Leland Sklar

0:01 Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My guest today is the one and only Leland Sklar, bassist extraordinaire. Leland, you have a big presence on YouTube. Tell me about that.

0:18 Thank you, COVID, is really what that was all about. When COVID struck, my date book was full for the year. And then all of a sudden, it blew away like leaves in a storm. And I'm looking and I'm going, God, what am I going to do now? And there's a backstory to this. In 2004, I was on the road with Phil Collins. And they hired a bass tech for me.

0:48 I'd never really had a bass tech before. I've always done my own gear. And he came in. I think he had probably been working with a band that bass player had like 10 basses and wanted new strings every day and all that. And when he came to me, he said, so what do you need?

1:03 What do you need?

1:03 And I said, nothing. And we were going to be on the road a year on this tour. It was a long tour. And so we had kind of running jokes through the whole tour about it because he ended up like working with the drum tech and being a general kind of gopher on the tour. Well, towards the end of the tour, there was talk that Phil might retire.

1:26 at the end of that tour. He was just pretty well done at that point. Just to be clear for the audience, what year are we in?

1:32 2004. Okay.

1:33 And so one of the things that hit me was if Phil's retiring, I may not see a lot of these people. Again, we had like 100 crew guys on this tour. And they were from Europe and the East Coast and all over the country. And I thought, I may not see them. So I thought, maybe I'm going to I'll just take a picture of everybody and make a little memory book for me as long as my memory was still intact and I understood what that was.

2:01 But as luck would have it, the first person that I went up to, his nickname was Chinner. And I said, hey, Chinner, give me a smile.

2:11 Is there a reason it was Chinner? Chinner. Spell it. C-H-I-N-N-E-R. That's what I thought. Does it have to do with your chin? And he had a beard. Okay.

2:20 He came with the nickname.

2:22 Okay.

2:24 So he was sitting at his laptop working and I went up to him and I said, hey, give me a smile. And all he did was flip me off at that point, which was perfect for that tour. And I looked at the picture and I kind of went, oh, this is actually a good idea. So I went and got Phil and Tony Smith as manager. I got all the band, all the crew. Bus drivers, truck drivers, pilots, caterers.

2:46 It was one of those kind of tours where there was all these people. And I ended up with probably about 120 pictures of people flipping me off. And I put it away and didn't really think about it. And then a couple of years later, I went on the road for the first time with Toto. And I thought, I'm going to get those guys. I mean, I've known Luke since he was 19. So I did that and it started to take a life of its own. And at this point, I've got over 13,000 photographs. But when COVID hit, I was at a friend's house in Pasadena who was having a little get together in his backyard.

3:23 And he was kind of like one of these hunter gatherers of people. He had scientists from Caltech. I live in Pasadena. So he had guys from Caltech. He had artists and all kinds of some actors and stuff, about a dozen of us. One of the guys was a guy named Richard Tremarchi, whose nickname is Blue, and he has a company called Art Alliance, and they do high-end art books and things like that. He does the posters for the New Orleans Jazz Festival and things like that.

3:53 So we were sitting there. I had just met him, and we started talking, and I told him about all these pictures I had collected and stuff.

3:59 He said, do a book.

4:01 And I said, well, I really hadn't had time. He goes, you got time now?

4:04 Yeah.

4:05 And so we started to sit in his office. I'd bring all my files over and we would just look at all these pictures and started assembling it. And next thing you know, I ended up with a coffee table book called Everybody Loves Me. And it's about 6,000 pictures in there.

4:23 Just because we have cameras here. This is the book. This is it.

4:27 And it's really a great book to have, like, keep in your car. If you park on a hill, it's big and heavy, so you can put it under the tires so you don't roll away, you know, chalk the tires with it. But I ended up self-publishing it. And to get a deal on the printing, it was done in China. There's really great print companies in China. I had to print 10,000 of these. So I went in deep. And... And, of course, COVID's going on, so I can't do any book signings. I can't do any kind of real hustling or anything.

5:01 Since you're this honest, 10,000 landed in L.A. is going to cost you how much? I forget what it was. It was, you know, a couple of thousand bucks for that. I think the entire getting into it, I think, was probably about 130 grand. But I'm down now to about 1,200 left. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. So now you're jumping ahead. So you can't promote it.

5:24 And- Well, I can't promote it, but I started promoting it. Then we put together a website for it. Now, I'd never had a website. I mean, there's so many things that happened with COVID. I had never recorded at home before. And all of a sudden, some friends of mine called and they said, we're doing a cover of Phil Collins' Easy Lover. Would you play on it? And I said, I'd love to, but Because what would happen just previous to COVID was when people would send me files to do things, I would just call friends that had home studios and I'd say, can I come over? I'll bring a file and we'll put base on it. I'll take you to lunch kind of a thing. It was our social life. With COVID, that ended. And so I told

6:05 these guys, I said, I'd love to do it, but I'm not set up. The next thing I know, one of the guys knew somebody at SSL and they sent me an SSL 2 Plus interface. And then I was in- Okay, wait. I know what SSL- I ramble.

6:18 No, no, no. Digression is the spice of life. It's great. Solid state logic. I certainly know what SSL is, but I don't know about that interface. Tell me what that is.

6:26 Well, it's Solid State Logic is the company.

6:29 Of course.

6:29 But known for desks in studios. Yeah, and all kinds of electronic, high-end studio stuff. The thing that they sent me was a little box that I would plug my bass into, and then from that, I would plug that into my laptop so I could record directly into my laptop. Now, I knew nothing about this, but I'm in a band.

6:47 We're sort of on hiatus right now called The Immediate Family. And one of the members of the group, Steve Postel, he's like kind of really the gear nerd on it. So I called him up and I said, what do you suggest? And he said, just do GarageBand. All you're doing is bass. You don't need anything more than that.

7:06 So he gave me a run through on that. And I ended up putting bass on this Easy Lover version that these friends did. And then I kind of just let people know I was available. And since COVID, I think I've done like 18 albums at home.

7:21 Just because you've done that much work, are you still doing it the same way with the SSL box and garage band?

7:27 Exactly the same. I just finished doing two projects last week. Because it's really simple. I'm not a composer, so I didn't really need to go into the stuff where there's all kinds of samples and stuff. I just needed something where they could send me a simple file. I put bass on it. It's a little bit more difficult doing it at home because if we were in a studio like we are right now and I was coming up with an idea, we could discuss it. Me sitting at home, I'm guessing what your thoughts are. So sometimes what I do is I end up doing maybe four different versions of the part and I send it to them and say, what works for you? Because I'm just guessing at it.

8:09 They might want something busy. They might want something simple. They might want something a little more esoteric. So it's a little, I have to dig in deeper when it's just me.

8:19 Okay. Conventionally in studios, you got enough money, the old school, you start with the bass and drums. In this particular case, they're sending you what without bass? Sometimes they're sending me, the thing that drives me crazy, really out of my mind with this stuff. They'll send me a file and the guitar is like maybe not quite in tune or it's not. They go, oh, no, we're going to be replacing that. Then the drums aren't quite there. They said, no, we got somebody else going. So I said, so basically I'm playing to shit right now. I mean, the parts are, you know, when they're saying we're going to replace that stuff later, well, that means what I'm playing to may not fit later. I mean, it's a real weird way.

9:04 most of the people that send me stuff, they've got it somewhat together. So, you know, they'll send me a click track. If there isn't really a finished drum track, at least I've got something that's going to be solid. But a lot of times, and this has kind of gone on over my entire career, being the bass player, generally the bass drums, you know, at most sometimes we have four guys in the studio doing a track. You know, I have a guitar player, keyboard player, bass and drums.

9:34 And so we're kind of guessing at where this is headed. And I'll hear something later on when it's finished, and I'll think, if I'd have known that that's what they were going to add to this, I wouldn't have played that part. But we're shooting blanks at that point. We really don't know. So there's a lot of guesswork involved in what we do. You're kind of anticipating where this might be going. Or sometimes when they send me stuff, I'll also send them some notes that I've thought about and just say, look, if you're doing this, maybe use this part on it. Because if you're going to add like horns and stuff, maybe have the who's doing the horn arrangements work off of this line. Because if they do something else, this is going to get cluttered and stuff.

10:17 So you're, you're kind of engaged in a different way when you're sitting at home. Okay. So let's assume I was laying down guitar parts. Yeah. It'd be a matter of which guitar, which amp, which effects, if you're laying down bass part, to what degree do you change the sound on your end before you put it in?

10:34 Um, I, that's been a really kind of crazy thing about my career is I really haven't accommodated much of anything except what I do. So, um, You know, occasionally, like I remember when we were in the studio doing one of Steve Lukather's solo albums and I'm trying to remember the name of the track we did. But it was one of these ones where I thought bass really should just be in your face. And we hooked up all kinds of distortion stuff and cranked it into like complete distortion.

11:06 And it was great.

11:07 That's kind of stuff that when you're sitting in the studio together, you kind of go, let's try this. At home, I'm really not set up for that. But in general... my having done this so long to my instinct is usually just to go kind of figure right down the middle. What they, what I think would be really a good supportive base part for something. And I don't, but there are times where I'll say, you know, maybe try like regenerating this when you're mixing or something like that, put some distortion or a little, you know, pitch shift or, you know, echo on, especially if it's a fretless part, it's kind of nice to throw a little bit of schmutz on it, you know, just to, give it a little more personality.

11:47 Okay, you got a lot of stuff going on here. Oh, please, I know. No, no, no, I love it. I love it. Don't take that the wrong way.

11:54 The fact that we're both naked right now is really fantastic.

11:57 But since they're replacing everything else, do they ever come back to you and go, now we know what you want, we want, we do it?

12:06 I've had people come back and say, could you go at it again? And I go, you understand that this is now another session. We're not still on that old date. So, you know, the job is it's a fresh day in the studio with that. But I'm happy to do that.

12:21 Well, I guess that leads to my next question.

12:23 Yeah.

12:25 You, you know, if somebody's calling you to do a session date who's not your friend. Yeah. You have a rate. There's the union rate. It's the rate double, triple, whatever. Yeah. Okay. Someone's calling you to work in your home or no one calls anymore. They're emailing you to work at home. Yeah. How do you decide what to charge? It's kind of.

12:45 First, I want to know how complicated this is going to be. Am I going to have to be writing charts for myself? Or something like somebody sends me a really simple tune, and I go, I don't know. You kind of just feel it. I usually kind of throw out a number at them, and I say, if this doesn't work for me, let me know what's good for you.

13:02 And there's been some projects that were people that I did know, and when they wanted to know what to pay, I just said, take me out to dinner or something like that. I look at this all kind of, it's my gig, but it's also my life. It's my social life and all that. And it's been an incredible run. I mean, I've been in the studio almost every day since 1970 or on the road. And I still pinch myself every day that I get to do this. And so I'm really happy to accommodate.

13:40 Let's talk the 70s and 80s. They're huge budgets. And you're working on an artist track. And generally speaking, you're hoping it sells millions. May not. Yeah. Okay. Today, almost nothing has that. So does that affect your psychological dedication to it? I'm not saying you don't do a good job, but can you not just get as excited about it because you know there's a limited audience for it? Not at all. To me.

14:13 When I get hired to do something, if somebody just called me up and they said, look, my Arrowhead delivery guy wants to make a record, and would you be willing to play? I would give him the same attention that I would give Phil Collins on it.

14:28 I really do.

14:28 I figure when I pick up that instrument, it's not an obligation, but I take pride in my gig. And so I don't look at it thinking like, well, this is going to sell 10 records and this one's going to send 10 million. Those 10 people are as important as the 10 million. On there, it's kind of like going out to do a concert. I still get excited.

14:52 I still play birthday parties. And on the one hand, you've come off of gigs that you just played for 200,000 people at a giant festival or something like that. And now you're in somebody's basement playing for 30 friends on there. I play the same at all that stuff. We did one a couple of years back where I got a friend called me and said, my friend's turning 60 and he wants to have a party at his house and all this. And so we show up. I got Vinnie Caliuta came playing drums. Mike Finnegan was playing B3 and singing. And I forget who the other guys were.

15:27 Everybody had just come. I had just come off of Phil Collins and somebody had just come off of, you know, like this other giant tour. And we're having a ball just playing top 40 cover tunes and stuff. So To me, I so enjoy when I get to play that I don't look at the numbers in the same way people have said to me, like with James Taylor, did you ever get sick of playing Fire and Rain? I mean, God knows I played Fire and Rain so many times.

15:51 I said, never, never.

15:53 Because somewhere in that audience, somebody's hearing this for the first time live or they've never heard the song before. So that's who I'm playing to. If somebody's out there going, oh God, that song again, well, fine. But I still loved every time I would play it. I would never find myself, you know, on long tours where we're playing the same set every night. I go, it's a different audience every night, different venues. Sound is different every night.

16:20 So to me, each day is a special day. And so I really, I just think every day how fortunate I was that something that would have been my avocation became my vocation. And I, I had a lot of jobs in the sixties and stuff, you know, doing crap work and stuff. And I thought, you know, non-musical non-musical.

16:42 Yeah.

16:42 Just paying some rent and like what, um, uh, working as a arc welder's assistant, making swimming pool filters. Wow. Uh, there was a print shop, right? I went to Cal state Northridge was San Fernando Valley state college back in those days. Um, and there was a print shop that was a couple of blocks from the student, from the campus.

17:01 And a friend of mine said, oh, you got to go talk to those guys there. They are always hiring. And I go there and it was basically they were printing porn in there. And I ended up running the offset printing presses and doing layouts for like the magazines and stuff. And they were paying like two dollars an hour under the counter.

17:18 It was cash.

17:19 So I was I mean, because at that time, you know, the rent was like. you know, 75 bucks a month or something like that. So like two gigs on a weekend and that thing kind of made the... So when was the last time you had a so-called day job?

17:34 Day job.

17:38 I would think it was probably that one. It was probably that one. Either that or while I was in college, my father had one of those corner magazine stands.

17:51 He had it in the valley.

17:52 It was on Balboa and Sadakoy, right on the wall of the Rexall drugstore. And I would work for him. When he didn't want to be there, I would do the evening shift there and stuff.

18:03 Was that his business, his main business? Yeah. He was a gypsy.

18:08 I mean, probably in the course of our lives, he could have, he must have had 25 businesses.

18:15 He was one of these.

18:16 People that He would find something that looked interesting and he would create a business. And then the minute it started to get successful, he would be bored and dump it and start some. So one day we would be tending glass. The next day he had a print shop. Then the next day he had a swimming pool cleaning company.

18:35 Then he had a bookstore in Tarzana and stuff. It was, we were always kind of hanging on the edge with him because he was, he was erratic, but fascinating.

18:46 Well, how did it work out financially for your family?

18:49 We were always– I mean, we never went without, but we didn't have a lot. It was just kind of a real valley middle-class family. So what would your mother say when he was constantly– She would just shake her head. But it was that time where the moms were stay-at-home moms and dad worked. But, you know, there was a little bit of uncertainty in our lives when he would go– I'm going to start doing furniture refinishing. And then when he would do it, it was this good. I mean, he would end up with these great clients, but then he would just be bored with it and he would look for something else to do.

19:24 So it was.

19:25 One of those things you were kind of hanging on the precipice all the time. But other guys, I knew their dads, like they had that one job and they were there till the day they died or till the day they retired. And I always kind of thought about that where I've had so many friends in the corporate world that um, they would say they were, they had a countdown clock on their desk. You know, they said, when this thing goes off, I never have to put a tie on again and all that. Um, and there was a part of me that was not jealous of that, but I would go, there's a certain thing about that.

19:59 Like they had their 501k and there's a lot of things that were lined up that made that look like it was stable. And, uh, but they would always look at me and they would say, so what are you doing? I say, well, we're heading to, we'll be in Europe for the next couple of months, touring and stuff. And God is so cool. But I would go the minute that gigs over, I'm unemployed. You know, I mean, knock on wood, every time something's ended within a reasonable amount of time, something else comes along. So you're, it's always been busy.

20:29 Okay. In terms of any of the work you've ever done for other people, they ever give you any royalties. Um, Two times.

20:39 I mean, I don't get mailbox money. Well, I assume you did, but I just wanted to establish that.

20:45 No, I don't. Okay. You fall down and break your arms on the way to your car here. Yeah. Are you set financially or you still got to work?

20:55 I'm probably okay if I don't go any farther than I already am in terms of expenditure. I bought my house back in 1981. So that was long paid off. I don't have to worry about my rent or anything like that. But, you know, as a sideman, I mean, people always kind of look like somebody like me and they see you working with Phil Collins. And I go, OK, well, for every thousand dollars I made with Phil, he probably made one hundred thousand dollars. So just because you see me in the video and standing next to him doesn't mean we're on an equal plane. But. I've never looked at that as, you know, I've always thought I've always paid my bills. You know, there's never been a year where I haven't covered the bills and managed to put

21:40 a little bit away every year.

21:41 How did you end up buying a house in Pasadena? I grew up in Van Nuys.

21:48 We were a valley kid. And when my wife and I got married, we've been together in December. It'll be 56 years.

21:56 Wow. Yeah. Yeah. She's very patient. You've mentioned that your wife's health is not good.

22:10 Well, what happened was a couple of things. She's actually been incredibly healthy. But about 15 years ago, she was at a friend's condominium out in the valley. And there was like the main entrance, but their condo was in the back. And there was a side stairs that went down to where she parked. And she always just would go down those. Well, at this point, the people who had the condo had come repainted those stairs, took off the little skid plate on each stair, took off the handrail, and then they had watered. And she came walking out and slid and went on her back down the stairs.

22:46 That was misdiagnosed, and she ended up with a bunch of shots for pain. But it turns out it was a major fracture that never got addressed. Well, about four years ago, I guess it was, a little over four years ago, We had like a group of six friends and every year we would go to Europe, like go to the Champagne region in France or go to Italy, go to Tuscany and stuff. It was like her cousin and his wife and just a really nice group of people. Well, about four years ago, we went to Spain and we were outside of Barcelona.

23:23 Right.

23:25 And we rented a house there that was just a beautiful, beautiful house. And they had all the bedrooms for everybody there.

23:32 It was really nice.

23:33 And they had a beautiful backyard. And in the backyard, they had a swing hanging off of a tree. And everybody was swinging on it. And she was swinging, and it broke and dropped her on concrete. And it burst her T12 vertebrae. Well, first off, you're up there. They don't speak Spanish. They speak Catalan up there. So I'm sitting with my phone looking at Google Translate trying to talk to doctors and stuff. And then we got her into the hospital. And the doctor said, don't worry about this.

24:03 He said they gave a little back brace. And they said, you know, just wear this for like a month. You should be okay. They don't give any painkillers over there. So the most she was getting was Tylenol for a broken back. And at that point, I had to get her home from Spain. The fortunate thing in all of this catastrophe was my neighbor right across the street from me is the head of orthopedic surgery at Keck. So I called him from Spain, and they set up with their back guy. So when we got back, she had to lay in bed for a week because the back guy was out of town. But the good thing was that her doctor, at that point when we got home, there was fentanyl patches and Percocet and things, so she could at least be comfortable because getting home was hellacious.

24:49 So then she had back surgery, and that got all fixed up. properly, but the other thing from 15 years ago reared its ugly head because of that. And so she's just gone through an ablation surgery where they've fused her sacrum to her pelvis, and she's just in a recovery mode now. And this was weird for me because I'm caregiver. At that point, we didn't have anybody else coming in. And they said, you can't walk for six weeks.

25:18 You have to stay in bed and not put any weight on your right leg. So I had to turn down a tour and everything and, and not, um, just be home for six weeks, which I'd never experienced. And I got, I didn't get into a funk, but I got into a different head space and almost for the month, I didn't even touch my bass and everyone went up and looked at it. Um, and now she's walking again. And, uh, I just was in Texas this weekend and we have one more gig in Texas with touring with Lyle Leavitt.

25:49 And then we hit the road in, um, On the 15th. And we're out till the kind of late November on the States. The sad, but while I was home with her recuperating, they did a leg that was Alaska and Canada. And I was only bummed because I've been to every state but Alaska. And I was thinking, I'm finally going to have every state. And then I had to bail on the tour.

26:10 To stay home.

26:11 But it's what you do, you know, in those situations.

26:15 Okay. How'd you meet her?

26:18 College in the art department. We were both students up there. We met, I must have been around 68, I.

26:27 Guess.

26:28 And I was like the freak in the art department. I was like the hippie guy and all that, even though I was so far from being a hippie. I looked it, but I was straighter than Ozzie Nelson. I mean, I was like, Everybody I knew around me was just getting high and everything. I've never done drugs, never drank, never smoked.

26:48 Okay, just stop there. So you've never tried marijuana?

26:52 No.

26:53 Have you ever had wine, beer, whatever?

26:57 I tasted it, and I realized that my palate doesn't like alcohol. I don't even like alcohol and beef bourguignon. It's really got to be cooked out for me to like it. It's just strictly— it was nothing— There wasn't a choice saying, you know, this isn't for me or I'm this. It just didn't agree with me. And I was, in a way, I'm going to say lucky, but it wasn't lucky.

27:19 I was in a band in like 60, late 67, I guess, 68, called Mike and the Mad Men out here. And Mike Marder was our lead singer, monstrously great singer. And I think he died of a meth overdose, you know, like as a late teen. I remember playing with Albert Collins at— Albert Collins, the great— The great blues player.

27:45 I got to play Snow Cone and Frosty with him. I got to work with Jimmy Reed and all those people. We did a gig at Otis Arts Institute with him in downtown. And when I was leaving, there was a park across the street, and I heard somebody screaming in the park. And I went over there and I found a guy who was like on the worst acid trip possible flipping out. And I ended up sitting on a bench with him for six hours till he came down enough.

28:11 And then I drove him home. I had no idea who this guy was. But over the years, I saw so much of that. And like when I started with James Taylor, he was still doing heroin. And I would just see, I was surrounded enough to see the dark side. And I kind of went, what's the appeal?

28:26 To this.

28:27 I mean, there's a part of me that goes, God, it would have been interesting to have taken acid and see what that's really all about. But I was always kind of too much of a control freak type A personality. I was the guy that always made, I drove, I was the designated driver. I always made sure everybody got home okay and they were all drunk and stuff. And I wasn't judgmental about that. I just didn't want them to get hurt. And so it was really, okay, so You know, you've.

28:52 Been around a while. It's a different era. Everybody's older. But if you go back 30, 40, 50 years, people got off the stage. They go to the bar. They go to the room, whatever. What did you do?

29:05 Generally, I probably went back to the room and watched TV or you get on the bus. The thing that's been great in contemporary touring is the fact there's internet on the bus. Because, man, when there wasn't, you would have a suitcase designated full of Betamaxes or VHSs, and you would just be sitting there in the lounge watching a movie all night on your drive. Or if you stayed in a hotel, I would just go back and watch TV. I'm kind of an insomniac. I only sleep about three to four hours a night. So things like YouTube and all that have been a godsend. for my entertainment.

29:42 The nature of a band is inherently social. Yeah. Is that your personality or are you just the bass player and when you're not playing bass, you're home doing your own thing? That's exactly it. I don't hang.

29:56 At all. It's like I don't get together socially with anybody if we're not working. The working really is our social life. And there's a part of that that really can be heartbreaking, too. I remember one of the people in the 80s who I worked probably the most with was Jeff Piccaro, the great Jeff Piccaro. And every time we'd be together, we'd go, why don't we just get together for dinner? I mean, it's always this. And then he passed away. And we never did have one dinner together.

30:23 But In the studio, for me, that's enough. On the road, that's enough. We've talked about everything we're going to talk about on the road. We've shared our lives together. So when I'm here, I love being home. I love working in my yard and working on my house and stuff like that.

30:40 Okay, so let's go back. You're in art class. How do you literally meet your wife-to-be?

30:44 Just in the hallway. I think I helped her with a couple of things. We would just talk, and she was just this adorable babe. And I always think, you know, like, why would anybody talk to me? It's that kind of a thing. But I remember one of her classes, she had to make a kite. They had to make box kites or some kind of stuff. And I saw her working on it. So I said, do you need any help?

31:10 So we sort of just. fell into it.

31:12 Okay. So you have a relationship, but this is also the 60s turned 70. You don't have to get married. How did you decide to get married?

31:22 We just kind of looked at each other one day and said, why don't we get married? And we drove to, we thought about families and thought, well, I don't want that person here. Well, I don't want that person here. So we drove to Santa Barbara and went to the courthouse and walked down the halls until we found a judge sitting in his office. And his secretary was the witness, got married, and then drove to Pea Soup Anderson's in Buelton and had dinner and then went home. And we weren't living together either at that point.

31:50 Well, once you got married?

31:53 When we got married, we found a house near where we were living and lived there forever. We got married in 70 and we were there in 73. We found a house in 70 and we stayed there until 73. And then in 73, we moved to Pasadena.

32:12 But, you know, it's a big valley. For those who don't know, Pasadena is one, you know, a half hour beyond. Yeah. Why Pasadena?

32:19 Well, what happened was her aunt and uncle lived in Arcadia, which is like one of the next big cities past Pasadena. And we would go visit with them. And there was a great Japanese restaurant in Pasadena called Miyako. And at that point, we were looking for a house in the valley. And everything was ranch style. And we're going, Christ, this is all we've seen our whole lives. And we were going to go have lunch with her aunt, Joan. And Joan said, oh, I've got a friend of mine, Annabelle.

32:51 That was her name.

32:52 She's a realtor and she's going to stop by lunch. And she said, she came to lunch and she said, we started talking about houses. She came to eat, didn't come to hustle. But she said, there's a house that just came on the market today if you'd consider Pasadena. And so we drove over there and we drove home.

33:12 It was a 1928 English Tudor on an acre of land, brick Tudor, fantastic. And she said, it's a divorce case. They just want to dump it. I think they were asking $ 67, 000. And Maureen goes in the house. I can hear her from the street going, I want this house. I'm going, that's a real bargaining chip right there. The owner's in there hearing you. But we ended up, gave them an offer of $ 62, 500 and they took it. And we stayed in that house till 1980. And then we sold it and moved into the house we're in now.

33:45 We've been We were the youngsters in the neighborhood now, and now we're the old farts. Okay.

33:50 What motivated you to go from one house to another?

33:52 My wife had seen this house for years. One of the things we used to do with Pasadena was come to the Rose Bowl flea market. We're voracious flea market people.

34:01 Is there something specifically you look for? Everything. Everything.

34:04 I mean, if you walk into our house, it's kind of like an episode of Hoarders with Cool Shit. But we collected everything imaginable in there. sold collections and changed directions and stuff like that. Just to stay there, how do you sell a collection of this stuff? Well, there was a guy that I met through a friend who has a place that's all kitsch stuff in Orange, California.

34:31 And he came out to the house one day. Bernie, my friend Bernie, suggested that Ray come out and take a look. And he just walked around. He said, oh, man, this is great. Next thing you know, he sends me a note with a list of all the things he would be interested in. And I said, come back, we'll talk. And he came over with a semi and they unloaded a ton of stuff. And what that allowed me to do was suddenly go upstairs to some rooms that had boxes in them.

34:56 And I went, I forgot.

34:57 I haven't seen this crap for 30 years. So I pulled that out and put it where all the other stuff was. It's, you know, it's it's one of those things that it's a really to me was always a fun way of spending a Sunday. was just wandering up and down aisles looking at stuff. And over the years, you become really good friends with all the different dealers and stuff. So it's your social life. There's a fire.

35:19 What are the two things you take?

35:21 First thing is my dogs. Absolutely.

35:26 Anything living is the first thing. Second thing, other than my wife, would have probably been my Frankenstein base.

35:35 Let me change it. Let's leave the obvious out, your wife, your dogs, your musical equipment, things related to that. Of the stuff you've accumulated, what are the two things you would take? Oh, that's a really good question. Yeah, and paperwork and those kind of things. I have a really lovely collection of Austrian German carved bears. They're like hall trees.

36:06 And things like that. Just really spectacular. And you buy those at the flea market? I've found them all different ways. I've got about 10 of them. And when you look, I mean, they're really works of art. But there's so much stuff. I mean, if you saw the house, you'd kind of go, where would you even start? I guess you'd figure what was the farthest away from the flames.

36:26 I mean, certainly we had thoughts going down when Altadena was on fire. We were lucky that we were about three miles from the intensity of it. but we got hit with 100 mile an hour winds. And right almost against the house, I had a 100 foot high, 100 year old podocarpus tree. And in the middle of all of it, I heard this crashing sound and about a third of that came. If it had fallen backwards, it would have crushed the front of the house, but it fell onto the driveway area. And then the next day I had to have a tree service come out and take this out. And the trunk was about the size of this table. I mean, it was just A magnificent tree.

37:05 Okay, let's go back. You're going to the flea market. How does this lead to the new house?

37:12 Because the house we're in is about a block from the Rose Bowl. So we would drive by it every time we went to the flea market there. And she had a girlfriend who's a realtor who contacted her and said, you know, that house you love is on the market. And once again, it was another divorce case. So they wanted just to get rid of it. I was on tour and Maureen contacted me on tour and said, I think that house I love is available. I mistook it for another house. And when we went to, I came off the road and immediately had to go meet with the realtor and discuss this thing. And I'm going, this isn't the house I thought it was because there's a house very similar to it. That's about an eighth.

37:57 Of a mile away.

37:58 And that was the one in my mind I was thinking about. So I was kind of surprised when I saw this one. But I think I was just in shock that I'm like suddenly going, what am I doing here? I was happy with the old house. But at that point, as they always say, you know, you just make the wife happy.

38:15 Okay. A couple of things. What's it like when they have an event at the Rose Bowl?

38:21 It can be difficult, just traffic-wise.

38:25 That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

38:28 It's one of these situations where when you're there, you have these events going on like UCLA football or concerts, U2 or somebody like that. But I'm thinking if that was all condos in that ravine, it would be a lot worse. So I put up with it. I kind of knew, you know, of the Rose Bowl game and the parade because there was a facility down there called the Rosemont Pavilion. And for years, that area is where they built most of the floats. So we would, on New Year's Eve, they would come up my street. So we would get our private viewing of all the floats and stuff. But over the years, they've kind of diversified and sent stuff to Irwindale and different places. But they're still doing some there. The concerts, it's really, for the

39:15 most part, they're okay. You have an expectation it's going to go on. And you just accommodate it.

39:24 You put.

39:26 put in provisions and you just plan not to go out for that day.

39:29 Okay. Let's go back. Okay. You're married. You're 23. Ever thought of having any children? Nope. So you both pretty... Did you agree or that's the way it worked out?

39:41 We kind of agreed. Maureen's brother, she was 12 when her brother was born and 15 when her sister was born. So she kind of raised two kids. So there's no mystery in that. And we were always just happy to have dogs and cats in there. And it wasn't so much like we're never going to have this. I mean, if something would have happened and we would have had kids, then you become the best parent you can possibly be.

40:10 And every time I would be around other friends' kids, they would go, oh, man, you should have kids. You're so good with kids. I go, I'm so good with kids because I don't have any. Because I'm going home now. because they're about to throw a tantrum. So we just never really felt that. But her sister, her son, my wife's sister's son, they just had their first baby. And this kid's fantastic. And so she's becoming like this kind of distant granny, auntie kind of vibe and sending lots of little goodies and stuff. So She enjoys that. She would have loved– I think she would have loved more dressing up a kid than dealing with them. And I said, decorate the house.

41:01 So you're working. Yeah. In the 70s, you're in the studio, you're on the road. What's she doing all the time?

41:07 Just at home, you know. I– Maybe it was a mistake on my part, but I told her one day, I said, look, if this ever works, I make a living for us. You don't have to think about working.

41:20 It happened.

41:22 Because she's really smart and really talented, and she could have probably really had a good career doing other things. When we met, she was working at the phone company as an operator and a delivery girl for a place called the Nosh and Rye in Encino, delivering sandwiches and stuff. And she was the... literally the breadwinner for us because I was, you know, if I was lucky, I was making like 20 bucks a weekend or something like that doing a club gig. And it all just changed. Upon meeting James Taylor changed my life. That's like the most dramatic moment.

41:56 Okay. But let's, we'll save that. Park that for a second. Yeah. Let's go back. You know, this is a business people on the road. Phil Collins himself, that's what inspired us for a solo album breakup of his marriage. How do you keep a relationship together when you're on the road or when you're busy working hard?

42:18 Part of that keeps the relationship together because you're not on each other's face all the time. I think absence does make the heart grow fonder at times, you know, when you're just talking on the phone and catching up on things. I mean, sometimes you're gone and there's something bad going on at home, and that's very frustrating. But for the most part, I've been really lucky that she has her own circle of friends and she's like gone, you know, like she'll say, can you take off? Don't go on the road. Stay home for a couple of weeks because my sister and I are going to go to Europe and they go do this. So she has her own life, but it's not a working life. It's not a business.

42:55 In the pre-internet era where it's easy and everybody's in contact all the time. Yeah. Back in the phone era, if you went on the road, would you call her every day? No.

43:05 How often would you call her? Twice a week, maybe, or something. I would say, you know, you know how to reach me. I mean, we didn't have cell phones, so I say she's got the itinerary and knows the hotel and all that. But other than that, I mean, you would see phone. I remember when we were out with Phil, it must have been on the 1990, the But Serious tour. And one of the background singers, it was his first really big tour he had done. And we were rehearsing over in Surrey in England. And at the end of the first week, I saw him standing at the desk at the hotel, kind of crying. And I said, what's going on, man? And he was so excited that every day he was calling all his friends back in the States through the switchboard. And I think

43:50 at the end of the first week, they handed him a bill for like $ 1, 200 for phone calls, which was his salary. And I said, lesson learned. I mean, nowadays, it's so easy. But back in those days, you really had to think about it, especially if you were In Japan or in Europe and calling home, this was not just a casual call. So you had to like expedite your thoughts and stuff.

44:14 Okay, let's go back forward. You do the book and you were telling me how this led to the YouTube.

44:21 Yeah, so what happened was at the end of the 2000– It must have been the 2018, the Not Dead Yet Tour, which is the last tour we did with Phil Collins. It was an incredibly successful tour. I mean, it was remarkable since Phil was sitting in a chair for the whole show and everything, but we were still selling out stadiums with him.

44:46 I mean, it was amazing.

44:48 But when the tour was over, I had some guys writing to me saying, you know, we saw the show in Brazil or in Germany or something, and they said, It was unreal, but we couldn't hear every note, you know, because you're in a stadium. And I remember James Taylor always used to say, you play a concert hall, you're a concert, you play a sports facility or a sporting event.

45:10 And no matter, we had the best front of house guy, best system and all that, but still you're in that situation. So I kind of thought about it and I didn't think I was going to be doing a YouTube channel. What I did was I contacted Michelle Colan, who was our front of house mixer. And I said, could you send me a board mix of a show and I got it and had it in my computer. And what I did was I had a little bass amp next to me, my bass, a little Bose speaker and my cell phone. And what I did was I opened up my laptop, set the phone on the computer and played the first song. But I did a mix so that what you were hearing from the speaker was the show and But my amp was louder, so you could hear every note of what I was doing. So I did

46:00 one day, I did the first song in the show.

46:03 A little bit slower. Yeah. That's how you did it. What was the exact inspiration?

46:11 Well, the inspiration was, I'll show these guys the bass parts. Had you ever posted to YouTube before? I'd never done anything on YouTube before.

46:20 So basically, it's COVID. You're thinking to go, well, I'll do that. Yeah.

46:24 I mean, I had so much time to do things like recording at home, doing the book. And so what happened is the first day, and I mean, I look at the videos now and like half of my head's cut off. I had no idea what I was doing. I did the first song the first day. And then the second day, I went and did the second song of the show and showed that part. By the third day, I had people writing going, man, we love your YouTube channel.

46:48 And I'm going, what are you talking about? And they said, well, you know, you're with your songs and stuff with Phil's songs. I really had no idea that that would generate a channel on it. But I continued on every day and I did the whole show. The only thing I didn't do was the last song of the show, which is Take Me Home. And I thought, I'm going to leave that at this point. I have said I'm going to leave that as the penultimate video. When I finally close the channel down, that'll be the last thing I'll do on there. But I got to the end of that show and I went, now what? And so it's been really interesting because what it really required me to do to continue it is I had to kind of go through like a forensic anthropology of my career. I started

47:32 pulling up James Taylor and Jackson Brown and all these different things and showing bass parts from all of those things. And without making any effort on it, I think there's 270 some thousand people on the channel at this point. And I still post, you know, at least probably at least five days a week. I do things on there.

47:53 And I introduced like yesterday I did an artist named Taylor Henry. And we had done his album either at the very beginning of this year or at the end of last year, but it was Dean Parks and Russ Kunkel and myself and him. And they just sent me like the 12 songs or something that we did. And I posted that yesterday on there. And people are writing, we love this guy, you know, because a lot of people have said, there's so much music I wouldn't have discovered if it hadn't been for your channel, because It's hard to find music at this point. There's so much of it, but it's not like going to Wallach's.

48:24 Music City here and perusing. Right, right, right. You don't have to believe me. Big issue. Yeah.

48:30 And then I just found, tomorrow I'll put it up, I just found an artist, and I can't pronounce his name, but it's an artist from Helsinki, Finland, that I did his album. And I just discovered it again, and so I'm going to put a couple of the tracks up.

48:43 Okay, I was looking at a couple of your videos. One time you had a takedown notice, right? To what degree is that an issue?

48:50 I've had probably about four blocks out of like 2,600 videos. So it's not a big deal, but it's annoying when you're doing the job of a record company for them because they're not doing shit. Right. And then all of a sudden you're taken down. And I'm going, this is only, I can't monetize my channel because everything's copyright protected on it.

49:13 So I would say maybe out of the, you know, 2600 videos and all these years, I maybe have made like $ 800 on it. And that's only because I post every once in a while pictures of my dogs playing and stuff like that. But anything with music in it, immediately I can't monetize it. So this is really more of a passion gig than anything else. And one of the fun things for me is when we're on tour, is showing all the venues. I take people on walkthroughs of these places where if they came to that venue, if they were able to come to it, they would only see the lobby in their seat. But I take them through the basements and up where the pipes are if there's a pipe organ and all this. And sometimes I get to meet people who work there and they

49:58 tell stories about it. I love that aspect of it because there's a lot of places I'll get to where people are never going to get there. So they're getting to have a little, they go on the road with us.

50:10 Okay. Is the audience stable or growing or going down?

50:15 It's still growing. I never really– you know, it's like a lot of people. They're consumed by looking at numbers on how many views have I gotten. I don't give a shit about any of that stuff.

50:25 Wait, wait, wait, wait. There's monetization, which you say in your case is not a factor. There's inspiration. If no one was watching, you wouldn't do it at all. But you are a known quantity for your talents. your appearances on these works, and also your visual look. Yeah. Okay. So... This is burnishing your personal image. I hate to use the word brand because it's not music. Yeah, yeah. But people now know who you are. There's a whole thing there. Yeah.

50:58 I mean— It's a package. You know, you could go on the road as yourself doing this. I'm not telling you you've got to do it. No, I get it. But you've built something.

51:07 Yeah, I mean, I can't go through an airport or any place like that without people going, oh, I love your channel, man. I watch it all the time. You know, it's— And I'm really pleased that it's touched people. That wasn't the motivation in the same way. Some of the best gigs I've ever played were soundchecks. You know, we were playing music because we love playing music. And sometimes the soundcheck, it locks and then the show happens and the sound changes because of the audiences. And you're suddenly, it felt better this afternoon. How can we fix this?

51:36 It can't. So my motivation really is I just... I just enjoy it. It gives me a, okay, you've done thousands. Yeah. You know, you talk about one with your dogs. There has to be evolution, new ideas. How has it changed as you've done it?

51:53 Well, it got to a point where I explained on one of the videos where I said the studio moment is a moment unto itself. I can't replicate like Gene Clark's No Other album. on the main track on that, I think I have six basses, almost the entire thing. I said, I can't sit here and play that for you. So this time, let me tell you stories about the session, and I'll be an audience with you. And let's just listen to it now, and then I'll tell you a few more stories. So when I transitioned in from sitting there trying to relearn a song every day and playing, showing the parts, when I started to say, look, I'm just going to listen along with you, but here's Who was involved in it? Let me tell you the backstory

52:37 of the studio and what went on, if I can remember. And then if I can't remember, I'll just make something up. It morphs all the time. When I started doing the videos of the venues, it kind of saddened me a little bit that I wish I'd have been doing something like this back when I was at with Phil. Because especially like the 2004 tour we did with him, he said, I'm not going to do a tour if we go anywhere I've ever been. So on that tour, we were in Latvia and Estonia and Finland and Russia and the Middle East. And we went to all these places. And it was so great because those audiences, like when we got off in Turkey, off the plane, there was a bunch of press people there. And Phil got off and

53:22 he looked at me and said, I bet you thought we weren't going to show up. Because especially in a lot of volatile areas, if anything's going on, the ban will bail like that. They're not going to show up. And we went to every place, and it was fantastic.

53:37 Okay. A couple of things. Let's stay there. Yeah. I know somebody who was a photographer for Led Zeppelin back in the film days. They'd stay up all night developing, giving the band. He said, I've been around the world, seen nothing.

53:52 Yeah.

53:53 What has your experience been? I still....

53:58 It's like going to a concert and all you see is phones lifted up and you go, can't you live in the moment? Are you going to now go home, sit on the toilet and watch the concert? As much video as I do, like when I'm walking around, I'm not this, I'm holding the camera below my mid chest and I'm talking to people and stuff and half the time they might be cut off or anything. But it's really a moment. I want to be in the moments that I'm in.

54:26 Well, I guess I'm asking something slightly different, irrelevant of your YouTube channel. Yeah. There are a lot of people, you know. Oh, they stay in the room. They don't do it.

54:33 Yeah. I try to get out at every place we are and explore the towns and stuff. I remember being in Japan. And I've been to Japan many, many times. And we were staying in the Tokyo Hiroton Hotel. And I bumped into Larry Carlton.

54:50 In the lobby.

54:51 And I said, what you up to? He was there with the Crusaders. And he said, oh, we all kind of stay in our rooms. I went, here in Tokyo, and you're staying in your room? I grabbed him. And we went out and I took him to Akihabara, which is a big electronic area, and Shinjuku, and these places that I had gotten to know over the years. And we had a great time that day. But there's a lot of guys I know that pretty much just sit in their hotel room and they don't explore. And I go, one of the greatest gifts of this gig is the travel and being different places. So if, if weather and time permit, you know, I'm not going to go out if it's a storm going on, I don't want to show up at the gig sopping wet or anything like that,

55:28 but it's really fun. Sometimes, you know, we get put on places that are so far removed from town. I'm really not going to start calling an Uber or something or a cat taxi to take me on a 45 minute drive to get to main street. But if we're in town, I like to get out there and explore. And a lot of times, um, You just, you find things.

55:51 And every place, you know, like people go, what's your favorite place? I kind of go, well, where I am at that moment. You kind of discover something and you just kind of go, this is cool. Or it's also good that you go to a place and you kind of go, I don't ever have to come back here. I've seen what it is and it's cool, but there's no reason to come back. I just saw what I needed here. In other places, you go, I'd love to come back here and really explore what this place has to offer.

56:17 Okay, so if you're posting five times a week, obviously there's no obligation. There's no contract. There's nothing. You could stop tomorrow. You could post one. Are you posting five times a week because that is an issue of character? You're committed? Or you have that much to say? Or you want to reach the audience? What motivates you to do it? A little of all of that. A little of all of that.

56:42 I mean, there was a point where I literally, when it started up through like the first 1,800 videos, They were every day was 1800 days of videos. And if I if I was missing a day, man, guilt would start to rack me. I go, I got to do something. I got to get something done here. And then when I finally just came to grips with it and I said, you know, because people would write in, they go, you know, you don't have to do this every day.

57:05 We're here for you.

57:08 It's it's one of those things that I find it really fascinating. enjoyable, the forensic side of addressing my career. Because over the years, people would say, what did you play on? And I'd draw a blank. I go, I have no idea. Because the only thing that matters to me is today and tomorrow. I don't think about the past.

57:26 Other people that send in information about that, I go, thank you for that, because I don't remember any of that. But it's become a thing where it's such a wonderful community of people. Like I Out of this, one of the things that came of this was I was talking to Rick Beato about this when I interviewed with him.

57:50 And he and Aaron, the guy who kind of handles the technical side of things, they said, so you should do a clubhouse or something like that. So I have a clubhouse, a little thing where you can, $ 10 a month you can be. And we do a couple of meetings a month on computer. I'm visual and the rest of it is a chat window. But the community that grew out of this clubhouse is just incredible. People that had never met before didn't know each other now hang out all the time. They've become really good friends. I mean, if nothing else out of this whole thing, to me, that's the most valuable thing that came.

58:27 Out of this.

58:28 Okay.

58:29 You're the sideman. Yeah. Well-known, but the sideman. Do you now know your fans? I always have. I always have.

58:37 You know, one of the things is I've I've always loved interacting with people. So like when we do gigs, like after a show, I'll just go out and walk and start talking to people. I walk around town and if somebody comes up and wants to talk, I'll spend time with them and talk. With the book, Lyle was wonderful and he said, look, you want to sell at the merch table.

59:00 It's great.

59:00 So every night we have a big cutout of me that's saying I'll be there for a meet and greet after the show. And the minute we've finished playing, all the guys are back in the dressing room because we usually have to sit around at least at least an hour to an hour and a half waiting for the for the bus drivers clocks to start. We usually leave at midnight for the next city. I go out there and I sit at the merch table and just meet people and talk to them.

59:23 And what's the retail? What do you sell the book for? Signed.

59:27 Signed it's $ 80 and, and unsigned it's 60, but at the gigs I signed them, I'll sign them for 60. I just leave it at that.

59:43 Okay. Getting back to the book, you told that story as a lead up to the YouTube channel. Did you see the YouTube channel as promotion for the book?

59:53 Um, yeah, probably it fit right in there. Um, again, it's like, I really, I was, you know, a neophyte in this whole thing. I really had no idea. I mean, there's people that have this shit down, you know, and they were, they're marketing and they're making a ton of money and all this stuff.

1:00:11 Most of them are not making a ton of money because people, I can't tell you, even people with big publishers a year for a year, they're doing a book, getting someone to buy the book is a huge step.

1:00:22 Yeah, no, it's, it's really hard. So I've, I've hustled and I have a website that's LelandSklar'sBeard.com.

1:00:29 Okay, let's stop there. What's up with the beard?

1:00:33 Well, you know, it was one of those things that when I went to high school, it was a pretty repressive time where, you know, they would even have grooming guards to keep an eye. They didn't want these kind of hippies around. And when I finally was handed my high school diploma, I said, I'm done. I just stop shaving at that point. I cut my beard all the time because I try to keep it where it won't go into the base. You know, that's kind of my criteria.

1:01:01 I don't need that tangled up in it. Or if I'm changing instruments, you take it off and you're caught in the strap lock and you're tearing your face along with it. It just became, you know, like a, I didn't really do this as like, I got to make an image for myself. It's just the way I felt about my life and stuff. And I just I thought, I'll just grow a beard and let it be that.

1:01:24 And it became like a calling card. And I always get people that are yelling, hey, man, Oak Ridge Boys or ZZ Top or stuff like that. It was really actually very funny. I was doing an album with the Oak Ridge Boys, and they had at that point had cut William Golden loose, the guy with the long beard. And we were in the studio, and Loretta Lynn shows up at the session, and she walks in and looks over at me, and she looks at the guys and goes, I can't believe you get rid of one and you found another.

1:01:53 Okay. In this 50 years, have you ever shaved it off? No, no.

1:01:58 The only thing I did was back around 70, maybe 71. One night I got kind of bored and I went in and I cut the chin out down. So I was like big mutton chops and I had a handlebar mustache. When I got up in the morning, I looked in the sink. I thought there was a dead animal in there, and it was my beard. And I kind of looked at it, and I went, oh, this is interesting. And then I just let it grow back out again.

1:02:25 Okay. We live in Los Angeles. It's not uncommon to see stars. You go anywhere, you go to the market. I get recognized. Yeah, there have been enough TV. Is that working for you?

1:02:39 Well, the thing I'm fortunate is I'm a sideman. So, like, if somebody, if I was with James Taylor, they would see James and they'd be shitting their pants. They'd be freaking out. They come up to me and they go, oh, man, I saw you with James Taylor, man. It was one of my favorite shows. And we have a dialogue. We have a communication. Nobody's ever come up to me. Maybe in their own mind they walked away and were going, oh, I can't believe I just met.

1:03:08 Right, right.

1:03:08 But for the most part, I've never not engaged people.

1:03:13 Okay, well, but... Isn't there sometimes someone wants to talk to you and, you know, there's something going on with your wife or your life and you don't want to talk? Oh, it'll happen.

1:03:23 But I'm honest with them. I go, look, something's going on. I'm really not in a good space right now. You know, maybe if we see each other again, but right now I'm dealing with something. I don't just blow them off. I try to walk away. But it rarely happens like that. Most people are really happy with about three to five minutes of saying hello. And there's so many times where I'm like at my supermarket and guys come up and guys will come and go, man, I'm a bass player. Man, you're playing means so much to me. And I go, that's really cool. And I said, what kind of bass do you play? We have a little dialogue. But to me, we're all in this together. Our time on this planet is pretty limited. And, you know, why be a dick?

1:04:01 You know, I mean, it's like some of the artists. I mean, it was really a funny moment, actually. I was talking to James Taylor at one point when we were on the road. And he said to me and a couple of the other guys, he said, so what'd you guys do? And we went over to the mall across the street, went over there. They had a pretty nice deli and we saw a movie.

1:04:20 We had a day off. We saw a movie. I said, what'd you do?

1:04:22 And he goes, oh, I just, you know, I stay in the room and stuff. And a couple of days later, he said, you know, it's kind of weird. He says, but generally the only time I get recognized is if I'm with you. You know, I mean, James has height. James has height because he's like 6'3. Um, so if you put on a baseball cap and some shades other than the height, you know, he could disappear into that.

1:04:42 I really can't disappear, but I've come to grips with that. I mean, where most people just go, oh God, it was so cool talking to you. I don't know. It's nice talking to you too. I mean, it's an, it's, it's an easy, easy relationship for me because as a side man, you don't have that star quality about you.

1:05:00 So people aren't that intimidated or freaked out by seeing you, even if they've seen you, you're not, the focus of the show. So, you know, they're a little more comfortable just talking to you.

1:05:11 Okay. Not the studio. You've been on the road with a lot of acts. Yeah. Have you ever worked with the kind of act is you're in the band, you show up, you play, but you're in the band. I'm in my own world. Oh yeah.

1:05:24 There's been, there was one like that. I'm not going to get into it, but yeah, there was one like, it's the only tour I ever quit in the middle of the tour where I, that we had a two week break on a really long tour. And there was a two-week break in the middle, and I called the manager, and I said, I don't care what you do, but I'm not coming back.

1:05:39 This is on you now. I'm out of here.

1:05:41 Because the artist was such a pain in the ass to be around. But that's, out of all the stuff I've done, that's really the only one time. Where most people kind of have an expectation of, like, crazy people in the music business and arrogance and all this. Most people I know are great. And most of the musicians I work with are consummate professionals. Things have gotten better.

1:06:03 A little bit better over the years. From the standpoint, there wasn't as much drugs and alcohol involved. So everybody's kind of really lucid. And there you're not dealing with somebody like in the early days, you would get on the bus and you'd have like an 800 mile drive ahead of you. And one of the guys looks at you as you're pulling out and.

1:06:21 Goes, I told you, I love you, man. I love you.

1:06:24 I go, I'm going to kill you before this driver. So get some gaffer tape. Let's just tape them up, put them in their bunk. You know, I mean, that stuff doesn't happen anymore. Everybody's pretty straight ahead. And especially even if they do anything, don't bring it to the show. Do it after the show. You know, the show is everything.

1:06:44 When you're on the road, that is what it's all about. And you want that audience. One of the greatest things to me was Phil Collins' attitude was he said that, you know, we would rehearse for a month for every tour. and really long, intense rehearsals, dialing everything in. And he'd go, first audience deserves as good a show as the last audience, where so many bands go out and they spend the first two weeks of the tour dialing the show in.

1:07:12 And then some people, they missed a great show because they were there to see an early one, and it wasn't, but with Phil, man, we would have that stuff like a fine Swiss watch by the time we hit that first gig. And it was exhilarating to be at those rehearsals. And we would record every rehearsal and then sit and listen to it afterwards. Sometimes, like in the last week of rehearsals, we would find like Barry Manilow or somebody in his band was in town. We'd invite him to the rehearsal to watch the show and then talk to them after and say, what do you think? You know, any thoughts about it? I mean, his approach to it was really the consummate professional. And I loved him so much for that, that he really cares about Everything was

1:07:56 about the audience, making sure they got the best show possible.

1:08:00 Okay. So you're growing up in Van Nuys. Is there music in the house? Oh, yeah.

1:08:05 Not so much musicians, but a really eclectic musical vocabulary. My folks had the old Magnavox, you know, hi-fi. And their record collection was pretty extensive, classical and big band and people like Martin Denny, and all kinds of really interesting things. But there was a piano in the house. And for me, my introduction into music, I always say I owe it to Liberace. When I was a little kid, like four years old, my parents would watch the Liberace show on TV, and I would watch it with them.

1:08:45 And at one point, I went over and started just kind of plucking away at the piano, and I had an... an incredible affinity for it. And they got me a piano teacher. And then by the time I was eight, I think seven or eight, I had met Eugene Normandy, the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. I had won awards from the Hollywood Bowl Association as like one of the young up-and-coming pianists in town.

1:09:11 Now, out of that... Wait, time out.

1:09:13 Yeah.

1:09:14 Most kids, including myself, we took piano lessons. Our parents made us... And we didn't want to practice. We'd rather be out doing something else. What was your experience?

1:09:25 I loved both. But I had no issues with sitting at the piano.

1:09:29 Okay, just to be clear, since you're playing this from a young age at a relatively high level, you're going to school... Did they say, oh, that's Leland. He's the guy who plays the piano. Or are you integrated with everybody else? Oh, I'm integrated. Totally integrated.

1:09:43 And really, my real skill was as an artist. So I was the kid that was in charge of murals, painting murals of dinosaurs and stuff like that. But I was always, I mean, I felt like, you know, like so many of us do, like the dork outcast. But I was still involved with things. And then you find out, meet people years later and they go, I thought you were so cool. I go, I thought you hated me kind of thing. But with the piano, there was kind of none of that at that age because you're still in grammar school through all of that. The thing that changed for me was when I went into junior high school at this point, I went to Birmingham out in the valley and Ted Lynn was the music teacher there.

1:10:25 And I kind of came in with the attitude of, well, your pianist is here. And he said, look, we have 50 kids that play piano here. We need a string bass player. And he pulled an old K upright out of the back room there. And he showed me how to hold it. And I plucked one note on that. And I felt that vibration of that bass. And at that point, I was ready to move on. I was burned out with piano. I'd been under a lot of stress with recitals and things. And I ended up getting a bass teacher at that point and was studying piano.

1:10:56 classical and jazz bass and never really looked back at the piano again. And bass became my focus at that point. And then the next dramatic change for me was because I was always in bands because I played like the Lighthouse and different jazz gigs and clubs around town and played in bands. But with an upright, you're beating yourself to death trying to be heard over the drums and piano and guitar and all. was my dad took me to Stein on Vine, which was the music store. At that time, it was in the building of the Musicians Union.

1:11:31 And he took me there and he bought me a melody, electric bass, and a St. George amp. I was suddenly a contender at that point.

1:11:38 Okay, how did that go down? Did you beg your father for months and he finally said yes? Or did he just realize, said, you know, this is what you need? This is where I was headed. No, they were very, very supportive through everything. It's not like that was a, Like, really? Okay, just to be clear, you're an art kid totally, or are you playing baseball doing that stuff? Yeah, I still did.

1:11:59 I mean, the sports for me was a little more difficult because they didn't really have, like, really good glasses for kids that were nearsighted. So if you were out there playing baseball, odds are you're going to get hit in the head while you're looking for that ball. I ran track more than anything. Okay, you're not wearing glasses now.

1:12:16 What's up?

1:12:17 Well, my glasses, the last prescription I had, they broke. And this is an ancient prescription. And I haven't had time to go in and get new glasses.

1:12:27 So you haven't had your eyes surgically adjusted? Oh, no, no, I haven't had any. Or contacts or anything like that?

1:12:33 I tried contacts once, and I just didn't like it. It just felt like I had dust in my eyes. The weirdest one was we did a gig. I forget who I was with. But we did a gig up in the Bay Area, kind of. And the guy who had invented the soft contact lens was at our gig. And he said, do you want to be fitted for something?

1:12:52 Just come over to the lab. We had a day off and a bunch of us went over there and he fitted everybody. But the most interesting thing that they had was they had soft contact lens sunglasses.

1:13:06 Wow.

1:13:06 So you put those in and suddenly it was like sunglasses, but he said, we really can't do them because your pupils look so big that the police think you're high.

1:13:13 Yeah.

1:13:15 He said they couldn't really market him because it was causing problems with the cops.

1:13:19 Okay, so you're taking bass lessons.

1:13:21 Yeah.

1:13:22 Your father gets you electric bass and an amp, and where does it go from there?

1:13:26 Well, I was always in bands. There were times when I was in like four bands at a time.

1:13:31 Okay, just to be clear. Because I'm a little younger than you.

1:13:35 Yeah.

1:13:35 We all played folk guitar. The Beatles hit everybody. Everybody changed. Were you in bands before the Beatles? Yeah. Okay.

1:13:43 Yeah, but the Beatles changed everything. As a matter of fact, I was an usher at the Hollywood Bowl when the Beatles played there. So I actually got to hear the Beatles play live, which was really... When I finally met McCartney and Ringo so many years later, I told them that and they just blew their minds.

1:13:59 You were an usher at the Bowl. But.

1:14:03 I was always in bands, but I was always, you know, doing lots of different things. Eventually, at the end, around the late 68, 69, I was in a band in town here called Wolfgang. And it was still one of the best bands I've ever been in. It was two guitars, keyboards, bass, and drums. And our singer, Rick Lancelot, who was like a monstrous singer, fantastic. And we were called Wolfgang because our manager was Bill Graham. And Bill Graham's real- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, yeah, that's his real name, but- Yeah, that's why we call the band Wolfgang.

1:14:36 Okay, a couple of things before that. Yeah. In the mid-60s, if you're growing up in the suburbs where I am on the East Coast, the main goal of a band is getting a gig. Los Angeles is the epicenter of the recording. You're in the San Fernando Valley. Are you putting together a band saying, hey, we can get a recording deal?

1:14:56 I had never been in a recording studio at this point.

1:14:59 In my life. So how did you guys get hooked up with Bill Graham?

1:15:03 It was through a secondary management team that turned us on to him. The first live gig we ever played was opening for Zeppelin at Winterland.

1:15:11 There's got to be a few more steps here. No, no.

1:15:17 We had only rehearsed. We had a house that we collectively rented out in Sunland. And we would just play it. every day that we could. And we were all still in college and stuff, but we were up there. But there were a lot of gigs in town. There were club gigs.

1:15:35 Okay, wait, wait, wait. At what point do you get the manager and how does the manager hook you up with Bill Graham? Well, I forget.

1:15:44 One of the guys in the band knew this guy, Bruce Glattman, who had a management company called Shady Management, which was the perfect name for this company. Because they also handled Zephyr, and that was where I met Tommy Bolin, and we became friends back in the late 60s. But I had never been in a recording studio before this.

1:16:04 And then with Bill, he set us up with David Rubinson to go in and cut some demos. And that was the first time.

1:16:10 You know, I know Rubens. What was your experience with him?

1:16:12 Well, that was in 1969, so it's pretty hard... Yeah, but he's a guy.

1:16:15 Who's got a large personality. He doesn't doubt himself. No.

1:16:19 I mean, it was really interesting. And I've listened to the... We never finished the demos. Everything fell apart before we finished them. So they're not mixed, but they're still... Everybody who has ever heard them went, are you kidding me? This band was so good. I mean, it was a great band.

1:16:37 So it was... You make a deal with Bill Graham. You're making the demos with Rubenson. You're opening for Zeppelin. When does this fall apart?

1:16:49 Kind of shortly after that. Because what happened was our drummer's name was Bugs Pemberton. Bugs was in Jackie Lomax and the Undertakers in London, who were rivals of the Beatles at that time. And he had moved to California, moved to Los Angeles. And he had a really good friend named John Fishbeck, who owned Crystal Recording Studios, and he had done like early Stevie Wonder records and all that.

1:17:16 At one of our rehearsals, he brought a friend of his who had just gotten back from England, and it was James Taylor. Now, James, nobody really knew who he was. He had done his Apple record. But other than that, he was in L.A. making a new album right now, his James Taylor album.

1:17:32 And.

1:17:33 He hung out with us for a couple of days at our rehearsal and he played us a couple of his songs and we ended up doing like a hard rock version of Country Road and stuff. Well, when he got offered his gig at the Troubadour, which really was the start of his real career, his manager was Peter Asher and he called Peter because they had Russ Kunkel.

1:17:56 They had just done the record. So they had Russ Kunkel on drums, Danny Korchmar on guitar, Carole King was the piano player. And they used a couple of different guys in the studio for bass. They didn't have anybody. And he called Peter and he said, I found my bass player. And they tracked me down and said, could you play this gig at the Troubadour with James? And I said, no, I'd love to.

1:18:18 Are you kidding?

1:18:19 It was the antithesis. I mean, Wolfgang was a hard kick-ass band. And all of a sudden, I'm listening to this sensitive, you know, different.

1:18:26 Kind of folk. Okay, just to be clear. when and why and how does Wolfgang break up? Well, it sort of went on. Rick, our singer, died, I think, I think at that point. And another guy, Lenny. He died. He must have OD'd or something.

1:18:43 Yeah, I think it was something like that happened. But Lenny, he went by Lenny Lee. He took over. Kevin Kelly was our B3 player. And there was two guitar players. It was Bryn Haworth and Randy Zacuto, who I had known Randy and I bumped into him. This is how we put Wolfgang together initially. I bumped him and said, hey, Randy, how are you doing?

1:19:06 He goes, it's Israel. I said, What? Okay. Okay.

1:19:09 So Izzy Sakuto. And then as years went on, I bumped into him again. I said, so Izzy, how are you doing?

1:19:15 He goes, it's Randy.

1:19:16 I'm changing his name. He just passed away recently, but he started a company called Mighty Might that made guitar replacement parts and stuff. And Bryn is still really busy. He went back to England. He was from England. And he's like an evangelical guitarist. He has a huge following in England and makes beautiful records. And Like about a year ago, he contacted me and I put bass on a track for him. I said, this is really so much fun to see you again.

1:19:44 Let's reconstitute. Yeah, I'm sorry. I tend to want to. No, no, no. It's great. So if it's the James Taylor second album, the first Warner Brothers album, that comes out in the early spring of 1970. Yeah. So you're now like married. Okay. We're in this case. continuum, do you say, I'm a bass player, this is my future, I want to be a professional musician?

1:20:12 Kind of when we played that gig with James, and I was still going to Cal State Northridge, and I was a science, co-science and art major up there. We were just getting into finals, and they said, look, the Troubadour gig went great, and the next thing you saw was James Taylor on the cover of Time magazine as the face of this new music And we kind of got swept up in this tsunami of James Taylor as the band. And I'm sitting there looking, they said, we got offered a month on the road on the East Coast.

1:20:43 Can you do it?

1:20:44 And I'm looking, I got like finals coming up in my fifth year of college. And I said, okay, I'm out of here. Never told anybody in school. I just left, never graduated. Somewhere up at Cal State Northridge in a microfilm catalog, I got like 250 units sitting there that were never, you know, Okay.

1:21:04 I remember that era in the spring of 70. James was not alone. Okay. So you were on the first band tour. The first band tour. And Fire and Rain. So the first band tour isn't until the fall. That's when he's on the cover of Time Magazine. But he's gigantic at that point. It hits. I mean, it wasn't subtle. Right.

1:21:28 Next thing you know, I mean, he was the guy. And that's when the labels. One of the greatest things in my career, and we all owe this to him, one of the greatest connections I have is Peter Asher. And one of the things that happened on that was when you look back at the wrecking crew and the musicians of that period before us, when people listen to records, they had no idea who the guys were on the records and gal. They would listen to the Association and the Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas and Frank Sinatra and didn't realize it was all the same players. Peter Asher insisted that our names appear on the jacket of the album. So when James hit, all of a sudden the labels were going, we got to cash in on this, let's find singer-songwriters.

1:22:14 And they were finding the Jackson Browns and all these people. They would look at James's record and they would see our names on it. And they go, well, God, if they're good enough for James. Literally, I went from no studio experience except our Wolfgang demos to being a first call player in town, almost working daily.

1:22:31 Okay, just to be clear, you could read music, et cetera.

1:22:35 Yeah, because of piano, because I came up as a classical pianist. So I was very fortunate that I had that skill because when we started working in the studio, all of a sudden– now, there's another little stepping back. In 1967, I was in a band called Group Therapy, and we were produced by– everything was done by Mike Post– And Mike Post at that time was the musical director for the Andy Williams show, and he had just done classical gas with Mason Williams and stuff. We lost touch after 67, but in 70, when I started, he tracked me down again. And because I could read, he suddenly asked me if I wanted to work on his TV shows.

1:23:19 So I started with him on the Rockford Files and basically did every TV show Mike did at that point, A-Team and Magnum P.I. and all those shows. And our relationship got back, you know, in full swing there. But it was because I was a reader that I was doing movie and television and jingles and stuff where some of the other guys weren't good readers. So they didn't have the opportunities.

1:23:42 Okay. You go on the road with James. Yeah. They say they have a month tour. To the degree you remember, you worked that month. When do you work with him again? Well, I started with Mike.

1:23:59 It was years after that month on there. We didn't immediately start because he didn't start.

1:24:05 Let me restate my question. Yeah. You go to work for a month on the road. Yeah. Now, simultaneous with this- They're still working. Right. He's still, he's making his month's light slim record. Yeah. But you've thrown everything aside to go on the road for a month. Yeah. You come back home, is there work for you? And that work is what?

1:24:27 One of the things that I figured out early on is people appreciate being included in your life. So what I would do is there were some producers that had started calling and what I would do And I've done this over the years like this. If I know I'm going to be going on the road, I contact them way in advance. And I say, look, here's the period I'm going to be gone. And here's when I get back and everything. There's been a lot of times because I've done that, that they'll either move a project up or they'll wait for me to come back. Or there are times where they'll say, look, we have to get it done then, but we'll call you for the next one.

1:25:05 Because you were good enough to bring them into your situation and say, here, I'm going to be on the road, but when I get back. And there were times where I flew back to LA and went from the airport, not home. I went to a studio and went right to work. We were really, because there's other guys I knew who never contacted anybody and told them anything. And they kind of went, well, they're not answering my call.

1:25:27 So they found somebody else to do it. If you really are really thoughtful with the people, and this is a profession, as much fun as it is, you're a pro at this. And You really need to treat it that way. I would really let them know my schedule. And generally, it really wasn't a big deal. I had one project. I think it was when Toto contacted me the first time, which I had been in the studio with Luke doing his album. And they had this huge tour.

1:25:56 It was the Falling In Between tour. And that was when they still hadn't diagnosed Mike at that point. They still thought it might be lupus or something like that. And then they contacted me and they said, is there any way you could do the tour? And Mike contacted me and he said, can you cover for me on this tour? Well, I was scheduled to go in the studio with Reba McEntire at that point. And I called Reba up and I just said, look at these guys.

1:26:20 They're in this situation and this tour is going to be months and months and months and all that.

1:26:25 She said, do it.

1:26:26 I had already done a number of records with her. And she said, no, we'll work again. We have since then. But she said, no, but if you really... talk to people about things like this. Everybody wants to work together.

1:26:37 Okay. That's once you have a name. Getting a name is the first step. They have to want to be calling you. Yeah. You work on... You go on the road for a month. You come home. Your name's not on a record yet. What are you doing for work? We're going in the studio to start Mudslide Slim. Okay.

1:26:58 And that's when our names started to appear.

1:27:00 Okay. So... Generally speaking, especially every musician, including the front person, but especially the band members, are unbelievable networkers because that's how you get a job. Yeah. To what degree? Everybody works it. Just tell me about you working it.

1:27:21 I think really everything really came down to Peter putting our names on those album jackets because when James hit, there was a quantum change. in the scene here. The way things were going to be recorded now, it wasn't like the wrecking crew where they sat down with charts and modified the charts, but it was defined like here's a three-hour session, then we got another three-hour session. We would be booked for like a week or two in the studio and we'd be working out songs and all that.

1:27:51 It was a different energy that went on at that point. And so, but as they started, James' success hit, the labels really, I mean, because the labels were powerful then. I mean, now it's pretty impotent, but the labels were really powerful and they were really bringing in tons of artists on that. So all of a sudden we were getting calls that we weren't even going out hustling and the phone just started ringing. And it was a challenge because having never been experienced in the studio before, you're suddenly sitting there, how do I get a sound? You know, people are going, where should we set the mic in front of the amp? I and know where it goes or anything. But the thing was, it was kind of the perfect group of guys for this. I met Russ

1:28:38 when he was in a band called Things to Come in 1968, and he remembered me from Wolfgang because we were all playing the same circuits. The first time Russ and I sat down and played together, it was like we played together for 50 years together. There was just an instant connection. The minute I played with Cooch, Danny Korchmar, we had that same feeling. And having Carole King playing piano with us was Because nobody knew who she was.

1:29:01 I mean, she was just a piano player.

1:29:03 But you knew. Well, we knew her by name. But you knew her history. Oh, yeah. So what was it like working with Carol at that point?

1:29:13 Well, James, she really did not, she was not pushing herself at all. And James, at one of the shows, I think at the Troubadour, said, look at, you know, told the audience, he said, you know, Carol's written some great songs. Carol, why don't you go out here and play a couple of songs for them? And she'd get someplace like Locomotion and Natural Woman and all. And the crowd went berserk over it.

1:29:33 It was amazing.

1:29:33 And she still is one of the most delightful people I've ever known. And we're still in constant contact and everything.

1:29:41 Okay. There are some people, they just seem normal. And then they stand up and sing it and you're just blown away. Other people, even when they're not on stage, you feel there's something there. What was it like with her? Well, I mean, certainly. I mean, she's not.

1:30:01 She's not Celine Dion singing, but she's got her thing. And in the same way like Paul Williams, when Paul Williams sings his songs, it's not the greatest singer, but he sells it in a different way. And she's a fabulous pianist. So it was just great because she was such a delight. And she's so fantastic where she's like, on the one hand, she's this You know, the pianist singing up there. And then a minute later, she's like the quintessential Jewish mother making sure everybody had dinner and everything like that. She's just the sweetest woman you would ever, you know, want to be around.

1:30:36 In the spring of 71, of course, James cuts his record, her song, You've Got a Friend on Mudslide Slim. Tapestry comes out and is the biggest album in history. You've been working with her. She already had one solo album. Nothing happened. Yeah. What was it like? Were you surprised?

1:30:56 Well, I wasn't surprised because the music was so good, but I wasn't involved in Tapestry because she was married to Charlie Larkey at that point, who was a bass player. And so he did the gig with Russ and Cooch and that team. But we were in the studio doing Mudslide at the same time. So it was like really kind of crazy. But Her songs were so good. You knew this was going to be something special. You never really know if it's going to be a hit record.

1:31:20 I mean, like when I did No Jacket Required with Phil. We're in there and I'm loving this thing. But if I knew something was going to be a hit, then I'd invest in it or something. But you don't know because what happens the minute it's out of the studio is out of our hands.

1:31:37 So you don't know.

1:31:38 Sometimes you've been on something that's so good. And then before it gets released, there's a change at the label. And the new people that have come in don't want anything to do with it. And suddenly it's shelved. And you go, are you kidding me? And that happened lots of times. But with Carol, you knew something really magical was going on.

1:31:57 Okay, so I interrupted you. Yeah. So you have this crew of guys. You're talking about the opportunities. You're just saying the phone is ringing off the hook just because you're on the back of the album cover and they have success. Yeah.

1:32:09 And then the things that we're working on are successful. You know, there were so many artists of that period that, like the Jacksons and Linda and these people, that this movement really took on a life of its own. And we were kind of just in the middle of the whole thing and just kind of looking at each other going, wow, this is pretty amazing.

1:32:26 Okay.

1:32:27 If they didn't call you, who did they call? Well, there was a number of bass players in town. When I went to college, one of the people that I was in, like, my painting classes with was named Irwin Glob. And Bob Glubb is his brother. And Bob's a wonderful bass player.

1:32:44 And he.

1:32:47 Came in a little after us in that scene. He's a little bit younger. But Bob did a lot of work in town, too. So there was a bunch of guys. And David Hungate still lived in town here, who was the original bass player in Toto. So he was doing a lot of work. And Wilton Felder. beyond being a sax player, was also a bass player. So there was, each seat was a few guys deep on like the A calls. And then there were B guys too, that sometimes they were better players, but they didn't have quite the opportunity yet. Where you look at so much of this is really the gift of a moment. I mean, if James Taylor hadn't come to Wolfgang's house, I don't know what I'd be doing. I might've finished up in college and been a medical illustrator, which was one of

1:33:31 the things I was doing.

1:33:33 Looking at.

1:33:34 So you don't know, but that's why like when I do clinics, which I do occasionally, I always tell people, don't say no. Do everything you possibly can because you never know what's going to happen. You might get a gig with somebody and they kind of suck, but there's somebody else in the band who you go, but we're doing good to you. Or somebody comes to that show and hears you and they go, oh man, I'm going to call you. And these things happen. So you just don't know. But if you say no, like you think it's beneath you, you could be blowing it completely. So I've always said yes. I mean, the only time I don't is if it's a conflict of schedule.

1:34:19 Okay. There's a role. The engineer, the side musicians play. You have to know it's not your thing, when to speak up. And also, the number one thing they're looking for is somebody they can get along with. Yeah. Talent is always subsidiary. So to what degree were you conscious of that and developed your personality in these situations?

1:34:44 I think it was always having been in bands. I understood that relationship. And when we got in the studio, I always thought, More than just sitting here plucking a bass, I'm listening to the song and I always would go in. I really would bust guys' chops about it. I said, we're going into the playback and you're sitting in here not paying attention. Go listen and see what's going on in there and maybe throw out some ideas. There's been times where I've suggested something or I said, could you let me try something else on the bass after we've done it? And there are times where they'll look at me and they'll go, you just made the song. And other times they go, no, we love it the way it was.

1:35:21 I go, that's cool. That's fine.

1:35:23 But you want to be engaged. You want them to know that you actually give a shit about the project and not in a kiss ass way. But, you know, you're putting your stamp on this and you'd like really to have some kind of say. So you're not going to get credit on the album as an arranger or a co-writer or anything like that. But you listen to it and you go, you know, there's been times where I've been with an artist in there and I look at him and I go.

1:35:49 Key?

1:35:50 Are you really sure about this key? Because it sounds like you're stretching a little bit hard or you're down below where you could really sell it if we raised it a whole step. And there are times when we do that and they just go, God, I didn't even think about that. So you're beyond just your instrument. There's other things that come with the territory that I find.

1:36:08 Really fun.

1:36:09 I mean, I've only produced one album. It's one of those things that People have asked, and it never really interested me because I like coming in, playing bass, and leaving, going to another project and not living with some of the psychodrama that goes on later. But I love being engaged, you know, talking arrangements and things like that.

1:36:28 Okay. You know, once you hit Abbey Road, White Album, et cetera, suddenly albums can take a year to make. Yeah. Some of these acts you have history with, how do you charge them? Yeah.

1:36:44 Well, for the most part, it's the bands that would spend a year in there. But none of the stuff I was involved with really was a band. It was usually something like a solo artist or something like that. And they might be in for a week of tracking or something. Most of them would come kind of prepared so they weren't spending the time in the studio writing and learning. But for the most part, most of the guys like me, there was a rate that set by the So they were all unions.

1:37:15 They were all.

1:37:15 Everything went through the union. And instead of scale, we would get double scale on it. And it always seemed.

1:37:21 Fine on that. And how about your union pension? It's okay.

1:37:26 I mean, when you look at how much you put into it and what you're getting, it's like it's okay. It's like Social Security, how much you pay into it. And you kind of look at this check and you kind of go, you know, whatever.

1:37:36 Right. Okay, so now your name is on the record. Yeah. Mudslide Sims, Spring of 71. At what point do you become more of a studio guy than a road guy?

1:37:48 It never really happened. I would really try to split the year 50-50 if I could. It was really predicated on the tours that were going on. I mean, some years they wouldn't maybe tour as much or as long, so I would have more studio work. in other years where the, like with Phil, like when we went out for a year, there was no studio work and there was no sending files at that point either. Cause now I take stuff with me and I do stuff from a hotel room when I'm, when I'm working. But at that point you would just kind of look at, now one of the things that would happen is like, I would, there was a lot of guys who would not tour because they didn't want to give up that studio seat and they, and they would, say, you know, we'd be

1:38:30 on a session. They'd say, so what are you doing next month? And we go, we're on the road. And they go, how can you do that? You're going to lose your gigs. I go, well, that's if that's what happens, that's what happens. But I think if somebody put a gun to my head and said, you have to make a choice between studio or touring, what would you do?

1:38:48 I would say touring. I like playing live. I like the feeling of a live audience. I like the immediacy of when I play a note live, that note's done. It's moved to the next note and it's hit their ears. In the studio, you could play that note and they could spend a week farting around with it.

1:39:08 Oh, well, let's move it here. Let's do this little correcting. To me, it's a process. It's like.

1:39:17 Are you in the pit crew of an F1 car or are you driving the car? I'd love to do both, but I'd really like to drive. So what's the studio work? Sometimes there's more studio work going on than touring.

1:39:31 It depends.

1:39:32 But it really depends. You're not the artist, so you're at the mercy of artists.

1:39:36 Back in the heyday, 70s and 80s, when you were off the road, Were you one of those people who's basically working three sessions a day? It could be a jingle. It could be a band. Was that what was going on?

1:39:49 Yeah, it was everything going on. I mean, that was the beauty. First off, that was the beauty of being a reader, that you would get all those other calls where the guys who weren't readers were kind of doing like the pop dates and stuff where they could come in and kind of sort of given the time. But you get in the studio on like a major, like a movie call. You're not there to say, well, could you give me a few more minutes when there's 80 musicians sitting in the room? But I could read fly shit coming from piano. I mean, even if a copy is screwed up and gave me a bass part in treble clef, I could still read it because I knew it from piano. And sometimes I would just take a second and sketch a couple of notes down on it

1:40:28 just so that I was there rather than suddenly freaking out on it. But to me, each one of those things is so exciting. you know, when we would do all the TV shows and movies, I mean, when we were doing stuff like, I always tell people, I said, you know, so much of what we end up doing becomes so kind of redundant. And I go, you know, when I worked on Groundhog Day, I said, I thought I was just doing a movie. I didn't think I was doing my life because there's times where you feel like you're living Groundhog Day. But we did all kinds of Forrest Gump's and Throw Mama from the Train and Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Kindergarten Cop and all those kind of Those were always fun to work on those dates

1:41:09 and Father of the Bride and Brady Bunch and all that stuff.

1:41:14 Okay. Let's assume you're not on the road. Yeah. To what degree is there studio work today?

1:41:21 It's probably about a quarter of what it once was, maybe. I mean, there's work because I still get sent files, but the actual going into the studio, there's some work. there was a lull where there was almost nothing going on. The only people really doing it were bands, you know, like you'd find out like at studio, they're like fishes in the studio and they've blocked the room out for six months or something to do their project. Or the orchestral dates, which so much is owed right at this point, I think to John Williams. I think because before Star Wars, everything was kind of turning into synths. And I think when the time came for him to score that, he insisted on using an orchestra and that kind of got

1:42:06 everybody back in the room again, which was really great. But it's not what it once was, but it's gotten better than it was a few years back. I mean, I've done probably a half a dozen studio albums this year at this point. And there's nothing like it. When you walk in the room and you look and I see Jim Keltner or somebody sitting there and the different cats and the minute the music starts up and we start coming up with parts and we're kicking ideas around and stuff, there's a juice in that atmosphere that's like nothing else. And to me, other than being on stage, that's my happy place, though, is that. It's not so much sitting around or somebody calls me to come in and overdub bass on stuff. Because at that point, all

1:42:54 I can do is the bass. I can't contribute to anything else. But when we're all in the room together, And you've got some really great tunes. You just kind of go, kind of pinch yourself and go, I love this. This is really good.

1:43:07 Who are your bass heroes?

1:43:10 Kind of, you know, because I started out earlier on. So I was listening to like Red Calendar and Ray Brown and Mingus and that stuff, even though I wasn't in that league at all because I was still so young. But I was listening to what they did. And then once kind of pop music really hit, I mean, McCartney had a major impact. I still find him to be one of the most fascinating melodic bass players. And then I find out later that, you know, a lot of that stuff, they would do like a basic track and then he would come in later and make bass parts up because I'm kind of thinking, how the hell did you think of that on a session? You know, it's like listening to Anthony Jackson's, you know, Money, Money, Money.

1:43:52 And you go, And then I find out he took the tapes home and worked for like a week on it at home.

1:43:56 I go, good.

1:43:57 I mean, that doesn't diminish the part, but it makes me feel better when somebody's giving me five minutes to come up with a part, you know, and you go, oh, God. But I think, you know, to me, almost anybody who picks up an instrument has something to offer. There's times when I've heard like the guys who are the techno monsters of the instrument And I'm kind of just bored hearing it. I mean, it's amazing. Now, here's somebody who's been playing a year and they're doing something.

1:44:26 What's that?

1:44:26 Because it's in their naivete. They're doing something really interesting with that. They're playing at the top of their ability where some of the guys who are really great are playing below their ability to kind of accommodate a thing. But I would see like, you know, I remember. One of the great moments was when I was going to Valley State College was in 68. Somebody said, oh, there's a show concert in the gym. And it was cream.

1:44:50 And I walk in there and there's, you know, they're opening with Tales of Brave Ulysses. And then when Jack Bruce opened his mouth, I went, are you kidding me? Because the hype was all clapped.

1:45:00 Right, right, right.

1:45:01 And then all of a sudden you realize the voice was Jack and his playing and his harmonica playing on Train Time blew my mind and stuff. But there were all those guys when I got to be friends with Ant Whistle and, you know, seeing The Who play. But there's so many bass players. Like, all the time on Facebook, everybody's, here's our top 10. And it's always like Flea and Geddy Lee. But I'm sitting there going, there are so many bass players. I mean, they don't talk about how incredible Peter Cetera's bass playing was in the early Chicago stuff.

1:45:33 I mean, it's just fantastic playing. There's... You can't really define really who's... Because everybody has an influence when you hear this stuff. And there were a lot of times that there was a guy named Bobby Leidig who's no longer with us. But Bobby did all the early Seals and Croft. And you listen to those records.

1:45:53 Oh, yeah. I can hear it in my mind right now. Yeah.

1:45:56 So, I mean, I try to like take in a little bit. And I always look at kind of like your mind is like a Rolodex. And you hear things and you kind of tuck them away. And sometimes you'll find yourself on a session. And I go, God, yeah, I remember that lick that that guy played there. I'm happy to plagiarize somebody, you know, if I think there's a good part.

1:46:16 Okay, I have to ask because in our era, although he passed early, what was your take on Jocko Pasterius?

1:46:22 Oh, Jocko was remarkable. I saw Weather Report with Jocko. And it was, you know, the thing is, like, Jocko was Jocko. You know, the thing for guys like me is I get called and they want me to do things for them. I remember when Jocko played with Joni. And he sounded like Jocko playing with Joni. It's not like he came in and was Larry, her husband at that point, who was a great bass player, played like Jocko.

1:46:48 But he assimilated into her music more. But, you know, Jocko's like one of the great tragedies in this business. When you think if this guy had not died, you know, what his contributions would have been in the same way Hendrix was. The things he was getting into just before his death were really different then. At that point, he was evolving into something really different, and it was pretty fantastic.

1:47:10 There's some videos of him just sitting on a chair playing, and you're just going, holy crap. But Jocko was amazing, but there's a bunch of people like this. I sit there and I watch him, and I just kind of go, it's interesting that you could have 20 bass players and give them the same bass and have them go in a room playing it with only 20 different basses.

1:47:32 Okay, which brings us to equipment. Are you an equipment freak or basically I can get my sound out of anything?

1:47:42 Right in the middle of that. Maybe leaning more towards I can get my sound out of anything. I'm not a gearhead where other guys I know have amassed tons of gear and amps and pedal boards and basses. I've got a few basses. I've got a dingwall, which I use for my five-string. I've got my Frankenstein bass, which we built back in the 70s, and that's been my main instrument in the studios. I've got a Warwick that's a semi-hollow body, semi-acoustic four string and a Hoffner and a Washburn AB45 fretless. It was a fretted instrument that I hated and I was going to just dump it.

1:48:26 And I thought, what the hell? I pulled the frets out and filled the marks and the thing came to life. So I've got a number of instruments because I also look at My job is like an electrician or a plumber or a car mechanic. You go in their shop and there's different stuff for different jobs where a lot of guys will say, you know, I see them writing going, oh, these guys are like gear whores. They just, they'll do anything to get their name on another instrument. I go, that's not really the case. But if I show up and I hear a song and I go, this is the right bass for that song. And then not that that bass might not, like when I was doing Vanessa Carlton's record, which she had a thousand miles on it.

1:49:06 And one of the songs we did on that was Paint It Black, Stones, Paint It Black. And I tried my bass and I went, that's the sound. I tried a couple of things and we ended up calling Andy Brower and he had a Hoffner and he sent the Hoffner over. It worked perfect for that. And so I went and got myself a Hoffner after that. And when I did B.B. King's 80th birthday, I just took my Hoffner there and shoved a bunch of foam rubber in it and made it sound like an old upright because that's exactly what his stuff needed for his birthday thing.

1:49:34 And we were sitting there with He's sitting where you are for me, and right there's Bobby Bluebland and stuff. I'm freaking out the whole time. But that bass was perfect. So you used the right tool for the right job.

1:49:45 And what about amps?

1:49:47 I was with a company called Euphonic Audio for many, many years, and then their supply chain got really screwed up during COVID, and they finally just closed up shop. And I was at the NAMM show a couple of years ago, and there's a company out of Italy called GR. And I checked out their stuff and it was amazing because it sounded great. And I could pick the bass cabinet up with one finger. There's amazing technology in them.

1:50:14 And so that's what I've got out right now with Lyle. But back when I worked with Billy Thorpe, when we were doing Children of the Sun, I put together the biggest bass rig probably ever. And it was all clips and stuff. It was like a half a semi's worth of backline just for the bass rig. And it was the best bass sound I ever heard in my life, but it would only work for doing Children of the Sun kind of thing.

1:50:40 Well, that gets to the next question. How's your hearing? What?

1:50:47 I'm sure it's been compromised over the years, but I think the problem for me with hearing is, would not have been bass, it would have been cymbals. Because I'm usually located- Use it on the high end. Yeah, between high end guitar and being stationed on stage, usually you're like an earshot of the crash cymbals and stuff. So if you're working with somebody, like with Russ, it's not a big issue, but there's other drummers, depending on the gig, who might really be just flailing up there and you're going to pay the price. There's times where you've come off stage and you're just ringing like crazy. But I'm amazed sometimes too that my hearing is- Not more compromised than it is. I'm still sitting. The only time it

1:51:29 really gets weird is like sitting in a noisy restaurant at a table and you're trying to have a conversation. There's so much ambient noise in the room that's just kind of eating it up. But I figure I've got nothing to say anyhow.

1:51:43 Okay. So you're working with James. Are there any James tours you haven't done yet?

1:51:50 Yeah, we didn't do like when he did the album Walking Man. He did that with David Spinoza.

1:51:55 Right.

1:51:56 And I think that was all New York guys on that. And then James and I, we parted ways in 1990 because I contacted him and we had just finished Phil's But Serious album. And that was when we were going to hit the road. And I think we started on like January 3rd and we finished like December 18th kind of a thing. And so at that point, I got Carlos Vega the gig with James. And at that point, Carlos, we were talking about what to do. And he did lots of work with Jimmy Johnson. So we just said, let's see if Jimmy, you know, is available for it.

1:52:33 And he did it.

1:52:35 And he stayed with him at that point. And the only time I played with James since then was when they did the Carole King James Taylor Troubadour reunion tour. And we put the original band back together for that. And that was a huge tour. The only thing that was a drag about that was all these promoters from Europe had come over to see the show and they offered like the most unbelievable tour. And Carol had already put a cutoff date on the tour because she was working on a book and stuff. And she I think at that point, too, she also felt that she probably wouldn't have the stamina to do a major, major tour.

1:53:13 And it turns out she got better and better during the whole tour. So she, I think, physically could have done it, but she had pretty much said no. And there was issues between two different management teams because they had James's and hers, and they weren't communicating on certain things. But we all just said, man, I wish we could have stayed with that. The thing that was funny was back in the days when we would do James's tours, to do a set list, we would write all the songs off on three-by-five cards. And then we would lay them on the floor at the rehearsal and look at like up tunes, slow tunes kind of thing. And just kind of keep rearranging until we came up with a set.

1:53:54 When we did it with James and Carol, it looked like a confetti on a ticker tape parade. Between the two of them, the amount of songs we were looking at to try to fit into a three-hour show was just insane because you wanted to do them all, but we would have been out there for 15 hours doing it. So that was fascinating. with that dime there. Okay, you're on the road with James. Who's the next person you go on the road with?

1:54:18 Jackson. And Jackson, someone just called you on Jackson because that's a different management team. Yeah, yeah.

1:54:26 I mean, the thing that happened was also through James, we ended up forming this band, The Section.

1:54:32 Right.

1:54:33 And so it was basically The Section. James had The Section. And then when that ended, The Section went on to work with Jackson. And the thing that was good was the two management teams would discuss things so that schedules wouldn't overlap. So, like, we would come off of a James tour and maybe have two days off and then go into rehearsals with Jackson and hit the road. So, I mean, it worked out. We never really had issues where we couldn't make it happen, but it took some logistics that we kind of left up to management. At that point, we were ready to do it. I mean, we were happy to do it. And then sometimes he'd come off and there'd be a Linda Ronstadt tour. Carol King, the first time I worked with Waddy on the road,

1:55:16 was doing the Thoroughbred tour that we had done. That was the first time Cooch and Waddy and me and Russ were together. And so it was one of these things that was certain logistical issues with it, but it never really was a problem.

1:55:30 Okay. So, you know, you have Linda's part of Peter Asher's group. Yeah. And Carol, you knew. How does it bleed into other acts?

1:55:39 Well, other acts will come and see you. They'll see a show and they'll go, God, I'd love to work with those guys. And somebody will find a number and we get called. Certainly like for me with Toto, I've known the guy since before they formed Toto.

1:55:52 So that was easy.

1:55:55 I spent like 10 years with Veronique Saint-Saëns, who in the early 70s was married to Stephen Stills. And we were at Caribou doing one of Stephen's records, and she was there pregnant with their son. And Stephen said, well, let's do my wife's album while we're here and stuff.

1:56:13 And we did it.

1:56:14 And that was like 73 or something like that. And then she contacted me through her management in 91 or somewhere around there. And they asked if I would come to France and record with her and tour with her. And I'd spent 10 years doing that with her. Um, I, I ended up on the road with Tracy Chapman, um, because they had, they were, she was going to be doing, um, farm aid. I think in 93, she was going to be doing farm aid and they had booked Bob Glob for, but what they did was they called Bob, I think Elliot Roberts called him and, you know, they, they said, are you available?

1:56:54 And I think he said, yeah.

1:56:55 But they never confirmed it. And like the day before Farm Aid, they called Bob and they said, you know, so here's airline. He go, what are you talking about? And they said, well, for Farm Aid, he goes, well, I took another gig. You never confirmed it. And Elliot called me and he said, I know it's a lot to ask, but can you learn her show tonight and fly to Texas tomorrow and do the show? And, uh, and I did, I stayed up all night and learned her show and went there and it was a great band.

1:57:20 I mean, it was Roy Bitton was playing keyboards and, Oh, God. Vernon Reed, I think, was playing guitar and all that.

1:57:28 And it went great.

1:57:28 And they said she loved it. Can you do the tour? And the tour was like five months or something like that. So they all come in in different little different ways. But at a certain point, like with Phil, I met Phil doing a Lee Rittenhour record. And at that point, Phil said, I'd love for you to work on it.

1:57:50 A little bit slower. Phil dropped it by. How did you literally meet him? On the session. He called Phil to do his work on the session. Yeah.

1:57:58 Lee Rittenhour had called me because I knew Lee from lots of sessions together. And he called Phil. And I walk in there and I knew Phil from Genesis. And he knew me from like Mike Post TV and James and stuff like that. So we hit it off on the session that we were doing. And he said, you know, would you be available to work on my record, which was face value? And I said, no, I said, I've already booked on with James Taylor. I can't do it.

1:58:24 But I said, I'd love to work with you if the opportunity comes up farther down the line. And in 84, he called me and he said, can you come to London and do No Jacket Required with me?

1:58:35 And I did.

1:58:35 And then we hit the road in 85 and spent most of that. And the thing that was interesting with that was at that point when that started, Phil was a drummer in Genesis, but they had no signature as a solo artist. And the gigs weren't that big on that tour. Then Susudio hits. And next thing you know, they're canceling gigs and moving us into arenas. And that the whole energy of the thing, just we were in the middle of this thing, watching it morph into this huge thing. And then after that, it became, you know, arenas were the casual little gigs. And then you were in like stadiums and stuff like that. It's fascinating to be in the middle of something like that and watch how it evolves. Because it's unexpected. You're not sure why

1:59:20 it's happening. The music's still the same, but somehow the dynamic of the business and promotion and all that took place. But we never played Susudio any different in a small venue as we did in an arena, but the response is different.

1:59:45 Okay, I know I'm harping on this, but by the same, you're the sideman. They call you up for a tour, they give you the number?

1:59:53 Um, I, I, I got called, I did an album with an artist, uh, and, uh, and she loved it. She loved the album and told management, I'd love to do this. And management contacted me and they said, so what would it take to do this tour? And it was a big tour. And I told them and they said, perfect.

2:00:09 That's great. No problem.

2:00:10 All of them, they sent me the paperwork and I called him back and I said, that was per day, not per week. And they hung up and that was it. Yeah. They said yes because they thought, oh, man, this guy's an idiot. And I said, no, that was a daily there. And I always looked at it as kind of a day thing. I mean, if you want to work seven days a week, fine. If you want some tours they got and they only work two days a week, but you're out there. And I go, it's going to be the same for that because it's my time out there.

2:00:39 But we've always been pretty, I mean, I hear about some guys that go out on the road and get staggering sums of money. You know, but I've never been in one of those situations. But I've always been content with, you know, what I get. I think it's fair and stuff. I mean, if somebody offered more, I would certainly take it.

2:00:56 But I, you know, I usually try to like just, you know, work with people on it. And I say, you know, just let me know what, if this doesn't work for you, let me know what would work for you. And if it's possible, great. Otherwise, you know, maybe another time. How about you remember the band, you find out somebody's making more than you?

2:01:11 Oh, I did an album with somebody where I was... I forget what I was getting.

2:01:17 I was getting like double scale for it. And they brought in like one of the famous bass players and they paid him $ 25, 000 for the day that he came in. And then the next day I was back in the studio with them and I had to replace the stuff he did the previous day. And I think I made five grand to do the album.

2:01:39 Okay. But that's my problem. Right, right. I'd call you up. I'll offer you four months on the road. You're in? Assuming I'm going to pay your rate.

2:01:51 Yeah.

2:01:51 You in? Or at this point in time, who are you? Are we going to go by bus or plane?

2:01:56 No, I don't care about that part of it at all. No, if you said to me, you know, I'm going to go on tour for four months and I'd love for you to play on it. And if we agree on a fee, I don't care about any of the rest of it. I don't have to stay in a Four Seasons. I'm happy in a Hampton Inn. I'm happy in a bus.

2:02:11 It doesn't have to be a plane or anything like that. I just want the music to be good. And if I'm going to spend four months playing crap, I'm not going to do it. I just want to go out and be proud of what we're doing every night. And if it's something that you're kind of just going, oh God, do we have to play this crap again? That's not a good way to spend your life. So that would be my only real criteria. I want to hear the music first. And then if we could agree on the business side of it, because there's times where like people said, we wish we could have had you, but we couldn't afford you. So They hired somebody else and they found out they were actually paying the other person more than

2:02:47 I was going to even ask on it. You just don't know. And it's hard to judge self-worth. I mean, you hear about some people that can really just go out and they just throw it out there and then they accept it. And you kind of go, holy shit, who would have thought you could get that kind of dough for something?

2:03:03 Okay. You formed the section. They were on Capitol, if I remember correctly. Yeah, first album.

2:03:09 Well, the first two albums were on Warner Brothers, and the third album was on Capitol.

2:03:13 Okay. You know, Capitol was not a strong label at that point. Yeah. To what degree were you invested in it emotionally, and why wasn't it bigger than it was?

2:03:25 I think when we got— Peter got us our deal with Warner Brothers— And I have a feeling that because of our pedigree of the kind of stuff we were playing in town, they sort of thought they were going to get an Eagles out of it. And we ended up giving them like a rock fusion, you know, no vocals album. I think they didn't know what the hell to do with it. They didn't know what bin it was going to sit in or anything like that. So that was one thing. I think we just gave them something that they weren't really prepared to promote or how to promote it because they would see us like... we'd go on the road and we'd open for James or for Jackson.

2:04:02 We would be the opening act on those shows. And we would come out and play this fusion. And then we'd come out and we'd play Fire and Rain and Running on Empty and stuff. So they kind of didn't know. I think they didn't know what we were. And we came together really because Russ and Cooch and I and Carol were the core band for James. But when Tapestry happened, Carol really She had little kids and stuff, and she really wanted to back off the touring at that point.

2:04:31 And I got a.

2:04:32 Call to do an album at A & M with Tom Janz and Mimi Farina. And Craig Durgey was the keyboard player on that session. And I met Craig there, and I called Peter after that. And I said, I just worked with this great keyboard player. And if Carol's leaving, this guy's worth checking out. And he ended up coming in.

2:04:50 And I've talked about this before. We were just all so horny to play music, and we loved just jamming together. And so, like, we would be out with James, and we would do soundcheck, and James would do his soundcheck, and then he'd split, and he didn't want to, like, burn up. And we just stayed in with jam and play.

2:05:07 And I remember one time Peter just called us afterwards, and he said, I want to play you something. And he played us this cassette. And we went, that's really great.

2:05:15 What was that?

2:05:15 He goes, that's your soundcheck today. And he said, you know, you should think about this, you know. I mean, there's something happening here. And James ended up naming the band because that, to me, is the worst part of any band is coming up with a name. I mean, I remember Don Henley coming to me at a session we were doing, I think, for Rick Roberts. And he goes, do you think Eagles is a stupid name for a band?

2:05:36 And I said, I thought Beatles was a stupid name for a band. So James said, well, look, you guys are the rhythm section. Why don't you just call it the section? And we went, done, fine. And so we would go out on the road with James and Jackson and open. And then we went on the road with Mahavishnu Orchestra opening for them. And we still have a cult following. I mean, I still have people that write me and going, is the section ever going to do anything again? I go, no, no, that was then. This is now. But so many things evolved from that. I mean, I got to be friends with Billy Cobham when we were out opening for them. And that's when he got his record deal. And he called me and asked me if I'd come to New York and do his album.

2:06:14 And then we did Spectrum. in there, which is still the definitive, you know, fusion album, uh, even though there's others with more chops and all that, but there's something about that album that 1973, we cut it and you listen to it today and it still sounds fresh. And Tommy Bowen, that's probably some of the best guitar playing anybody ever played at that point before his life kind of started folding up with the James gang and deep purple and all that. Um, but, um, But the section really ended up becoming kind of a package where a lot of artists that came along, they wanted to get the four of us on it because they knew that sound and they knew what we brought to it. So that's when we would end up doing like Warren Zevon

2:06:59 and all these different things that came through. And they were all, it was just from a writer's standpoint, that whole 70s and 80s was a fascinating period. There were some of the best music was written during that period. And every time you'd walk in the studio, there'd be a new face of somebody in there, and you'd just go, oh.

2:07:15 God, this is good.

2:07:16 I mean, it was really exhilarating. It was one of those things that you just left work every day just kind of pumped and just going, I love this.

2:07:25 Okay. Just to focus for one second. You know, in the old days, the 60s, the AM radio, one speaker in the dashboard, you couldn't even really make out the bass.

2:07:38 Yeah.

2:07:39 Okay. And we get stereo records. We get the stereo in the late 60s. But it also comes down a lot to the mix, the EQ, et cetera. So you come to a session. What is it that you want to add? What is the base supposed to do?

2:07:58 Well, again, again, it, I always say that everything is predicated on the song. So, you know, what, what's right for one song, even on an album, the next song may sonically be a little bit different. So you, you do, you, you judge everything by that song. Uh, Most of the time, the level of engineers that we've worked with over the years have been really high, high quality engineers. So I kind of like try to leave everything in their hands in terms of what they're used to hearing. Like I'll bring my own direct box, but if I go, you know, if you've got a DI that you really like, we'll go ahead and use yours and stuff. There are times where I've, there was a lot of times in the studio where I would, Ask the engineer at the end

2:08:45 of a project, could you burn me a cassette? Just give me a board mix. And then later on, you hear the album finished and you go, they lost it. It sounded so much better when it was the board.

2:08:57 It was simpler.

2:08:58 The sound of them just pushing up the faders and just running it off for you as compared to sitting and tweaking and farting around with this stuff. But... Usually, that's the only time where, like during the course of a session, there's so much that's going to happen afterwards that if I go and listen to playback and I can hear all my parts in there, I'm happy. But we're not involved in the mastering or the mixing of the album.

2:09:23 Well, I guess just literally playing the bass. If I'm the lead guitarist, okay, I do a solo. I mean, there's some records with bass solos, not a lot of them. I know my role. Yeah. Drums, there's everything. What is the role of the bass and how do you intellectualize where you fit in the oral landscape?

2:09:44 Well, you're sort of a liaison between the melodic and the rhythmic side of things. With the drummer, you're locked in with the drummer rhythmically on it, but you're also playing parts that are cognizant of the keyboards and the guitar. And then sonically... I just, I try to give, I mean, that's one of the things I've had, like basically one sound for everything I've done from country to funk to whatever.

2:10:11 I just try to give them a really rich, fat bass on it where everything can sit on it. And it's got this foundation under it that sounds that really, that actually anchors the bottom down. Because I hear a lot of bass parts on things. where guys, I'm hearing like a lot of fret noise and it's too trebly and clicky. I mean, it's fine if that's what they, that's not the world I live in. So usually, I mean, it's always funny. Like you'll go in and they'll have the drummer getting drum sounds and they're in there for a half hour just banging away and stuff and the guitar and they're working on it. And then I'll go in and I'll sit down and I go, oh, let me hear you. And I hit two notes and I go, great.

2:10:51 I mean, you're done at that point. They've just, you know, I kind of know what they want to hear. And I just give them a nice rich fat bass part. Now, like I said, like on that one Luke record, we distorted the hell out of it. There's other times where I can step in a little bit where I'll do something and I'll go, let me do this part and then let me double it up an octave. And if we do that, then let's change the speed of the machine just slightly or whatever they put on the computer so that it gets this almost chorusing effect. I used to, at one point I had a piccolo bass, which is an octave higher than the regular bass. And I've done things where, like with Billy Thorpe, I doubled almost everything

2:11:36 on piccolo bass because we were a power trio and I just wanted it to sound really different. But I'm just looking for like a good bed for everybody to sleep in at that point. Because if you've got that, if you're locked in with the drums... And then you've given them that. You can build anything on top of that, and it's going to get better, hopefully. Where if that's a weak foundation, if the drums aren't sonically there or feel-wise and the bass isn't there, it kind of doesn't matter if you've got the greatest guitar player or anything in the world. It's just not going to be there.

2:12:10 And I've always liked the responsibility of the bass, the psychology of it. I like the seat that I get to sit in and to think, live, you know, occasionally you'll have to do a little soloing thing or something like that. But for the most part, you can just sit up there and lock it all down. I know with Lyle Lovett, there's one song called Memphis in it.

2:12:32 And at a certain point in the song, it breaks down and everybody in the band does a solo. And people have come up to me afterwards and they'll go, why didn't you take a solo? I said, I was playing under everybody's solo. I soloed for the whole song and I'm responding to each solo with a different licks and stuff. But I said, just because you don't see the spotlight on me doesn't mean I'm not doing it.

2:12:55 Okay. You're very verbal, engaging. If you're home in Pasadena and you're not working, you're talking to me now, you could be in a session. Are you cool with that? in your own mind, or you're talking enough to your wife, or you got to call some people on the phone and run through it.

2:13:15 I can go days without speaking to anybody. When I'm home, I am like a total hermit. I mean, I'll talk to my wife and I'll talk to the dogs when we're out in the backyard playing with them. But for the most part, if I'm home, I can spend the whole day just weeding in the yard and not talk to anybody. I don't sit there clutching my phone. I'll check for messages at the end of the day, usually my ringer's off. I can completely shut all of this down.

2:13:42 And I'm really happy just to get into a different headspace. And then like when I go to bed at night, I'll just lay there sometimes for hours, just perusing YouTube, just looking up things in there. I'll find out like a great song that I was thinking, you know, a classical piece or something. And I'll start to look through all the different performances of it just to see, you know, if you want to do Nessun Dorma, you know, in your like 20 different versions of it, and then you'll still end up at Pavarotti at the end of the day.

2:14:09 But I'm a real kind of homebody. It's like one of the things for me that maybe didn't help in the early days in the 70s was there was a real gathering, not so much partying, but a gathering of people all the time at people's houses, and they'd be playing songs. And so And I'd finish a session. I'd just go home. I'm not the hang guy because, first off, there was usually drugs or alcohol involved. And I just, after a little while, you're so bored because they're all on the same plane at that point, which is fine.

2:14:40 But you're sitting there going, I've heard this before.

2:14:43 I don't need it. Love you, man. Yeah.

2:14:46 So I would just go home and I'd say, I'll see you tomorrow at the studio.

2:14:50 Okay. You're upbeat dynamic. Is this your mood or do you ever have any dark moments?

2:14:55 Oh, I can go so dark. I've gotten dark on the road and some people said, you don't want to see that. But I have to be pushed. I mean, I'm like one of those reeds in the wind that you almost have to be flat on the ground before you respond to something. But I've been pushed a few times and I don't like that headspace. Okay.

2:15:16 Well, it's one thing if you're reacting to something. But there's another thing, let's assume, you know, during COVID was unique situation where you're home and your mood starts to sink. Is that ever going to happen? Oh, yeah.

2:15:29 Yeah. I mean, well, I had a bit of that with my wife's, you know, her back now where I literally had to turn down a tour that I wanted to do. And I really couldn't do anything because she literally could not get out of bed. for almost seven weeks. So for seven weeks, I almost didn't even touch my base.

2:15:47 I just got into a kind of a dark place and people were sending me files and I contacted them back. I said, I'm really not, I don't feel like doing it now. And a couple of them said, well, we'll wait till you are. And I got them done last week, you know, when she started getting around again. Yeah, I mean, my nature, I'm not really effusive all the time, but I try to be somewhat upbeat and engaging. But for the, but for, Other times, there are times when you do get dark, you know, and they're like there's family issues going on or deaths from friends. And you just kind of wonder what the hell's going on in the world.

2:16:24 I mean, I get up and as soon as I turn on the TV and I see the state of what's going on right now, I find it profoundly distracting and depressing. But I'm also not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. I'm going to be as proactive. I mean, on Facebook, I get death threats. On Facebook, people saying, you know, we know your touring schedule. We're going to come get you kind of thing. Just because of a political statement.

2:16:49 Okay. Will you ever think twice or you just make the statement?

2:16:53 No, I just I think I suffer from a kind of an emotional Tourette's. I just throw it out and then think about it afterwards. But it's already committed. Now, at that point, I just kind of go, no, I have my standards and my scruples and the life I want to live by, and I'm not going to change that to accommodate somebody else's. I don't want to hurt anybody.

2:17:16 I don't want to say things that would be harmful to anybody, but I'm certainly of my own opinions.

2:17:22 I've been that way.

2:17:23 My roommate when I was in college was the head of SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society. We were followed every day by the FBI at school and I mean, I went to every march, anti-Vietnam march that there was out there and had a big peace sign painted on my truck and signs that said peace. I mean, I firmly believe in all of that. And our time in this world is so. kind of not only limited, but it just goes by so fast. I mean, I sit there right now, and I can talk about my very first session, which was before James was actually not my first session. When we played the Troubadour gig with James, in the audience was Del Shannon and Brian Hyland And they contacted me to do an album with Brian Hyland

2:18:13 before I ever was in the studio. So my first studio experience actually was with Del Shannon and Brian Hyland. But to me, I can still picture that session. And I was a squirt. I was a little kid and I'm going to be turning 80 and it still feels fresh in my mind. So, you know, there's been a massive amount of stuff that's gone on in this period, yet it feels like nothing. I mean, I can go back instantly. And one of the things that maybe was good for me personally, was the fact that I didn't drink and didn't do drugs because so much stuff is still right there. It's not like I sit there. I mean, like when James is interviewed and he talks about how many years he lost because he just was out at that point. He said he gained when he finally kicked

2:18:56 drugs and started working out and stuff. He said he gained about 20 hours a day. You know, and that's his life. That's whatever. And I'm grateful that he got his shit together and that he's healthy. and still making music. That's great. And I'm happy that Phil is doing better than he was a few years ago. We just talked the other day, sent me an email and stuff. And I've been seeing interviews with him and he's, I don't know if he'll ever work again, but with all he's done in his life, I just want him to be happy and healthy as he can be. So, you know, but it's interesting how this stuff goes by. So I've set kind of standards for how I function in this world.

2:19:33 And You know, unless somebody shows me something that I think would be better for me, I'm going to stick with what I do. And some people get pissed, but tough shit.

2:19:43 So you're going to die on stage?

2:19:45 Oh, wouldn't it be great? It'd be fantastic. I mean, I've worked with one artist for sure who died on Magic Sam. I was playing with him back in the 60s, and he passed away at the gig. But, you know, you hear about this, you know, people dying on stage. Dick Shawn? I was just going to say Dick Shawn, his one-man show. He died under that pile of debris.

2:20:10 They thought it was part of the act.

2:20:11 Yeah, and his son was the director. And he came out. Yeah, I saw that show twice. And it was the, you know, fabulously fantastic junior. Dick Shawn was one of the greatest comedians. I mean, just the best. I mean, in Mad, Mad, Mad World and stuff. But yeah, I saw that show in San Francisco, I think. And then when we got to New York with, I think, James, I said to some of the guys, I said, you know, Dick Shawn is.

2:20:38 And they said, well, I think so. I said, let's go to the show. And it was the night of the blackout. So like all the lights in Manhattan were out. And then in the studio, the emergency lights came on and Dick's worked it into his set. And he's going, oh, be careful when you go out there. It's getting kind of dark out in the, you know, and so we opened the door and it's pitch black in Manhattan. It's like, holy crap, that was the most amazing experience. But yeah, that whole thing of dying on stage like that, you know, either that or I just want to go to bed.

2:21:08 You know, I've had so many friends that have died long, horrible deaths, you know, like the, you know, the Don Grolnick's and, people like that that just withered away in a hospital. Man, just let me have a massive stroke be gone. I mean, it's tough for the people that find you and have to deal with it, but it would be nice to be able to go out quickly.

2:21:30 But to be on stage, you know, I mean, it would be kind of weird for everybody around there if you just kind of drop on it. But he never played that before.

2:21:42 We'll see.

2:21:42 Yeah, it's... Getting nearer and nearer. I mean, it's kind of weird when you start looking at numbers.

2:21:50 Well, that's a whole other subject because I find that most people don't want to admit it. In that, you know, once you reach, when you're 60, you've seen the trick. Yeah. If anything is good, I'll find out about it. I'm not susceptible to advertising. You turn 70 and you become conscious that this doesn't go on forever. Yeah. So you have two types of people I find. You have the retired, self-satisfied people. Isn't life wonderful? Then you have these people who are doing the identical thing that they've done for 30, 40 years, but without consciousness. Yeah. So you say, isn't this weird? There are people who are dying, health problems.

2:22:31 We got what's going on in the government. No one wants to talk about it. No, same as it ever was. Yeah. And it's very strange for me.

2:22:37 Yeah. I mean, there's a little of all of that as you age. I mean, I kind of look at it now and I can start to think, I go, my folks lived to be like, I think 93 and 94 when they did.

2:22:45 Wow, you did a good run.

2:22:47 So I'm kind of going, well, if I can stay healthy like they were, then maybe I've got like another 12 to 15 years left. And 12 to 15 years goes by so fast. I mean, I'm already booking stuff into next year. And I'm just kind of going, it's a finite amount of numbers on this stuff. But I kind of go, if I'm going to get up today, I was, you know, I got up this morning and I went, I'm going to go talk to Bob. This is, that's why I wanted to not do this as a zoom.

2:23:14 I wanted just to say, let's come down here and sit and talk. This is so much nicer than doing it on a computer. Um, but it's, it's one of those things where you just kind of go, you just want to, you know, just take every day and enjoy it as best you can. And if I'm going to work great, if I'm not going, one of the things that for me was a real life lesson was early on, um, If I was like working and all of a sudden I would look in my date book and there would be two weeks of nothing in there, I would freak.

2:23:41 I'd be panicked because you think, is there going to ever be anything after those two weeks? Is that going to fill up? When I finally kind of looked at my gig to amortize it as an annual job and kind of go, if at the end of the year I've paid all the bills, made some money, been able to do some things and all that, it's a good year.

2:24:01 I'm not going to sit there and look at two weeks off Like it's a failure, like everything's over. So, I mean, if I look at the end of the year, I'm kind of going, it's fine. If I have a period where there isn't work going on, I'll find other projects to do. I'll do some repairs in the house. I'll work in the yard and do other things. Life isn't this kind of one trick pony. And if you're not doing that thing, you're not valid anymore. But it takes a while to kind of come to grips with that, especially when your gig is starting. Because I never thought I'd be a professional musician. I knew I'd always play.

2:24:33 But you just don't know. I have a friend who I did a session for Paul Anka back in the early 70s with who played guitar on the session. And he had aspirations of becoming a studio musician. But he could play, but he didn't have the temperament for it. And he went on and became an oral kind of an orthopedic reconstruct. I mean, an oral reconstruction of surgery.

2:25:01 And he has two clinics up in Northern California. But he still is a Martin and Dorsey. He has a Pro Tools studio in his dental clinic and he still makes his records. And he's come down and we've done a few albums together. He's kind of like a James Taylor kind of. And you just kind of go. So he didn't have the original dream of music, but he's still making music on his own terms. But he has an incredibly successful life as an oral reconstructive surgeon.

2:25:28 You just don't know. Well, that's a better story than most because most don't make it. Well, no, they don't. They don't finish college, go to graduate school. Oh, I know.

2:25:37 I know. Well, that's the thing is you really have to think about all these things and sort of have a plan B. I mean, that's one of the things I was just back at Berkeley doing a thing back there with Victor Wooten and Steve Bailey. And it's one of those things where I kind of look at them and I go, the only thing they don't teach you here is you come out with all these chops and everything on Friday.

2:25:57 What's Monday?

2:25:59 You know, there's no gigs waiting for you generally or anything like that. And they go to a studio like, you want to do, you know, you sweep for us for a while and, you know, work your way up the ladder. I mean, they kind of paint this picture of like, this is going to be this amazing thing's going to happen. You've got all this four years or how many years of learning and facility, but there's a finite amount of gigs when you walk out that door and not everybody's going to get them. And there's a lot of this business is built on disappointment. And if you're the kind of person that can be disappointed easy, You're going to drop out and the next guy who's maybe a little more tenacious is going to step in

2:26:33 and they might have a shot at it. So you just don't know with all of this. And it's just like life. You just kind of live every day in you. You know, it's not one of my favorite songs, but there's a Henley song. How bad do you want it? Not bad enough. Yeah.

2:26:49 You know, talent is at most 50%. Yeah.

2:26:50 Yeah.

2:26:52 A lot of great people who are not working in the business.

2:26:55 Better players than most of the guys I know. I mean, it's like when I was in high school, my sister had a girlfriend. And we were talking one day, and she said, oh, you should come over to the house and play with my brother.

2:27:07 He plays guitar. It was Ted Green.

2:27:10 And here's probably one of the greatest guitar players who's ever lived. When I started working, though, I tried to get him on sessions. And he wasn't good on sessions. He was great at doing his technical books and all of his thing. But I got him on and they said, well, take a solo. He goes, I don't want to take a solo.

2:27:27 He goes, shit.

2:27:28 I mean, it's like I remember being with John McLaughlin and I mentioned Ted Green. And John goes, you know, Ted Green. It's that thing. But here's the guy with all the facility in the world. But he's just he's like that. a cult hero to the guitar players, but nobody knows who he is. And other guys who maybe are crap players, but they're out there just putting it out.

2:27:47 And the people go, that's the man. Because they're seeing this whole different thing. They're just seeing the persona and the presentation. And there's some bass players out there that, to me, are just like, monstrous players, but they just somehow, they don't push themselves or people just aren't aware of them or they've never, they're so in the background that they're kind of unaware of that this guy's there. And other guys that just have a stage presence that, you know, is to people is exciting. And they're the guys that get the gigs and the big bucks and all that and whatever. You know, I don't look at anything other than, you know, I'm grateful to still be a working musician in a really great community of musicians. They have really,

2:28:29 you know, to be able to, it still freaks me out. Like if I'm at a someplace in like Clapton's there and he'll look over and go, hey Lee, how you doing? And I go, why the fuck does Eric Clapton know me? I mean, you still think of yourself as like I'm this dork from the valley. And so all of a sudden when you're around like Robert Plants or any of those people and they, I mean, I was, we did a gig with Lyle and Tommy Emanuel was on the gig.

2:28:54 And he came and he said, oh man, I saw you in Australia with James Taylor. And I'm about to like crawl through ground glass to go touch his shoes. Cause I mean, this guy's so remarkable, but we all have our own level of, you know, recognition of our own self-worth and where we sit in this whole thing.

2:29:10 And it's just kind of surprising sometimes when you realize, you know, it's one thing for somebody to come up and say, oh, I saw you at the universal amphitheater. But it's another thing when somebody who you've like, like when McCartan, when I met McCartan, he goes, oh, I always wanted to meet you.

2:29:23 And I'm like, You know who I am? I can't believe it.

2:29:25 Yeah.

2:29:26 I mean, it's weird. It's weird. But, you know, it is what it is. I accept it all. Okay. Final question. Yes, please. What's it like going through life with the name Leland?

2:29:37 I think it came from, like, a great-grandfather in Russia or something like that. I think his name was something like Leobruch.

2:29:44 Or something like that. Yeah.

2:29:47 Lee was a hard one for me when I was in grammar school because it was a girl named Lee also, but it was L-E-I-G-H was her name. The best part for me, if we're going to talk a story about name, one of my favorite people I've worked with is Judith Owen, who's married to Harry Shearer. And she's a Welsh singer, songwriter, pianist, marvelous talent. When we were touring over in England, they had us going to every BBC studio to do an interview while we were there. And I forget what town it was, but we get to the studio and there's this young girl who has been told to interview us, who has no clue who Judith is, who I am, nothing.

2:30:26 It was the most uncomfortable thing to be sitting across from this girl. And she's finally desperate for something to ask. And she looks at me and she goes, Sklar, that's an interesting name. Where does it come from? And I said, well, I said, it's actually, that part of my family was from Ukraine. But I said, it's a similar spelling and all that, like up in Scandinavia, it might be a double A with an umlaut over it and stuff. And I said, but an interesting thing is in all the places, it means exactly the same thing, which is glassblower, which it does. And she looks at me and she goes, have you ever blown any glass? And I said, only Philip. Man, I look over, Judith has snot running out of her nose.

2:31:11 She's dying, and this girl has no clue what I just said. It was one of those name moments that was really wonderful.

2:31:20 Well, I just remember the first time hearing Sklar, the legendary programmer of WABC Radio in New York, was Rick Sklar.

2:31:27 Yeah, and Sklar was one of the major guys, I think, at Imagineering at Disney for many years. It's when we moved here when I was a little kid that was like, maybe a quarter of a page in the white pages of Sklar's. And now there's pages, there aren't pages because it doesn't exist. But it was one of those things that I never, the only other one I knew, there was a bass player in the valley named Buddy Sklar.

2:31:52 And he was, I forget what bands he played with, but we were kind of contemporaries of each other. So it was really interesting that there were two bass players, Sklar's and the San Fernando Valley. But I remember talking to Elmer Bernstein, I did a movie with him and we were talking names. I forget, but I mean, he's one of the greatest composers. I mean, to kill a mockingbird.

2:32:13 When he got hired to kill a mockingbird, they thought they were hiring Leonard Bernstein. They made a mistake and they called him because they got a Bernstein on. And he said, man, when I found out, he said, I really had to bring my A game to that one because they were expecting Leonard. Names can be funny on.

2:32:30 That level, but- Okay. We're going to leave it here, Leland. Okie dokie. We could talk all day. You tell great stories. Your memory is unbelievable. Thanks for taking this time with my audience. Oh, it's my pleasure. I'll come back anytime you want. Okay. And of course- I'm busy that day. I'm sorry. This is not a pitch, but you could definitely watch them on YouTube.

2:32:50 Please come join me. And my book is on LelandSklar'sBeard.com. And I do everything.

2:32:56 I'm the mailer.

2:32:57 I print the labels and stuff. So you're not going through any kind of Amazon situation.

2:33:02 Get a personal relationship. You betcha. Till next time, this is Bob Lefsetz.