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Speaker 1: It's NIC's Eyes with Dan ray On Guilging Easy Boston's News Radio.
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Speaker 2: Rolling Stones fans, this is your time. Listen carefully and I know you may want to call in on this during this segment. You may want to call me at six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty Bradley Jay and for Dan on Night's Side. And we're very, very excited to have our next guest with us. Name is Bob Spitz, and he's had such an interesting life, is still actually having an interesting life, done things like managed Bruce Springsteen and Elton John wrote episodes of the Partridge Family, written biographies on the Beatles, Zeppelin, Juliet Child, Ronald Reagan, Bob, Dylan Woodstock, and now the Rolling Stones the biography. Thank you so much, Bob Spitz for being with us.
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Speaker 3: Hey, it's great to be here. I'm happy to be with you.
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Speaker 2: Thank you. You know, I saw a picture of you that looks like it's probably from the high school senior yearbook picture.
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Speaker 3: That's my bar Mits that's my bar Mits foot picture right Well, when I saw that, it's it's it looks exactly like.
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Speaker 2: My high school uh senior photo, same haircut, same exact tie, same exact suit jacket, and it looked like the same photographer. I thought, you know what this this this guy's is gonna be great. It's going to get along with me. I felt like I bonded with you when I saw that photo.
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Speaker 3: And now you're going to ask me to uh to give you money to buy that picture back from you.
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Speaker 2: Right, So let's get right into this book.
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Speaker 3: Sure.
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Speaker 2: One of your state of requirements when you're choosing somebody to write about or an entity to write about, is how they changed the culture. How did exactly how did Stone? How have the Stones changed the culture?
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Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, they took they took rock and roll what we knew was rock and roll, the music that Elvis gave us, Duop gave us, and even to some degree, the Beatles gave us, and they hot wired it and jacked it up and they turned it into something different. Look, even the Beatles in nineteen sixty three and nineteen sixty four, we're doing you know, pop pop songs, great pop songs, but pop songs. The Stones took it somewhere else. They decided to do music that sounded like you know, bar band music, things that you would do in your garage, and I think they gave us a sound of rock and roll that has persevered for you know, sixty five years. What we're listening to now comes directly from the roll In Stones.
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Speaker 2: All right.
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Speaker 3: Now.
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Speaker 2: The Beatles, for example, they had a long, long period of getting good. They worked, worked a lot of places real hard, and started really young. Whereas the receptionist that the Rolling Stones kind of came on the scene really fast. But they also did sort of an internship. You know, they put in some time. We just don't know about it, but you know about it. Can you tell us about where they, you know, put it, put in their hours to get good. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: They worked in the same kind of small clubs that the Beatles worked. And they had a place called the Crawdaddy Club. And when they took it over, no kids were coming into this club. The first night that they played, three three kids showed up. The club scene was just wasn't happening in London for for blues bands and rock and roll players at that time. And they started to play and the owner said, look, well, play as if there are three hundred kids here, and next week there will be three hundred kids here. And he was absolutely right. And they started to, you know, crank out their brand of hard hitting blues with a rock beat and played Chuck Berry songs. And soon enough that the kids were hanging from the rafters in that club. And the Stones, you know, they paid their dues. They went on tour opening up for the Everly Brothers and they were like fifth on the bill. Did the same with Little Richard. And that's what all those bands did in those days. I look, we met it with Bruce Springsteen when I was with them. You just pay your dues and you drive from gig to gig, and you work all night, you go to sleep in the car, and you get up the next morning and you drive another five hundred miles to get to the next gig. And basically that's what the Stones did too. And you can do that when you're twenty one years old. When you're thirty, not so much.
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Speaker 2: Right, I guess it's Bob Spitz author, a great author, and everyone who is that I've talked to that I told that you were coming on. It started raving about how great your books are. And folks, if you haven't read Bob Spitz book, you got it, and you might want to start with the Rolling Stones. The biography Stones didn't consider themselves rockers in the beginning. What did they consider themselves?
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Speaker 3: Oh, they were a blues band first and foremost. It's so odd because this happened in the UK in England, but it didn't happen at all here in the United States. These kids latched onto you know, Mississippi and Chicago style blues and the great artists that had, you know, begun playing in the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, nineteen forties. The Stones loved it, and the kids in the UK backed them. They really loved that music as well. The kids in the United States where that music came from, ignored it completely. So the Stones really became a blues band and that's all they ever wanted to play. It was Brian Jones' idea, he said, don't want to play rock and roll, not interested in even Chuck Berry at that time. But the others decided to, you know, to soup it up a bit, and so within a few weeks they had hot wired the blues and put a rock and roll backbeat to it and created something that was completely different and really took over the airwaves in the UK.
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Speaker 2: Probably a good time to talk about the influence of Andrew Oldham, because it wasn't it Andrew to tell the look, you can't just doing covers of blue songs. You got to write song. You got to write some rock songs.
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Speaker 3: That's right. Every great band needs a great manager. And Andrew was. He was cut from some strange cloth. He was eighteen years old when the Stone signed the recording contract. Andrew was so young that he needed his mother to co sign on the contract, but he had. He had I don't know if I can say this, kohonas that were huge besides the balling Balls, and he decided that the Stones were going to be as big as the Beatles. And yes, you're right. From the start he said, you can't just keep covering people's music. You have to do something original. So he challenged Mick and Keith. He put them in in a kitchen in one of the grungiest apartments in London and said, don't come out of this kitchen until you've written a hit. And they wrote. You know, they had no desire to write music, but they tried it out. They wrote four songs. They were all pretty crappy, but it was the start and before they knew it. They had a hit for Mary Anne Faithful.
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Speaker 2: Wow, So why did they trust Andrew? He's eighteen years old.
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Speaker 3: He had a great gift of God. He could talk. He could talk anybody into anything. Look, he had worked for the Beatles by the time he was eighteen, he had worked for Mary Kwant, the woman who changed all fashion in the UK and invented the mini dress. Andrew had been around even at the age of eighteen. And he was a shark. I mean he could talk anybody into anything. And he crafted the whole image of the Stones. He changed the rimmage completely and put them on a path to start him.
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Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break and hopefully Bobby can stay with us a bit. Folks, if you've never read had a book written by our guest Bob Spitz, you gotta and you might want to start with this one. And I have a feeling once you get the Rolling Stones and the biography, you're gonna get the whole catalog, including Ronald Reagan book and the Woodstock book. So more with Bob Spitz in a moment on w BZ.
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Speaker 1: It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's news radio.
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Speaker 2: We continue with Bob Spitz, author of many great books, and we're concentrating now on the Rolling Stones, the biography, and I want to just ask you, how did the country western vibe make its way into the Stone songs And was that a thing that bands in the area were doing or was it kind of specific to the Stones and maybe a couple other bands.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really great question. I'll tell you. Country in Western was huge in the UK, big surprise. I mean, when I was researching the Beatles biography Liverpool, it was a wash in country and Western. And one of the reasons is that servicemen from the United States were stationed there during World War Two, and what did they have. They had country and Western music with them. And when they left the UK, when they returned home to the United States, they left all the records behind and so the young kids, and more than the young kids, all the people there glombed on to those records and fell in love with country and Western. So, you know, you hear it definitely in the Stones, you hear it in the Beatles a lot of the bands. Even when I was researching the led Zeppelin book, Robert Plant told me that he absolutely adored country and Western music, and it really took me by surprise. I didn't expect it. But it's really crucial to the backbone of what bands like The Stones and the Beatles were doing. They listened to it and they really learned from it.
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Speaker 2: Was there an assumption you made about the Stones or any of the personnel on the Stones that proofs be wrong once you get into it, And I guess related, is there any accepted sort of history of the Stones, accepted things about the Stones that you proved be wrong when you got into researching the book.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question too. Absolutely, everybody thinks of The Stones as bad boys. You know that they were the anti Beatles, you know, incompetent guys you didn't want in your house. They are the sharpest guys I've met in all the years that I've researched books. Mick Jagger totally fored me. You know, we see Nick Jagger as that kind of butt shaking, lascivious peacock who fronts the band. But since Andrew Oldhamwolf as manager and teteen sixty seven, the Rolling Stones never had another manager. Mick Jagger managed that band. He negotiated every record contract, every date they did every tour, designed the tours, and Keith Richards, who you know, everyone kind of looked at Keith as hey, Keith, you know, a drug addict and kind of bad boy. Keith Richards is a sharp, smart, really incredibly sophisticated guy who, with Mick, has just transformed this band and kept them going for sixty five years. And so when I started researching the book, yeah, I was prejudiced. I thought, you know, these guys are a bunch of wackaders. Wrong. They aren't. They are as sharp as can be, and that's what's kept them on the front line for sixty five years when every other band has fallen fallen by the wayside.
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Speaker 2: Guest is Bob Spitz, author of many books, including the latest, The Rolling Stones of the Biography. We have a call from a town in Bill Ricker is Rick and Bill Ricker with a quick question or observation for our guest, Bob Spitz.
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Speaker 4: Hi, Rick, of course, Bob, of course, it'll be quick, go ahead, always quickly. Okay, what happened to Mick Taylor? He was so instrumental during the probably just mentioned about the twangy country sound that would come about probably on let it.
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Speaker 2: Please okay, right place to stop? Right there? What do we have an answer?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Mick Taylor, Yeah, gone, I mean gone in a flash. Uh. Mick fell in with Keith and Anita Pallenberg, Keith's Keith's common law wife. And while he became one of the great guitarists for The Stones, he was really young and he fell under Keith's influence and soon became, you know, a drug addict and wanted out. He did not want that life. He made the decision whether or not deliver or die, and the way that he found to live was to leave the Rolling Stones. And I think he made a really smart decision and it's one that Keith regretted because he loved playing with Nick Taylor. Mick was sophisticated, had a fabulous sound, was just great to play with and it was a tragic thing that he could no longer participate.
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Speaker 2: Good question, Rick, And also speaking of people gone, Brian Jones, what did he bring to the band really besides founding it? And you know, how did he happen to run out of gas? Did he'd lose interest? What happened with that?
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Speaker 3: Yeah? Founding it? You're right, The Rolling Stones was Brian Jones band. He created it, he named it, and he was the one who got all the rest of the guys interested in the blues. But Brian was a really fragile person. He had a fragile ego, and when Mick and Keith started to emerge as the frontman frontman for the band, Brian couldn't deal with it. He always thought that he was the front man for the band. And so, you know, tragic story. He gets involved with drugs. He fathered five children by the time he was twenty one, with five different women, and it all kind of collapsed in on him, and so Brian couldn't handle it. And by the time the Stones were ready to make Sticky Fingers, Brian was no longer even participated and they asked him to leave the band and he did and a month after that he was dead.
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Speaker 2: You know, there's a thing in England too, there was anyway, we don't have it here in the United States, and that's one of the reasons I think that during a certain period of time, the music there was so good, and that's the art school system. The English art school contributed a lot to the music scene. It was like a laboratory for musicians, you know, they so many went to Keith went Freddie Mercury, Clapton, Bowie, Townshend and Running Wood went to the same ealing Art college. Brian Ferry, bran Eno, a whole bunch. Can you talk a bit about that? And is that something that existed only there in England and I'm not aware of it existing anywhere else? And why did an art school tend to produce music people?
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Speaker 3: You know, I'm so glad you brought this up. Art schools or art schools are the foundation of rock and roll. It's something that only happened in the UK. When the kids are eleven years old, they take something called the eleven plus exam and basically you take this exam and they think that you're either headed for college or you're headed for anything you can grab onto. And at eleven years old they cast these kids off. What happened to these kids if they had any talent whatsoever or any artistic bent, they went to something called art colleges and these were for, you know, kids who had some talent. Everybody who you mentioned just before went to art school and Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jess Beck. What did they learn in art school? Not too much? They did some drawing. They took drawing in classes, they took architecture classes, but there were no tests. And so what they did was they brought their guitars in and they played in the cloakrooms, and they played in the bathrooms, and they traded songs. And the entire rock music section grew up in those art schools. Pete Townsen took a course from a guy who taught auto destructive art. Why do you think the Stones started the who started pounding out and breaking their instruments. It came from the art schorores and it was wonderful. It was a great place to grow up for these kids and give them a place to express themselves.
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Speaker 2: You know what, I don't hear much about the Stones and Altima. Not only did they headline, but they sort of organized it. And it was a disaster, such a bad disaster that it it ended an era, It ended a cultural era.
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Speaker 3: Maybe I hate to tell you this was the Stones didn't organize it. The grateful Dead organized it. They brought the Stones in from the beginning. They got them to do it, and they tried to get them to, you know, to do it quickly and put it together quickly, and of course, Mick put all his money into it and backed it, and then what happened, Well, of course it happened too quickly. The Grateful Dead showed up but refused to play. They refused, they took off. They left the the Hell's Angels there to take over for them. And it was a disaster. I mean it was. It was one of the big miscues of the Stones career and they always regretted it. It would never should have happened.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I read that. I read the Grateful Dead had the idea to use the Hell's Angels because they thought they were their outlaw brothers of the counterculture. That they just that was just so bad. And I didn't I hadn't realized that that Hell's Angels did it for just beer. That's all I asked for in return.
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Speaker 3: Right, five hundred dollars worth of beer. They were tanked up, they were doped up, They brought sawed off pool cues, they beat kids over the head with them. It was it was a disaster from to get go, and Nick had to get out of town afterwards, and always regretted the Stones participation in it. But they couldn't walk off if they had walked off, there would have been a riot. So they stayed and they played one.
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Speaker 2: More question and I mean, actually I have I have. Do you have a little bit more time so I could ask you a couple more questions? No problem, fantastic, So let's do this break And I actually want to ask Bob Spits some questions about Bob Spitz coming up on WBZ.
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Speaker 1: It's Night Side on wb Boston's news Radio.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for being with us, Bradley Jay for Dan. We're with wonderful author Bob Spitz, author of Been In a Wonderful Book, and we're concentrating on the recent The Rolling Stones, the biography. I'd like to ask a couple of questions about you. But first one question about music in general. Music does not seem to really matter so deeply to modern culture, and it did in the time of the Stones, in the time of the Stones, well it's still the time of the Stones, but in the formative days the sixties and maybe early seventies. Is that true? Is it not as important to the culture now and is there a reason?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to say it's not true. It's important to young kids in a different Oh. I love the Stones, I love the Beatles Joni Mitchell, and you know, I was totally involved in it. But kids are involved in a different way today. I mean, you know, the music is different. It doesn't concentrate so much on playing instruments anymore. It's all about productions. So while young kids aren't really musicians, they're performers and that's a whole completely different thing. And performing has kind of taken over. You know, you go to a Tailor Swift concert and you see one hundred. I was in kids in the stadium. It means a lot to them. So you know, I decided a long time ago that while I thought my music was the only thing that mattered, I had to get out of the way and let the next generation feel that their music, no matter what format comes in, is just as important in a different way. And I think it is.
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Speaker 2: All right now about you. You were deeply involved in a lot at a really young age. At twenty one, Now were you managing Spring? What were you doing at twenty one? What came first?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I got out of college. I had no idea what I was doing. My parents put me on a bus to New York and said, hey, you know, the music business looks good to you take a good look around. And it was at a time when you could walk into any office in the music industry and get a job. And I was just lucky. I got a job with a music publisher who was producing The Partridge Family at the time. It was exciting. And six months after I was there, a young kid walked in the office after hours to have his music heard, and that was Bruce Springsteen. And there were three of us in the office and we quit our jobs the next day and walked out and managed. Bruce signed him to Columbia Records within a week. That's all it took got him on the road. I played with him occasionally.
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Speaker 2: What about him? So? What about seeing him in that office made you so confident in Bruce that you quit your job right away?
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Speaker 3: Oh? He picked up He had a guitar with him, this ratty guitar case. He opened it up and he started to play. It was a song called No Need. He's never recorded it. I recorded it luckily that night, and we knew. We knew immediately. Look, we were all music guys, the three of us, and loved music, and we knew he was so different, so original, so confident in the way he played It was a no brainer. I mean, I was the youngest of the three of us. The other two guys were in their thirties and they had families to take care of. Never gave it another thought. It was Bruce all the way, and we knew we had something special.
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Speaker 2: Did you have any idea how to manage an artist or did you wing it?
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Speaker 3: We winged it and we did pretty well. I mean, you know, we got him an agent, we got and Bruce kind of moved into my apartment in Manhattan, wrote his first album, Spent Nights in a Hammock in my apartment, and it was all happening. It happened very fast, and there was so much going on musically in the streets of New York in those days. Everybody was on the street, you know, all and Oates were there, and I mean just everybody. Everywhere you looked, there were guys carrying guitars and it was an exciting time to be there. We winged it, and I think we did the right thing. And Bruce was you know, all he had to do was play and he knocked people out right, and.
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Speaker 2: You did and Elton John the same basic thing. I guess you probably met out and through working with Bruce as my guess.
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Speaker 3: Actually, my relationship with Bruce came to an end in nineteen seventy five after a second album. My partner and I didn't see eye to eye. I left, and of course Bruce fell into a huge problem with them legally. Later on, and I was out of work and somebody said to me, Hey, you know, I worked for a guy who's really interested in meeting you. He's watched you with Bruce, and why don't you come over and meet him? And I said fine, and I walked over and it was it was Hilton John and I was like, okay, this is interesting.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, what a life. And it seems as though there's some lesson to be learned there, and that is you got to you just gotta go to where it's happening and be in the right place at the right time. But you've got to put yourself there. And it seems that's what you did. You just went there.
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Speaker 3: You got to do that, you do. And also I was lucky. I mean, look, you know this was a time in the mid seventies when the music business was really growing up and taking off, and so you know, it was easy to move around to meet people. You could walk into office buildings without going through security and just grays and meet people in their offices and hear what's going on. It was exciting. It was fantastic, and it's not really happening again because today things happen in your in your bedroom. You know, you you have a tape machine in your bedroom or or an electronics setup and you put yourself out on the internet and that's it. But we played with each other, we uh, you know, with other groups, and met other groups, and we toured with Stevie Wonder, We toured with Chicago. Uh. You know. It was it was exciting in those tasks.
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Speaker 2: One more question for our guest, Bob Spitz, author of The Rolling Stones, the Biography and many more books. By the way, if you like The Stones at all, or even if it just like rock music, you're going to love these books. They don't get any better than this.
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Speaker 3: All right.
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Speaker 2: You swung back to writing, and I read that when you did the Dylan book, you it was anxious. You were anxious to infuse the book with you a voice. And after some time has passed, you take a look at that book and you realize you put too much of your voice in there. Can you explain what you mean and how you went about remedying remedying that for the next book.
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Speaker 3: Yes, you know, absolutely right. I was a young kid. Dylan was my first big book. I was lucky I had Bob, I was the first one to be his biographer and had access to everybody. But I thought you had to have a sharp mouth and to be, you know, kind of sarcastic in your book. And when the book came out, it got a great review in the Washington Post. It said this on the front page of the Washington Post book review. It said, this is a wonderful book. Nobody has ever captured the village in Dylan like this, and this is a terrible book because the author has not learned how to take himself out of it. And so I immediately thought that the person who wrote that review was a jerk. Put the review away, and two years later I pulled it out and I read it again. I went back and looked at my book, and it taught me more about writing than any writing teacher or any editor I've had. It really made me understand how to work and to be straightforward in a book, and to really concentrate on your subject. It's not about me, it's about my subject.
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Speaker 2: Was it difficult to take yourself out of it?
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Speaker 3: Not in the least, No, absolutely.
00:29:34
Speaker 2: Not, Bob Spitz. I cannot thank you enough for sharing your time. Fascinating. Excuse me, fascinating man, excuse me, great author. Everybody buy the whole catalog. Thanks very much, Bob.
00:29:47
Speaker 3: Skitz, my pleasure, great being. Review to take care, Bye bye.
00:29:51
Speaker 2: Now this on WBZ.
00:29:53
Speaker 1: You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news Radio.
00:30:00
Speaker 2: Well, I have to tell you that that interview that we just concluded with Bob Spitz, the author of many a book on rock folks and other folks like Ronald Reagan, Julia Child, that was one of the favorite interviews I've ever done. And I must say that Bob Spitz is one of the most interesting persons I had the pleasure to speak with. I only wish he was able to be in person, but that was certainly better than nothing. And I will tell you this that I have interviewed hundreds of rock people, hundreds and hundreds big stars, you name it, Bowie four times. I'll get into some details on that later. And well, Bowie's kind of exception, but In general, it's really hard to interview in a substantive way rock artists because most of them don't have anything to say, and if they did have anything, they say, they're saying in their music and they don't want to explain their music. You can't. You can't just ask what do you mean you know in that song? You can't do that, So it's kind of pulling teeth and you really have to prepare and think of big picture questions. I think out of the box. Try to think what's their life like? What's their life on the road? Like, put yourself in their feet position? Shoot, but just ever on their shoes, not their feet. Uh, what's their life like? What are they What's what irritates them, what rewards them? What's it like going from town to town? What's it like on the stage. What's it like getting in the van and driving all night and getting up all crusty eyed and at noon or whatever and doing a sound check? But I suppose since I have And by the way, Greg and Ohio, you I saw that you called and wanted to speak with Bob Spitz. I didn't have the time. Frankly, I did not have the time. I had stuff I had to get in there. But if you have an observation or you want to say, tell me what question you would have asked, I would love to have you share that. So feel free to call back. Love of you, many many many of you don't. There's a big patch of my life you don't know about, so let me share that to round things out a little bit. And by the way, if you've missed some of that interview, or if you want to share that interview, you can do that because you can listen to Nightside anytime day or night by going to Nightside on demand dot com. Rob Brooks working the master control there who's the best on the biz? He posts those as podcast hours Nightside on Demand. So what you do is you go to Nightside on Demand dot com. Do well, obviously see the most recent shows, and you wouldcroll to the third hour out of the four and it will have a title that has something to do with the Rolling Stones, and you'll be able to hear the whole thing and share it. I think it'd be something he'd really like to share with a buddy that likes the Stones or a buddy that loves reading about rock pants. People I talked to Revere Bob Spitz and say his book's unbelievably great. For example, the Beatles Book. On my previous guest, Greig Fitzgerald, the car guy, he read the Beatles Book and was going on and on about how great it is. It was a big deal that Bob Spitz came on and talked as long as he did. I took it very seriously, and just by way of my background, I never I don't really talk about this. There's a percentage of WBZ listeners that know me from a previous lifetime at WBC and the rock station. I spent twenty eight years there being a rock jock, truly live in a rock lifestyle. And I actually knew early on that I wanted to do talk radio, so way way early, like ninety seven, maybe I started putting out feelers and doing fill ins for talk radio wherever I could, I would. I drove from Plumb Island to Providence, Rhode Island to do a two hour fill in. I taped. It wasn't so bad. You know one thing it made it good. I was done in Providence. I had nothing to lose, so I didn't care. I just I wasn't uptight. I was a little looser, and that made the show better, and that turned out to be an important audition tables they call it. But I did work in the rock business for a long time, and as I mentioned, my specialty was interviewing rock people. I became the go to interview person and some of the experiences I think you'll be interested in. When I worked mid days, I was Bradley J King of Midday, as they say, and about maybe four times a week, three or four times a week, a band would come in and play live and I would interview them, and everyone from Henry Rollins to Moby to Poory Amos played three feet away, so they would all be interviewed. So that had to be hundreds there. And a couple of other things. Was Woodstock ninety nine. I interviewed twenty one of the fifty artist This is a little braggy, and definitely braggy. I'm going to brag a bit now, but I wanted to be prepared, so I went to Woodstock on Tuesday. It started on Friday. I went Tuesday, sat in the tent where the press would sit, and for three days I prepared fifty interviews. I prepared an interview for each artist, even though I was only going to schedule to do seven, but as things worked out, I did one interview and the producers said, you know, what can you do this one? I said, yep?
00:36:31
Speaker 3: And it was beautiful.
00:36:32
Speaker 2: It was beautiful because while everyone is sweating it out in their own filth out there in woods in the airfield and Wassdock ninety nine, I was in the MTV tent doing these interviews and it went like this. I did seven a day for three days. You do the interview, and it was also on TV. There is video of them in there. They had the best air conditioning on the planet. They had an air conditioning holes like three feet in diameter for a small issue room. And you know what, they had a keg of beer. I see Cole Beer. So it went like this. I would interview alta Marris set and think, okay, one down, have a beer, and then not too long, but maybe half an hour later I had a small beer, not enough to affect me, but it was a nice reward and it kept me loose. And then the next Willie Nelson and Rage against the Machine and Parliament, Funkadelic and on and on and on. Seven a day. So yeah, there was seven I guess half beers, a half a beer between each one. Then through that gig. One day I was at the Gyman. I called the producer of that because I knew she was producing the Grammys, and I said, hey, do you need somebody to interview people at the Grammys? She said, And I did this on my own. Wasn't through work? She said, I don't know, let me call me back in twenty minutes. Called her back twenty minutes and she said, do you own a tux? I said, yes, I do. She said, all right, you're in. Can you believe that? It was one of those things in life where you just got to ask, just ask, even though you think there's not a chance in heck. It's sort of like when the girl or the guy is so handsome and so beautiful you would never dare to ask because they probably are turning down request for dates all the time. Still ask, you never know. And that's how we got to do the last show ever at WBCN. I just asked, and as it turns out, no one had really asked yet, and the boss just said, yeah, I guess. Same with my first MC of a band ever, Talking Heads just knocked on the dressing room door and asked and they said, yep, I guess it's w b Z.
Speaker 1: It's NIC's Eyes with Dan ray On Guilging Easy Boston's News Radio.
00:00:06
Speaker 2: Rolling Stones fans, this is your time. Listen carefully and I know you may want to call in on this during this segment. You may want to call me at six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty Bradley Jay and for Dan on Night's Side. And we're very, very excited to have our next guest with us. Name is Bob Spitz, and he's had such an interesting life, is still actually having an interesting life, done things like managed Bruce Springsteen and Elton John wrote episodes of the Partridge Family, written biographies on the Beatles, Zeppelin, Juliet Child, Ronald Reagan, Bob, Dylan Woodstock, and now the Rolling Stones the biography. Thank you so much, Bob Spitz for being with us.
00:00:52
Speaker 3: Hey, it's great to be here. I'm happy to be with you.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: Thank you. You know, I saw a picture of you that looks like it's probably from the high school senior yearbook picture.
00:01:06
Speaker 3: That's my bar Mits that's my bar Mits foot picture right Well, when I saw that, it's it's it looks exactly like.
00:01:14
Speaker 2: My high school uh senior photo, same haircut, same exact tie, same exact suit jacket, and it looked like the same photographer. I thought, you know what this this this guy's is gonna be great. It's going to get along with me. I felt like I bonded with you when I saw that photo.
00:01:35
Speaker 3: And now you're going to ask me to uh to give you money to buy that picture back from you.
00:01:41
Speaker 2: Right, So let's get right into this book.
00:01:46
Speaker 3: Sure.
00:01:48
Speaker 2: One of your state of requirements when you're choosing somebody to write about or an entity to write about, is how they changed the culture. How did exactly how did Stone? How have the Stones changed the culture?
00:02:04
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, they took they took rock and roll what we knew was rock and roll, the music that Elvis gave us, Duop gave us, and even to some degree, the Beatles gave us, and they hot wired it and jacked it up and they turned it into something different. Look, even the Beatles in nineteen sixty three and nineteen sixty four, we're doing you know, pop pop songs, great pop songs, but pop songs. The Stones took it somewhere else. They decided to do music that sounded like you know, bar band music, things that you would do in your garage, and I think they gave us a sound of rock and roll that has persevered for you know, sixty five years. What we're listening to now comes directly from the roll In Stones.
00:03:02
Speaker 2: All right.
00:03:03
Speaker 3: Now.
00:03:04
Speaker 2: The Beatles, for example, they had a long, long period of getting good. They worked, worked a lot of places real hard, and started really young. Whereas the receptionist that the Rolling Stones kind of came on the scene really fast. But they also did sort of an internship. You know, they put in some time. We just don't know about it, but you know about it. Can you tell us about where they, you know, put it, put in their hours to get good. Yeah.
00:03:36
Speaker 3: They worked in the same kind of small clubs that the Beatles worked. And they had a place called the Crawdaddy Club. And when they took it over, no kids were coming into this club. The first night that they played, three three kids showed up. The club scene was just wasn't happening in London for for blues bands and rock and roll players at that time. And they started to play and the owner said, look, well, play as if there are three hundred kids here, and next week there will be three hundred kids here. And he was absolutely right. And they started to, you know, crank out their brand of hard hitting blues with a rock beat and played Chuck Berry songs. And soon enough that the kids were hanging from the rafters in that club. And the Stones, you know, they paid their dues. They went on tour opening up for the Everly Brothers and they were like fifth on the bill. Did the same with Little Richard. And that's what all those bands did in those days. I look, we met it with Bruce Springsteen when I was with them. You just pay your dues and you drive from gig to gig, and you work all night, you go to sleep in the car, and you get up the next morning and you drive another five hundred miles to get to the next gig. And basically that's what the Stones did too. And you can do that when you're twenty one years old. When you're thirty, not so much.
00:05:12
Speaker 2: Right, I guess it's Bob Spitz author, a great author, and everyone who is that I've talked to that I told that you were coming on. It started raving about how great your books are. And folks, if you haven't read Bob Spitz book, you got it, and you might want to start with the Rolling Stones. The biography Stones didn't consider themselves rockers in the beginning. What did they consider themselves?
00:05:39
Speaker 3: Oh, they were a blues band first and foremost. It's so odd because this happened in the UK in England, but it didn't happen at all here in the United States. These kids latched onto you know, Mississippi and Chicago style blues and the great artists that had, you know, begun playing in the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, nineteen forties. The Stones loved it, and the kids in the UK backed them. They really loved that music as well. The kids in the United States where that music came from, ignored it completely. So the Stones really became a blues band and that's all they ever wanted to play. It was Brian Jones' idea, he said, don't want to play rock and roll, not interested in even Chuck Berry at that time. But the others decided to, you know, to soup it up a bit, and so within a few weeks they had hot wired the blues and put a rock and roll backbeat to it and created something that was completely different and really took over the airwaves in the UK.
00:06:54
Speaker 2: Probably a good time to talk about the influence of Andrew Oldham, because it wasn't it Andrew to tell the look, you can't just doing covers of blue songs. You got to write song. You got to write some rock songs.
00:07:06
Speaker 3: That's right. Every great band needs a great manager. And Andrew was. He was cut from some strange cloth. He was eighteen years old when the Stone signed the recording contract. Andrew was so young that he needed his mother to co sign on the contract, but he had. He had I don't know if I can say this, kohonas that were huge besides the balling Balls, and he decided that the Stones were going to be as big as the Beatles. And yes, you're right. From the start he said, you can't just keep covering people's music. You have to do something original. So he challenged Mick and Keith. He put them in in a kitchen in one of the grungiest apartments in London and said, don't come out of this kitchen until you've written a hit. And they wrote. You know, they had no desire to write music, but they tried it out. They wrote four songs. They were all pretty crappy, but it was the start and before they knew it. They had a hit for Mary Anne Faithful.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: Wow, So why did they trust Andrew? He's eighteen years old.
00:08:20
Speaker 3: He had a great gift of God. He could talk. He could talk anybody into anything. Look, he had worked for the Beatles by the time he was eighteen, he had worked for Mary Kwant, the woman who changed all fashion in the UK and invented the mini dress. Andrew had been around even at the age of eighteen. And he was a shark. I mean he could talk anybody into anything. And he crafted the whole image of the Stones. He changed the rimmage completely and put them on a path to start him.
00:08:55
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break and hopefully Bobby can stay with us a bit. Folks, if you've never read had a book written by our guest Bob Spitz, you gotta and you might want to start with this one. And I have a feeling once you get the Rolling Stones and the biography, you're gonna get the whole catalog, including Ronald Reagan book and the Woodstock book. So more with Bob Spitz in a moment on w BZ.
00:09:17
Speaker 1: It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's news radio.
00:09:23
Speaker 2: We continue with Bob Spitz, author of many great books, and we're concentrating now on the Rolling Stones, the biography, and I want to just ask you, how did the country western vibe make its way into the Stone songs And was that a thing that bands in the area were doing or was it kind of specific to the Stones and maybe a couple other bands.
00:09:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really great question. I'll tell you. Country in Western was huge in the UK, big surprise. I mean, when I was researching the Beatles biography Liverpool, it was a wash in country and Western. And one of the reasons is that servicemen from the United States were stationed there during World War Two, and what did they have. They had country and Western music with them. And when they left the UK, when they returned home to the United States, they left all the records behind and so the young kids, and more than the young kids, all the people there glombed on to those records and fell in love with country and Western. So, you know, you hear it definitely in the Stones, you hear it in the Beatles a lot of the bands. Even when I was researching the led Zeppelin book, Robert Plant told me that he absolutely adored country and Western music, and it really took me by surprise. I didn't expect it. But it's really crucial to the backbone of what bands like The Stones and the Beatles were doing. They listened to it and they really learned from it.
00:11:01
Speaker 2: Was there an assumption you made about the Stones or any of the personnel on the Stones that proofs be wrong once you get into it, And I guess related, is there any accepted sort of history of the Stones, accepted things about the Stones that you proved be wrong when you got into researching the book.
00:11:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question too. Absolutely, everybody thinks of The Stones as bad boys. You know that they were the anti Beatles, you know, incompetent guys you didn't want in your house. They are the sharpest guys I've met in all the years that I've researched books. Mick Jagger totally fored me. You know, we see Nick Jagger as that kind of butt shaking, lascivious peacock who fronts the band. But since Andrew Oldhamwolf as manager and teteen sixty seven, the Rolling Stones never had another manager. Mick Jagger managed that band. He negotiated every record contract, every date they did every tour, designed the tours, and Keith Richards, who you know, everyone kind of looked at Keith as hey, Keith, you know, a drug addict and kind of bad boy. Keith Richards is a sharp, smart, really incredibly sophisticated guy who, with Mick, has just transformed this band and kept them going for sixty five years. And so when I started researching the book, yeah, I was prejudiced. I thought, you know, these guys are a bunch of wackaders. Wrong. They aren't. They are as sharp as can be, and that's what's kept them on the front line for sixty five years when every other band has fallen fallen by the wayside.
00:13:00
Speaker 2: Guest is Bob Spitz, author of many books, including the latest, The Rolling Stones of the Biography. We have a call from a town in Bill Ricker is Rick and Bill Ricker with a quick question or observation for our guest, Bob Spitz.
00:13:14
Speaker 4: Hi, Rick, of course, Bob, of course, it'll be quick, go ahead, always quickly. Okay, what happened to Mick Taylor? He was so instrumental during the probably just mentioned about the twangy country sound that would come about probably on let it.
00:13:35
Speaker 2: Please okay, right place to stop? Right there? What do we have an answer?
00:13:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mick Taylor, Yeah, gone, I mean gone in a flash. Uh. Mick fell in with Keith and Anita Pallenberg, Keith's Keith's common law wife. And while he became one of the great guitarists for The Stones, he was really young and he fell under Keith's influence and soon became, you know, a drug addict and wanted out. He did not want that life. He made the decision whether or not deliver or die, and the way that he found to live was to leave the Rolling Stones. And I think he made a really smart decision and it's one that Keith regretted because he loved playing with Nick Taylor. Mick was sophisticated, had a fabulous sound, was just great to play with and it was a tragic thing that he could no longer participate.
00:14:36
Speaker 2: Good question, Rick, And also speaking of people gone, Brian Jones, what did he bring to the band really besides founding it? And you know, how did he happen to run out of gas? Did he'd lose interest? What happened with that?
00:14:50
Speaker 3: Yeah? Founding it? You're right, The Rolling Stones was Brian Jones band. He created it, he named it, and he was the one who got all the rest of the guys interested in the blues. But Brian was a really fragile person. He had a fragile ego, and when Mick and Keith started to emerge as the frontman frontman for the band, Brian couldn't deal with it. He always thought that he was the front man for the band. And so, you know, tragic story. He gets involved with drugs. He fathered five children by the time he was twenty one, with five different women, and it all kind of collapsed in on him, and so Brian couldn't handle it. And by the time the Stones were ready to make Sticky Fingers, Brian was no longer even participated and they asked him to leave the band and he did and a month after that he was dead.
00:15:49
Speaker 2: You know, there's a thing in England too, there was anyway, we don't have it here in the United States, and that's one of the reasons I think that during a certain period of time, the music there was so good, and that's the art school system. The English art school contributed a lot to the music scene. It was like a laboratory for musicians, you know, they so many went to Keith went Freddie Mercury, Clapton, Bowie, Townshend and Running Wood went to the same ealing Art college. Brian Ferry, bran Eno, a whole bunch. Can you talk a bit about that? And is that something that existed only there in England and I'm not aware of it existing anywhere else? And why did an art school tend to produce music people?
00:16:36
Speaker 3: You know, I'm so glad you brought this up. Art schools or art schools are the foundation of rock and roll. It's something that only happened in the UK. When the kids are eleven years old, they take something called the eleven plus exam and basically you take this exam and they think that you're either headed for college or you're headed for anything you can grab onto. And at eleven years old they cast these kids off. What happened to these kids if they had any talent whatsoever or any artistic bent, they went to something called art colleges and these were for, you know, kids who had some talent. Everybody who you mentioned just before went to art school and Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jess Beck. What did they learn in art school? Not too much? They did some drawing. They took drawing in classes, they took architecture classes, but there were no tests. And so what they did was they brought their guitars in and they played in the cloakrooms, and they played in the bathrooms, and they traded songs. And the entire rock music section grew up in those art schools. Pete Townsen took a course from a guy who taught auto destructive art. Why do you think the Stones started the who started pounding out and breaking their instruments. It came from the art schorores and it was wonderful. It was a great place to grow up for these kids and give them a place to express themselves.
00:18:20
Speaker 2: You know what, I don't hear much about the Stones and Altima. Not only did they headline, but they sort of organized it. And it was a disaster, such a bad disaster that it it ended an era, It ended a cultural era.
00:18:35
Speaker 3: Maybe I hate to tell you this was the Stones didn't organize it. The grateful Dead organized it. They brought the Stones in from the beginning. They got them to do it, and they tried to get them to, you know, to do it quickly and put it together quickly, and of course, Mick put all his money into it and backed it, and then what happened, Well, of course it happened too quickly. The Grateful Dead showed up but refused to play. They refused, they took off. They left the the Hell's Angels there to take over for them. And it was a disaster. I mean it was. It was one of the big miscues of the Stones career and they always regretted it. It would never should have happened.
00:19:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read that. I read the Grateful Dead had the idea to use the Hell's Angels because they thought they were their outlaw brothers of the counterculture. That they just that was just so bad. And I didn't I hadn't realized that that Hell's Angels did it for just beer. That's all I asked for in return.
00:19:45
Speaker 3: Right, five hundred dollars worth of beer. They were tanked up, they were doped up, They brought sawed off pool cues, they beat kids over the head with them. It was it was a disaster from to get go, and Nick had to get out of town afterwards, and always regretted the Stones participation in it. But they couldn't walk off if they had walked off, there would have been a riot. So they stayed and they played one.
00:20:14
Speaker 2: More question and I mean, actually I have I have. Do you have a little bit more time so I could ask you a couple more questions? No problem, fantastic, So let's do this break And I actually want to ask Bob Spits some questions about Bob Spitz coming up on WBZ.
00:20:32
Speaker 1: It's Night Side on wb Boston's news Radio.
00:20:37
Speaker 2: Thanks for being with us, Bradley Jay for Dan. We're with wonderful author Bob Spitz, author of Been In a Wonderful Book, and we're concentrating on the recent The Rolling Stones, the biography. I'd like to ask a couple of questions about you. But first one question about music in general. Music does not seem to really matter so deeply to modern culture, and it did in the time of the Stones, in the time of the Stones, well it's still the time of the Stones, but in the formative days the sixties and maybe early seventies. Is that true? Is it not as important to the culture now and is there a reason?
00:21:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to say it's not true. It's important to young kids in a different Oh. I love the Stones, I love the Beatles Joni Mitchell, and you know, I was totally involved in it. But kids are involved in a different way today. I mean, you know, the music is different. It doesn't concentrate so much on playing instruments anymore. It's all about productions. So while young kids aren't really musicians, they're performers and that's a whole completely different thing. And performing has kind of taken over. You know, you go to a Tailor Swift concert and you see one hundred. I was in kids in the stadium. It means a lot to them. So you know, I decided a long time ago that while I thought my music was the only thing that mattered, I had to get out of the way and let the next generation feel that their music, no matter what format comes in, is just as important in a different way. And I think it is.
00:22:23
Speaker 2: All right now about you. You were deeply involved in a lot at a really young age. At twenty one, Now were you managing Spring? What were you doing at twenty one? What came first?
00:22:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got out of college. I had no idea what I was doing. My parents put me on a bus to New York and said, hey, you know, the music business looks good to you take a good look around. And it was at a time when you could walk into any office in the music industry and get a job. And I was just lucky. I got a job with a music publisher who was producing The Partridge Family at the time. It was exciting. And six months after I was there, a young kid walked in the office after hours to have his music heard, and that was Bruce Springsteen. And there were three of us in the office and we quit our jobs the next day and walked out and managed. Bruce signed him to Columbia Records within a week. That's all it took got him on the road. I played with him occasionally.
00:23:33
Speaker 2: What about him? So? What about seeing him in that office made you so confident in Bruce that you quit your job right away?
00:23:40
Speaker 3: Oh? He picked up He had a guitar with him, this ratty guitar case. He opened it up and he started to play. It was a song called No Need. He's never recorded it. I recorded it luckily that night, and we knew. We knew immediately. Look, we were all music guys, the three of us, and loved music, and we knew he was so different, so original, so confident in the way he played It was a no brainer. I mean, I was the youngest of the three of us. The other two guys were in their thirties and they had families to take care of. Never gave it another thought. It was Bruce all the way, and we knew we had something special.
00:24:29
Speaker 2: Did you have any idea how to manage an artist or did you wing it?
00:24:35
Speaker 3: We winged it and we did pretty well. I mean, you know, we got him an agent, we got and Bruce kind of moved into my apartment in Manhattan, wrote his first album, Spent Nights in a Hammock in my apartment, and it was all happening. It happened very fast, and there was so much going on musically in the streets of New York in those days. Everybody was on the street, you know, all and Oates were there, and I mean just everybody. Everywhere you looked, there were guys carrying guitars and it was an exciting time to be there. We winged it, and I think we did the right thing. And Bruce was you know, all he had to do was play and he knocked people out right, and.
00:25:23
Speaker 2: You did and Elton John the same basic thing. I guess you probably met out and through working with Bruce as my guess.
00:25:30
Speaker 3: Actually, my relationship with Bruce came to an end in nineteen seventy five after a second album. My partner and I didn't see eye to eye. I left, and of course Bruce fell into a huge problem with them legally. Later on, and I was out of work and somebody said to me, Hey, you know, I worked for a guy who's really interested in meeting you. He's watched you with Bruce, and why don't you come over and meet him? And I said fine, and I walked over and it was it was Hilton John and I was like, okay, this is interesting.
00:26:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a life. And it seems as though there's some lesson to be learned there, and that is you got to you just gotta go to where it's happening and be in the right place at the right time. But you've got to put yourself there. And it seems that's what you did. You just went there.
00:26:32
Speaker 3: You got to do that, you do. And also I was lucky. I mean, look, you know this was a time in the mid seventies when the music business was really growing up and taking off, and so you know, it was easy to move around to meet people. You could walk into office buildings without going through security and just grays and meet people in their offices and hear what's going on. It was exciting. It was fantastic, and it's not really happening again because today things happen in your in your bedroom. You know, you you have a tape machine in your bedroom or or an electronics setup and you put yourself out on the internet and that's it. But we played with each other, we uh, you know, with other groups, and met other groups, and we toured with Stevie Wonder, We toured with Chicago. Uh. You know. It was it was exciting in those tasks.
00:27:32
Speaker 2: One more question for our guest, Bob Spitz, author of The Rolling Stones, the Biography and many more books. By the way, if you like The Stones at all, or even if it just like rock music, you're going to love these books. They don't get any better than this.
00:27:46
Speaker 3: All right.
00:27:47
Speaker 2: You swung back to writing, and I read that when you did the Dylan book, you it was anxious. You were anxious to infuse the book with you a voice. And after some time has passed, you take a look at that book and you realize you put too much of your voice in there. Can you explain what you mean and how you went about remedying remedying that for the next book.
00:28:15
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, absolutely right. I was a young kid. Dylan was my first big book. I was lucky I had Bob, I was the first one to be his biographer and had access to everybody. But I thought you had to have a sharp mouth and to be, you know, kind of sarcastic in your book. And when the book came out, it got a great review in the Washington Post. It said this on the front page of the Washington Post book review. It said, this is a wonderful book. Nobody has ever captured the village in Dylan like this, and this is a terrible book because the author has not learned how to take himself out of it. And so I immediately thought that the person who wrote that review was a jerk. Put the review away, and two years later I pulled it out and I read it again. I went back and looked at my book, and it taught me more about writing than any writing teacher or any editor I've had. It really made me understand how to work and to be straightforward in a book, and to really concentrate on your subject. It's not about me, it's about my subject.
00:29:29
Speaker 2: Was it difficult to take yourself out of it?
00:29:32
Speaker 3: Not in the least, No, absolutely.
00:29:34
Speaker 2: Not, Bob Spitz. I cannot thank you enough for sharing your time. Fascinating. Excuse me, fascinating man, excuse me, great author. Everybody buy the whole catalog. Thanks very much, Bob.
00:29:47
Speaker 3: Skitz, my pleasure, great being. Review to take care, Bye bye.
00:29:51
Speaker 2: Now this on WBZ.
00:29:53
Speaker 1: You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news Radio.
00:30:00
Speaker 2: Well, I have to tell you that that interview that we just concluded with Bob Spitz, the author of many a book on rock folks and other folks like Ronald Reagan, Julia Child, that was one of the favorite interviews I've ever done. And I must say that Bob Spitz is one of the most interesting persons I had the pleasure to speak with. I only wish he was able to be in person, but that was certainly better than nothing. And I will tell you this that I have interviewed hundreds of rock people, hundreds and hundreds big stars, you name it, Bowie four times. I'll get into some details on that later. And well, Bowie's kind of exception, but In general, it's really hard to interview in a substantive way rock artists because most of them don't have anything to say, and if they did have anything, they say, they're saying in their music and they don't want to explain their music. You can't. You can't just ask what do you mean you know in that song? You can't do that, So it's kind of pulling teeth and you really have to prepare and think of big picture questions. I think out of the box. Try to think what's their life like? What's their life on the road? Like, put yourself in their feet position? Shoot, but just ever on their shoes, not their feet. Uh, what's their life like? What are they What's what irritates them, what rewards them? What's it like going from town to town? What's it like on the stage. What's it like getting in the van and driving all night and getting up all crusty eyed and at noon or whatever and doing a sound check? But I suppose since I have And by the way, Greg and Ohio, you I saw that you called and wanted to speak with Bob Spitz. I didn't have the time. Frankly, I did not have the time. I had stuff I had to get in there. But if you have an observation or you want to say, tell me what question you would have asked, I would love to have you share that. So feel free to call back. Love of you, many many many of you don't. There's a big patch of my life you don't know about, so let me share that to round things out a little bit. And by the way, if you've missed some of that interview, or if you want to share that interview, you can do that because you can listen to Nightside anytime day or night by going to Nightside on demand dot com. Rob Brooks working the master control there who's the best on the biz? He posts those as podcast hours Nightside on Demand. So what you do is you go to Nightside on Demand dot com. Do well, obviously see the most recent shows, and you wouldcroll to the third hour out of the four and it will have a title that has something to do with the Rolling Stones, and you'll be able to hear the whole thing and share it. I think it'd be something he'd really like to share with a buddy that likes the Stones or a buddy that loves reading about rock pants. People I talked to Revere Bob Spitz and say his book's unbelievably great. For example, the Beatles Book. On my previous guest, Greig Fitzgerald, the car guy, he read the Beatles Book and was going on and on about how great it is. It was a big deal that Bob Spitz came on and talked as long as he did. I took it very seriously, and just by way of my background, I never I don't really talk about this. There's a percentage of WBZ listeners that know me from a previous lifetime at WBC and the rock station. I spent twenty eight years there being a rock jock, truly live in a rock lifestyle. And I actually knew early on that I wanted to do talk radio, so way way early, like ninety seven, maybe I started putting out feelers and doing fill ins for talk radio wherever I could, I would. I drove from Plumb Island to Providence, Rhode Island to do a two hour fill in. I taped. It wasn't so bad. You know one thing it made it good. I was done in Providence. I had nothing to lose, so I didn't care. I just I wasn't uptight. I was a little looser, and that made the show better, and that turned out to be an important audition tables they call it. But I did work in the rock business for a long time, and as I mentioned, my specialty was interviewing rock people. I became the go to interview person and some of the experiences I think you'll be interested in. When I worked mid days, I was Bradley J King of Midday, as they say, and about maybe four times a week, three or four times a week, a band would come in and play live and I would interview them, and everyone from Henry Rollins to Moby to Poory Amos played three feet away, so they would all be interviewed. So that had to be hundreds there. And a couple of other things. Was Woodstock ninety nine. I interviewed twenty one of the fifty artist This is a little braggy, and definitely braggy. I'm going to brag a bit now, but I wanted to be prepared, so I went to Woodstock on Tuesday. It started on Friday. I went Tuesday, sat in the tent where the press would sit, and for three days I prepared fifty interviews. I prepared an interview for each artist, even though I was only going to schedule to do seven, but as things worked out, I did one interview and the producers said, you know, what can you do this one? I said, yep?
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Speaker 3: And it was beautiful.
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Speaker 2: It was beautiful because while everyone is sweating it out in their own filth out there in woods in the airfield and Wassdock ninety nine, I was in the MTV tent doing these interviews and it went like this. I did seven a day for three days. You do the interview, and it was also on TV. There is video of them in there. They had the best air conditioning on the planet. They had an air conditioning holes like three feet in diameter for a small issue room. And you know what, they had a keg of beer. I see Cole Beer. So it went like this. I would interview alta Marris set and think, okay, one down, have a beer, and then not too long, but maybe half an hour later I had a small beer, not enough to affect me, but it was a nice reward and it kept me loose. And then the next Willie Nelson and Rage against the Machine and Parliament, Funkadelic and on and on and on. Seven a day. So yeah, there was seven I guess half beers, a half a beer between each one. Then through that gig. One day I was at the Gyman. I called the producer of that because I knew she was producing the Grammys, and I said, hey, do you need somebody to interview people at the Grammys? She said, And I did this on my own. Wasn't through work? She said, I don't know, let me call me back in twenty minutes. Called her back twenty minutes and she said, do you own a tux? I said, yes, I do. She said, all right, you're in. Can you believe that? It was one of those things in life where you just got to ask, just ask, even though you think there's not a chance in heck. It's sort of like when the girl or the guy is so handsome and so beautiful you would never dare to ask because they probably are turning down request for dates all the time. Still ask, you never know. And that's how we got to do the last show ever at WBCN. I just asked, and as it turns out, no one had really asked yet, and the boss just said, yeah, I guess. Same with my first MC of a band ever, Talking Heads just knocked on the dressing room door and asked and they said, yep, I guess it's w b Z.
