In The Studio with Redbeard

Category: Classic Rock Interviews

These are the interviews from the most recent editions of the weekly national radio broadcast of In The Studio .

  • Sting- The Soul Cages 35th Anniversary

    Sting- The Soul Cages 35th Anniversary

    We had already done multiple interviews when Sting was in The Police, and now by the time we reconvened, the Chief of Police had released three highly-acclaimed solo albums, The Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985), …Nothing Like the Sun (1987), and The Soul Cages in 1991. By then Sting had lost both parents, the most recent his father, and was clearly wrestling with his star of success and celebrity ascending amidst the pain of personal loss. While that is an inevitable, wholly predictable, nearly universal experience for tens of millions, strangely little exists in Western culture that is readily available to prepare one for it.

    Not since the Beatles had a band exited the international stage at the zenith of their popularity quite like The Police following 1983’s Synchronicity  album and eighteen month world tour, so to say that Police singer/songwriter Sting’s first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, was highly anticipated is quite an understatement. Musical direction-wise it surprised some who did not know Sting’s pre-punk jazz roots at college, but in no way did it disappoint, with “If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free”, “Russians”, and “Fortress Around Your Heart” framed by sophisticated arrangements showcasing the lilting soprano sax of Branford Marsalis. …Nothing Like the Sun  in October 1987 continued that musical direction with “Be Still My Beating Heart”,”Englishman in New York”, and the #7 “We’ll Be Together” resulting in the album’s debut at #1 in the UK, a #9 peak in sales stateside, garnering three Grammy nominations including Album of the Year, and eventually selling an estimated eighteen million copies worldwide.

    For  The Soul Cages, Sting’s second #1-seller in the UK and a Grammy Award winner in 1992 for Best Rock Song with the title track, a new digital-only expanded edition has been released containing remixes, Spanish and Italian vocal singles, live performances, and two covers. The extended remix of “Mad About You” and an exquisitely faithful reading of Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s “Come Down in Time” are included here, the latter with  Sting on acoustic upright bass that’s worth the price of admission.

    In my In The Studio  classic rock interview, Sting covers a lot of ground, including paying his dues pre-Police by playing in cabarets and backing stand-up comedians; the pejorative term “Third World countries” and the conundrum of developing nations; the alarming lack of heroes in our society today, and the failure of politicians to provide leadership; ecology, global warming, and threat of pandemic disease; how fatherhood changed his relationship with his own father; losing both parents at the height of international stardom; his favorite pop songwriter; the Nordic myth that inspired “The Soul Cages”; and the satisfaction Sting derives from writing such timeless songs as “Roxanne”, “Message in a Bottle”,”Every Breath You Take”,”King of Pain”, “All This Time”,”If I Ever Lose My Faith in You”,”Fields of Gold”,” and “Brand New Day”.

    “Basically, misinformation is the most frightening aspect about American culture. People only get the information that confirms their prejudices. The opposing viewpoint isn’t really easy to find.” Sting made that observation to Spin  writer Vic Garbarini, not echoing the conclusions of US intelligence agencies in the last ten years, but rather presciently predicting it in October 1987 in conjunction with Sting’s sophomore solo release …Nothing Like the Sun. –Redbeard

  • David Bowie- Station to Station 50th Anniversary

    David Bowie- Station to Station 50th Anniversary

    “The way you change Music is by changing the music,” David Bowie told me, without even a hint of irony whatsoever, while we discussed  1976’s Station to Station album,  as the Pied Piper of Rock led us once again down another musical path. One of the most revelatory things that I have discovered by interviewing the world’s greatest rock musicians over the last half century is that practically all of them have a distinct period which they would rather not revisit. The reasons for that reluctance are myriad: creative, intra-band struggles, personal issues, health… and not always well documented. What further complicates the discussion is that, as often as not, some of their most acclaimed music can emanate from these difficult times of conflict in the musicians’ lives, and therefore are absolutely crucial to the story of how the music was written and recorded. Such is the backstory to David Bowie’s Station to Station .

    David Bowie completed filming his first foray into acting in Los Angeles in The Man Who Fell to Earth  before commencing recording there for Station to Station. With Bowie’s  albums already numbering in double figures, he had acquired the reputation of the boldest rocker extant, constantly challenging accepted societal norms. With his Ziggy Stardust  character, was he a man, was he a woman…was he even from planet Earth? With the Harlem/Philly Soul-centric Young Americans  which preceded Station to Station, was that the Starman’s landing pad? And then with the gaunt Thin White Duke with the perpetual moontan, was Bowie now rejecting all of that American influence in favor of a Euro-Continental approach?In my classic rock interview In the Studio concentrating on just those questions and those dizzying years, no longer infatuated with soul music as it evolved into Disco but not yet embarked on his pioneering electronica work with Brian Eno in Berlin, David Bowie continued what was to become a hallmark of his entire career, adopting a dramatic new look, an intriguing stage persona, and assembling a white-hot live band of decidedly American players this time, including bandleader guitarist Carlos Alomar and lead guitarist Earl Slick.

    Songs on Station to Station include “Golden Years”,”Stay” (terrific guitars from Alomar and Slick),”TVC 1-5″ ( Bowie said that the unused tune for the Man…Earth soundtrack was about a girl and her relationship with her television),”Wild is the Wind” (as soulful as anything on Young Americans   but without the affectation ), and the title song, often cited by post-punk bands including The Cars, Talking Heads, and Gary Numan as a major influence. My archival conversation here with the late David Bowie encompasses all of that plus much more on “Golden Years” golden anniversary. –Redbeard

  • Styx- Paradise Theatre 45th Anniversary- Tommy Shaw, James Young

    Styx- Paradise Theatre 45th Anniversary- Tommy Shaw, James Young

    Quick, lightning round: if I told you that  forty-five years ago  one of America’s top music acts released a concept album that  identified growing cracks in the foundation of our society and presciently predicted practically everything we find today, who would you guess it was? Bob Dylan? Neil Young? Crosby Stills and Nash? I doubt that Styx would come to mind to many, but that is precisely what Paradise Theatre  was: part lament, part warning, all expressed,  performed, and recorded exceedingly well. And when you hear my guests Styx guitarist James “JY” Young and co-founder/former member Dennis DeYoung discuss the America they were observing in January 1981 on Paradise Theatre, it is disconcerting to realize now how those warnings by and large went unheeded.

    Over the course of four decades interviewing the various members of Styx, it became apparent that, even while ascending to one of America’s most popular bands and selling millions of copies of four consecutive albums between 1977 and 1982, a struggle for artistic direction was occurring among keyboardist/co-founder Dennis DeYoung , Styx guitarists Tommy Shaw and James “JY” Young. It became glaringly obvious when Styx followed 1978’s hard-rocking multi-million seller Pieces of Eight, heavily laden with Shaw and Young rockers, with the album Cornerstone containing the hugely popular ballad “Babe” written and sung by DeYoung.

    What a revelation it was then to find that the band members never actually discussed the elephant in the room until my classic rock interview, which also includes current Styx singer/ keyboardist Lawrence Gowan’s somewhat more objective perspective. Not since their breakthrough The Grand Illusion   had singer/ songwriters DeYoung, Shaw, and JY contributed as equally and effectively as they did on January 1981’s Paradise Theatre,  containing in-concert perennials “Rockin’ the Paradise”,”Too Much Time on My Hands”,”The Best of Times”, “Snowblind”, “Lonely People”, and “Half Penny, Two Penny”. And not surprisingly, the musical alliance yielded the top-selling Styx album ever. Current Styx lifers JY and Shaw, plus DeYoung, screen the American Dream, alternately in and out of focus four and a half decades later at the Paradise Theatre. – Redbeard

  • Steve Winwood- Arc of a Diver 45th Anniversary

    Steve Winwood- Arc of a Diver 45th Anniversary

    When I sat down In the Studio in Autumn 1990 with Steve Winwood to talk about his then new release Refugees of the Heart, he had already established himself with the breakthrough album  Arc of a Diver  ten years prior. Then between those, Steve Winwood released Back in the High Life, one of the biggest albums commercially as well as critically in the Eighties, followed by Roll With It.

    In my in-depth classic rock interview to mark the dual album anniversaries of Arc of a Diver and Refugees of the Heart, the shy quiet-spoken Steve Winwood covers a lot of musical as well as personal ground: eschewing the music business altogether through the mid-Seventies after a misdiagnosed illness at the end of the Traffic days almost killed him; his 1977 under-appreciated solo debut, Steve Winwood,  with “Hold On” and “Time is Running Out”; 1980’s hit “While You See a Chance” and the title song “Arc of a Diver”; Winwood’s long successful collaboration with Texas songwriter Will Jennings; and reconnecting with Traffic mate the late Jim Capaldi to write “One and Only Man”, a Top 20 hit from Refugees of the Heart. –Redbeard

  • Van Morrison- His Band & Street Choir 55th Anniversary

    Van Morrison- His Band & Street Choir 55th Anniversary

    Not even a quarter way into his six decade career, Irish singer/songwriter Van Morrison was already stringing together a series of soon-to-be-classic albums including November 1970’s His Band and Street Choir. This album followed closely on the heels of the revered Astral Weeks and Moondance, with their obvious folk and jazz influences, with a decidedly rhythm’n’blues feel on songs such as the horn-driven “Domino” and “Blue Money”.

    This rare 2012 classic rock interview was conducted in Belfast by the BBC’s intrepid John Bennett. If you are tired of all of the “eyes wide shut” Access Hollywood-type glitz and glam representations of the pop music business, then you really owe it to yourself to listen to this knowing blunt trauma confessional from Van Morrison, who  had a front row seat with Garage Rock grandfathers Them, then an all-access pass to rock’n’roll fame with Bert Berns’ Bang Records and “Brown Eyed Girl”, before reeling off a string of legendary solo albums including Astral Weeks, Moondance, Tupelo Honey, His Band and the Street Choir.
    With Belfast-born Van Morrison’s July 1972 sixth album Saint Dominic’s Preview, the mainstream rock audience finally caught up to the quality jazzy, folksyrhythm’n’blues Morrison had been belting out consistently since critics began lauding his  Astral Weeks four years earlier. When radio listeners heard “Jackie Wilson Said”, “Gypsy”, “Listen to the Lion”, and the title song “Saint Dominic’s Preview”, produced by Ted Templeman with some of San Francisco’s finest studio side musicians including Ronnie Montrose, they rewarded Van Morrison with Top 15 sales, his best seller for almost forty years.-Redbeard

  • The Who- My Generation @60- Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey

    The Who- My Generation @60- Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey

    “In the case of The Who, the thing that comes across for me is that The Who started as a Pop band. Good Pop possibly is the sublime and the ridiculous, the important and the absurd,” opines Pete Townshend looking back on My Generation, released six decades ago and hitting #5 sales in the UK (April 1966 in America, but stiffing just before The Beatles would pretty much single-handedly make the LP format dominant in 1967 with Sgt. Peppers…).

    You know, reading that back after Pete Townshend  defined it to me here In the Studio, we really can just stop right here. I mean, there it is, right? That’s what I have always loved about Pete. “For God’s sake, man!” he exclaims to no one in particular,”It’s right there in front of our collective faces!”  We have In the Studio  The Who’s Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, plus archive comments from the late John Entwistle, in my classic rock interview to mark the.sixtieth (!) anniversary of My Generation.

    As surprising as it may seem, not all famous rock’n’roll musicians are comfortable talking about their past, even involving their times of greatest creative accomplishment, fame, and fortune. The reasons can be myriad and not immediately obvious. Recalling your naive exploits, often at a time barely out your teens, can be awkward from the current perspective of a Rock Elder Statesman. Frequently the songs, albums, and tours are tied inextricably to behind-the-scenes issues of lawsuits, sour business deals, personnel defections and firings, and personal losses which are painful to re-examine. Some former stars whose careers are fading now are loathe to revisit past glories simply because it underscores for them just how far from grace they’ve fallen. And more than one famous rock star simply cannot remember key periods in their lives due to memory blackouts, a frightening and unfortunately permanent result of alcoholism or drug abuse. Pete Townshend of The Who has no such reservations, discussing easily the merits of The Who’s music from 1964’s “I Can’t Explain” right up to their current days, as well as their demerits for the band’s behavior along the way. “(Looking back) It wasn’t all painful, but it was poignant,” Townshend confessed to me.

    As The Who’s recognized “Supreme Creator”, Townshend has assessed their  more than six decades of musical creation and found it to be good. Pete is a delightful, witty, thoughtful, and refreshingly honest conversationalist who can easily and effectively examine The Who’s body of work through a slightly-detached objective eye in my classic rock interview, which only the passage of time plus maturity can provide. -Redbeard

  • Scorpions- Crazy World 35th Anniversary- Klaus Meine, Rudolph Schenker

    Scorpions- Crazy World 35th Anniversary- Klaus Meine, Rudolph Schenker

    Sitting with my guests singer/songwriter Klaus Meine and Rudolph Schenker, Scorpions co-founding guitarist/songwriter,  it was fascinating to be reminded by members of Germany’s  beloved band just how much rock music indeed  had changed this Crazy World by the time of that album’s late 1990 release. And the Scorpions should know better than anyone: they were there, living it every day in just the six short years after the  March 1984 release of Love at First Sting leading up to Crazy World. “We were not proud of our country, and our parents were not proud of our country,” says Scorpions lead singer Klaus Meine. “They had just survived the (Second World) War. So rock music is the way we got out. And starting as young musicians playing English and American music, it was in a way something like an attempt to be part of the world community, to escape a place where you feel this burden.”

    The Scorpions from Hanover Germany had been the decade-long international long shot when their 1982 album Blackout  blew up Top 10 in the US, powered by the #1 Rock radio track “No One Like You”. The Scorpions’ follow-up album Love At First Sting  two years later soared to # 6 on the Billboard album chart with triple platinum sales, while delivering a blitzkreig of rock anthems including “Rock You Like A Hurricane”, “Big City Nights”, and the signature power ballad “Still Loving You”.

    Back in 2020 when I heard that Spotify was introducing podcasts by co-producing one based on the premise that the CIA wrote the Scorpions 1991 international hit “Wind of Change”, I literally giggled out loud. “What a hoot!” I thought. “They’ll have to get the song’s composer, Scorpions lead singer Klaus Meine, to tell The New Yorker reporter Patrick Raddan Keefe the same story Klaus told me over twenty years ago, about being invited to meet and dine with Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev in Summer 1990 when Scorpions played the Moscow Music and Peace Festival, which inspired Meine to write “Wind of Change” for the next Scorpions album, Crazy World.” But when I realized that podcast host Keefe was taking this CIA conspiracy premise seriously by expanding it to a series of eight episodes, and talking to everybody except  Meine or the Scorpions, my bemusement quickly turned to annoyance.

    “Sometimes I felt like a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist,” (quote) Keefe told Rolling Stone magazine. Well, as the late poet/activist Maya Angelou once said, “When people tell you who they are, BELIEVE THEM.”Rudolph Schenker (L) with Klaus Meine

    But the real story is how the Scorpions overcame potentially insurmountable barriers of distance, language, lack of management, lead singer Klaus Meine’s desperate throat surgery, the notorious East German Stasi secret police, and the Berlin Wall to be key players with Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev’s dismantling of Communism in the Soviet Eastern Bloc. Lead singer/ songwriter Klaus Meine and guitarist/songwriter Rudolph Schenker share how rock’n’roll helped the Scorpions escape the uber guilt of Germany’s Nazi past and build a future.”We played Leningrad and the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1988 and 1989, one hundred thousand Russians for each of two days in Lenin Stadium…When we were growing up in Germany, the Russians were the ‘bad guys’. But in 1989 there was such a feeling of hope…We told the Russians, ‘Our parents came with tanks. We come with guitars.” So were people from outside the Scorpions brought in to work on 1990’s Crazy World ? Absolutely, but the last I checked, veteran song doctor Jim Vallance and producer Keith Olsen were never with the CIA. The song “Wind of Change”, which went to #1 in Germany, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, France, Norway, Holland, #2 in the UK and Belgium, and #4 US, was captured perfectly in the zeitgeist of the time by Scorpions lead singer Klaus Meine.

    The Moscow hotel near Gorky Park where the Scorpions stayed while playing the1989 Moscow Music Peace Festival, met with Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev, and inspired Klaus Meine to write “Wind of Change” was named, ironically, The Ukrainer. Something tells me that since current Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, that hotel no longer has that name. –Redbeard

  • Emerson, Lake, & Palmer- Carl Palmer, the late Greg Lake & Keith Emerson

    Emerson, Lake, & Palmer- Carl Palmer, the late Greg Lake & Keith Emerson

    Emerson, Lake, & Palmer released in late November 1970 was Progressive Rock’s first supergroup, owing to the progressive pedigrees of keyboardist Keith Emerson (The Nice), cherub-faced choirboy Greg Lake (King Crimson), and percussionist Carl Palmer (The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Atomic Rooster). Melding the intricate music, chops, and complex arrangements of classical composers, while substituting grand piano and the electronic synthesizer for the ubiquitous electric guitar, was challenging stuff both for a rock trio as well as the listener then. The degree of gusto with which Emerson, Lake, & Palmer embraced this bold experiment is still breathtaking to behold fully fifty-five years later.

    Prior to Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, if you had asked any follower of the white hot London music scene in 1969  to wager on who would emerge as the most innovative bandleader, the smart money would have been on Jimmy Page’s Led Zeppelin, King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, and the featured soloist fronting a three piece called The Nice, the impressive keyboard player Keith Emerson. On piano and organ prior to forming Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, Keith Emerson really had no peer then performing in British colleges and clubs, and he was among the very first to embrace Bob Moog’s unwieldy electronic synthesizer, determined to explore the musical possibilities of the daunting electronic monster.(Carl Palmer (l), Keith Emerson (c), Greg Lake (r)

    With The Nice, Keith Emerson quickly developed a reputation for dazzling live audiences with breathtaking keyboard virtuosity on progressive rock material that seemed light years beyond “Be Bop a Lula”, so when Emerson surprised everybody by announcing his departure in order to team with King Crimson’s bass guitarist/singer/songwriter Greg Lake and Crazy World of Arthur Brown/Atomic Rooster percussionist Carl Palmer, the music press saw Emerson, Lake, & Palmer as prog rock’s first supergroup. Carl Palmer and the late Greg Lake tell the tale of the groundbreaking 1970 debut containing “Knife Edge”,”Take a Pebble”, and the hit “Lucky Man”, plus the ahead-of-its-time opus Tarkus in 1971, with archival comments from the late Keith Emerson and Greg Lake. –Redbeard

  • George Harrison- All Things Must Pass 55th Anniversary

    George Harrison- All Things Must Pass 55th Anniversary

    The first Beatle to fly solo to the peak position high atop the sales charts was not John Lennon nor Paul McCartney. In November 1970  All Things Must Pass  from  George Harrison, the self-described “dark horse”,  alluding to the youngest, quietest of the four moptops, it was in fact Harrison  who surprised everybody by becoming the most popular maker of solo music for the first five years after the Beatles called it a career.

    Harrison sussed that notable feat fifty-five years ago the hard way: with the three-record set All Things Must Pass. George Harrison, “The Quiet Beatle”, certainly got tongues wagging with the sheer copious amount of solo music as well as the quality of many individual songs on All Things Must Pass. George Harrison talks easily in my classic rock interview about “What Is Life?”,”My Sweet Lord”, and “Isn’t It a Pity” from the triple LP massive (and massively popular) All Things Must Pass;”Dark Horse”,”Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)”  “Blow Away”, and the tribute to his mate John Lennon with “All Those Years Ago” to mark All Things Must Pass from the late George Harrison on its fifty-fifth anniversary. – Redbeard