The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - How Ron Dante Became the Voice of a Generation | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Billy Corgan welcomes Ron Dante, the unmistakable voice behind the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar,” for a fascinating look at the hidden machinery of classic pop music. Dante recalls starting as a 17-year-old demo singer, auditioning for the Monkees, and becoming the anonymous voice of two Top 10 hits at the same time.He reveals how “Sugar, Sugar” became a worldwide phenomenon, why he never resented the “bubblegum rock” label, and how elite New York session musicians powered a cartoon band. Billy also shares his own emotional connection to the song.From anonymous singer to hit producer, Dante takes Billy inside the making of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” and shares the difficult decision that helped clear the way for Pat Benatar’s rise to stardom.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What I liked was singing, singing in studio, singing other people's songs, my songs. It didn't matter. I was just on a joyride. Your voice has a lot of, you can sing, of course, but there's a personality to your voice. I think only you have that personality. Dick Schultz comes out and looks at me and he goes, you don't record very well. There'll be somebody trying to say, you shouldn't do it like that, right? And whenever they say that, I do it.

I can't think of anybody that's similar to your story. A little different. I'm on stage and I don't know what to play. And I started playing sugar. No. Ron Dante, thank you very much for being here on my podcast. It's so cool and fun and exciting to talk to you.

You ready to jump in? I'm ready to jump in, Billy. So happy to be here. Thank you. Okay. Gypsy be mine. Oh, my goodness. Absence of Lisa.

Oh, my goodness. Ronnie Dante. Or is it Dante or Dante? Dante. Dante, okay. Dot, April of 1967. I would only been one month old now, not to date myself. But I found this record and there's that voice, your voice, which is, there's only one person who sings like you.

But I thought it was cool because I was like, I got me thinking, like, what were you hoping to do as a recording artist? Did you want to be a soloist? Did you want to have a band? Because I know back then in the record business, there was a lot of stuff. stuff going on. It depended who had a contract. I'll let you put out a single. He comes sing on this session. So can you walk me through that part of your life? I was a studio singer, background singer, demo singer. I sang for other people. I did their demos. I worked in an office where the writers in the office were Gauphin and King, Carol King, Jerry Gauphin Wright. They did okay.

They did okay. First day I walked into this office, I got a job as a demo maker. I was only 17. and who was in there, but Tony Orlando, Neil Sedak, and Carol King. So I got to sing background on their records. And I was a journeyman singer. I would go to studio dates and do demos for people. And some of those demos would become singles. And they would put them out onto different names. And I'd said, great, if one of them hits, we'll do an album.

Were you okay with that? Because it seems to be it takes a certain psychology to be okay with not having it always be about you. My ego was very submerged. I didn't have a big ego. I had a drive to succeed and do well and get my voice out there. I knew that some of these things might turn into great opportunities for me as a solo artist, but I wasn't in a hurry. Interesting. I wasn't in a hurry.

Little lollipop in 1964. No. My first single. Yes, that was. But what's amazing to me as somebody who loves your voice is, it's a, it's a, the voice is there already. Like, there it is. It was formed.

It was formed at 14 when I started my first band. I had that voice. Yeah. And I came from a certain part of New York City that had this accent that worked with lyrics. Interesting, right? Kind of like how sometimes people with English accents, they sound a certain way when they sing, I guess, American songs. Yeah.

Or American rock and roll. Who were the, who did you idolize this from, in your general? generation, who did you look up as a singer and think, oh, I wish I could sing like that, or who'd you really look up to? Well, as a very young man, 10 years old, I idolized Elvis. And then 11 or 12, I idolized the Eveli brothers. And there were other acts that came along during those years that I just love their songs and I love their sounds. My sound really didn't hit its prime and perfect spot until the Beatles came out and the four seasons came out and the Beach Boys came out. And those were the ones...

64, 65. Yes, I really, really felt, oh, this is it. This is where the vocals should be. Oh, I see. Okay. Did you ever meet Phil and Don? I met a Phil. Yeah, Phil was cool. I knew Phil a little bit. What a wonderful guy. He signed a pick for me in strings. He was selling strings at a convention downtown. Yeah, I saw them play once in Australia, and they were so good. It was frightening. It was frightening. Their pitch and their...

And the choice of harmonies. Not always thirds. That bluegrass, like sad. Lovin brothers, you know, there's a lot of influence on those guys. That's right. Do you know the Lovin brothers? I don't know of them, no. Oh, I think you'd really like it.

If you, I think what you might enjoy is if you listen to some of the best of the Lovin brothers, think 50s, I think they were on Capitol. Mm-hmm. You basically hear the birds and those Crosby stills and Nash harmonies, but like 10 years before. They were the first one that were doing these kind of, I don't know, like parallel force or whatever that those type of harmonies are. So when you hear the Luvan brothers, you're like, oh, that's where they all got it from.

That's, well, we always take what comes before and we build on it. You built on what came before. Oh, yeah. And then I stomped on it. You stomped on it. You did great, though. Thank you. Fill those coliseums.

You're so sweet. When did you start working for Don Kirchner? I mean, was it was it a business relationship or was he just one of, one of the, the people that would hire you under given circumstances. Were you an employee? Yeah, I was an employee. I walked into his office at 17 and the songwriter is there, listen to my songs and listen to me, sing, and they said, we're going to take you in to see Donnie. So they took me in to see Mr. Kirsh, and he had a great white piano with jelly beans in the sides of it. And he just was the nicest guy. And I said, I'm going to sing for you. I sang for him. He said, okay, kid, you've got a job.

I want you to be our staff demo maker, and I'm signing you to a songwriting contract. Wow. So that was the beginning of my relationship with him. Had you written songs before that? A couple. A couple. I was already thinking about what could I play for people. And what heady company to be around?

Is this Brill Building or is this? It was across the street. Okay. Brill Building. I did work there at one point for Bobby Darren and his publishing company later on. Wait, stop. Talk about Bobby Darren. Because Bobby Darren's, what an incredible talent.

Well, he had a publishing company. the Brill building called TM Music. I was looking for a job after I left Kershner and was on my own and his music supervisor signed me. So once a month or every couple of months, Bobby would come in and listen to you. Wow. And he'd give you a little critique. He said, I might want to record that song. He said, but here's some tickets. Come see me at the Coppa Cabana. I got to see him at the Coppa. I was only 18 and 19. It was unbelievable. He was a really nice guy. One day he'd come in in a tuxedo. Next day, they'd come in in jeans and a t-shirt. He had many different personalities. You know, obviously, my generation knew who Bobby Darren was because he'd be on TV, but he was trying

to recast himself more as a singer-songwriter type. But the rep on Bobby Darren was he was like kind of this, you know, five-tool Mr. Showbiz, like an entertainer in a way that we don't have entertainers anymore. Can you at least talk about that a little bit? Sure. I think he took his key from Sinatra. I think a lot of his motions on stage, his movements, his vocals, the way he approached vocals in songs, Mac the Knife. That was his training ground. So he came from an older school of thought, and he used that, and it didn't work at a certain point. It started to not work because the 60s.

Because he wasn't cool. It wasn't cool, so he grew his hair longer, and he put on jeans, a t-shirt, and started to write. Do you ever hear Bobby's version of, if I were a carpenter? No, I haven't heard of that. It's so good. Because again, he has that incredible vocal ability, but he's trying to recast himself almost like a Neil Diamond, like one of those type of guys.

So he's like walking that line, but it's beautiful. He could change. He was a chameleon. He could really change. Even from his first record, Splish Splash, that was like an R&B vocal if you listen to that. And it went from Splish Blast to Dream Lover. It kind of changed a bit.

And then Mac the Knife, completely different person, vocally. Of course, growing up in the 70s, you know, we knew Don Kirshner because it was Don Kirsner's rock concert. So he'd been as, I'm Don Kushner, you know. Can you talk about the real Don Kirsner a little bit? I know you said he was a nice guy, but can you take me behind the scenes? Because, you know, he was a real mogul in the publishing, New York publishing world. He certainly was. He was the biggest thing to hit New York City in years with his idea to have a stable of writers, young writers, teams of writers.

So he had like cubicles in the office. like eight of them, and there'd be a little piano in each one, and you could hear people banging out songs in one and doing one like that. But he was like, I always describe him as your favorite uncle who would visit you on Sunday and slip you five bucks. Don't tell your dad. He was the nicest, fairest guy I ever worked with. Wow.

After about three, four months working with him, my guitar was stolen out of my car. A beautiful Gretch, one of those acoustic, and it was worth like $300. So I went to Donnie. I said, Donnie, somebody stole my guitar. He said, no problem, kid. He said, check, go buy another guitar.

Wow. So about three months later, they stole that one. Oh, no. I had a convertible. I should have gotten rid of that convertible. So I said, oh, I can't go back to Donnie. But I finally, I said, Donnie, they stole it again. He said, no problem, kid.

There's another check. Go buy another guitar. We need you. That's the way he treated me. Wow. Can you, I'm obsessed with old, I guess old studios because I wasn't there. Excuse me. I'm obsessed with old studios because I wasn't there.

Can you walk me through like what a typical session in the 1960s would have been and where would you have been recording? Was there, did he have his own demo studio or were you going into like a typical? With Kershonest Publishing Company, there was a little demo studio called Associated, which was very reasonably priced and not very high tech. But good. Yeah. And they would steer us to that studio, $100 an hour, whatever, 25 for each musician. You'd get three musicians. And it was just a kind of a funky studio with old-fashioned mics and some old-fashioned players

who had been around quite a long time. The bass player had just gone to electric bass. He was playing upright bass in the 60s. And then it became the Fender Base. and it was just very easy to do but we would record and then we'd bounce to more tracks because there was only like four tracks

I see and we'd bounce vocals back and forth back and forth back and forth and each time it would add hiss to it. Sure. And compression though which is kind of part of the magic

and we would put it on and sound like frying eggs it would put it up but it sounded great because I got to do like many voices backgrounds I could do I could harmonize with myself So that was a session. Yeah.

The guys would help us out. The older musicians would help out the young writers. They would say, no, no, you can't play this chord to this melody, and they would help us. Oh, wow. And it was, it was a beautiful thing at that time. How did you learn how to do harmonies? Because that's usually a gift that people have. Was it something that came naturally to you?

Kind of, I used to bring up the Evely brothers. I used to try to find the note in between their notes. To sing with them. What? To sing, almost like sing with them? sing with them. So I'd learn bird dog or dream, any of those things. And I'd hear where the hole was, and I'd plug the hole vocally and sing along with them. And of course, I did doo-wop at first. I was, you know, 16, 15 years old. I would sing in bathrooms at school or at the

ferry terminal. And so I would learn what notes go where. And it did come naturally to me, though, because I grew up in a family where people did sing, an Italian-American family, where. A lot of people sang, my dad liked to sing, my uncles. Nobody did it professionally. I was the only one who got out. Who's the first person that ever pulled you aside and say your voice has something unique? Well, I think it was how to be Kirshner. Interesting.

It had to be him because he would constantly try to get me a record deal on the demos that we were doing. When I was 14, I went into a recording studio in New York City, Dick Charles recording studio. It was a big demo studio. And Dick Charles was the engineer. And so I'm singing some song that I'm going, my dad wants me to sing, so I'm singing him. And Dick Chawes comes out and he looks at me and goes, you don't record very well. What does that even mean? I know.

He says, your voice doesn't like the microphone, something like that. And even at 14, I knew he was out of line and that he was wrong. Oh, wow. Because I heard the playback and I said, that records just fine. I have to get my voice better. Yeah. But so that's what they try to do to you. Every once in a while you'll get a positive,

but there'll be somebody trying to say, you shouldn't do it like that, right? And whenever they say that, I do it. Yeah. I think what's interesting is that there's a lot of people who sing really good, but not everybody can sing with personality, which is an interesting gift, you know. And as has been seen by your musical life,

your voice has a lot of, you can sing, of course, but there's a personality to your voice that's, I think only you have that personality. Does it make sense the way I'm putting? Well, thank you. I used to do commercials. I sang commercials for years. I was a jingle singer.

And I would work with different people coming up. Michael Bolton would be coming up, Luther Vandros, Valerie Simpson. They would be coming up the same way, and they'd be on the side of me. Wow. And I remember Valerie leaning over to me one day

and saying, I hate your happy voice. That's kind of what I was after. There's a happiness in your voice. It's so happy. And I couldn't help it. It was just, you know, I love singing. To this day, I love singing.

Like, you love to do what you do, right? Yeah. So it's well known, of course, the monkey's history with Kirshner and that, you know, they sort of rebelled at some point. You know, there's this incredible story where in the beginning it's Boise and Heart. They think they have the gig.

Then Kersner kind of muscles in. The monkeys end up kind of pushing Kershner out. And then Boise and Heart kind of had a year for a while. And I think Kersenner ended kind of coming back in towards the end. Were you around for any of that machinations? Because eventually it does have to do with you. I was at Screen Jams, Columbia Music, which Don Kersen was the president of.

And he had me audition along with everybody else and on the staff, Young, who could sing and do videos and send them out to the coast. You actually audition for them. I auditioned for the monkeys. Yeah, they were considering me for the Davy Jones part, but Davy really deserved it. He was so great. People loved him and his English accent.

The charisma of the four of them together. Yes, it worked. I remember thinking Don Kirshner really wanted a funnel in great songs to them. He knew they would, or a TV group, right, made up to be a group. So he would get. them the best songs, I'm a believer. Oh, Neil Diamond, produced by the same guy, Jeff Barry, who produced sugar sugar.

So I remember that time, and Donnie was very upset that they didn't like his approach, not letting them play on the records, not letting them write the songs. Yeah. And he was very despondent about that. And the monkeys were so popular and so strong that he was fired. Yeah. It just fired from Screen Jems Columbia Music. It made them hundreds of millions.

Oh, he got fired from. the job. Yes. Wow. He got fired from the job. I didn't know that part of it. And he said, someday I'll come back

with another company that will be as big. And he did. He came back years later. And he did. He found Kansas. Yeah. The Archies.

Yeah. So as the story goes, of course, correct me is that he offered sugar, sugar to the monkeys that they turned it down because it was too sweet. That's what I heard.

And even Mickey Dolan's told me that's what happened. Because I went back and listened to Sugar, sugar today, knowing I was going to talk to you, and you can almost hear Mickey singing it. Easily.

Good singer. Great singer. But what I'm saying is, if you just listen to the song, you can hear it was literally written for Mickey. I mean, it's got Mickey's rhythm in it. They would have had a number one record. Absolutely.

That song was destined to be a big hit. So did you just cut the demo and they released the demo or they said, okay, now you're going to do the song? How does it end up instead of Archies? The Archies were going on TV, and they needed music. And Jeff Barry was brought in to write, produce it. Kershner was music supervisor.

And I heard they were putting music here. They didn't have a lead singer. So a friend of mine in the band said, you should come over. We're at RCA Studios. And I went over and said, Donnie knew me. So did Jeff. I had worked for both.

In New York City. RCA studio, big beautiful studio. And they said, well, try this song. I did the song called Bang Shang-Lang. It became the first single. And I was signed that day to be the voice for the next three years. it wasn't part of the backstory was that because of his upset with the monkeys

that he made sure that he was in total control of the Archie's thing, right? Is that? I don't know about that. I don't know. I'm asking. Yeah, I don't think that was it. Yeah. I think he took the job as music supervisor for the TV show and it just happened to have the Archies as a band. Yeah. And he was fine. Again, he would come to the sessions and cheer us on

make suggestions to the producer Jeff Barry who was genius at pop music. Yeah. I mean, Jeff had written with his wife, Ellie, Be My Baby, Dood Run, Ron, Ranky, then he kissed me. He got up once at a BMI Award 16 times for the year. I mean, so having him on a project, I knew it would be a successful project. Oh, I see. There was a lot of talk.

I don't know if you heard it at the time, but there was a lot of talk about the monkeys are not real. This is not real music. I mean, what was your general impression of that sort of thinking at the time? My impression was that they were real. They were good. They were all musicians. They were performers. Mickey had been in show business since he was a kid.

Davy Jones since he was a kid as the Artful Dodger and, you know, Oliver. I mean, and the other two guys were good musicians. I understood they wanted their own piece of it. They wanted to control something. And they did very well. But I guess I'm talking more about the cultural conversation, which even to the state continues. but in other forms because of the rise of auto tune and pop music and this idea of like where does organic stop and where does artificiality begin? And it becomes part of your life story because obviously the Archies is a completely fictional band.

Yes. Now at the time there was a lot of talk that they were manufactured and they had to prove them wrong. I think the success was so monumental and so worldwide they had to become the group. I see. Yeah. Yeah, it's almost like the illusion had to become real. It had to become real. I see. But how did you feel about, did you have any compunction about basically fronting an artificial band or, I know it was a job, but I'm saying is, especially when you start having success. Did you feel any kind of reservation? You were just so happy that what you were doing was successful. I was so happy. I knew. Selling six million records. Really? And being on TV every Saturday morning for a million children that grew up to be rock and roll fans. It was a gift at the time.

I was listening. And it was a gift at the time. And I knew it. And I was grateful. I was very grateful at the time. I understood that this is a real opportunity to maybe move on with my career into solo or production. Sure. So for you, it was just like, wow, this is an incredible wave to ride.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Biggest songs, Sugar Sugar of 1969, the biggest song in the world, not just the biggest song, the biggest song in the world. That was astounding. My mom and dad took a trip to Africa, a cruise. She was in a market, and there was a lady selling trinkets. And my mom said to the lady, do you know my son's song, Sugar Sugar? And the lady sang it back to her. It was like Zaire or somewhere. And I went to London, Paris, and Rome on two of us. and it was being played. So you actually did Archie's tour? I actually went out and promoted my solo album after that. Okay.

So I didn't go on Archie tours. The Archie's never toured. I was surprised they never even tried to put a band together. No, the cartoon people who wanted the copyright wanted to keep it animated. In fact, when it went number one, my mom called me and said, oh, the Archie is going to be on Ed Sullivan tonight. So I turned it on, and they were playing the cartoon. Yeah.

So I said, well, my voice made it to the Ed Sullivan. Yeah, my voice is there. I have to tell you a quick story I thought to tell you. It's such a weird story, but I had a, before my band The Smashing Pumpkins, I had a band called The Marked. I always have to spell it because people can never, it's M-A-R-K-E-D, the Marked. Not a great name. And we played for a while in Florida in 1985, 1986,

and the band started to break up. And so we decided to kind of do this last show, but we weren't really sure we were going to break up. So I was feeling a lot of emotions, and I'm standing on stage at this club called Act 4 in Tampa, Florida, in 1986. As my band, I'm having my first kind of real band breakup in my life, and I'm on stage, and I don't know what to play. And I started playing Sugar Sugar. No. True story.

And then after that, after we did the gig, we all went in the parking lot, and that was hit. The band broke up, but that's the band that led to me starting the Spashing Pumpkins. So you're forever going to have a place in my heart in history. I love that. Because I didn't know, I was so sad. I didn't know what to play. And I thought, what can I play that's going to lift my spirit? Honey, honey, honey.

I think I even have a recording of it somewhere. How cool is that. So it's got a place in your heart. Yeah, thank you. With this, that period of time, do you have something you wanted to add? No, I'm fine. With this period of time, it seemed to usher in, let's call it a different sensibility, like, oh, if we can have success with cartoon bands, monkey bands, it seemed to usher in this other sort of sensibility in the music business. Then you had the 1910 Fruit gum companies in Ohio Express.

Yeah, so it seemed to usher in all this other stuff. And then, of course, you started singing for other, I guess they were bands, but they weren't bands in reality. I mean, how did you take all that? You know what I mean? Were you thinking, this is all great because eventually I'm going to be able to make it about me? Or, you know, I'm saying it's surprising to me that you didn't, I'm not saying you didn't have a solo life because you did,

but I'm saying as not everybody could handle it gracefully, maybe, and you seem to handle it gracefully. I was okay with it. I kind of looked on it as every opportunity came around. I said, yes. Try this saying this. song, this will be a group, this will not be a group. Yeah.

I just thought it was the most fun in the world. Yeah. Because what I liked was singing, singing in studios, singing other people's songs, my songs, it didn't matter. I was just on a joy ride. Yeah. It was, everything came my way and I took it. You know, I figured one of them may stick.

Yeah. One of these groups may do better than the Archies. Yeah. Well, back then, was it union? Was there union times or, What was the normal length of a session, a recording session? Oh, it was three hours. Three hours.

No longer. Was he go five minutes over? Was it a union thing? Most of my things were not union. Yes. Probably, probably not. I don't remember contracts being sent into the unions. But then again, it was the Wild West.

It was really, really, I mean, think about, I fronted, and they put out maybe two dozen groups with my voice on it. I mean, it's like different songs, different types. And nobody called me. No unions called me, no official call me. Oh, I see. Yeah. I guess when it hits, people love success. Yeah. Well, what's the famous saying?

Success has many masters, but failure has but one. That's right. I saw this thing, and I thought it was really curious. When you had the hit Tracy for the cuff links, you had two hits on the charts both with your voice but they were with anonymous groups Yes

that was heady I remember the day Tracy hit number nine and sugar was still number one and I was anonymous but I was gleeful I was like oh great great

there was a radio station New York City W ABC that played hits one and the same hits every hour so you're on the radio so I was on the radio twice an hour plus maybe one of the commercials I sang for Dr. Pepper or Coca-Cola.

Yeah. Yeah. So it was a really great time. And it was fine with me. I was happy. Now, with these types of things where you're like with the Archies where you're the singer, are you,

I assume there's no royalties. You kind of just get paid and that's it? Or do you have a royalty deal in those situations? I had a flat fee at the time. And over the years it has developed into a royalty situation. Yes. Because of the new rules. come along.

Oh, okay. That lead singers are supposed to get paid for the plays and sales, our streams. So when you put out Ron Dante, it brings you up, sorry, because the song, is it going to bring you up? It's just, let me bring you up. Let me bring you up, yes. But the title is the similar, yeah. What were your hopes then? Because now this is really like your first, like you've got success, everybody knows who you are.

What was the thinking at that moment? They thought they would take advantage of all the success they had come before. The Archies, especially the cufflinks. And Don Kirchner's label was, it was Kirchner Records. And it was distributed by RCA worldwide. So I knew it would get a great shot. I toured a little bit, went overseas, did some, excuse me, did some radio shows. And it was a fun ride at the time.

it didn't seem to take. People wanted the sound of the Archies and my solo record was a little more mature. Yeah. It was a little more, I was a married man. I had different things in my mind for the songwriting and stuff. So they wanted the younger version, I think.

Oh, interesting. So it wasn't a big success. It just, one flop does not change a career. I figured that I was going in a certain direction anyway towards production. So I knew that if this, worked, okay, I'd do a solo for three years. I see. But it was, it was an interesting time. I had great expectations. Yeah. It did not work. I was a little depressed for a while, but I bounced back.

Yeah, it would seem it's got to be kind of a weird feeling to be seen and not seen at the same time. It's like, here I am. You know, you know who I am, but you don't know who I am. Right. Was there something that you saw with the media where they, they were sketched? Or, you know, because of how media they try to make a story out of it. So what was the story they tried to make? I don't know. I think the story, just the radio DJs were in charge of it. When they got the album, they heard the single.

They loved it or they didn't. And I don't think a lot of them loved it. Yeah, I wasn't familiar with the first single on the record, and I thought it was very strong. It was a strong song. It was a Jeff Barry and Andy Kim song. Yeah. Who had originally written Sugar Sugar. Yeah.

So I figured we had a winning team, had a winning song. It could have been the drug times. DJs were a little afraid to let me take you higher and higher. It was around those times. Woodstock was coming around, but it was before Woodstock, I think. Yeah, it was also the kind of the coming of the singer-songwriter, the James Taylor's and that whole world. Oh, sure. I mean, I don't even know how to ask this question.

So weird question asked. but it's like, well, what we now commonly call bubblegum pop or sunshine pop or what do you call that period of music? Bubblegum rock. Yeah, it was rock and roll. Yeah. And it was rock and roll for very young people. Sure. It was never meant to compete with Led Zeppelin or the Stones or any of it.

Never. It was meant for nine to 13 year olds who chew bubble gum, bubble gum at the time. Yeah. And eat cereal in the morning. That's why they put sugar sugar on the back. of Sugar Pops, 10 million boxes went out with a cardboard record that you could cut out and play like 21 times. I didn't know that.

Yes, and it was very successful. I'm sure. And it had four songs on it. Okay. So a lot of kids, six, seven, eight years old were eating breakfast. They'd say, what is that? Oh, let's cut that out. Yeah.

Play it. So it was some of the first rock and roll they ever heard. I was never offended by the term bubble gum. I thought, I said, they should know who's playing on these records. Yeah. The greatest New York studio musicians played on the Archie's records. Hugh McCracken, David Spinoza, two of these guys on the Archie's records. When Paul McCartney came to town to do Ram, who did he hire?

Hugh McCracken and Davis Spinoza. Come on. And we had great drummers. We had great bass players. And they played on all the hits. So it wasn't like a little kid band over here making young music. It was grown-ups making young music. I see.

Who would you cite were the chief architects of the bubblegum sort of rock movement? Yeah. There was a company called Camusutra that had the, I think the Ohio Express or 1910 Fruit Gum Company was real. I think that was the key phrase, fruit gum company. There's bubble gum for you. And they had one, two, three red lights. Simon says, very young. Lemon Pipers were on that label.

That's right. Green tambourine. What a great single that is. Oh, great tambourine. sound. Yeah, right now. Yeah. Right. And that's where it came from. And Archie's just got caught up in it. Yeah. Because we were on a Saturday morning cartoon show. Yeah. So what better group to lump it in there. But grid artists, really top artists like Tommy Roe with Dizzy or Tommy James. Tommy James. Great. Both of those were kind of lumped into that at one point. That's true.

Because they were appealing to that group also. Yeah. Because it strikes me that it's it's almost anachronistic to everything that was going on in the 60s at the time. You know, the Beatles had gone like kind of back to blues, back to basics. Of course, you had the rise of hard rock, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple. And here in the midst of all of this is this kind of beautiful pop music that has aged very, very well. It still sounds good. Sounds good.

The songs still resonate. Yeah. You hear them in commercials, TV shows, movies. My kids were in the car two months ago singing sugar, sugar. It's amazing. I got young kids 10 and 7. Perfect. They would love it.

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Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash Magnificent, the name of this podcast. That's QUO.com. Magnificent. So, but is it, sorry, because I love my rock history, so excuse me for going one question too deep, but was there, was it strictly a commercial philosophy, like you said, to appeal to young listeners and the Archies were part of that? Or was there a sort of, did somebody have a greater intellectual overlay there about, like,

like this almost like pure pop against what was happening in music? I don't think that was the mindset. of the people in charge. Just commerce and... Yeah, it was... Especially for the Archies. It was a Saturday morning cartoon show. The music, we broke barriers with our music

because it was pretty good rock and roll. If you listen to the... A lot better than what they're playing now for kids on TV. Terrible right now. So I think that was the mindset, was keep it young and appeal to that. So Jeff Barry and Andy Kim

and Bobby Bloom was another. writer who wrote songs for us. They came up with themes and songs that were appropriate to that. They didn't dive deep into lyrics, but they dove deep into pockets on those records. The grooves

were great. Yeah. And I remember Jeff Barry working very hard on Sugar Sugar, making sure that the drums and the bass played what he wanted. It took an hour and a half or two hours to get the pocket. And then I came out after the track was laid and did my vocal. Yeah. Which

people say, who did you think about when you were singing Sugar Sugar? And I said, I was thinking about Donovan, me mellow yellow. Oh. They call me mellow yellow, quite right. I did, sugar, ah, honey, honey. I thought I was Donovan. I wasn't. I was this me.

Does Donovan know that? No, he does not know that. He knows now. Yeah, he knows they'll come back from royalties, I know. Were there, I don't want to say accusations, but I just know how music critical. are. When that music became as popular as it became, what we call bubble gum rock, right? Was there a pushback from the snobby crowd about what it was? Because it's so, it's so crassly commercial. Yes. I don't remember much of a pushback. Or they just ignore it. They kind of ignored it.

That's even better if you think about it. It was much better. I never saw articles in Rolling Stone saying, well, this is crap. That would be beneath them. Right. So they never touched us. And they left us alone in our area, which grew. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, sugar, sugar's probably getting played somewhere on this planet right now. Right now, it's true.

I went to Amish Country to do a show, and I went to a farm with an Amish farmer, and he showed me around the farm, and my girlfriend asked him, do you know my boyfriend's song, Sugar, Sugar, pulled out his phone, and it was his ringtone. In Amish Country. So we got around.

Yes. I'm probably asking the most obvious question of the world, but it seemed to me, and maybe it's a testament to you, that when I hear you sing those songs, and I love the, it's called Rondante's Funhouse, it's a compilation of all your work in this area.

It's like basically two CDs worth of music. It's on Spotify, at least that's where I found it. And I love that it was all, because I didn't have to go searching for all these things. It was all kind of compiled. And the thing that strikes me is you brought such a joy and a passion to this work. It never feels like you're just phoning it in. Every vocal session is a new session to me.

And I'm a little anxious before the vocal session, just a little. I'm a pro. I've done it a long time. But when I was doing those things, I wanted to bring my best and enjoy it. Because we used to do commercials and the account executive would say, You're singing about McDonald's fries and, you know, mayonnaise, but smile. Smile when you're singing that. And I would go, okay.

But I always thought in my vocals, I was smiling for my pop stuff. Yeah. I always had, you know, and I said it was always, I was treated it as fresh. This is the first time I'm singing this. Well, I think that's part of the endurance of the music, right? Could be. Could be. It's authentic.

Because now that we know what it was all about, It doesn't take away the joy that's in the music. I would think so. It still makes people smile. Yeah. I think it's interesting because almost all the ink spilled on the 60s going into the 70s is about, you know, Dylan going electric and, you know, all these things that really do matter. The Beatles breaking up and all these types of things.

But hiding in plain sight is this other branch of popular music that's almost totally diametrically opposed to, I'm in my feelings. You know what I mean? The world is burning. I'm coming off a heroin or whatever. And you guys are over here writing pure pop. And, you know, I think maybe what I'm after is that maybe because we've had such pop hegemony over the last 20 years and certainly the rise of Taylor Swift and like this other

Bruno Mars and things. Bruno, right. I mean, global pop artists that are overtly pop. Like they're not even playing necessarily game. about credibility in the way that we would normally voice it in the rock community. To like, I want to have a great song and I'm just going to do whatever I got to do to do it. Maybe in some way that casts a better light because coming out of the 60s and I, when I had Mickey Dolans in that exact chair talking to him about the Monkey's movie Head

and how it was kind of a riff on, you know, this overt idea of making something popular or plastic. You know, do you ever see that Monkey's Movie Head? Oh, you never saw that movie? Yeah. It's a very strange movie. It was directed by Jack Nicholson, and it's kind of the monkeys are breaking up. So they almost make a movie about the end of the monkeys.

So it's interesting if you're bored sometime. It's like a surreal take on what it means to be fake and real at the same time. So you might find something interesting. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe more so than we realize, looking back at the cultural nadir of the 1960s going, into the 70s, that the rise of bubblegum pop is just as potent as the rise of singer-songwriter, you know, the artists making and producing their own records, that the 60s doesn't just usher in a different type of artists. It ushers in the very obvious moment of saying,

but we're also going to make purely commercial pop music. We're not going to try to pretend that it's anything other than what it is. I know that was a long speech. That's quite right. Does that make sense? It makes sense. It makes sense. It has its place. The pop charts when I was growing up had all types of different music. R&B, country. I don't know what happened to that. They're singing nuns. They got rid of rock now for 25 years. I hate that. And there's no keeping it down. They can try. Well, rock's about to have a massive comeback. Everybody sees that. Everybody sees it. I see we just added to our Happy Together tour that I'm on. Jason Schiff, the lead singer.

from Chicago. Okay. For 16 years. Great singer. He goes out and does a heavy rock thing at one point. And the audience goes crazy. Yeah. You know, it was something we hadn't had, and now we have it on the tour.

So wonderful. Yeah. But you're right. Rock will always come back. It will always be something very important. Live, it's filling places. I saw that you'd produce the last Archie's album. I did.

Did you have a sense? I mean, maybe I'm being too, too, on the thing. But do you have a sense that that thing was coming to an end? No. I thought this was just one in the line. We'll just keep going, yeah. We'll just keep going as long as the TV show is on. Yeah. The TV show went off. And that was it. And I figured that was the end of that group. Yeah. It was the end of the popularity. It was a three or four years popularity on CBS. Did you want to be a producer? Was that something of interest to you? I did it because I wanted my vocals to sound good. I wanted my vocal. I wanted my vocal. to be what I wanted.

I see. Not what the producer thought he should, the microphone, he should put on my voice. So it started with, I was a singer trying to get my voice recorded properly. And the arrangement, I wanted the arrangement to surround the voice so that it was a cushion for the voice. I see. And that's the way I got into productions. I liked producing because it was like a big, what was it, Austin Wells went said,

directing is like a big train set. that you have complete control over and you can build anything on it. Yeah. And I think producing records is very similar to that because you have control over everything. That's, to me, that's the secret power of music is actually being at the board making those decisions. Right. At the end, who has the total final cut? This is always, you know, an argument I would have with my band is, you know, everybody wants to hear their instrument louder or whatever, you know, and I get that. But the thing is, if you're not in there at that board, making those decisions, you know what I mean?

That's right. No, no, it's, I love the final cut. Right. It's wonderful to have that because I did, I did, I had the final cut on all the productions I was involved with. Yeah. And it was the most fun, and it turned out good things came from it. So let me ask you a nerd question. And so what's your favorite vocal mic then? Oh, if you had a 47, I don't know.

It changed Sony. There's a Sony mic I like. Is it that crazy one that's like... Yeah. Yeah. I like that one. It depends on the singer's voice. When I would produce...

I guess I'm asking for you, though. Yeah, for me, AK-47. It would be one of those old mics that I liked. Yeah. Do you like a mic that works with you or do you like as clear as possible? I like it works with me. Yeah. I think everything should be...

I don't know. My production technique is everything should be in. We should enhance the bass. The drum. We should work for it. I listen to yourself. It's very earthy. And I notice you don't enhance that much because you're going for the truth in the track, I think.

Yes. Mine is to fabricate a better track. Yeah. And make it spectacular. Yeah. Yeah, I sort of believe in something that not everyone agrees with, which is like, let's call it like a tonal density where if you put a lot of things together

in a particular jigsaw way, it creates this other sort of overarching harmonic. The problem with it is it takes forever to do. It does take a long time. And it's very dependent on the guitar. I'm a guitar player first, so you can see where that... I can see where it's going.

That bread gets butter. I have to tell you, both these theories work. Yeah. Because there's nothing, nothing they say, well, you can't do that. No, that's the thing. No, no, that's the beautiful thing about music. There really is no one-

way of doing it. And everybody's, I used to have this producer used to say it's a weird, he's, he's English. One man's snare drum is another man's snare drum. Very English. That's perfect, though. I am a, I'm a Barry Manilof fan going

way back and the record I fell in love with was Mandy, which I know you were involved with. So I had to bring that up because a very obviously great songwriter and He has had an incredible sustained career. So let's start there. I mean, knowing Barry all these years, I mean, you must sort of marvel at his sustained, talented guy, right?

It just, right from the beginning, I knew he would have a career. The first songs he ever played me when we first met to get together and he wanted me to produce him was, could it be magic? Beethoven. I said, wow, this is a wonderful way to go. And he played me some of his other songs.

I am he a child, different things. And I knew that he had something. And I saw his first live show. And his first live show is so alike his live show today. He was building a dramatic show that had peaks and valleys that covered jazz, pop, Broadway, and, of course, the hits. And so I'm amazed that it's gone on, 50 years. Yeah. But he loves what he does.

Yeah. He loves it. He would not do it if he didn't. It's genuinely love being on stage. It's interesting because if you think about it, there aren't many of that guard left that connect us to like the old Hollywood and the old way of doing it. It's true. Barry Manilow is one, Liza's another, where it's this beautiful connection to the old Tin Pan Alley songwriters, the Harry Warrens and the Cole Porter's and the Irving Berlin's. But then that beautiful bridge all the way to like, you know, you know, Rogers and Hammerstein and then into 70s pop.

Exactly. There's this beautiful kind of bridge there. And you have to, you almost have to be a lover of song to really appreciate how magical that is because it takes a certain art of understanding. And then obviously there's a great empathy for the performers. Barry being one of those. He's like,

his audience, like, loves him. That's just part of it. They express, they call it my Barry. They do. It's my battery. He speaks to each individual. And that has resonated throughout the years and developed new fans. Yeah. So talk a little about Mandy since I, okay, so imagine, you know, whatever, I was seven years old. I'm listening to the 45. Wow. So take me back into the session. Well, it was an incredible session. We had one album out. Yeah. And it was not a hit. So we were going in for us.

second album. Do you remember who the label was? Arristen Records. Okay. So it's Clive Davis? Yes. So is Clive putting pressure on you better come up with the hit? Well, he just, he wanted, he wanted a funnel in his songs that he liked.

Okay. And bless his soul, he had a good ear. And he funneled in some beautiful songs. And Brandy was one of them. Yeah. And as we were recording it, we realized we can't call it, Brandy. Because of the looking glass hit. Yes.

So Barry came up with an arrangement. It was too fast. He went out and he started to play it as a ballad. And that's the one that we caught that night. Wow. It was just a bass drum piano, live vocal. That's a live vocal? Live vocal.

Yeah, we punched in maybe one or two lines, tops. So it's the live vocal. That's why it's so emotional. Because our president was in the booth with us. The man who pays for everything and promotes everything. So there was a lot of pressure that night to do well. And Barry went out and knocked it out of the ballpark. Sang Mandy beautifully.

And I said, as a producer, don't screw it up. Don't overdo it. I see. Don't get carried away with guitars and this and that. I brought in a couple of arrangers who worked with Barry on some oboes or string parts. Yeah, very tasteful. And then Barry and I did all the backgrounds. Wow.

You did all the a-s in the big sections. And I remember during the mix, I kind of accidentally hit the echo pot on the snare, and it went, and everybody said, that's it. So I used it every two and four. And that's the key change. We put the key change in. Now I've got to go back and listen. You'll hear.

It's a special sound on the drum, the snare especially. It was the beginning of the rock ballad. People don't realize that other groups kind of pick that up, and all of a sudden you hear it. You know what? It's funny you mentioned it. I can't think of a record before that that does what it becomes the rock ballad. Yeah, it was it was a rock ballad from the key change on with as much as we could put into it. Yeah, and this was like 74. 74 we recorded it. It was number one, January 75. Wow. And we knew we had something that night because I've been in tons of sessions since the 60s.

Well, you would know. I heard it. Clive heard it. Barry heard it. We all heard, oh, the playback, okay, this is something we must handle with kid gloves, take good care of. Yeah. Let's get it out. And I got calls the day it was played on the radio from people in Nashville, from California, from all over the place going, I just heard you, Mandy on the radio. I pulled off the road. I almost crashed.

It was so good. Wow. And it went number one. That was the first number one production. Wow. Yeah. But we knew we had something. We had to follow it up with some good.

stuff. Yeah. And we followed with a, it's a miracle. It's uptempo, which was unusual, but that was what we had. Yeah. And that went top 10. And then it was iffy, what's going to happen next with his career, right? So I did it edit on Could It Be Magic, because it was originally seven minutes long. Okay. And I made it 360 or 59. And that edited version came out and kind of solidified his career. Yeah. I would think at the time. Yeah. He's unusual in that. he's, at some point he became kind of, certain singers reached a point where it's like, hits are nice, but they're not, they're not,

they're no longer subservient to trend. Good point. Once Barry found his audience, they've never left him. And he's had this incredible run that wasn't dependent on whether or not he was in or out or he had a moment or a song or, and you think about it, there's very few singers have ever been able to pull that off. It's unbelievable a career. Yeah.

It has a lot to do with his live show and who he appealed to. Yeah. The way he also is very vulnerable on stage. Yeah. He doesn't get out there and he's a big star. He makes fun of himself. He pulls out his accordion and he plays his accordion. He sings with his grandfather in an old clip.

Yeah. His grandfather telling him to sing it, Barry, sing it, which was one of the first things Barry even played for me was like that the quarter machine on Times square you could go in for a quarter. Yeah. And record your voice. And his grandfather took him in his six and recorded him, tried to get him to sing happy

birthday. And Barry wouldn't sing. So the grandfather's going, sing it. The money's going, sing it. And Barry goes, no, no, no. And we put that right on the opening cut of his first album. As someone who knows him and worked with him and was such a part of his success, like, what, I always find this interesting because.

all singers and you know like there's a personality and an image that comes across in an entertainer but like what's something about barry that we wouldn't understand like is it is it his songwriting that's the key or like just give me something that sort of illustrates him a little bit more if you don't mind well he's a very private person and he's happy alone i i feel of knowing him over the years he likes to read great books and do crossword puzzles and uh he's a back musician. He was the guy in the band. He was the keyboardist that played for all the aspiring Broadway girls that were trying to get auditions. He would back them up. Oh, I see. And he would help them, he'd give them a key, he'd help him with the song, he'd help them get the job, maybe. So he must have done hundreds of those things over the years. He was a Marvin Hamlish after Marvin Hamlish. I see. Marvin did the same thing. And for Liza. Right. So that's the kind of guy. He was not ready to be the front man. Actually, his first session, he said, well, you're going to sing it, right, Ron?

And I said, no, no, you're going to sing it. They're your songs. I'm producing you. We're working together. So he said, oh, okay, I'm not sure about being the front man. And that he even says it in his interviews. That we kind of pushed him out in front. Yeah.

So he's a private guy, and he loves his fans, and he's one of us. Yeah. He's one of the musicians that, you know, know, they took it to the front. That does explain something to me. Because, you know, a lot of singers are sociopathic, let's face it. You know what I mean? Join the group.

There's something that I don't quite understand in myself of why I feel the need to stand there behind that microphone and sing to thousands of people. I don't really understand it. Yeah. There's a part of it that makes sense. Like, all the eyes are on you and it's your song. And, you know, in my case, I'm usually singing my song. there's an ego to all that, and that's something beautiful about that because if people enjoy it, well, then it's not a bad thing.

But there's still this other part that's like, why do I want to be up there? Exactly. Do I have to be up there tonight? Right. Maybe I'd like to go see somebody else sing, right? But that's part of us. I mean, none of us, Frank Sinatra, we'd get nervous before going on stage. He even said, he said, I'm nervous about the voice tonight. I'm not sure it's going to be there, right?

man who'd been in the business 60 years and did everything. So we're part of that. You know, we're just human. Just give me a little bit of a snapshot because, you know, you'd come from this,

you're a demo guy and you work your way if you have hit records. You do try to do a solo career where it's about you and your name. And it seems like once you kind of get into the 70s, it might turn forward as the hustle, but you really start working like,

I mean, you do everything from being involved with Broadway shows to your, I mean, you famously sang the Coke, like to teach the whole world to sing. I mean, you're like, you're kind of everywhere at the same time. Can you kind of give me a snapshot of your life in the 70s? It was get up in the morning, pick up the phone messages, see what's, there was a thing called registry that would book singers. And they would call me. And they handled all the jingle houses. They were the central place. They had all the singers' names.

they would call me and say, be at ANR recording studio at 4 o'clock, you're doing a Dr. Pepper commercial. And so that would be the start of my day. Then I'd look into other things that were happening. People I knew, it was a time to say yes. And I knew that it was a certain window that would happen. So I made sure I was available for the things that came along on the phone. People meet me at parties, say, Would you like to be involved in a Broadway show?

I said, let me read the script. I read the script. It was a thing called Aynus Behaving. I went right in. I said, I'm in. I always wanted to do something like this. I used to work in that area. The Brill Building is right in the middle of Broadway.

So that would be my... It's the Fats Waller story. Yeah, yeah. And it won the Tony for Best Musical. It won three Tonys that year. It was an amazing show. And I loved it. It was music.

Because I got to supervise the recording. RCA did a cast recording. So I was part of that. I made that deal. And it just, I kept, I kept saying, this has to stop at some point. And things kept coming my way. And I was ready for it. I was prepared for it.

I already had the experience. I had also the ambition to do things. I didn't want to just be stuck as the demo singer, the singer-songwriter, the artist. I knew what it felt like to be an artist. So that's why when I produce people, I know what they're going through. I see. And I make it comfortable for them. Yeah.

I deal with their minds, not just their vocals. Is there, isn't, because you sang in so many successful records, is there, is there a perfect pop formula? I don't think so. Is it right song, right performer, right key, right, is it perfect storm? Good fortune overlays the session. Yeah. Or the thing that you work. on and it happened to be the right bass player, the right guitarist, the right engineer,

they're important, and the songs, songs are the key without the songs, as Paul Anka just said in an interview, without the songs, the artists are not there. Yeah, yeah, that's what blows my mind with somebody like Mr. Anka's, like, you know, incredible musical life was a teen idol, the whole thing, but behind it all is the songwriter. Songwriter, and he wrote some great songs. His first teenage songs were monstrous. The best is he bought all his publishing back in like... Smart move. He bought it.

By the early 60s, when his kind of teen idol thing was running out, I think he was on ABC Paramount or something, he went and bought back all his publishing from them in like 1963. Wow. He basically took all the money he had at the time, which was about, I think he said it was about 350,000. thousand dollars in 1963 money

and he bought all his publishing back and he still got his publishing very he was very smart very smart guy very smart and a great singer and great performer so uh i didn't know this until today so i'm not claiming any deep knowledge but uh i did interview pat banitar and her husband neal obviously they've had this incredible 45 plus year musical partnership but i didn't know you were at the beginning of that particular story.

I was. That's pretty cool. It was very cool. What did you see in her early? A friend of mine in New York City, Jim Kerr, local DJ who's still on radio, called me up. He said, Crystal, this is interested in this girl singer. She's in a club downtown.

Why don't you go down and see her? Yeah. They need a producer. So I went down to see her. She sang crying. Roy Opsons crying. Okay. She's saying, you better run.

by the old rascals and the minute she hit you better run I heard I said that's it because I always loved that record to begin with I said we can make a

kicking record with her I said she could do that she sang it great she got a review in one of the papers there were lines around the block for her before she signed a deal so I took her into the studio signed to deal with Chrysler

to do three sides That was it because I was busy with other things. Yeah. But I really believed that she was the, she had an attitude that it was really different than most of the girls around. The girls' singers were not quite like Pat. Very strong personality. She's a small package, but a huge power.

And I saw it right away. I said, first of all, she's so cute. She was so adorable. I said, what a great looking girl. If she gets a good hit, she will have a huge success. And I just adored her. And I took her into the studio with my friend Paul Schaefer, who did the arrangements. We did Heartbreaker.

And you better run and cry it. That was the three songs I chose. And we did a kick-in arrangement. We had a guitarist named Elliot Randall who played on him. He was with a Steely Dan for a while, played solos on this stuff. And the sessions were unbelievable. When we got to her vocals, I noticed she was a little apprehensive.

She had been singing in clubs, not in recording studios with phones on it. It takes time, you know. So I built a little stage in the studio with a spotlight, put the mic and stand on top of the stage, and I invited some people in. Her mother came, and they were in the booth. So we did the vocals as a performance,

and she knocked it. She was like, I said, this is it. I heard her do you better. or heartbreaker or even crying. Nobody's ever heard crying. They never released it. I wonder why they never put it in. I don't know.

Maybe it's the wrong direction because it's a sparse arrangement. Yeah. But it shows off a vocal ability 100%. So that was it. The A&R guy, Jeff Aldrich, real nice guy.

I sent him the premix. I said, okay, this is, I'm going to put an extra guitar on this stuff, but here's the premise. He showed it to the showed it to the presidents and the guy is in charge of the thing. And I think

what happened was they thought, no, Ron's a middle of the road producer. He's had the Archies, okay. But he's had Barry Manilow with some big hits for five or six years. And that's a whole different area than we're going to put Pat.

So what they did was they cloned my records. They cloned my arrangements. They recut them all with Mike Chapman. beautiful producer, great guy. Yeah. But those are my arrangements. Paul and I worked on this day and night before we got to the studio.

I worked on the vocal arrangements, the breakdowns. I'm singing on them with her. And so she called me one night and she said, she was crying at the time. She said, they want to take me away from you. Yeah. Right? And she didn't want to leave. And I, not as the producer, but the artist in me said,

you must tell her the truth that if she fights, them over me, she could hurt her career. Yeah, she could lose. She could lose if she's stubborn. You'll be fine, but she might get hurt. Yeah. So I told her that. I said, you have to go with them. Wow. Whatever they want you to do, you go with her. You're going to be a big star. But this is your time to make that decision. Wow. And I did it. And that's the honest truth. That's what happened. I believe you. And I love it to this day. I'm so proud of her career. And she was the MTV girl for a while with those great videos, and she went on, and her and Neil created great records. Yeah. Wow.

Those situations are tough. I've had a few of those myself. Of course. And you have to roll with it. Well, it's not so much you can't win them all. There's just times when you just got to get out of the way. And I give you big props for getting out of the way on that one. That couldn't have been easy.

It wasn't. I knew she was going to be a big start because at the minute we recorded those records, I said, these are hits. we had to put all three of them out at the same time. Okay, we're almost done. Thank you for indulging me. There's not a ton of information on you on the Internet, to quote George Bush, but I saw this, and this piqued my interest.

Paris Review from 1978 to 1985. Now, is it George Plimpton, was your neighbor? He was my neighbor and my best friend. Okay. And we met over a four. fire. He had the brownstone next to mine. His wife was on the second floor and one night I come out with my wife and there's fire coming out of the second floor. Yeah. So we rush in and we help George's wife Freddie get the baby out. She had been waxing her eyebrows and set the whole window on fire.

So we got them out and George and I met that night and he said, oh, what do you do? You seem to have a car to pick you up every day. Yeah. I said, well, I'm in the music business. I produce things and stuff. said, he invited me over for dinner. Then he started, he had a pool table. We started to play pool. And we're having fun every Friday night. We play pool, then go to a lane. It was like a dream come true for a kid from Staten Island. And one night he said, we're losing our publisher. And he said, would you be interested in publishing the magazine? I said, I love the magazine. You've had, you had the first interview with Hemingway. You've had the best interviews with the greatest writers of all times. You put, you give new writers a chance every, I said, I'd love you. I'd love you. I'd

love to. I said, but you have to beat me at pool. And he did. He ran the table for like two roles. And I said, you didn't have to do that, George. I'd love to become the publisher. Wow. And so I was involved in the covers that we did. And I meet the people he had invited over to his apartment through the greatest parties. But that was a beautiful time. Because I met a whole different type of people. I'm sure. I came out of the music business where Sometimes you have to check your wallet. Full of scoundrels.

Yes. Sometimes you check your wallet. In this business, it's different. You know, they're gentlemen about it. So that was my involvement in it, and it led to great things. Wow. Speaking of George Plimpton, recently I met the gentleman who he wrote the fictional baseball article in. Really?

Remember that where he wrote about a fictional baseball player? Yes. I can't remember, but it's a very famous article. I met the gentleman that's in the pictured in the article. And to this day, he still gets recognized. I'll bet. George made lots of people famous. And he was famous for being the amateur.

He was an amateur fighter, amateur hockey man, amateur boxing and hockey and basketball. Yeah. I mean, he wrote about, he loves sports. He was one of those great people that you just love and talk to, you know, that have great stories. Okay. Two more things. Okay. Given your success and given your life, which is really in many ways, I can't think of anybody that's similar to your story.

It's a little different. It is different, but cool, certainly cool. Where do you fall, and maybe there's no way, maybe it's just a silly question to ask, but where do you fall in art versus commerce? Does the question make sense the way it? It does, it does. And I understand that. I would love to say art. It's pure art.

I always think of it. But in my depths, it's commerce and art. It's like, you're a Picasso. I'm Andy Warhol. I get it, yeah. You know, that's the way I feel about you. Oh, thank you. No, no, you truly believe what you did and did it well and broke ground and suffered for it sometimes, but you did it, right?

Mine is more like pop art. Yeah. You know, and I always, I have to think, I came from a poor family. I, we didn't have much. And I always thought about, well, is there some way to monetize this? And that's what I do. So I combine commerce and art equally. I do not favor one or the other.

And the art comes if you work hard enough, you know, if you feel deeply, I felt deeply about things that didn't work, but I was proud of them. Yeah. And I do it again. So that's kind of where I fall. Does that explain it? Well, I think what I get listening to you is because, you know, when you work in the music business, and as somebody once said to me, it's called the music business for a reason. But, you know, I've done many indulgent things, and I like a lot of indulgent music.

but when pop is done at the highest level, it is unmistakable that it is its own form of art. It stands. And if you look at the two most traded artists in the world, to this day, it's Picasso and Andy Warhol. So that tells you on some level the public recognizes that the greatest creative expression without much commercial oversight, although Picasso had plenty of commercial oversight,

but that's a story for another day. He was very aware of how much he was selling. There's plenty of documentation of that. So he wasn't just living in a cave. Some of a painting the Madonna. But if you look at that, if you look at the two greatest artistic movements of the 20th century, at least visually,

well, there you got. And even if you want to go into Hollywood, whatever, you can talk about the great films of Fellini, but you can also talk about, you know, the great commercial success of John Ford. Absolutely. That's the artwork of the 20th century film in particular to me. It's great art. The Godfather is a work of great art. So, yeah, I didn't mean just. That's right. No, no. And some of the more pop stuff is also great art. Yeah. Where do you fall personally? Like, what is most attractive to you? Is it art that achieves a great clarity in commercial success or is it great pop music that has an artistic bent?

Good question. Because the great songs of Gophid King, which were obviously, you know, they were written in those times. To me, that's high art. Yes, definitely. But they were trying to write hits. It's not like they were sitting there trying to be arty. But they were artists. Yeah.

They were creating something. So where do you fall on that personally? I'm kind of, you know, pop art, that side of it. Yeah, I would fall on. Yes, because I enjoy it. You see, I'm not severely depressed. There's no way to top that. Okay.

Thank you. I've enjoyed you very much. I've enjoyed this interview. Thank you.