In The Studio with Redbeard

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  • Sting- The Last Ship- pt 1

    Sting- The Last Ship- pt 1

    Here In the Studio we were both honored and thrilled in Fall 2013  to be able to share Sting hosting a very personal discussion of his family as well as their cultural history, retold as fable in the bold multi-dimensional album and 2014 Broadway musical The Last Ship. Centered in the shipyard of the Northern England seaport city of Walls End/Newcastle, where “your casket is sealed with a riveter’s gun…”, Sting  composed at that time his first original new music in a decade. Sting explained here in part one that his best-selling 2005 memoir Broken Music, followed by the record-setting 2007-08 Police reunion tour (the third largest in concert history), left his creative tank empty and his muse AWOL. Sting’s career then was not unlike the real life cruise ship Costa Concordia: massive, gleaming, yet run aground and listing heavily on its side.

    At the close of the twenty-first century’s first decade, Sting was longing for a rising tide which would lift him up and right his creative course, and he discovered that in fact it was only he that had anchored his musical vessel. The former chief of Police found that  he was immersed in very personal inspiration reaching back to the Soul Cages in 1990 following the death of his father and, as such, Sting just had to give himself permission to get out of his own way. 

    “Well, you know that I have total freedom to do whatever whim takes me,” Sting admitted. “And in the end you end up like a curator. You say, ‘Oh, I’d like that in my museum. And that, and that, and that.’ And you mix and match, and I think that I’m pretty good at creating a synthesis of different disparate elements, and hopefully make something new. I’m not a folk musician. I’m not a jazz musician. I like to try and create a hybrid, which for me is where the creative spark is. I’m not there to be steeped in tradition, that’s not what I do. I’m much more of a gadfly. I like sparks flying. And the results are unpredictable, and not always successful, but I think it’s worth having the experiment. So  that’s what my job is- to mix things up a bit.” Listen here to Sting in part one of two of The Last Ship.  –Redbeard

  • Crowded House- I Got You- America 2010

    Crowded House- I Got You- America 2010

    This song “I Got You” was done in 1980 by New Zealand band Split Enz, who started their career by dressing in such bizarre  garish make-up that would make KISS look like Lady Gaga. Split Enz was led by Tim Finn and younger brother Neil, who went on to Australia and eventually Los Angeles as Crowded House. Here is Crowded House ( sans Tim, who has some health issues ) during their 2010 North American tour reprising ” I Got You”.  –Redbeard

  • Boston 50th Anniversary- Tom Scholz

    Boston 50th Anniversary- Tom Scholz

    When we scored a major coup getting Tom Scholz and Brad Delp  as guests for In the Studio  episode #10 telling the story of the Boston  1976  debut, Scholz had already earned the reputation as the “Howard Hughes of Rock” because of his technical wizardry and notorious reclusiveness. My first conversation with both came during a break at rehearsal for Boston’s highly-touted return to touring in 1987, and adding to the understandable teething problems from being off the boards as a working band for about seven years was the fact that Tom Scholz was in considerable chronic lower back pain. Standing on concrete for 8-10 hours a day at rehearsal with a twenty-five pound Les Paul guitar hanging off his shoulder didn’t help matters, either. So Tom’s initial responses were polite but reflected that his focus was elsewhere.

    A year before releasing what quickly became the biggest selling debut album in music history, the band Boston did not even exist. In 1976 Tom Scholz’s seven year basement tapes would emerge out of nowhere to re-write the record books on popularity and profits. The Cinderella story of Scholz and Boston tends to be reduced by some to astronomical numbers (over 17 million sold and that number is soft), which may seem appropriate for a brainiac M.I.T. mechanical engineering graduate. In this classic rock interview, Tom clearly explains that he never got into music to be a rock star. While his first time at bat resulted in the grandest of slams, the subsequent releases from this musical mad scientist would unrealistically and unfairly be compared to Boston’s record-setting first release (only recently surpassed by Appetite for Destruction from Guns’n’Roses ). ( The late Boston singer Brad Delp at Hard Rock Café, Dallas in Summer 1987 )

    During that first interview Brad Delp sensed that his musical partner was not elaborating as much as I would have liked, and the late Boston lead singer did his best to supplement the story, something for which I am forever grateful. Several subsequent interviews found Tom feeling much better and learning that I was not going to do a hatchet job on him as others had in the past, and over the years he gave me some wonderfully open and honest insights into the music business . –Redbeard 

  • Joe Satriani- Crystal Planet 20th Anniversary

    Joe Satriani- Crystal Planet 20th Anniversary

    Ten years after redefining what the guitar composer/ performer could be with 1987’s Surfing with the Alien,  Joe Satriani had come to a crossroads in his career and knew that he needed a second act. He delivered in a big way in 1998 with Crystal Planet, and I’ll let AllMusic.com’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine make my case: “Joe Satriani always stood apart from the legions of guitar virtuosos who surfaced in the late ’80s, largely because he had a sharper ear than his peers…Recording with longtime bassist Stuart Hamm and drummer Jeff Campitelli, Crystal Planet finds the guitarist taking more chances than ever…It’s his finest all-instrumental effort since Surfing with the Alien .”  Here we have Joe Satriani joining me In the Studio  along with his band for an in-depth interview, songs “Crystal Planet”,”Lights of Heaven“, and “Raspberry Jam Delta V” from the album, and live in studio performances of “Ceremony” and “House Full of Bullets“. – Redbeard 

  • Lynyrd Skynyrd feat. Ed King- Sweet Home Alabama- Dallas 1993

    Lynyrd Skynyrd feat. Ed King- Sweet Home Alabama- Dallas 1993

    Ed King (l), Gary Rossington (c), Johnny Van Zant (r) of Lynyrd Skynyrd with me In the Studio  performing “Sweet Home Alabama” acoustically in front of a small invited audience at Q102 Dallas, Spring 1993. Ed told me that the guitar solo for his song came to him in a dream. King passed away  from cancer after undergoing a heart transplant successfully in 2011. Ed King was 68. –Redbeard

     

  • Lynyrd Skynyrd Guitarist Ed King Dies at 68

    Lynyrd Skynyrd Guitarist Ed King Dies at 68

    We are very sad to report that original Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Ed King, the only original member who did not grow up in Jacksonville Florida but was a Southern Californian they met when he was in the Strawberry Alarm Clock, died at his home in Nashville August 22. Ed King was 68 and had been hospitalized recently suffering from lung cancer. He and his wife told me as far back as the mi-1990s that Ed had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and at one point King was on a list for a heart transplant, but doctors decided to treat his condition with a drug protocol instead. Eventually King did have the heart transplant in 2011.
    In addition to this interview with Ed discussing his earliest days with Lynyrd Skynyrd, there are links below to additional exclusive interviews which he shared with me here In the Studio  over the years. –Redbeard 

  • Hard+Heavy Box- Deep Purple, Whitesnake, KISS, Bad Company, Heart, Judas Priest, Boston

    Hard+Heavy Box- Deep Purple, Whitesnake, KISS, Bad Company, Heart, Judas Priest, Boston

    When entities outside of the rock world try to define it, I usually hold my breath and cover my eyes, but in 2008 the folks at Time- Life   did a pretty impressive job collecting hard rock genre-defining classics from Deep Purple, Whitesnake, KISS, Bad Company, Heart, Judas Priest, Boston, Ted Nugent, and many more in a nine CD box set Hard + Heavy.  I asked Roger Glover and Ian Gillan, David Coverdale, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, Paul Rodgers, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Rob Halford, Tom Scholz, and Ted Nugent each to share their respective “Rock’n’Roll Fantasy” and each agreed to “Shout It Out Loud” here In the Studio.  –Redbeard

  • Billy Joel- Captain Jack- Long Island 7-81

    Billy Joel- Captain Jack- Long Island 7-81

    People that have not been in Billy Joel’s corner since the days of The Hassles and Cold Spring Harbor  and Piano Man,  the latter album released November 1973, truly cannot appreciate the depth of affection millions feel for this guy. But those lucky few who packed Spark’s Saloon to the rafters in Huntington out on Long Island  on a hot July night back in 1981 understood that it was a favorite son coming home to check in, throwing an anchor over the side of the battleship of superstardom that had set sail with him aboard four years earlier with The Stranger, to sing and play the song which had actually sealed his original Columbia Records recording deal, “Captain Jack”.  –Redbeard

  • Aretha Franklin: a Fond Memoir

    Aretha Franklin: a Fond Memoir

    The tributes and testaments started even before official word was issued that Aretha Franklin had passed away. Knowing that I have interviewed so many of the greatest musicians of the last half century, more than one news outlet  contacted me looking for a possible recorded interview that they could excerpt, but I never had the honor of talking with Aretha Franklin ( maybe it was just as well: she was notoriously difficult with male interviewers, and a few years ago I watched her bemused look as normally capable tv talk host Tavis Smiley made a fool of himself gushing over her on his PBS show ). But I did get to experience Ms. Franklin electrify a room…a very very big room… jam-packed with thousands of very  big titles, wallets, and egos to match, all to launch a very big idea back in the second week of  September 2000, XM Satellite Radio.

    You see, a year before XM made history by actually making the 100+ subscription radio channels available in September 2001, an introductory gala was held for national press, politicians, and Wall Street investors at Washington DC’s cavernous Union Station at the foot of Capitol Hill headlining Aretha Franklin, and so I asked three of the original XM brain trust at the pioneering organization charged with getting the “right” performer about how the selection was made. “Choosing the Queen of Soul was easy,” said Lon Levin, XM Satellite Radio co-founder. “I have a fond memory of that night watching her with Lee Abrams and Steely Dan/ Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter. She was the greatest and we were fortunate that she shared her gift with us that evening.” Original XM EVP/ Content and Programming Lee Abrams recalls, “It was a group decision. We wanted someone such as Aretha Franklin who crossed format barriers and was timeless, a performer who fit the XM vibe perfectly. Who made the shortlist? She did.”

    The logistics for advancing the date for Aretha Franklin’s appearance fell to a cadre of XM executives much more accustomed to schmoozing Wall Street bankers and Detroit Big Three automakers than a Detroit show band. “Just like John Madden, Aretha didn’t fly,” explains original XM VP/ Operations Dave Logan. “For the gig, she rolled in by buses caravan style from Bloomfield Hills MI. XM CFO Heinz Stubblefield had to sign off on a withdrawal of $60,000 in cash, and Gary Hahn had the pleasure of delivering the briefcase to Aretha’s hotel suite.”

    No doubt Ms. Franklin knew all too well that she was a single businesswoman operating in a heavily male dominated entertainment industry, and The Queen wanted the members of her court to know first hand who buttered their biscuit, according to Logan. “You see, Aretha Franklin personally paid each member of her band in cash after the gig, complete with any critique of the individual musician’s performance that night.” R-e-s-p-e-c-t, y’all! – Redbeard

  • Billy Joel- Billy the Kid- UConn 12-76

    Billy Joel- Billy the Kid- UConn 12-76

    “From a town known as Oyster Bay Long Island, Rode a boy with a six-pack in his hand…”

    As Billy Joel prepares to blow out the candles on seventy this week, it felt right to dust off something more akin to seventeen. There are moments in time when a photographer’s lens or a tape recorder’s microphones capture that magical moment just before history is made, and that’s what we have here: Billy Joel and his live band, even then aces all, poised on the launching pad of stardom mere months before The Stranger  would forever change his life and pop culture, playing a regional stronghold for Billy Joel, the University of Connecticut at New London just before Christmas break in 1976. Three years earlier I had discovered the brilliant songwriting on the album Piano Man  by playing on the radio not only the now-famous title song but also the heroin cautionary tale “Captain Jack” and the semi-autobiographical “Billy the Kid“, a very rare live version which we share here. –Redbeard