That night all the young kids who too young to go out and have dates or whatever Yeah, yeah, they were swatching diva so in my parlance I call it the thing that should not be Divo should not be but you all Well, you know, we were really Controversial and polarizing back then and and there were people who loved us people that hated us more of them than than hated us. Well yeah more in the beginning you know like anything new that's the beauty of rock and roll it it doesn't sleep it's always looking for the next thing. The only reason people are interested in us now is because we did something sincere and creative and original at that time

That a lot of it

Has withstood the test of time

Well

Here we are. Thank you for being at that as users our first ever live podcast for my podcast the Magnificent others

So I'm very honored to have you on my podcast. You can apply. It's hard to get people to visit and up. And this is the first time I met you in person. Yes, we played together in about 2007 and that's lucky. They kept us apart. What else? know, despite your sort of egalitarian profile, you know, it was like, don't go near them, don't talk to them, don't look at them in the eye. You could catch some who said that. Probably a flower pot. Yeah. That's the problem. Okay. So let's jump in. So I know where you were October 14th, 1978, do you remember? October 14th. That's what it said. Oh, I remember the 17th, Saturday night live. Yes, maybe I have the date. What's all right? Somewhere over there. Close. Okay, I'll go with you you because you were there. October 17, 1978. Sarah at live. You played two songs, Satisfaction and Jocque-al-Colomb. Yeah. And the reason I want to start here is because my father was a musician hated pretty much everyone maybe outside of Slystone or something. And I didn't have a bedtime when I was a kid, so I would have been at this point 11 years old. And I heard my father howling with laughter and flee from the other room. Oh, okay. And I walked in because I couldn't understand the whatever he was laughing at. And it wasn't laughter mockery. It was like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Exactly. And I came in and we had the little roller TV on color, color TV in the kitchen. And he pointed the TV and said, you have to watch this. Oh. And that was the first time I saw it. It was good, dad. Yeah. You know, the most common story we get is I watched you guys on Saturday Night Live and it scared the **** out of me. Oh, really? Yeah, we get that. Yeah, nobody believed it was real. I remember people telling me, did, did Lord Michaels and those people, did they speed up the video? And I go, well, they couldn't because it was live. How did you guys do that? Well, what was strange for me was I was used to my father pointing at the television, saying, I hate this. I hate because it was an exhibition and it was always bad, bad, bad, worse, bad. He can't sing. She can't dance. And I couldn't quite at that moment. Now it makes sense to me. Understand what he saw in it because it was so different. And my natural thought would be, well, this would be something he would like. But it was two steps ahead of difference so that he couldn't hate it. No, I think he immediately got what you were doing. Now he was a stoneroner, so that might have contributed. Well, no, there were people like my parents who were just like your dad about everything, but when they saw the Beatles, it kind of stunned them. They weren't able to. That's what I'm saying. He had this kind of process. It was sort of like, this is so awesome. What is this? Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Until then it was like, it was all terrible. Stupid. Did you, did you, did you feel the effect of that performance or that appearance immediately? Was that apparent to you from the inside? Pretty much overnight. Yeah. We, we changed our venues. We were in the middle of a tour, and our venues all changed. You went up to the level. We went up to the level. Yeah, because you got to remember the viewership, then, there were only three channels, right? National TV channels. Everybody had common experiences. And Saturday and live was this revolutionary thing. And on any given night, I had about a 15 million share, 15 million viewers. And so that night, all the young kids who were too young to go out and have dates or whatever, yeah. Yeah, they were watching Diva. Yeah, fantastic. College students. Everybody watched SNL. It was a phenomenon. Did you get any kind of, uh, not I want to say media kick back, but like, did the hipsters decide they all liked you all of a sudden? Huh. Yes. Yes, the hipsters did, but not radio. They all decided they hated us. Really? Yeah. Because it was... Pick your adjective. Well, we were trying to trick people into thinking it was rock and roll or something like that. Yes. They didn't get at we were. Yeah. For the punters in the crowd, including me, give me your sort of general, because this was the, I bring this up because when I did start paying attention, which was immediately after that performance, I remember the first thing I hit me conceptually was the idea of de-evolution and it was a big thing. So can you give me your kind of thumbnail on? Because it obviously drove the philosophical underpinnings of the band if that's a fair way. At that time, the thumbnail was that we didn't see evidence of evolution. We saw massive evidence of de-evolution in the culture, when people less able to think logically, critically, more pronounced ability to just spout slogans back at you that they learned and mass conformity that we were mourning against. Well, thankfully we course corrected it now, our country is. Yeah. What's, what's, what's better now? What's, what's frightening is not only were you right? I mean, it's the trend blind has continued. Correct. That was strike you in some sort of irony. Well, we were hoping we were just paranoid, but it hasn't turned out that way. Yeah, we thought we were canaries in a coal mine and being kind of like snarky and you know student

cool but it's it's beyond adiocracy now. Yeah. Do you agree with that? If you could talk a little bit about the the data influence on your thinking. You know, we were at school and we were at school all of us in the late 60s, early 70s. And we were really interested in all the art movements going on in Europe in the 20s and 30s. And I just remember wishing I could have been there then, you know, back in were the futurists in Italy that we didn't share their politics, but we loved their concept of music where they thought that current orchestras and the music that was available then didn't relate to our culture. And I said, for industrial society, you need new instruments. And they were experimenting with fog horns and clanging sounds and shawls. And it was even that kind of early data film where it was trying to kind of, it was called something mechanical ballet. Oh, ballet, mechani. Ballet mechani? Yeah. That influenced us us a lot. Yeah, even the outfits and that were geometric. Yeah. And so we like that. So we were drawing pictures of how we imagine if we ever got to play a show some year, you know, we'd dress in, you know, we were drawing, you know, like geometric shaped outfits. Going back to American culture for a second was, was, and I know this is a bit of a heavy way to put it, but was your, was your hope that American culture would be subverted and it would be replaced or did you, in a way, wished it turned out to be the idealized sort of 50s version that we all talked about? No, you're right. Subversions the word. Okay. We were trying to subvert in a creative way. Our whole existence was a creative response to horror and trauma. That's really what it was. Yeah. And we were just anti-stupid. Okay. It went beyond any kind of partisan thing, or it was about the duality of human nature being so flawed and so dangerous that what we saw was the danger of stupidity, you know, just crushing liberty and the human spirit. And so we were being funny and creative. Yeah, and having fun. Did you did you hope with that subversion that it would be replaced by something or was it sort of like can we kind of reverse the trend line here? Well we thought things were gonna go differently than they did. We were paying attention to artists like Andy Warhol, another current artists at the time that were just coming out. And they were like multimedia. They weren't just, I just do this. I just play one instrument, or I just do one kind of art. They were about the idea first, then they would use whatever technology or whatever, you know, method they needed whatever. You know, whether it was visual or audio or film or whatever. And we liked that. We wanted to work on all the mediums. And so at the time we were forming, there was video was just starting to become available to the average person. You could go get some really clumsy video equipment. To be that fated can. And we were embracing technology. Yeah, Mark was definitely, he was the guy that had a Mini-mogue and an arp odyssey, you know, and he wasn't interested in trying to make beautiful fake orchestral sounds He was making noise and I'm said that's great This is great because when you ask that question that you just asked and the crux of it's very serious, we weren't trying to roll anything back and go back to the Beatles. We were trying to project a way forward when music had stulfified and gotten rancidly self-involved with guys with, you know, platform shoes and big socks and their crutches, the whole, the cliche was so disgusting and stupid to us. We were trying to show people away forward. Did any artists of that time take Umbridge with the sort of, what's called this diversity? Did they all, yes they did. Did they tell you about it or did you hear about it?

I mean, we'd hear about it indirectly, but I remember one meeting with who was a Todd Rungrin. Remember that when we were summoned to his studio in San Francisco and we went to this meeting because are you guys just trying to shock people or do you want to be successful? It was hilarious.

It was like, it was like 1977, and I'm like, what? Well, we're doing what we do, you know? He was really upset. So he just wanted to talk to you. Yeah. Well, I guess we were important enough on his radar to have him have to like... Isn't it ironic that he eventually had that hit about banging on a drum? I mean, it could have... It could have... It's a message that could have come out of deep all right this like, yeah. That's true. You know, that's kind of an idea of a racer and I just need to bang on the drum to be happy, you know? They could take all come around. Oh, actually, glad you remember that.

I'm not sure who said it, but it was in your documentary. The quote was, we're not cynical. We just watched the news. Absolutely. Can you, can you point to some of the cultural forces at the time of the bands? I know the formation didn't happen overnight. Winging up Saturday night live is nice, but there was this formative years before that. It was like, was there, like some people say Nixon or was, you know, like, well Nixon was your, was your type of fire. Well, Trickey Dickey was important because he tried to do something where he knocked down the three rails of government, you know, like the checks and balances of the judiciary, the executive, and the legislative branch. And in a way that was in your face. And we were upset by that. And that's why the expansion of the war happened from Vietnam into Cambodia without a act of Congress. This was unprecedented in history of the United States. Up to that point. Up to that point. And then after that it was normal. Yeah, now it's normal. Exactly. And that's why all the students across America were upset and that's why the protests happened at Kent State University when I was there about the expansion that war without an act of Congress. And that's when they brought in the National Guard with live ammunition and M1 rifles. And we didn't know that. You know, it was like the old hillbilly saw. I didn't know good and low. Right? We didn't know. We were stupid. Were you the only person in the band that was at that? No. Yeah. Yeah. That day. Oh, that's the first demonstration. Bob was at the one the next night and then Jerry was at the one the third day. Yeah. I was I was just one that killed people because, you know, I had been a member of SDS to be honest and- What says yes? Students for a democratic society was kind of lefty, but it was really just against illegitimate authority controlling your life. Now there was centralization. They thought that people should have locally their own agency over their own government.

Yeah. Nothing too crazy just to know. Yeah. There was not big government. Yeah. Which now all we have is big government. So anyway, that's, and what's weird about that day is they shot at us and it was completely just shockingly,

you know, the long for seeing. They shot at us, but they shot over the heads of all the students who were closest to them, because the National Guard was composed of kids who were the same ages, me, right, and my friends. And I think because they had gas masks on and they could see us, they didn't really want to shoot us point blank like ducks in a shooting gallery. And so they kind of shot over our heads and the people that got killed wounded were all 20, 40 feet behind us. So you almost think in a way it was maybe not accident, but you know, they weren't necessarily trying to hurt people. Yeah. Yeah. I think they've given an order and then they didn't really want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm struck looking at your long partnership if that's even a fair word that you had such a unique trust with each other. It really comes across me when I watch your performances. There's a cohesion in your... I mean, was that articulate man? Cohesion is the key. But it was that something, I mean, was it something that came natural? Was it something you guys kind of worked out, sitting around a table and then like, let's get on the stage. Okay. Yeah, we talked about it, but most of it was just, it just happened in a basement and it was like, things that made us laugh or or things that uh... We were all in the same cage as people like to say and we wanted the same thing, we have the same goal and we worked together in a collaborative way to make it happen. It's really beautiful to watch because you know having been in band bands, it doesn't take much for people to go in their own direction. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, and that's natural. That's human. You know, in a band in many ways is like a family and you know, blood here too, but but it doesn't always work that way. I mean, this reality sets in at some point. And But when I watch those performances, it's like you committed to that space in a way that's, there's very few bands I can think of that are all in the same direction at the same time. And that's what energized me and that's what I loved. It's, you know, it was incredible. And that's what people like too, because they like to see a collective of people working together and moving in one direction, because that gives them hope in their lives that they're not just isolated and that they could do that. Yeah. I know at one point you were managed by Elliot Roberts. Who was that first second album or was that sort of when you needed to see? Maybe it was our manager from the beginning. Yeah, it was a Neil Young, right? Neil Young brought him in. Neil Young brought him in to you guys. Yeah, he introduced us and said, I know you've been thinking about a manager and I know you've had bad experiences meeting with people. Here, here you go. Meet my man. So how did you know Neil before that? I thought it was the other way around. So that's, no, we were introduced to Neil Young through Tony Basil and Dean Stockwell. OK. And we were amazed that he liked us. It was just like, that's a weird. Well, he's definitely a kind of an outlying personality. Absolutely. Yeah. But the reason I'd ring up, Elliot is because I was managed by Elliot at one point. So I didn't do that. Yeah. So sorry about that. I mean, that's great. That's great. I was getting there. I was getting there. But um, you know, Elliot, you know, he sort of extolled the 60s virtue of not selling out and yeah, yeah, that was until it doesn't work, you know what I mean? But I was curious how that worked. Did that kind of 60s? He wasn't really a hippie, but he was very much a 60s brain. How did that fly with you guys at the time? We liked him as a person, but his management style was very ineffective. And about two years in, we had met this guy Bill Gerber, who was young and brash and smart and plugged into what was happening with the emerging music scene. And we actually told Elliot we wanted him to hire Bill Gerber or we had to leave. And so he hired Bill Gerber and Bill Gerber turned everything around. Yeah. Did you end up going with him eventually? Well, Bill Bill Gerber worked fairly until the end. Oh, so it kind of works. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And Bill Gerber ended up being a big deal producer from Warner Bros. Films. Right. When you guys kind of and I don't know if what your memory is, but it seemed like that movie with Neil was a human eye. It was a human eye. I made it my way. But then other stuff of yours visually seemed to be on television a lot in that period. Yeah, we were lucked out. I mean, it was a lot. I felt like human eyeway was on every five seconds at HBO for a period. was your, what was your thought of working with Neil so publicly, you know, did you, did you sort of see it as an alliance or it was fun or it was a wonderful anomaly. I mean, we like Neil personally. Yeah. I don't believe it. He's not the grandfather. Oh, he's not the grandfather of Genoa. Rock this guy's whacked out. And he was so youthful in his thoughts, right? He was so curious. And you could see him like being energized by our aesthetic. Yeah, you know, his, I liked his filmmaking better than his music, actually, because I liked his style of it was kind of like Robert Downey senior It was impromptu on the street stuff where yeah, he wasn't afraid to just Shoot things and let him happen and then turn that into a movie and It was kind of data. Yeah, did you ever put together? you know, Mr. Soul is basically satisfaction in reverse. Did you know that? No, let me think about that. Missed if you, my take and I don't know it for a fact, Mr. Soul is Neil's piss take on satisfaction. Oh, it's a riff and reverse. And if you listen to lyrics, he's making fun of the stowlands. Wow. Dang, now I gotta go listen to the song. No. It's not a bad, right? Yeah, you know, our thing what satisfaction is, it was 1974. It was like 10 years after satisfaction was first came out. Yes. And I remember thinking, well, rock and roll is over now. So what's the new, you know, what's the new sound? And so we took satisfaction and created our version of it 10 years later, because we thought it was the best rock and roll song that was over here. I thought satisfaction was the most incredible, Like best rock and roll song. Yeah. I thought it says it actually was the most incredible, like definitive rock and roll moment. Even the lyrics are sort of anti-commercialism in their own kind of way. And the guitar rift that has three notes up and the bass is going four notes and they clash each time they play them. That was like a divo thing. I was, yeah, that was great. Yeah, I just had this matter thing of like, kneels, piss, take on it, your piss, take on it, and then you guys working with kneel like, I guess it's karmic, maybe. Yeah. So, did you stay with Elliot to the, we stayed with Elliot till the end? Okay. Yeah. I fired Elliot. I understand that. Yeah. And he was very mad at me for firing him. It was kind of like how dare you fire me. I'm Elliot Roberts. Yeah. Pretty much. And I tried to because I liked him very much personally. He was a great person. Yeah, he's good. Well, I remember, I remember we went to England and played our first shows. We were playing our first shows after our, we recorded our album before. While we were recording our first album, singles that we had released with stiff records were charting. and they were going number one in different countries and somebody showed us that and they were like, hey, you got to come play a few shows in England before you go back. So we did and why am I telling you that? Elliot Roberts. Okay. So while we were there, we met bands and while we were a manchester, we met a human league who were half of their band was what was the other band that they had that they had. That was amazing. Yeah, when they split apart, they became 17, which I loved. Yeah, they were the heavier of the two pieces. But we got back and Elliot said, did you hear any good music? I said, yeah, check this out.

It's human league.

And the next day he goes,

if that music is ever a hit, I'll eat my hat.

And so I was like, okay, whatever.

And then about a month or two later, he didn't wear a hat.

He was smart, yeah.

But he, after they became big, he said, hey, are there any other bands you think I should sign

okay so I said to him yes there's this ban from San Francisco called the residents you got to

sign them they're great and so he did and uh he put the residence on a tour and I remember the first

show was in Pasadena and they were doing their most extreme hard-to-watch show of any of the shows they ever did. And I remember about halfway through the show he came walking up the aisle and he passed me and he goes, don't ever recommend another band to me. He did get us on Saturday night live though. That's right. That was the big thing. Oh, Elliot. Yeah. Yeah. That's how we signed with him, uh, because he came to the set when we were filming human highway with Neil Young and Dean Stockwell and, um, um, Dennis Hopper. Yeah. And, uh, and, uh, and he, you know, we met him for the first time. He goes, Neil tells me you guys are adverse to managers and I said, well, no, they just they want 20% they want a piece of your publishing. They want you to sign a three-year deal like I couldn't do any of that. I said, say no. He goes, I don't want any of that. Just 15% 30-day handshake. I get rid of you. You get rid of me. Anything else? I said, yeah, we've been trying to get our tapes and our songs to Saturday Night Live because we want on that program and it goes, come into my office next week. No problem. And of course, it was good friends with Lauren Michaels. What we didn't know is that Lauren had been trying to get Neil Young on his show for two years at that point because they started in 75. Now it's 77. So what Neil, what Elliot does is he promises Lauren who doesn't give a hell about Devon. He doesn't know who it is. He says, I will get you Neil Young if you put these guys on your show. And Lauren goes, okay. And he didn't even like what we were doing. What was perfect is that it came a week after the stones were on the opening part of the 77 season. So we come on playing satisfaction, a week after the stones opened the season. It was even more kind of bad out of it. And it just all looked like a big, big deal. And it was partly planned and partly not. Yeah, partly in action, yeah. I'm not asking the classic, you know, hey, we're all getting older. So let's take a shot at young people's music. But, but, no, I'm not, I just not what I'm asking, but you know, you, you, you, you went out of your way in your youth to assail the corporate state of music and, and, and, and now it's truly institutionalized. Yeah. And in my generation, we did our own version of it. Yes, you did. And for a brief moment, there was some daylight. You saw daylight from the head of the water. For a brief moment. Yeah, for a brief moment. Yeah. So I'm curious from your perspective,

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