In The Studio with Redbeard

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  • David Bowie- Young Americans

    David Bowie- Young Americans

    “I was terrified of being trapped in that Ziggy Stardust character for the rest of my career,” David Bowie solemnly confessed to me In the Studio. So in early March 1975, Bowie executed a musical and visual image hard left turn, in homage to the vibrant soul music with which he had fallen in love while living in New York City then. The resulting albumYoung Americans contained the sweeping “Win”; the soulful “Somebody Up There Likes Me”, featuring the budding sax star David Sanborn (d. 2024) steaming like a Junior Walker acolyte; the huge hit with the John Lennon cameo, “Fame”; and the dance-floor flooding “Young Americans”. The late David Bowie from the In the Studio  classic rock interview archives marks the all-important career landmark Young Americans.

    By 1975 David Bowie had abandoned the Glam Rock he had virtually invented in the guise of the ego-tripping tragicomic fallen rock star Ziggy Stardust, first as New York City blue-eyed soul man, then the LA decadence of his Thin White Duke persona. David Bowie was rock’s Full Moon, irresistible in his pulling power, while the rest of the rock world was like the tide, following inexorably yet always lagging behind. But with Bowie’s mid-decade Young Americans  album with the #1 hit “Fame” and its John Lennon cameo pointing directly toward Disco’s dominance a mere two years later, hindsight clearly shows that the tide was rising quickly.

    Arguably, the sound of the Seventies may have dawned as early as August 1971 with Who’s Next,  or as late as April 1973 with Dark Side of the Moon. But with David Bowie’s June 1972 The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, not only did the exaggerated stereo and dry close-miked perspective make the sound of The Spiders seem to threaten to pierce the invisible barrier of your speakers, but Bowie’s hair, makeup, cross-dressing, and outrageous onstage behavior looked and acted like nothing we’d ever seen outside of a Frederico Fellini film festival. David Bowie took my assessment of the Seventies’ line of demarcation one better: “The Seventies really felt like a new century. The Sixties were a coda to the rest of the (20th) Century,” David stressed. “I think the Seventies showed conclusively that we live on a thread of rationality, that in fact the cosmos is far more complex and non-understandable than we had perceived. That everything we know is WRONG!” –Redbeard

  • Eric Johnson- Cliffs of Dover- Dallas 6-14-86

    Eric Johnson- Cliffs of Dover- Dallas 6-14-86

    For nearly twenty-five years my Dallas/Ft.Worth radio station Q102 sponsored the largest radio blood drive in the nation. We could not be more proud of our loyal listeners, who in six days of withering Texas summer heat would donate up to 14,000 pints of live-saving blood each year. To thank them, each blood donor would receive a pair of tickets to a free concert sponsored by Q102 radio station, and on June 14, 1986 Austin-based guitar virtuoso Eric Johnson played live to a pumped up North Texas crowd of blood donors. Eric Johnson opened his set with this then-unreleased song, “Cliffs of Dover”, which four years later would propel Johnson’s million seller Ah Via Musicom. Mixed live to two-track by Doug Hall at the Dallas Convention Center Arena. –Redbeard

  • Tears for Fears- Songs from the Big Chair

    Tears for Fears- Songs from the Big Chair

    Recording an album that a million people purchase is no mean feat, but doing so is not always a benchmark of musical quality. Celebrity (and notoriety), timing, even technology such as the viral internet video, can propel the likes of Milli Vanilli, Billy Ray Cyrus, Vanilla Ice, and Ashlee Simpson past the million sales mark, only to be relegated at astounding speed to trivia contests at best, punch-lines at the worst. However, to get over ten million or more people to buy your album, as in the case of Tears for Fears and Songs from the Big Chair, released February 1985,  is in no way trivial or a joke.

    It implies with it a measure of universal approval that transcends time, geography, and that most indefinable of attributes, taste. To sell through to more than ten million individuals, the music’s appeal has to spread horizontally across a wide cross-section of age, ethnicity, education, financial and lifestyle strata. That’s precisely what Tears for Fears did by Summer 1985, displacing Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA , Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required,  and Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms  at the top of the US sales chart with only their second effort,  Songs from the Big Chair. 
    There was something gleaming, sparkling, and whip-smart about Tears for Fears Songs from the Big Chair in February 1985. The duo’s debut The Hurting was one of the strongest debuts in 1983, with “Change”, “Mad World”, “Pale Shelter”, and the title song leaving an indelible impression. The followup Songs from the Big Chair was even stronger, with “Shout”, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, and “Head Over Heels” all driving the album to #1 sales in America. While the two individuals’ names, Roland Orzabal and my guest here Curt Smith who  comprise Tears for Fears, may indeed be the stuff of ’80s Trivia Night down at your local pub, the songs “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, “Head Over Heels”, and the #1 “Shout” on the ten million-plus seller…Big Chair  give no indication of becoming comical any time soon, unless you count laughing all the way to the bank. -Redbeard  Curt Smith ( L ) , Roland Orzabal

  • Damn Yankees- Tommy Shaw, Jack Blades, Ted Nugent, Michael Cartellone

    Damn Yankees- Tommy Shaw, Jack Blades, Ted Nugent, Michael Cartellone

    The Nineties’ first supergroup Damn Yankees actually lived up to the hype and promise in their pedigrees: containing Styx singer/songwriter/guitarist Tommy Shaw, Night Ranger’s singer/songwriter Jack Blades, veteran drummer Michael Cartellone, and whackmaster Ted Nugent, the Damn Yankees  debut in February 1990 sold a whopping two million copies of melodic rockers “Coming of Age”,”Runaway”,”Come Again”, and the soaring #3 hit single “High Enough”.

    But as you’ll hear in my rowdy classic rock interview, these guys had way too much fun that is legally allowed making those, and the 1992 Damn Yankees follow up Don’t Tread.

    “I’m from the Motor City,” Ted Nugent reminded us, “and we’re the ‘Murder Capital’ not because we are more violent. It’s because we are better shots!”-Redbeard

  • Brandi Carlile- Broken Horses- SNL 10-21

    Brandi Carlile- Broken Horses- SNL 10-21

    By the time absolutely iridescent singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile first took the stage in October 2021, dressed in a gold lame’ suit backed by a crack rock’n’roll band, NBC’s Saturday Night Live had long since established its well-earned reputation for showcasing musical talent that deserved national  exposure. But I was not prepared for the impact of watching and hearing a star being born when Brandi Carlile stepped up to the microphone to sing her song, “Broken Horses”. This blew. Me. Away.

    Hands down this was the most memorable live TV performance I saw all that year, and ranks right up there with some of the best SNL performances in their fifty years, including Elvis Costello and the Attractions “Radio, Radio”, the Talking Heads “Take Me to the River”, the Rolling Stones’ season opener in Fall 1978, Prince, Sinead O’Connor ripping up a picture of The Pope, even U2 with Bono breaking the fourth wall barrier by leaving the tiny SNL stage to embrace the studio audience.
    On her “Broken Horses” first Saturday Night Live performance October 23, 2021 Brandi Carlile, framed by her hired gun identical twin bald-headed guitarists, elicited comparison to Bonnie Raitt backed by Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. Carlile’s songcraft, stage presence, and impeccable vibrato, with that hot band kicking her backside, made me an instant convert. Be looking and listening for Brandi Carlile’s newest collaboration with her lifelong idol Elton John called “Who Believes in Angels”. –Redbeard

  • Led Zeppelin- Physical Graffiti pt2- Robert Plant, Jimmy Page

    Led Zeppelin- Physical Graffiti pt2- Robert Plant, Jimmy Page

    Fifty years on, Led Zeppelin’s 1975 double album Physical Graffiti‘s sonic slam has not diminished one iota in strength, sheer number of exceptional songs, the band at peak performance, and Jimmy Page’s impeccable production. Funky “Custard Pie”, “The Rover”, the furious “In My Time of Dying”, the playful “Houses of the Holy”, funky electricity of “Trampled Underfoot”, and epic synth/French horn arrangement of “Kashmir” can still leave the listener breathless five decades later…and that’s just the halfway mark.

    “Traveling the world was now a constant thing…The whole thing was becoming a creative process,” Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page said  at a press conference, reminiscing about the February 1975 double album  Physical Graffiti . By the time of composing for this, their sixth studio album, Led Zeppelin’s international success was taking their tours to far-flung places in the world, which in turn exposed the band to even more creative stimuli. For instance, a distinct new flavor had already started to spice up the blues-based hard rock on certain songs on the preceding Houses of the Holy : Jimmy Page’s staccato guitar was locking in far more often with John Bonham’s inventive percussion in a choppy rhythmic manner, which in turn left space for multi-instrumentalist John Paul Jones to fill with a new instrument, the electric clavinet.
    LED-ROBT-935939_10200327575093923_1720918598_nIn the recording, the daunting challenge of capturing the sheer scale of Led Zeppelin’s sonic dynamics was never so successfully rendered by Jimmy Page in the producer’s role, without overwhelming the recording process of the day nor compromising the visceral impact of this double album. Here in the conclusion of my interview, Page discusses the grandeur of “Kashmir”, the progressive rock of “In the Light”, the furious electric funk of “The Wanton Song”, and the shimmering delicacy of “Ten Years Gone”. Inside Robert Plant ( r ) explains the elusive motivational sparks which were responsible then for Physical Graffiti  brilliance which has accounted for sales of over sixteen times platinum.

    LED-JIMMY-PAGE-720x405-458901406Listen to Jimmy Page (l) and Robert Plant In the Studio for the conclusion of the Physical  Graffiti  deluxe edition. – Redbeard 

  • Phil Collins- No Jacket Required

    Phil Collins- No Jacket Required

    Even four decades after release, Phil Collins’ third solo album, No Jacket Required, is formidable because of  how artistically satisfying it remains as well as how commercially successful it quickly became. And Collins was so prolific in this period, writing so many memorable melodies and identifiable lyrics for a massive mainstream audience including “Sussudio”, “Only You Know and I Know”, “One More Night”, “Don’t Lose My Number”, “Inside Out”, and the anthem “Take Me Home”, that it took the almost doubled capacity of the just-developed new musical format then, the compact disc, to hold it all.

    Whenever I think of Phil Collins and his third blockbuster solo album No Jacket Required, funnily it triggers a flashback regarding another superstar effort. It was late January 1985 and Atlantic Records had invited me to London (along with the late WNEW-FM legend Scott Muni and WBCN Boston’s Oedipus) to interview Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers as The Firm, broadcasting back to millions listening in America live from the famed Abbey Road Studios. As I prepared the interview that morning in my London hotel room, I flipped on the tabletop radio. While the government-run BBC had long been the sole legal radio outlet in the entire United Kingdom, the daring brilliance and glaring inconsistencies of the pirate radio stations had informed the UK rock fan for decades, but recently British law had changed to allow legal non-governmental radio station ownership for the very first time. London’s Capital Radio FM in January 1985 combined the variety and spirit of the pirates with the slick energetic presentation of the best of American Top 40 radio in its prime (think 1970 WABC/New York, 1972 WLS and WCFL/Chicago, 1973 KHJ/Los Angeles). That day Capital Radio had just received an advance copy of what would be Phil Collins’ third solo album, No Jacket Required.  Until this point, Phil Collins was best known as the drummer who surprised everyone by more than capably replacing band mate Peter Gabriel as the lead singer for Genesis, but Capitol Radio’s London deejays seemed to sense that we were about to witness that rarest of astronomical and cultural phenomena: the birth of a star entering supernova. Capital Radio’s deejays were breathlessly promising to play a different song from No Jacket Required  every hour, and the excitement was palpable!PHIL-COLLINS-LiveAid-96260290_640

    ( Phil Collins (left) onstage at Live Aid benefit concert in Philadelphia July 1985 )

    After loving “Sussudio”,”Only You Know and I Know”, the hypnotic”Long Long Way to Go”,”Don’t Lose My number”,”Inside Out”, Collins’ second #1 from this collection”One More Night”, and the concert sing-along”Take Me Home” (all of which I heard featured over the following two days in London), I began secretly to plan how, upon my return, I would utilize the strength and depth of Phil Collins  No Jacket Required  to upgrade my Dallas/Ft.Worth radio station Q102 to become the region’s rock leader. And that’s exactly what happened for the next decade.

    Meanwhile Collins would go on to sell 25,000,000 copies of No Jacket Required  worldwide (half of those just in the US) and win multiple Grammy Awards, including “Album of the Year” for 1985. Phil Collins joins me In the Studio to serve up musical fine dining on No Jacket Required ‘s fortieth anniversary. –Redbeard

  • James Taylor- Mud Slide Slim @55

    James Taylor- Mud Slide Slim @55

    “Rockabye sweet baby” James Taylor is still recording wonderfully satisfying albums like the recent  American Standard and Before This World, and being chosen to open brand new live music venues as he did in Ft. Worth  fifty years after the album Sweet Baby James  captured the country’s attention. Now that’s finding the keys to a real time machine. Rolling Stone  magazine bestowed February 1970’s Sweet Baby James  with the ranking of #103 on their Top 500 Albums of All Time.

    For me, James Taylor’s music was the soundtrack of my life, the music that ushered me from a teen into manhood with honesty, gentility, and hope. For this conversation with a true American cultural icon, we begin by focusing on his Winter 1970 breakthrough (but not his first) album, Sweet Baby James,  containing “Fire and Rain”, “Country Road”, and that lullaby title song written not solely about the composer but his namesake nephew.

    In part two, James Taylor reacts to new stardom in several of the songs on 1971’s Mud Slide Slim, plus reveals the beginning of his life-long musical partnership with Carole King, who wrote James’ first #1 hit, “You’ve Got a Friend”.Five years after making the covers of both Time magazine and Newsweek, but no longer “baby James”, part three lets Taylor explore career success and domestic bliss with his 1975 multi-platinum Gorilla  album containing”Mexico”,”Shower the People”, and a toe-tapper Motown cover of “How Sweet It is to Be Loved by You” amidst a high-profile marriage to, then break up with, hit singer/socialite Carly Simon.- Redbeard

  • Van Morrison- Moondance/Tupelo Honey

    Van Morrison- Moondance/Tupelo Honey

    The enigmatic Irish singer Van Morrison took us from seminal garage rock with “Gloria” to  joyous pop with “Brown Eyed Girl”, from ballads (“Crazy Love”) to jazz (“Moondance”) to soul (“Domino”) and then “Into the Mystic”. Morrison released one of his classic albums, Moondance,  in January 1970  a year before the similarly timeless Tupelo Honey  and His Band and Street Choir. Join us here In the Studio  for an ultra-rare, gloves off bare-knuckled conversation with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Van Morrison.

    No matter who first coined the term “blue eyed soul” to describe the Righteous Brothers, it is a safe bet that the phrase was next used to describe the Belfast singer/songwriter Van Morrison. Practically speaking, it is impossible to explain the width and depth of this Northern Ireland native’s contribution without resorting to hyperbole, as music writer Jason Ankeny found out on AllMusic.com  when describing Morrison’s output (quote)”…perhaps the most spiritually transcendent body of work in the rock and roll canon. Subject only to the whims of his own muse, his recordings cover extraordinary stylistic ground yet retain a consistency and purity virtually unmatched among his contemporaries.” Yet until this revealingly frank interview by the BBC’s intrepid John Bennett, Van Morrison easily would qualify as the most mysterious of celebrated singer/songwriters, by comparison making Bob Dylan look positively chatty.This ultra-rare, fascinating classic rock interview is nothing short of a revelation set against the backdrop of his early Warner Bros Records career snapshot of some of Van Morrison’s greatest hits, including the seminal “Brown Eyed Girl”, the jazzy “Moondance”, “Crazy Love”, and “Into the Mystic”; the New Orleans stomp of “Domino”, “Blue Money”, and “Wild Night”; the sweet soul dripping in “Tupelo Honey”, and the title song from St. Dominic’s Preview,  all from this most durable career (over sixty  years a professional ); most prolific recording artist ( his 2015 Duets  was Morrison’s forty-first release, not counting hits compilations & anthologies); most acclaimed (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, with two albums in the top seventy on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums of All Time, including Astral Weeks  at #19). And most reclusive, the Howard Hughes of rhythm and blues.  –Redbeard

  • Black Crowes- Shake Your Money Maker- Chris & Rich Robinson

    Black Crowes- Shake Your Money Maker- Chris & Rich Robinson

    “With Shake Your Money Maker   we thought we would make our one album, you know, and then talk about it the rest of our lives”, sardonically says Black Crowes singer/songwriter Chris Robinson. The never-reticent frontman was joking about the unheralded January 1990 debut which, for fifty-four consecutive weeks, punched way above its weight class until peaking in the Top Five best-sellers in America. At the time, the Eighties pop-metal hair bands were starting to wane due to mousse abuse, and the Grunge guys were in the on-deck circle. The Black Crowes sounded as if the late Small Faces/Humble Pie dynamo Steve Marriott had gone on holiday to Paris and dropped in on the Rolling Stones sessions while recording Exile on Main Street .

    It is easy to recall that throughout the year 1990 I relished Shake Your Money Maker, this new Atlanta-based band The Black Crowe’s debut album, as a personal guilty pleasure amidst the detritus of a third wave of pop metal hair bands by then. Apparently a whole lotta folks felt similarly, as Shake Your Money Maker would march up the Billboard Album Sales chart over the course of fifty-four weeks, eventually cresting at #4 and selling over a million copies initially. The impressive nine originals co-written by Chris and Black Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson put much-needed soul back into rock’n’roll, including”Twice As Hard”,”Jealous Again”,”Thick and Thin”,”She Talks to Angels”, the gospel-tinged”Seeing Things”, and the impeccable cover of fellow Georgian Otis Redding’s “Hard to  Handle”. Starved for such sounds made by passionate musicians playing far beyond their years (guitarist/songwriter Rich Robinson was 21!), the audiences resonated like a tuning fork, with over five million copies sold eventually of Shake Your Money Maker.

    Chris, the older singing Robinson, leaves us in my classic rock interview with this observation:”Our regional identities are being stripped away by technology. That is horrible. I did get to grow up in the (American) South. In Atlanta Georgia you were twenty minutes away from the best bluegrass music in the world, or the best blues you’d ever heard. Same music, just different neighborhoods. You know?”
    And don’t miss the Black Crowes’ equally impressive followup The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion released two years later, all here. -Redbeard

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