Don Was

30:58And when you get that cycle going, which happens not in every song, but it'll happen a couple times a night, You blow the roof off the motherfucker. It's really, it changes. You change the space you're in. And it's exhilarating. It's the greatest feeling to do that. With a band that's listening to each other and speaking the same language and being generous and trading things. And then taking that same kind of cooperation to the audience and having them be part of it. I actually don't know a feeling in life that's better than that. Wow. So you just become addicted to it. You ever talk to Bob Weir about that?

31:44All the time. Man, why do you think he's out there playing for 60, 70 years? Every time I read about him or the Rolling Stones, people saying, don't they have enough money? When are they going to retire? You don't retire from that. And it's got nothing to do with money. You know, I'm sure Mick and Keith, we're, if you said, just go out there, it's going to, you got to pay us$10 ,000 tonight. Meaning you pay, Bob Weir pays for the privilege of paying. He paid the$10 ,000. Stones would pay the entry fee because it's the experience of getting connected to all those people. That's what we crave, man.

32:27We're tribal, communal people. We really have not evolved that much from living in caves and groups of 30, 40 Klansmen, right? And we crave this. But look at how we're living here in L.A., man. Everyone's locked in their cars. I don't even know my next-door neighbors. And I've lived next door to them for 10 years. One time he came over with a dog and told me to tell my son to stop playing drums loud. Great way to meet your neighbor. That's my only encounter with him. Man, can you imagine that? but that's how crazy you know life has become so we crave that kind of communal situation and what better way to do it than in a musical concert that's so heartening to hear man i mean you know i'm i'm i i don't know i don't know if you've ever talked about it i don't want to bother you but i am like the world's biggest stones fan i love i love the stones man like every era of the stones um and you know the rap on mick amongst the general public is he's like the business you know he's business minded and it's probably he's in it for but to hear from you that it's like you know he he as much as anyone else as much as keith or anyone else is still in love with music They're all savvy businessmen, but that's not why they do it.

33:49And anyone who, if you think that about Mick, listen to his harmonica playing. You know, you can't play like that if you're not a deeply soulful musician. He's one of the great frontmen of all time, which is nothing to be minimized, you know. like a motherfucker can get up on a stage in front of 80 ,000 people and make every one of those people think he's talking one-on-one to them, even if they're thousands of feet away from him. I went to see him when they were at SoFi Stadium. I saw you there. Yeah, I saw you there. And, you know, I know him pretty well. I spent 25 at least years with him, right?

34:38and he came out, he came walking down that long ramp and I go, wow, it's that guy, man. He came to visit us in LA and I just turned into such a fan, you know, because he can't help it. He just makes you feel like he's singing to you in a stadium, man. That's incredible. That's insane. And he's got this great gift. I don't even know how to describe it exactly. Listen to Tumbling Dice and listen to the mix, almost nobody in their right mind would mix a vocal that low. Interesting. So low, but it doesn't matter because he is so charismatic. He comes leaping out of the speakers anyway. You can't bury him.

35:23And you can't be that guy without having tremendous soul and tremendous powers of communication. So no one should ever think that he's just some guy out to make a buck. I don't think he minds getting paid. Well, sure, that's not why he's doing it, I guarantee you. And none of them are. We'll be back with more from Don Was after the break. There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. An unexpected diagnosis, the sudden end of a relationship, the loss of a job. As our lives fear off course, it can feel like time is dividing into a before and an after. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist, and my new book, The Other Side of Change, Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, is all about how we navigate these inflection points.

36:18The Other Side of Change pairs singular, real-life stories with scientific insights to help us find meaning in the tumult of change. What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives not simply as something to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be. I'm thrilled to share that Booklist gave The Other Side of Change one of its coveted starred reviews, saying, quote, It's impossible not to be moved. The Other Side of Change is out now. Get your copy today, wherever you like to buy books.

36:52It was come to think of it, too. I talked to Rafael Sadiq one time, and I asked him about the Grammy performance they did. I guess he said you actually, you helped set that up a bit. But he was saying like during the rehearsals, like they went to rehearse, they did the song that they were going to do, but then Mick was just like, hey, let's just do some blues numbers. And the rehearsal just kept going and they just ran through blues numbers. And then by the way, Mick, speaking of like his charisma, like it's one of the great like Grammy performances ever. Like he killed that stage. It was incredible.

37:22Killed that stage. It was absolutely incredible. He just showed everybody what a real king. Insane. And you're seeing everyone. Everyone's there. Beyonce's loving it. Everyone is like a rapture, you know. It was an electrifying moment and a master class, what being a front person means. Yeah. He made the, it was at Staples Center, and he made it feel like he was in like a little nightclub. He made it so intimate, and he just filled the room. You know, there was a moment when we were making a record called Bridges to Babble, and we were kind of like right across the street from here. We were in what was then called Oceanway.

38:05It's now East West Studios, Studio One, which is a big room. And we were on a dinner break, and I walked into the room to talk to the guys, and it was just Mick and Keith and Charlie standing there. and I walked in and the first thing that grabbed me was that with these three guys in the room this gigantic room and they're not big guys the room was full their personalities their essence transcended the skin by so much they were like their personalities are the size of like the blow up dolls that they had on the voodoo on the voodoo lounge yeah yeah on the same remember it was like five stories high right or maybe it was the Steel Wheels tour.

38:49But that's who they are. They're enormous musical personalities. Enormous personalities. They can contain it and walk through the world, but they unleash this thing. And, you know, exact same thing with Keith, man. What a soulful player, man. There's nobody like him, man. Anyone who thinks he's sloppy is out of their fucking minds, man. his technique, it's so crisp, man. The attack, where he lays into the rhythm and where he releases the notes. That's the other thing. It's a lost art, releasing the notes. Don't just let it sustain into a spine if you're in the Ramones and that's your sound. But man, but to really get a groove going, you have to let go of the note and let some air come in there so you can feel the syncopation of the rhythm.

39:43and it requires tremendous practice and technique and he's got that. He's a badass guitar player. He completely redefined the connection between rhythm guitar and lead guitar in rock and roll. He's come up with some of the most incredible licks of all time and I think he's an incredible singer and writer and just an absolutely brilliant and soulful cat man. But it's such a privilege to have been able to know him and play music with him and be part of watching him create a record. Incredible. Charlie Watts, man, nobody played like that. Yeah, people discount Charlie's. But if you're a fan, I feel like Charlie's contribution is, I mean.

40:32You wouldn't have had that band. That band would not have achieved that level of, you know, it's more than popularity. Importance. It would not have penetrated the souls of millions and millions and millions of people if they wouldn't have had Charlie Watts playing. I used to think about a graphic depiction of a pocket. As a bass player, you try to land in the pocket of the drummer. So you can feel it. The second you start playing with someone, you can feel it. And Charlie Watts, let me put it this way. If you're listening to, say, a drum machine where the beat is quantized, It's like if you're the bass player and you want to land in the pocket of that thing, it's like getting up on a diving board and diving into like a flute of champagne.

41:21You got this narrow little space in which you can hit it and express your own sense of the rhythm. Charlie Watts was like this big, beautiful, gigantic swimming pool that you could land in, man. because from where his hi-hat hit, which would sometimes be a little ahead, his snare be a little bit back, and the bass drum was somewhere in between, you could, if you graft it out, and you could actually see how beautiful a pocket he carved. And Keith can land in that pocket. Bill Wyman could land in that pocket, and Mick could sing in that pocket. And it was wide enough to cover the disparity between Mick's rhythmic feel and Keith's.

42:11Because Keith feels it behind more. And Mick's more punctuated and attacking. When people think the Stones are sloppy, I think they don't understand that sometimes the riff is also the melody. Start me up.

42:28So Mick is going to sing it in a different place. and Keith's going to feel it because they feel the rhythm in two different places. So yeah, all right. So it's not perfect and you don't slide mixed vocal over to land where Keith's guitar did or vice versa. But that disparity is where the character and the soul lies. Capturing that in the studio, was that ever challenging or was it always just, you know? Well, they can always sound like the Stones, You know, I personally have never been to a Rolling Stones show that I thought was a bad show. Some nights were transcendental, but they always play well.

43:12Just in general for anybody, not just the Rolling Stones, the biggest enemy you have in the studio is good. Being good sucks. Any motherfucker can be good. That's your enemy because it can fool you. Good can trick you into thinking it's great. and if you can't be great, don't go to the studio, man. That's not your intention. Yeah, we've all made records that aren't necessarily great. You can't always control it, but at least strive for it. So it would just be the take when everybody's sat in the pocket just right and you feel some magic. There's a thing about making records. you're waiting for lightning to strike.

44:02The great ideas don't originate inside of you. They come from somewhere else and they come through you. I'll take you back to where I first started thinking along these lines, which was when I produced, first time I worked with Bob Dylan in 1989. I said, how come you can write Gates of Eden and I can't? And he said, well, look, if it makes you feel any better, He said, I remember moving the pencil over the page, but I didn't write that song. It came from somewhere, and I was the scribe. I wrote it down. And at the time, I thought, oh, isn't that sweet? He's telling me this to make me feel better.

44:46Then I started. I'd see it everywhere. everyone I talked to who I thought had achieved this level of extraterrestrial genius Brian Wilson the same yeah Brian Wilson same thing he'll just talk about it he talked about it coming from God Keith Richards if he's in the studio he doesn't say hey wait I got an idea he said hold it incoming incoming and eventually I realized that the great artists are the ones who just have really great antennae and can pick this up. But the thing is, and this is the curse for these guys who are that great, they don't control when it comes. So it's like surfing a little bit.

45:32You can learn how to stay up on the board, how to get a good ride, but you don't control the waves. The surfers always... That's it. Well, it's the same thing, man. You ride the wave that you get or you wait till one comes in, but you don't control when it comes in. So that's kind of hard for people, man, to know that the thing that everyone's expecting from you is not something that you can just spew out at random, man. You got to go fishing and wait for it. Yeah. Do you think, because there are people like Dylan's one, I mean, I think there are people who only want Dylan narrowly to be, you know, Freewheel and Bob Dylan maybe, or times there are change in Bob Dylan.

46:22But I happen to think all Dylan is great. To varying degrees, every album is. There's incredible, amazing stuff. I'm with you. I think Neil Young's the same. Like he seems to always be. So what is like, or what is it, the tenor? Is it a sensitivity thing? I don't know, man. Maybe you're chosen. I don't know. It depends how ordered you think destiny is. Okay. And I don't know the answer. The way I used to make sense out of it metaphorically was I pictured this ether way up there. And in the ether, all the really great ideas, all the times there are changings, all the every grain of sands, they all float at the top.

47:09And only a few people got tentacles that are long enough to reach the top and pull those ideas down. and I don't know why that is. You know, I became aware of something when I worked for the first time with Garth Brooks in the studio. Fuck yeah. He, I liked him. I understood that he had tremendous communicative powers, but I didn't fully get it until I heard him coming through the speaker singing because, you know, sometimes you put the speakers on the edge of the board or they're behind the thing, and I view the speaker line. It's like the 50-yard line in a football game, right? Who's going to carry the ball across?

47:54You know, getting to the 50-yard line, you don't score a touchdown. No glory in making it to the 50. You got to get down there. So whose voice jumps out of the speaker line and crosses into your head, right? And Garth Brooks, when he opened his mouth and started singing, And his voice leapt out of the speaker so far that it was almost like it was behind me. Wow. And I thought, oh, now I understand. Now I get it. And Mick's got that. Aretha Franklin's got that. Gladys Knight's got that. Bonnie Raitt's got that. Just a handful of folks, man. Frank Sinatra. Frank. Did you ever see Frank Sinatra? Sure, yeah.

48:40I got to play Frank Sinatra's last gig. I was working with Willie over at Oceanway and he said I gotta leave early today I said where are you going he said I'm going to Palm Springs I'm opening for Frank Sinatra at his wife's celebrity pro-am golf tournament banquet and it's Frank Sinatra's last gig everybody knows it except for Frank I said you gotta take me so Kenny Aronoff was playing drums on it so willie to willie was just going to do it with mickey rafael but he took kenny and his great is his heart player yeah yeah mickey's one you know like his he's almost inextricable from the sound of willie he's so the four of us drove up there and we played our set and then i i knew frank jr who was his conductor at that yeah you put you wait you put frank He sang on a record.

49:38On a was record. Wait, oh, this is the other song I mean. Right. And I loved him. He was a really, really good guy. And I felt for him a lot because that's a tough road he chose, man, to be a singer and be Frank Sinatra Jr. Yeah. It's tough to win like that. Mm-hmm. But he was conducting for his dad. And so he said, here, you guys sit right here. And it was in a ballroom. It wasn't like a theater or an arena or anything. It was a hotel ballroom at the Marriott. Then it was a banquet for golfers who were in the thing. And so we sat five feet from Frank Sinatra on the side of the stage. It was like where a wedding band would play, but he had a big band.

50:19And it was the last time he played. And Willie introduced me to him at the end of the thing. And I saw him play a number of times. And, man, you talk about charisma and character. and impeccable technique and brilliant phrasing. He had it all. We just did a, on Blue Note, we have an audiophile series of records. It's called the Tone Poets Series. And they're produced by a guy named Joe Harley and mastered by a guy named Kevin Gray, who are just brilliant. And they just know how to maximize the thing. and we expanded into the Capitol vaults and we just did in the We Small Hours. And when you put on this Tone Poet version of We Small Hours and play it on your turntable, it sounds like Frank Sinatra is like six inches from your face singing right to you.

51:17It's so intimate and you can really hear every nuance in his singing. And even though I feel We Small Hours was cut in 53, I think he got better, you know? over you know and 53 is like late also by the way also for sinatra in a way you know it's like kind of but he still even then man he was there was no one could touch him yeah no one could touch him yeah we brought up garth brooks and yeah you did you did also did around maybe a little earlier you did a great travis tritt record thank you yeah it was a cool record man well it was weird because he he called me because he wanted to make a more traditional rootsy country album he didn't wanted to do the whatever the slip the country was at the time and he felt he had to leave Nashville to do it so we got it in LA and uh no I thought I thought he was an incredible singer man I like Travis a lot we had a good time making that record and I just thought he was a really soulful cat we did uh i met him we i did an album called rhythm country and blues in the 90s there was it was duets between country artists and r &b artists really meant to show that oh man despite whatever differences you want to imagine everyone's got the exact same emotions and there There are just some phrasing differences, but everyone's the same underneath, you know?

52:49And it was a strong testimony to connection among humans, I thought. So initially we thought, is this even going to work? Can Gladys Knight and Vince Gill sing a duet? They were the first ones who sang on it. And of course they could. So we just covered R &B or country classics. and as it went on we got more adventurous with the tracks but he's travis saying uh when something is wrong with my baby and you're gonna go in a studio and sing live with patty labelle good luck motherfucker right he was awesome and i was blown away by how good he was and we became friendly and i enjoyed making the record and we had a we had a number one country record yeah it's and it sits different in his in that in that um era of his catalog it does sit different it's really it's a little more intimate sounding agreed yeah yeah i wanted to ask you man you talking about making that album showcasing that there's not a lot of daylight between what we think of as r &b and country yeah we're talking the day after steve cropper yeah yeah did you did you ever get to work with steve cropper i or or i i played with him a couple of times under some big settings, you know, tribute kind of thing.

54:14And I had dinner with him a couple of times, lovely guy, and what a heroic figure, man. What an important figure in music. His style of guitar playing impacted everybody. You know, it's just what Steve Cropper brought to the game has become part of the musical vocabulary that everyone shares. and so many generations removed, I'm not sure younger musicians understand that he played that way first. Right, yes. And what a wild milieu to come out of being a white guy in Memphis making those records and just having that band, Booker T and MGs, man. What a great statement that made about people getting along and being the same and the commonality of human experience.

55:07Just seeing that band at that time, just seeing them play and having so much fun and seeing Duck Dunn so happy and grooving around like that. And Al Jackson Jr.'s drum. Every one of them, man. Every one of those guys was a diamond, you know? Yeah, no, there's one Steve Cropper, man. Yeah, I remember reading a Hendrix biography at some point, and somewhere in it, it's mentioned that Hendrix, I can't remember where he was in his career. And he went, yeah, he's like, I'm in Nashville. Like, I'm going. He, like, waited in the studio for 12 hours for Steve Cropper to show up. But Cropper knew something that Hendrix had played.

55:48Oh, man, I can't think. He was on some session. Like Mercy Mercy or something? Yeah, something like that. Oh, yeah, maybe it's Don Colby. Yeah, Don Colby. Yeah. It might have been. Yeah, it is Mercy Mercy. Would have been it? Yeah, but he knew that, and he wanted to meet Hendrix, but didn't know what Jimi Hendrix was about. He just knew he was the guy who played on the Don Covey song. I didn't know that part of it. So wait, so he, that's fast. Yeah. What a time to be alive, man. Imagine that. Yeah. For Booker T and MGs for their first single to be Green Onions. Unbelievable, man. Well, I've been able to play with Booker a lot over the years.

56:29And he played on the Was Now Was album. Did he? Which one? He's on an album called Boo that it took us 16 years to finish. We started it in 93, got dropped by our label, and went back and finished it in 2008, and he's on it. But, you know, he would do sessions, and I got to play it. Actually, a big thrill, man, for a couple years ago, was Willie Nelson's 90th birthday. At the Bowl? We did the thing at the Bowl. You were the MD, weren't you? I was the MD for it, yeah. so I'd never played at the Hollywood Bowl before I'd been there I never was on stage playing so just at the sound check we did Stardust same exact arrangement from the album that Booker produced and played on right and the sun was going down there's no one in the audience some was going down over the hill and Willie sounded like Willie you know like 40 years ago and I just couldn't believe i remember buying stardust you know being broke in detroit and trying to learn how to make records and just playing it over and over and listening to it and i i got choked up man that that i was standing on stage at the hollywood bowl with these two guys and that this the universe had parted in such a crazy way to allow me to get up on stage and be be playing that song with them There were so many highlights musically of the two nights.

58:04We played like 60 songs, and it was just an incredible array of people coming to pay tribute to Willie. But that one moment was the highlight. One last break, and we'll be back with Don Was. There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. An unexpected diagnosis, the sudden end of a relationship, the loss of a job. As our lives veer off course, it can feel like time is dividing into a before and an after. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist, and my new book, The Other Side of Change, Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, is all about how we navigate these inflection points.

58:47The Other Side of Change pairs singular, real-life stories with scientific insights to help us find meaning in the tumult of change. What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives, not simply as something to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be? I'm thrilled to share that Booklist gave The Other Side of Change one of its coveted starred reviews, saying, quote, It's impossible not to be moved. The Other Side of Change is out now. Get your copy today, wherever you like to buy books.

59:22we're talking about like the the intersection of like you know our country and all i mean you have going back to your new record you have a hank williams song work its way into your guys's repertoire that was that blew me away too i initially wanted to well i wanted a good song i wanted a good you know who you get one i don't i don't really know better writer than hank Williams I know different kinds of writers but if ever there was a guy plugged into the basic stream of human emotion it was Hank and he could express it with the simplicity that no one else could what I wanted with this album to be honest with you was I didn't want the writing to be the weak link and I just certainly didn't want my writing to be the weak link so I didn't write much for it uh i wanted to to launch this thing with an advantage so i i just tried to choose great songs that would help us uh but that doesn't mean you got to do it just no point in doing it just like hank yeah right well then how do you guys arrange your how do you guys arrange these songs is it everyone come do you help or does everyone write their own that well that one I arranged, I did an album in the 90s called Build It As Orchestra Was, which was kind of the Was Now Was guys, there's Sweet Peas singing and McMurray but I also had Herbie Hancock and I had Robbie Turner who was Waylon's pedal steel player on it, we had like 13 musicians in the room, Terrence Blanchard but Dave McMurray and Luis Resto from Was Now Was were there and Sweet Peas sang and that was one of the songs and I just worked out a different arrangement, it was actually all Hank Williams songs Merle Haggard sang a song on it no one's ever heard it it's streaming I'm gonna pull it up but we never played any gigs, we played one gig I think one time and it was too many people too hard to get everybody together so this was the first chance I had to play it live so we started doing it with the Pan Detroit Ensemble.

1:01:37We've been opening shows on the last tour. Oh, that's amazing. So it's a Hank Williams song, but it's pretty reworked. Yeah. I had to go get permission, let me put it that way, from the publisher to take that kind of liberty with the song. You did? Yeah. They were cool. They didn't mind. That's incredible. I want to ask you about this song because I want to know, where did this, I want to know specifically where this sound came from. Oh.

1:02:13What is that? Well, here, this, that's from our first Was Not Was record called Wheel Me Out. And they didn't have, they had 808s. They didn't even have the Lindrum. There were no digital sampling things when we made that record. We did that probably in 1979. So yet I wanted to make dance records, and I knew that having a hypnotic groove was essential, and I thought the groove should be repetitive. So we made loops with analog tape, and the way that would work was that, you know, you'd play something for a while, and you'd find the section that was great, and you'd cut the tape so that it began at the beginning of the loop and ended right before the one of the next bar or wherever you wanted to cut it.

1:03:10And then you taped it together. So it was literally a loop. That's why they call it looping. And then what you did was you put it down on the analog tape recorder and it was too big. The reels didn't matter because you wanted the same thing to play. So you'd thread it through the cap stand so that it would turn. Then you set up mic stands all over the room. You could, I think that loop covered, it filled the control room. We had to have three or four mic stands so we had the right amount of tension. And then we recorded it on a 16-track, two-inch machine, and then bounced it over to a, made the loop play on the 16-track, bounced it over to the 24-track, and we built the song up from there.

1:03:56How the hell did you know how to do that? People have been doing it for years. We didn't invent it. But that was the only way to make a loop. They didn't have samplers. There was no digital sampling. And it was nice because it was all played by humans. So we had a drummer come in, and then those are like soda bottles that were playing by hand. and there's a couple of us just sitting on the floor. Really? Yeah. Hitting soda bottles with drumsticks, but tuned to it. We picked ones that had a pitch. I knew it had to be that interval and those notes.

1:04:42And who's playing that part? There's a couple of us. It's probably, I'm trying to remember who was in it. It was probably Larry Fratangelo, who was the percussionist with George Clinton, Funkadelic. Right, Fratangelo. Played on One Nation Under Groove. One Nation Under Groove was pretty, it informed a lot of that album, what George was doing at that time. In Detroit. Yeah. So Larry was a buddy of mine, and he toured with them for years. So I think I had him come over. But I think it was, there were a couple of us. It took a couple of people to play it. So cool. and uh and there was a and then we played played drum the drum beat and uh bounce that over and we built a track up from the loop so it's one it's it's just to this day it still sounds alien to me when i hear it it's been sampled a lot never got paid for it but it's been you did there's another thing you can relate to your audience

1:05:47how did the curtis mayfield song make it onto your uh this is my country it's kind of an overlooked song today in his catalog but i love i love that song that album too yeah no it's a great album curtis was such a brilliant writer and i think i just played it on my radio show And when I heard the lyrics, it broke my heart because I remember the mood in 1966 when he made that. And it was so hopeful, the mood then, man. If you'd have told me in 1966 that that song was going to be more relevant in 2025 than it was in 1966, I wouldn't have believed you, man. and it actually got me choked up to think of how many backward steps have been taken in the last few years.

1:06:40And it just seemed like an essential message. So we started closing our shows with it. And beyond the message, everyone in the band on the bus, you know, we'd get back on the bus at 11.30 at night at 5 o 'clock in the morning. Everybody in their own rhythm was singing.

1:07:03What a hawk, man. It's so infectious. So we just thought, well, yeah, we should cut it, man. It's a timely, important thing to say right now. The album cover looks familiar. I feel like you've showed me this. I might have showed you the... I could have showed it to you before. It's a great picture taken in front of Joe Von Battle's record store, which was on Hastings Street in Detroit. Hastings Street was the center, the main street of an area called Black Bottom, which was the black residential and economic area of Detroit. And in one of the most heinous episodes in the history of the city, it happened all over the country in the late 50s.

1:07:52There was this thing called Urban Renewal that was just basically a plan to destroy black communities and displace people into areas that there was not enough housing for. It got turned into a freeway ramp. In fact, I visited it recently. I did a thing with Don Gagne for NPR. Oh, cool. where we did music sites in Detroit. And Joe's record store stood just south of Mack Avenue on the southbound entrance ramp to the Chrysler Freeway. Torn down for nothing, man. They could have built that half a mile over. But Joe Von Battle was a really important person in Detroit music. He had a recording studio in the back.

1:08:38He recorded John Lee Hooker there. recorded Aretha Franklin when she was 14. Her first record was made in his studio because he used to record her dad's sermons, C.L. Franklin, Reverend C.L. Franklin. He'd press up the sermons and sell them the week after church on a Sunday. It was like immediate distribution. And that record store was the heart of Detroit music. The photo was taken by a French photographer who went to shoot a John Lee Hooker album cover. It's kind of a famous cover. You see the store from another angle. He moved over onto the sidewalk and John Lee Hooker's standing in front of the store.

1:09:20And you get a better view of Hastings Street. So I saw that picture and I thought, man, this is, that record store is metaphorically our spiritual home for this band. And so it's actually my wife, Gemma, photoshopped us into the picture. So it looks like we're hanging out in front of the store with Joe who's in the picture. And metaphorically, musically, that's what we're doing. We're hanging out in front of that store. And those sounds, to me, the real sound of Detroit kind of comes from John Lee Hooker because he's raw and unpretentious. And so raw, you'd think the music's maybe gonna... the song could collapse at any moment, right?

1:10:09But it never does. Not only doesn't it collapse, but it swings like crazy, man. Grooves like crazy. And it's just soulful and from the heart, and that's at the root of Detroit music. If you're looking for the thing that makes Detroit unique, it's a raw groove with real heart and soul on top of it. And it doesn't matter what stream of music that flowed from that record store out, whether it's the rock and roll bands like Mitch Ryder. No one liked Mitch Ryder in the world when he came along. And Mitch Ryder informed the MC5 and the Stooges and really Funkadelic too. But then the R &B stream, not just Motown, which everyone knows, which if you really listen to those records, it's clear that those are regional.

1:10:58It's folk music from Detroit. Those are raw records. They had a Barry Gordy to somehow. Well, he put pop melodies and he understood how to tap a world sensibility, but they're very Detroit, those records. And Fortune Records before that, which was incredible, R &B, cut in another record store, in the back of another record store. So the jazz comes from Detroit to me. Elvin Jones epitomizes the thing. man he's level of sophistication and uh knowledge and technique that's not been exceeded but he's still got this raw energy to his plan that uh that's it's a rambunctious detroit feeling but so many great jazz musicians when i first got the job of blue note man i i thought let's start doing let's do a series of regional albums.

1:11:53We'll do famous cities. We'll get people from each city. I'll curate the Detroit one. And I went through this. Donald Byrd, there's Paul Chambers, there's Ron Carter, there's Thad Elvin, and Hank Jones. There's Curtis Fuller. I mean, it just goes on and on. There's Jerry Allen. There's Dave McMurray, who's on the label now. I mean, it's the number of Joe Henderson. Joe Henderson. Yeah, man. It just goes on. Kenny Burrell. Kenny Burrell's from Detroit? Yeah. I did not know that. Oh, man. So I thought, well, we'll do this in every city. No. Maybe Newark, if you put a lot of Wayne Shorter. Maybe Philadelphia.

1:12:36Maybe Philly. But that's it. You can't do it. So there was a Detroit thing that happened in all that. But I see it as being descended from the same. It's just, there's no bullshit. yeah it's unpretentious was was richard prior sober when you worked with him yeah and he wasn't well yeah he wasn't yeah it was towards the end of his life yeah he's sweet uh but he was he was sitting a lot yeah yeah yeah it was a real honor man we were like we were gobsmacked you know that's crazy i mean Yeah. Yeah. Some of his records are, I don't know, as mythological as any other music record. You know what I mean?

1:13:21Some of those records are just like, like wildly good, you know? Yeah. No, I agree. He was way ahead of everybody. Sometimes it gets lonely being ahead of everybody. That's a lonely spot to be in. and uh you understand why he he chased the distractions he chased yeah he seemed to have an inability as well to be anyone other than him yeah there was no like that's it cosby i'm this but i'm really that it's like yeah no you you you can't do that and not be it be it 100 yeah i think It's the same in music, too. You can't act. You know, one time I saw, when I was working with Bonnie Raitt, a writer named Paul Brady sent us a song that I guarantee you would have been a top 10 pop single, but it was about a breakup.

1:14:21And Bonnie wouldn't sing it. She said, I can't sing this now. I just got married.

1:14:27And she didn't want to act. If she didn't write them, they had to be as if she had written them. And I think that's why she can go so deep with those songs, because she finds a place deep inside where it rings true. And she only sings songs that do that. And that's why she's, you know, there's a better singer around. I don't know who it is. Were you a fan of hers when you started? Because, I mean, her catalog is so insanely good. Yeah, I bought her first. I didn't buy it. got her first album when it was new in like 1971 or something like that and it was so refreshing man it's got bluebird on that i think was stevie's still bluebird and thank you and uh yeah it's it's a it's just a it's just a really raw real album which was refreshing at the time when everyone was still imitating sergeant pepper and doing prog rock to find someone who she i think it was like at an abandoned summer camp she recorded, or a deserted one that was not in the summertime.

1:15:29And they were just in cabins and set up a four-track. And it's just real and not echoey or anything. It's just a beautiful record. So I was with her the whole time, and she was always one of my favorite singers. There was a guy named Hal Wilner who invented the tribute record, but he did real artful ones. He did a Nina Rota record. He did a Thelonious Monk one that he called Was Not Was when we were just getting started. And they were crazy records. And everyone, Carla Bley was on it. And you can't out Carla Bley, Carla Bley, right? So everyone used it as an excuse to go outside, and you couldn't compete in that arena with the real outside people.

1:16:17so the next album i thought i we're gonna go in and we'll be so inside that we'll stand out that way and so we came up with an it was a disney tribute album and we came up with an arrangement really probably based around a steve cropper guitar part for baby mine which is this great sad song from dumbo where the the where the mother elephant gets locked up and the baby wants to go to sleep and puts her trunk in there and wants her mom out so i just heard bonnie rate singing it and hal put us together and we just clicked from the the moment we met uh uh and i you know we're still close man i i love her dearly she's one of a kind bonnie and uh i went on my birthday this year she was playing in detroit and i was there at the fox theater so went to see her and she just sounds as great as ever maybe better than ever she's amazing yeah i think i have a bootleg of her performing at like a damn i shouldn't say that i think i have a bootleg of her performing though whatever uh with lowell george yeah yeah yeah 71 or 70 years they do can't find my way home yeah really good shit yeah really good as a radio station show i think yeah yeah yeah insane yeah those those shows were yeah bugged out i think i have like a sunra from one of those things too it's just like whoa you know um two more questions yeah sure i'll let you go man you md'd the willie nelson 90th you were were you also md or you at least played in the band for the dylan 30th i was i played on some songs i played on some songs ge smith was the md and most people played with the band that he put together but i played with willie and chris christopherson and keltner played drums and i think we had reggie young playing guitar and then two days later bob came i was making the record across the borderline with willie and bob came in and sang a duet with him on the song heartland and that's the show that sinéad o 'connor got booed off the stage on the bob at the 30th yeah bob 30th yeah because it's a week after she ripped up the picture of the pope on saturday night live so new york wasn't having there at the garden and it was pretty heavy christopherson came out she couldn't sing she couldn't do her song and willie saw that and he said let's do a song with her so she came we did don't give up the peter gabriel song and sinéad sang the uh the kate bush part it's a really a cool record that one of all the records i ever worked on i think across the borderline that album that i made with willie nelson it's the most overlooked and probably my favorite oh it just it's one that i put on i can disconnect myself from like thinking oh man we should the tambourine's too loud or whatever and i can listen to it and it just makes me feel good i've listened to it but i haven't listened in a long time i'm gonna put that on revisit i'm real proud of that record I was watching a, some recording of, I don't know, Bob Geldof in the studio with George Harrison and they're recording something and Bob asks George, like, oh, have you heard this?

1:19:39Like, they were talking about feedback and then Bob goes, oh, I heard this great Neil record where it's just all feedback. This Neil Young record, it's Ark Weldon. It's just like half is live and the other half is just all feedback from the show. and George is like, I can't really kneel, I don't know. We were playing at the Bob 30th and all of a sudden someone starts soloing and I look over and it's kneeling and I have to look at, he's like, I look at Eric and I say, it's not me. I was like, what a trip that whole thing must have been, man. It was quite a green room. That's for sure. The thing I remember most is being afraid to go up to Johnny Cash.

1:20:21and then i ended up producing the highwaymen a couple years later maybe a year later a couple years later i don't know insane and uh and he was he was such so approachable and so sweet man he was a really nice guy yeah and uh what about waylon was waylon great well i didn't know waylon He was sober by the time I knew him. I met him, I cut a duet with him that never came out with him, and Bob Seger's, for Bob Seger's record. It's a really cool song, but Bob's sitting on it. And I loved him, man. He was a real soulful guy and a real good heart. He's another guy. You know, you would have been afraid to go up and talk to him, but he was incredibly approachable.

1:21:08I remember going over to the Sunset Marquis and talking about, I said, what kind of record do you want to make? And he said, I want it to be like the Dylan album, Oh Mercy. He said, I want to be Waylon and do my thing, but I want those atmospheric textures behind. I said, wow, okay. And then we tend to forget what a progressive character Waylon was, that he was the first Nashville guy to cut a Stones song. I think he cut a Christofferson song before Johnny Cash did. He was hip to all kinds of different writers and open to it. And playing with Buddy Holly. What? Oh, there's that too. What the fuck?

1:21:53What a career, man. In retrospect, I'm glad I made all the records I made and got all those experiences. And I don't know that I'd change it, But I'm sorry that we didn't keep building that audience. It's very interesting starting a band at age 73, right? And starting from scratch. You know, some places we're lucky if we can draw 300 people. Sometimes, you know, more people on stage. but it's so much fun just to start from scratch and build this thing up go from city to city and and then see get back there the next time and and see twice as many people that's a that's a cool thing i'm glad you're doing it man it's a great album and thank you like i said like i mean just you know the way the album plays it moves it there's such variety on it but and i just loved that by the time I get to the end, it's cameo.

1:22:57And then I'm hearing like, you know, an echo of your past in it, you know, and it's so cool. Yeah, thank you, man. The next one will be better. Can't wait. Is it cut? I'm working on it. It's not cut. Okay. Can't wait to hear it. Thanks, Don. Thank you, brother. In the episode description, you'll find a link to Don Wuzzy's new album, Groove in the Face of Adversity, as well as a collection of songs he's produced throughout his career. Be sure to check out youtube.com slash broken record podcast to see all of our video interviews. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at the broken record pod. You can follow us on Twitter at broken record.

1:23:34Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Talliday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening. for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richman.

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