right, So a lot of people don't know who they are.

I didn't know a lot about it. And like I said in Rumble, when I was losing my mind after Rod Stewart, when I was just so full of my own bs and I was so yeah, I was out of my mind. Everything was tequila and parties and chicks and rockstar shit. And Randy Castillo, who was the drummer of Ozzie, it was like me, and it was from New Mexico. My family's from New Mexico. And he said, he says, I got to take you to Indian Country. You're out of control. And I didn't know what that meant,

you know, Indian Country. And so I went with him and we went to Santa Fe and then he took me up to Taos, and that started me on this path in the early nineties of balance where I would lose my mind in La and I could go to Indian Country and kind of just not be, not trying to be some kind of badass rock star. I was just I was trying to be trying to be a

human being, right, And Randy was the same way. And then we'd go back to LA or New York or London or whatever we need rock stars and go play sports arenas and and that that's kind of how it was.

I was brought up on a reservation. There's a definite energy that has been passed down from generation to generation where the people are made to feel like they're worthless, made to feel like, hey, this isn't for me. This is maybe for them, but we don't get to do these kind of things. So I'd be like, hey, look at me, I did it. I remember these kids would tell me I was doing a TV series that I was producing and hosting in Winnipeg in two thousand and seven,

eight nine, ten or something like that. I did three seasons of it, and the Native kids would come to me and go, we want to do what you're doing, but they won't let us. And I'd say, like, who are they? Because whoever they are, they let me, you know, and they think of about that what I said. But I was brought up to believe that anything was possible.

I was brought up to believe that there's the King of England has his blood is not better than my blood, And I'm not buying any of that kind of bullshit. And I was brought up to believe that. You know, I don't think that he has royal blood and I have bullshit blood, you know. I challenge all that, and I think that Native people now are finding more strength

and there's becoming more success. But there's still a lot of this feeling, especially on the poor reservations where you're living on welfare, then pretty much all you're getting in is all the food whatever they'll give you, and most of its gmode crap and a bunch of terrible stuff that's not good for you, you know. So there is a lot of problems with the diabetes and obesity, bad water.

I go into Indian reservations, Bradworter and I spend our own money and we hooked up with swear Water and we go into Indian country, these places where they don't have he can't drink the water, and we put in water filtration systems in there ourselves because we can't wait for the government any more to figure out the problems. So we do it ourselves, and then the government guys call us, hey, hey, what are you guys doing. It's like what can we do to help? And it's like

we're just doing it. Either don't come and do it with us, or we're going to do it Anyways, luckily my partner and that and where he works on Six Nations there were very well financed. So we're able to if we have to spend forty thousand dollars on water filtration systems and donate them through our Dream Catcher charity that we do in Six Nations, you know we can. We can get these things as we're very fortunate that way.

Mexican you could stay in farm in New Mexico. But if you're an Indian, you're gonna get shipped off, you know, so then we're not Indians. So there's a huge denial of My one friend Brian right McLoud who wrote that encyclopedia, told me, you guys are part of the lost Indians, that's what they call them. They don't know who we are, We don't know where we were. You know, we have the search fried you know where our family came from and how they identified and what they had to do

to survive. In Canada, their fronts, tons of programs where you're an artist, you want to make a film, you want to make a record, there's all these funds for not just Native people but for their citizens. You know, you can get funding to do all kinds of stuff through your tax dollars. So everyone goes your taxes are high, but you actually get a lot for tax dollars, you know what I mean. And so that's why you see a lot more development in the arts from the Canadian

Indigenous community. The Americans one just like here, you know it is it's it's if you can't sell something and make the money, then you can't you don't get money for it. You know, there's it's a lot harder to be successful in America. Than it is in Canada.

just think that's just ridiculous, but you know I had Marty. Yeah, wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.

so he shut it down. Well, there's a lot of that gatekeeper thing where oh, this girl's so popular with her music, and so warners or give her a record label, and she's supposed to help develop native stuff. Well she never had a hit record herself, or he never had to hit record themselves, So how are they supposed to

know if this guy's any good. So what they end up doing is they work with people who worship them and are their friends, and anybody that might be a threat, that might be more popular better than them, maybe they push away where I again, not that I'm not trying to brag. I want to be the dumbest guy in the room. I want to surround myself with the baddest ass dudes there are. But if I surround it with you, I'm gonna try to eat you alive. I'm gonna try my best to eat you alive to prove that you

are the best. And otherwise I'm gonna eat you alive, and I'm gonna get bored with you. You know, And me and my friends do this, Phil X and I and Richie Kotts and all those guitar player guys. We love each other and we respect each other. But when we get on that stage, man Philo embarrass me or I'll try my best to like, I'm not gonna be crappy.

I'm gonna kill them, you know what I mean. It's like, I think there's competition, but up there, instead of finding competition, what they do sometimes is they surround themselves with people who worship them. And that's no good for anybody.

the eighties. I think, you know, they're you know, and these things are like a victim films, you know, and people need to know the history. So you have to make these victim films, but non native people who are gatekeepers that get to decide what shows get made. Oh, you know, it's like in spinal Tap when Artie Fluffkin says, Oh, kick my ass, it's my fault. Well, they're kind of like that. Oh, all white people are bad. We need to tell this story how we screwed you over, you know.

And if you really watch Rumble, Rumble the co director Catherine Bainbridge, and they kept reaching for the negative because they were angry, and there was negative, There was racism, there was all this stuff. And I kept pushing for a film about heroes. I don't want to film about victims, and a lot of the films that get made, unfortunately, and Rumble was the story of heroes. We really kept the victim thing out of it. You feel the victimness if you do it right, but you don't have to

harp on it. And we don't want to be victims, you know, we want to be heroes. And a lot of these films that get made now are still victims. Oh you got your ass kicked, and it doesn't leave you feeling like anything's better, If anything that makes you feel like I'm trying to releaeve some guilt or some shit if I'm non native and I don't like that. Reservation Dogs was at least it had a lightness to it that was fun. And the kid, the Pharaoh, the young kid, he's got so much star power. I love him.

He's doing a film right now in England. He texted me yesterday because, like you said, all the guys and all us native guys to know each Okay.

But I go see your friend's Ben and I suck, and I'd have to lie to them and I and I feel like when I was lying to them, like hey, man, you guys are great, I feel like they were looking in my eyes and telling me you could see I'm lying. So one day my friend Melvin Brandon Junior is from den Rey Network, says to me, Oh, you don't lie to them, you say, And when they say, hey, what'd you think of the show? You say, and you guys were up there doing it. And it got me off

the hook because it was positive. It didn't mean that I liked them, and I didn't have to lie, you know. So I got to tell you. You know, you print a lot of my letters. When I write write on some of the things you write about, which which some some of the guys around here are like, oh, your Bob's little little a little pal. You always post your letters,

and I'm like, yeah, I think it's cool. And then you post my letters, man, because you know, it means maybe I'm saying something that makes sense to some people with some brains. You know, you don't know, you know, so, but yeah, I get shipped sometimes because you post my letters, and some of the people in the business, you know, we are more. So we call doll your bob's a little pet. I get some shit for that, just so you know, you make it.

you know, but not like I'm the greatest. But also I think all those a lot of people have those desires and that drive and the push and they just don't get lucky. I just think I got lucky. And you know how it is if you connect, if you fall into one thing once I did George Clinton, like, let's just say it wasn't George Clinton. Let's say it was David Cassidy or something, which still would have been a job and he would have paid me, and I could have played in Vegas. Well, that wouldn't have worked.

George Clinton had so much credibility that it was George Clinton. You must be cool, okay. Keith Richards used to say, you know, this is a big thing that happened. One time. I got invited to Keith richards fiftieth birthday party before I knew him in New York. I was in New York City and walk in the door and it's very private, and the first guy I see is Bernard Fowler, who's like my brother. And Fowler looks me. He it was

blah blah blah. And then there's there's Clapton sitting there in Naomi Campbell and you know the whole thing, you know it is. And then I see Ivan Neville. Iven comes up gives me a big hug. Everything's cool. Keith Richards walks up, he shakes my hand, kind of gives me a hug and talks to me a bit and then he leads, and so I think I'm in. Keith likes me I'm in because you know, if Keith don't like you, there's nothing you can do. Man, it's gnarley,

you know. And when I was playing with Jagger, I used to yell, Mick, tell me what Stone songs were playing because I don't want I don't want to not know it and play it wrong and have Keith want to pull his knife out and stab me, you know, so, but Keith so, Keith walks away. Later on I find out Keith goes back to Bernard Fowler and he says, who the fuck is Salas? Is he cool? The Fowler? You know, he's not a hype guy. He's like, yeah, he's cool. Later on I find out he goes to

Ivan Neville, Who the fuck is Salas? Is he cool? Ivan never goes, yeah, he's my brother, He's cool. Then I got invited to sit at his table and you know, drink vodka. But you know, there's a thing about it that when you got to get in and you got it, you don't just get in and you can't be all bullshit, you know what I mean. And maybe you got to know how to fight, you know what I mean. Maybe you got to know how to tell someone to fuck off. You know, and not be an ass kisser, but you

got to be. You know, if you associate with the right kind of people, you you may not get rich or rise to the top, but you will get respect and and and when you lose that respect, like if I were have picked the wrong bands to play with. Okay, I'll tell you. Richie Cootson one of my best friends, insanely great guitar player. Early on, he joined Poison when c c de Bill quick. Okay, that didn't turn out so good. They wrote a few hits and then he went on his own again. Years later, he gets a

call to audition for Trent Resnor. You're Twiggy because Tweggy knows Richie's an incredible guitar player and incredible singer. Richie comes in auditions for him, blows Trent Resnor doesn't want him to come, but he comes, and he doesn't He does it as a favorite of Twiggy. He blows Trent Resnor's mind like he should because he's amazing. Trent Resner goes, Oh my god, he goes, I had no idea you

were going to be this good. He goes, I want to hire you, he goes, but I can't think of what I'm gonna say the first time a magazine or somebody interviews me and asks, what made you hire the guy from poison so Richie couldn't get that gig. So sometimes you gave, You make a wrong move and you pay for it for a long time.