Susanna Hoffs

And you know this is true for you know, I think why I'm addicted to listening to songs, why I obsessively watch movies, um, and and why I love novels. And I've been reading since I was a little girl, and it had always been kind of, um a dream to one day write a novel. I started one in nineteen eighty nine as the Bengals were winding down, but

then then I didn't really pursue it, you know. So suddenly and I'd written, and I've co written several screenplays, some of which have been optioned, but then they just sort of found themselves on a shelf in some studio in development. Hell. So, um, it was around I sort of embarrassed to say how long the process of me of me writing this novel has been but I'll be honest with you, it's the idea really came to fruition

in twenty fifteen. I was still doing Bengals shows and working on solo music, but it became an absolute passion. In fact, it was almost like a psychotic addiction to the process of writing the novel. I became completely cessed and immersed in it. Let's go back a chapter. You say you're a big reader. I hate to put people on the spot because their mind goes blank. But what have you read recently that you'd enjoyed? Well? I read, um, um, Well, I read Daisy in the Six Okay, I thought so,

and I've um, oh, gosh, you put me on the spot. Here. What there's all these books in my I should look at my phone. What's in my my phone? Here? Bear with me, because there's um I'm reading the love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois. Um. I just recently read Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany. It's extraordinary and I want to revisit in cold Blood. Um I just read I revisited Brideshead, revisited um oh, this is it.

I went on a deep dive of books that were turned into motion pictures that I loved so and I went in any even further in a kind of rabbit hole of books about teachers inspiring students, if that makes sense. So I recently reread or recently read for the first time, To Serve with Love by e Our Braithwait, and it's really great the novel because a movie only can show so much, you only have an hour and a half to tell the story. I revisited Muriel Sparks, Amazing, The

Prime of Miss Jane Brody. Oh, George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo. I'm glad I have my books in my phone, So there's those. Yeah. Oh, and I recently reread About a Boy by Nick hornby Nick hornby the great novelist and also lover of music, and had the great fortune to meet Nick a few about a month ago, and um and get a lot of play lists from him. He's he, like me, has an addiction to music. And I always say music is the beginning, middle, and end of every day, and I think that's true for Nick

Hornby anyway, I have like ten great playlists from him. Okay, one step at a time. You looked at your phone for the books you read or reading. Do you read digitally or do you read on paper? Well, I have to say, at age sixty four, my eyesight isn't what it was in my teens, nor my two empties. So um, yes, I have taken to reading on you know, e reader and I have a kindle, and then I'm obsessive about audiobooks. I love to be read too. What can I say?

Who doesn't? Okay? And a lot of people are readers who are sort of you know, inner focused and don't interact, have some social anxiety, etc. What's your personality? Well, I love connecting. That's why my novel is is kind of That's one of the themes of the novel. You know where we find ourselves in this planet we call Earth, and you know what, somehow, as humans, I just think we're meant to commune with each other. I love alone time again, disappearing into fictions of all forms, but I

also crave human connection. And I'm fortunate to have a great husband who just did all this tech support for me, and two great sons, Jackson and sam Roach, and my parents are still with me with us and um my brothers and my sisters in arms, the other Bengals, and so I feel very fortunate. But yeah, I think I think. Though it's solitary to read a novel by yourself in your room, I find connection there too. Okay, let's go

back to the book. So all of a sudden you decided to start the book about seven eight years ago, and you were furious. Furious is the right where be really very active? So tell us what went down there? I think that's correct. Use, I think that's a good way of saying it. I was furiously engaged, furiously writing. So what was that like? So I it took me a while before I sat down and started the first sentence. That is quite different from what the actual first sentence

now that you read if you buy the book. But I was intrigued with a couple of books that I had listened to the audio book, and in both cases I had read and reread these two novels. One was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. The other was Rebecca by Daphne de Mourier, and I was intrigued with the themes. They both have this sort of gothic setting. It's both In both cases, the protagonist is a person who feels somewhat out of their element in a kind of Gothic setting.

I set my book in Oxford. The male love interest is an Oxford professor. He's nothing like mister Rochester in Jane Eyre because he's not twice my Jane's my character Jane's age, nor is he rich or arrogant. But I felt Rochester, if I was going to use that as inspiration, was due for a little bit of an overhaul as a character that a character like my Jane start whatever fancy being involved with. And in Rebecca, interestingly, the protagonist

is unnamed. Rebecca is the name of Max de Winter, the man that she marries and then moves to to what was it Thornfield Hall? I think it was called Yeah, no, Yes, I might have mixed up the names of the mansions that these women find themselves in, But I just like the themes that there are ghosts that haunt these two women and sort of threaten whatever it is, their sense of trust in their relationships. And you know, in some ways love is as much about trust as anything else.

You know, you take a leap of faith when you decide to be with someone in an intimate way, and I just think, yeah, I think that those themes resonated for me. I'm happy to say that I've been with Jay for thirty years, so obviously we trust each other. But when when I'm writing fiction, I you know, you're a story. Isn't that interesting if there's not some conflict or peril or predicament, you know? So I wanted to that sort of theme to be one of the things

that the character is grappling with. Can she trust him? Can she trust herself? Tell us more about trusting yourself? Well, I think for my character, we find her descending an elevator, kind of tarted up in what she thinks is the expected costume. Ten years after she wore that costume to perform her her song, which was she really only had one hit song at a bachelor party. She's at a very low point in her life. She's been dumped and cheated on. She's years out from when she had this

hit song. She put out an album following the hit song that nobody really cared about. And yeah, she's she's trying to figure out her life really and whether her making music matters to anyone beside herself besides herself. So I mean, I know, I know that I had a lot of really great luck and in the eighties, but you know, I do relate to that feeling of growing older. And I mean there used to be this idea that pop stars there are no you can't be a pop

star in your thirties. Even I don't know if that's still true. What do you think, Bob. That's a much longer discussion because anything's possible. But by the same token, in the Bengals heyday at MTV, everybody knew you if you were a star. Everybody knows the Bengals hits. Today, a record can be number one and nobody knows it, irrelevant of the age of the person. So people can be a little older. But it's not like it used

to be. No, I mean, think how young the Beatles were when they started out, Like I think I remember. It's something that I haven't really reflected on till recently, even even for anyone in show biz. You know, there is a sort of period where I noticed that a lot of the winners of Best Supporting Actress or Best Actress are often like around twenty seven, twenty eight years old.

I have not done the map. I have not I don't have hard facts on this, but yeah, it's just interesting and I think maybe I don't know, it's probably true for any gender, but I think my character for sure feels like at thirty three and with being down on her luck in the music business, I feel like she's ready to pack it in, like who's going to want some thirty thirty something, you know, one hit? Wonder

like who's going to care? So I kind of I was able to write that because even though, as I said, I'm so grateful for the success that I've had, it doesn't mean I haven't been disappointed in making music that doesn't necessarily find its audience. Wow. Just going back to something you said earlier about the Beatles. One of the things it's dune me about the Beatles and Jackson Brown being another example, they were so wise at a young age. Now you listen to those records today and you go,

how did they know all that? I know that's so true. I mean, the Beatles were so young and Jackson Brown was so there's so much wisdom and sort of philosophical you know, badass road for lack of a better word, going on in that young man's mind to be able to do those early records, it's extraordinary. So you're having these thoughts now of your peak and pop dam being in the past. Is it something a feeling that's just

started now or did it start some time in the past. Well, I look at myself when I was I can find videos and whatnot of myself at age I guess thirty one or two, when I was embarking on a solo career and my first solo record came out on Columbia, and I guess I wasn't too concerned at that age.

But as the years ticked by, and I was so fortunate to make three covers records with Matthew Sweet and I and I have a little yeah sometimes I lately I've been questioning the idea of like a covers record versus a not a record of original songs, because I was thinking, like I'm digressing here, sorry, POSI is a spice of life, Go forward, Okay, there we go. I was realizing that I and you you probably could correct me if I'm wrong, because you know so much about

music history. But I don't think Elvis ever wrote a single song. And he's Elvis. We know him and love him, But do we say, oh, when you pick up an Elvis record, do you go, this is such a great covers record that Elvis did do I don't think I've ever heard anybody characterize those records as cover records, Nor do I think that Frank Sinatra, not that he's in the pop side of things, those were all covers too,

am I right? Yeah, so there is suddenly, and I do feel very proud of the songs that I've written, co written almost always, if not always. Yeah, I mean that's the thing about this novel, As they said, maybe earlier or not, it's one of the first things I've ever done alone, completely alone. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Back to your question, I might have drifted. No, Okay, let's say you're out and about outside your own neighborhood

where you're known. Do people recognize you? No, Once in a blue moon. Once in a blue moon. What popped into my mind was that, I think, because of Instagram or something, a woman was at the supermarket and with her two little kids, and I think that one of the kids recognized me from somehow seeing something. But yeah, no, I'm not recognized. I don't think. No. But in the heyday of the Bengal success. You were recognized, right, you know, I don't. I don't have a lot of memories of that.

I think that we kind of when not on stage, we were kind of we mostly disappeared under the radar somehow. That was not something that happened that much. I don't have memories. It was certainly not like what you see in the movies with in Beatles movies, with being chased or anything like that. It was nothing like that now. I mean, we had wonderful fans, and we had a fusive fans, but um, yeah, no, I don't. I don't remember us being unless we were together. I don't that

that would happen. If we were in a hotel and something, some people would recognize us, but often not more often than not. Well, is there a sense of loss from what you had and the way it was and the way it is now? No, I mean I can really safely say that was a really intense decade of having met the Peterson's in eighty one and decided that very night,

um that we would be a band. I've always described it as we may as well run off that that that next day or that evening to Vegas and gotten married in an Elvis chapel because it was that fast and that kind of impulsive. That's the best word I have for it. You know. Obviously, Vicky and Debbie had grown up together and they already had been playing in bands. My only band experience was in a duo with David Roeback, who went on to form Mazzy Star, and that was

our sound. Our sound was what you know, what he ended up doing with Hope sandoval In, but that was sort of the vibe of it. And Vicky and Debbie were seasoned, you know, high school band kind of thing, so they taught me a thing or two. And I can still remember. I was living in the garage, the converted garage of my parents' house, and they had brought microphones and I went up to this foreign thing and

I went like, I blew on the microphone. They just started laughing, like she's so green, she knows nothing, because I mean, I really didn't know anything about performing live because everything David Rebeck and I did was just make recordings in the apartment where we were living in. So

I was very unseasoned when it came to performing. So I soon found out what it was like to Carter gear around and hope that anybody showed up at these kind of out of the way gigs that we had initially in La Okay, if we go back to that heyday, you didn't write every song, hit song and the Bengals and the but the Bengals only had most of the albums relatively successful. So my question is, how's your royalty situation? That's so interesting? Um, I don't really think about it

that much. I assume somebody will tell me. I mean, we get a lot of licensing requests, which always makes me happy, not because of the money part, um, really mostly because they're they're those songs are staying alive, so to speak, in when they're placed in movies, and I love I love when someone wants to use um one of our songs in a movie. So um, that's it's more like the idea that the music is still relevant.

I mean, it is to me, but it always makes me smile that, you know, people still want to listen to the songs um and or have them as part of another work of art, you know, within a movie or a television show. So I'm feeling pretty good about it. Could you live on the income from the Bengals. Well, oh yeah, no, I mean, I don't know, because I've had this new career as a novelist, and also Universal Pictures bought the books the book rights to my novel

and employed me to write the screenplay. And I'm happy to say that I delivered the screenplay just very recently. So I'm actually making in my sixties, actually more money than I think I made as a musician. But maybe that makes sense. The music business has always been hard to figure out. It's a complicate. The way everything works in the music business is complicated. I feel slightly ghost talking that way though, about how surprising it was that I had this other career. But anyway, so let's go

back to the book. You attempted a novel in the last century. What literally inspired you to write this time? Just a passion for books, for fiction, and just a genuine passion as a reader myself and I had always wanted to. And I was sitting there with my kids and Jay one day on the heels of a screenplay that I had just co written for Warner Brothers, of all things, and it looked like it was just going

to be shelved. And I'd had this wonderful collaboration with a guy named Larry Stuckey writing this kind of musical. It was a musical movie. And I thought, what now? And my kid, my older kid, Jackson, said, Mom, you've always wanted to write in a novel. What are you waiting for? And I said, what am I waiting for? And then he kind of prodded me again. I started to craft the story, as I told you, sort of the themes and the story and the character might be it.

Should she be in showbiz? Should she be? It took me a while to comerade. I originally thought maybe she'd be an actress, and I thought, well, I know music, I know what that feels like. I think I could imbue the story and the character with with really rich conflict and predicament because I've I've been there, done that.

So and then I just I just He said, about a week later, stop talking about your story and just start, and he like gave me this edict and I sort of said and he said He even went on to detail it. He said, Mom, I want you to wake up tomorrow morning, open your computer, stare at that bank blank page, and just start writing. And I was like done, I'm going to do it. And I did, and I sat down. I had no idea. My fingers just automatically typed.

And the first line was not the first line that you see in the in the final novel, but it was a first. It was a start. I wrote about two pages and I went, Okay, I'm going to force myself to read it to my family. I invited my even my parents over. I wanted to know that I had done it. It was like I planted my flag in the sand and they were all and I wasn't going to chicken out and I wasn't gonna you know, I was going to make good on my promise. And that was it. That was the beginning, and I never

looked back. How old was your son when he implored you to do this? Okay, so it was I'm admitting how long ago was It was twenty fifteen, so he was twenty okay, so an adult. So you're talking about having the story before you wrote. To what degree was the story fleshed out before you put your fingers to keyboard. It wasn't fleshed out much at all. Really, I knew I basically because I wrote a first person, narrated story.

What would happen would be I would almost disappear, I would disappear out of myself, even though I was sort of the god of her, you know, I was, I was puppeting her, but I would just let her go in my imagination and Jane start would just start talking. And I found that she had a voice, and she was sassy, and she was emotional, and she was occasionally unhinged, but also a smart young lady, a smart thirty something girl. She has tremendous compassion and empathy for other people. She's

a good person. And that mattered to me that the characters that I wanted to fall in love, that they though they have many flaws as all of us have, that they actually were goodhearted human beings. And I wanted her to go through her paces and her struggles, but at the end of the day, I wanted I hoped that she would find love and connection in her life. So that was kind of those were important things. And all of the characters started to just talk to me. I know it was kind of a form of psychosis.

Maybe I don't know. I've never asked other is about it, but um, you kind of you kind of just hear voices in your head tell that they would, they would narrate their thoughts. And also, actually, I'm looking over here at my phone. This is my new phone. I had an old, older phone when I was writing the book. I would just try to bottle what they were saying immediately, so I had I would wake up in the middle of the night. I always kept a pen and pad by the bed during the day. If my characters start

talking to me, I would I would. I learned the hard way. Don't assume this great thing that they said you're going to remember. I would just capture it on my phone. I would text myself or email myself at thousands of texts and emails to myself. Okay, they're different styles of writing. Some people plot it all out and

then lay it all down. One of the things I love about writing is you never know where you're really going in your surprise, did you learn things without even realizing and you look at the paper, what was your experience it was? It was kind of similar to that. Um, I didn't have it all plotted out, and I wonder if I probably should have. But even in the eleventh hour, I remember I was sitting there about to do send my editor and this is cut to years later, Little

Brown and we you know, wants the book. I take their offer. I have finally an actual editor. I commune with her. Revisions happen. But at the eleventh hour I was I had a sudden thought, well, actually, Jay, Jay took a look at at a little thing that I did. I asked for him to clap eyes on something in the in the eleventh hour, and he said, it's repetitive. He gave me the golden nugget and I didn't really want to hear it. I mean, I was due to hit send on this draft. It was really right, like

the final thing. And apart from catching typos or something like that that they sometimes they have people that because you read these sentences over and over again, you stop, you stop seeing a typo. But I sat there and I did this revision and my hands were kind of shaking, and it was like an emotional part of the book, and I knew that it was working because I was crying a little bit for Jane. I was crying tears

of anxiety and tears of joy all mixed together. And I thought, okay, yeah, if I whenever I'm triggered like that, it means something, and then I just hit send and then that's what That's what ended up being in that spot. It was really eleventh hour. Okay, So the first draft took I mean yeah, first run a completion to Cowlong several years, several years. I didn't. I had one friend. It was very solitary. But I had my best childhood friend who was going through some hard times and I

had this behemoth draft. It's like this thick. It had a whole section that's not in the book anymore. But she is a lover of fiction and it was something we had shared as kids. But we were always talking about what books were reading. And she she's an aspiring writer herself. She would schlep over to my house and she just wanted me to read to her. So I said, well you, I'll read you my book. She's I said,

it's not finished, it's this is the current draft. Said go, and she would come over and I would read it aloud and act out the parts as best that I could, and she was It was like a It was like a healing thing for her to just to be read to. And I needed to say the words out loud. I don't know if novelists all do this, but it's important to say the words out loud to see if the dialogue feels right and to see if it makes sense.

So I don't know if everybody does it, but the fact that my friend wanted me to read her my early draft, I think I learned a lot from that, actually, And what do you think you learned? Well? I learned that the story was affecting her, which was very important. I learned that this giant section of the book needed not to be in the book, that it was just something that I had written as an exploration. And I love it and I want to I want to rescue it and resurrect it for my next book because it

was really fun. One of the characters, which is the character of Alfie, figured prominently in it. But yeah, I learned a heck of a lot. The act of reading aloud was useful, and I ended up reading my audio book myself. I knew that I had to. I knew that no one else would understand the inflection, and quite as I told you, I hear the voices in my head, so I did my best to read them as I

heard them. Except then I found this, I found myself at this moment where it's like, I'm not good at British accents and there's like five different kind of British accents in my book. And the Jane Eyre that had blown my mind was read by a wonderful British actress named Juliette Stevenson. So so many of my dreams came true, like in this process because I started to I had listened to Juliet read to me some of my favorite books, not just Jane Eyre, but there's a book by Sarah Waters,

a wonderful Irish novelist called The Paying Guests. And I had studied certain books, certain books while while I was reading. I want to say, whilst I was reading, I would reread certain books over and over and over again, and they just were like it was like a tutorial for me. And so I reached out to every single person I knew who might know Juliet Stevenson to see if she would do the British voices in my audiobook. And guess what, I just checked audible dot com wait wait for it,

and she's listed. She did it. I found out that she did it, but also to see it, I can't find it on here, but to see it on listed on my Audible for my book narrated by Susannah Hoffs and Juliet Stevenson. Wow, dream come true. M. We live in a society where most people can't even complete things. How did you keep yourself going over a two year process? Well it was actually more than two years, but yes, how did I keep myself going? Just the passion to

do it? It was escapist for me, the writing you mean in particular, yes, yeah, um, wanting to hang out with my characters. M. Music really really really triggered all these It was like the juice. It was like knocking back a whiskey if that's your thing. Like I would just get like excited music. And that's why I posted the playlist of the book on my Spotify Spotify people go check it out, but also, um, and check out

my new music on Spotify. Sorry, it's so hard to connect with the music side of things right now, but UM, I hope that that will happen. But yeah, I'm just looking at my my Spotify posted the playlist on there and most of the chapter headings, not all, but when whenever I could use a song title as a chop as a chapter heading I did for music Lovers. Okay, so you finished the book? To what degree did you rewrite? Some people the original is just you know, code hangers

where they hang everything. I'm the opposite. It's pretty close to done when I finished the first draft. What was your experience, Well, there were there were so many drafts that leading up to the to the draft that my my best friend who's a novelist, Margaret, stole Pride from my reticent grasp I guess, I would say. And she read it very quickly and said, I don't know, said a lot of really nice things and that she was extremely moved by it, and she's she insisted I get

it to a literary agent asap. And I said, oh, well, do you have someone in mind? And she said, well, I think my agent, Sarah Burn would love it. And so on my sixtieth birthday, when it was pissing down rain in La, I was due to have lunch with Belinda Carlyle, who I love from the Go Gos, a Bengal and a Go Go had planned lunch and a kind of a birthday lunch for me, and I asked my son, Jackson, the same kid of mine that insisted I write the novel and all that. He said, Mom,

I'll drive it to FedEx. I was like, that's the best birthday present a gal ever got. Thank you. And so Sarah got the manuscript the next day. We did an overnight. She read it very quickly. I was at a friend's house. This is pre pandemic, and he had a little movie night thing on Sundays. I tried to put it out of my mind that Sarah was reading my manuscript. And I just sat down with everybody and they just put on the movie that we were watching.

When I had the stink or they were just about to turn on the movie, the instinct, Well, maybe I should check my email, And there was the email from Sarah saying, I'm actually near you in La. I flew in from New York. Can we meet for coffee tomorrow? And I was actually I couldn't because I was recording my Bright Lights record. At that point I had started piecing together recording session. Sorry, this is a rambling story, Keep going, keep going. But I couldn't meet with her.

So she said, I said, but I'm due to come to New York in a couple of weeks, and she said, great, let's meet at my office. So Jay and I had planned this trip to New York. I get there. I actually wore a suit and I walked from where we were staying in Midtown to Sarah Burne's office and I kind of cried a little bit on the way. There was very cold, because I thought, I'm really, this is really happening. I'm meeting a literary agent in New York City at her office. And then she took me out

to lunch. I met the other her cohort at the office. They were amazing. One of them, David Gerner, it's the Gern Company, said I love Hero Takes a Fall. I was like, check, you had me at Hello. It was like, what you know that song? Nobody mentions that song? And then um, Sarah at Burns and I went to the restaurant where the literary where the book people did the book community gather their watering hole. I was dying. I

was just dying. It was so awesome. And we talked about the book and she told me which things she loved the most and which things that you know, just we just started the conversation and it just went from there. Yeah, and then eventually we you know, we we got a Little Brown picked up the book anyway, So did she say at that first meeting she wanted to do it? Oh? Yeah,

I mean she wanted to meet me. Even before that, she wanted to she was going to stay in La maybe another day because she's based in New York to meet me. So she was very enthusiastic right from the get go. And who knew my friend Margaret. I mean she just I was so afraid to share the book with anybody. It was such a it was such a blissful journey solo. But I just wasn't. I just kept wanting to make it better and better, and you know, I don't know, I was a little resistant. And how

did it end up at Little Brown? Well, so Sarah then finally came the day where I worked on some revisions. And Sarah, because she had edited The Lovely Bones and many other books and came from editing, had just beautiful ideas and suggestions. At one point, my book was all in present tense, for example, and there was a moment where she suggested trying past tense and I'm like, okay, you know, and I did. So there was a lot of learning on it because my friend Margaret's and novelists.

She read the book a lot of times for me, Sarah, I just had a few good compadres early on after years of you know, hammering away at it. So then it came time, She's like, we're ready. I sent in a draft. I worked really hard on it. It was like I would send these drafts at like eleven fifty nine PM when they were due for her to wake up to the draft, you know that she needed from me.

And so she said, we're ready, and she's like, I'm I'm going to go out to publishing houses and she said, don't be alarmed if we don't hear anything for it. They take they need to read it and they sometimes take a little bit of time people traveling. I was like, okay, I'm I'm gonna be so calm. I'm taking this advice from you. And like about Thursday or Wednesday of that day of that week, while I was waiting, I couldn't help it, and I called Sarah and I said, I'm

just calling, just calling. I hope everything's okay. I know I'm supposed to be tuning all of this out, but I am admitting to you that I'm just kind of pacing around aimlessly in my house, wringing my hands and UM, yeah, just let me know if you hear anything. And then sure enough, the beginning of the following week, she was starting to get the reads were in and she was

starting to get a lot of interest. And then there was a Right around that time, I got a text from her saying that the incredible editor Judy Klain, who had edited I mean so many books Julie and Julia, well, we could look it up. I'm you know, where'd you go Bernadette for examp couple incredible books. She was reading it and my friend Margaret and I were having coffee, and Margaret started crying. She goes, do you know about Judy Claine? I said, I know nothing. I know the

music business, I don't know the book business. I don't know who the people at the book business are. And she said she was so happy for me that Judy was reading them and really enjoying the book. So it turned out that a wonderful young editor, Helen O'Hare at Judy shared the book with Helen and said, I think this might be up your alley, and then Helen read it,

and then things were likely went really really fast. In fact, they made me a preemptive offer, and it actually had a ticking clock on it, and I just Sarah Burns happened to fly in from New York that day and we just I had to come to a decision before it was like five pm LA time, eight pm New York time. I had to say yes or no. And I said yes, okay? And how long from that verbalization of yes until the book came out? So that would have been May of twenty twenty one, So we were

right in the midst of the pandemic. And so now the book is coming out, and I was told that it would take way longer than one expects. Yeah. So yeah, So they got the book around that time. So May of twenty twenty one. I did revisions, but they already knew bye bye bye. A year later it had been any revisions that had done had apart from odd type post that snuck their way through. Um, it was pretty

much done. But then there's that build up to pub date, you know, and they and they said pub date would be uh, it's just coming up April fourth, twenty twenty three. There's a long journey for books. There's and there's kind of the way that they set it up. Yeah, so it's good because it gave me a chance to um read the audio book and a lot of other things. There was a lot of steps in the pre promotion. There was quite a bit of pre promotion, some of

it in house with Little Brown. Okay, can you tell us more about external pre promotion and how the whole

process of promotion uh looks visa v. The music business? Well, I mean, then then I met the wonderful Nicole Dewey and Carla who you know that because it was Carla I had met on the Bright Lights record through my managers Russell Carter and Kathy Lyons and Adrian Carter that the team there at ar camp, and so I already was just so happy to be to be united with Carla because she has such a great love of music. And actually I insisted she read She's I don't know

if Carlo's listening her. If she's not, she'll hear this on the podcast if it stays in. But I insisted that Carla read John Updike's Couples, which is one of my favorite books. So even even when I first Yeah, so I'm digressing, I'm all over the place here, but yeah, so what was your question again, sorry, any more coffee. It was precisely what you wanted to know. The timeline.

Two things. The process of pre promotion, I know, like if you go on Amazon and these other places, books are sent to people pre publishing day, trying to build a buzz. Oh yeah. And I was also interested in the process your experience relatives your experience of promoting music. Okay, yeah, So the process with books is that they send out galleys,

so they're not the final, final, final, final version. But um and and there's different aspects to it, like there's a there's a tradition with books to get blurbs from blurbs, quotes from other novelists. So um, that started to happen, and there was some element of having to write letters

to people. Um and and then I was so happy when um Tom Perata, who I worship his novels, and had the great fortune to meet him years back when I was on the road with Matthew Sweet doing our covers records, and um he came to He and his wife Mary came to a few of the shows and and so Tom read my manus script. At that point, it was still the printed out pages nothing fancy or bound early reading copy or anything like that. Not before

the galleys. He read a version on a coast to coast flight from LA to New York, which is really fitting for the story. If you've read the book, there's a plane scene that factors really heavily in it, and he really loved it, and he stepped right up and wrote the most incredible blurb. I also shared it with other novelist friends like Helen Fielding, who's written the wonderful Bridget Jones books and is really a wonderful friend and writer.

And then then I would reach out to other people, and Little Brown had some people that they thought would would be interested in the book as well who's stepped up and took the time to read it and to you know, put a little stamp of endorsement with a blurb of what they liked about it. So there was that.

It was a busy time in the beginning of doing interviews and starting to think about coming out of my my hell my not my hell my, my whole, my cloistered life, pandemic life, being just sitting in a little room writing all the time, to come out and be more part of engaging with the outside world with getting feedback and so on. Okay, mentioned Tom Parada. Did you

ever read his book to Wishbones? Oh? Yeah. In fact, I just did a piece for the I just did a by the book for the New York Times, which is a running piece where they talked to novelists and about you know, they post a set of questions, and um, there was one of the questions I'm paraphrasing here about what books or what authors who write about music? Um,

do you love and and and the Wishbones was? I mean, I think I've read every every Tom Parata book, but I really loved reading The Wishbones because anyone who's ever started a band, you know, understands that story. Okay, how did the book end up at Universal? Okay? So um. Early on in the process, Sarah Burns connected me with someone who happened to be a friend. And she didn't realize that Sylvie rabina who's who reps Tom Parata. As it happens, she's their agent. And I went to high

school with Sylvie Rabineau's husband, Steve Rabinou. In fact, I think my first boy crush was on Steve, and the first time I ever went on a date with anybody. I was very late. Bloomer was with Steve and we went to I think it was Alice's restaurant in Westwood. It was, it was, it was. So it's so funny that I've known him all these years and I have this sort of awkward first date story. But so Sylvie read read a draft of the book and said, oh, I want to rep this for a movie adaptation, a

film adaptation. So early on there was this idea of a film adaptation, which made sense to me because it was really like writing the book was like watching the

movie of the book. It was just an inside my brain is like a screen would come down and I'd see the characters and then I'd just like write what they were saying and where they were and what their expressions were, etc. So it did make sense to me, and it was like deep a deep down dream beyond writing the novel that there would be a film adaptation of it, because I mean, especially after all the years writing writing screenplays, co writing screenplays with people, but wondering

if anything would ever happen. So yeah, So now then Liza Chasin and Bruno Pop and Drea teamed up their incredible movie producers, women that I've known through Jay. And then um, I started to do a bunch of zooms. It was still all zooms, as it still is to some extent, and not not in person meetings, and I met with all kinds of streaming you know, Netflix, different, I don't want to name all the names, but and then then, um, one day I got my list of who I was zooming with and it was Eric Buyers

at Universal. Jay walked in the door and he said, I said, Jay, guess who I'm zooming with today Universal Pictures, and it's Eric Buyers. And he just stopped in his tracks and he said, Eric Buyers and Universal, those those are my favorite that that is, those are my favorites. You know that Eric is my favorite executive in all

of Hollywood. I probably shouldn't say these things because I'm sure he loves other ones too, but he just and then he said something like, wait, Eric Buyers read your book, said apparently, And then I zoomed with him and Liza and Bruna and it was just again it was like little Brown. They just were like, boom, We're in. So, you know, sometimes it's like I met Janna blind date. Maybe it was that kind of thing. I'd just been lucky that way. When the chemistry's there, it's just as there. Okay,

tell me about being a late bloomer. A late bloomer, Oh you mean in love? Yes, Okay, Well I was because I don't know, I was one of those kids who just was a late bloomer. I just, you know, right when everybody else was turning into like sex goddesses in high school, I still was like sneaking in on

the kids tickets at the movie theaters. Remember the kids tickets of course, So you know, I mean it's I was surprised when the Bengals thing happened that I somehow cast off my like the girl on the schoolyard who looked like she was in a couple grades back, you know, like not because of her intelligence, but because she just looked really tiny. Um, I'm a small Jewish woman. What could I say? Not that being Judaish has anything to

do with it, But my identity was not. I was not like if you go to school, high school at Pali High, it's like fast Times at Ridgemont High. Like there's the cool kids and then there's like the bookish kids, or like the music drama kids that are in this little subset. I was in the music drama kids, but I wasn't. I wasn't a cool kid. I wasn't a surfer girl. That's that's what it was back then. So what was your experience in college? Well, that just broke

open all the doors, didn't it. I mean, I go up to UC Berkeley, and I flew up there by myself. There it's the seventies. Nobody's parents came and unpacked their betting for them. It was like, here's your plane ticket. I flew up, I land in Oakland, I get off the thing. I have this giant Duffel bag. I get off the plane and I get to take the bus to Berkeley, and I'm literally on Telegraph Avenue. Have there's no iPhones, there's no map Quest, there's no you know.

I just dragged this Duffel bag towards the dorm and I'm like immediately in love with Berkeley. I'm like the seventies hippie chicken me was going crazy. All these bookstores, all these cool coffee houses. But I am am dragging this thing that was too heavy. And suddenly these two guys come over and say, can we help you with that, and I'm like looking over my shoulder, like you mean me, and they're like, yeah, yeah, you're struggling with that duffel bag.

And I thought, they don't know me. They don't know that. They don't know the me I think of myself from high school. They don't know that. So I went, oh, why, yes, you can help me, and they dried. They took my bag into the dorm and helped me, and I thought, I had I can start, I can start fresh. Yeah it was weird, and did you continue down that path

of being a different person, Well, it wasn't. It was an invitation to be this other person and to realize that the slate was blank and I could, yeah, I could start this chapter, like really turned the page and start this new chapter. And you know, Berkeley was so bohemian, and you know, it wasn't like my high school was one of those sort of giant kind of I don't know, high school was hard. Yeah I did. Let's just say that it was the beginning of a brand new chapter.

And I don't want to say a new me, but a new confidence in being me. That's one way to put it. And tell me the circumstances of the blind date with Jay oh Okay cut through later later, later, later. It was November twenty second, nineteen ninety one. I had been yet again working on a creative writing project with my boyfriend at the time, Donovan Leech, who was the son of or my ex boyfriend. Sorry, of course I wouldn't be going on. We had already broken up, but

we were still friends and still are. So Donovan leached the son of the singer Donovan, and a guy named Mark Stern, and I don't remember how I was connected to Mark, but we were writing sort of a twenty something, like a melrose Place thing before Melrose Place. It was a kind of a take on the series thirty something that I loved. Edswick and Marshall Herskovitz, who I got to know over the years too, had written it. And anyway, Mark Stern, I said, who, who can you invite me

to a party? I'm single, I don't know how to date. This is before apps anyway, not that I would have used apps maybe, I don't know. That wasn't something that was available to people then. It was more like word of mouth. And he said, well, I know this film professor at USC who has written some stuff at our company. He's a screenwriter, but his sort of day job is he teaches at USC and I went, film person, film professor, not rock star or not I mean, not person from

the music business, not person exactly. Not an actor or not a sorry i'm babbling. Not an actor, not a musician. This sounds good because I like academics, and I like academias. So I get. I'm told where the appointed restaurant is and what time to be there, and I show up. I go up to the host as she said, oh, because it was meant to be a dinner party, let me just put it that way. I'm sorry, a more coffee. It wasn't a one on one date. I didn't want

to go on a one on one date. I wanted to just be invited to it, like a dinner party of some sort, because I didn't want the pressure of it a single date. So I she said, oh, the first guest is here, and she points just as Jay is sitting at the bar and the chairs wheels around, and I like, look at him for one second, and I don't know why I thought this, but I thought he looks kind and he looks trustworthy. Ding ding to both those boxes. It was like, those are two qualities

that I just really want in a person. So then he walks me with the hostess, walks us to the table. Were the first ones there, and suddenly I feel this strange feeling of someone helping me with my jacket, and even though this is nineteen ninety one, I'm thinking, wait, what's happening. He's such a gentleman. I not that I cared about those kind of old school manners, but like it was, it was just kind of notable in that moment that he was helping me take off my jacket

and he pulled out my chair. I was like, who the hell is this a person? And then we proceeded. The other people showed up, except none of the three other women who were supposed to be there for this so called dinner party showed up. Mark Stern's wife was not you know, she was under the weather, had a

cold or something. And the two other women who were supposed to come to the party didn't show, so it was just me, Mark Stern, the host, and bachelor number one, two and three, And so I was like, okay, but I really only had eyes for Jay. I liked him immediately, not because of the especially the polite things. Those just

struck me and stayed with me all these years. But because we had such a good conversation, and I loved that he was, you know, a screenwriter, and that he loved movies as much as I did and was obsessed with movies and stories. And at one point we shared where we went to college and when he went to Stanford. And I don't know why. My parents went to Ivy League schools, and so it was always a big thing going to college in my family. My brother went to

Yale Um. And so when he said that he went to Stanford, it was like the guy at the at the fair who goes tries to hit the thing went. There was a little ding. I thought, Oh, I love this. He's kind of you know, he's into academics, and you know, I don't know. I just I kind of for him. You fell for him? Was he instantly into you? I don't think so. No, I don't think he was a good question, Bob. I don't think he. I think he thought, well that was interesting, she's nice. We had a great,

great conversation. But all I know is that, um, how did I get his number? Let's see, I might have given him my number. I was. I was the rockman roll Chick at that time. I guess I think I gave him my number. And then I got in my car, which at the time had the hard wired phone in it, you know, not there were no cell phones, I don't think back in ninety one, and I called my mom. This is very telling, and I said, Mom, I don't know why I feel this way that I just think, yeah,

I think I've met somebody that I don't know. I think this is might work here. And so I was right. Jay called initially it was right around Thanksgiving, and he said, oh, I'm going to visit my parents in Albuquerque, but you know, let's talk again. And then then he dropped off the face of the earth. He just finally. I paced around for a while and I called Mark Stern and said, what's the deal, because he hasn't called you yet. He said,

I'm going to give him a nudge. So he gave him a nudge and then and then we finally went to see a movie together, and then we went to see another movie together. And weirdly, the two movies that we saw were both very um One was at the Black Robe, so it was about a missionary going to somewhere that I can't remember. We'd have to look this up, and it was all this sort of like I didn't know the content. It was. There was a lot of like sexy content in these two movies about missionaries going

to places. The other one I think was called at Play at the Field of the You know, I'll send you the names of these movies. I can't. I don't want to get it wrong. Okay. Had there been any long term romances before Jay Um? Yeah, there was. There was a long term romance in the Paisley Underground with Louis Gutierrez who was in the band. Um. Yeah, there was that, and and um, let me think back, there was quite a long mace with Lewis, like starting in like nineteen eighty two or three when we when we

when that scene was really happening. And then after that there was a long along romance with Donovan Leech, the son of Donovan, And prior to that, I'd had a relationship with David Roebeck. They were all they're all musicians. That's right now that they're doing the math on that. Okay, that maybe that and no no offense to any of the musicians, but maybe that's why maybe that collective amount of relationships there um added up to me thinking maybe

maybe not a musician. I don't know. But also, um, there were a few actors and I and yeah, there are actors and musicians up until Jay. What was it like being famous and on the road as a woman, both in terms of romance and me too? Stuff? Ah, interesting and say it again on the road? Okay? You know in that era, certainly pre cell phone, one of the reason musicians wanted to become musicians, to be famous

is to experience the Shenanigans of the road. What was it like being a woman and in your case it was a band of women as opposed to some other acts there was a female front person. And then right, well, um, I had mostly good experiences unless I blocked things out. I seem to always be or most of the time I was involved in a relationship. I'm going way back here.

I feel like I've always kind of had my wits about me, you know, in a sense, if that expression is the right one, because I felt quite vulnerable just due to my stature, physical stature. I've always had my eye out for anything that felt like ding ding ding, danger, approaching so I think that I got through that period

pretty well. I skated through. But I do feel like as a female in an all girl band, I did feel a sense that, say, as an example, walking into a record company and having a lineup of male executives and suits looking at you. Um I, you know, of course, I felt like, oh god, you know, is this am I being judged? Am I? Am? I? Is there some imperative for me to be to look to dress the part of a sexy rock star? Or you know I I you know, I still grapple with that, you know,

even as we age too. It's like it's it's there's an aspect of being in the in the limelight, I guess you could say, or um, a performer where there's a natural aspect where the sexuality is part of it. Let's just face it. It's part of rock and roll for both for all sexes, you know, for all genders and all there's just rock and roll is most often imbued with sex and sexuality. So it's it makes it very It's very complex, Bob, That's what I think. It's

a complex thing. But I do think that there's a parallel. In my book, I was able to kind of recall that feeling of like I've got to put on I've got to become her. I've got to I've got to be someone who's confident and who can tap into the natural sexuality that's sort of vibrating under the surface. That that's part of what this music is about. You know. Um, it's definitely a part of making music and performing music. I can be honest with you. It's it definitely, and

that's why I love it. I mean, who doesn't love being lost in that feeling. Let's just go back a second to Jay. You reference being a nice Jewish girl earlier, and Jay was Jewish according to the information online. Whatever that's worth it. He converted? Can you tell us all

about that? Yes, he did, He did ultimately convert. I am the granddaughter of a rabbi who's no longer with us, But my dream was to be married by my grandpa and my uncle, who are both rabbis on the Simon's side of my family, and in order for that to really happen, Jay was totally fine and was happy to It was a very easy conversion. It was made easy by the fact that my mother could teach him a few things. He didn't have to go through months of lessons,

and he learned just what he needed to learn. And my grandpa, Ralph Simon also gave Jason tutorials and it was a very quick and easy. Becoming Jewish was not a big thing. It was the family made it very easy for him, and it meant it meant a lot to me. I get a little chair choked up to thinking back on my grandpa marrying me and my uncle. It was a beautiful thing. And to what degree were you observed? Did your kids have bar mitzvahs, etcetera, etcetera. Um,

not particularly observant. Mostly just for me, it's always been part of my identity, my jewishness. The boys didn't really have. I had a bat mitzvah in Israel. My older brother John is only a year older. So we went in nineteen seventy two, in nineteen seventy four, but I think my brother would have been, Yeah, he would have been. I think it was seventy two. We just went to

the whaling wall. He read out a little phonetically spelled out a prayer and then at the whaling wall and we all watched that, and nobody was sitting there with iPhones filming it. By the way, it was like the dark ages before pre cell phones. And then we went to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and we had a big luncheon with my grandparents and then I did the Hamotzi prayer over the bread, which I never forgot, and that was my bot mitzvah, and our kids have not.

Although I had this funny idea, I don't want anybody to steal it because I think it's pretty funny, but I'll share it with you that we you know, how you can throw a surprise party for someone's birthday. I

wanted to do. I had this fantasy of throwing a surprise bar mitzvah for my two kids and do it similarly simply, where they just have to read the odd prayer phonetically spelled out and they just walk in the door one day and everyone would be there, it's your bar mitzvah, and the boys would read it and we'd have someone officiating and that would be it. They were both par misfit. Speaking of your two kids, what are they up to? So? Jackson Roach is a podcast in

the podcast world. It's he has been in love with radio storytelling. Radio play since he was a kid and also has been like a tremendous reader. He just loves fiction too, like his mom. And so he has done. He produced and wrote a show that was got on radio, that got on Radio Lab and ninety nine percent Invisible. Now he's working for a podcast company called the Dig, so he's immersed in creating podcast and in that world. And then my younger son, Sam Roach, he is a

screenwriter and actor. And where did they go to college? They both went to Stanford. That okay, so they have that pedigree. Let's go back to the Bengals era. To what degree were you and the other women in the act involved in drugs and alcohol back in that period? Well, I liked a little bit of the white wine back then. I don't drink at all now I don't think. I actually don't know if i'd have written the book if I still did. I didn't have what I would consider

a problem. But I liked it and it just was a nice relaxing thing to do. But I one day I just thought, what would life be like if I didn't have that wine, you know, at six o'clock every night or however whenever, Um gosh, I'm being so confessional with you, Bob, I hope it's okay. Is everything? This is exactly what I'm looking for. Stuff Okay, good, I figured as much. But so um, No, the Bengals were

quite We liked the odd drink. We would have, you know, a glass the wine before going on stage or not. You know, it depended. I'm speaking mostly for myself, but afterwards for sure, And yeah, I think it was. But I don't think we were out of control. We were not. It was it was not. Let me put it this way. It wasn't an issue. Nobody had to go. There were no trips to rehab in our band. We're very lucky that way. We just we just enjoyed a little bit

of wine from on the road. But it wasn't beyond that. Speaking of the Bengals, although the Go Gos were maybe the progenitors, the Bengals actually had more hits than the Go Gos. The Go Gos are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm not a big believer in the rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I bring it up. If the Go Goes are in the rock and Roll Hall of Fame, shouldn't the Bengals be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Well, I I think that would be very nice. I don't, I don't

What's what am I trying to say? It would be very fun, I think to get inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I say this partly because I inducted the Zombies and I had no idea what it would be like to be there among peers in the music business. But that experience, because I love the Zombies so much and I was so honored to be asked to even you know, to be asked to induct them, that I had one of the best nights of my life at that show because I just ran into all

these musicians that I hadn't seen. Brian May from Queen the Bengals opened for Queen and at Slane Castle in nineteen eighty six. I think it was one of Freddie's Mercury's last show with them, or last show, and it might have been we'd have to do some fact checking.

But to just reconnect with Brian May and then um, to be with the Zombies and to meet all the other to read John Taylor was there who hadn't seen There was a really fun party that Stevie Nicks threw and I got to hang out with Simon Lebon and John who hadn't seen in years because they I think they inducted. Okay, now I'm forgetting, but we can look it up. It was just a magical night and mostly just to celebrate music. So yeah, I mean, I yeah, I don't know how to. I don't have a last check.

Let me let me change the question a little bit. Do you feel a little ripped off that they're in and you're not in? Oh? No, no, no, I'm not like that. No No. I went also, um to see their induction because I was again invited to because because I'm so close with the Go Goes. So um No, it was incredible, Like not at all. No, I'm just yeah, that's not that's not how my I'm not that Yeah, that's not that's not where I go with those things. Yeah, you mentioned how much you love the Zombies. You talked

about exchanging uh playlists with Nick Hornby. So how did your interest in music begin into what degree? Was an infatuation? Well,

let's start with that second part. It's always been an infatuation and per my mother, who loves music as much as I did and played the AM radio and had bought records all the time, played it constantly, and claims that that when I was born, I was in this little crib, and for that period of time in the crib, she had the music playing and that I would cool along to it, and it was in a room with a floor that it had wheels on it or something that she'd find that I sort of bopped around to

it as a baby, and I was so like turned on by the music. I was so activated by it. And then as soon as and then growing up in La you're in the car, you're in the backseat of the station Reagan, and my mom was always blasting AM radio. So I was teaching myself to sing first well, from the crib, if she's right about that might be an exaggeration, the backseat of the car and when the radio was on.

And then the minute I started buying records, or my mom would buy records for me, I would play them continuously, and then I would teach myself the exact moves and nuances that the singers were giving their performance. I just studied them without knowing that I was studying them. I mean, this is true of a lot of singers I've met and had this conversation with Joni Mitchell Records, Linda Ronstadt Records. Now having worked with Peter Asher, those childhood memories resonate

even more. But just learning the like mimicking that them, actually trying to mimic every one of their little swoops and growls and moves vocally. How did you decide you wanted to be a musician, Well, it was just a passion. I mean, I don't know that I ever thought of any other career path besides being in the arts, for sure, because I was always painting and drawing. I was around my mother painting and drawing and sculpting all the time too,

and my dad being a psychoanalyst. He was just a cool presence in the house who was so open minded about everything and so so cool. Let me just say that cool parents. But it Singing was just a part of my life from childhood. So it was as soon as my uncle, my mother's younger brother, put a guitar in my hands. You know. Again, everything that I've done in the arts has pretty much been self taught. I'm embarrassed to say I don't read music. I really should.

What's wrong with me. I don't know, but I just never got round to it. I think I was always so impulsive about it, like teach me the chords of that song, and I would just I just know the chords. It's not like I can read a musical chart, and I would just try to figure out how to play a song that way. And like compared to hanging out with Peter Asher, who's so are youdite when it comes to music and has all the charts there, and I see them reading the charts and I'm like, yeah, what

are the chords? I can do it that way? Folk folk folk style and sharing. For me, it was people sharing their recipes like that's what That's what it was to learn a song. Um. Yeah, am I answering your question? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Uh. Did you play in bands or play live alone in high school? Um? I did more dance and theater and dancing and acting in high school. I was always in the musicals. I would play with friends on the schoolyard occasionally.

I definitely had other friends like me who could play, you know, maybe various songs on the guitar. I was singing, for sure, but I don't know if I and I was in the musicals, but I don't think I ever sang like in a school concert like my own stuff. I was in the choir. But yeah, the stuff that I really cared most about was the stuff I would just do with my friends. Nobody really heard it besides us. What about in college? In college, let's see, I was a dance major, A drama dance major. I must have

had a guitar up there. I was obsessed with music in college. I remember we had eight tracks. Was that when eight tracks where? Absolutely? Yeah, I definitely. I'm trying to remember if I had I debt what? Oh? Part way through college, absolutely I was with David Roeback. I was still back on that story of the first year when I was in the dorm. Oh yeah, no. Starting after the year in the dorm, I was playing music, but not publicly, just for myself. And you graduate then

would then? I? Okay? So I went to see the Sex Pistols, and at winter Lamba Room I went to see Patti Smith. So during college and during the David Roeback period of college, which was the second half my junior and senior year, I was totally immersed in making art, painting, sculpture, singing, recording music with David on little cassettes, going to see shows, going to San Francisco, going to the punk clubs. Yeah,

that's that. Music became the big headline. And my dream was to come back to LA and either be in the band with David Roeback whatever that we were just a duo at that point, to create a band with him, and then when that didn't work out because the relationship was kind of rocky, I realized that I needed to do it some other way. So I just started to adversisise myself in the recycler and I drew because I was still kind of post art school I was. I would draw all these flyers and xerox them at a

xerox place and pat put them at reck stores. And I took a stack of my flyers to the Gogs show at the Whiskey of Go Go and they got thrown in the trash. I had to dig them out a few times. Then I gave up. Yeah, I was like an old school Okay, these were flyers saying I want to start a band, yeah, and I can send there's some of them are online. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hand drawn flyers that I made let's go back to David Roebeck. What came first? The music of the romance? Oh?

That well, we were he was. He was my brother's best friend growing up, so we went to high school together. He was a grade older than me. Um. Wow, that's a good question. At one point my brother wasn't too happy about it. A romance bloomed. But I think I was in college already. Yeah, no, it would have been in college. It would have been in college because yeah, you also do you also go to Berkeley. He transferred

to Berkeley. He started out at a college called Carlton College in Minnesota, and he started there in seventy five. I started Berkeley in seventy six, and then he transferred. It had probably been seventy seven seventy eight that around the time he transferred, and then we eventually lived together at Berkeley. Did he transfer to be with you? I may partly? I think maybe? So. How hard was it when you broke up? Not only romance wise but musically. Okay,

we're taking a long time ago. I'm sure tears were shed and emotions were felt deeply. It was hard, I think because I loved the vibe of what David and I were doing. I mean, we would play like Little Honda by the Beach Boys, but Mazzie Star style, if you can try to picture that like sort of droney and slowed down and kind of etherial, you know, and

you know, of course we love The Velvet Underground. I think, um, my recordings that I made with David of I'll be your mirror and I'll keep it with mine, which was the Nico song from her record that was produced by um. Oh my god, I'm having a a senior momentum guy from Guy from the Velvet Underground. Now I can't remember there it is there, it is, thank you. Um. Those were like seminal records for me and still are, I think. So I'm really glad that finally on my Spotify you

can find those recordings. I'll keep it with mine and I'll be your mirror. U. So yeah, I mean, David, until he passed away, has been a close family friend, close with my parents, close with my brother John, who they were in the same grade. They were best friends and such a special person. So you talk about exchanging playlists with Nick Hornby. Is this new music or is this music throughout rock history? Just throughout rock history, just

stuff that he's his listening practice. His discovery practice of finding stuff is like well honed. Mine is haphazard. I have a tradition of sending links to my family, we share links all the time, and friends and sharing playlists that I've made. But Nick's blow all those out of the water. I mean he is a master curator of playlists, and some are thematic and some are more of a jumble. But like it's a gift. Yeah, I mean, because I'm finding all sorts of new artists that way, he's he's

more tapped into new music. And to what degree are you listening to new music as opposed to the old music? Well, I tend to default to the oldies. But because I have playlists that friends have been sending me with newer artists, it's been a great way to crack open that, you know, that side of things, and to have exposure. The other person who, like Nick Hornby, is great at discovering new stuff is Peter Asher, and he's the one who turned me onto Holly Humberstone. Did we already talk about this

or recycling back? So Holly Hush, Joe Joy odellacum adela cum I always pronounced it ode locum, but I think I have it the emphasis and is meant to be on the other syllables. If you've got her song, if you've got a problem, it is just extraordinary. And it was a pleasure to sing. Yeah. And then you know, I don't know. I think it was Peter who had the cool idea of covering a Billie Eilish song that was great. Of course I knew about Billie Eilish, but

I didn't know that song. So I really owe a lot to Peter for opening my eyes too and my ears. I should say to these some of these young artists that I hadn't crossed paths with on my Spotify or on my streaming searches. So how did you end up making a record with Peter Rasher? Well, it was kind of the dark days of the pandemic. It was ninth

sorry nineteen. It was two thousand twenty one when I got an I heard a voicemail that I had missed from the day before from my longtime road manager, John Kollachi. That word was that Peter Asher wanted to make a record with me. And it was such a dark period right then, and I it was like sunshine burst through the clouds. In that moment, I was practically trembling, and I kept listening over and over again to that, to that voicemail Peter Asher wants to make a record with me.

I could hardly believe my ears. So then then the communication started, and um, you know, we we connected. I drove out to Peter's home in Malibu and was welcomed in by his family. I at that point I gave him, like I think, I mentioned a manuscript printed out and from my computer printer, m from I should say, my printer, and for him to read of the book. He read

it really quickly. There was an instant bond. I was, you know, in awe of him as a producer and and but then got to know him as a dear friend. And I just cherished that relationship so much. Well, if you've got to make a record, it costs money. Where

did the money come from? Well, I'm I'm I don't know what what happened in my life, but I just hit a point where I realized that the indie spirit that fueled everything that had come in, starting with the Bengals, or even the attempt set a band with David Roebak that didn't necessarily come to fruition. I remember going I'm

digressing for one second here. I remember going to a night of the women of Berkeley, an event at a dear friend's house to get everybody together, and everybody was reminiscing about graduating and how they came upon their careers, and many of them had gone to the jobs office at Berkeley to talk about ways to start a career. And I remember thinking when they came around the circle of everyone telling those stories to about how they got

their jobs, I was like, they're what. I couldn't exactly work walk into the Job's office at Berkeley and say, I want to start a band? What what what do you got for me? You know? So so yeah, I've always I've always done all these things on sheer will and maybe a little bit of insanity, but um, I was possessed with the idea of starting a band. I'll just say it. I was. I was impassioned at the thought of it, and I just had to go out there and keep knocking on doors, you know, so to

speak to find people. So that's why I made the Flyers. I I looked at ads in the newspaper pre internet, so there was recycler I was looking for. And then I called one of the ads and lo and behold Vicki Peterson answered it was an ad, not from her, it was their roommate. And that's how that started. Okay, And in this interim graduating from college, did you have a day job? Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.

So my uncle Carmy Simon, my mother's youngest brother. He was an incredible musician who was the first person who gave me that guitar that I'm holding in the picture of myself. When I was eight or seven. I was either finishing up year seven or just eight, because it says January nineteen sixty seven on the picture. He offered me a job out of college. It was kind of it was like a factory girl job, if you can imagine.

It was in a warehouse in Santa Monica where he had a little ceramics company, and it was all the rage at that time to make these like little hand painted ceramic buttons and jewelry and stuff and not exactly like pottery. So I sat in the basement room alone with a transistor radio which I had tuned to k Earth one oh one, which in the eighties was playing nineteen sixties music, and that's what how I spent my

time for the most part during my day job. Every once in a while i'd go upstairs where there was sunshine, but most of the time I was in the dark with the radio. And I heard that song. I had already met Vicking Debbi through the recycler. They'd come over. We'd had that fateful testing out of the waters where we determined we should be a band that night, and I heard I heard Hazy Shaded Winter. I know that when I was still at the I was that that

day job for a while. It wasn't until things started kicking off for the Bengals, because I remember hearing Hazy Shaded Winter and not knowing that Simon and garfuncle Fan and I thought I knew all their music, and I pitched it at rehearsal, and then we didn't record it for years. And Robert Hilburn, the local journalist, gave it a really crap review. Specifically, he said it was plotting and listless or something like that. That's okay, he's entitled

to his opinion. How did you ultimately give up the day job? Oh well, that was m let's see what got me past the day job? Oh? You know what, I think we finally got some action on the record company front. We finally had it all. It takes as one, as I like to say, there was crickets and then there was one, and that was Peter Fulben bringing Bruce Springsteen to see the Bengals play The Scrappy, the Scrappy early iteration of the Bengals play at Magic Mountain? Am

I repeating? Or have I have I not? No? No no no, keep no yeah. Yeah. So we had a gig at Magic Mountain. It was a very spinal tap sort of atmosphere. It was just sort of a band shell and a kind of a cement stage as I recall, and sort of rising up seats, and we met Bruce Springsteen. Peter had dragged him all the way from wherever he lived.

And I've always thought Bruce vetted the band, because you know, somehow, some way, I'm going to give him credit for that and Peter Philbinum, but it's kind of amazing to think that he dragged Bruce out to a theme park to see this all girl band. I don't know, how did you get him? How did you get a manager? Um? Okay, so how did we meet Miles Copeland and Mike Gormley. We had a lawyer, Candice Hanson, who was really advocating for us. Oh I remember now, Sorry, it took me

a second. We were part of the Paisley underground scene and we were playing at like the Cathay de Grand or are one of the ones that kind of downtown LA or Hollywood. It was one of the ones in Hollywood, and I remember post show, I was sitting at the bar or someone said there's a there's this god. No, I must have sat. I somehow managed to sit next to him. I had no idea who he was. I didn't really know that much about the police because of

my obsession with sixties music. I wasn't really like up on the bands of the eighties at that time period. This would have been eighty two, nineteen eighty two or yeah, I'm guessing eighty two. I'd go up to him, he starts to make conversation with me. I have no idea who he is. No one told me that I had no clue that he was this iconic manager. And I was kind of, you know, kind of sassy and scrappy. I don't know I don't remember really like treating him

like he was some important person. And so that's my memory of first meeting Miles. Okay, now let's switch back. You said you were talked about what it would cost to make this record, and then you talked about doing things in an indie way. Yeah, what it would cost to make the one I made with Peter? Right? Where the money would come from? Well, the money I took the money from that I'd made over the years in

my life, and I invested in myself. Yeah, I have to ask, under today's circumstances, how much did it cost to make the record? Oh, I don't like talking about that kind of stuff. Well, let me put it a different way. Maybe Peter can give it to you. It was it cost enough to let's put it this way. He hired the best people, a great studio. Yeah, I don't know if i'll I don't know if a person can make money unless they get song placements anymore. I

don't know. I don't know about the music business. Well, that's why I'm asking. You're investing X somewhere between thirty and one hundred K, and are you thinking about return on investment? Not at the moment, I'm just helping people

connect with the music. I don't. I mean, I guess that that I'm in a lucky position that all these many decades of being a hard working gal doing her thing, and the great fortune of having songs like Eternal Flame click with audiences and remain something that people dream or want a license for movie and television placements, that I've continued to receive enough royalties to fund my own indie record. Okay, so just going on, Peter tracks you down, but you're

paying well? Sure, and Peter did not. The fee to produce the record was extraordinarily reasonable. If not, I mean, I think both Peter and I are in a place in our journeys on this planet we call Earth that um, we were doing it for love. I mean, really, he was very reasonable. And I wanted to pay these hard working musicians what what felt right to them, so, you know, and I wanted to the young man who runs the studio as a dear friend, and I wanted to make

sure that I was paying everybody what felt comfortable. They all knew that I was self financing this record, so people, you know, were cognizant of that. But I also wanted people to be happy. I didn't. I never want to take advantage of everyone's doing the best job that they can. And I'm so fortunate to be in the company of these extraordinary human beings who work so hard to help me create something, hopefully that's beautiful and connects. But one

never knows. Every time you throw yourself out there to make something, you just hope for the best that some connection will be made and somebody will somewhere somewhere around the world will click on a song and go, ah, this is exactly what I needed to hear. Okay, you know, he brought in his usual suspects, like walk tell all great players. Were you intimidated it all? Yes, at first, until I met them, and then they were like family. I mean I was so intimidated at first, and but

they're not intimidating human beings. They're warm, and they're a family and they've played together forever and Peter knows them so well. I was like in the best club, and they invited me to be a member of their club, you know, like I was rather like pinching myself, like wait, is this happening? Yes? And then they made me step up, and I just wanted to be my best in front of them. I just wanted to give my all and be my best because they're masters. They're all masters, every

single one of those guys you just mentioned. Okay, So from the moment you got to mast Alibu and you meet Peter, how long after that till you go into the studio? Okay? That was I want to say. In the in the spring, so maybe April ish, beginning of May. I'm going to Malibu regularly and playing around and trying songs on for size, like you know, does it do they fit? Can I sing it? What are the keys? And then I believe we started recording, and Peter can give you this if I'm wrong, but I believe we

started recording. The first batch was in September, and like I said, we tracked I don't know a whole all the songs with with that crew in four days, maybe three, three to four days. That's how good they are. And how much longer did it take for you to lay your vocals down and finished recording process? M Well, so I had they had all the live vocals, and then it took another series of recording sessions to do all the harmonies and to sing, taking another crack at the vocals.

In some times you can use the live vocal. I think in certain cases sometimes you can mix and match between days and takes. And I mean, this is how it's done these days, as opposed to like Elvis Presley days, probably everything was recorded on a few tracks in one take, but some vocals are virtually one take vocals. I think it was so enjoyable to sing these great songs. It's like the pleasure of a of a of for a singer is to sing a great song. Okay, these are

covers but mostly modern songs. Was the concept originally covers? And how did you end up up with these particular songs? And was always thought, yes, we want to do contemporary songs. Yeah, I loved the idea that early on in my conversations with Peter, the idea of doing contemporary songs was like lit us both both up. We were very in tune with each other on that and in agreement. And because when I did the Matthew Sweet records, it kind of set this record apart from that because in those cases

we drilled down on a decade. So it's the sixties, seventies, and eighties we've done and maybe some day in nineties. But with Peter, I liked the idea. I loved. I so worshiped his work with Linda you know and so and the other wonderful female artists that he produced, but that those particular as I said, Heart Like a Wheel and Prisoner and Disguise were so impactful in my life. So I loved the idea that even on those records there were the curation of the songs was something I'm

sure they did together, as Peter and I did. But Peter has such a gift for having ideas and inspirations and what might work. So the album was done. When so the album was done, the tracking was done quickly. Throughout the rest of that fall. We would grab like three days here a week there would we would we cobbled together a really nice schedule with you know, you could probably get that from him. I probably have it.

If I went through my we usually would book like a streak of days like it would be, you know, we're going to work Thursday through Sunday this week. You know, we wasn't every day. I guess what I'm asking is, if it is now essentially April twenty three, when was the album done completed. Oh, it was done in the fall. It was done in the fall of twenty It was completed, i'd say with all the mastering, I mean the mixing part of it, because then there's that, there's the recording part,

and then there's the mixing part. And there were dates book to have the string quartet because suddenly we wanted string quartet on everything. It started with one song and then it just spiraled out of control. Not out of control in a bad way, kids, in a candy storeway, is what I mean with that. We just couldn't resist. Yeah, So we had to be careful because everybody had certain commitments. I had to juggle with between book and music, you know, so and Peter had things. Yeah, but it worked out.

So you're saying the album was done in the fall of completed in the fall of twenty twenty two. Yes, okay. So was it a conscious decision to release the book in the album simultaneously. I hadn't thought of it, but all of a sudden, the conversations as we were nearing my book release, I mean inching towards it, and I was already starting to promote the book and work on the game plan for that Russell Carter and let's see

it would have been. I ended up having two publicists, Carla and Nicole, Nicole More coming from book World and Carla from Music World. Everybody put their heads together and we had I think we had a zoom or something to discuss what the how the rollout would go with these two big projects that I've been working on for so long, and it was deemed that maybe we put them out on the same day. Here we are, what the hell? Going back to the album, how'd you pick

Black Coffee in Bed? Well, I love that song. You know, as a person who loves music, you know, I can't help us sing along to certain songs, and that was one of them. And also Squeeze were really important to me in the eighties because I discovered them. It was right when the Bengals were happening, and so there were certain bands that you would be very aware of because you were all putting out records at the same time. And I just have always had a passion for the

music of Squeeze. Well, it's just funny because that was the subsequent album to the one with Tempted and Paul Carrick had already gone and I love that song, but nobody ever talks about it. Tempted. I love it. You talking about black No, no, I'm talking about black coffee and bids. Oh no, I love it. I'm glad you love it too. I just love it. And how about only you? How did only you the well? I so I always whenever I love that song so much, and again it brings me back to the decade when the

Bengals were here, there and everywhere. But I whenever that song comes on, I always sang the high harmony to it. I just made up a harmony, and I always wanted to. When I used to do shows at Largo in La I always wanted to cover that song and sing a high harmony on it. And then it's just I think I just mentioned it to Peter that I loved it. I think it was that was one that was my idea, and I told him about my idea of just having it be like sort of a duet with myself, and

that's how that happened. Have you met Alison Moye? No, I want to. She's cool. She's a very regular person. And how about you don't own me? Well? Well, you know that is one of the early examples of a kind of feminist and I met Leslie Gorett some something once there was like a convention or something, or some music business thing. But I've always liked the music again, of all of that whole period, and I just always thought that was kind of a badass little number that song.

I mean, I don't mean to say really little number. It's a big number. It's a it's a defiant song, and I just really it really spoke to me, and I think this may be the case for a lot of people. Perhaps a lot of women in particular, would would find that song meaningful. So it was fun to take it on. Okay, dee Le's just say, twenty twenty three is very different from nineteen eighty three. And back in those days, the hardest thing was to get a major label deal. If you did, they promoted you a

certain amount. You hit or you didn't hit, whereas today it's a vast cornucopia of all kinds of music. How do you get people to listen to this music become aware of it? I don't know. I'm doing everything that I can. I worry about it. It keeps me up at night. I'm doing my best. There's this thing called social media, and I've discovered that it is very useful, but it's it's it's work, you know, it's work in a sense because you have to create a lot of content.

So it's this it's a new fun job. But it's again because everything is fueled by kind of an indie spirit and zeitgeist and how I approach all these things. No record company, you know, just doing everything as a just waking up in the morning and going, okay, let's make some art. What we're going to do here, and how do we promote these things? So it's really just making little videos. I mean the days that I can remember of the big video shoots that being on Columbia

Records and all of what that was. I mean, at least especially during a pandemic, I've been able to just go around it with this little thing and make a little movie and send it to someone who can help me edit it. I have a partner that helps me with that because I'm no good with the editing with tech. But yeah, that's what we're doing. TikTok kind of changed things. Instagram changed things. There's loads of indie creators just putting

their stuff on there and spreading it. That way well before we booked this on TikTok, I came across you singing some of my ear quotes here greatest hits a cappella. Did that just start or you said, oh man, I have to do promote my book in my album, let me do something. Well. The first ones that I did was just really in the deep dark pandemic days when people were not even and leaving their house. And I thought I'd already had a little social media on Twitter,

maybe I just started Instagram. I was pretty late to the TikTok party, but I'm there now and I just put put the old version of this thing. I set it on my piano over there, and I just I thought, what should I do? How can I express myself? And I just did this one clip of me singing man Monday, and I had no idea it would connect so much with people, just me alone in my house, not with

the band, not with anybody, but just solo. And I realized that I had this opportunity not only to explore the concept of being the folk seatinger that I started out as when I was that little girl and my uncle Carmy gave me that first giant guitar when I was eight. Like, I'm actually been asked on the book tour will I bring a guitar or will I sing a little bit? I'm honestly terrified because it's one thing to do it in your living room, and it's another

thing to do it in front of people. But I'm bringing the guitar tomorrow when I get on the plane, and I have all these notes here. I just I'm making these little little notes because I've gotten myself so nervous about it. Here's my under my thumb. It says, oh, different drum in case I do that Capo four. This is me scribbling, scribbling it out, like I'm really just after this call. That's what I gotta do is figure out you know, I know I can do it in my living room, but can I do it in front

of people at a at a bookstore? I think, So, what do you think, Bob? Well, you know, different people, without mentioning some famous names, they really need to warm up to produce the sound that they're famous for, Whereas it seemed very very natural with you. So I have to ask, can you just okay if I ask you sing a couple of bars a different drum right now. Could you do it? Absolutely? Yeah, I could do it.

So the anxiety is just that other people will be there. No, the anxiety is just this natural anxiety that I feel before I opened my mouth and let the sound come out. But then when I do it, I go, oh yeah, Like it's kind of like a two personalities. It's like a split personality. It's like than me that might overthink or freak out and being it's just like my character in the book. Actually, I was able to write that

because I know what that's like. I do have to kind of flip a switch and just go, Okay, I'm not chattering and schmoozing and talking with someone. I have to like produce this sound out of my throat and also stop my brain from subtitling, subtitling some other inner monologue. I just have to be in a singular focus with it.

And so that'll be a little bit tricky because well, we'll see what happens when I get to the strand in New York City, you know, because the ideas like we're Q and ang and then there's like an idea will trigger well, here's a little bit of something that goes with that so I told Jay's the thing I'm most nervous about because I haven't really ever sung like this this way, like completely alone with my guitar, though he hears me do it in the house and you've

heard me do it in the house when I think, oh, put the camera on myself. This is something for social media to share. Do you normally have stage fright when you're on with a band or this is unique? I do have stage right. I have to overcome my stage right. I do, I do, okay, And obviously the goal of social media is to have a viral moment. Obviously, you go on these platforms, although your usual audience is going to be an older demo, you reach those people. Have

you found yourself reaching new people? Well, that's the goal, And just as of recently, I'm starting to see the scales change in a way, in a positive way. I'm so grateful for anyone who wants to find me there and for long time fans. But I've been hoping, really hoping to connect with a new audience and also with women, young women too because for whatever reason, and I think and I don't know, I don't have statistics here, Bob, but the go Gos had a very big, big, big

female fan base, as did I think Madonna. I'm thinking of our eighties selves, and weirdly, the Bengals had the scales were tipped more heavily towards a male audience, and I never really understood it, but I've always wanted to connect with, you know, have the balance be a little bit more equal. So I'm feeling that now. Interestingly, I think the book because the character is a female, that the protagonist is a female woman, a female woman. Obviously this is me. I need more coffee. Do you edit

this thing or do you just use it? Oh, we don't add. Everything you're saying is great, But let me switch to a couple of gears here. Yeah. Yeah, you made these couple of albums with Matthew Sweet. Yeah. Are you the networker or is it more like Peter Rasher you're just fielding phone calls? Oh, networker in terms of making it happen to reaching out to do it. Yes, Um, I'm pretty staunch in my you know, sort of work ethic to kind of like not hesitate to reach out

to people. I can be the one to instigate in the process of working with Matthew Sweet, it was quite interesting. He was the magical wizard doing all the wizardry with the with the technology that that I when you said that I missed heard or understood what you're saying. I immediately thought about my dynamic with Matthew and that brought me to that thought. But no, I'm gonna go get them kind of person. I don't wait. I I once I have an idea, I throw myself into the deep

end to plug the album title there. But and I just start dog paddling or whatever it takes to sort of rally the project, rally the troops, make it happen because I just I'm fueled by being in process with a creative project. That's what I wake up in the morning, going, okay, what, let's let's get in Let's let's get some paint on the canvas, let's, you know, tune the guitar, let's you know. I just what, I'm so fortunate that I can do this. And how did you actually hook up with Matthew Sweet

to make those records? Um, we had done a show at McCabe's together the Bengals and Matthew and I had brought Mike Myers to see Matthew that we may have talked about that already, and that's ming te Um. We had done the band for Austin Powers. We were in the band. We created the band with Mike, and Matthew was there part of it. Um. I guess at some point it came up after the McCabe show that the Bengals and Matthew had been at that we should do something.

And then he brought me up to his house and I've met his wonderful wife, who I'd known because she worked. She was part of the Austin Powers team. If it's very complicated, but it's all good. It's just that I'm trying to go back in time and sort of pull threads from different eras of my life. But Matthew had this incredible space up on up in the hills of Hollywood where he had an amazing studio and all this crazy art everywhere and all the art that he was making.

He was just one of the most dedicated artistic souls I've ever met. It didn't just stop at music. He was making sculpture, he was painting, collecting art. So we just started to go up there and I basically, sort of like with Peter We basically pitched around song ideas, what could we record? And we got very giddy kids in a candy store, as how I described it with Matthew for sure, I remember the day on the second record when we were broaching the idea of doing a

seventies one in a second record. He we we're on a call together and the concept of doing Prague adding in Prague rock to what we were intending to do. Um and I've seen all good people. Your move was the one that we chose. Um and that was one of my favorite ones to sing. I remember that moment that was that was the life changing moment. Do you you have a unique voice? When did you realize that? And are you self conscious about the way it sounds? You mean like my singing voice? Yes? Um? I and

my self conscious? Did you ask? Sorry? And yes yeah? Um. I think I just have that built in stage fright thing. So, but early as a child, it was sort of how I lulled myself. It was almost like I've been told that I rocked back and forth a lot too. I don't know. There's always a rhythm going on and in my head a little bit, and I think that it was kind of delighting even to myself, when I realized I could sing along and mimic records, I could try to be like a minor bird. My mom always said,

you're like a minor bird. I guess minor birds are the ones that can learn speech and can mimic speech. And I started to get like it was almost like a hypnotic meditation to drop the needle on a Jonie Mitchell record, for example, and sing a song, for example, like you turn me on I'm a Radio, and just try to like fit in with what she was singing and sing along as perfectly as I could, with that fair sort of spontaneous melodizing that she does in her

songwriting and her performing. And then the same was true with all these artists that I would sing to along too, And I even sang along to those early Beatles records my mom brought home. Yeah, so singing along was kind of a meditation, and I guess I realized that my voice was complying you if I think about it in a certain way, it was doing it. It was able to do it. And the more I did it, to the chagrin of my family, hearing me over and over

again singing to certain records, the more I became confident. Oh, it is an instrument that I have and I can use it, and I just have to learn how to keep teaching myself how to use it by mimicking other people who do it. Well, that's how the process this was. And do you still paint and draw today? Yeah? I don't share much of that, but I do not so much painting, but but drawing. Yeah. And then how many siblings do you have? I have an older brother named John,

and Jesse is my younger brother. And what are they up to every day? Um? John is a very excellent writer, as is Jesse, although Jesse they both didn't really do that, you know, as a career. Um, Jesse practices law and he works. Both of my brothers. My brother was uh, worked for the Tennessee prison system as a as a therapist and had group therapy, you know, into that's what he did. And Jesse interestingly does a lot of stuff in the in the LA prisons systems. To league, you know,

represents people a thing as driven as you are. I don't think so not. I mean I think I don't know, I can't really say, but I think that that that is something that this sort of burning drive that I have to do these things. I don't know what accounts for it, except I do think my childhood set me up for it, or set me up with the idea that I've found this kind of bliss of disappearing into this kind of process oriented work, and and that it allows for my imagination to be triggered and a sense

of play. And I just I'm very grateful that that I've had the opportunity to spend so much time making art in all these different forms. And what was it like growing up? Is the middle child, the only girl? Well, I think the fact that I was the only girl gave me a little bit of a special place that

my brothers may not be resented that I had. That said, I think that some of the sassiness in the book, and I think having all this boy energy from my brothers and being all adolescents together was informative and it gave me a hint into, you know, just how to write about the human experience. And I just found my family to be kind of endlessly entertaining in all their function and dysfunction. Dysfunction is very interesting to write about.

I like to write characters who have dysfunction and because otherwise it's boring if everybody's perfect and like a robot, you know. So I like idiosyncratic in idiosyncrasies in characters. I like characters who behave badly. I like characters that we love to dislike. I mean, I just I just like. I don't know. It adds interest to things, and I think it's it's been fun to write about. Okay, And going back to the scene in the eighties, and there

was a scene Bangals were very successful. There were other acts that got some notoriety at the time. What happened to all those people and do you have any contact with them? Well, some of the Paisley Underground, so called scenesters are still around. I still very recently I called Lewis Gutierres. We stayed in touch. We dated back then he was in UM. It was originally hit the band was called Salvation Army, then they were called the Three o'clock UM. I've stayed in touch with other members of

the in quotes basically underground UM. There are there are things that have brought us together, sort of concerts, often for charitable organizations that you know that raising money for really really important causes we've done, We've all reunited for those those concerts. Um, what went back to your question against specifics. Okay, so you stayed in contact with those people. Those people were relatively successful, they brought records. But what

are they doing all day? You have the luxury of having the hits that are licensed, etc. How are all these people staying alive? And are these good stories or bad stories? Mostly good, I would say, I mean some of them have gone onto non music or entertainment related jobs like um, some of them have you know, our work in businesses and for companies or stockbrokers or educators, you know. I but the yeah, so I I everyone

seems to be doing okay. So so no sad stories, no burnouts, no ods, etc. No, I mean I've been lucky that way, you know. And I think my partners in the Bengals are all ensconced in m and No, Vicki's always staying creative. She just went to Europe in fact, to do a run of shows that were Paisley Underground. People involved with those and performing in Europe. So I know that I spoke with her recently and she was very thrilled about that. Okay, Susanna. Okay, let me ask you.

Your name on the records that Susanna. How does your family refer to you as well? My parents are quite elderly now that I visit them as much as they can, and whenever I walk in the house, my dad says, Susannah bananas here. So he's been lately calling me Susanna Banana and um. He used to call me Zannie. That was my nickname. Some people call me Susie Quzi. I don't know. They can call me whatever the hell they want. I love them, I don't care. But um, yeah, I answered,

I answer mostly to Sue and Susanna. I've never been a Susan. My ballet teacher who's I love and we're still in touch after all these years. He used to call me Susanne, and I was I was fine with that. The only the only one I don't really connect with is Susan. I don't feel like a Susan. I'm good, I'm okay with a Susanne. Susanna Banana is just fine. You're welcome to call me that. Bob. Yeah, that's that's sort of the answer to that. And your father was

a psychoanalyst. What was your experience with therapy. Oh, I was heavily into it. I did on the couch psychoanalysis, you know, Freudian analysis in the eighties, and boy did I need it. It was very stressful. The music business. I mean, music is one thing, the music business is another beast Entirely. I think I just needed, you know, to have therapy then. And I'm glad that I was kind of early on the tip. I don't think had my father not been a psychiatrist psychoanalyst, I don't know

that I would have even known to do it. But it was such a part of my childhood knowing that my father was helping all these people, and you know, it was really good at his job. You know. People always used to say, what's it like having a shrink for a dad, And I said, usually, he just reminds me that everyone's crazy. Everyone's crazy. It's not like you're the only one. So I suppose we all sort of need something to get us through this thing week called life. And so for me, I got, I got that psycho

analytic treatment. They used to call it treatment in the uh just talk therapy, really, um, I got I got in early with that. And what about later days, you go back for a tune out. I did. I did need a tune up once I became a mom and just I definitely went back to the same person. I'm very fortunate. Yeah. And when it was psychoanalysis on the couch, it was multiple days a week, I presume always like four days a week, I mean a barring when I

was on tour, you know, of course. Yeah, it was like traditional like when you watch watch Annie Hall or something, and you know, uh, you cut back and forth between the the analysis sessions. They're saying the exact opposite thing. They never want to have sex. They want to have sex all the time. And any word of wisdom you can leave us with from therapy. From therapy, um, oh, what would I say about it? Thank you to the therapists and to all you know, no, no, no, what

did you learn about yourself? About life? Well, I'll tell you what. I wish I can say this to everybody in their twenties. Enjoy your twenties. Enjoy them. You only get to be in your twenties then, and you waste so much time thinking you're not good enough, you're not this enough, you're not bad enough. I wish I could give my twenty something self a pep talk and say, let it go. You this, You're in your freaking twenties, you idiot. That's what I wish I could say, don't

fritter this time. It's that's oh my gosh, you know, and having kids in their twenties. I saw, you know, it's it's it's a weirdly complex and fraught time. But if I had a way to go back and tell my my twenties something self, any something, it'd be stop beating yourself up, Stop criticizing everything about yourself, Stop worrying about all these things. Do everything you can to cope with anxiety and healthy ways, in the best ways. But you know you're blowing it because you don't get to

be twenty again. Okay, one final thing, because I've been watching you here on the zoom, even though the audience doesn't see the zoom. You don't wear a wedding ring protect at a moment. You just didn't put it on today, or you normally don't wear it. You know, Jay wears his every day. I because I played guitar it, I've always found it a little bit uncomfortable. I'm so married. You're right, but I do. I just I'm lax about wearing the ring. But he doesn't hold me. He doesn't

hold it against me. He knows i'm He can count on me, ring or no ring on my left ring finger. Okay, Susannah Banana, I think I think we've come to the end of the feeling we've known. I want to thank you for taking this time. It's been very insightful. The digressions were the best part. I wish you luck with your new projects. You already got a great review of the book in the Times, so you're on your way. Bob,

thanks so much. I've been so looking forward to this and I really appreciate you wanting to do this chat today with me. It was great. In any event, till next time. This is Bob left Sex