Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - GGACP Classic: Shep Gordon

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

GGACP celebrates the birthday (October 18th) of legendary talent manager, producer and "Supermensch" Shep Gordon by revisiting this memorable interview from 2019. In this episode, Shep joins Gilbert and Frank from his Hawaii home to talk about his 50+ years in rock 'n' roll, the pitfalls of worldwide fame, the importance of "making history," the secret of client-manager relationships and the benefits of "bad" publicity. Also, Janis Joplin packs a punch, Cary Grant adopts a cat, Elton John gets showered in panties and Shep saves Raquel Welch from a wardrobe malfunction. PLUS: Wolfman Jack! The late, great Teddy Pendergrass! Groucho dishes the dirt! Shep hangs with the Dalai Lama! And Alice Cooper gets fired out of a cannon! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Peloton has everything you need to help you get going. Get a head start on summer with Peloton and choose a flexible payment plan that works for you at onepeloton.ca slash financing. Once is never good enough for something so fantastic. Fantastic. So here's another Gilbert and Franks. Here's another Gilbert and Franks. Here's another Gilbert and Franks. Colossal classic. I'm Nancy Allen, and you're listening to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal pod plant. Oh, thank you.

This could take a while. This could take a while. We got the time. I should have been rehearsing this. Okay, I'm Nancy Allen, and you're listening to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing, colossal podcast. Gilbert, you eat shit. He's easily pleased. You are a very sick person.

I hate to tell you. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and our engineer, Frank Furtarosa. Our guest this week is a genuine bona fide showbiz legend, a producer, a New York Times bestselling author, an entrepreneur, and one of the most successful and influential talent managers in showbiz history. guiding the careers of artists such as Anne Murray, Blondie, Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Ben Vereen, Squeeze, Frankie Valli, George Clinton, Kenny Loggins, the Pointer Sisters, Raquel Welch, Rick James, and even Groucho Marx. He even managed Pink Floyd for all of nine days.

And he's still working with his original client and longtime friend, Alice Cooper. He's also a movie producer, helping bring to the screen award-winning films like The Duelist, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Rhodey, Stop Making Sense, Choose Me, The Whales of August, Wes Craven Shocker, and John Carpenter's They Live. But that's not all. He also created the concept of the Celebrity Chef, directing the careers of Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Nobu Masuhisa,

Close. Close enough. And Daniel Balud, among others. His best-selling memoir is entitled They Call Me Supermench. he's also the subject of the Mike Myers directed documentary, Supermensch, The Legend of Shep Gordon, which was released to rave reviews in 2016 and featured longtime friends Sylvester Stallone, Michael Douglas, and Willie Nelson. Please welcome to the podcast mentor, advisor, spiritual guru, master promoter, marketing genius, idol maker, and the man who came up with the brilliant idea

of wrapping a rock and roll record in women's panties. The one and only Shep Gordon. Now I know why I'm tired. You said your documentary was like a eulogy.

That's like a eulogy. Yes, all a eulogy. My life has turned into a eulogy. Now, starting from the beginning, one of your first jobs was something I'm sure any Jewish parents would be so proud of their son doing. You were a security guard in a prison. Yeah, I was actually a probation officer.

I was in California. I was a probation officer for a day at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. And I was going to the new school for social research knew i wanted to drop out and they sent some um some uh recruit recruiters from the california penal system and i said um i was a jewish kid from manhattan who thought of myself as um the savior on a white horse. And it was the Reagan era when people like me, hippies, I was a full-on hippie, were getting persecuted. And I said, I'm going to go save these kids. So the luckiest, that was probably the best choice I ever made

because it started my journey. I ended up at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. I had hair almost down to my journey. I ended up at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. I had hair almost down to my waist. Luckily, I left the psychedelics in the car because I had to go through a frisking when I went in. Good decision. Yeah, good decision. And they sort of set me up. They sent me out to play baseball with the kids who were all basically South American kids, young. This was a probation, not a jail, so it was under 18. And I guess they gave them instructions that I was going to be the baseball, and all the guards left, and the kids came around me. It didn't really hurt me, but I got the message and I I left that night

and drove into LA and checked into a motel I had about 10 days worth of money in a cheap motel it was I think $50 a night and took some psychedelics you saw a vacancy sign, right? Saw a vacancy sign. It was actually right next to the Magic Castle, but I didn't know about the Magic Castle in those days. It was all fate because I got off the freeway and I got in the right lane. I was trying to get to Hollywood, but you had to make a right on Franklin Boulevard, which is where this motel was. And I saw a vacancy, went in, checked in room 224.

Still remember the room in the corner. And I heard a girl screaming after I was, you know, psychedelicized and heard a girl screaming. And it had just come from a jail. So my thoughts weren't of love. They were sort of something violent. So I went down again on my white horse, you know, here's a savior,

and separated him and the girl punched me. They were making love. And in the morning, I went down to the pool. And the girl pulled me over and the girl was Janis Joplin. Amazing. And she was sitting with all these rock stars, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison. And my mind immediately went to, I am the luckiest guy in the world. I just found the world's greatest customers from my pharmacy business. And my journey began. And about three months into it, I made enough money to buy a car. So when I got the car, Jimmy Hendrix said, what do you do for a living?

I never see you go to work. And I said, well, I just do my pharmaceuticals. And he said, well, what are you going to tell the police if they ask you where you got the money for a car? And I had never thought of that. Long Island, nobody asks you. In Watts, you know, they ask you. And I said, I don't know

he said are you Jewish and I said yeah I said you should be a manager career advice from Jimmy Hendrix and Alice Cooper was living in Chambers Brothers basement and he said can you afford to pay a hundred dollars a week to say you manage these guys and I said absolutely so Alice tells of Jimmy Hendrix walking in with Lester Chambers saying, we found a Jew who will give you $100 a week and manage you. And the journey began. You had no knowledge of that motel. No knowledge whatsoever. You were pulling into the rock and roll motel. No knowledge whatsoever.

You were pulling into the Rock and Roll Motel. It was just there. There was a vacancy sign. It was in a convenient spot at the time. Yeah, it was completely because I had to make that right turn. Had to make that right turn. I can remember. This place is as good as any, right?

Oh, yeah. I figured I could spend $50 a night, and this was, I think, like $38 or something. It's almost magical. No, it's a bit. But most of my life has been knee-jerk, you know, openness to be open enough to some knee-jerk bump. Yeah, I mean, it's a random decision to just, oh, I'll pull into this place. It changes everything. In a moment.

Yep. So then your first and only client at the time, I guess, or maybe the other ones were clients. Yeah, in a different way. Yeah. How was Alice Cooper? Who was, for me, the perfect client because everybody hated him, which meant I would never have to work because I didn't know what to do.

I was doing it as a cover for my pharmaceuticals. So he was the perfect cover. He was the perfect client in life. And life was beautiful. We went on for about a year, maybe nine months, and he'd come get his $100. And I'd do my thing, and it was great. And then people started to get arrested all around me. And I just didn't want to be one of those people.

So the only thing really in my life was Alice. The only thing in Alice's life was sort of me. So we looked at it. You know, the band got together. Alice at that time wasn't Alice. Alice was Vincent Frenier. Alice was five people. So we all got together, and I remember what we talked about.

We said, it only took like 10, 12 people for Christianity. We don't need to be that big. And their thoughts were much more abstract than ours. So six of us really believing if we make a pact that we're going to change the world with this, let's just stay together till we do it. And the only thing we really had was that people didn't like them. So the thought was, how do we turn that into a positive? And when we started to think about it, we realized that that was the thing that every superstar had in common parents hated them they hated the Beatles they hated the Stones

they hated Sinatra Elvis yeah now it's hip-hop you know I remember going into my kid's room hearing hip-hop and rap the first time and what is this crap and as I said it I realized it's going to be the biggest thing ever. So we realized that we had in our toolkit this unbelievable tool, which was the ability to get people to hate us. So we told that story and we did everything to that point. That's where the chickens came from and that's where the name Alice came from and that's where makeup came from and that's where chopping up Alice came from, and that's where makeup came from, and that's where chopping up babies came from. What's going to really piss off a parent? And during the course of it, he developed into a great rock and roll actor.

Yeah, it worked. And that was the legend of Alice Cooper where everyone says, oh, he's the guy who bit off the head of the chicken which he never did yeah so what was the real story the real story was we we had our uh the theory we had of getting parents to hate us was a great theory the making it happen was a tough one so buying lunch was difficult our dreams were big so we knew we didn't have a So we knew we didn't have a lot of stuff. We didn't have a lot of bullets left in our gun. We just

couldn't get attention. We tried. The first thing we tried to do was we went into a place called The Experience in L.A. on Sunset Boulevard. And the thought was, let's get arrested for indecent exposure. Indecent exposure could maybe make a daily newspaper or a TV thing in L.A.

Parents will see it and say, oh, my God, this is disgusting. A guy named Alice who's naked on stage. So we made up see-through plastic clothes and went on stage at the experience. And you could see everything. The genitals were all there. And I went to a phone booth, and I called 911. And I said, oh, my God, I'm here with my children. There's these naked, crazy hippies on stage.

I'm sure they're on drugs. Next thing I know, the sirens are coming. It's like, yeah, we got them, baby. The police come, you know, bust in the door, like eight policemen. And by that time, the heat of their bodies had fogged up the plastic. So you couldn't see anything. They looked like they were dressed. Was a noble effort.

So we had a lot of noble efforts, but we were getting near the end of our economics. We were eating like rock soup. And an opportunity came up for me to produce a show with John Lennon. It was the first show. Oh, the Rock and Roll Revival show. Yeah, it was the Rock and Roll Toronto. It was Jim Morrison of the Doors, who I knew well. I helped get them for the show.

And John. So I knew John's first appearance with Yoko was going to get the world's attention. So in lieu of pay, I said, I just wanted my act to go on before him. And they agreed to it because it was too late in the game. They couldn't get rid of me. And that was the only way I was going to do it. So you put Alice between the doors and John Lennon. Yep. Jim was very cool do it. So you put Alice between the doors and John Lennon. Yep. Um, Jim was very cool with it.

Jim was loved Alice. They were really good friends. He understood this was sort of make it or break it for us. And we had to do something outrageous. And I, truthfully, I couldn't think of anything outrageous. So we did one. The thing we were doing was we had pillow feathers, uh, feather pillows in the hotel room and CO2 tanks and fire extinguishers. So we were able to open up the pillowcase and blow it out with CO2 every day as long as we stayed in hotels that had feathers.

So that was part of our show. And I was driving to the show trying to figure out what to do. And we got to the show. There were these, what do you call them, feral chickens running around the field. Wild chickens. So I said, this is it. So I just put one in a laundry bag from backstage and snuck to the stage. And when the feathers started to go on stage, I threw the chicken.

And Alice saw the chicken. And he assumed the chicken could fly. So he threw it to the audience. And the audience just ripped it apart. They were frenzied. And that became Alice bit the head off the chicken and drank the blood. And we never said it wasn't so.

We were thrilled that that was the story. But it wasn't. You went with it. We went with it. Print the legend. Yeah. Truth wasn't our biggest factor at the minute. Well, didn't that lead to the ASPCA following you guys around for years?

Every single show. That's sort of where the snake came from because we figured as long as they're there, we might as well really irritate them. So what other animal could we introduce into the show that would really freak them out? And the snake came up. So they had, it was a double header. They were after us for the snake and for the chicken every night. But that would make the 6 o'clock news.

And that's what we wanted. We wanted on the 6 o'clock news the most respectable people in the city saying, oh, this disgusting guy is in your town tonight. Don't let your kids out to go see him. That's what worked for us. And you in England, you took a big picture of Alice Cooper naked. With Derek Taylor. Yeah.

With a snake wrapped around them and had this guy just drive around Piccadilly Circus and then just stop. That's a great one. It was the same theory. I went to London. We had put Wembley up on sale. I thought that because we were starting to sell tickets in America, we would in England.

But I got into town about five days early, and ticket sales were very weak. And they took me into the office of this gentleman, Derek Taylor, who I had never met, who was just one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. He was the fifth Beatle. Great character. Always had a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

And when I went into his office, George Harrison was there in these white robes. He had just come from India. It was sort of that period of time, the Beatles in India. And Harry Nielsen was in there and a whole bunch of people. And I had to wait like three, four hours to get his attention. Then he sort of said, what can I help you? I know my president sent him down. I said, I have this band, Alice Cooper.

And he said, I haven't heard of him. And he said, tell me about him. So I explained a bit about him. And he said, what can I help you with? And I said, I need a way to rapidly piss off every parent in England. And I only have three days to do it. And he said, uh, you know, we started talking and I said, I just come from America, from

New York and Richard Avedon took this picture of Alice naked with a boa constrictor wrapped around his penis. And Derek said, well, let's see, let's talk about it. He said, every family, where can you get every family? You can get them at morning news on the BBC. They watch traffic. You could get them maybe in the newspaper newspaper but three days is tough for a newspaper story for me to get a reporter so when he said traffic i said well track if they watch traffic every mornings he said yes what about if we took that picture and put it on a big thing and broke it down would they cover that he said absolutely and he's the one who came with piccadilly it ended up backing up traffic for about 25 miles.

He broke down the truck three times, went to jail. The same police every time came over to get the truck away. Was the driver worried he was going to get arrested, Sheriff? He knew he was going to get arrested, but we told him we'd cover him. But the best part of it was what we didn't expect was the next day, one of the MPs in Parliament introduced a bill to ban Alice from coming into the country to do the show. So the London papers had a picture of the billboard with Alice naked and the story about being banned in England, that this MP was trying to ban us.

So the show sold out in two hours. Of course. Fantastic. Since we mentioned Pink Floyd in the intro, and I don't want to forget it because it's kind of fun, and I want to ask you what Sid Barrett was like, if you have any memories of him. Yeah, Sid Barrett.

A legend. I had met Sid Barrett only once during that time. I only met three of the band members. Okay. They had a road manager named Stephen O'Rourke and they stayed in that motel. Same motel. Same motel. And

Jimmy and Lester wanted me to develop a business. You know, you should manage other people. So the name of my company is because they were artists, and they wanted to make me a business card. And in those days, the Chambers Brothers used to put up a V.

Time has come today. They would sing at the end of their show, and they put up the peace sign and fingers. It was a big thing in those days, V. So they drew that, and we looked in the dictionary for the first word with a V, and it was alive, A-L-I-V-E. So they brought me Pink Floyd as a second client. They said, we have this great guy.

He's Jewish. He's really great. He's, you know, and a guy named Steve O'Rourke came, and they wanted a gig on the way back to England. They were going back like 10 days later, and I knew nothing. I didn't even know what a gig was. I had to ask what a gig was when they left the room. But Lester called a guy in Chicago and booked them at the hot club in Chicago

the following weekend. It was a guy named Aaron Russo, the hot club in Chicago the following weekend. It was a guy named Aaron Russo, very famous guy in the music business was married to Bette Midler, ran for mayor. I know the name. Yeah. Yeah. A film producer too.

I think film producer, very famous guy. Yeah. And a very famous, um, lived on the edge of, of, of the law.

Sort of, I don't know how to describe it. So anyway, a kinetic playground, which was like the film war and i got him ten thousand dollars to play um which i didn't know it's a gigantic sum of money to play the following weekend which i didn't know nobody books anybody for the next weekend. Well, they hired me immediately as a manager. $10,000 was got to Chicago. The club burned down that weekend. Unbelievable. He, I'm sure, needed an act to be on the marquee who he could not pay because the club burned

down. But I had no other act, so I wouldn't hurt his future. So that was the weekend the club burned down. They fired me immediately. The end of your association with Pink Floyd. so I wouldn't hurt his future. So that was the weekend the club burned down, and they fired me immediately. The end of your association with Pink Floyd. By the way, Shep, that's Gilbert's dream, that the club burns down before he has to go on.

Every time when I'm backstage waiting to go on, I think I wish there was a fire or a flood, and they hand me my check and send me home. Should I have a detonator button? Should I give you the check? Just start torching the place, Gil, like Joe Pesci. Good fellas. Now, the first time you met Teddy Pendergrass, tell us your sales pitch to him.

That's right. You know, there's certain stories that you sort of never tell because they're not really believable because you don't want to hurt somebody. This is a story I never told until Teddy wrote his bio, and he wrote it in his bio, so I now feel like I'm free to tell it. Sure. I first went to see him, and I I went backstage and there was every great Jewish

manager lined up at the door. He had just had a number one record. You know, I didn't like the show. And I didn't really, I was there doing a favor. The chairman of CBS at the time was the executor of Groucho Marx's estate, Goddard Lieberson. And he asked me to go see Teddy. So I went because I had to. So anyway, Goddard called and made me go down a second time. When I went down the second time, I was always a huge fan of Teddy's voice. Once I realized he was the voice of Harold Melvin, I just didn't like the show he was doing it. But when I went down the second time, I sort of made up my mind

that I was going to be so crazy that there was no way I was going to have to get into this. Because in those days, urban music was a tough game. It was dangerous. It was very different than the rock and roll world. So I get down there and um he lived in an apartment house in front of the apartment house of the white orals royce says teddy on the license plate and you know i was a young kid i wasn't like i wasn't rocking at this point i was still you know checking the bills at the restaurants how much how much was the soup uh um and i go up and it's a penthouse apartment. I ring the doorbell and this gorgeous girl comes out in the negligee. Just gorgeous, like drop-dead gorgeous.

And I was always very taken with gorgeous women. It was sort of one of my things. So I thought, oh, wow. And then I go in and Teddy walks in the room. And he's the sexiest um most handsome i can't even describe when he walks in a room he owns the room and it's like pure sex um and here you know i'm like this you know not even successful yet kid who's you know um one of 25 other managers. So anyway, he said, thanks for coming down. I said, listen, man, there's not a lot of things I really know in life, but one of the things I do know

is that you have no qualifications to determine which one of us is lying to you because you have met the best liars in the business and I'm probably one of them. So the criteria of you making a judgment that this guy's going to do a better job for you, or this guy's going to do a better job, it means nothing because you're not qualified to make that decision. I said, but here's what the other thing I know. I can get higher than you. I got more beautiful women than you. I can drink more than you. And when you collapse at the end of like nights of partying, I will be there to take the cash out of your pocket. So when you wake up, you still got it. And he just looked at me like I was completely insane. I thought he just

throw me out and say, and he said, you know, you're right. Let's get together. And three weeks later, I got the Atlantic apartment. Atlantic Records had an apartment at the Warwick Hotel. And we got a two-bedroom suite. And three days later, I was managing Teddy. And I managed him for his whole life after that. And he actually tells a story in his bio. What is the story in the book of you running through the streets with the suitcase full of money? That was related to Teddy.

Yeah. We were doing two shows at the Apollo. And after the first show, and they were sold out shows way in advance, so there was no cash in the box office. And after the first show,

the road manager came to me and said, he won't go on, he's left the building. I said, he's what? He's left the building. It's a sold out audience. And he said, he's left the building. I said, he's what? He's left the building. It's a sold out audience. And he said, he's left the building. And, um, he wouldn't, wouldn't get on the phone with me. Wouldn't talk to me. And I, you know, I had, this is Harlem. This is not funny. You know, this is a sold out crowd. You don't get up there and say, Teddy can't come on, come back tomorrow for your money. Um, I, I didn't want that on my shoulder.

So I called him. I had a business manager who just passed away, Bert Fidel, and he had a restaurant client in the village who, in the restaurant business, you tend to keep cash. So he had $60,000 in cash, which is what I needed. So I took a limousine down to the hotel, picked up the cash, and the limousine broke down about 15 blocks from the theater. So I'm walking with this white Jewish kid, walking too hard.

It was like, you know, 10.30 at night. I was so scared, but we got it. We paid everybody off. It wasn't until a couple of years later when Teddy told me one night with some cognac, he said, you know, I'm really sorry about that night at the Apollo. And I said, what happened, man? And he said, someone flashed the gun. And unbeknownst to me, his last manager had been shot to death.

So he just got really scared. Someone had pulled the gun the first show, and he just didn't want to do the second one. He had a woman manager. Yeah. And then just one day, one morning, they said, oh, your manager was shot in the head. Well, you go into detail in the book, Shep, about the

Chitlin Circuit and the amount of corruption at the time and how you guys were determined to break it. Very ballsy of you, I might add. Yeah, you know, for me, I didn't feel like I had anything to lose. I wasn't really married. I didn't have kids. Yeah.

And just, you know, just about everything I've done has been a knee-jerk reaction, and that was really a knee-jerk reaction to, like, you know, basically, can you curse on the show? Fuck them. Sure, yeah. It was basically a fuck them. It was like, you know, fuck you. Like, fuck you like fuck you promoted

in pay us and when i went to teddy i found out that's what happens to him every night this had happened with black performers there was a history of this you know it was it was in every industry it seems to be the same pattern um that they're suppliers of content who are the artists whether they're chefs whether they're musical artists. Then there's power people who make huge amounts of money off them. And they should. No one's saying they shouldn't. But in the record business, how it manifested in the black world,

it started in the white world too, but it broke out very fast, was an artist was told that in order to sell records, radio stations would only play their record if they went to those towns and played a club date for him or a concert date for him. So Teddy would go to Cleveland. He'd play for the radio station in Cleveland that was playing his records. For a promoter who worked in cahoots with the radio station, he'd basically play for free or almost

nothing. The record company would make them do it, saying that's the only way you're going to get hit records. Radio station would make money, club would make money, and Teddy would go to the next place. The chefs were exactly the same way. They were convinced that the only way they were going to get business into their places was by doing these things for free. And the demand for R&B music was so gigantic that it didn't matter. You weren't going to stop people from playing Teddy. But every act went for that. And it became very hardcore. And if you tried to move out of it, which a few acts did, then you started getting serious pickets at your show

because it was very tied into politics. It was so much money that it was tied into anything. Well, you guys got death threats when you decided to break it and play the Roxy to take a chance? The FBI protected us for a while, which was really but credible but we had you know when we did radio city musical we had pickets um because just because that radio city was a white owned facility so the black promoter in that town couldn't make money on the show so it it became, it was, it was, it was gangster on one side, political on another culture on another. Um,

also there was a huge feeling in the black community of loyalty to the black promoters and black record companies. And even if they were getting screwed by them, they're still a loyal, you know, it's like your parents, it may be bad to you, but they're still your parents. So sure. It was the devil they knew. Wasn't it that when they would, they'd hire someone, and at the end of the gig just say to them,

no, we're not going to pay you. Yeah, or they'd give them a ring, or they'd give them half of what they owed them. But it wasn't just that. It was the lack of respect for their artistry. They'd never provide a PA that was adequate for the building. They'd never provide lighting systems

that showed off the artist right. So it wasn't just that they weren't allowing them the resources for doing it. They were making them compromise their artistry. A pattern of disrespect. Just a total pattern. And that's what got me to like, fuck, you know, fuck you. It was Teddy's first date.

He went on 30 minutes late because the PA system was being used at the Holiday Inn. And they were doubling up the system. And they sold 8,000 seats in a building Alice had been to four months before and sold 6,000 seats. We got paid a lot of money. He got paid nothing. before and sold 6,000 seats. We got paid a lot of money. He got paid nothing.

And you, this is on a lighter topic, but also with Teddy, he was doing a concert with thousands of people, mostly women, who were in love. They were all like sexually turned on by teddy pinterest and and you gave out like thousands of chocolate lollipops like we said master promoter what i what i always tried to do for my artists was um so i always tried to get ahead a little bit and write our own headlines. So when we came up with this idea for Women Only, I sat in my jacuzzi and I said, okay, now I'm in the hall.

Now he's singing Close the Door. What do I want those women doing? Oh, man, like licking a chocolate lollipop. Shep, this is not a visual medium, so we'll tell our listeners that Shep is licking the chocolate lollipop. Shep, this is not a visual medium, so we'll tell our listeners that Shep is licking a chocolate lollipop. Demonstrating what his vision was.

He's sticking his tongue out and putting his fist to his face. And so, so it was like symbolically thousands of women sucking his dick. Exactly. What could be greater?

Not subtle. What could be greater? What a great fantasy. I want to try that at one of my shows. You should. A little halva. I like it. You know, on a more serious note, Shep, since we're on the subject of Teddy,

and I want to plug the documentary, which Dara called me. We're all watching it. I had seen it before, but I showed my wife. And Dara was texting me furiously, I love this man. He's my new hero. I see it a few times. I cry every time I see it. it Oh it's beautiful for so many reasons and Mike did a wonderful job

but one of the most touching things one of the most touching moments in it not a dry eye in the house is when you basically got Teddy back on stage at Live Aid after his terrible accident and it's a moment That was an amazing moment Can we go back first to the accident Yeah. And it's a moment. That was an amazing moment. That was.

Can we go back first to the accident? It was like there was a show that Teddy didn't want to go on. It was a show in England. I actually am only half right about it. I had the opportunity since the movie came out to run into Harvey Goldsmith who was promoting that show. And Teddy was actually sick. Maybe not sick enough to

go on. Okay, so you're amending the story. I'm sort of amending the story because I had the conversation with him, but he was also sick. I thought he was just really putting it on. I just felt like something was wrong. Um, and we had a long conversation about karma and how, you know,

um, these people got babysitters. Um, they planned for this for months and months and months. This stuff comes back to haunt you. Um. And that was the last show he did. You had said something, according to the documentary, you said something to him about how karma was real. Yeah. No, I remember saying it to him. In my mind, I didn't remember him saying he was sick. When I saw the promoter, he said he was.

I sort of feel a little bad that I was so strong with him. You know, artist-manager relationships are very unique when they work. They all have a different rhythm. The symbiosis is never the same because the needs are so different for every human. And it's really a human management. There's a career management. But with Teddy, we used to have these things called don't be a schmuck conversations. And he was an artist who I could really talk to, and he could really talk to me.

There were a couple of times when he called me out. But it was such a great – that's the real joy of management is when you can be stupid with your client, where you're not scared to say things that maybe are too far. So we, this was one of our, don't be a schmuck conversations where I called him. I called him up and,

you know, um, he said, Oh shit, what did I do? And, uh, we went through our thing,

but he was, yeah. Yeah. He crashed into a tree. Yeah. As Rolls Royce. Yeah. Yeah.

And then, you know, that's, that's so, so many things have been revealed to me in the last few tree. Yeah, as Rolls Royce, yeah. Yeah, and you know, so many things have been revealed to me in the last few years. I'm not one who deals with the past. So for me, as soon as this happened, I just jumped in working the future.

I never asked them what happened that night. I never asked them. There was a big controversy. The girl in the car was actually a guy. I never asked them about that. But I did make some assumptions. And some of my assumptions were very wrong. of the real story, which is I always assumed that Teddy put his hand down and felt a male, you know, a penis and then went into a tree. That was always my thought because I knew what happened up till then. He had been in a basketball game. He brought a date. I didn't realize he drove the date home till I saw the movie, but I knew Julius Irving had told me what happened that night, that this girl was at the bar. Teddy had a date. He ended up taking the girl from the bar home. The girl was actually a guy that came out in the newspapers the next day. So my assumption was that I was lucky enough to get invited to Oprah's for lunch one day. And we started talking about it. And she said she had a show on TV that, where are they now? And she went out and

found the girl or guy. And it turns out that she had had a sex change operation. So she didn't have a penis. So my whole thought process was actually wrong. And he, nobody, but nonetheless, that's what, that's what came out in the streets. And that was, was a difficult moment. So I, but I never went back and ever. Well, it's a beautiful moment in the dark that, you know, nobody thought he would perform again. And he was in the wheelchair and at Live Aid in Philly. Nobody thought he would live.

Nobody thought he would, I mean. Would live, would even live. And somehow you convinced him. You brought him to that Live Aid show. And tell us what you said to him when he said, I can't do it. I just heard from Valerie, actually, Simpson. First time since that day. Wow.

She texted me yesterday. She saw the documentary. Got the number from the people who made the movie. We had worked really hard. I think if anyone watches the documentary, you'll see there was a team of doctors that got him back to a place where he could sing. He didn't have a lot of power,

but we had started recording. And then they announced Live Aid, and a good friend of mine, the same fellow from England, Harvey Goldsmith, who was the promoter for the last show, was the promoter for Live Aid.

And I saw they were doing it from Philly. And we had been very careful to never take a picture of Teddy. Nothing. His audience had never touched him since the accident. No press releases, no pictures. I wanted that first bullet to be gigantic. I didn't want to compromise it at all. And I knew that there were women out there who, you know,

every day thought about Teddy, his audience. They loved him. So when they announced Live AIDS, it just seemed so obvious to me that he had to be part of this moment. And I called Ashton and Simpson. I called, I think, their manager. I don't think I actually ever spoke to them and said what I'd like to do and would they do it with them.

And they jumped on it immediately. And we were all gung-ho until we got to the stage. And when we got to the stage, he was really scared. I'd never seen him scared before. Teddy's a pretty brave guy. And he asked the family, should he, you know, the family was like huddled around him. And one of them came over to me and said, I don't know if he can do it.

He's really scared. And I just went over to him and I said, listen, Teddy, I got it. I, you should be scared. I'm scared too. But this is the moment. So there's nothing you can do. I'm going to wheel you out there. You don't have to sing. You can just hum along with them, do whatever you feel like doing, going to wheel you out there you don't have to sing you can just hum along with them do whatever you feel like doing but you're going out well and um as soon as he got out there it was he could see you in the movie when he's rolling out you know the uh it was a great moment i remember that day i remember that show really special you know he was a beautiful man. What a talent. What a talent. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor.

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for a balanced flavor and smooth finish. Just sit back and listen to the music. Ooh. This single malt scotch whiskey is guaranteed to impress dad this Father's Day. The Glen Libet. Live original. Please enjoy our products responsibly. Let's take it to something a little lighter and sillier.

A lot lighter. Gilbert was talking about the penis lollipops. It seems like a perfect segue into the aborted attempt to shoot Alice out of a cannon. Oh, my God. The aborted attempt to shoot Alice out of a cannon. Oh, my God. So, you know, when I talk to young people, too, I always tell them that the failures are sometimes more important than the successes. That's one of your philosophies, right? One of your business philosophies. demonstrated how, um, how you can sort of overcome anything if you work together and have some trust and belief and are willing to,

you know, really do it, go for it. So, um, I had learned what I did to see through clothes that you have, that you have to rehearse rehearsal. You have to rehearse. If Iarsal, you have to rehearse.

If I had rehearsed that, I never would have gotten in that situation. Sure. So unfortunately, I didn't learn all my lessons. So we get our first baseball stadium, football stadium show. Three River Stadiums, Pittsburgh. I think it's 1972 or 73. Humble Pie is opening and somebody else for us.

And I'm trying to think of what would Alice Cooper do in a baseball, in a football stadium? What would be Alice Cooper? I got it. We're going to shoot him across the stadium out of a cannon. That would be so cool.

And I've seen it at Ringling Brothers, Bonham and Bailey Circus. It's obviously doable. I don't know if you can get how far you can project, but in those days, Warner Brothers Film Studios was building our props. And they had done a great job with, we did a,

we hung them. So they built the gallows, which was great. And the guillotine. The guillotine. Everything they built for us was we hung them. So they built the gallows, which was great. And the guillotine, the guillotine, everything they built for us was great. Sure. Um, so I went in, it was a guy with little half glasses on, didn't even look up for me and thanked him for the guillotine, told him how great it was, was working every night. Thanks for the guillotine. And I said, you know, uh, we're doing a, we're doing a stadium and, um and I'd like to shoot Alice out of a cannon across the stadium.

And it didn't even look up at me, and it said, what period cannon? Which gave me so much confidence. So we ended up with a World War II cannon. And he actually, he had the blueprints. He took it out of a drawer. There it was. To me me it's foolproof but i still remembered you had to do break-in you know you got to rehearse but i made the fatal mistake of going on radio and in the ad see alice get shot across out of a cannon so it's banging on the radio. So we get to the first break in Dayton, like Flint,

Michigan. And, um, the gag was, um, Alice gets in, goes through a crawl space. There's a dummy inside.

He gets into a golf cart. The golf cart drives them around to the other side. Meantime, we do stick on stage to give them time to get there. So the band, the lights go out, the band all gets torches, the drummer has a snare drum,

they do a slow procession up the steps to the end of the cannon. They have the torch, they light the fuse, slow burn down. Explosion over the PA. Smoke everywhere. Spotlight. Hits

Alice. The only problem is the dummy came out one foot. There wasn't a person in the place who knew what we were doing. Or to look where Alice was. They were all looking at the dummy. It's one foot down, so there's nothing. So they get up in the golf cart.

He said, boy, that was quiet ending. I said, yeah, could be the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. And I said, it came out one foot. He said, what are we going to do? And I said, go to sleep. I'll figure it out. And instead of keeping me up all night bitching at me, he let me go do what I do, which is a great lesson.

Not that it worked. So he shows up the next night, and I say, I got it. Overnight, I got these fire extinguishers. They had CO2 foam ones. So we put balls on the cannon. We turned it

into a giant penis. And when he got there, I said, you get on it, you're going to masturbate. You got to lick it and rub it. And this foam is going to go out over probably the first 40 or 50 rows of cum. It's going to be fantastic.

It's a cum cannon. It's going to be fantastic. So he gets on the kids. The last song, he gets on the cannon. He's working so hard. He's licking it. He's rubbing it. He's scratching the testicles. The foam drips out. It's like, you know, one little drip comes out of the end of the cannon.

There's nobody who knows what it's supposed to be. It's like, what is this guy fucking doing? So now we're one day away from, see, Alice, get shot out of the cannon. There's 55,000 people waiting. So what are we going to do? I go to sleep. I got it covered. No problem.

He said, well, you didn't really get it covered last night. I said, no, but I got it. I got it. So the end of the story is he shows up that night and says, so what are we going to do? I said, well, I don't want to tell you the whole middle. The end is you're probably going to spend the night in the hot local hospital here. What?

And I said, I just have this premonition that the cannon's going to blow up while you're in it. He said, you've got to be kidding me. I said, no, we've got a film crew here from Pittsburgh. They're going to see you get in it. They're going to see the cannon blow up. They're going to see the ambulance rush up. They're going to follow the ambulance to the hospital. We're going to have one of the roadies in a doctor's outfit who's going to do a press conference around the corner for the hospital saying that you got burned,

but that you want the show to go on, but that I'm going to make you do the show. The doctor is saying, but we're going to make him do the show from a wheelchair. He can't be standing. And it hit the news in Pittsburgh and we did the show from a wheelchair. Gilbert's taking notes, Shep.

He wants to incorporate this. Gilbert's taking notes, Shep. Let's incorporate this. You need a little bit of this in your stage show, Gil. And why was there was one thing you said, the three things you say a manager does. Yeah, that was told to me by Jerry Wexler, one of the great old record managers. You want to be a good manager, you got to get the money, never forget to get the money, and always remember to never forget to get the money. Right. Well, you know, somebody who knew that what you guys were going for,

and you say this in the doc and also in the book, you guys were, it kind of hits you that it was vaudeville. Oh, yeah, completely. That, you know, the music was one thing, but you guys were a little bit of pt barnum oh yeah and we love that error and love doing that stuff and still do alice still you go to an alice show and it's fun it's you know it's a it's a beginning a middle and an end and it's fun i saw one of those guillotine shows as a kid yeah yeah it's great yeah great. And you also had a thing of you would warn people

you signed on, like you said something like, I'll have you work really hard and then you'll be in rehab. What I would say to them is if I do my job perfectly, I will probably kill you. Luckily

for you, I'm not perfect, but I'm really good, so you will get maimed. And you got to be willing to take it because nobody escapes it. And I don't know anybody who really has. You know, fame is really tough to deal with. You say there's no intrinsic value in fame. Could you elaborate on that?

Yeah, there's no, it doesn't do anything for you. You know, not the fame, it's the things that come off fame. You know, there's, you know, being a great chef, you know, there's an end result of great food. Being a great comedian, people laugh. Being famous, you get a parking spot. There's no intrinsic value to it.

It's a manufactured, artificial, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons, but it's vapor. And it's a dangerous vapor because, you know, I'm not a psychologist, so I can't say why, but I am a sociologist by sort of, you know, college. And all you have to do is look at everyone. Look at everyone who's famous. And luckily, the majority recover, but I don't know anybody who hasn't had a big fall. Well, it's sort of a specter in the dock.

You know, for all the good times that you're having and all the adventures that you're having, Janice died at 27. That's what I mean. Jim Morrison died. You know, Teddy had the terrible accident. You're stalked by it a little bit, if I may say. Alice in rehab. I mean, every friend that I rehab is either dead or rehab, every famous friend, which doesn't exist for my friends from college or from high school, you go through them and not everyone, you know, it's a very different journey. Not that it's an easy journey, but there's

something. And I, I don't know if it's the personality that drives to become famous that is the problem or the fame itself that is a problem. I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg. But you have to be a fool to take fame lightly when you see what it does to people. And you've been around the most famous people in the universe. And fame also is addictive. It's all the bad stuff. That's what I mean. There's no intrinsic value to it.

It feeds on itself. It's completely addictive. It finds you doing things that you would never think in a million years to do to try and get more fame or to keep the fame. think in a million years to do to try and get more fame or to keep the fame um it's it's but and and it usually ends up in this yin and yang where you will do anything you pay fifteen thousand dollars a month to get famous and if someone says hello to you in a restaurant you freak out so you're fighting to become the person that you don't want to be. It's such a, it's the circle is so bizarre. Fascinating.

I always said to my artists when they would get angry, when someone came over for an autograph, I said, no, no, no. The time to get angry is when they don't come over for the autograph. Yeah. That's when you get angry. That's great. Yeah. And if we could go to another topic when i i was fascinated by uh you also handled of all these rock and soul performance i know where you're going how did groucho come into your orbit analysis came into my orbit alice called me up one day and he said you won't believe where i was last night i said where is it i was watching tv with groucho marx in his bed and i said you

gotta be kidding me because alice likes to tell stories so i said you got to take me so maybe a week later he called me up he said groucho said you could come over so i go up and they're both in bed in ground we're wearing gray mickey mouse ears both and it was like wild so i said i was so intimidated i don't even know if i could talk you were a kid we should point out too that your dad used to watch marx brothers movies oh my god my dad that was so we used to my father would cry. He was laughing so hard. So it was a very important part of my life. Of course. And literally the whole time I managed it,

it was very tough for me to ever speak. It was really, really difficult. I was in awe every second I was around him. I had a person. Anyway, so I go up that night and I get to meet him. And the next day, Alice tells me that he couldn't afford his three shifts of nurses. And that's why he was going up there every night to be the late shift.

And he would sleep with them and get them water. I said, you're kidding me. It's Groucho Marx. And he had a business manager who was before they knew what Alzheimer's was, had Alzheimer's. And they literally didn't have money. I mean, they had money to eat, but they didn't have money. So there was a woman in his life who was his secretary slash manager slash wife. Oh, yeah.

She's come up on this show before. Yeah. Many times. I have nothing bad to say about her. I know a lot of people do. But I came in after she was there. She's the one who hired me. Erin Fleming.

Erin Fleming. Thank you. And it was amazing because Groucho would be slumped over. No expression on his face. Inadamant. And she would walk in the room and he would get eight inches taller, a huge smile,

start telling jokes. She'd leave the room, he'd go right back down. It was like a marionette. So she made him happy. And that's all I really cared about. And I never, I believe the stories that maybe she gave him said it is when she wanted to go out.

But that was at that period when they couldn't afford the shifts of nurses. So anyway, I came in. She hired me. I put a guy named Bill Owens who set up an office in their house. And the main thing we did was get the TV show back on the air. 95% of the contestants were SAG actors. You bet your life. Yeah. I never knew that. I found that out in your book. So we had to go back and renegotiate with the estates to get a rate that would afford it to

be syndicated. And then I did a birthday party for him. It was Albert Brooks. I think last time he did stand-up. Wow. He performed for Groucho. I forgot where we went. But there was a group up at Groucho's house, Bud Cort, Marvin Hamlisch, Jeff Bridges. Jeff Bridges. And they were the house band.

And when you ate dinner at Groucho's house, you had to perform after dinner something you didn't normally do. So Alice would read a book and have an arpeggio. Marvin would give him this big arpeggio or a dance. I would read contracts to music. Where to Ford Groucho would always throw me out of the room, like, get out of here. Where to Ford Groucho would always throw me out of the room, like, get out of here. But he would, every time I'd be with him, every single time, he'd have an opportunity to come up where he would say, this guy's Shep, my manager?

And someone would say to him, yeah, that's Shep. He'd say, funny, you don't look like a crook. Every time. Would he tell tales about the actors and the people he used to work with when he was in bed with alice stories oh my god he'd entertain him he had a story about everybody you know but usually it was about who was fucking who he was fucking his sister so he was fucking the daughter of that no he was hysterical we'd go out to eat. It's been 10 minutes.

You haven't sued anybody. And here's a case of one of the biggest legends of showbiz who can't pay for a nurse to take care of him. Well, he didn't handle his money terribly well, did he? No. My sense was the business manager couldn't even find where it was if there was money. He was before we knew what Alzheimer's was. And he was definitely an Alzheimer's guy. But we got him back to life.

Jerry Moss came up to the line very heavily at A&M. Gave him a lot of money for that album, much more than the album was worth. Right. Your friend Ron Delsner was here. Oh, was he? By the way. Oh, I love that. I love that you had Dick Donner. Richard Donner was here, too.

Yeah, a lot of people from the Shep Gordon inner circle. And Alan Zweibel I went to college with. Zweibel was here, too. Oh, wow. Ben Whoopi and lots of your friends. No, no, I saw a lot of them on the show. I love the Dick Donner show. I don't think he's ever done another one.

A podcast, you mean? Yeah, I don't think he's ever done another one. A podcast you mean? Yeah, I don't think he doesn't. After Gilbert brought up the sexual affair between Brando and Richard Pryor, he may never do another one. I think we were his virgin podcast and his swan song. And you were talking about your father. And you said, you know, growing up, you didn't know he about your father. And you said, you know, growing up, you didn't know he was your father. You didn't know anything about him.

And you weren't concerned with anything. And then you said that you found out he gave up his entire life. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, you only know what you know. Sure. And childhood is a strange thing. And I had a very bizarre childhood.

My mother was a very strong personality. She really ruled the house, not uncommon in Jewish families at that time. My dad just sort of went to work and was quiet and gave me a lot of love. And my brother had a dog that used to bite me. So I very rarely interacted with the family. I mean, really rarely interacted. I barely know my brother. And we probably haven't had dinner 20 times. I'm 73. And we grew up in the same house. had dinner 20 times i'm 73 so that that's and we grew up in the same house wow so my my image of my father always was of the human i love the most on the planet who loved me so much and i used to feel sorry for him um he never had friends um he didn't do anything. He didn't drive. He never did anything for

himself. And I thought of him as, I loved him so much. And I thought of him as this very weak man, you know, domineered by my mother, no real life. And when I was writing the book, it sort of, there was a moment in writing the book where it sort of hit me. Doing the research, I started to see, I got out a box of stuff, because Mike wanted me to look, and I saw that he was a handball champion. Then I found these cards that he had

that are available for stag parties, Ben Gordon, and I saw pictures of a... He worked at a brewery, which I didn't know. What was he doing at stag parties? Like stand-up? No, it was a card that he would give out, I guess, to women. Oh!

I have the card. It's framed in my bedroom. I'm liking this guy more and more. Yeah, yeah. No, no. And I found out that he had a life. Wow. And realized that he sort of gave up his life to raise me and that was his full-time thing he was with me always and was had given i mean i never he had one friend who i knew not um so i thought he never

had any friends when i opened up the book there's always 20 guys and they're handball champions. So it really explained to me a lot of the choices I've made in life, which I never understood why I made them. And they always say genetics are – because I tend to make those kind of choices myself, but I never understood. I do basically everything knee-jerk. So I make choices without thinking about it.

Well, you also put people first, which is one of the philosophies in the book and of your business style, your approach to business and to life, and it sounds like your dad did. Yeah, yeah. He was completely of service, which I never realized.

I thought he was living a life out of weakness weakness and he was really living it out of strength i mean to to to give to something to your family the way he gave and give up everything that he enjoyed in life that service you know that's yeah amazing service absolutely that's living a life of service. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. Chef, so many stories on these cards. Where do you want to go, Gil? Oh, well. Oh, that's a loaded question. There's so much.

You're like a six-hour interview. You got a phone call that I guess a lot of men would envy. Raquel Welch called you a few years ago. She called me. It was about four days before the Academy Awards. And she said, are you the guy that made that freak Alice Cooper famous? And I said, well, maybe sort of kind of. She said, you take me to the Academy Awards.

I'll pick you up at eight o'clock or six o'clock, whatever the time was. And she was wearing this little chiffon pink dress, which as in those days, you would pull up to a red carpet and Johnny. Oh, the mayor of Hollywood, Johnny Grant. Johnny Grant would come into the car. Yeah, yeah. He's gone now. Yeah, but he'd come into the car with the microphone, you know, and, hi, it's Raquel

here. It's a whole different thing than the way they do it now. There was one guy in those days. There was one guy. So as he leans in, Raquel says to me, my dress just broke. You had to hold the back. So now, again, I'm a young kid. I'm with Raquel Welsh.

You know, I'm holding the back of her dress. I'm trying not to get a hard on. Probably didn't do too well at that. probably didn't do too well at that so anyway uh i uh i ended she basically what she said to me was that she realized that um she was getting older that she was a movie sex star and that was a real problem and that she had two kids who she needed to support she was a single mother supporting two children. And wondered if I could do sort of an Ann-Margaret thing for a music dance show at Vegas, that kind of, you know, and find a career for her where her brand of a sexual star

would have some value. And that's what we did so we put together a song and dance thing and i remember the first show was um the first two shows were uh at the concord where they had the the wooden mallets i'm sure you've been there where they bang on the table. Oh, where they don't applaud. They do the... You hear that? Which completely freaked her out. Yeah. And then the second show was up in Reno at the hotel that had elephants as the opening act for everybody.

Sam Arceaga's or something. Arceaga's Hotel. And they had these elephants who were the opening act I forgot they were the opening act and I'm standing with Raquel it's the second show of her career and the elephants shit on the stage during the act Raquel are you ready to go on

oh my god it wasn't exactly the glamorous thing she was thinking of, I think, when she called me. I guess you guys can laugh about it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gave me another segue. Shep, you gave me another segue talking about the elephant. Tell the camel story from the book with Wolfman Jack.

I was just telling somebody that yesterday. We booked the Hollywood Bowl. We had Wolfman Jack, who was a great DJ. He was out of Tijuana. He did a show, and he went right across the country. And he was a great personality. He was a cartoon kind of character. So we had him introduce the show.

And the Hollywood Bowl, at this point now his career was a big moment um he was sort of the big he just had the biggest tour in the world he was on top of the world this was going to be our big statement we we hired a helicopter pilot who was willing to go to jail. We put a lot of people in jail. He dropped 18,000 pair of paper panties on the crowd, which cost a bunch. You dropped paper panties on the crowd from Alec. 18,000 paper panties. I just wanted to repeat that.

It was a great story. Elton John tells the story of being in the front row that night. He came out with about 14 pairs of underwear that night. It draped all over. And the Hollywood Bowl is the most expensive union hall on the West Coast. It's everything you do is very heavily unionized. It's very expensive.

You don't make a lot of money when you play the ball. So we went out paying for the helicopter. I got Wolfman, and I got him to come out to introduce the opening act. He came out carried by 14 women, all dressed as Arabian belly dancers, and they carried him out in a moat. And then the second time he came out, he came out on a little motorcycle with 40, who are those, like the Rotary Club guys in the hats? Oh, the Shriners.

Yeah, the Shriners, exactly. I kept thinking of Jackie Gleason. Like a circus. Then the third time he came out was with a camel. Came out on a camel, again with the girls and that thing. So when we're doing the rehearsal and the camel comes out, the pit crew comes over to me, the union head. And he said, Mr. Gorman, we've got a problem.

And I said, what's the problem? He said, you didn't tell me you were going to have animals. And I said, yeah, but, uh, you know, it's one animal. It'll come and go. He said, well, here's our problem. Um, if the camel takes a dump, that's okay. Cause we have prop guys. But if the, if the camel takes a dump and the dump steams, that's working props. We have to have two people.

You've got to be kidding me. Two more people. I went to Joe Gannon. Who was producing it with me. I went over to Joe. You're standing at the side of the stage with a fucking towel. If that cowl starts shitting, you run out there and cover it in a towel. That's what happens. Before it steams.

Those are some stringent union rules. If it steams, it's two guys, right? I didn't want to ask how much steam. Is there a line, like a steam line? That is so good. We got to ask, it's in the intro, Shep. We got to ask about the School's Out album.

Yep. And specifically, which is, again, the days when they really put production into albums. There was a great company called Pacific Eye and Ear, two guys, Tony and Ernie. And I came across them with the Cheech and Chong Big Bamboo album. I don't know if you remember that album. Sure. Oh, sure. But that was the coolest album

so I found them and we started working with them and the idea for I was always again I always went back to I always thought my job for my artist was if I could make

history rather than wait for history, I could guide where I wanted to go. So I was very aware of things that got news. I would always clip things out of newspapers or if I'd see something that was really ironic. So I had seen this story that in Baltimore, they confiscated paper panties because they weren't flammable.

And when I read it, I just thought, this is so ironic. This is something I can use somewhere with Alice. I had no idea where. I clipped it out of the paper. We started working on Schools Out. We were talking about what would really piss off parents. What could we package this album in that would really piss off parents? If a kid brought this home and the parent looked at the album

and, oh, fuck it, I want to drop it almost and wash their hands. And I said, I read this story about paper panties in the back of my mind. I said, fuck, if I could get the album stopped at the border for having paper panties, this is cool. So

I went to the company and we had a really difficult fight about the paper panties cause they're expensive. And it turned out I had to, I had to do, you know, as a manager for yourself, there are times, let me back up as an artist, you only have one career as a manager, you got a plenty. So if something doesn't work as for an artist, as a manager you got a plenty so if something doesn't work as for an artist as a manager you can move on if it doesn't work for the artist they have one life so i never felt

that i could let anything fail for the artist for me i never gave a shit so i went when we when the record company said it's too expensive that that to me was, you know, I couldn't allow that to happen because what am I going to tell his fans? Oh, we didn't do something cool because it was too expensive? So I never took no's. That was my reputation. Record companies hated me. And I did whatever I had to do to get to a yes. And in this case, I knew that they were fucking me around and in those

days what existed in the record companies was um only two companies had made album covers there was album graphics and ivy hill lithograph and each of those two companies had exclusive contracts with different labels so if you're a warn Warner Brothers artist, Ivy Hill were the only people who could make your cover, so you couldn't bid your cover out. So I went to the guy in charge, and I said, listen, this is really important for you. You've got to bid this out. No.

Why won't you bid it out? We don't want to do it. We don't trust the other company. They do thousands of albums. No. No. So I don't take no good so um i hired a detective because at that point we had money and i said i need some dirt on this guy

um i just need something that i can walk in his office and say uh hello now what do you want to do um and what it turned out was that the house he was living in was owned by the album cover company. They own the house, the deed to the house. So I went back into his office and I said, hey, I can't bid it out. And he said, no. I said, how would you like this in Billboard next week?

Did you live in the fucking house of the people that print all the covers? And and he said we'll match the price so we got the paper that's management yes so now i'm in a climate of complete hostility they're ready to rip my throat out they want they want Well, you upped the stakes, right? They want this thing to fail so bad. So I can't tell them what my plan is. Because my plan was to print up

100,000 albums with the illegal panties, call customs, get them busted, but at the same time order panties from Canada for the other million and a half albums that didn't have a fly but I couldn't tell them because they would kill me

so I had to change it up in midstream what I did is I had the panties shipped the same day as the album shipped and I called Baltimore as a guy Tom Zito who was the music reporter for the Baltimore sun.

And I called him up and I said, I have a major exclusive for you. You got to print it tomorrow. You got to wait 24 hours and then print it. So all of Alice's albums shipped into the stores. Baltimore sun, biggest panty raid in history, front page. 150,000 paper panties for the new Alice Cooper album

have been confiscated at customs because they're flammable. The people of Warner Brothers didn't know that I had ordered from Canada the real ones. They thought they had to take back all million and a half albums. And they were just fucking freaked. But it was all cool so anyway that was uh and you had i missed those days there was one crazy story you had a pet cat that disappeared with the carrie grant oh yeah that's in the dark it's great

it was uh far out was a cat it was this great cat, and it got lost, and I put things up on trees. And I got a call from Cary Grant's housekeeper who lived down the hill from me. And they said that they had found the cat, and when was a good time for me to come and get it. And then they never returned my calls for a couple of weeks. So finally, I just went down and knocked on the door. I never met him. The door opened and there's Cary Grant on a fur rug with my cat and two bowls of food playing on the floor. And they actually did, TV Guide did a big story about how the cat sort of brought Cary back to life. So I just, I was going for joint custody,

and I just said, I can't do this to Far Out. Far Out was like looking at me going, don't blow this for me, Shep. I got Carrie Grant fucking petting me and feeding me. Shep, I've asked this of a couple of guests before, but, you know, the liner notes on the back of the book, you refer to yourself as a nebbishy Jewish kid. You grew up in Queens.

We were talking in an email about Jan's ice cream parlor. Oh, yeah, I love that. Some of our old haunts. You grew up around here. Gilbert and I remember Nathan's and Jan's, which you talk about in your book. Kitchen sink. Remember the kitchen sink?

Kitchen sink, of course. 28 scoops of ice cream or something. You say you tend not to look back, but do you have these moments where, my God, I'm this kid from Queens. I'm this Jewish kid. I didn't know what I wanted to do. You describe yourself as not having any ambition. Every day.

Yeah, I can't believe it. And Betty Davis and Cary Grant and John Lennon and Salvador Dali and all of these people. The Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama. All these people came into your life. Yeah, you know, there's a part of me that it's not me, so I watch it and I just can't believe it. You're removed from it.

Yeah, and I pinch myself. It's like, holy shit, how did this happen? And it just keeps happening and it's just better and better but yeah no i think for all of us you know i i and i think everybody's journey it's just we happen to be in a journey where hollywood is the you know is the uh the the uh the candy of today so our journey because it happens to be Betty Davis, but you know, everybody's got their journey of it's Forrest Gump for everybody. It's just different levels.

One way to look at it. And you're, you also speak a lot about how you're aware of people's mortality. Oh yeah. No, it's, that's what it is. It comes in,

you know, it's, um, it's a short journey. Enjoy it. Take advantage of it. I was very lucky be around, and see how service makes you happy. It's something that, you know, particularly in Hollywood and the entertainment business, you're almost ashamed to be of service. It's almost like a weakness. Because it rewards narcissism. Yeah. To a degree. Because it rewards narcissism. Yeah. To a degree. So it's weird.

It took me a long time to get comfortable even talking about it, of being of service. But it's really what makes me happy. I enjoy helping people. Anybody who wants to be in show business really should read the book and watch the movie. And then they'll change their mind. anybody who wants to be in show business really should, should read the book and, and, and watch the movie. And then they'll change their mind.

Well, maybe in one scene in the documentary, they said you had a favorite t-shirt you wore. That Perk Gilbert up. You know, I had, it's so, it's very bizarre. You mentioned, I just had a long conversation today about that. I am, maybe I'll give you too long an answer,

but the derivation of it is when I was on the road, I used to get every night at the hotel, we were at a party room. And there were guys who worked on the crew whose job was to find girls and invite them back to the party room because I didn't want the band to leave the hotel. So I felt one of my jobs was let me bring all the action to the hotel. And then I know where everyone is and every night would be the the guys telling these women who we knew they were never going to see again and who they didn't even know the names of how much they loved them oh i love you i love you come to my room and give me a blow job oh

bye-bye and i and i just like gilbert's life on the road. And I thought it was so horrible. You know what? It just seemed so unfair to the girl, to the guy, to everybody, because it wasn't about I love you. It was about give me some head. You know, and so I never was willing to play that game. So I got hornier and hornier on the road. And then at one point I said, you know, let me just be honest. Really, they all want to get backstage because they want to go to sleep with the lead singer. I just want to get some head. I got, I have backstage passes.

Let me tell the band what I'm doing. And so I went to Alice in the band. I said, listen, you know, I'm the manager. It's not easy for me to get ahead. I'm going to do this T-shirt and give out some backstage passes. They did great. So that's what I did. I would walk around with the thing. And if someone would come over to me and say, I want a backstage pass, pretty obvious.

I'd have to tell you I love you. It was a transaction. To me, a transaction was an honest and open thing. It's open and honest. Yeah, to me, it was. So anyway, when Mike made the movie, that came back to life. And I did a lot of personal appearances with the movie and with the book. with the movie and with the book.

And invariably, even at the most like summit at seas, you know, the most liberal places you could get to, there are always a bunch of women waiting in the lobby with smiles on their faces going, oh, can I get a backstage pass in good form, you know? Or, you know, can I have your baby? Or everything taken in sort of the way it was meant. And then the night that Trump got elected, I was doing a talk at Summit at Sea, which I had done the year before. And after it came, I went outside and women were

screaming at me. You're a horrible human. You mistreat women. You should be ashamed of yourself. It completely turned into a Me Too kind of a thing overnight. So I burned the shirts and thrown out the coffee cups. And I don't know if we mentioned the shirt said, no head, no backstage pass. Yeah, which was a true, which was exactly what it was. All this truth in advertising.

There's pictures from screenings when the doc came out of everybody wearing them. Yeah, yeah. There's you and Mike. And people would show up with it, and people would send me stuff, and it was like this really funny thing and then it turned on a dime. So I don't, you know, not being one who wants to offend people

if I don't need to, I just sort of took it out of the repertoire. Which my girlfriend is happy about, by the way. Your girlfriend's happy about it. Shep, before we run out of here, there's a gentleman who does some work for us, works with us, Mike McPadden, who's our Facebook,

does all our Facebook, and he's a big Alice fan. He reminds me that he has Alice's eyes tattooed on his hands. Oh my God. So we had to ask one question for Mike, and I'm going to ask you this one. He says, did Alice have any ideas in the 70s that Shep had to put

a stop to? And which ones worried him? And if you don't like that one, I have another. Not that I can think of. I mean, we had a lot of things that failed. Like, we would always try and figure out new ways to kill them.

So at one point, we decided a meat hook. We were rehearsing it to Fillmore, and. So at one point we decided a meat hook. We were rehearsing at the Fillmore and we decided we'd put him on a meat hook like in Rocky and let everybody beat him up on the meat hook and it was just horrible.

Didn't work at all. Well, he's a fan of all that stuff. I mean, I've seen interviews with the two of you together and he's a fan of horror movies, specifically bad horror movies. Bad horror movies. He's in a handful himself yeah yeah he loves bad horror that's how he prepares for his show every night that's what he does he watches bad kung fu movies yeah what what is the uh what is the story too i found this fascinating the famous scene from almost famous the plane scene. Oh, yeah. You said this was taken.

Cameron Crowe took this from. The real scene was Cameron Crowe was maybe 17, 18. He was a hotshot reporter. Yeah, for Rolling Stone, yeah. Before Rolling Stone, it was an Orange County newspaper. That's where I met him. Oh, right. That's right. When he was very young.

I probably met him at 14 or 15 um and um he can't he got an assignment and candy bergen was the photographer so he was the writer candy was the photographer and we had this really funky airplane um the only in those days there was no cable there was nothing there wasn't a lot of stuff and um to get a last minute sale you wanted the six o'clock news that was the only way you could really talk to the public and especially with what we were doing we wanted to you know we knew we had parents at the six o'clock news who would say to their kids you better not go tonight. And that would spawn last minute sales. So we wanted something we could do that we get to six o'clock news.

And Atlas doesn't do rehearsals. And that's where you normally did it. So we hired this plane that's really funky, horrible, two prop plane with a pilot who was, I think, drunk all the time. And we should have never been in the airplane. But it gave us, we would come into the city, we'd get a high school marching band to meet the plane, put a red carpet out that had a big snake on it and stuff. And they would all get off with bottles of whiskey in their hands, get drunk and fall on the floor and get to 6 o'clock news

to see him being drunk, even though they weren't. So the plane paid, the plane was an important part of our promotion, but we couldn't afford a good plane. So anyway, we're on the plane and playing poker, which is what everyone did. And one of the engines caught on fire. And it was like, oh, shit. And the first thing they did was double the stakes of the poker game. But the engine is now, I mean, it's flaming. And we had a, this is really early on. So this was, there weren't even crews at those days for rock and roll.

There weren't anything like a carpenter crew. So we used builders from Fire Island who couldn't be there in the winter. This is a winter tour. So we had space Latanzia, hot Ralphie, Kefuko, fat Frankie, Skidler,

this Italian building crew, complete fuck ups. These were like great guys. So, um, our accountant was named Jay Benson, but he wore big glasses, and his nickname on the tour was Elton Jew.

So he had just had a baby. The baby was maybe three months old. Elton Jew. So now the engine's on fire. We don't really know if we're going down or not. But we

had had a similar incident a week before where they couldn't get the wheels down and the pilot had to put oil. He was pouring oil in the cockpit. So Spatial had to put oil. He was pouring oil in the cockpit. So anyway, Spacia Latanzia stands up in the back and he says,

I don't know if we're going down or not going down, but in case we are, Elton, I got a confession to make. It's my baby. Which wasn't true. Not true at all. And with that, the plane lands.

And that's the scene the camera accepts as his game. He borrowed it and put it in the movie. That's great. Fantastic. You also had a story one time you were at home and you were having trouble with your computer. Oh, no, he was in Fiji. That's time you were at home and you were having trouble with your computer.

Oh, no, he was in Fiji. That's when you were on your honeymoon. On Fiji, and you were having some trouble with your computer. Yeah, I called the desk and I said, is there anybody who can fix a computer? And they had apologized to me. It was the island owned by Fiji Water. They have this beautiful resort on it, but it's only got maybe 10 or 12 buildings on the resort, and it's usually one person at a time.

And I had helped them with marketing Fiji Water in the beginning when they first came on the market. I was working with the chefs, and I had helped. So they offered me the resort for my honeymoon. And when I got there, they apologized that there was another couple, but that I would never see him. So anyway, I called the front desk. They said, oh, yeah, we'll send someone. Knock on the door. And it's Steve Jobs from Apple.

He came in and fixed the computer. And talk about like building a company. He gave me his card. If we had video, I would show it to you because I carry it all the time. And it's a very simple, just Apple, S-Jobs, phone number, email. And I've had that laminated.

And when I have trouble with my computer, I go into an Apple store and every employee takes photographs with the card. I mean, I wish I ran a company the way he did. The admiration of his employees for this guy is just unbelievable. So anyway, it's gotten me a few new computers. Shep, we hate to wrap this up.

There is so much. There's so many other stories in the book. And people, will you come and play with us another time? Absolutely. Just let me know when. We can ask about, I mean, you even knew Peter Sellers, for God's sake. Oh, yeah. And Albert Finney, who just passed away.

And Albert Finney, who we just lost. Good friend. No, the way Mike and I became really friendly buyers was when he started coming to my house. Every night, he'd have names written on his hand. And he'd go, okay, Peter Sellers. And I had a story for everybody. So I'd give him, then he'd go to the next one. There were a couple of times I didn't have stories,

and I just lied and made up stories. But that was what really bonded us together. And he said, you got to keep, so I've been lucky, the Peter Sellers. Oh, my gosh. Did you meet Chaplin, too? Do I have that right? Yeah, I sure did. The Peter Sellers and... Oh, my gosh. Did you meet Chaplin, too? Do I have that right? Yeah, I sure did. Wow!

A great little Chaplin thing is Michael Jackson. His entire show he took from Charlie Chaplin. The hat, the bowler, the walk, the cane.

Think about Michael Jackson on stage. Think about the moonwalk. That's fascinating. Think about the gloves. Think it's all Charles. And he openly would talk about it, not to the public, but I introduced him to Una, the wife after Charlie died, and he would openly talk about it.

But think about that. Go watch a Charlie Chaplin and watch Mike on. It's the same thing. Jeez. It is fascinating. There's so many people on this list, you know,

in the interest of time, we have to get out of here, but we'll ask you next time if you'll come and play with us again. We didn't get to talk about the Hollywood vampires. Yep.

And then that great Anne-Marie story, what you did for Anne-Marie. I want to ask you about the thallus story from Buffalo. The Thallus of Marquette, the Alan Zweibel. Alan Zweibel was there. And Alan Zweibel was around.

Oh, Zweibel, Zweibel. We'll give our fans something to look forward to. And we'll tell that one next time. But got to plug the book. Yes. I mean, and the movie is great and it's and it's in addition to you having a million rock and roll stories the book was published by anthony bourdain published by the late your friend the late anthony bourdain you that's another thing we don't have

time to talk about but you created that whole that whole idea of superstar chefs. We'll do it next time. I was very hungry. There's also his famous dinner parties. Oh, it's insane. Shep, it's been quite a journey. You say everybody has one, but yours has been. And also what I love is that your journey happened to pass through the most decadent period of rock and roll. I got really lucky.

I got really lucky. I got really lucky. You saw the period of excess so that you saw and experienced everything. Okay. The book is They Call Me Supermensch. My Amazing Adventures in Rock and Roll, Hollywood, and Haute Cuisine. Haute Cuisine. Shep Gordon.

And we recommend it. And the movie, which Mike Myers made, which is a whole other show that we could do and talk about. I enjoyed being with you guys. Fun. And you know something? It's like,

as someone like me who's met a million agents and managers over the years, you're the only one that people has anything nice to say. That's right. I second that. I pay everyone. I pay everyone. They're on retainer.

I'll tell you, Shep, I watched the movie and I turned to my wife and I said, if I'd ever had a Shep Gordon in my life, things would have been different a lot faster. What a blessing to Alice and all your artists. So this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my sidekick. My ghost. Sidekick? My boy wonder, Frank Santopadre. I'm wearing tights under this.

Shep, you can't see it. I'm wearing tights under this. You can't see it. I'm wearing see-through tights. And we've been talking to the ex-Jewish pusher who became a legendary manager and producer, Shep Gordon. Aloha. Thank you, man. It was so great. Shep, aloha. Yeah, aloha.

Come visit me in Hawaii for the next show. Oh, God. We will. We love that. What an invite. Thanks, pal. I'm tired out. Yeah, I'm tired.

I got tired on the intro. It's like, shit, did I do all that? Holy fuck. Thanks, tired on the intro. It's like, shit, did I do all that? Holy fuck. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Wake up all the teachers. Time to teach a new way. Maybe then they'll listen to what you have to say.

They're the ones who's coming up And the world is in their hands When you teach the children To jump the very best they can The world won't get no better If we just let it be The world won't get no better. We gotta change it now. Just you and me.

Wake up all the doctors. Make the old people well. They're the ones who suffer and who catch all the hell. But they don't have so very long before their judgment day. They're the ones who suffer and who catch all the hair. But they don't have so very long before their judgment day. So won't you make them happy before they pass away? Wake up all the builders, time to build a new land. I know we could do it If we all lend a hand The only thing we have to do

Is put it in our minds Surely things will work out They do it every time The world won't get no better If we just let it be The world won't get no better We gotta change it now Just you and me

Change again, change again Just you and me Change again, change again Can't do it alone, can't do it alone Need some help, y'all, y'all Can't do it alone, can't do it alone Yeah, yeah Wake up, everybody

Wake up. Everybody. Wake up. Everybody. Need a little help, y'all. Yes, I do. Need a little help. Say it for me. Need some help, y'all. Change the world.

What it used to be. I'm going alone Need some help now Wake up everybody Get up Get up Get up Wake up Come on

Wake up everybody come on, come on Wake up, everybody Did you know me? Maybe then that's less I What you have to say Wake up, everybody No more sleeping in bed No more back to thinking

Time to think ahead Come on now Wake up Everybody I'm talking about Don't push up Stop pushing that door Don't use us

Stop using the door Wake up. Yeah. Well. Oh, well. Yeah. Wonder what you're telling now. Wonder what you're telling now.

Force lying. Force preaching. Yeah. Yeah. Force teaching. Oh, yeah. Wake up, y'all. Come on. I am a false preacher, false teacher. Wake up, y'all. You preachers. Stop preaching what you keep.

Teach the truth. Wake up, preachers. Taste the truth. Bring up the creatures. The liars. Politicians. Well, stop lying. Stop lying. Stop lying. Stop lying.

I'm not a man. Somebody help the poor people Help the babies Help the babies Your businessmen Stop cheating, stop cheating, stop cheating, stop cheating, stop cheating, stop cheating Wake up, yeah, wake up, yeah, wake up, yeah, wake up, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah It don't matter, yeah, yeah What base, creed or color, everybody, we need each other Wake up everybody Well, you see We need

Wake up Everybody We need Come on now, wake up everybody No more sleeping in vain No more backward thinking Time for thinking ahead Wake up all you teachers

Start to teach a new way They're the ones that suffer Betcha every day Teach the children Teach the babies Teach the babies Teach the children Teach the babies

Teach the children Teach the babies teach the babies they're the one who's coming out and the world and the world