Larry Fast

WEBVTT
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And what we're doing is making sound.
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Yes, we are.
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Hello, Larry Fast.
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How are you doing?
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Good.
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Nice to see you.
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It's making sound with the unclosed episode 123.
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Hi, folks.
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To be back.
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It's uh really this is gonna be great.
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I can't wait to talk to this man.
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It's uh Thursday, December 12th, 2024, as we tape this.
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And uh I'm here in uh my home studio in Astoria in Queens, and Larry Fast is here and talking to me from New Jersey.
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From New Jersey, from Morris County, New Jersey.
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Morris County?
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So far.
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Northern New Jersey.
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Northern New Jersey.
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I um I'm glad to have Northern New Jersey in the house.
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Um it's it's really great to to have you on the show and uh welcome back, everybody.
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Uh it's been uh pretty hectic.
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Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.
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I just got back into town from Kenya, and um I am here with Larry Fast.
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Let me tell you about Larry Fast if you don't know who this guy is.
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He is an American synthesizer player, and I more than just a player and composer, you know you're you're an inventor too, in my opinion.
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Uh, best known for his 1975 through 1987 series of synthesizer music albums, which uh under the project name Synergy, and for his contributions to a number of popular music acts, including Peter Gabriel, my favorite, Foreigner, Nectar, Bonnie Tyler, Hollow Notes, Meatloaf.
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Uh, I could go on.
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I could drop a lot more names.
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It's it's really great to have you.
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You um you're originally from New Jersey, if that it is that correct?
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That's correct.
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Not not where I'm living now, but not all that far away.
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So yeah, I've been a Jersey guy, then out to Pennsylvania for a while for college, and then the touring years started, and it was all over the world, and a lot of commuting back and forth to the UK during the Peter Gabriel decade.
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And we met um very recently for the first time in person, I think, at Brockstock at the music festival.
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It's the first time we really had a conversation.
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I think we met to shake hands uh with Annie Haslum at one of Sellersville or one of the smaller theaters.
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I don't remember where you played.
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A lot of them because I've been producing Annie as a solo act on and off.
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Since 1989.
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Yes.
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Her first solo album.
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And a little bit of work on um even before that in 1977.
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With Renaissance.
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Um, as she was a solo voice on an album called the Intergalactic Touring Band.
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Oh, yeah.
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And I was associate producer on that.
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Really?
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So she did one of the standout vocals on that album.
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Wow.
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So we go way back, but it was sort of the label mates thing through Sire Passport Records back when Renaissance was in their really Carnegie Hall heyday.
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That's when we got to know each other.
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What year was that that they did the Carnegie Hall album?
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I think that was in 74.
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Okay.
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I was there.
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I remember walking across 57th Street and fighting the traffic and going in.
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But that was just because it was a big deal for the label.
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Yeah.
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Man, I mean, you you've you have been around a long time, you've experienced a lot, you've met a lot of people.
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Um, you're sort of uh uh a pioneer when it comes to the use of synthesizers in uh modern music, you know.
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It's it's really kind of it's kind of cool.
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Um the Peter Gabriel experience, yeah, I'm sure, you know, I I I was listening to Synergy uh right before, you know, I always listen to the artist for a while before we I start talking, and it gets me in the mood.
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And I try to get into that vibe, you know, of uh what kind of creator this the person is.
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And and there there's so much in there that I hear.
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And you know, as a techie myself, I know that you're you you really are you're one of those people you didn't just play the instrument, but you know, you'd have like a stack of MOOC synthesizers uh behind you on stage with Peter Gabriel and everything was analog.
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At the start, absolutely.
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I mean, it w it was a matter of whittling it down.
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Very early on, there was digital sequencing.
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Um can you talk about sequencing?
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Explain what that means to a layman because this is very interesting and and uh uh uh it explains a lot of how uh how popular music has evolved.
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The um well, sequencer is just what it sounds like in synthesizer terms, and there you are, little little marketing.
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Um the it's a a device that uh puts out a sequential series of events.
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It doesn't actually make any sound by itself, but it triggers other things to do specific things over and over, which is almost exactly what a person does when they're playing an instrument.
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They are playing a sequence of events, which are sonic events at a particular time, at a particular pitch or a particular timbre, or it could be percussive, you know, it's not restricted.
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That's the beauty of it in electronic music.
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It can be designed to be almost anything.
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What does it do?
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Well, the old early ones look like a something out of a telephone switching network.
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It looked like a whole bunch of knobs, and they had little white lights under each one.
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The original Moog sequencers did.
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And um Is it Moog or Moog?
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Moog.
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Depends on who you it talked to.
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It's funny.
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If even in Bob Moog's biography, the family pronunciation changed on and off over the years, but it goes back.
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It's it's Dutch in origins.
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Yes.
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Not I mean, I knew him, I knew him well, but I wasn't one of his very close intimates.
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There are other people that knew him far, far better than I did.
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But we had a very nice, cordial and long-term relationship from the 1970s until he passed away in 2005.
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Okay, so go ahead.
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So anyway, um, the the device uh in in that incarnation had a bunch of knobs, and then there was a think of it like a little clock motor running behind the scenes that would step from event to event to event.
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Um at it could be at a slow rate, like a little percussive rate, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, or it could be super rapid, excuse me, super rapid rates, which would be almost creating tonalities on their own, or something in between.
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And it didn't have to be rigid, the timing could be adjusted to be a little longer, a little shorter.
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Um, and that was the only way to do it in the earliest designs was to make an analog design.
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But fairly early on in the computer days, as things got cheaper, as just as uh personal computers, and I don't mean the kind of things you could go out to retail store and buy, but the very early hobbyist ones happened when prices of components and memory chips and things finally got cheap enough that it wasn't a uh corporate or a laboratory function anymore.
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And uh one of the very first digital ones was created by Tom Oberheim.
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And I jumped on that in 1974.
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And in that one, the events were played on a keyboard or entered manually with voltages, but they were stored in a form of computer memory, which got more sophisticated as time went on.
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But it meant it didn't have all those knobs, it just had a clocking knob and a couple of other things uh to deal with multiple sequences.
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And it was a much cleaner, neater, and I felt very musical approach.
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And I I loved it.
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I really rarely went back to the old analog sequencer.
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The key being that the musical and the musicality of it was uh well, it was identical in the digital one, but it could also do other things, which was even better.
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And that's sort of been the way things have gone from analog, which got us up for the hump of doing electronic music when there was no other way to do it at an affordable way, even if that was in itself fairly expensive.
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But digital in the right hands, I like to think.
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Um it's just a tool, which is actually one of Bob Moog's favorite phrases.
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These it electronic instruments are tools for creative people.
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So if you've got the two right tools, you should be able to create just about anything.
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You're the perfect person to ask this.
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Who invented the click track?
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Um Was it Giorgio?
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Oh no, Giorgio Moroter?
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No, it goes back to film, early sound film, I would guess, probably in the 20s.
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Um because you know, it was there even for scoring purposes.
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Didn't he use it?
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Even before there was magnetic tape.
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Didn't he Marauder use it as a uh on tape?
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Wasn't he the first to like utilize it on on tape?
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Well about this.
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Well, the um predating him, the um there were sync tracks.
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In fact, this Oberheim digital sequencer had it, where you could sequent um just put a tone on tape and it would take that in and divide it.
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So this was in the early 70s.
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Wow.
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Um, and then derive your um your sequencing locked to tape that way.
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So now it was pretty early.
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I mean, it um a lot of it, it's it's all about timing controls, which were put on tape, and it was SIMT timecode, which had been used, and that became part of the lexicon of recording studios.
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And that was all derived out of stuff from NASA to keep um video from, I think it was the Ranger project in 1964, was what I call really early iteration of what the You're covering your your mic with uh here.
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I keep forgetting it's there.
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Can you can you re repeat that what you just said about the about NASA?
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Yeah, NASA was using time code to in order to um mark video frames coming in.
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And I think that became some of the basis which was then used in video editing.
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But the whole idea was getting time code or a timing signal on tape, yeah, and even synchronization of multiple tape machines, which is in a sense sequencing was done fairly early on with pilot tones and other ways of creating the sequences.
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I mean, Georgia Moro probably um created one of the earlier hit record series that made use of um tying sequencing to tape.
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So that was it.
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But I I mean I was kind of using it as a cheat early on in even in the early 70s when I was still in school, because um if you had multiple multi um multiple parts that you needed to sync and you didn't have a good multi-track tape recorder, which I didn't, it was easier to create some kind of a sync tone which could be divided out electronically to create whatever the time was going to be.
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It's just a fancy way of doing a metronome.
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Yeah, right, right, right.
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Yeah, no, it's it's it's it's fascinating.
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So so what's interesting is that during this time in the early 70s, you you were a history student, a history major, not a music major, so to speak.
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Or to but technology was played a role.
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Like what's what's one of your earliest experiences with with technology where you you know built something or uh created something or built rebuilt something or fixed something?
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Can you oh can you talk a little bit about that?
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Yeah, I mean it goes way back.
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I was uh my fascination hobby obsession when I was in single digits as a kid was I I liked things that lit up.
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I liked electricity, I wanted to know more about it, and I was very fortunate that my grandfather was an electrical engineer and a mechanical engineer and very high in the uh American um science pantheon.
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He rubbed uh rubbed elbows with many of the well-known names of his era in the 30s, 40s, and 50s and to the 60s.
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Um, a lot of the people who became the Manhattan Project or other because he was tied in with some military, military establishment.
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Really?
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And so um he sort of illustrated what the Manhattan Project is for.
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Oh, the development of the atomic bomb.
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Which ironically, um, as I understand, and I do need to fact-check this, but the building at Columbia University in Manhattan, where the first iteration of what was going to eventually happen at Los Alamos during World War II, is, I believe, now the building that is where the electronic music studios for Columbia University are.
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Really?
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So uh where the RCA Mark II synthesizer still resides in the program.
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I believe I've got to go cross-check the addresses because I'm sure they're available publicly.
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When do you have time for us to uh pop in over there?
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I don't I don't control that.
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I've I've been there.
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In fact, if you um ironically, if you look at the RCA Mark II synthesizer Wikipedia page, that's uh a very early pre-MOG vacuum tube-based synthesizer that was built for the uh uh well, it ended up in the possession of the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Labs from RCA, who would be.
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Where is Bob Moog from originally?
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New York.
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He's a New Yorker.
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And uh he you know came out of that world.
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Um he wasn't directly associated with that electronic music lab yet because it uh was still getting on its feet as he was going through school.
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But um, if you look at that Wikipedia page for the RCA Mark II synthesizer, there's a guy who's got really dark hair and a lot more of it standing in front of the synthesizer, and that was me back in the 1990s.
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Somebody grabbed a picture, and I don't honestly know how it ended up in the Wikipedia article, but it did.
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It did.
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Good for you.
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Good for you.
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You belong there.
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Um, so so your what what was the role that music played with your love for tech and fixing things?
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I I always had that, you know, like I was like that.
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I I loved I I used Legos to build stuff.
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You know, I had I always got Legos for gifts, you know, like another spaceship, another car, another this, another that.
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But I would take the pieces and I would start building my own thing with it.
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I understand that.
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I you know Legos, I guess I'm too old in America for Legos because they weren't like a thing yet.
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But no, but you know, in in in addition, I had uh, you know, I had like a tape player and I would record myself and talking, singing, making sound effects, and I would open the thing up and try to figure out how it worked.
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And I did the same with computers later on, you know.
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My brother had a um had an Atari, I got a stereo, he got an Atari, you know.
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So and I know that you also uh, but I want to I want you to talk about your experience, how you brought music into it.
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But it's interesting because um, according to Wikipedia, um some of the sounds that you created ended up in uh Commodore, which Commodore 64, which is an early uh uh you know the computer, ended up in video games.
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Well, no, it actually that's that's a a weird story, and that has more to do with copyright and intellectual property.
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Now, one of the albums that I had done, Audion, had a couple of tracks that somebody who was programming very primitive music on these early sound sound chips in um I I don't know whether it was on the cartridges, on on which platform exactly.
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I think it might have been Atari.
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But at any rate, they just ripped off my melodies, programmed them into the chips with instead of the kind of rich moog tones that were recorded in a recording studio for my arrangements.
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They took stripped it down to the basics, but it's clearly the same piece of music on uh several of these pieces, and they became the score to those.
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How did you notice it?
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Um, actually, it was fans that brought it to my attention.
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They said, Hey, did you know that your song Ancestors is featured on, I don't remember what the name of the game was.
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And it was like, you're kidding, you know, and had to check it out.
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And um, you know, it would it turned out absolutely was right.
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And then it turned into a whole thing between the publishing company and going to the the game platform, and of course they were in denial.
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And I'm trying to remember that there were some fairly names that became fairly big in uh gaming audio that were the perpetrators of this thing.
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And it never really resolved completely successfully, but whatever it was, that game series and the platform went away, and it went went away with them.
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So the wasn't really worth the legal fees to pursue that.
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But I didn't have anything to do with just developing that platform or the gamer world at that point, you know, the primitive cartridge uh version of game world.
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So um, you know, I just kind of by standing there got roped into it in a in this weird way, and it gets misinterpreted in a lot of interesting retellings.
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I'm glad I'm glad we cleared that up, moving on.
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So, so uh, but your your relationship with technology and and then combining that with becoming a music creator, can you talk about how that how that sort of spawned?
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Yes, it's not really that difficult.
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I mean, the electronics obsession was there right from the start.
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So this whole thing with liking, well, first it was light bulbs and electricity and Thomas Edison and all the things that that came out of that.
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And and it it sort of also, in a weird way, it also spurred my interest in history.
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Because there was this kind of there was a world before electricity, there's a world after electricity.
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And what was it like before and especially what was that transitional era like?
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But even as a kid, I mean, we're talking as a grade schooler, and I wanted to learn how these circuits worked and how to make a battery and a light light up.
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And my grandfather was very good in encouraging me with that, and he taught me to solder, and we'd solder these little, you know, D cell and a light bulb and a switch and a rheostat, and you know, I just learned the very basics from him.
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And we moved on to building um very early transistor radio kit, which was um not too long after transistors got into general circulation.
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So we're moving away from vacuum tubes.
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And um and he would buy me, he would go to this store called Lafayette Electronics, Lafayette Radio Electronics, which was a big chain uh based in New York, but they were all over all over the Northeast in the U.S.
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And probably I I think they had outposts in other parts of the of the continental U.S.
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And he would just buy me uh, you know, bags full of resistors and jacks and switches and all kinds of things and spools of wire and and just turn me loose.
00:20:15.599 --> 00:20:16.880
It's like go have fun.
00:20:17.119 --> 00:20:20.799
So I would, you know, get some of these kids' books on building their own circuits.
00:20:20.960 --> 00:20:23.200
So it was kind of self-taught in that way.
00:20:24.319 --> 00:20:30.799
And um, one of the things I was really fascinated with, and I started seeing the overlap, was my dad was an early adopter of hi-fi.
00:20:31.119 --> 00:20:36.240
So we had this really superb mono hi-fi system in the 50s.
00:20:36.559 --> 00:20:39.440
Big electro voice speaker, which I still have.
00:20:39.759 --> 00:20:40.160
Wow.
00:20:40.400 --> 00:20:47.359
And um stepper preamp and vacuum tube amplifier and Gerard turntable.
00:20:47.440 --> 00:20:52.079
You know, it was uh it was a pretty good system, and I liked I love the music on it.
00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:57.680
I don't yeah, I don't know whether that's just something that's baked into the DNA or something, but I always like that.
00:20:57.839 --> 00:21:11.599
And I had my little tiny kids um record player, you know, which could play children's records, but it they play LPs, so uh, you know, they sounded terrible coming out of a little tiny speaker, but I was fascinated with that too.
00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:19.920
So they and they all had pilot lights on them, so they lit up, so they that got my you know uh fascination going.
00:21:20.079 --> 00:21:27.359
The vacuum tubes glowing with their orange and blue glow was something else I was just mesmerized by.
00:21:27.680 --> 00:21:31.200
And um I've got a song, I've got a song for you, but go on.
00:21:32.160 --> 00:21:34.319
Uh Katha, you one of your songs?
00:21:34.400 --> 00:21:36.000
Or yeah, it's called Pilot Light.
00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:36.240
Yeah.
00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:36.960
Oh, okay.
00:21:37.039 --> 00:21:37.920
Well, that's great.
00:21:38.799 --> 00:21:43.279
That was one of the things I fell in love with Fender Amplifiers was their red jeweled pilot light.
00:21:43.359 --> 00:21:48.160
And then I found you could buy at Lafayette Radio, you could buy other colored jewels for them.
00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:51.759
So later uh the blues and greens and yellows.
00:21:52.079 --> 00:21:56.319
Um, but at any rate, um, the music was just captivating.
00:21:56.400 --> 00:21:58.400
I found an affinity for classical.
00:21:58.480 --> 00:21:59.599
My parents loved Broadway.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:00.400
Shows.
00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:08.720
So in the you know, the height of Broadway era of when the LPs were coming out, they always had the latest shows as they became hits.
00:22:08.799 --> 00:22:13.039
And so it was Rogers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Lowe or whoever.
00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:15.599
That was playing around, that kind of infused.
00:22:15.759 --> 00:22:19.200
But my dad had a pretty good classical LP collection.
00:22:20.319 --> 00:22:20.720
Excuse me.
00:22:20.880 --> 00:22:23.519
And he was a big band kind of guy.
00:22:23.759 --> 00:22:26.079
And my mother had slightly more eclectic taste.
00:22:26.319 --> 00:22:35.440
She would find going back to her college days, um, Pete Seeger or Josh White or other um for a moment.
00:22:35.839 --> 00:22:36.799
Oh, that's great.
00:22:37.039 --> 00:22:39.759
Never met him, but you know, certainly lovely guy.
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:42.319
Brightest blue eyes I've ever seen in my life.
00:22:42.720 --> 00:22:43.680
So I've heard.
00:22:43.839 --> 00:22:44.480
Yeah.
00:22:44.880 --> 00:22:46.720
So um interesting.
00:22:46.880 --> 00:22:56.480
But at any rate, so the music was infusing, and there was some point where it gelled that the technology of one is not really that distinct from the technology of the other.
00:22:56.720 --> 00:23:01.119
And one of the things was again with my granddad helping, helping him.
00:23:01.279 --> 00:23:02.319
I was handing him parts.
00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:08.319
He was building a new HeathKit preamp for his mono-based hi-fi system.
00:23:08.720 --> 00:23:15.200
And he was an early adopter of uh tape recorders and televisions uh in the 40s.
00:23:15.519 --> 00:23:29.039
And um, you know, so I would get exposed to the technology, he had a fairly good half-track machine that I actually took um kind of got gifted to me right about the time the Beatles hit.
00:23:29.359 --> 00:23:40.079
So I was off and running with recording things uh at in the 60s to like 63, 64, actually a little bit before the Beatles broke through.
00:23:40.319 --> 00:23:44.400
And um, and that was the point where I realized I I liked it all.
00:23:44.720 --> 00:24:00.079
And just like any good suburban kid with parents that came from a good background, I was um I got started with piano, well, first violin lessons in third grade, piano lessons starting in fifth grade.
00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:08.400
Wasn't that thrilled with any of it, but I liked making music, but I didn't like what I was given to play in practice.
00:24:08.880 --> 00:24:15.759
And then I guess kind of again, this uh inflection point when the Beatles happened.
00:24:16.079 --> 00:24:22.559
Rock happened, here I am, young, barely teen, and the whole world shook.
00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:28.000
And it was like, wow, all these different things technology, music, playing music.
00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:32.720
Um, I remember buying a uh Beatles music folio at the local music store.
00:24:32.799 --> 00:24:49.359
They didn't have much of it, it was mostly classical music and marching bands stuff for the school, but they had um some early Beatles songs found in a book, brought it home, sat down at the piano, I could play it, and it was like, oh boy, this is like really enlightening.
00:24:49.519 --> 00:24:50.960
All of a sudden I'm in another world.
00:24:51.119 --> 00:24:52.559
Now I liked playing it.
00:24:52.720 --> 00:25:00.559
It wasn't like that damn Brahms piece for kids that I had to uh, you know, the the kids' arrangement of it for learning piano.
00:25:00.720 --> 00:25:03.359
This was something I really I wanted to play.
00:25:04.160 --> 00:25:18.559
And uh month from there, my younger brother and I fooled our money and bought an electric guitar, a cheap, you know, Asian-made one, and gradually got, you know, worked our way up to better stuff, taught ourselves guitar and bass.
00:25:19.119 --> 00:25:24.319
And uh the electronic sounds were the last missing piece in the puzzle.
00:25:24.400 --> 00:25:25.839
And I was hearing some things.
00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:30.079
And in fact, it was my mom that turned me on to a theremin in a Hitchcock movie.
00:25:31.680 --> 00:25:34.000
Oh, yeah, you know, I remember spellbound.
00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:42.160
Yeah, and um, I think it might have been spellbound, but whatever it was, I you know, and she explained to me what it was, and that was amazing.
00:25:42.319 --> 00:25:47.680
Like, you know, it but it made sense because I knew a little bit of radio technology, so I could see how it would work.
00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:52.000
And at that point, I went, okay, there's got to be ways to do this.
00:25:52.079 --> 00:25:59.759
I was building little oscillators that were supposed to be used for Morse code training, and I started fooling around with one of them.
00:26:00.079 --> 00:26:02.240
Realized I could change out the resistor, make it very much.
00:26:02.559 --> 00:26:05.839
Explain uh to the to the audience what uh uh an oscillator is.
00:26:06.559 --> 00:26:18.480
Oh, well, it's a it's a little device very fundamental to many parts of electronics radio, um, creating sound or even for test equipment.
00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:26.319
But it um it just creates a waveform, a repeating waveform at a given pitch or an adjustable pitch.
00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:36.559
And it's kind of the basis under, at least for analog synthesis, is that the oscillator is what is making the the core sound.
00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:45.839
It's very much like the plucked string or the air through uh uh going through a tube um in a flute or pretty much any instrument.
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:51.839
Something is making the sound, and in electronic instruments, the oscillator is where it starts.
00:26:52.079 --> 00:26:54.000
So um so I started playing with that.
00:26:54.079 --> 00:27:07.839
And again, this is early as pre-MOG, pre-you know, there were synthesizers or experimental university or fringe people that were working with some of these things, or even using um test equipment.
00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:14.880
The Hewlett-Packard had a very successful line of oscillators that they had built the company on in the 1930s.
00:27:15.359 --> 00:27:21.519
And uh they were adapted for electronic music creation at some of the universities.
00:27:22.319 --> 00:27:41.680
And um I didn't realize it at the time as a junior higher and then high school student, but I was kind of backing into electronic music by working with oscillators, figuring out how to modify their sounds by making them distort or overloading them or filtering them.
00:27:41.920 --> 00:27:50.160
And uh I kind of self-taught inadvertently myself the basics of electronic music.
00:27:51.039 --> 00:27:51.680
Wow.
00:27:52.079 --> 00:27:57.519
Uh yeah, I I I'm just I'm sorry, I'm just like uh very fascinated with the tech stuff, you know.
00:27:57.599 --> 00:27:59.039
So it's just it's one of my favorite things.
00:27:59.119 --> 00:28:09.440
So I I gotta ask you about some of the the um the artists that you uh collaborated with and and recorded with um in addition to your own recordings and writing.
00:28:09.759 --> 00:28:17.359
And uh I think there is a um one of the first people you meet, I think is Rick Wakeman from Yes, the band.
00:28:18.079 --> 00:28:19.839
Yeah, that was fair fairly early on.
00:28:19.920 --> 00:28:21.680
Um that was a door.
00:28:21.759 --> 00:28:22.799
You know, there's always a door.
00:28:22.960 --> 00:28:24.480
How do you got how did you get in?
00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:30.559
Like who who was the who was the first and who and you know, how do you get to work with people like Peter Gabriel?
00:28:30.640 --> 00:28:34.559
Although, I mean, he was also largely unknown at that time.
00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:35.440
I mean he was coming in.
00:28:36.160 --> 00:28:38.400
I mean it was yeah, yes, was yes was unknown too.
00:28:38.480 --> 00:28:44.799
They were traveling around in a uh station wagon with their manager and a U-Haul truck, and they were playing colleges.
00:28:45.039 --> 00:28:51.680
Um this was pretty early on, but um I had become aware of the So we're talking like what, 74?
00:28:52.559 --> 00:28:55.039
Uh no, one 70-71.
00:28:55.279 --> 00:29:00.960
I'd become aware of the band in 1969 on a family trip to the UK.
00:29:01.440 --> 00:29:06.000
And um, my brother and I bought the early yes albums out.
00:29:06.079 --> 00:29:11.839
I don't even know if they were released in the U.S., but they were available, we found them in London and brought them back.
00:29:12.480 --> 00:29:19.200
And um then the band, you know, was kind of on the bubbling under everybody's radar.
00:29:19.359 --> 00:29:38.720
When I got to college, and you know, I'd been in bands in high school and cover bands, and we wrote a couple of our own songs and we've recorded a few things, but you know, at home on home tape recorders, but it was not a formal business plan involved in making a career out of music that way at all.
00:29:39.039 --> 00:29:43.359
I got to college and I knew this going in.
00:29:43.599 --> 00:30:08.160
Um, college radio was a great vector because you got to play a lot of music, you got access to all the new releases because they were servicing the college stations, and the feedback chain went the other way because you could contact the labels, and you had a way to reach back into the business, and I was becoming more fascinated by how that part of it worked, too.
00:30:08.559 --> 00:30:17.200
So um, another buddy of mine, guy named Frank Grabaniac, who was still active with a band called Fractal Mirror out of Holland, even today.
00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:23.440
Um, but an American, we were at college together, and he and I were very active in the college radio station.
00:30:23.839 --> 00:30:36.880
And um when, yes, as a baby band, when Rick Wakeman had first joined them, and he had a synthesizer, and I was already kind of obsessing on synthesizers, and we said, Well, let's interview them.
00:30:37.039 --> 00:30:47.039
So we called Atlantic Records, talked to the press agent, and they were playing in another college in Pennsylvania, not too far a drive from where we were.
00:30:47.359 --> 00:30:53.599
And they said, Yeah, any press we can get, you know, you want to interview them, put them on the air, whatever you want to do.
00:30:53.839 --> 00:30:54.880
So we did.
00:30:55.119 --> 00:31:01.279
And in the course of the conversation with the band, and this is in the very late part of 1971.
00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:09.519
So the fragile album had been out, I think, for about 16 weeks worldwide at that point, and nothing had broken through yet.
00:31:09.839 --> 00:31:15.839
And um, in talking with Rick, I said, Oh, by the way, you know, I build some of my own synthesizer modules.
00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:17.920
I do kind of what you do.
00:31:18.319 --> 00:31:22.240
Uh, I've never done the keyboard thing as well as he does.
00:31:22.400 --> 00:31:28.720
This guy's just a genius, but I was thinking of myself more as an electronic composer.
00:31:29.119 --> 00:31:31.039
We exchanged notes, we hit it off.
00:31:31.119 --> 00:31:37.599
We've been in conversation to, you know, this day to the last time he was touring here in the States.
00:31:37.839 --> 00:31:42.400
Um, he was so fascinated by what I was doing, and I told him what I had built.
00:31:42.480 --> 00:31:50.400
It had a little digital sequencer in it, it had some customized modules that did specific functions, and he said, I want one.
00:31:50.640 --> 00:32:00.400
And he got the manager to peel off money in cash for me to start buying parts and build him a copy of what I had for myself.
00:32:00.720 --> 00:32:02.000
So I did.
00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:05.839
And delivered it the next summer, which was great.
00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:07.839
It wasn't a really great design.
00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:10.480
I mean, I was still pretty green as a designer.
00:32:10.640 --> 00:32:16.960
It was still early days in electronic music, and nobody was quite sure what the the necessary functions were going to be.
00:32:17.599 --> 00:32:20.400
But um, it wasn't very expensive for him.
00:32:20.559 --> 00:32:34.640
The band took off, we stayed in contact, and uh, you know, I ended up hanging around in the studio two, I guess two or three years later, for Tales from Topographic Oceans, which turned out to be a wonderful education for me.
00:32:34.799 --> 00:32:40.160
Rick said, you know, come on over and maybe you can help me with some sounds on that thing.
00:32:40.319 --> 00:32:45.440
Well, that thing wasn't really relevant that I built wasn't relevant to what they were doing in the studio.
00:32:45.680 --> 00:32:53.279
But I ended up just hanging in the studio, and Eddie Offord, who was producing and engineering, um, didn't have an assistant.
00:32:53.359 --> 00:32:56.960
And I just sort of hung around and I would end up being the assistant.
00:32:57.039 --> 00:33:01.920
So I kind of learned studio technique, production technique, watching him.
00:33:02.240 --> 00:33:13.039
He loved having somebody just to tell his tricks and what he was doing with the compressor, how he was uh making the Mellotron sound richer and thicker than it actually did in real life.
00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:16.240
And I was like Sponge, sucked it all up.
00:33:16.400 --> 00:33:20.000
And uh it was the first time I had uh touch.
00:33:20.319 --> 00:33:24.000
I think I I cut my first two-inch tape there.
00:33:24.400 --> 00:33:28.559
Uh, you know, that was uh, I mean, literally editing that kind of thing.
00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:35.599
So it was like an apprenticeship for me, as a new college graduate with a degree in history who wanted to be in the music business.
00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:43.279
And even then, it wasn't certain exactly how I was going to fall into all of this, but it was a wonderful opportunity.
00:33:43.359 --> 00:33:49.759
And I, you know, just have to thank Rick and John Anderson, who was, you know, helpful in letting things happen.
00:33:50.000 --> 00:34:00.480
Um, they actually um their manager, at their urging, made a couple of phone calls to labels to listen to demos that I had brought to the UK.
00:34:00.960 --> 00:34:04.400
And that led to the first development deals that I got.
00:34:04.640 --> 00:34:08.079
And within, well, by the next year I was signed.
00:34:08.559 --> 00:34:08.960
Wow.
00:34:09.199 --> 00:34:12.719
I mean, it's almost it's a different time in the business, you know.
00:34:13.119 --> 00:34:13.599
Oh, yeah.
00:34:13.840 --> 00:34:15.679
It just it's not like that anymore.
00:34:15.840 --> 00:34:25.840
Um, you know, when we met uh in person, well, when we talked to each other for the first time, because I I didn't know you'd seen me perform with with Danny until just now.
00:34:26.079 --> 00:34:32.719
Um and you uh you were at Procstock and we were in the dressing room, and you know, you were introduced.
00:34:33.039 --> 00:34:35.280
Well, this is Larry, and I was like, Larry who, Larry Fast.
00:34:35.440 --> 00:34:36.719
Oh, oh, oh wow, what?
00:34:36.880 --> 00:34:38.960
You know, like click, click, click, click, click, click.
00:34:39.199 --> 00:34:40.559
Okay, I know who that is.
00:34:40.719 --> 00:34:56.559
And um, and then, you know, you I was performing with Rachel Flowers, um, who uh uh we released a song together called The Lost Kingdom, which I wrote with Annie Haslum years ago, which uh you know has now finally come out.
00:34:56.800 --> 00:35:07.679
And um, you know, it was it was um it was just one of those moments where I was like, you know, maybe it was just meant to be for us to you know meet there and have that moment.
00:35:07.760 --> 00:35:14.239
You know, we started talking about and we started talking about maybe doing something together, and I still think we should talk about that.
00:35:14.320 --> 00:35:16.719
I don't know what that's gonna be, but it will be something.
00:35:16.960 --> 00:35:47.760
Um so so the so you're you're hanging out with these guys and you're learning and you're just you know uh starting to see it it it's a great it's a really interesting time um in in um in a person's life and in a musician's life, especially, if uh you get this inspiration from people that are already doing it, that are already on that creative path and have found channels to uh get the music heard.
00:35:48.159 --> 00:35:56.800
Um and it it's it's exhilarating, you know, you you really feel like um the it you're in the right place at the right time.
00:35:56.960 --> 00:36:04.639
So so how does that then progress into you uh meeting Peter Gabriel and working with him?
00:36:04.800 --> 00:36:08.719
Because you didn't actually record with with Yes, or did you?
00:36:09.039 --> 00:36:09.760
No, I didn't.
00:36:10.079 --> 00:36:18.159
No, I was I was I was you know an equipment, a techie, a hangers on, and for me it was an educational experience, and I made some good friends over time.
00:36:18.320 --> 00:36:28.159
I mean, Steve Howe became a um I was just blown away many years later when he told me how much he liked my stuff and his kids liked the Synergy albums.
00:36:28.320 --> 00:36:31.039
So, you know, that was such a high honor.
00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:33.920
Um, but with Peter, it was almost the same thing.
00:36:34.079 --> 00:36:37.840
Genesis was discovered again when we were doing college radio.
00:36:38.079 --> 00:36:39.840
Went, well, here's a cool sounding band.
00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:42.480
They've got some really interesting things going on.
00:36:42.559 --> 00:36:43.760
There's Melatron.
00:36:44.239 --> 00:36:46.559
Um, call up the record label.
00:36:46.719 --> 00:36:48.000
You got a baby band.
00:36:48.239 --> 00:36:49.519
We want to interview them.
00:36:49.840 --> 00:36:50.639
Same deal.
00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:53.440
Met everybody at the same time.
00:36:53.519 --> 00:37:05.519
I mean, whether it was Phil or and Tony Banks, basically I thought maybe Tony Banks would be replication of somewhat of the Rick Wakeman experience, but he was pretty well accomplished, pretty well set in what he was doing.
00:37:05.679 --> 00:37:14.400
He didn't, you know, we I uh we don't know each other that well, but we've had nothing but good contacts over the many, many years.
00:37:14.639 --> 00:37:22.719
Um but with Peter, uh, met him on that first interview night, and it was nothing special for him.
00:37:22.880 --> 00:37:27.199
There wasn't anything so spectacular about doing this college radio interview.
00:37:27.519 --> 00:37:48.320
But um, what did transpire was just a matter of um coincidences in a way, which was that the label that ultimately got interested in what I was doing, what became the Synergy Project as a solo electronic act, also happened to be owned by the same company, Gem Records, that was an importer.
00:37:48.559 --> 00:37:55.519
In fact, they had built their company on importing records from Europe that didn't have proper distribution in the U.S.
00:37:56.320 --> 00:38:03.119
And one of the things that they did, one of the acts that they did very, very well was Genesis.
00:38:03.280 --> 00:38:08.880
They brought them British pressings of the Genesis catalog into the U.S.
00:38:08.960 --> 00:38:11.039
and got it into wide distribution.
00:38:11.280 --> 00:38:18.880
Even though there was a label that had licensed the Genesis product in America, they didn't know what to do with the American pressings.
00:38:19.039 --> 00:38:20.239
They kind of languished.
00:38:20.400 --> 00:38:22.480
But the Genesis Records did well.
00:38:22.800 --> 00:38:33.679
And what had happened was as my career took off, and I put a couple of synergy records together, and um I became more involved with the label group.
00:38:34.079 --> 00:38:54.480
So I would be there with meetings with Genesis manager Tony Smith, with label owner Tony Stratton Smith, Gail Coulson, who was working at the label, but later went on to work with the management, the band members, and all the periphery, just as some of the things like Brand X were getting started and some of the members of that.
00:38:54.719 --> 00:38:59.599
So I was um well and by now it wasn't so much a hanger on.
00:38:59.679 --> 00:39:01.679
I was part of the interrupt quickly.
00:39:01.840 --> 00:39:04.320
Brand X was Phil Collins.
00:39:05.039 --> 00:39:06.639
Phil that was Phil Collins' soul.
00:39:07.039 --> 00:39:07.920
He was the drummer, right?
00:39:08.079 --> 00:39:08.880
He was the core of it.
00:39:08.960 --> 00:39:12.639
I mean, Brand X, I mean, they were brilliant musicians, you know.
00:39:12.719 --> 00:39:15.840
Yeah, there were a lot of great players, Mars Purt and others.
00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:17.599
But um John Goodson was a very good thing.
00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:19.039
What was the station to that?
00:39:19.199 --> 00:39:22.400
What was the name of the station that you were doing all of this, the college station?
00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:26.960
Well, the college station was called WJRH, J R H.
00:39:27.199 --> 00:39:27.360
Okay.
00:39:27.599 --> 00:39:27.920
Yep.
00:39:28.079 --> 00:39:30.400
That was in Easton, Pennsylvania.
00:39:30.480 --> 00:39:35.280
It's it's it's been going now, it's probably been going for 80 odd years.
00:39:35.519 --> 00:39:39.039
I think that's there's isn't the state theater there, the Pennsylvania.
00:39:39.440 --> 00:39:39.760
Yes.
00:39:39.920 --> 00:39:40.480
Same town.
00:39:40.960 --> 00:39:48.639
I sang there years ago at a Martin guitar anniversary with um uh yeah, it was a that you say Easton.
00:39:48.719 --> 00:39:49.519
It reminded me of that.
00:39:49.840 --> 00:39:54.800
Um President Cash was on that gig, John Leventhal, Marty Stewart.
00:39:54.960 --> 00:39:56.000
Anyway, yeah, sorry.
00:39:56.559 --> 00:40:03.440
Yeah, no, this well, I well, the state theater was still a theater when I when I was going to college there, which went to see movies there.
00:40:03.679 --> 00:40:07.599
So um Wow, you know, yeah, the wow is how long ago.
00:40:07.760 --> 00:40:24.239
However, a couple of us ended up being associated with a commercial station um while we were still in school as well in Allentown uh called WSAN, and that was a um uh progressive rock AM radio station.
00:40:24.400 --> 00:40:26.400
It was probably the only one in the whole country.
00:40:26.639 --> 00:40:29.360
And um and they had something like that.
00:40:29.599 --> 00:40:31.760
Yeah, they had hired some of us to work.
00:40:31.920 --> 00:40:36.400
Some uh the guys with the better voices became air personalities.
00:40:36.639 --> 00:40:40.880
I was working in commercial production, so I had and I was using my MOOC.
00:40:41.039 --> 00:40:45.280
That was some of the earliest getting my electronic sounds on the radio.
00:40:45.599 --> 00:40:48.800
This was like 1972, 1973.
00:40:49.519 --> 00:40:57.840
And um, we were doing car dealerships and appliance stores and that sort of stuff, because that was a big part of commercial radio.
00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:06.559
The college station was non-commercial, but in commercial radio, you had to sell advertising time, and in these small markets, um, you had to make the commercial.
00:41:06.719 --> 00:41:14.960
So if you sold time for an ad to the the used car dealer, then you had to create that ad for the used car dealer.
00:41:15.119 --> 00:41:19.039
The DJs got paid minimum wage, but they got a percentage of the ads they sold.
00:41:19.119 --> 00:41:19.360
Oh, okay.
00:41:19.599 --> 00:41:22.239
So it's a whole different economic structure.
00:41:22.480 --> 00:41:24.159
But that's anymore.
00:41:24.400 --> 00:41:28.719
No, that was also part of how well I don't know how small markets work.
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:29.599
They still might.
00:41:29.760 --> 00:41:31.519
I don't know whether that works that way.
00:41:31.840 --> 00:41:33.119
But um Wow.
00:41:33.360 --> 00:41:36.639
You know, so there was another part of my education in the music business.
00:41:36.880 --> 00:41:43.599
All along, I'm studying history and intending to go to law school and who knows, maybe be an entertainment lawyer.
00:41:43.760 --> 00:41:47.599
But, you know, being a musician, that that's not a real job.
00:41:47.760 --> 00:41:48.960
Nobody makes it in that.
00:41:49.039 --> 00:41:53.920
The chances are one in a thousand, one in a million of having any success in it.
00:41:54.079 --> 00:41:56.559
But I still liked what I was doing with the electronic music.
00:41:56.639 --> 00:42:03.920
So I was running these parallel paths, um, is what I was studying and then what I was starting to do.
00:42:04.159 --> 00:42:27.440
But um it it ended up that by the time I got to my last year of undergraduate and law school was looming, and some of these opportunities like to be in London and hang out with Yes and be in the studio and the first bubblings up of getting signed as an act, um let me go.
00:42:27.599 --> 00:42:29.360
I think law school's gonna have to wait.
00:42:29.519 --> 00:42:33.039
And it did, and threw myself wholeheartedly into the music.
00:42:33.199 --> 00:42:35.920
So uh and it and it worked.
00:42:36.239 --> 00:42:41.119
Can you uh uh connect that to the to how you got into Peter Gabriel's band?
00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:43.119
Yes, so very easily.
00:42:43.280 --> 00:42:51.599
So all the um the demo work and trying to get signed led to uh my getting signed ultimately.
00:42:51.760 --> 00:43:08.480
And then what I was starting to explain with all the um it sounded like the you know the inside the industry stuff with who the managers were and the label and all that, but Peter became aware of the Synergy albums as they were out, as at around the time he was leaving Genesis.
00:43:09.119 --> 00:43:11.039
Which was like 74, 74?
00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:13.280
Yeah, it was 74.
00:43:13.679 --> 00:43:18.559
And then um so I mean how many albums had Genesis done?
00:43:18.880 --> 00:43:21.199
Oh boy, that's that's a good question.
00:43:21.360 --> 00:43:25.280
I mean, it was it depends on if you how early you start counting.
00:43:25.519 --> 00:43:38.639
It was the one they did when they were still at Charterhouse before they were out, and then trespass, um musical most musical box, um, nursery crime.
00:43:38.880 --> 00:43:39.920
So that'd be three.
00:43:42.559 --> 00:43:47.920
Yeah, I guess it would be four, and there was a couple, yeah, there was a live one in there.
00:43:48.159 --> 00:43:52.639
Um so about you know, say roughly a half a dozen at that point.
00:43:52.960 --> 00:43:58.159
And then the lamb was very uh, you know, a traumatic experience all around.
00:43:58.480 --> 00:43:59.760
And we noticed during the tour.
00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:09.360
But by that time, the Gem Records Group was a large distributor of The Lamb as an import album.
00:44:09.599 --> 00:44:20.719
And it uh so I was there with the record company at some of the Genesis gigs for the Lamb and backstage and hanging out and you know and talking to the guys.
00:44:20.880 --> 00:44:22.800
So Peter kind of knew who I was.
00:44:22.880 --> 00:44:24.400
I certainly knew who he was.
00:44:24.559 --> 00:44:36.719
And then um when he left, and he kind of went into the quiet creative period for about a year, but we talked, and I'm not exactly clear, it was either late in 1975 or early in 1976.
00:44:36.800 --> 00:44:50.719
And I remember we met in New York for lunch, and um and it was he asked me would I work with him on the new album, but I'd be in the you know, the session band and some of the things, and I was thrilled and flattered.
00:44:50.800 --> 00:45:03.280
I was on tour with Nectar at the time, and you know, I had I was working on my third album, so there was a lot going on, but it was of course, I'd you know, I'd be delighted to work with you on that.
00:45:03.440 --> 00:45:12.239
And so the arrangements were made in late in late summer, early fall 1976, Northern Hemisphere.
00:45:12.559 --> 00:45:18.880
Uh we all met up in Toronto, and that became the first Peter Gabriel solo album.
00:45:19.280 --> 00:45:21.440
And was Salisbury Hill on that?
00:45:21.679 --> 00:45:24.000
Yes, yeah, that was which was a big hit.
00:45:24.480 --> 00:45:26.800
It was, it was a solo hit for him, yeah.
00:45:27.119 --> 00:45:32.719
Yeah, I mean, it's um a lot of that the guitar picking, that's actually Steve Hunter.
00:45:33.039 --> 00:45:46.239
It was a very interesting, eclectic mix of guitarists on that, because you had Steve Hunter, who was coming from Alice Cooper, and had done a lot of session work on Kiss albums and uh oh, I'm trying to think what other ones.
00:45:46.480 --> 00:45:49.840
It was he was part of Bob Ezrin, the producer's team.
00:45:50.320 --> 00:45:52.880
And uh fabulous instrumentalist.
00:45:52.960 --> 00:45:58.079
I think he's just has a new one coming out now, it's late in all of our careers.
00:45:58.400 --> 00:45:59.199
Is that right?
00:45:59.760 --> 00:46:08.800
Um saw it on a posting he put on Facebook fairly recently, and then um Robert Fripp was the other guitarist.
00:46:08.880 --> 00:46:15.840
You couldn't have two talented guitarists, tops of their field, but so different in style.
00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:20.960
Yeah, and they were both on that record and both contributed.
00:46:21.360 --> 00:46:26.079
It's almost like they didn't play the same instrument, they were just playing some kind of sonics.
00:46:26.400 --> 00:46:41.280
But they all they had these strengths, Robert, doing these fabulous kind of Frippian things on Here Comes the Flood and um this very almost American finger-picking style from uh Steve on something like Solid Very Hill.
00:46:41.440 --> 00:46:43.679
Yeah, so what a cool album, Melissa.
00:46:44.239 --> 00:46:50.559
Yeah, it's uh I mean, you know, so I I didn't get into uh Peter until a much later.
00:46:51.360 --> 00:47:04.880
But uh, you know, when when I remember seeing Sledgehammer the video on uh MTV, and you know, I was very young and just thinking, what the hell is that?
00:47:06.159 --> 00:47:08.239
That's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
00:47:08.400 --> 00:47:14.960
I mean, I must I must have just been so just you know weirded out by it, but like I was in love with it.
00:47:15.199 --> 00:47:27.360
Um so uh we were talking about Peter at uh at Procstock, and I mentioned his uh most recent album, which took 21 years to complete, called I O.
00:47:28.639 --> 00:47:30.800
Um I'm a huge fan of that record.
00:47:30.880 --> 00:47:34.960
It's you know, um I really love the later Peter Gabriel stuff, you know.
00:47:35.039 --> 00:47:42.400
I uh a lot of that, a lot of it doesn't get played uh much on the radio because radio's changed so much, especially if you're in the US.
00:47:42.880 --> 00:47:53.679
Um but you know, his his progression as a as a writer, artist, producer, singer, um is is just extremely interesting to to follow.
00:47:53.840 --> 00:47:59.119
And so you had like a first first row seat in in all of this when it began.
00:47:59.440 --> 00:48:38.639
And you know, he he always comes across as someone that is just very moderate and and you know pretty together and not too not too emotional, you know, except in the music, you know, which I which is something I really appreciate, you know, because I I I wanted I like to work that way, you know, like I'm I have a lot of energy, but I don't like to fight, you know, I don't like to argue, I don't like to do any of those things, and I don't like to get political and you know, I mean like it's just all of those things that we sort of carry with us on a daily, day-to-day basis.
00:48:39.039 --> 00:48:59.679
And him and and Prince, you know, like like two artists that that make me that you know, the you wouldn't see them even now when anyone can say anything on Twitter, X, Facebook, whatever, you know, say blah, blah, blah, blue, you know, anything, anything, right?
00:49:00.880 --> 00:49:08.159
Completely meaningless in a way to me, you know, but like they people like that uh would never do that.
00:49:08.320 --> 00:49:10.159
They would write a song about it, you know.
00:49:10.239 --> 00:49:12.880
And I'm a I have that, I'm it's the same school.
00:49:13.039 --> 00:49:19.599
I I feel like that's my school, you know, is if you want to say something, say it through art.
00:49:19.840 --> 00:49:25.360
Say it through the art, you know, because uh it it gets really confusing otherwise.
00:49:25.519 --> 00:49:28.559
People people don't know how to separate those two things.
00:49:28.800 --> 00:49:30.239
The audience, they don't.
00:49:30.400 --> 00:49:32.239
To them, it's all the same.
00:49:32.800 --> 00:49:34.320
Well, no, I think you're right.
00:49:34.559 --> 00:49:51.039
I think part of it too is the the art is there's there's artistry in any of the songwriting, but some of it, there's a certain professional craft of making hits, and then there is the expressing yourself, which sometimes gets very self-indulgent.
00:49:52.559 --> 00:49:56.000
Which in his case he was able to do because he knew how to write hooks.
00:49:56.400 --> 00:50:05.039
That's about the point I was about to make, is that you know, Peter is a fan of uh Motown and RB and pop records and Americana.
00:50:05.280 --> 00:50:19.440
Very much, you know, you can see that um from a slightly earlier uh decade in the the Beatles' absorption of American music and other music into what they then put out as their creative output.
00:50:19.599 --> 00:50:20.880
And they matured along the way.
00:50:20.960 --> 00:50:22.960
And Peter certainly has done that too.
00:50:23.280 --> 00:50:24.559
But um he does.
00:50:24.639 --> 00:50:26.239
He has a very good instinct for it.
00:50:26.320 --> 00:50:29.760
The you know, the the hits have been hits for a good reason.
00:50:29.920 --> 00:50:46.000
They really uh exemplified some of the best of the craft of songwriting, whether you're looking back at the Tinpan Alley writers or later bill building writers, you know, people that were not necessarily known, some of them became known as artists, but some of them were just writers.
00:50:46.480 --> 00:50:50.400
Um, and there was a lot of skill involved in that.
00:50:50.480 --> 00:51:08.639
Uh and I look back at that in even in the Broadway writers and in the Rogers and Hammerstein or Stephen Sondheim, you know, nobody's ever heard of Stephen Sondheim's single, but the music is so incredibly well-crafted and so intelligent, and it's and gets the points across.
00:51:08.800 --> 00:51:19.599
So, you know, I see Peter as coming from that school of thought, but also having the artistic talent to bring it across and as a performer.
00:51:19.840 --> 00:51:22.239
And that's a very rare combination.
00:51:22.800 --> 00:51:30.400
Yeah, it is indeed, and also bringing in political aspects of of uh societal aspects, political aspects into the writing.
00:51:30.559 --> 00:51:33.519
And and again, hard to do, very hard to do.
00:51:33.760 --> 00:51:35.679
Um so absolutely.
00:51:35.840 --> 00:51:39.679
No, I was just gonna say we all got banned from South Africa because of Biko.
00:51:40.719 --> 00:51:41.039
Right.
00:51:41.199 --> 00:51:42.320
So, yeah, that's an interesting.
00:51:42.639 --> 00:51:44.159
So, were you in South Africa then?
00:51:44.239 --> 00:51:45.039
You know, I I grew up there.
00:51:46.480 --> 00:51:49.599
Well, you know somebody, but yeah, much later in the in the 20 teens.
00:51:49.679 --> 00:51:57.039
Um I was having to do with my wife's um wildlife preservation work, and we went to go meet some elephants.
00:51:57.199 --> 00:52:00.320
And oh listen, I never mentioned a word about Biko.
00:52:00.719 --> 00:52:05.199
I just you know went for the straight visa and things had changed a lot.
00:52:05.360 --> 00:52:09.840
So yeah, but but after after Biko, we weren't gonna be allowed in there.
00:52:09.920 --> 00:52:15.119
And I I don't know whether after Wallflower, any of us who worked on the record were banned from Argentina.
00:52:15.280 --> 00:52:19.280
So, you know, there's a lot, a lot of history in that.
00:52:20.239 --> 00:52:23.599
And yeah, I don't, I don't even, I don't even know what to say.
00:52:23.679 --> 00:52:25.840
I mean, like, really, there's so much here.
00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:30.079
The thing is, is my show, this show, making sound.
00:52:30.239 --> 00:52:33.039
By the way, thanks for mentioning that term earlier.
00:52:34.639 --> 00:52:35.599
We are making sounds.
00:52:36.159 --> 00:52:41.039
We are, and it's only you know, it's an hour, and I basically need you to come back.
00:52:41.199 --> 00:52:43.280
I need we need part two of this.
00:52:43.599 --> 00:52:44.719
Well, we can do a part two.
00:52:45.119 --> 00:52:48.159
We've already been talking for an hour, if you believe if you can believe it.
00:52:48.480 --> 00:52:50.400
And we've only reached the 1970s.
00:52:50.800 --> 00:52:57.360
And literally, we have only come to like your first tour with your first uh first album with that you did with Peter, Gabriel.
00:52:57.440 --> 00:53:02.880
Um, all right, so but I want to close on on on uh something that I wanted to ask you.
00:53:02.960 --> 00:53:07.760
That's it's in my in my notes here, and there's a lot more, and we didn't get to I didn't get to half.
00:53:08.239 --> 00:53:24.159
So you when you when you start out uh creating music with synthesizers, building some of them um yourself, and creating a basically a a sound that's um your own.
00:53:24.559 --> 00:53:28.960
That's a unique uh unique uh original uh sound.
00:53:29.440 --> 00:53:47.039
When uh computers come in and you start uh using um uh synth sounds, uh electronic synth sounds, uh digital synth synth sounds, how difficult was it to leave uh the analog world behind for you?
00:53:47.119 --> 00:53:51.920
Or do you have you do you still combine the the two together now?
00:53:52.639 --> 00:53:54.719
No, there's very little analog left in it.
00:53:54.960 --> 00:54:03.599
Well, uh very briefly, um right after I did the first Synergy album in 1975, that was 100% analog.
00:54:03.840 --> 00:54:12.559
There was you know nothing other than a little bit of the digital sequencer control, but you didn't hear a sound on that record that had anything other than analog in it.
00:54:12.800 --> 00:54:14.800
It was recorded analog as well.
00:54:15.039 --> 00:54:22.800
Um, Bob Moog was invited to become part of a project, an ongoing project that was at Bell Laboratories.
00:54:22.960 --> 00:54:26.559
So the telephone company's premier research and development labs.
00:54:26.719 --> 00:54:29.199
I happen to live very close to Bell Labs.
00:54:29.280 --> 00:54:33.920
Um I the town that I'm in is almost a company town of Bell Labs.
00:54:34.639 --> 00:54:41.119
And um, Bob was way up in upstate New York, but in uh Buffalo, not far from the Canadian border.
00:54:41.360 --> 00:54:45.039
And this was going to be a few times a week for many months.
00:54:45.280 --> 00:54:48.000
And he suggested that I take his place.
00:54:48.239 --> 00:54:57.760
So in 1975, I kind of report for duty as a sort of nascent artist in residence on a digital synthesis project.
00:54:58.079 --> 00:55:10.719
And I'm exposed to what they've been doing at Bell since World War II in digital uh pulse culted modulation, digital recording, uh, computer-based uh synthesis.
00:55:10.880 --> 00:55:18.079
And I'm thrown in at the sort of the deep end, though I knew the theory behind it, and my world just exploded wide open.
00:55:18.239 --> 00:55:22.559
It's like, wow, are we limited by what we can do with analog synthesis?
00:55:22.800 --> 00:55:24.880
This world is amazing.
00:55:25.039 --> 00:55:30.239
But of course, it was on mainframe computers in a multi-billion dollar research facility.
00:55:30.559 --> 00:55:35.760
I didn't think, I figured I'd be 80 years old before anybody could own this stuff at home.
00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:39.519
And it happened within like six or seven years.
00:55:39.599 --> 00:55:39.920
Yeah.
00:55:40.239 --> 00:55:41.760
And so it was very quick.
00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:46.239
So the big point being, I jumped to digital synthesis very quick.
00:55:46.400 --> 00:55:51.440
I was using stuff that I recorded at Bell by 1979 on my Synergy albums.
00:55:51.920 --> 00:55:59.519
And I found that my instincts as a producer and as a composer and an arranger, where I wanted certain classes of sounds.
00:55:59.760 --> 00:56:02.960
And going back to Bob Moog's thing, they're just tools.
00:56:03.199 --> 00:56:09.360
The instruments are tools to get your composing and arranging chops to where you want them to be.
00:56:09.599 --> 00:56:20.400
And I found that my overall sound, whether it's done 100% analog or 100% digital, it's more or less in the same sonic workspace.
00:56:20.960 --> 00:56:22.400
It's got more refinement.
00:56:22.559 --> 00:56:29.280
It's in some things are much easier to do in digital, which lets you do other things where you can uh pursue different goals.
00:56:29.440 --> 00:56:31.840
It may have been just impossible to do in analog.
00:56:32.400 --> 00:56:41.599
But overall, what I hear in my head when I'm starting, where I want this recording to end up, it really doesn't matter if it's digital or analog.
00:56:41.679 --> 00:56:43.119
I'm not one of those purists.
00:56:43.280 --> 00:56:48.400
The analog instruments do not make what the end product is, they're just a tool to get there.
00:56:48.719 --> 00:56:49.199
That's great.
00:56:49.360 --> 00:56:56.159
That being said, can you tell us a little bit about what you what you use to like what's your DAW?
00:56:56.320 --> 00:56:57.840
What do you use to record now?
00:56:58.480 --> 00:57:01.039
My created one because I've been using them forever.
00:57:01.519 --> 00:57:02.639
Digital audio workstation.
00:57:04.400 --> 00:57:04.559
Sorry.
00:57:04.960 --> 00:57:07.840
Yeah, it's um Mark of the Unicorn Digital Performer.
00:57:07.920 --> 00:57:16.000
I go back to digital to performer when it was just a MIDI sequencer running on an early, early Macintosh.
00:57:16.079 --> 00:57:21.440
And before that, passport designs and opcode companies that aren't in existence anymore.
00:57:21.599 --> 00:57:23.599
Um, but I was using those things.
00:57:23.760 --> 00:57:26.320
Uh at Bell Labs, there was some sequencing built-in.
00:57:26.480 --> 00:57:33.679
This was all custom software that was running on either the mainframe computer or a couple of PDP 11s with a custom front end.
00:57:34.000 --> 00:57:37.440
But getting it home, it didn't really change that much.
00:57:37.519 --> 00:57:44.159
So it was a little bit on an Apple II and then transferred over to Macintosh in the 80s when that came out about 40 years ago.
00:57:44.480 --> 00:57:47.760
And um, Mark of the Unicorn's products have been out there.
00:57:47.840 --> 00:57:49.280
So I've been using that.
00:57:49.519 --> 00:57:55.679
Um Apple bought the company Logic and now has it incorporated into their sphere.
00:57:55.760 --> 00:58:05.760
And they've got some some nice tools that come with that as well for immersive sound, which is an area you've got surround sound on Mark of the Unicorn.
00:58:05.840 --> 00:58:18.800
But in terms of composer tools and what I'm familiar with and comfortable with, there are a lot of good ones out there, but I've got um Digital Performer running on at currently uh Mac Studio.
00:58:19.199 --> 00:58:27.920
The Mac uh Pro Towers that I've been using for most of the early 2000s are kind of semi-retired at this point.
00:58:28.079 --> 00:58:34.320
And the uh Apple silicon architecture in the Mac Studio works great.
00:58:35.119 --> 00:58:37.920
And um mostly I'm I'm working with that.
00:58:38.000 --> 00:58:45.920
You know, there are uh Omnisphere as a software synthesizer that it's a lot of standard tools that a lot of it's available.
00:58:46.079 --> 00:58:50.480
Anybody can go to one of the big retailers and buy the same stuff that I'm using.
00:58:50.559 --> 00:58:53.760
There's nothing uh very extravagant about it.
00:58:53.920 --> 00:59:08.239
The only difference when I was doing the Moog stuff was that there was a a high cost barrier to entry because the Moog equipment was so expensive, and that was where all of my record advances went to, and buying some recording equipment.
00:59:08.320 --> 00:59:08.639
Yeah.
00:59:08.880 --> 00:59:10.960
But but even that doesn't exist now.
00:59:11.440 --> 00:59:15.760
Except you went you started off with uh a Mac, an Apple II.
00:59:16.480 --> 00:59:27.679
Well, even before the Apple II was a Kim I, which was uh that was the same processor that Steve Wozniak chose to use in the Apple I and II.
00:59:28.320 --> 00:59:30.000
And uh I still got those.
00:59:30.079 --> 00:59:36.719
They were like single boards, they cost about six hundred dollars, and you had to program them in machine language, machine computer code.
00:59:36.880 --> 00:59:37.039
Yeah.
00:59:37.199 --> 00:59:39.199
But I wrote ones and zeros.
00:59:39.599 --> 00:59:42.239
All yeah, we did them in binary code?
00:59:42.480 --> 00:59:42.800
Yeah.
00:59:43.119 --> 00:59:47.280
Well, we used them in um hexadecimal, which was a base 16 code.
00:59:47.440 --> 00:59:50.000
So it was 0 through 9 ABCDEF.
00:59:50.159 --> 00:59:53.679
Those were the the 16 digits that you had to work with.
00:59:53.840 --> 01:00:05.039
But then you had to string them together in the right what were called opcodes, operational codes to program the uh the microprocessor to do what you wanted to do.
01:00:05.519 --> 01:00:08.639
It was kind of fun and very frustrating at times, but I bet.
01:00:10.079 --> 01:00:19.280
So so you were saying you didn't expect to have access to this kind of stuff until you were 80 years old when you were only 20 or 30 years old in your 30s or whatever.
01:00:19.440 --> 01:00:24.320
And and didn't like 2025, I think, when I first started.
01:00:26.320 --> 01:00:31.599
Does it still surprise you how fast we're we're advancing now?
01:00:31.840 --> 01:00:37.599
Like uh what what is your what are your thoughts on incorporation of AI in in music?
01:00:37.840 --> 01:00:39.199
Do you have any that you want to share?
01:00:39.599 --> 01:00:43.119
Um Yeah, well there's well it's it's still Is it too long a conversation?
01:00:43.199 --> 01:00:49.199
Should we say it's it's probably a long conversation, but but basically I I just don't, you know, it's it's been proposed to me.
01:00:49.280 --> 01:01:00.480
Well, what if AI scooped all of your, you know, the the 10 Synergy albums to date and put out an 11th album that sounded in your style?
01:01:00.719 --> 01:01:04.719
And my reaction to that was that wouldn't be what I'd be doing.
01:01:05.039 --> 01:01:09.199
You know, I it it advanced from each album.
01:01:09.519 --> 01:01:20.719
My own thoughts and maturity and uh tastes as a writer changed, the influences changed, and AI can't just look at the past and figure out what my future is going to be.
01:01:20.960 --> 01:01:25.360
It might try to interpolate a little bit, but it's not gonna necessarily be that.
01:01:25.519 --> 01:01:27.440
So it doesn't bother me on that.
01:01:27.519 --> 01:01:39.360
And yet, on the other hand, some of the AI tools for production, um doing some things with some archival recordings now where we're splitting tracks out, the kind of thing that Peter Jackson did with the Beatles, get back, right?
01:01:39.599 --> 01:01:53.440
Um, so that we, you know, can take what were not very well recorded tracks at one time and give them the benefit of you know, at least getting the vocals separate from the drums, and the drums can then be beefed out without screwing up the vocals.
01:01:53.599 --> 01:01:56.880
So I'm working on a couple of things like that right now for other artists.
01:01:56.960 --> 01:01:58.079
And uh that's cool.
01:01:58.320 --> 01:01:59.760
I like AI in that context.
01:01:59.840 --> 01:02:00.639
I think it's great.
01:02:00.800 --> 01:02:02.719
That's what that's where it should be going.
01:02:02.960 --> 01:02:07.360
But uh from the creative core, I'd still rather let the people decide.
01:02:07.519 --> 01:02:08.559
Yeah, whether it's video.
01:02:09.119 --> 01:02:10.000
That's a great answer.
01:02:10.239 --> 01:02:11.840
That's a great, great answer.
01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:13.599
That makes so much sense, you know.
01:02:13.679 --> 01:02:15.360
And I think the same way about it.
01:02:15.519 --> 01:02:21.119
It utilize it for something that will that'll make our lives, your life easier.
01:02:21.599 --> 01:02:22.559
Save you time.
01:02:22.880 --> 01:02:24.000
That's exactly it.
01:02:24.320 --> 01:02:27.280
I mean, you know, it's again, these are tools.
01:02:27.440 --> 01:02:31.840
Yeah, they're tools that creators can use, they're not to replace the creators.
01:02:32.000 --> 01:02:32.639
I mean, they can.
01:02:32.719 --> 01:02:41.519
If you got to crank out elevator music, I guess it's cheaper to just let an AI listen to all background music and spit out new background music.
01:02:41.679 --> 01:02:41.920
Yeah.
01:02:42.159 --> 01:02:48.880
And, you know, that means less work for musicians and copywriters and other things, but maybe more of it'll get out.
01:02:49.119 --> 01:02:50.400
But it's a different world.
01:02:50.559 --> 01:02:52.719
You know, it's not art for art's sake.
01:02:52.880 --> 01:03:02.000
And that's gonna be the uniqueness of the different minds, whether it's architecture or art or music or writing a play or a poem, you name it.
01:03:02.079 --> 01:03:04.960
I mean, the spark, it's still human at its core.
01:03:05.119 --> 01:03:05.360
Yes.
01:03:05.599 --> 01:03:16.960
Maybe when there's a sentient computer, when there's a computer that is self-aware and is a mechanical, well, mechanical is the old term, but you know, it is as aware as a human.
01:03:17.360 --> 01:03:18.239
We're not there yet.
01:03:18.480 --> 01:03:19.599
Yeah, we're not there.
01:03:19.760 --> 01:03:25.039
It will happen, and then it can get mad at the dumb computers that only do AI.
01:03:26.480 --> 01:03:27.119
Yes.
01:03:28.480 --> 01:03:29.440
Okay, that's great.
01:03:29.519 --> 01:03:30.480
Well, we gotta stop.
01:03:30.559 --> 01:03:31.679
I gotta, I gotta let you go.
01:03:31.760 --> 01:03:33.360
That was uh fabulous chat.
01:03:33.440 --> 01:03:35.599
I look forward to to more of it.
01:03:35.920 --> 01:03:37.920
Um can you tell us?
01:03:38.159 --> 01:03:39.360
Yeah, my pleasure, man.
01:03:39.519 --> 01:03:48.559
Can you tell us a little bit more about what you or anything that you want to announce that you have coming up or coming out or that you're working on that you're that you want to talk about?
01:03:48.719 --> 01:03:51.360
That you could not well, there's nothing definitive.
01:03:51.440 --> 01:03:54.320
I'm not gonna give you any dates or labels or anything right now.
01:03:54.480 --> 01:03:56.320
There are things in the works.
01:03:56.480 --> 01:03:59.599
Um there is always new music that I'm writing.
01:04:00.079 --> 01:04:16.400
And often it's been uh shunted into other uses in broadcast media or um even there's a kind of a lost album of stuff that I did for Disney for a theme park in Europe, in uh in Asia that's never come out, and we're kind of seeing whether we can get the rights back to that.
01:04:16.480 --> 01:04:18.960
Wow, or or at least the license rights.
01:04:19.199 --> 01:04:30.159
Um, but the new things are, you know, they're taking my time, but I'm kind of working on other people's projects right now, and it just wouldn't be fair, you know, for them to announce what's coming out.
01:04:30.320 --> 01:04:41.360
But they're challenging, there's some known contemporaries of mine that uh, you know, the I guess my skills in engineering and production are also there.
01:04:41.440 --> 01:04:51.280
I'm not writing any music for these, I'm doing nothing but fashioning the best possible way for them to put archival material or even more recent material out.
01:04:51.679 --> 01:04:54.800
And when I get through all that, then it's kind of back to synergy.
01:04:55.280 --> 01:05:02.320
Uh maybe re- you know, re- I'd like to revisit the old albums, not to re-record them, but just to do the same thing.
01:05:03.280 --> 01:05:08.079
They've all been digitized now, all the multi-tracks have been preserved and restored.
01:05:08.320 --> 01:05:13.760
I would like to see all that come back out in high-definition audio and immersive audio.
01:05:13.920 --> 01:05:16.880
So that's kind of the the long-term plan.
01:05:17.360 --> 01:05:18.159
Cool stuff.
01:05:18.400 --> 01:05:19.280
Cool stuff.
01:05:19.599 --> 01:05:20.480
All right, folks.
01:05:20.639 --> 01:05:21.360
Uh, let's see.
01:05:21.440 --> 01:05:23.199
I got a couple of things I got to announce.
01:05:23.280 --> 01:05:28.480
Uh very quickly, I am going to be in Germany for some shows.
01:05:28.639 --> 01:05:32.639
January 3rd, Birdland Hamburg with my band there, with my German band.
01:05:32.960 --> 01:05:37.519
And uh January 8th at the Speakeasy stage in Berlin.
01:05:38.079 --> 01:05:43.280
January 22nd, NAM Show in Anaheim in uh Southern California, LA.
01:05:43.440 --> 01:05:47.199
January 26th, the Venice West in Venice.
01:05:47.360 --> 01:05:52.800
And February 21st, Port Washington Public Library with the American Band.
01:05:53.039 --> 01:05:54.719
So uh hope to see you then.
01:05:54.880 --> 01:06:00.400
And um we have next week coming up, uh Ibrahim Nashat is gonna be on the show.
01:06:00.559 --> 01:06:03.760
He directed a movie called Hollywood Gate.
01:06:03.920 --> 01:06:06.800
That is fantastic, highly political.
01:06:07.119 --> 01:06:08.960
It's gonna be a super interesting chat.
01:06:09.039 --> 01:06:11.519
I want to thank my guest, Larry Fast.
01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:13.280
Thank you, Larry, for coming on the show, man.
01:06:13.360 --> 01:06:13.599
It was great.
01:06:13.920 --> 01:06:14.719
Thank you for inviting me.
01:06:15.039 --> 01:06:16.000
Pleasure talking with you.
01:06:16.320 --> 01:06:16.880
Uh pleasure.
01:06:16.960 --> 01:06:24.159
Uh hold on one second, and uh I will see you next we'll hear and uh see you next week.