In The Studio with Redbeard

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  • Pat Benatar- Precious Time 45th Anniversary

    Pat Benatar- Precious Time 45th Anniversary

    One of the blessings that comes with maturity is the confidence to tell the unvarnished truth, and in my classic rock interview to mark  her #1-selling third album Precious Time, Pat Benatar makes a series of eyebrow-raising revelations here In the Studio.

    “It went platinum (1,000,000 sales) in thirteen days,” Pat Benatar states matter-of-factly about her explosive third album Precious Time, while she and hubby/musical director Neil Giraldo reminisce In the Studio. It headed rapidly to the top-selling perch in America by August 1981. There are some powerful perennials on her best-charting collection, including the timeless tortured love rockers “Promises in the Dark” and “Fire and Ice”. No doubt delivered with complete conviction, Pat was just attempting to rebound from a bad first marriage as she was falling in love with her new guitar player. But the real story wasn’t between the sheets.

    “You gotta understand, I was twenty-seven years old. I came off a few years of a very bad relationship, was around a lot of girlfriends who went through hell with (abusive) men. You have to understand that I grew up with the Women’s Movement. I was ready to stretch and flex. I was happenin’ ! (chuckles) So I would inflict serious injury if a guy gave me a lot of crap.” When husband Neil Giraldo recoils in mock horror, Pat quickly adds,”But I’ve mellowed, you see. But I’ve learned to put the glove on the fist. Except I always think that I’m big!” she blurted out in laughter,”I always think that I’m big, I do! When you’re a little person, when you got pushed around on the playground, that makes you into something else that big people don’t have to deal with. And it wasn’t limited to men, it was people in general.”

    It is important at this point to remind you of just how much the business of pop music has changed over the Precious Time of forty-five summers since Pat, identified by the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock’n’Roll  as “the most popular female rocker in the Eighties”, earned that accolade. “That was when we were doing twelve, even fourteen months (touring). During In the Heat of the Night  we did fourteen months in a row. It was nuts. But that was old way. That’s what you did. There was no MTV. You had to expose what you were doing to everybody and that’s how you did it. I look back on it nowadays and I think, ‘Oh man, that purple zebra leotard. What was I thinking ?!” According to Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, those who were supposedly on her management and record company team chose sexploitation as a business plan. “Redbeard, you gotta understand, in ’81 the record company was airbrushing ( her photos) ,” Neil says exasperatedly,”They were airbrushing…”

    “My clothes off !” Benatar blurts out.

    “You’re talking about management and the record company,” Giraldo continued,”that she really couldn’t do anything! We were trying to make records, and they were telling us what we can and can’t do, and would play both ends against the middle.”

    “What happened was that I had a record company and a management group who refused to be open-minded,” Pat pointed out.”It was a constant battle with them. I was already gone (figuratively) by the time this record came out. By the time this came out, I was already moving to another place. Except that they weren’t letting me. And at that time they still had control, they had contractual control. I didn’t have a choice at that time. And that was when I said, ‘You can do anything you want, but you can’t make me make records. And if you don’t let me make the kinds of records that I want to make, I WON”T make them anymore.” –Redbeard

  • Genesis- Invisible Touch @40- Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, Phil Collins

    Genesis- Invisible Touch @40- Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, Phil Collins

    The fortieth anniversary of Genesis’ biggest album in their long fifty year+ career, Invisible Touch  (worldwide sales estimated at 15,000,000) has arrived, so we convened Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, and Phil Collins here In the Studio  to discuss the blockbuster sales behind “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”, “Land of Confusion”, “In Too Deep”, “Throwing It All Away”, and “Invisible Touch”.

    Between 1980 and 1986, the British trio Genesis released a series of four consecutive hit albums, each more successful than its predecessor by as many as five times, which include 1981’s Abacab  and 1986’s Invisible Touch. Because drummer/singer/songwriter Phil Collins had a parallel solo career take off during that time, revisiting the critical reviews  from many respected music writers in that period reveals a prevailing assumption that Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks unwittingly (if not unwillingly) were somehow led by Collins in a more mainstream pop direction. However, the simple facts just don’t bear out that inference, as all three members explain here.

    The title song “Abacab” (named nonsensically after the three musical sections “a”, ‘b”, and “c” ) was nowhere near the pop mainstream. “Man on the Corner ” was indeed a hit, but in it Collins addresses the issue of homeless people and society’s reluctance to acknowledge them or, in many cases, feel any responsibility for finding solutions… not exactly your typical pop banality. “Land of Confusion” going Top Five as a single says a lot more about the changing mainstream tastes in 1986  rather than any musical agenda by the band, and the #3 hit “Tonight,Tonight,Tonight” from the astonishing 15 million-seller Invisible Touch  effectively silenced any silly debate about pop vs. rock by running over nine minutes long!

    Moreover , it wasn’t just Collins who was branching out. By the time his 1985 third solo album No Jacket Required   made Phil deservedly a star in his own right, Rutherford and Banks had each done no less than two solo efforts apiece. Instead of siphoning off creativity and diluting Genesis of strong material, the respective solo albums clearly inspired the group to lift any self-imposed restrictions to the Genesis sound, as you will hear in my classic rock interview In The Studio. – Redbeard 

  • Dave Matthews Band- Crash 30th Anniversary

    Dave Matthews Band- Crash 30th Anniversary

    After meeting and interviewing Dave Matthews during the 1996 Horde Festival tour just as their second studio album, Crash, was being released, none of the subsequent successes of the Dave Matthews Band since then has surprised me. Impressed? Absolutely, but not surprised. Sure, the fun-loving good time swing in their first big hit “What Would You Say”, with the Olympian harmonica solo from Blues Traveler’s John Popper on the Dave Matthews Band’s second album Under the Table and Dreaming, got my immediate attention in 1994.

    But it was the musical sophistication of “Rhyme and Reason”, the sublime “Satellite”, and the inventive arrangement featuring woodwinds and violin on “Ants Marching” that announced that this crack musical collective had already passed “Go”, collected the $200, and never missed a beat. Then Crash sold a headspinning 7,000,000 copies of the Spring 1996 release containing the lazy sunny day chestnut “So Much to Say”, the furious funk groove of “Too Much”, Crash Into Me”, and the “look Ma, no hands” band serious chops workout of “Drive In Drive Out”. Dave Matthews was already a wise resident of the world with a maturity that belied his tender age when we had the chance to talk  backstage. But even Dave himself could not have predicted that the DMB would become the first band in music history to debut six consecutive studio albums at #1 sales on Billboard!!!

    With the 30th anniversary of Crash, we dedicate this edition of In the Studio to band co-founder/saxophonist LeRoi Moore who passed away in 2008 from complications from an off-road ATV accident. An incalculable loss for music; heartbreaking for the band, family, and friends. – Redbeard

  • Emerson, Lake, and Palmer- Tarkus @55

    Emerson, Lake, and Palmer- Tarkus @55

    Listening now fifty-five years later to the Steven Wilson surround mix of the epic title song Tarkus, Emerson Lake and Palmer’s second studio album released in June 1971, is a revelation. Tarkus followed quickly after their stunning 1970 debut, with Greg Lake’s voice delicately yet nimbly bounding along to Keith Emerson’s piano runs, making it crystal clear that Emerson Lake and Palmer were much less “Be Bop a Lula” in their melodic grandeur and much more “Andrew Lloyd Weber”. Here is the story of progressive rock’s first supergroup in their own words regarding Tarkus, a top ten seller on Billboard  in America and a dizzying #1 seller in the UK.

    In 1971 I borrowed the debut album Emerson, Lake, and Palmer from a buddy, and was fascinated by the epic “Take a Pebble” featuring Greg Lake’s choirboy voice, Carl Palmer’s fantastic drum technique, and Keith Emerson’s impressive ability on a variety of keyboards including the new electronic invention, the Moog synthesizer. ELP were not so much about willfully breaking the unspoken rules of rock’n’roll as they were about boldly expanding the boundaries of it.

    Recalling Tarkus, the second Emerson, Lake, and Palmer album, allow me to share a personal memoir. In Summer 1971 there was a college bar not far from the local campus on the main street of  Findlay, Ohio where the “townies” congregated, just a safe haven for the newly-legal-age hippies to get a cold beer without fear of being hassled by rednecks. There was no room or budget in the narrow bar for live music, just a jukebox. Up until then every jukebox I had encountered was stocked with the Top 40 hits of the day, but this one was special. Someone had loaded up this baby with cutting-edge progressive rock that we couldn’t find on the radio dial, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young’s “Ohio” backed with “Find the Cost of Freedom” barely a year after the shocking killing of four fellow students at nearby Kent State University. But when somebody slipped a quarter in and punched up a new band called Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and their “Knife Edge” and “Lucky Man” two-sided single, that ‘box would rock!

    Photo by Alan Messer/REX_Shutterstock (44517f)
    KEITH EMERSON, GREG LAKE AND CARL PALMER
    – 1973

    Here is the story in their own words of progressive rock’s first supergroup from (left to right) Greg (who died in  December 2016), Keith (also gone, at age 71), and Carl In the Studio. –Redbeard

  • Bryan Adams- 18 ‘Til I Die 30th Anniversary

    Bryan Adams- 18 ‘Til I Die 30th Anniversary

    Bryan Adams’ seventh studio album 18 ‘Til I Die was a #1 seller in the UK and Top Five sales in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The international popularity was driven by hits “The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me is You”, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman”, and the title song. This point thirty years ago, however, was also the first indication for Bryan Adams of a bizarre syndrome peculiar to American media whereby, in spite of over a decade of prior multi-million US album sales, 18 ‘Til I Die peaked on the Billboard sales chart at a perplexing #31.

    This baffling reaction by US media gatekeepers, particularly latter twentieth century rock radio programmers, was first pointed out to me by The Edge of U2 while conversing about that band’s late Eighties road movie, Rattle and Hum. The Edge pointed out a long-standing mistrust by  music writers of such early pop music idols as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley “…going off to Hollywood and never coming back.” So apparently, Bryan Adams’ original sin was to include, on his previous album Waking Up the Neighbours (packed with no less than a dozen flat-out rockers), a single ballad,”Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” that happened to run under the credits at the end of a hit chick flick that year. MTV played the video in saturation airplay because it had scenes from the blockbuster Kevin Costner film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Everyone benefited from this cross-marketing, by the way: North American rock radio played six great rockers from that album on the way to record high ratings, Bryan’s record company had a #1 seller worldwide, MTV had record ratings, & the movie company broke box office ticket sales records. So what p0ssibly could someone complain about?

    But when the next Bryan Adams studio album 18 ‘Til I Die  came out in June 1996, US rock radio programmers decided, in spite of the music actually on the album to the contrary, to brand Bryan strictly as a love song balladeer. Not rock enough, not alternative enough, not cool enough. “And don’t confuse me with the facts, all those millions of people in all of those other countries buying 18 ‘Til I Die are not in my town, so we are different here in the Greater Tri-State Area. See?” Yeah, whatever.

    So then, as much to remind everyone what an enormous contributor his music had been to the preceding decade of popular music, Bryan Adams performed on MTV Unplugged, which we also discuss in detail here In the Studio in my classic rock interview. Included were brilliant new arrangements of “Summer of ’69”, “Cuts Like a Knife”, “Heaven”, a stunning reworking of “I’m Ready”, a medley “If You Want to Be Bad You Gotta Be Good/Let’s Make a Night to Remember”, and a song composed specifically for Unplugged, “Back to You”. –Redbeard

  • Metallica- Load 30th- James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett

    Metallica- Load 30th- James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett


    Metallica have reissued Load with a 2025 remastering, which really makes an audible improvement on songs “Ain’t My Bitch”, “Until It Sleeps”, “King Nothing”, “Hero of the Day”, “House That Jack Built”, and the biggest sonic upgrades on “Bleeding Me” and “Mama Said”. Check it out here while James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett discuss Metallica’s Load thirtieth anniversary with me In the Studio.

    “He nicknamed me ‘Dr. No’ ,” chuckles Metallica lead singer/songwriter James Hetfield, regarding their early recording collaboration with producer Bob Rock. “Every suggestion he made I’d say ‘No’. Over time we learned to think about his suggestions…”.
    “And then say ‘No’,” deadpans Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett with a comedic rimshot. After the superstar-making 1991 “Black Album”, it took  five long years for the members of Metallica to catch their collective breath sufficiently to venture a follow-up, Load, in June 1996. Even pre-internet widespread use, the response in popularity and the attendant responsibilities to be available to a voracious worldwide fanbase left precious little time for writing and recording new Metallica music. 

    After almost a decade of struggle, capturing Metallica’s heavy metal sonic fury in the studio had eluded them. The tragic death of original bass player Cliff Burton, and being rock’s maladjusted poster children had made Metallica insular, and for good reason. Of course, selling an unbelievable 16  million U.S. copies of their first attempt working with hard rock veteran producer Bob Rock on 1991’s phenomenal  “Black Album” raised even the notoriously obstinate band’s confidence level to Def Con 4 for the follow up, Load  in June 1996. Hear all about it here in a refreshingly honest interview with Hetfield and Hammett while you jam at lease-breaking levels. –Redbeard

  • Rod Stewart- Every Picture Tells a Story 55th Anniversary

    Rod Stewart- Every Picture Tells a Story 55th Anniversary

    “If you would’ve told me in 1970 that I would have a #1 hit in America…well, all around the world, actually…I’d have said ‘Forget it!’ ” admits Rod Stewart dismissively about  Every Picture Tells a Story, “especially since ‘Maggie May’ almost didn’t make the record!” Now that’s just one revelation in my charming classic rock interview commemorating Rod Stewart’s breakthrough Every Picture Tells a Story in May 1971, which also contained “Mandolin Wind”, impeccable choices of covers from Bob Dylan (“Tomorrow is a Long Time”), Motown (“I Know I’m Losing You”), Tim Hardin (“Reason to Believe”), and the slammin’ autobiographical “Every Picture Tells a Story”.

    When the Jeff Beck Group made their American debut at New York City’s Fillmore East, no one in the audience trying to follow young lead singer Rod Stewart, hiding behind the backline amps  due to major stage fright, could have imagined that the raspy-throated rooster-haired Englishman would become an international star just three years later with his third solo album, 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story. There are so many wonderful tales behind the songs, the various musicians, and the recordings on Every Picture Tells a Story, and Rod Stewart does a marvelous job sharing them  all here in one of my favorite classic rock interviews. Plus Rod intimates some colorful, often hilarious stories about the legendary band he also fronted at the time, The Faces.

    In our critical first five episodes  back in 1988, In the Studio scored something of a major “get” for an upstart fledgling rookie on the crowded national weekly syndicated radio sweepstakes: an hour-long visit with superstar singer Rod Stewart, to explore his breakthrough 1971 solo effort Every Picture Tells a Story,  something that the Rodster was not known to do in the past. We agreed to meet at co-manager Randy Philip’s Beverly Hills house where, during the actual interview, we were interrupted by the delivery of a new shiny black Corvette convertible for Rod.  He admitted that it was the first American-made car that he ever owned (after the interview concluded, I gave the car dealer a ride back to his Beverly Hills office, alas in my non-descript rental!). If you listen carefully, at times you can hear Rod’s then-twelve year old blonde-haired daughter Kimberly watching television in an adjacent room while her dad charmed me for hours  at his storytelling best about this album, ranked at #171 on Rolling Stone magazine’s “Top 500 Albums of All Time”. And ladies & gentlemen, Rod Stewart was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth. This despite the fact that at his first record company meeting, “They didn’t like me clothes, me nose, or me hair.” Upon the royal announcement, Sir Rod said: “I’ve led a wonderful life and have had a tremendous career thanks to the generous support of the great British public. This monumental honour has topped it off and I couldn’t ask for anything more. I thank Her Majesty and promise to ‘wear it well’.“ – Redbeard

  • Peter Gabriel- So 40th Anniversary

    Peter Gabriel- So 40th Anniversary

    So here we are four decades after So by Peter Gabriel was released, and I am no less enamored of every song sung, every note played, than I was the first time I heard it. Only more so. Very close to the perfect album for millions, So by Peter Gabriel has remained a “desert island disc” essential to so many of us ever since its May 1986 release. Long time fans knew Gabriel not only from his many eclectic solo albums and mesmerizing, quirky MTV videos, but even further back as the enigmatic original lead singer/lyricist with progressive rock pioneers Genesis. Peter Gabriel joins me In the Studio to discuss how the worldwide mainstream pop stardom which followed the release of So affected him in so many ways.

    It was not until stumbling into the broadcast media/entertainment business that I got to witness, up close and personally, individual musicians who have been given enormous powers of influence through the modern phenomenon of celebrity, granted by the very people who they entertain. Case in point is my classic rock interview:  ex-Genesis lead singer Peter Gabriel had a cult following after four studio solo albums, with his most influential creation being the ground-breaking “Shock the Monkey” video. But with the May 1986 release of So (#1 UK, #2 U.S., over 5 million sold; 4 Grammy nominations including Album and Record of the Year for the #1 hit “Sledgehammer”), Peter Gabriel was vaulted into international pop stardom with all of its attendant door-opening, barrier-eliminating amenities. Like certain other entertainers who had reached elite status in the fame game, Gabriel chose to use his newly-found powers for good  through several international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Peter’s own World Music charity WOMAD, and a death row/capital punishment project (watch the film The Exonerated).

    When the rock critics who parse such things as musical innovation, vision,  and authenticity perfectly agree with mass popular taste, a remarkable thing happens, as Peter Gabriel found out with So everywhere at once in May 1986: you become the saving grace of progressive rock music while simultaneously occupying the mainstream pop high ground, a once-in-a-generation feat. Because of “Red Rain”, “Sledgehammer”,” In Your Eyes”, “Don’t Give Up” with Kate Bush, “Big Time”, and the meditative tone poem “Mercy Street”, you would have to reach all the way back to Dark Side of the Moon to find anything even remotely comparable. Peter Gabriel is my special guest for this big time fortieth anniversary. In one of the most personal, powerful, thought- provoking interviews ever in the  history of the In The Studio rockumentary series, Peter Gabriel reveals candidly why he agrees with Jesus Christ in the Book of Luke that “to whom much is given, much is required.” –Redbeard

  • Bonnie Raitt- Luck of the Draw 35th Anniversary

    Bonnie Raitt- Luck of the Draw 35th Anniversary

    Prior to release of her tenth album (!) Nick of Time in early 1989, and the equally sublime Luck of the Draw  two years later, Bonnie Raitt was a bit of a puzzle. For two decades she had been a critic’s darling, starting with her 1971 debut (four stars); Give It Up  in 1972 (four and a half stars); 1973’s Takin’ My Time, and Streetlights the following year (again,  four out of five stars). Bonnie Raitt did everything musically, and every American style, well except write prolifically, but her superb ear for finding excellent songs and players meant that she didn’t have to. Yet it is probably fair to say that prior to Nick of Time, after almost twenty years  of recording and constant touring, Raitt’s best-known recording was her 1977 cover of Del Shannon’s 1961 hit “Runaway”.

    Nine albums’ worth of modest sales and little songwriting royalties required Raitt to tour long and hard throughout the Seventies and deep into the Eighties just to keep new strings on her National steel guitar, so the  well-known rigors of the road understandably took their toll. Not coincidentally, however, Bonnie’s first post-recovery album Nick of Time,  released in March 1989, sold five times more than all previous nine albums combined, thanks to such songs as John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love”, Jerry Lynn Williams’ “Real Man” and the deadly “I Will Not Be Denied”, the gorgeous shimmering “Cry on My Shoulder”, and two terrific Bonnie Hayes compositions,”Love Letter” and reggae-inflected “Have a Heart”.

    When Nick of Time  rose steadily, eventually becoming the #1-selling album in the US a year after release, no one was more surprised than Bonnie Raitt. When it also won three Grammy Awards including the coveted Album of the Year Grammy in 1990, no one was more appreciative. Nick of Time  rests at #492 on Rolling Stone  magazine’s most recent Top 500 Albums of All Time list. She thanked everyone in the best possible way by following  it up in May 1991 with the even more successful Luck of the Draw  (over nine million sold, her biggest ever) containing the huge hit “Something to Talk About”, the groove thang duet with veteran Texan Delbert McClinton on another Grammy winner,”Good Man, Good Woman”, and the sublime “I Can’t Make You Love Me”, racking up another three Grammys. And Bonnie Raitt’s impeccable sense of picking just the right songs has continued twice in the last few years, including on 2012’s solid Slipstream  around the time of her Rock Hall induction, and 2016’s excellent Dig in Deep,  both highly recommended. As you will hear in my 1990 interview, Bonnie name-checks two Texas collaborators sadly now passed, Stephen Bruton and Jerry Lynn Williams. -Redbeard

  • In the Studio 1988-2018: Thirty Years of the Greatest Rock Stories Ever Told

    In the Studio 1988-2018: Thirty Years of the Greatest Rock Stories Ever Told

    Enter the name of any band, musician, album title, music style, year, or place in the search box in the upper right portion of the homepage, & then click to find thirty years of Redbeard’s exclusive interviews and live recordings!