Brian Setzer And The Songs That Inspired Him

0:04Hey, this is kind of cool. Recently, I got to sit down with one of my heroes. As you may know about me. I'm a rockabilly fanatic. And I love Brian Setzer. Turns out he was in town. and we got to sit down for an hour-long conversation, which was just a blast for me. We talked about a lot, Brian committing to always doing what he wanted to do as a musician. That guy has stuck to his guns and it's worked out beautifully for him. Having a guitar lead a big band was something he had never done before, which is massive. Guitarists did not lead big bands, but he did it. How Rockabilly spoke to him, as it did to me at a very young age, meeting George Harrison and Ringo but never Paul and Brian and I talk a little bit about living on a tour bus and how it can drive one quite insane anyway it was a really fun conversation if you want you can listen to the episode with the songs included by searching Conan in the new Sirius XM app or you can listen to the conversation here and cue up the songs on your music streaming app of choice check it out here's my conversation with Brian Setzer

1:38the message of my career is dreams do come true and uh i've been a massive fan and huge admirer of a gentleman known as Brian Setzer for many years. And he's been an influence on me in all kinds of ways. And I adore him. And over the years, I've had the pleasure of Brian coming on my shows and getting to perform live with Brian. And then we heard that there was a chance that he might be in town and might have a moment to sit down with us and appear on Conan O 'Brien Words and Music with my friend Jim Pitt. And so we did everything we could to get him here. We kidnapped him about an hour ago and he's here with me now and I could not be happier.

2:31Brian, thanks for being here. Seriously, I'm just like, and I've told this to many people that I can kind of do the hair if I could play guitar like you and sing like you, no one would ever hear me tell a joke again. I'd be gone. I'd be out on the road because you're living the life that I would like to live. So, and then to find out years ago that you're also an incredibly nice person was this nice gift. I remember being afraid the first time you came on the show. What if he's an asshole? You never know. There's going to be a fight. Yeah, exactly. From your music, there's just, you know, there's a lot of people fighting and switchblades.

3:11and I thought he might pull a knife on me. And then you could not have been a nicer guy. And so many of my favorite memories of doing a late night show over the years was when you would come by, when you would bring the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Oh, yeah. And people knew on days when you're coming with your orchestra, don't bother me. Meaning don't give me a lot of comedy that day that I have to rehearse. Don't try to have a lot of meetings with me. don't have the accountants in that day leave me alone so i can go downstairs and sit in the audience and watch you guys do your thing always a joy oh yeah you love the big band i know you did yeah and i remembered sitting this is one of my favorite memories i'm sitting in the audience and you play the set that you're going to play um what you're going to do for the late night show and then you said hey conan anything else you want to hear and i'm just sitting there in the audience like with Jim Pitt who's sitting with me and maybe a couple of other people and I said are you guys do the Hawaii Five-0 theme and you went guys one two three oh I know you just did it and it when it was over my clothes had been blown off I was completely naked I was just it was absolutely incredible and uh how just I mean first of all I know this is one of the things I've heard about you and it's something I've thought about over the years which is some of the best music ever made in america is television theme songs yeah and we grew up with them we're the same vintage and we grew up with this stuff right hawaii 50 i know you're a big i've heard you talk about the manix theme oh god um i think about uh you know the wild wild west yeah there are all these incredible bonanza bonanza great orchestration yeah great music and it was television themes yeah you know what happened so those were jazz guys right that once the big band dinosaurs went away they became extinct they had nowhere to go and they started doing that for tv you know so we need you know we need something big and bold that sounds out west you know and it was four guys in new york city in the brill building you know writing about the wild west right you know it's the funniest thing and and it's the best stuff right you know and you know and they wrote bonanza and they you know hawaii 50 and all that just fantastic stuff so when i actually got the big band together heard that back it was my favorite stuff to play it's amazing i love playing that james bond who could do the james bond theme no it's incredible like that music is so iconic and because it was a tv theme it was easy for people to at the time probably dismiss it like oh it's just some song on television it's not the real thing until you go back and listen to it and realize this is some of the best music recorded i was really it didn't surprise me but when i found out that because when i was a kid one of my favorite cartoons was top cat yeah top cat and it was this cartoon sort of like a sergeant bilko who's a cat he's got his gang and they they always pull one over on somebody it was very funny i think it was a hannah barbera cartoon that the top cat theme was an inspiration for you top cat theme because it was badass you know they they were mixing some you know trying to mix rock and roll but their their roots were in that in that 50s big band stuff it was just sweet nobody had hit upon it and i had the idea why don't i lead a big band with a with a guitar that's never been done and everybody tried to talk me out of that one and they were saying oh it's going to be a embarrassment you get no one's going to want to listen to this you just won't be able to pay them who's yeah who's going to come see that right you know they said that was rockabilly too yeah but I've always just done what I've wanted to do.

7:23And that big band just kind of kept taking off, taking off. It got higher and higher and higher. You know, I, we did, I paid the band out of pocket the first couple of shows. And then, uh, I remember all of a sudden is, uh, the, the Greek theater want you the Greek. We just did the house of blues. It caught on and it just kind of, it kind of, you know, stayed there at this point. So a lot of people, you know, we ended up with the Hollywood Bowl. A lot of people feel the way we do, you know. Well, that's the kind of, I always call it the field of dreams phenomenon. If you build it, they will come, which is, you know, if you, you know, my whole career I've thought, if this is something I really care about comedically, I'm just going to keep doubling down on it.

8:08And if no one else cares, at least I did what I wanted to do. But I think other people are going to care. Right. And if you just keep putting that signal out, and it's a little bit of almost a religious thing, spiritual, like, i i'm gonna double down on this and put this signal out and i'll show them yeah yeah and uh going back like is interesting because it's it's hard to explain time goes by and then people lose the context but when stray cats first comes around when you're first playing this music 1980 81 it is exact opposite late 70s early 80s it's the exact opposite of what the music scene is completely diametrically opposed right nobody's got a three-piece playing stripped down rockabilly stand-up bass snare drum uh 6120 gretch guitar no one's piling their hair up like that uh it's the cars it's the i mean we could go on and on about what it was but it was not that no and uh But I think it was just musically so undeniably amazing that it cut through and became a sensation.

9:19And I think a lot of people were hungry for it when it came. Yes, we found that out. But when we first started, first of all, the band was right. You know, me, Jim and Lee, we had a chemistry. You know, we're just three guys from almost the same block on Long Island. and we just believed in this sound because, oh, without mentioning other bands' names, we'd had enough of the big pompous bands with the gongs and all that stuff. And I said, you don't need all this stuff, you know? You don't need the half a million dollar Les Paul. You don't need that, man. I'm picturing the Stray Cats going out with just you guys and a gong.

9:55And I'm on gong. And every now and then you signal me and a dong. And a G-Stray. I'd do it. I'd do it. But yeah, so you were, you were, it was a reaction to what was happening and you did that. And then of course, later in your career, when you did the big band, that's a reaction because I think when you came out with the big band, it was grunge was what everybody wanted. That's right. And you're saying, I've got, I've got this massive orchestra and I'm going to do Louis Prima and it's going to be huge. And it was. it did become huge the idea for the big band you know i learned how to read and write music and uh johnny carson asked and he didn't have rock bands on yet if we wanted to be on the show we're like what who just kids and then he said you want these docs big band and that's where the idea started did you do it they didn't have a song no it didn't work out johnny did that a lot invite people on they'd show up and he wouldn't let them in it's an old johnny trick yeah that's pretty much how it happened we we didn't we didn't get the show but they were talking about it but that idea remained what if i put that big band behind the stray cats since i could write all that stuff i just i wanted to hear because the two had never met a guitar player had never led a big band and like you said we were influenced by all that 50s and 60s television theme stuff so i at least had to try it and believe me it was hard to get 17 guys you know to to do this to write all that music out you know people would yell out songs and i would say well but we don't have the we don't have the charts what play uh you know rock this town oh i didn't have it written out yet for the big band i hadn't reimagined it yet right right you know so um it was just uh it was an idea that i had to follow through with but from the very first one it was like wait this is not like sinatra this is something different you know this is it's a hybrid yeah yeah it was my idea of like of of rock and roll with like but not not a swing band people thought we was swing as well and the swing bands had three or four horns this was a full big band you know right so that's that's what started that idea and then it caught fire pretty quick so i have to say for me personally i think one of the reasons like i grabbed on to you and what you were doing immediately is i had this experience i was born in 63 so i'm in college and everyone's listening to what people are listening to uh in the 80s and you know soft one i mean freshman year soft sell is really big and tainted love right um and you've got all this stuff happening in the 80s and i remembered uh it was fine but i wasn't grabbed by any of it then i think they did some reissue of the sun session albums or i started to hear early elvis because i'd only known sure i had only known um The Elvis hits that we were all.

13:03The stuff that your mom played. Right, exactly. The stuff that was on RCA or especially the stuff that came later on in the 70s, late 60s, 70s. And so I start to hear, like I hear Baby Let's Play House and I can just feel something happen to me. It's so primal. I know. And I'm just, I'm listening to it and it's, you might go to college, you might go to school, you might drive a pink Cadillac, but you'd be nobody's and there's a real passion behind it it's very simple and then obviously that's all right mama and um i'm listening to all this stuff and the next thing i know my dorm room i have an early elvis poster but i also have jerry lee lewis from high school confidential on the back of the truck playing the piano he's on the back of like a pickup truck it was still from the movie high school confidential and i'm listening to jerry lee lewis and then i'm listening to little richard and that's the stuff i'm listening to and my friends don't get it like what are you doing why are you doing this and of course you guys come around and then suddenly it's it's cool it feels like it's you know you know what i mean it's uh i could understand it because to me it was i still explain it as this is the music that still like reaches right into my chest and grabs me and for me it's like for buddy holly it's rayvon like the kind of insistence of it you know that and it's driving and it's very simple but that was why what you were doing and everything that you've done throughout your career has always kind of made perfect sense to me because other stuff i don't know when i i love and admire a lot of the other stuff but there's something so um like i'll just go back to primal about i know it is you either get that or you don't i feel the same exact way i went through the same thing and i i think the first i heard any of that real stuff was my dad was in korea he was you know and he came back with some records you know this is what the guys were listening to you know i like it and i put on you know, Carl Perkins, and I couldn't tell him I liked it, but to me it rivaled, it was, it rivaled that energy that punk rock was just starting with, but, but the guys could really play, you know, and it just spoke right to me, you know, that, that's the hardest thing to write is the, the, the simplest stuff, you know, with the direct lyrics, the direct chords.

15:42I mean, cause it's all been written you know that that's the hardest stuff to come up with yeah but i had the same exact feeling as you did isn't that funny i didn't know everybody's going to do their hair like me i thought that was for stage yeah but i stuck with it for the longest period and people when i was right oh you still got a good head of hair when i was on there when i was a writer on the simpsons i had this giant pile on my head and you know i had sideburns and and and people were just like you're a comedy writer yeah but that but but that's how you feel comfortable yeah yeah

16:29you showed up earlier than i thought you were coming in and i wander around my because it's my building i get to wander around with a guitar around me all the time you will attest that this is true a long way that goes back a long way and i always have a guitar yeah you always have a guitar so i have i heard all this commotion downstairs because they were having a birthday party for sarah fedorovich and i come down just to join in and of course i just have a gretch a duo jet around my neck and who do i the first person i run into is you ryan and i'm and I feel like an ass because it's like walking up to Tiger Woods holding a golf club.

17:10I feel stupid now. Look what I've got. I know how to play. Yeah, exactly. Who knew? But I'm glad it made it into the studio. You know, we were going to, one of the things we like to do occasionally on this show is we ask our guest to pick a couple of songs and the first one you picked is something else. by eddie cochran which is 1958 and i got into eddie cochran i think after college i'm out here in la and i'm really trying to start to learn i'd been a shitty drummer and i decided it's time to be a shitty guitar player and i uh a friend of mine randy klempert and i who were in improv class together he could play serious rockabilly licks and that's what i wanted to do and he said you gotta know about eddie cochran so he was the one that got me into eddie cochran and uh eddie cochran was the guy who had a big orange gretch 6120 yeah and that was the guitar that you had to have yeah if you were going to do what you wanted to do well can i tell you how how i discovered him there's no time we're out oh all right goodbye everybody no i'll see you then Go ahead.

18:25Yes, that's why you're here. But the funny thing about Eddie was nobody knew who, like, you know, my folks didn't know who Eddie Cochran was. He had summertime blues. But we had a record store called Whirling Disc. And it was a cheap little place. And the guy had the album covers hanging from Fish and Line. I don't know how old I was. Well, early 70s, right? you know just just you know tees early teens 14 and i didn't like anything i was hearing and i banged into this one record i go who's this guy i didn't know what he sounded like i go this guy just looks cool i just uh that look made me feel right too you know that i i couldn't relate to the 70s kind of rock and roll look but i was a rock and roller yeah so i saw a picture of eddie with the baggy pants, the slick back.

19:19I went, this cat's cool. You know, he could be in a motorcycle gang. He could be a guitar player. And then when I went home and put the record on, it was all over. Why doesn't everybody know who he is? Yeah. They do in England and places like that. But we opened up for the Stones here in 1980. And, you know, I'm just glad we didn't get booed off. But we came up on stage and I said, hey hello minnesota home of eddie cochran people didn't people just gave me a what quizzical look idea you know they didn't know who he was one second time i came back they had signs saying home of eddie cochran but you know well tragically for the listeners that don't know eddie cochran brilliant fantastic uh he wrote and he sang and he looked like a million bucks but he could also play he was a real player yes and um you know not everybody not everybody was some guys just thunked out rhythm uh but but eddie cochran could really play and his trademark was uh 6120 which you all know it um when you see it it's big orange uh guitar that was kind of a country western themed guitar and they would put a cattle brand on it right of the gretz g and some of the ones I've never had one but some of them have all this inlay of like little cactus and little uh and I remember when you first started playing seeing that you had a 6120 but you would put like dice on for the knobs and I thought that was the coolest thing I still think it's the coolest thing I've ever seen you know I've seen a lot of cool stuff but I've not I still think that is the guitar you know um but he went to England and was touring and was in a car accident was killed yeah and um i've always heard that george harrison this is pre-beatles followed that tour george harrison of course was like a young kid yeah teenager who loved eddie cochran they didn't get access to these stars because very few of them came over but that uh that george was really interested in following that that concert and trying to get a chance to look at eddie cochran and see him and tragically he passed away on that tour he was killed on that tour yeah yeah yeah so uh we have a song because we asked you to supply three songs and the first you said was something else by eddie cochran and i i love that song he goes what's all this what's all this it's just all swagger oh it's all swagger but you know it's also nice there's a sweetness to it which is, you know, the punk version you'd think would be, you know, I want that girl.

22:04I got to get that car. I'm going to go fucking steal that car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. He's working. I'm going to work real hard and save my dough. I never thought of that. And it's kind of like, it's nice. There's almost this, there's this almost like work ethic message in there. I never thought of that. I'm not going to go steal it. But you can tell he's got swagger and everything, but he's going to do this the legit way. How did they get that sound? What is happening there? Do you know? Do you have any idea? Good gosh. We have tried to capture all those sounds. And I'm telling you, it's in the air.

22:41Because even if you use the old flat wound strings, even if you go back and use all the tube stuff, you can't catch it. It was just in the air. I was going to say it's funny when I was living back in the UK, you know, there was a big division amongst groups, right? The punks didn't like the rockers and they didn't like the mods and they didn't like all that stuff. They all agreed on Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. Yes. Oh, Gene Vincent. All right. I remember Lemmy said, oh, Gene Vincent, you know, it takes Teddy to make one of him, you know? Yeah. Everybody agreed that those were the guys. There was no fighting amongst that.

23:19Here's a weird thing, too. again not to be morbid but i think gene vincent was in the car yes gene vincent was in the cab yes with eddie cochran and eddie cochran's girlfriend when the car crashed yeah in england on when they were doing that tour and as a side note uh gene vincent was injured eddie cochran was killed but his girlfriend sharon shealy right uh co-wrote something else with him yeah yeah she was a she was a writer and they were they were a great uh i've heard her interviewed talking about eddie and talking about them working together have you yeah now i've been on that little curve where they smashed it's pretty wicked even on a nice night you know it was raining and all sorts of you know come on we want to go home that kind of jazz it's the it's the i had a chance because i'm a buddy holly fanatic i we had the crickets came by once and they performed on late night right and afterwards we're just hanging out and i couldn't believe i was getting to talk to the crickets.

24:16And then I just said, you know, I kind of just said, I don't know where, like, why did buddy get on that plane? It's snowing. And why do you do that? And I think it was the Jerry Allison or someone said, ah, buddy, he had get there. I just always did. You know, like he just, I got to get there. You know, I'm sick of this bus. Oh, I'll go ahead. I'll take the laundry with me. We'll take this little plane. And I always think about that because every now and then I'm in a situation from doing a travel show somewhere i'm doing something people say you know this guy can take you in a helicopter and we'll get there a little faster and i say i i'm all right that helicopter doesn't looks like it was built in world war one as an experiment i think i'm good i'll just be a little late it's okay to be late i'm getting worse that too as i get older because we you know i live in minnesota um in the tundra and we took a 25 hour bus ride even though we have the dogs and you know we want to come like that but i took that over a flight because i just uh i just got to go my way at this point you know can you sleep on a bus because i i did some bus time couldn't could never sleep on a bus and so what i would do is i'd be too wound up from the show so i would sit up front with the bus driver and jabber while everyone else was sleeping and just talk and talk and talk.

25:41That's the thing. People who've never been on one of those things, I can. Yeah. But people who've never been on those think that any time off is just like, you know, no big deal. You can go do this and go do that. You know, when they said, well, Conan wants you to come on, I said, Conan, I'll make time for, but you know. I was told you got on a bus and it was 25 hours just for this interview and you're turning around and coming and going straight back. That might have been an exaggeration. I'm going to stick with my story. Conan walks me, get up the bus. Get out that bus. Yeah, Gene Vincent was a guy that I got really into also around the same time as Eddie Cochran.

26:24And what I knew about Gene Vincent was obviously, you know, he had great style and he had a great voice. but he had this guitar player and at the time when i first heard it i thought is that gene vincent playing that i didn't know anything right and it turned out to be kids guitar players one of the great guitar players in rock and roll history i know maybe one of the all-time you know like if you're going to make a list of 10 but cliff gallop everybody has to agree on cliff gallop i heard cliff gallop for the first time again you know we're about the same age how would you hear that and i was i was in max's kansas city in manhattan and uh shooting pool and all the punk was on there you know screaming out of the jukebox and all of a sudden well be babaloo and it was like a hand came across the pool table and pulled me into that jukebox and that guitar solo came on and it was the sexiest thing i'd ever heard i go what's this guy doing really yeah that's that's So I started using a pick and my fingers.

27:31He, Gallup used finger picks and a thumb pick. I just used my fingers and a guitar pick, but I pick like that, and then I go back down with the pick. And I just did it because I wasn't getting, I wanted to finger pick. You know, I wanted to, you know, do some stuff that Scotty Moore did. Yeah. So I just invented that. I never saw anyone do it. But when I heard that song, I just went, wow. It was, it was sexy. you know just had it we had scotty moore sit in scotty and dj and dj fontana his drummer they sat in with max weinberg i mean i used that late night show so much of it was conan works out his quiet perversions and america has to come along whether they want to or not but he came and then the show was over and i asked him could you just scotty i i can play the solo to that's all right mama but boom boom boom boom down down i can do it kind of but and he went oh no it's not that hard let me show you son and then he did it in front of me and to see the hands this is where it gets weird you see the hands make the shapes and do it and you realize these are the same hands that did it in 1954 in sun studio and that changed the world and i'm looking at the same fingers i know and then i think okay it's time for me to go have a drink take a pill something you got to get out of that head but it's interesting to go there for a lot of people i think that way yeah but so gene vincent he comes along and what's interesting about gene vincent is elvis hits and he's huge and it's a phenomenon so everyone's looking for the next elvis we got to get one of those rca has elvis they buy the colonel's contract so capital record says we got to find someone and i had always heard that gene vincent had won like a contest right like sound like elvis contest sure so capital signed him because they thought this guy will be the next he'll be our elvis right which kind of makes sense because he's you know every guy from down south was trying to be the next elvis yeah but gene had i think gene lived those lyrics you know he was he was a bad boy but uh he had that sweet uh what is it the ian duri said sweet virginia whisper right he uh he he had that thing and he had the band right you know that that when they came in to record they had students the chet atkins was there in case the band wasn't any good they heard the band they went oh well we can send them studio guys home right that's amazing these guys are great yeah gene vincent and the blue caps and the studio photos i've always seen all his amazing band they're all wearing blue caps and gene always has this arch top guitar that looks like it has a hole in it you know like this beat up a big hole yeah Bubba told me they used to light off cherry bombs on stage to get the audience going.

30:44I could have used that. Plenty of times I could have. Yeah, me too. Plenty of nights we had a flat crowd. He told me they used to throw cherry bombs around and blew up on the Gene's guitar. That's what he told me about that hole. So Gene Vincent, he really shoots to the top because he does a song called Bebopalula. And that was the second song that you chose. It's from 1956, I believe. So this is around the time the Elvis fuse gets lit in 54. It's really started to burn in 55. And then 56 is when Elvis just becomes, you know, he's everywhere. And he is the king of show business. And it's a huge revolution, king of rock and roll.

31:26And then Gene Vincent comes up with Bebop Alula, which is a massive hit. And so let's give that a listen. And then we can discuss. Yeah, spin it. or push the button no one's spinning sounds better i know you know it's interesting because the guitar is amazing but you pointed out something about gene vincent's voice which is it sounds like it does sound like cool spring water there's something very liquid about it do you know what i mean oh man yeah it's just kind of perfect and you can't it's sexy yeah it's very yeah very sexy yeah and um what is cliff gallop playing is he playing a telecaster he's playing the guitar in the corner there is he playing a duo jet yeah okay so he's playing a gretch all right gretch duo jet yeah it is so funny because gretches which it's funny you single-handedly drove up the price of gretches you asshole but uh when you come along and you're playing the 6121 grutches weren't thought of they they weren't valued that way especially 6120s duo jets and then you come along and uh after the stray cats there were thousands and thousands of dollars and you can't have one my first ever electric guitar was a tennessean yeah uh and with the single cutaway and it had the painted f-holes which i didn't really know why would you paint f-holes on i didn't understand why and someone explained to me it's because of the feedback you know that they didn't they hadn't quite figured out yet how to keep guitars from feeding back through the f-hole yeah that's pretty much it yeah you know i i'm convinced you know after all these years of playing them if one person says something they'll change it like i just bought this new guitar from gretch and i've had my son is having problems and i had to save up a lot of money oh we'd better change it and then they'll do something like that yeah You know?

33:31Honestly, I use the feedback. Of course. That's why I need. Yeah. Right? So people that don't play guitar, I'll explain to them, like a solid body guitar doesn't feed back because there's nothing coming out of the guitar except the pickups are pulling the sound from the strings. But when you play an archtop guitar. Which is more like, if you imagine a violin or an acoustic guitar. It's hollow. It's got big holes for the sound. It resonates. Yeah. It's not a solid block of wood. Picture me playing a cello with pickups. Yeah. If you stand in the right spot. Yeah. It doesn't go. Because we rock them.

34:07Those guys in the fifties, you know, Chet Atkins, he sat down and played it like a, like a gentleman, country gentleman. We started just rocking out with them, you know? So we had to figure out how to get them to play right. You know? We had Chet Atkins come by the show. We did. Yeah. Yep. And then, so of course, being the nerd, I am. You guys had everybody. We had everybody. Les Paul was on like the first week. Les Paul came on the first week, gave me a Les Paul and signed it to me. Oh yeah. Yeah. I wish I hadn't thrown it out. But, but, you know, I don't want to be a hoarder, but no, Chet Atkins came by.

34:42And so I gave, I showed him my Chet Atkins scratch 6120. And he takes it out of my hand and he looks at it, but he looks at it very technically. Like, let's see. Yeah. Cause it's his, it's one that was put up with his name on it so he's looking at it and he goes like yes well they did a good job with this and then he did a really cool thing he just put his initials on the back of the headstock rather than sign a big thing up front he was like well that would mar the guitar so i'll just do yes with a little sharpie and you i mean i have that guitar you you can't even see it barely right but it's back there and it was his way of saying like well we mustn't damage the product right you know it's kind of cool yeah i i only met him once too and he invited me over and he goes, why don't you look me up before, boy?

35:27And I said, I thought it'd be like meeting the Pope. I didn't think I could just come in and meet you. So we sat down and played and, hold on one second, let me show you something cool. Sure, yeah. So I don't know how well you can hear it. So he goes, can I show you something? And I go, yeah. Yes, you can, Chet Atkins. Yes, you can. Exactly. He goes, what do you want to know? I go, do you have anything in B-flat? And he goes, what are you doing up there, son? I go, I got this big band with all these horns. So he gave me this really cool riff.

36:10And it's cool, right? That's beautiful. I love that. And it's not, what is it? I mean, it's not blues. It's not, what is that? It's kind of, it almost sounds a little like Dixieland or something. I don't know. It does.

36:27It does. It sounds like... Yes. You know, it sounds like you could have like a straw boat or hat on playing that. Yeah. I said, so I wrote a song around, you know, let's live it up, let's live it up. I wrote a song. And I said, can I give you credit for that or something? And he goes, oh, hell, I just stole it from Jerry Reed.

36:51Everybody stole from somebody. That's true. they nicked they nicked it yeah as the beatles would say um i'm curious you you said like you didn't think you could just go talk to chet atkins and i love that attitude i've always had that attitude like i don't want to bother people and who am i to i don't know i'm always it's probably better to go at it from that angle then this person is gonna love meeting me because you know what i mean it's yeah i mean do i look you up in the phone book i would have no idea and i wouldn't even pursue it right because he's chet atkins but he put you know he reached out he had the whole building there they're in music row yep he's why don't you call me boy why don't you look me up i thought it'd be like calling up the pope yeah and then he was just happy to sit down and just just play you know um why is b flat so cool ah b flat is a cool key because you know well i've okay the other day i know you're coming on and and you're on my rap i think the one of the things i listen to that you've done the most is your version of jump jive and whale you know and i'm listening to it and i get out my guitar and i'm guessing and i'm like yep that's b flat going up into b you know but i'm just like what why so many cool things are in b flat and i don't know what that's all about it's cool on guitar when you when you play in a horn key that's a horn key that's a It has three flats.

38:17And Chuck Berry is a lot of times. Is it three flats, Julie? B flat? Oh, it is two flats. Yeah. But it's - B and E. They're both flat. Anyway, so it sounds better for those guys when you're playing those keys. Yeah. So there's a lot of tricks on guitar that you wouldn't normally do in that key. And once you discover them, you're one of the few people that do them. Right. Because everybody does the A and G and C. Right. But B flat's something a little different. Yeah. Isn't Chuck Berry in sort of B-flat territory a lot, I think? I don't know. If you got a sax player in those days, you probably converted to their key.

38:55You had to know those keys. And then it changed some time when, oh, you're going to play guitar keys now. A, D, G. Right. It's what comes across to me when you look at all of your work is that you're interested in all music. you're not thinking nope i'm rockabilly or you know nope i'm just gonna do big band now it's you appreciate everything like you have big ears for country i mean if there's you just like music and then what can i do thanks i do and so many people they're they're they're just now they've got those blinders on you know it's like do you only have one record in your collection i do like all different types of music you know that's why i kind of mix it all up that's why it's not pure rockabilly what i play or it's not pure big band i i just that's that's what sounds good in my head and that's what comes out the third song this is a little bit of a departure which i didn't expect by the way but thrilled that it's on the list which is she looks i'm a beatles fanatic as well she loves you 1963 the beatles how did this make it on your brian setzer pick three songs and and something else bebop lula and then she loves you what's going on here um what's going on is that was so influential and just me liking music it was so early and uh shall i talk about it after after we spin it sure yeah okay let's let's give these beatles a chance

40:32we're gonna hear from that group again i know uh so so what was it about that song that that made it onto your list so that song you have to understand when i was well i don't know when that how old i was maybe it was just when i heard it you would have been i mean you would have been i think five i was born in 59 okay so i probably heard it later yeah right but you had to go grocery shopping we called it back east grocery shopping i don't think they do all over uh with mom and there was a little pizza place across the across the way and that came out of the jukebox you know it's like yesterday and uh i walked up to the pizza guy who's that on the jukebox I don't know.

41:14Ask those girls. So I went up to these girls. Who's that? She goes, oh, it's a new band called The Beatles. Right? And the only thing in my young years was that guitar. I heard the guitar. Mm-hmm. Right? And it was just new and fresh. I mean, I couldn't have heard something like Eddie Cochran yet. Right. And that's where you have to be open-minded when people like different sorts of music. then we went across the street and in another record store it was a picture of the beatles and george had the neck of his guitar like goofing around across the other beatles necks like that yeah and i go the guitar is what makes that sound it's the guitar i wanted that sound cool you know yeah and that's why they i couldn't get it out of my head you know i didn't want you know a bb gun i wanted a guitar you know what a guitar nobody plays good so we don't know anybody of his guitar that's what i wanted you know and wasn't your first instrument was it the guitar well in school they stuck me with this thing called the euphonium sounds like an iron lung poor brian can't breathe on his own we got him a euphonium yeah oh geez you're right it does so picture the skinny little kid from long island with the euphonium which is like a mini tuba you're right yeah but uh that's what they had in school my parents didn't have any money yeah you know and um actually i learned how to read the bass cleft with that thing but i really wanted the guitar to play yeah but that's what i played in the school band like you know that kind of music and then my brothers and i were cadets you know we had the hats and we could march with that thing sure yeah that was in b flat yeah the euphonium i'm glad you gave it up i think he went rockabilly euphonium yeah exactly well it was up to my dad i'd be in the coast guard playing euphonium um so you of the beatles you got you kind of got to meet george a few times yeah yeah can you talk about that at all a little bit because he would have i imagine loved what you were doing he told me he did yeah yeah he was he was very dry You know, very sarcastic, you know, like in a no bullshit way, you know, but yeah.

43:37What can I say about him really? He was, you're always in such awe when you meet someone like that, you know, when you met Paul or when I met George. But that's the stuff they all love. They all love the Rockabilly stuff. Like I said, you know, the biggest stars that people that I grew up with, they wanted to meet, you know, Freddie Mercury or, you know, the latest, you know, Jethro Tull and all that, you know. And all these guys wanted to meet the Stray Cats. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Oh, it was unbelievable. You know. He must have. And I didn't know many of those band songs because I listened to Rockabilly music, you know.

44:18Right, right. When we opened for the Stones, I could have sung maybe Satisfaction and a couple. I didn't know their music. Right. Because I was listening to Carl Perkins, you know? Which, by the way, strangely enough, they had been listening to or they had been listening to, you know, earlier. And then they had gone on to that stuff. You know, what's so fascinating is that I have found this to be true. People you idolize, it's the stuff that you heard when you were a kid. So it's just you talking about hearing some of this music when you were much younger. And that's what grabbed hold of you. I'm that way about comedians.

44:49I idolized the people that were on TV when I was a kid. Those are the ones that later on when I got to meet them, when I got to meet Don Knotts, I couldn't believe I was meeting Don Knotts. Yeah, right. you know so many incredibly talented genius performers today who are in their 30s and 40s when i meet them they're younger than me i'm really excited to meet them and i really love their work and i think they're brilliant but it's never going to have the same effect on me as seeing those people that came through my tv set or on my record player when i was a kid like it's just you can't get no one can get to you the same way i know i never thought of that but it's yes yeah and it's because that's what you're growing up with you know that's what shaped you yeah you know you get older i guess and it doesn't have that same effect did you get to play at all with george or just chat i i don't think i did uh i i played with with keith and with with bill a lot bill wyman yep uh but i don't think i ever know he didn't last too long the poor guy no um but he said uh oh just a quick funny story yeah we went to a party and there was george and my brother did you know you have you ever brought a family member to meet somebody that they're gonna flip out over sure okay so he does the thing oh don't do this you know goes oh hi Mr.

46:24Harrison, I've got a band. We're on the Deca label. I'm going to do this and I'll be doing that. And so George just looks at him and goes, well, see you on the telly then. And he walks away.

46:38I could just see him doing that too. And I was just, why did you do that? Yeah. We were just kids. And if somebody did that to me, I'd be understanding. Yeah. It was so funny because we had Ringo on the show once. and i'll never forget it was the first time ringo was on the show i play with ringo yeah and ringo's such a lovely guy but i remembered it's the first time he was on the show and he's backs he's out in the hall outside 6a and iconic 6a studio and he he's outside and and uh someone comes up and says the line that people always says which is um i'm so sorry to bother you you know if they want to they want you to sign something i'm gonna bother you yeah and and what And what they always say is, I'm so sorry to bother you and Ringo with just matter of fact, like he's been saying it since 1963.

47:25It was one of the like cameramen said, so sorry to bother you. And he went, no, you're not. But then but then signed it anyway. But as he was signing it, just saying, if you were really sorry, you wouldn't do it. I just thought like, oh, that's kind of a these Liverpool guys. Yeah. How to give it. They don't audition. Each city seems to have that wise guy thing going, you know. Yeah. Well, I I'm glad it's and you said you haven't met Paul, which I find hard to believe. no no yeah well just call him up he's not the pope