And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 91: Glen Ballard

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

He is a six-time Grammy Award winner and one of popular music’s most accomplished producers and songwriters, whose records have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. During his diverse career, he has worked with the biggest names in music, from Barbra Streisand and Aerosmith to Dave Matthews and Katy Perry. He wrote and arranged “Man in the Mirror” for Michael Jackson, and co-wrote and produced the Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated song “Believe” by Josh Groban for the feature film ‘The Polar Express’. He has written and produced songs for Quincy Jones, Aretha Franklin, Shakira, Idina Menzel, George Benson, George Strait, Wilson Phillips, Van Halen, Chaka Khan, Patti Austin, Al Jarreau, Andrea Bocelli, and many others. And his production credits include producing and arranging records for Annie Lennox, No Doubt, and POD. Also quite notably, he produced and co-wrote Alanis Morissette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’ which sold 33 million records worldwide, earned four Grammys and was named Best Album of the Decade by Billboard Magazine. The album also inspired the musical called ‘Jagged Little Pill’ which debuted on Broadway in November 2019 with Diane Paulus directing and a book by Diablo Cody. Expanding on his successful theater background, he wrote original lyrics and music for ‘GHOST the Musical’ (now in its eighth year of world-wide presentation), and presently he is co-producing and writing original music and lyrics for a stage adaptation of 1985’s ‘Back to the Future’. The musical, in collaboration with film composer Alan Silvestri and director John Rando, premiered in Manchester, England at the Manchester Opera House in March 2020 to glowing reviews just before performances were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. His work in film includes composing original songs for ‘Charlotte’s Web,’ ‘Beowulf,’ ‘A Christmas Carol,’ ‘The Croods,’ ‘The Mummy Returns,’ and ‘Valentine’s Day.’ Today his production company Augury is currently developing original, music-driven content for television, film, and stage. His most recent project is a Netflix Original series called ‘The Eddy’: a music-driven and multicultural drama about a jazz band trying to survive in chaotic modern-day Paris, for which he serves as executive producer and has written and composed original music for the show as well. And The Writer Is...Glen Ballard!This episode is sponsored by BMI. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, welcome to Ann the writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs.

I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, big deal music publishing, and mega house music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear. Go to our website www. and the writer is.com. For a little bit of context,

we just wanted you to know that a lot of these were recorded before quarantine. And as we know, a lot has changed in 2020. So again, please stay safe out there. and enjoy the new episodes of And The Writer is. This week's episode is sponsored by BMI. At BMI, music moves their world, just like it moves mine. BMI is my performing rights organization. They're the bridge between people who create music like me and the businesses that bring it to the public.

They make sure I get paid when my music is streamed on apps or shows, played on radio, at live shows, or in bars, gyms. basically anywhere where music is played. And they do this for over 900,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers, with more than 14 million songs across genres. But it's more than that. They help us navigate the music industry. They create opportunities for aspiring writers and composers

through stages at festivals, song camps, and workshops. And they connect us with the right people. They're also on Capitol Hill, fighting for copyright protection and fair royalties. And they work hard to ensure the future of music. They have my back and they'll have yours. Learn more at BMI.com.

Welcome to And The Writer is, I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's guest is a legend among legends, a producer among producers, a collector of Grammy Awards who define and redefine some of the greatest careers in music history. even if all he did was co-write Man in the Mirror, that would have been enough. Or co-wrote all of Jagged Little Pill. That would have been enough.

The list of his contributions is worthy of many episodes. But alas, there's only enough time to talk about wait. Hold on. He also has opened and is opening multiple musicals on Broadway and West End. Who does this? This Mississippi native has entered the highest pantheon, of pop music gurus. You ought to know this guest, and the writer is Glenn Ballard.

Wow, thank you for that introduction. I don't know if I can live it up or even live it down. There you go. But I'm happy to be here. Thank you. So let's start a little bit from the beginning. I mean, Mississippi, how does it Mississippi boy end up not in Mississippi? Tell me about your childhood.

Who are your parents? my parents were Mr. and Mrs. Ballard in Massachusetts Mississippi and spent a lot of time in New Orleans because my father's Louisiana native and I'm about half French so I have a little bit of the Creole connection

so New Orleans was really for me ground zero for music and even as a child I was hearing music played all over New Orleans because it's one of the great music towns So for me, the great influence was that music was being played by so many people in so many places for the love of music. So I think for me, music being around New Orleans in my formative years, I realized that it was normal to express yourself that way and that there are so many great horn players in New Orleans on every corner, there's somebody playing.

So it was kind of the inspiration of. of making music, not because you're trying to make money, but making music for the love of the music. Sure. So for me, music was always the fun thing I did. Who got you an instrument? I mean, I could play the piano at an early age. I mean, I lost my aunt when I was probably eight years old,

and I inherited her piano, and it was the greatest thing she could have ever left me. So for me, just investigating on the piano basically from a very early age. And I started writing songs right away because I was more interested in just creating my own thing. Do you remember the first song you wrote? Yes, I do.

It's called Fair Weather Man. I'm a Fair Weather Man. It was basically saying I'm looking for sunshine. How old were you when you wrote that? Oh, I think it was about seven. You were seven when you wrote and you still remember it? Yeah, I still remember it? Yeah, I still remember.

Did you play for your family and stuff? Or were you actually starting to play it outside? I drove my family crazy because I didn't know any other songs other than the ones that I was writing. And they would always say, play me something I know. So my parents' favorite song was Misty. So I learned how to play Misty. Look at me. I'm as helpless as a kid in a tree.

But mostly I just wanted to write. And it's nothing more boring than hearing somebody write a song, you know. And so that's what I would do in front of. of my family and it would be like the doors would all slam so for me it was like a lonely thing of like creating my own music when did you start playing outside of the house well i had a band in the fifth grade the rogues and the esquires and we we played shows every weekend and we were making $200 a show wow at that age at that age and then you guys were actually pretty good then we were really good and we played mostly original materials so for me i've never been

never been in a cover band and so on every level for me I was always making sure that people heard my music and it's what did it sound like it was it was kind of rock it was rock oriented it was loud I played guitar on the band even though I was a piano player but if you have a rock and moe band and it's the 60s you need to have a guitar yeah so that's essentially why I got the guitar and of course the Beatles were a huge influence. So we just played music. And what I realized from that was whatever money I made doing that

was more valuable to me than making money from any other source. So that was it. I just wanted to figure out a way to make music and somehow get paid. So of course, being in Mississippi, there's not a lot of... Or New Orleans, you don't make a lot of money making music.

You just make great music. So it's either go to L.A. or New York. and I picked L.A. for the weather, and it kind of worked out for me. Did somebody say to you, you have to leave New Orleans to make money in music, or did you intuitively know that it was time to get out of the South? The truth is I went to Ole Miss undergraduate, and I studied literature, and I had a fellowship to go to law school when I graduated,

and the day I graduated, I got in a car and drove to L.A. and I never went back. I still haven't gone back. Did your parents accept that decision when you were, you know, they didn't even question. They already knew that I was going to do my own thing. Did you think you were going to get in, you knew you were going to be involved in the creation of music, though. You were never going to get involved in the business side. I mean, having even got a fellowship going into law school and then going to L.A.,

there is many people who do that. You know what? I'm going to get involved in the business side. of music. Well, I did get involved with the business side of music unwittingly because within a week of my arriving in L.A., I had the good fortune of essentially working my way into a gig for the Elton John organization. They had just opened a record company in L.A. called Rocket Records. And Elton had moved to L.A. He moved his band to L.A. and through a chance meeting of somebody at Sunset Sound Recorders in LA, who was going to work for Elton, I just sort of tagged along and

helped her and sort of insinuated myself into the whole organization, started answering the phone for them, started moving boxes, and suddenly they hired me about two months later. So I was answering the phone around Rocket Records in 1975. And so... Where were you living in L.A.? I was living in Beverly Hills, believe it or not, but it was in a very tiny apartment. that I had talked my way into as a building manager. You have to have a hustle to get going. If you don't have a hustle, forget it. Because you've got to invent this shit every day.

Okay, and that was my thing of like, let's let me figure out a way that I can be here and continue to make music. Yeah, I feel like a lot of new writers, that's the, you know, the biggest question we get asked is sort of, what do I do next and how do I get my songs to people? And the answer is I don't know. And no one has the answer to this. You make these relationships and you have to get it to these people.

I don't know how the hustle happens. You find your apartment and you find your job and you just keep meeting people. But as you get into the job and Rocket Records, weren't you tempted to start giving opinions on composition? I wisely waited about a year before anybody even knew that I was a musician. How did you keep that to yourself? Well, I mean, because there was too much to do. You know, there was too much for me to do.

And they, I'll tell you a story about a great songwriter. In 1975, I'm sitting at 2-11 South Beverly Drive. And a young woman walks in with a cassette player. I mean, a cassette tape and says, I have a song for Elton John. And I'm like sitting there going, okay, do you know that he writes his own material? And she said, I don't care. This is for him. She left it with me.

And there was no way I could play it for Elton. but I just put it in the pile of whatever. It turned out to be Diane Warren, who has written more hits than any of us. And she was already, she had her hustle on of like, I'm going to take my song to Elton John, and that's how she did it. And it was like a direct line, however I can get there.

So I was always inspired by that, and we've remained friends for now 45 years, and we always remember that day. what is it first of all when you're doing another job how do you keep up your chops are you actually still playing at all did you have a keyboard

I rented a piano it was essential for me most of my money went into renting this upright piano so I had a tiny apartment but I had to have the piano and this is sort of pre-digital so you needed musical instruments to make the noise

so I actually had this I rented this piano and it ended up being everybody's favorite piano. The keyboard player in Elton's band was a guy named James Newton Howard. And he finally, about a year into it, he heard me play something and he went, hey, dude, you can play.

And so I started doing demos for them and they put me with KikiD to write some songs. So just by being patient, I think... You have from 19... you have like five, seven years where you're starting to get some credits as a keyboard player and playing on some records. How are you starting to get infused into that world? And then what's the difference between that and when you actually start writing with people

and, you know, before we get to the first hits, you know, what's the process of going from, okay well I like this job at Rocket Records but I'm actually a really good instrumentalist and I could actually

do some work on these Well I was working every night every penny that I had went into making demos or to renting instruments or buying instruments so I never stopped creating making demos as you would write

and produce your own songs Exactly I never said I've literally made hundreds of demos What were you making the demos Or were you renting? I would rent studios. I would find studio time.

At that time in LA there was probably 200, literally 200 recording studios because you couldn't make a record in your bedroom. So I knew them all, man. And you could go in a lot of these places at midnight and work a deal for 100 bucks. You could stay there all night. The small room at the village up at the top? Yeah. Well, there was a room at Sunset Sound Recorders.

The owner of the studio, too, to Camerobarov. a, it was a great arranger himself, was so sweet to me. So he gave me this little room over there whenever it was available. So I did hundreds of demos constantly trying to get better at it, really to get better at. Was that frustrating or is it sort of, no, this is just a process. It was fun. I mean, and my attitude was I'll work with anybody if they're enthusiastic. Let's do it.

Who is encouraging you in L.A. as far as songwriting goes? No one. So what keeps you going At some point Who are you sending these demos to? Are you doing the Diane Warren thing? Are you walking up to people? I would go to publishers

I was trying to get a publishing deal And I remember going to Irving Almo And There was a publisher in there Who I played him 10 songs And they said This is the worst shit I've ever heard What are you doing?

Do you know who it is? Yeah He shall remain nameless He's out of the business but at the same time it was a bracing reality because the songs that I had

given them were really for an artist me the artist but I wasn't going to be the artist so it was on some level the biggest thing for me was to say okay I'm not going to be the singer even though I can sing I'm not going to be up on stage

I would rather just have other people do it and I made that decision really early like when I was probably 23 to give up being the artist and empower other artists because I just didn't feel like that was what I should be doing. I just knew I needed to make music every day. And first of all, I couldn't make music every day just for me. So having the early rejection as a songwriter,

it made me, first of all, focus on if you're going to be a commercial songwriter, what is it you got to do to make it interesting to other people? And at that time, you could, as a songwriter, find scores of artists who would do outside songs as a routine. So it rarely exists now. But by 19... Okay, my first song that I got recorded is all because of Davy Johnstone, who's the guitar, is still Elton's guitar player. He and Kiki D. were in a romantic relationship at the time. I had written a song with a fellow songwriter named Tom Snow called One Step,

and Davy loved it. I had a little demo, and he played it for Kiki. She liked it, and that was my first song recorded. And it was produced by Bill Schnee over at Cherokee Recorders, and it was like a mid-chart single. And so I was still working at Rocket answering the phone, and a man named Leeds Levy called me, from New York. He was at MCA Music Publishing. And he said, I'm looking for the writer of this song

one step with KikiD. And I said, hey, dude, that's me. Yeah. He said, really? Yeah, I'm answering the phone, but I'm also a songwriter. So he said, well, I'm interested in that song. Would you be interested in talking about maybe being a songwriter for, you know, as a staff songwriter? And of course, this is the music to my ears. So I got hired at $100 a week for, you know, for, you know, from MCA Music Publishing to be a songwriter. I'll give you $200 a week right now. And I'll take it. You got a deal.

That's inflation, right. That's incredible. Yeah, that's my story. Just starting to jump because there's so much to get to. But the first song that I see that's like a real hit is the George Strait song. Yeah, you look so good in love. Yeah. You know, for somebody from...

Mississippi, that makes sense. For somebody in L.A., that does not make sense. It makes no sense. How is your first number one song, a country song? It was the second country song I'd ever written in my life, first of all, and it was because of a guy named Rory Burke, who's a Nashville songwriter. We wrote that song on the lot at Universal Studios, because that's where I was as a songwriter. and so we wrote this country song over on the lot and we did a quick demo and about three months later Rory Bork called me up and said

this guy George Strait wants to cut out song and I mean who's George Strait? I need nothing about country music I mean zero and then it ended up being one of his biggest hit so I'm forever grateful but I'm completely naive to it you know it was not a plan My first really successful single was a country song too,

and we just started going to Nashville all the time. And when it was starting to get the pull of, like, why aren't we living in Nashville when clearly there should be some sort of desire to cut songs in Nashville for things that I'm writing? I turn out this still, like, when it comes down to it, you're in L.A. and you just write songs that you want to write, and it just happens a country person

cut it. But were you getting the poll to go to Nashville? No. I just felt like Nashville from a musical standpoint felt limiting to me and some of the greatest songwriters

are in the world there but the kind of music I was writing was a little more chromatic and it just didn't I couldn't get away with it there. So I've always tried to write music a little bit outside of the box

that's my thing. I love rich harmonic structures and yet I love songs that deliver. So for me, I think if you describe my song running style, I'm trying to create songs that are memorable, but that are easy to digest. Sure. Well, speaking of easy to digest,

so all I need by Jack Wagner, it becomes sort of the first big pop hit. The difference, difference between a country hit and a pop hit now is much different than it was then, where I feel like country records sold a lot of... George Strait was selling a ton of albums.

You were probably making a lot of money on a George Strait single. And a Jack Wagner song, which was a top five, top one, top two pop song means something different. But it doesn't necessarily make more money in the pop world then

than it did in the country world. I guess my question is, were you encouraged by the pop song having that kind of success? How did you feel like the comparison? Because at this point, you have one country song, one pop song. And how did you feel about that era? Well, I didn't think I would be writing any more country songs. I just thought it was just an accident, really.

So, and at the time of the Jack Wagner thing, I was actually, I was a staff producer for Quincy Jones. and it was just a gig I was assigned. How did you become a staff? Well, because I worked on a record, a George Benson record, 1980 called Give Me the Night, and I had written really a jazz song for it called What's On Your Mind?

And that was my first really big record, and Quincy recorded it, and that's when I met Quincy in 80, and Rod Temperton and the whole Quincy team. So Quincy did, just dug how I did it. He liked my demos. He liked my writing. And he hired me. He had a big record company. He had a bunch of artists signed. So he said, I want Glenn Val to do it so because he can write and produce. So one of the first things we got was this guy on General Hospital, Jack Wagner,

and we had to write some songs basically that he could perform on the show. So it was really TV that got that song over. It was all about television. And so, I saw the relationship between how powerful TV could be if you if you paired that with the right record and it was it went through the roof because he performed it almost every day on the show for almost two months did that um you know once you start having success now in L.A because the other success you're having was sort of all over the place but this is now like a television hit and radio hit are you getting pulled in all kinds of directions and are opportunities starting to flow your way

or is it sort of going through Quincy still? It was still going through Quincy. I was I made records with Evelyn Champagne King, Teddy Pendergrass. I did a he even had some really crazy British experimental music on his label.

I worked with a band called Philobelia which didn't end up being a hit but they were a Manchester sort of English pop rock group and so Quincy was just embracing all kinds of music and he needed people

to help him execute it so that's what I did for three years is the greatest education I could have ever had you know for someone like Quincy who's you know

maybe one of the greatest arrangers of all time you know and he's at this point working on the new stage of Michael Jackson are you trying

to get into that to the Michael Jackson world were you actively trying to get involved in that or is it sort of that's not how you work with Quincy you just do your thing and no I was actually I was involved because it was like a family

so I was involved with Thriller I wrote a song for Thriller and Michael and I demoed it was called Nightline and it almost made it on the record and then he it was like one of the last things and then Michael came in with two new songs. One of them was called Beat It,

and it was called Billy Jean. And it was like, shit, those are much better than this song we've got. So what is it like to see, you know, Thriller, obviously, having that kind of success, you hadn't had anything like that, and you see that and you were this close. Yeah, it was that close.

How did you deal with that? I never lost a night of sleep. I never lost a night of sleep because a lot of people asked me that question. I went, look, if Michael had come in with some songs that weren't very good to replace mine, I would have felt bad, but Billy Jean, are you kidding? Yeah, right. It was like, that one deserved.

It earned its place on the squad. So I was cool about it, you know, and it ended up working out for me because I got on the next record with another song. Yeah, so let's go to that song. I mean, you know, you write with Seattle Garrett. Yes. you're doing this I assume it's just a regular

writing session, right? Just the two of you? Because there's no, you know, it's just you two as the co-writers on it. So you're just sitting in a room thinking were you aiming for Michael Jackson? Oh, we wrote it for him. So you were aiming for Michael Jackson, you're thinking this is a cool concept.

We should do a worldly song? Or was it not intentional just happened where he is in his life that man in the mirror becomes that? Well, first of all, Saida Gera, who's an incredibly talented woman across the board. I mean, there's almost nothing she can't do. I first met her.

She was recommended to me as a demo singer. So the first two years I knew Saida, she wasn't a writer. She would come in and sing my demos. And Quincy Jones heard her singing and went, who is that? So he had already identified her as somebody he wanted to work with as a singer, background singer, whatever. And so

throughout the process of the bad record, I was, you know, heavily involved with Quincy and all of it. Michael, I was in the studio making that record,

helping them make it. And I wrote like eight songs for the record. None of them, you know, they were all up-tempo songs, like trying to do the dance thing. And it was like,

whatever, none of them worked. So right near the end of the record, Sayyta called me up and she had subsequently shown me that she could write lyrics and I had no idea

but I'm really open if somebody can write they can write so it was like oh my God you can really write a song for Michael I said okay let's do it I said by the way I've already struck out a million times on this but if you want to try it so it was like the last ditch effort

it was a Saturday night she called me up I had plans she said we have to do this for him And so we sat down and wrote it in a couple of hours. I just sat at a fender roads. And it just happened right there. She wrote most of the lyric. I wrote some of the lines. I don't know.

It was just a magic moment. How soon from Saturday night to when Michael cut it? This is where God bless Saida. She took it to Quincy. Would you have taken it to Quincy? No, never. I would have just like turned it in and like, she called him up on a Sunday.

and said, you've got to hear the song. You have to hear it. You have to hear it. So she insisted her way to his house, upon Billy her plays, played it for him, and I got a call from him saying, I really like this.

I'm going to play it for Michael tomorrow. Played it for Michael the next day. Yep. So on Tuesday, I was in, I had the whole song programmed in a Lenn 9,000. And I'd written it in A-flat, which is the key I love.

And so we sat in with Michael at Westlake Studio D, and he said let's drop it a half step so we dropped it down to G but I still wanted to get to the A flat and so we did this half step modulation like halfway through the tune and jumped it up a half step and Quincy said I don't know about that I said no let's do it

and then why do you like A flat it's just a rich key just a rich key I love that that's the reasoning for doing the modulation is because you're like I'm going to get there you have to get back home That's so funny. And then, you know, I had this long outro,

which I was getting ready to chop off because I didn't really have anything going on there, but music. And Michael said, no, no, no, no. Let me have that real estate. I know what to do there. And man, did he ever know what to do there? The last two minutes of the song are my favorite part of it.

And that was just taking the riff. Then we added the choir, and then Michael just going off, you know. In 2020, if that's done now, Quincy's a writer on it, Michael Jackson's a writer on it, the runner is probably a writer on it. You know, at that time you write a song and it's lyrics, melody, music, you know, chord changes. And if an artist did their interpolation of certain parts or interpretation or improvisation, whatever they did on it, that that was a contribution to the song, but it didn't make them a song writer. and made them an artist. Why, the biggest artist in the world,

maybe the biggest writer, the artists of the last 40 years, ends up singing in the song, why did he not take songwriting credit? Because he didn't write it. Yeah. He didn't write any of it. Yeah.

But he brought his artistry to it in a way that elevated it way beyond what it was. Totally. So, but at that time, there was a lot of, a lot more respect for the integrity of the DNA of a song. Sure. And I mean, look, if you'll put me, this reflection on what's happening currently,

so much of the pop music is, it's about the track. It's, and the question is, does it survive, does the DNA survive separated from the track? That's always my question. Yes. And for me, it's always about if I can sit down. and play this song on a piano or a guitar and it will survive. If it survives that, then the DNA is strong and it's not dependent on just the track.

So I don't know. I don't know how 10 people write a song. I don't know how that works. You know, that song is on a whole other level than almost any song that any of us can get connected to. Man in the Mirror becomes worldwide, and by worldwide, I mean, like, small villages throughout the world are seeing this song.

I mean, at least that was the public perception. How did this experience of having Quincy produce your song like this influenced the way you produce records? I mean, Quincy is always the one I look to in terms of his process. he was always so positive and loving in the studio. He empowered everyone around him to do what they did, and he never micromanaged any of it. His attitude was, I want to get the most talented people in a room together,

and shit will happen. And he allowed it to happen. So when we worked with Quincy, all of us, all of the musicians, all the singers, we just love being there. I never wanted to leave. I mean, at Westlake Studio D, They had showers. There were times I was in there three days at a time.

Because it was also much harder to record multi-track back then. Michael usually wanted like 30 tracks of vocals to do his backgrounds. And we would have to make that real estate. So, you know, I'm dating myself. How is your relationship with Michael? It was great. He was, I never saw him outside of the studio. But in the studio, he was enormously patient.

A lot of people are very impatient. They want it right now. but it took a lot longer to make records then. Yeah. And so I just remember that he would dance two or three hours every day out in the studio, and I was always mesmerized because he was so dedicated to that art form. This week's episode is sponsored by BMI. Full disclosure, Joe and I are both BMI songwriters.

So we didn't write this, but we believe it. BMI, we celebrate your talent, value your music, and champion your rights. To all our songwriters and composers, your pay. passion is ours. BMI, music moves, our world. You leave having this massive success with this song, just new level. You could have worked with any artists on the planet. You certainly could have probably gone in with as far as females at the time, you know, Madonna, probably the Bengals, whoever else is really big at this time,

and you go in with Paula Abdul. You know, Paula didn't have anything yet. What did you see in Paula that was worth? following up working with people like Michael Jackson, that you go in the studio and do forever your girl. You know, that's an interesting choice. You could go somewhere where the floor is much higher. I look at everything just as an opportunity to make music.

And that was, first of all, it was a good gig. It was a good paying gig. And Virgin Records was a fun place to make. So it was just a fun thing for me. I didn't think of it beyond that other than she was wonderful to work with, easy to work with. She was not the most gifted singer,

but it was about entertainment. So, yeah, it's definitely not man in the mirror. No, but I mean, it's so successful. Yeah. It was so huge. Did you feel having gone from doing the venerable artist now to breaking new artists?

Did you start preferring one or the other? it doesn't really matter. It didn't matter. But for me, the most fun, obviously, is it coming out of the darkness in being this bright light. And there's nothing more satisfying than that. And so I was involved with that a little before Paula, with a group called Wilson Phillips. And again, my thing is, I'm kind of just a natural counter-programmer. When I did the Wilson-Philips record in 1989 they were originally signed to Warner Brothers for records and they wanted them to abandon the the pop thing and do dance record and so I got a call from China Phillips saying we're not going to do this deal we want to work with you because I had done these demos with them that were

pop. So I really am grateful to them forever for having the artistic courage to walk away from a record deal at Warner Brothers and to just come continue to work with me and they didn't have a deal. So we had four demos, one of them, it was called Hold On, You're in Love, release me, and one other song, and they're all number one records ultimately. But no one wanted it. No one wanted it. So somewhere along the way, a great impresario named Charles Coppulman had just put together a great deal, sold a big publishing thing to EMI, and they gave him a label called SBK Records. So he had a brand new label, and he was, again, one of the few people who liked what we had done. And so he took an artistic chance with this three-part harmony pop songs.

group in a time when nobody was doing that and he said I'm going to make it a hit and thanks to Charles Kauffman it was a hit and we we had huge success with that record yeah I mean that's even again a level up of you you break an artist like Paul Abdul and that sits in this this specific lane but Wilson Phillips sort of goes across all different age groups yeah and becomes even more successful gets nominated for a bunch of Grammys. How did that influence the choices you were making even further from that? Did it make you want to be involved in, well, here I have these demos for some unsigned artists. You could sign your own artists. Did you start feeling, you know, I don't know how

that makes you feel when you go from taking, working on demos for an artist, then almost having a record deal throwing those demos away than going somewhere else and becoming successful like you were saying did you ever feel like releasing it yourself if this is 2020 you would just say fine I'm going to release it on

tune core yeah exactly you know you needed a gatekeeper you needed there was no way to distribute your own stuff but you were but you were one of the in a way I would assume most of the labels would give Glenn Ballard I mean you end up having some

you do end up releasing some music so I guess what I'm getting to is when did you start thinking as I'm going to have my own imprint my own label probably never because I recognized how difficult it was I mean I if you if listen I ended up having my label right I don't regret it the five years I spent trying to do that but I realized that it's something that I couldn't do I could either do one or the other really well and for me just making the music was the most important thing rather than trying to have a label with 10 artists and 10 different trajectories is very difficult I didn't have the right partner either so it was a situation where I got a label based largely on what I'd done with Atlantis.

And I ended up just producing records for that label, not my label, but for the parent label. And they rarely would release any of my stuff. So it was the wrong fit. Let's jump to Alanis. You know, here's somebody who's sort of on the lowest totem pole for Maverick at the time. You know, Mavericks is still something of a starting label.

They're struggling with their own management at the time. I would say that if you were to look at the who's looking list that labels were giving out. Alanis at the time was probably not the top name on the list when you first met her. That's no knock on her. It's just sort of in a weird sort of way. Maverick was this

brand new label. You know, they just didn't have what the other labels had. And here's this Canadian artist who has a quirky vibe. why did you choose to work on Alanis and you wrote the whole album pretty quickly notoriously so tell me about the process of writing Jagged Little Pill I always think of myself as a songwriter first

and if somebody wants to write with me and they got some something some serious enthusiasm and any talent I'm usually interested because for me, my thing is trying to find the special thing with my partner, even if they don't know that's what I'm looking for. I'm always listening to their voices. If I can get in a room with somebody who's a singer and I can hear their voice, it changes everything for me because I've been looking for the place

where they have the most emotional resonance in their voice. So I'm doing all this like kind of not sneakily, but I want to, I just, feel like every person that I sit with has something special and I'm looking for that. Looking for the special thing. Not the thing that's already out there. I never start from outside, go in. I always start inside and go out. And it's maybe harder, but I don't listen to what's going on out there. I don't. I would rather just make it around the artist. So I've never tried to copy anything. And so it starts with a deep dive with an artist, trying to understand, hearing them

sing in the room and then shit happens. Just hearing a voice because you know it's their fingerprint and you go, oh, let's make something out of that. So it was exactly that way with Alanis. I just thought of myself as a songwriter

at that point, even though I was a successful record producer. I got a call from my publishers. A guy named John Alexander, MCA Music. And he said, I've got a writer in town from Ottawa she had a record deal on MCA when she was 14

she's out of her deal but we kept her publishing will you write a song with her and the answer for me is always almost always yes let's do it really it's not I mean there's a I know of a very successful songwriter who said to another very successful songwriter's like your hit writer

act like one and I feel like some of that it has this connotation of that you got to start the power of no and you say no to almost everything and then you rarely say yes. I always say yes. Wow. Because yes to me is a possibility.

No shuts off all possibility. Yeah. Who taught you that? Are your parents like that? It's just my mode. I mean, for me, first of all, anybody that's dropped out of normal life to do what we do,

they're already freaks. And I consider myself to be a freak in that way in that I don't live a conventional life. and my passion for what we do is all consuming. And so if I meet somebody who has that kind of passion, I want that and I want to find out what they've got. And so for me, getting a call from my publisher, they said, what I write with? Of course.

That's what I do. If it doesn't work, what you've lost? A day? You probably have something at the end of it. Because for me, I always try to make sure that we have a song at the end of the day, or at least we have something that we can call a song. What was the song you wrote with her?

The first song I wrote with Atlanta as well, I'll tell you about this meeting because it was an instant connection. I had a studio in Encino, California, and she showed up, knocked on my door, 11 o'clock. We had a cup of tea, and I'd do nothing about her. I had never heard anything.

And I just suggested that we write a song. And so I just threw out a concept, I said there's a club in New York. York called the bottom line. All these great artists used to play there. Why don't we write a song about meeting at the bottom line and the bottom line being this metaphoric bottom line of the relationship?

And she went. And she, like, for her, that was like an instant predicate for writing a song. And so I picked up an acoustic guitar, which was kind of unusual. And we wrote a song called The Bottom Line. And she wrote most of the lyric. I helped her with a little bit of it.

And then we sang it and demoed it. And it was like, shit, I like her voice a lot, a lot, a lot. There's something's feral about it and something unusual. So we turned the song into MCA. They liked it. They sent her back to me. We wrote another song. And they sent her back like two weeks later.

The third song we wrote was a song called Ironic. And then she went back to Canada. And so they sent her back to L.A. in June and we got together like eight more times. We wrote eight songs. She went back to Canada. She came back and we wrote

a bunch of more songs. We got together 20 times. We wrote 20 songs. That's the only time I ever spent with it. And so 12 of those songs were the on jagged little pill. It's crazy. I mean, the space between

well, we'll get to that song later, but the space between Wilson Phillips, to drag little pill it's actually pretty substantial and you go from having when you it's easy to look at a discography

and just scroll down and say okay yeah there's a hit there's a hit there's a hit but there's space between these these hits oh yeah your expectations after a few years start to change

because for sure you've worked on other things that have been somewhat successful somewhat not along the way And you have to have some either moniker of doubt or you have to at least question a little bit the process and the business because the business changes so rapidly

and you have to start questioning yourself and whether or not maybe I don't know what a hit voice sounds like or what a hit song sounds like. It's just natural. Going into Jagged Little Pill, did you start questioning yourself? am I projecting?

Or is there some part of you that was like this is, you know, that doesn't really motivate you in the creation, in the creative process. And it's, you know, it just happened to be as big as it was. If nothing had ever happened with it, I would have still done it. I would, and I would do it again. I mean, for me, the success comes after you've turned yourself inside out.

and if you're not willing to do that every single time, for me, that was the only way to go. And because I'm so all in on it, there was no retreat, you just got to keep going. You just got to keep making music. And, I mean, I write every day. So to me, it's like, if I'm not writing something every day, there's something wrong.

So for me, it's like, no, we get, I remain undaunted. And even between hits, you just try to survive. You just try to make music that you think is good. and look if nothing had happened after 10 years I would be forced to do something else there's no question but there was enough activity

even between the times we didn't have a hit that it felt like we were moving towards something you know. Did you have a personal life during any of this? My person, listen

I was married and I had kids so I was never a party guy I was always the work guy so I worked seven days a week and even throughout all of that and so my family was enormously supportive of it you know my two sons who are grown now they were around all this music you know so

but they knew what my mode was which is just making music so we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of Jagged Little Pill amazing and we're celebrating by ending this year by the time this comes out last year but we're celebrating Jag Little Pill

the musical on Broadway which opens tomorrow or when this comes out a few months ago but this is a it's hard to explain how complicated it is to get a show to Broadway and you know the quick part of it is there are 39 theaters on Broadway half of them are plays of the remaining half

half or more of them are legacy shows like you know Phantom of the Opera Hamilton, Book of Mormon, so on and so forth. So you end up with about seven theaters. Half of those are going to be revival. So you're going to have Oklahoma, you know, those kinds of things. So the remaining shows are basically Moulin Rouge, which costs 35 million plus. You know, Tina Turner, which costs 20 million plus.

And then you have Jagged Little Pill, which is your musical on Broadway, the book written by the Academy Award-winning Diablo Cody. how is this process you know I know you had a show which we can get to later a little bit but you had a show Ghost

that opened based on the movie that you did with Dave Stewart that opened on Broadway how does this differ from that and what does it feel like now having multiple shows on Broadway well first of all deep gratitude just based on what you're talking about

the shelf space is so limited for your product getting on the shelf getting a theater is like you say is it's the hardest thing in the world and so first of all just gratitude that that I do have this activity I mean the as you well know the process of getting something on stage you have to shed all your sense of expectation in terms of how long it's going to take

every show I mean first of all jagged little pill has been gestating for eight years, seven years, eight years. I had very little to do with the show other than I wrote the songs 25 years ago. I saw some of the workshops that they sent me. I saw the show in Boston, but mostly my involvement with it has just been at a distance. And so this one is a complete gift to me. I'm just reminded that the commitment that we made to writing those songs is on some level is paying us back now because

when we wrote those songs, we were just trying to please each other. We had no supervision. There was no record company. There was nobody. It was two of us in a room. And the fact that these songs have now found a new life with these incredibly gifted people

like Diablo Cody and Diane Paulus who've taken this music and reconfigured it in a way. It's actually astonishing to me. So for me, Jagged Little Pill, the musical is like a Christmas present. How does it compare to a show like Ghosts, which you wrote from scratch? Those songs are written from scratch, which takes... Explain the process of writing a Broadway show, because I've tried,

but you've done it now a few times, and it's trying to explain the intricacies in the process of developing a show is so complex. What is the difference from doing Ghost and now you have a show that's in the West End right now, right? No, it's going on, Manchester. Oh, Manchester.

Yeah, back to the future going up and we'll eventually be on the West End. So explain, you know, the process of all these different musicals. Well, I mean, for me, as a songwriter, first of all, it's enormously liberating. It's enormously liberating.

liberating because the pop music box is a much smaller box now musically smaller than it's ever been so for me it's a liberation from that little box mostly you can use all the vocabulary of music to tell your story on stage so right away i'm liberated but it's and i also love the fact that of all the art forms, it gets the most, you work it out the most. I mean, it's really funny. I've just shot eight episodes of a TV series. We didn't rehearse any scenes.

We did table readings and then we shot. In theater, you work this stuff up for months. You do workshops. You audition things. And so the process, for some people, is extremely daunting because you auditioned so many things. But for me, it's liberation, because you have the time and the space

to actually figure out how to make it work. And you can actually rehearse it, and you can see it in front of you and go, oh, no, that doesn't work. There's almost no other medium where you have that kind of revision. Everything gets revised. Even when you're in previews, you get to revise it.

But back to the whole process, I mean, it's, you have to shed all sorts. sense of what you think the timeline can be. You just can't, you can't be sitting around looking at your watch. You can't, or the calendar even. So the commitment is so deep. If you don't believe in it, you will wash out. So the process is daunting, but it's, if you like me want to write real music, it's, it

opens up the door. The, you know, bringing what you learn from the theater into the pop world is, fascinating because that idea of what do you really want to say making sure every lyric has a purpose making sure the song delivers in that artist's life do you find yourself using any of the knowledge you know from doing things like television and and film you know you want a grammy for polar express you know do you have writing for film writing for film writing for theater does that influence how you write for other artists?

Because you have a real clearly defined purpose always in front of you or if it's a film you have all these beautiful pictures and story. So I think in every way I don't want to say it's easier but the predicates

are all there. I mean the reason to be doing it is there. So it you're never lacking the inspiration and those media. You really aren't. When you're sitting around trying to write a pop record,

it's a completely different process. You're basically trying to get something today that sounds like a lot of everything else, but it's only different. Going back in time a little bit for some of the more discography questions, you know, nine lives for Aerosmith, that comes off of get a grip,

which is probably their biggest success, you know. Having the sort of commercial expectations for following up get a grip, how was it working with Aerosmith during a time where they had just followed up something, you know, was it hard for them to follow up?

Did they feel this pressure during the writing, recording process? I, yes. The simple answer is yes, but they were going through, I mean, look, there was some internal dynamics in the band. They weren't great at that time. But at the end of the day, it's probably the most fun I've ever had. Yeah.

We spent six months in Miami Beach. We lived at the Marlon Hotel. Stephen Tyler was in 206. I was in 205. And just the act of writing was Stephen. as much as I did, it's an incredible experience because when I

I say I love to hear a singer sing, Stephen can sing for 12 hours and his voice never gets tired and he can do the most amazing shit with his voice. So for me, as a writer, I was always having fun. It must be so fun recording a voice like that with all the overtones and all that.

Like he's just as such a unique tone. He's one of the greatest singers and people don't recognize it as much because, I mean, he can even do this Tuva singing where he sings through his nose. I mean, the man has, so, listen, we felt all that weight of like, you've got to have another hit.

Is this a hit? Is this not a hit? I try to protect the artists I'm working with from too much of that stress. I try to take it on myself and let them just be creative. And yeah, I was feeling it. I mean, John Kalladner was our A&N, our guy and I love John so much

and it was you know there's a lot of pressure there but you can't bring that to the artist you can't you can't two other projects that are really interesting right after that you know return of Saturn for no doubt

really kind of cements their place they had had a single that worked and then they had an album that you know tragic kingdom that was just massive and they have like return of Saturn really solidifies them in the pop

punk punk rock world but that also feels a little bit out of the box musically compared to anything else that you had done well I didn't have anything to do with the writing of that record and I think that was

before they even hired me to do it they wanted to make a record that they wrote so even though Jimmy Iveen really encouraged them to write with me. They weren't open to it. So basically I just took their material

and arranged it and tried to make a hit record out of it. So it is different in that respect because it's their music and I'm just the producer. Yeah. What it worked. I love the record. You know, love it. Dave Matthews band every day. You know, for anybody who's about my age

who learn how to play guitar, Dave Matthews is the most influential guitarist. for almost every songwritery kind of guitar player. This was a famous album for him, partly because it was abandoning acoustic guitar and being able to really embrace electric guitar. Was that a conversation between the two of you? What brings...

That's sort of his Bob Dylan moment of, okay, I'm going to do an album that's electric guitar and his fans like, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to consume it, and then you have space between, you have a bunch of hits on it. But how do you, you know, that conversation of taking an artist for maybe one of the more pivotal moments of one of the biggest artists you worked with. Well, first of all, there was some reaction from the hardcore base about that electric and sort of more commercial or whatever they wanted to call it.

It all happened naturally. I was, look, they are a famous jam band and they are famously, they were famously sort of slow making their records. So they were in the middle of making a record with Steve Lillywhite in their studio in Virginia and they'd been working on it for like a year and they had nothing recorded at the end of a year. So I was called in basically

to take that music that they had written and most of the songs were in various forms but most of them were like seven and eight minutes long, which is what they do. They're a jam band. So I took all of that material. I met Dave and the band in Connecticut, and they're like meeting this guy from the outside.

It's a very insulated group. And, you know, it's, so they were really enormously embracing to allow me in. And the attitude was, this is the fixer. This guy's going to come in and arrange your shit. and we'll make a record out of it because we need a record this year.

So I got all the material and I went back to L.A. and I went about doing my edits and sort of just making four-minute versions out of eight-minute songs, which I did on all the material. I think it was like eight songs. So the idea was that they,

because they tour all the time, they only had five weeks to make this record, five weeks, and they had already spent a year making it. So I was going to start over and make a record in five weeks. We needed two more songs, so the attitude was, Dave will come out and write with me for a week.

We'll get the other two songs, and we'll make the record. He came out, we got in the studio, and we proceeded to write 12 songs at seven days. Actually, I've never had anything like that happened. I sat and I gave him a baritone electric guitar and we sat in my studio and we caught fire and we wrote all those songs in a week

a week. And so the band came back a week later and I mean my thing is to make the demos right when we're doing it so we had really good demos in this week we got them into my studio and said okay Dave said I have a couple of new songs I want to play and he played them all this new material and they were just like,

they never heard it. And so Dave said, I want to do these songs. And they went, how are we going to do that? And now we have a month to make this record. But they were so game about it. And so we went into the studio

and I, we made this record. Yeah, crazy. You know, after this, you obviously, So you end up working with some artists really early on in their career is Miley, Katie Perry. You know, you're still meeting these artists really early and still saying yes. Yes.

But there's one name of a fellow classic writer that you're friends with. And I guess I'm not sure when you guys met, but going into our next segment, which will be five for five. I'm going to name five names, and you just tell me the first five things that come off the top we're going to start with this one dave stewart oh from the erythmix i love dave so much his spirit is infectious uh he's one of my favorite guitar players i love him like a brother he's he's the greatest he's the most fun person i've ever worked with quincy jones quincy jones is like my father figure He's all love. He's a genius.

And he's so confident in his genius that he empowers other people on a regular basis. So I owe my career to Quincy Jones, no doubt. Wilson Phillips. I love them like they're my daughters. I love them so much. We were very close. I mean, they had these famous parents who weren't always great. them and I sort of hopefully I filled in a little bit in terms of being a solid presence in their life

and the first time I heard them sing they they sang the song released me and I was I said that you don't have three voices there that's one voice and for me the sound that they made in the room was all I needed it was like okay let's make a record based on that so I love them to this moment they're the greatest. Alanis Morissette. Alanis Morissette. A smiling genius who shows up at my door at the age of 19, who was an open channel and who's,

I would use the word alacrity to describe her. She was so present in a way that was astonishing. And it was, I think, serendipitous that we were in the same. room together 20 times and the magic that we were able to create is still there. Let's go with Marty McFly. Marty McFly. Oh, great. Well, I am doing Back to the Future for the stage and Marty McFly is, you know, he's going to go back to

195 and I'm trying to help him get there. Exactly. And a shout-out to Malia Savette, our fellow friend. Oh, so we have to give a show. to Malia. She's one of my favorite singers, such a dynamic performer. Just kudos to her. And the fact that we both are connected to her is serendipity. Yeah. I'm excited for her music to come out in 2020. But, you know, I got to, first of all, thank you for doing this. Thank you.

I feel like I can ask you questions all day and talk to you about music because you think of music as, Not necessarily as just the top 40 chart. You think of music. And music is so vast. And it doesn't have to be a chase over, you know, certain loops and dealing with interpolations and all the parts that are a part of the music industry now. And it is important to know all of what's happening in the world right now. But it's also important to respect music of all different genres

and to use that music in creating new music as a way to progress. You kind of have to understand where music came from. And your discography just speaks to an understanding of music, and it's such an inspiring way. And you don't know this, but I met Dave Stewart 10 years ago. I don't know if you remember this, but we went to your studio in Hollywood. And, you know, one of my good friends and I, who we still write with together, we went and we were just so green. Both of us were, you know, he's the S&L guitarist.

Jared Sharf, shout out to him, Pearl Line producer. And I, you know, and I was in a band, and we were just starting to co-write. And somehow Dave Stewart brings us in, and he brings us inside your studio, and it's all white. It's my studio. It was all white, and it was all white except for the Grammys that were sitting out. And it was such as you focus on those Grammys and you see that grand piano. And you just look at it and you think, okay, this person is starting with a literal canvas. Creating a white room is a space where the only thing that paints the room are the words and the music.

And I just remember seeing that. And whether that was intentional or not, I think about that. image a ton. Oh my God. You know, the idea that our job is to paint. You know, our job is to create music that didn't exist before, that helps tell a story because that's what we're inspired to do. And if you do what you did with Alanis and you just write songs for each other, then maybe

out there there's other people who can see themselves in that. Because that's where honesty comes from. That's where all of it comes from. But, you know, again, I can't thank you enough for doing this. This is really exciting. And congratulations on the opening of Jaggle, Little Pill, the musical. Thanks so much. All right.

Thanks, friends. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist. Or visit our website at an anthwriter is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. and the writer is, is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Berg's mom, and published by Big Deal Music.

A special thanks to David Silberstein from Mega House Music and Michael White. Until next time, this is Ross Bowling.