The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Paul Williams | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

In this episode of TMO, Billy Corgan sits down with songwriting legend Paul Williams for a free‑wheeling conversation that spans astrology, Williams’ nomadic childhood and early hormone therapy, his breakthrough at A&M Records, and the creation of “We’ve Only Just Begun”, sessions with the Wrecking Crew, trading quips with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, Williams’ roles in Battle for the Planet of the Apes and Brian De Palma’s cult classic Phantom of the Paradise, and his memorable “Love Boat” theme. Both reflect on struggles with addiction: Williams’ 1989 cocaine‑induced breakdown that led to long‑term sobriety and Corgan’s experience with his father’s substance abuse. Subscribe to the Magnificent Others YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BillyCorganTMO?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is like a Dickensian tale. The aunt said to me during the two weeks, if you go back to live with your mom and your little brother, every bite of food you take will be a bite of food your brother won't get. So if you're going to be a real little man, you're going to write your mom and tell her you really want to stay here. And I bought it and I wrote the letters and I stayed with these people that I didn't love. Elvis Sinatra, Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Tony Bennett, Bowie, Carpenters, obviously. Kermit. Quite a resume of people singing your songs and obviously thousands more. That's pretty cool. Pretty cool, man. I mean, as a writer to writer, I had no idea you'd be this nice. I adore you. Paul Hamilton Williams. September 19th, 1940. Yep, exactly. Let me find this card. I wrote this card out. Sorry, this is really good. You might appreciate it. Do you like astrology? You know what? I know that I'm a Virgo. I know that I have, you know, my moon's in Ares and I have Gemini rising, but no, I don't pay any attention.

Okay, well, check this out. So the idea is that there's just sort of mutable characteristics for every birthday. So I just typed in your birthday, not even your birthday or just your birthday. September 19th. So listen to what it said. Excels in the arts, singing, painting, or sculpting. They need to say inspired and they might become prophets. for a higher, and they might become profits for a higher cause.

Protectors of the humankind or the animal kingdom, doctors and healers of all kinds. They do things to flow to become their best in their field of expertise, for their waters must be clean so they can stay aware of their talents. Oh, yes. I thought it was like... That took a while to get those clean waters, you know. I believe in everything. I mean, I believe in everything.

I believe that... But there's a dark side to this quote. Okay, go ahead. because I'm curious if this because that feels right to me as a fan of your work. Thank you. The first part. Thank you. But let's the second part.

This is the dark side of them. Okay. Good. Detached and lonely, they easily fall into psychosomatic problems when they are not satisfied. Feeling powerless over issues that are their own responsibility, they become, they can become a burden for those close to them and turn to dishonesty or substance abuse when they are lost. And I have a black belt and a couple of those things. I mean, it's like, you know. So that's your birthday.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because, yeah, and, you know, I joke that I spent my life writing Ouch Mommy songs. I'm, you know, the master of the codependent anthems. So it's like, you know. But it's a time, though. I'm a master of the codependent. You know, it's to pick me up and love me.

It's the essence of it. When I was about nine years old, they gave me shots to make me grow. And the shots did not make me grow. actually kind of closed off the bones. Really? I could run under coffee tables. I was so little two brothers that are six-footers and me in the middle. Do they have any sense of why?

No, but they went to a doctor in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He said, I can make his boy grow. Do you remember that? And I do, I do. And I was probably eight or nine. And he gave me male hormone, which kicked me into early puberty, which what that basically does is it also begins to close off the bones and all. And of course, I immediately had a totally different relationship with the world around me.

I had no interest in my toy chest, but my hand in his chest was something that I found fascinating. And they saw this and they stopped it. But it screwed up my body claw. So, well, they'd also screw you up mentally because you've gone from innocence to not innocent. Now they take away the hormone. To a hunger that I do not understand. Okay, right. A hunger, a knee, an urge that I have not identified.

identified yet, but I am feeling the beginnings of it. And then they, because they interrupted the cycle, whatever like that, I was like maybe 22 by the time. I mean, so by the time I actually hit puberty. So I mean, this all relates to your opening salvo. Yeah. Is that all of us, so I'm in high school with the body of a 12 year old.

And but the mind is racing ahead. The mind is raising a head. And out of that, all of a sudden, I'm in my early 20s. I want to be in that. My dad died in a car wrecked drunk when I was 13. So alcoholism has been a huge part of the Williams family. Both my brothers died sober. I'm sober 34 years.

And I'm at a place in my life where I can see, I kind of can identify. you know the different areas of the roller coaster okay and when you you know the the information you discovered throwing out my the date of my birth is is accurate to to a point of being magical so I need to start paying a little more attention yeah to to to my birth signs and that that moon in areas I think so One brother was a NASA scientist. Is that accurate?

Yes. And worked on Mercury and Apollo projects. Yeah. That's pretty cool. My brother, Jack, being in eight years older than me. So we weren't, you know, it was a sweet, sweet man. Loved music, loved me, loved me, loved me getting the attention I did eventually. And another brother wrote, Drift Away, right?

Mentor Williams. What a great song. Great, you know what? I used to cover that song with him. Did you really? Oh yeah, what a great song. It's a fantastic song. He passed away in 2016.

Both of my brothers quit drinking, but they could not quit smoking. The one thing I did that they didn't do is I quit smoking. I just, I'm, I'm, it's one of my sort of sideline hobbies, I'm sort of fascinated by genetic lines, like what we get from our, you know, from our ancestors. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

And in your case, if you just look at the three brothers here. Were there other siblings? Pardon? Were there other siblings in your family? That passed away at birth, there was a sister. Okay. But just three boys. I was the middle boy.

All three of us drank. I mean, we were born addicts. We were born addicts. But setting that aside, I'm not being glib about it, but it's interesting that all three did something in the world. You know what I mean? There's something there that must have come from up the family tree, right? That's just my belief.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's like I was gifted with, you know, with the genetic propensity towards, you know, addiction and alcoholism. And then I did a little work on it on my own. And, you know, I mean, I was, how old were you, the first drink you ever had? Probably five or six. Wow.

I mean, we would get a little glass of beer sometimes watered down just a little bit at the family picnics. And, I mean, I would go around at like 11 and 10, 11, 12, whatever. And if there was a little something left over from the adults and everything, would always, you know, just taste it. Do you see that as the first signs that there was going to become an issue later? Is that typical kid stuff? No, I think that's typical kid stuff. I'm just curious. Yeah, I think that, you know, I really hit my stride in, like, in my 30s.

Late 20s, I, you know, in the 60s, cocaine was not addictive. It turns out I am, but it was like all the news was there was this wonderful drug and it's not addictive, but it was which is absolute bull-ed because it's remember there used to be like barretta episodes and you'd be like coke's not addictive i remember for some reason i remember that well there would be episodes where you would talk about you're talking about an episode that i wrote i wrote that episode okay why watched that i remember that i did the tonight show with with robert blake and i said i love your show

i'd love to do it he said well then write one and i did so i did i wrote one with the orphan annie blues and where i played a guy that has an old a record store that's selling drugs because he has a sister in a wheelchair. Coke's not addictive. Yeah, exactly. And I think I have the line about this. Nobody dies from cocaine. It's not even addictive.

I think it was one of the lines of it. Okay, I'm in a basement when I was watching this, by the way, back in Cold Chicago. Robert Blake said to me, you're the only one that I, he says, the thing I always said to actors was right one. He said, you're the only one that I ever did. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

I love Robert Blank. I just speaking to him. Oh, me. What an interesting. Where are the Robert Blakes of today? Right? Exactly. It's fascinating.

Those are the people that I wanted to hang with. You know, I lived in Montecito between Jonathan Winters and Robert Mitchum. I mean, it's like I was the normal guy on the blocks, sort of, you know. But Mitchum is, I mean, I didn't want to get sober. I got sober. I mean, I called a doctor in a blackout. And, I mean, that's a whole other story and all. But I, you know, trying to keep over the Robert Mitcher put me in treatment twice, you know, it was like.

It was a notorious stoner, right? He was like, you know, I remember being roasted for the city of Hope calling Cheech and Sean and going, you know, would you be on my dais? And they were like, no, man, we didn't do that kind of. Come on. I said, Robert Mitchum was on the desk. And they were like, oh, man, we're there. It's like, it's like that, you know, that he's the pirate, you know. He really was that guy too, right?

He was that guy. And I loved him. How did you get from Omaha to L.A.? That seemed, that story doesn't seem readily available in my digging around. I went to nine schools at the time I was in the ninth grade. Okay. My dad was in because he worked for a company called Peter Kewittstein's company, a big construction company. They built the B-36.

hangers in South Dakota. They built Boysdown in Omaha. He built a hospital in Albuquerque. So we would go wherever the job was. Every year, wherever the job was. Same company, same group of workers kind of working together and all. My dad would sit and drink with a guy named like McShane every night. And we either had an ice brick house in the, in the upscale house in Denver, or a 24-foot trailer in Lucasville, Ohio, because that's what was available. Wow. And the only thing that was constant was my dad and Ike McShane drinking every night. But how did you get to L.A.?

It was this with the family? When my dad was killed in the car wreck, he had a half-sister that lived in Long Beach. Okay. Who had never met him. I found out later he didn't like it all. And I didn't either. But she came to the funeral, and she took me to Long Beach with her for two weeks while my mother moved to be in Denver, were close to her sister with my little brother.

And the aunt, I mean, it's very, it's like, this is like a Dickensian tale. The aunt said to me during the two weeks, if you go back to live with your mom and your little brother, every bite of food you take will be a bite of food your brother won't get. So if you're going to be a real little man, you're going to write your mom and tell her you really want to stay here.

And I bought it, and I wrote the letters, and I stayed with these people that I didn't love, you know. Wow. And, but there was a gift. in it because of the friends I made in Long Beach at Woodrow Wilson High School that were theater nuts and we all loved Montgomery Cliff and we all felt like Montgomery Cliff. And so this is mid-50s.

Yeah, I graduated from high school in 1958. Okay, so who were you listening to in mid-50s that you loved musically? Yeah. You know why? Was one of those kids before my dad died, that he would get me up in the middle of the night. and have me sing Danny Boy for for Ike, you know.

And Ike incidentally hated me. I was like the last thing Ike wanted to hear was some no one was singing. Especially Andrew Boy, you know. But, but I, yeah, I loved, I think that when I was basically preteen, even, I loved the American songbook. I mean, I just. Because you always had that in your writing. Yeah, yeah, it was.

I don't know, it translates to everybody the same way it would translate to us. But when we, when you say Gershwins and. the Irving Berlin's, yeah, Irving Berlin, all that, exactly. So you weren't in, you weren't a rock and roll kid? I discovered the Beatles, I discovered rock and roll and the music of the 50s through the Beatles. The Beatles changed, you came later. I listened to the 60s, I listened to Revolver, and I listened to, you know. So you weren't, did you like Elvis and, or just just kind of over there?

Well, no, I mean, I, Elvis, but no, I liked, you know, I like the platters. are like, you know, Jackie Wilson, you know, there was, but something happened. As long as far as the, how good are the Mills brothers? The Mills brothers were amazing, you know, and they're kind of a late discovery in my life. Yeah. And you just... When did you find that... How did this happen?

I think I just came across them in a movie or... I'll tell you about my child. But a drop up a hat, you just got to ask, you know. I'm a cheap whore when it comes to talking about my child. But like the Frenchman and the... There's some of the Mills brothers blow them. mind yeah there's something up because you know they would do that thing where like they would do their own horns and oh yeah they like only the one guy playing the one

like a tenor guitar and they do those crazy beautiful harmony yeah and even there's cool stuff with them with uh l jolson and it was sexy oh my god very sexy so cool you know so like the vocal duke ellington like you know i mean like the who i love that i love that you know like the beautiful kind of purple feeling of duke ellington but vocally yeah and And what's your favorite color there? Is it a favorite song? Oh, gosh. There's a song I really like.

I can't think of... It's like one of these kind of swan-y variation songs. Kind of like a Stephen Foster take. Did you love Randy Newman then? No, not a Randy Newman guy. Well, if you listen to Randy's really early stuff, it's very Stephen Foster. It's very, you know, yeah. I love that one.

Randy Newman's song about the wall. It's being too thin, which is a great. You know, that's not that Randy Newman, some about the wall. Dusty Springfield did. It's something about the walls are too thin. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to hear it.

I think, I don't want to hear it. Something about the walls are too thin. Yeah, I don't remember that. It's an early Randy Newman. But Randy Newman, as everybody knows him now, I've never sort of emotionally connected. Aaron Nelson? Not really, really.

Yeah, yeah. I know he was. They were in big and fun. A pal. Yeah. When you do kind of burst on the scene, you know, you didn't have the stench

that a lot of people who went through psychedelic music had. Yeah. You were more of a classic writer, and that's how people will view you, right? But I'm still curious for, since you were here, and you watch what went on in the 60s in L.A. and the Sunset Street. Was that a world you were a part of? I know at some point you stand up working in it, but it's not what came out of me. I mean, it's like...

No, but atmospherically, were you hanging out? Oh, atmospherically, I mean, I had show-lo-length hair. I wore round black glasses, a top hat with a feather in it. a tie-dye shirt, under shirt, with camouflage pants and work boots. I mean, I looked like, you know, when I met Richard Pryor, he said, I loved you, like, when you were late for the party in Alice in Wonderland. He looked like the, you know, the, I'm late on late rabbit, you know. So were there any of those?

And the music that I love, I mean, my favorite band that I ever saw, ever in person, was the original Delaney and Bonnie in France. Oh, yeah. Do you know that? Yeah, of course. Was it with Clapton still play? Yeah, well, I saw him with Leon Russell. I saw him with Carl Rade-a-Lone bass, you know, like Jimmy Gordon playing drums for, you know.

Is Bonnie's the singer right? Yeah, what was her last name? Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett. Right. Bonnie's a really cool singer. They were amazing, you know, but what came out of me was, you know, I was writing for about four years. I mean, the first song that I wrote that got recorded was a song I wrote with Biffro's called Filial. heart. See, you are an adult

because that's the next page. Ooh, it froze is right here. Buzz the Fuzz. Buzz the Fuzz. I showed your song, hold on. Fill your heart. Recorded by David Bowie. Well, yeah, recorded by David Bowie.

And Tiny Tim. But first by Tiny Tim. It was the B-side of Tiptoe through the tulips. Good B-side to have. Huge B-Saw. Did you make a lot of money up that? We made a lot of money on that. You know, I showed up at A&M Records.

I met Biff-Frose on. on the Mortsal show. I was an improvisational actor working with... Okay, tell me what it was like to work for Mortsall. I don't really remember a lot, except it was all about the... Garrison, it was all about the Kennedy assassination. It was all about the Warren Commission Report. Everything, all of...

Really? For comedy? Absolutely into the... I know he did those records. Did he do those records, right? Or maybe I'm confusing. It was like Firesite Theater. Well, no, no, no.

Morn Sall was... Mortis Hall is a political satirist and a... Oh, so you needed grist for the mill of the topic of the... What happened is he had a local television show, and he was furious about the Warren Commission, which he felt was, you know, a far... So he was a conspiracy theorist? A major conspiracy.

He had, you know, garrison on the show. But anyway, I went on, I played a young... I played a Boy Scout who... goes to the White House to get his ribbon as an honors, as a top line, whatever the scouts are, the honor scout, whatever. And I get drafted and put in the army. And Biffros was playing a chicken delight delivery guy who also gets drafted on the spot. And the two of us met, and he was writing funny songs, buzz the fuzz, whatever.

And we became friends. We got high together. He played me a melody. He said, this is going to be a really funny country song. He played me a melody. And I went, I don't think it's funny. I think it's pretty. And he said, well, then write words to it.

So we started writing together. We wrote a couple of songs together. He went to A&M Records, played him everything had ever written, and they liked the songs, including the ones that I'd written. And as he was leaving with his little bit of an advance he got at the door, he stopped and looked back and said, incidentally, there's a couple songs that a guy named Paul Wayne. Williams worked on with me and he wrote the lyrics, whatever.

And they went, which ones? And he told them and they said, get him in here. And I showed up in a stolen car. This is A&M? At A&M, yeah, and found alive. Was it where, you know, the Chaplin Studios, was it there? 1967, I signed as a contract lawyer there. Who was your point of contact?

Chuck Kay was his name. Did you know Chuck? An amazing publisher, who was the kind of publisher that would, when you were halfway down with a song, of it sounded like a hit or he knew who it was for he would put you in the car and drive you over to play an unfinished song for somebody i wrote i finished rainy days and mondays in the car driving over to play it for uh for bones how wow yeah oh it was an amazing time because i went from a starving out-of-work actor you know i had done a movie called the loved one i did a movie called the chase with barland browno robert redford all that and on that picture bed picked up a little i bought a little i bought a little little guitar and wrote about three lines about a scene that we were watching a shoot where there's a fire Robert Redford is a character named Bubba who's an escaped convict hiding in a junkyard fire that us kids have just set and I just picked watching Brando and Redford do one scene after another

I just for my own amusement went Bubba Bubba Bubba Bubba come out wherever you are over going to come in and get you I'm just looking for chords and making it up. But we're going to come, and Robert DeVall walked by it. And he went, what is that? I said, it's a guitar. I just bought it. He said, not the guitar.

What were you singing? And I said, I just, I thought it was in trouble. I just made it up. I just made it up. He said, come with me. And he walked over to the director and said, show it to him. It's in the movie. He shot it.

It's in the movie. Two years later, I started writing songs because I'm a slow learner. But there was like a billboard in that moment. Well, I was being shown that, you know what, do that, you'll make a living at it. So for work, like a lot of people, it was, did you get into the movies just because it was money, but you, or you wanted to be an actor? I wanted to be an actor. I felt that Montgomery Cliff. I looked like Haley Mills, but I felt like Montgomery Cliff. How was Brando, was he, what stage in his interesting arc was he at at that point? People would walk up to Brandon and start talking to him, and he would just go,

and walk off and all. But, I mean, I think there was maybe one conversation that I had with him, with several other actors and all. I mean, he was Brando. And just watching him shoot one scene over and over with totally different dialogue and energy every time. Always just, I mean, I just spent two years with Billy Bob Thornton on Goliath. I mean, an amazing actor. And that same kind of, it's all, so internal. Yeah.

So. Did you have a sense then of that Brando would be like, you know, he's obviously ascended to legend status for a variety of reasons. Do you have a sense then? I mean, you're looking at the living person in his prime. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm looking at Brando on his life, but at this point, he's already Brando. I mean, it's 1960.

Yeah, but not all those legends lasted. Yeah. It was like, I mean, it was, I couldn't believe I was on. First of all, there's a part of me that is just, if I walk on a movie set or a film set, I'm nine. I'm just like, oh, my God. Do you like old Hollywood? Oh, I do. I'm obsessed with that.

Absolutely. I mean, my first wife, I sent a picture to her yesterday of myself with Carlo Ponte and Sophia Loren. And anyway, my wife is walking by in the background. She's so beautiful in, and I sent it to her. But it's like, for me to be this, the run of the litter from the Midwest to construction brand. And all of a sudden, I'm, you know, when I started having hits, I started, you know, recording albums, which were basically like demos, I'd record an album and then other people record the songs. And I made a living. Thank God, thank you, Lord.

But I started doing, I mean, I did 48 tonight shows, you know. And I joke that I remember six. Yeah. But all of a sudden, I'm like, I remember being at a friars roast. And walking on stage and in the audience was Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, Robert Mitch. It's like Sparticus and Atticus Finch and I'm just like, and I'm nuts. I mean, I'm just like.

How were those guys with you? Did they see something to you? You know what I mean? Because at different times, depending on your arc, you know what I mean? There were times where you kind of came across as a curiosity. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like as American culture.

I don't like to think I haven't lost that. Okay. Well, God bless. But then there were times where you could see people almost like they kind of figured out that you weren't going anywhere. You know, Tiny Tim was a talented guy. He was a curiosity. And his fate, yeah, yeah. You know, you went from a curiosity to someone who was on the Tonight Show, posting the show.

That's a, that the American zeitgeist, as you know, is very fickle. Yeah. How were those guys with you when you were in that? I think, I think that, well, first of all, they were friends. I mean, I was friends with, you know, with many of them. You know, and Montecito was a tight little community with my, and Michael, Douglas and Mitcham and whatever. But, you know, the great thing about what we do for a living is we don't have to give up our fan card.

So I could keep that and everything. But I also, I mean, I was just a little loaded and just a little arrogant, so I was comfortable in any situation. You know, I didn't know that I should have been scared. And I'm sure a good therapist would take me back into the, you know, like, what's behind that wall, behind that wall, behind that wall, and probably there was somebody that was going, oh, my God, but I just, you know, I said yes to everything. I had a certain drug, and I had an affection for what I was doing that was a passion that was absolute and that was fueled by a certain arrogance that was drug-induced as well. And, you know, but not from the very beginning.

I mean, it was, it's a progressive disease. I mean, by the 80s, you know, I misplaced the 80s. You know you're an alcoholic when you misspoles. It's a decade. But in the 70s, I mean, I couldn't go to the piano and identify a D minor, but I could score, I scored movies. I go, okay, here we go. The shot of the gate.

Bum-pom-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bum-bom. I want Arco basses to do the Bum-Bomb-Bom. And then like a Bidi-de-do-do-do-do. Let's do a walk-down on attack piano. I mean, it's like, I'm doing. doing stuff, I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's working. Yeah, right. And it's probably because when I was three or four years old, I'm listening to,

only you can make my dreams, because I've got all that in my head and my heart. And I think it's not only for your viewers, it's like, you know, let this, the dribblings of insanity here about trying to do anything that we get the opportunity to to do, start living your life a little bit like that because what we dwell on, I believe we create. Yeah, I believe the power of intention. The power of intention is immense. You certainly manifested for sure. Thank you. I'm curious because I love recording history. And unfortunately, as much as people interview musicians like us, they don't really get in the substance of where we really work. Yeah. So it's a rare opportunity.

because I want you to put me in this atmosphere. So you signed to A&M as an artist. Yeah. But like you said, people are covering your songs. I'm sure you're doing a little bit of a hustle. You're writing with people. Yeah, yeah. Well, I wrote with Roger Nichols almost every day for years.

And that was your six. Yeah. You guys wrote songs. When Biffroes went to A&M and played in, he mentioned me, they were looking for a lyricist for Roger Nichols. Okay. and Roger wrote beautiful melodies and he would write them for me

the night that I met him the day I went into A&M he gave me a cassette he said here's the melody take a listen I'll see if you hear any words I showed up at 9 o'clock the next morning with the finished lyric because I mean I hear words in music so do you you know so do you so take me in that partnership a little bit

so in that case he's more the melody guy and you're the lyric guy. He writes. He writes. He writes. Was there attention? Like, I'm just playing the game. If you heard something different, would you tell him or you? Oh, yeah, yeah. And he goes, you know, I said, can I have an extra note? He says, you don't need one. He was 6'5, so I'm 5, too. I said, we went with his version. Yeah. You know, but the thing is that he would write, you know, But da-de-do-de-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dha-dha. And I would hear it, no-for-node, talking to myself and feeling old. Sometimes I'd like to quit, nothing ever seems to what.

You know, I hear lyrics in a fountain. I mean, the water in a fountain. I hear vowels, and it's weird. I mean, I would have wound up in either a bonfire or a dunking chair if I'd been born in the 1700s. Were there other writers? I'm trying to have some linear out here. I'm having trouble of some linear here.

Around that time, were there other writers that she worked with? Oh, yeah, because Roger would go home. Roger and I would work from about 10 o'clock to, and we'd have a couple beers at lunch, whatever, and then we'd go back and work a little in the afternoon, and he'd leave, and I had no life, you know. So I've got a little office, and anybody that dares to walk by my office,

I would, you know, like, I mean, I wrote with, I wrote out in the country for a three-dog night with Roger. I wrote old-fashioned love song by myself alone because he'd gone home. I wrote Family a Man for a Three Dog Night with Jack Conrad, who was my bass player. I wrote, you know, with anybody. And, I mean, I just, I loved it. What was the, what? I mean, you were an artist and, you know, this, I like this song, the Someday Man that the Monkeys did. But you recorded that as well.

Well, I did an album called Someday Man. Right. With the, I actually, my first album was called The Holy Macro, which produced for Richard Perry. Okay. That's how I met Richard who produced Tiny Tim and blah, blah, whatever, you know. But, you know, I just, when I signed at A&M, eventually I made an album called Old Fashion Love Song. Yeah. That Michael James Jackson produced.

And whereas the Someday Man album was like Roger's album. because it was all of his arrangements, his melody. It was all my words. He didn't write a lyric. I always wrote the lyrics. You know, but it was like, it was his kind of his record. I get you. Michael James Jackson said, I want to strip you down to, like, just minimal, you know, you and the song.

And he went on and he got Ros Conkaw, Lee Sklar, you know, Craig Durge. Just the amazing musicians. And take me anywhere you want to take me. One is, what was the hustle like back then to get your songs placed? to be sung or recorded by other artists. I had very little to do with it. So who was doing that? Chuck Kay, the great publishers, you know.

So is there, all your, you focus on writing, I wrote the songs, and when my albums came out, you know, I mean, I had people that were really, really good to me. I mean, Three Dog and I was amazing. Great band. Richard Podler, who was their producer, we cut our demos there. And Richard Poller would,

that we'd go and cut a song and he'd show him to him. And so you should cut this and they'd go, I don't want to cut that. You'd go, you should show three songs they recorded that they didn't want to record, and all three were his. So, yeah, I was, you know, I was slowly but truly beginning to kind of get my pause on the occasional script, the occasional little acting job, you know,

and just loving the opportunities. I mean, I said, and I still, I'm still like that. I mean, I'm writing, you know, at this point, solidly two musicals right now, one with Guillermo del Toro, we're doing Pan's Labyrinth for the state, you know, which is. That sounds spot. Oh, yeah, JJ Abrams is producing.

We're in good shape. Tell me what it was like working with a wrecking crew. at that time. Because there's a lot of mythology now about that. But like, what was it actually like to be in a session with them? You know, it was, you know, Hal, Hal Blaine, Larry Nehry and I mean, yeah. This Howl's kind of, it was how, he was the general of that whole. Yeah, he was.

You know, I mean, I didn't realize at the time that I was working with the greatest rhythm section in all of Hollywood. I mean, I've, I learned that rather quickly, but I mean, I just, you know, I just, you know, I just, These guys would roll in, we'd do a couple songs, sometimes three songs in a three-hour session. And they just played great. I mean, they were just, they were amazing. And then it turns out they were the guys that played on all these massive myths. Oh, it's insane when you really look at that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But then I also had that same kind of relationship with the section, you know, with Russ Conkall, Lee Schlar, you know, Danny Kuchmer, who want to leave you now? I mean, it's just, there are great players, you know, they're great players. And I had a road band that through the years, I would take, I mean, the songs for the stuff I did for the Muppets and the Phantom of the Paradise and all the stuff that I worked on. My road band, I got to know me so well that, you know, I'd joke that, you know, one of them would fart and I'd feel better. It was like, that's a relationship, you know. I remember, I know Chuck Negron a little bit, I run into him every once in a while, And I remember saying to him one time when we were talking, I said,

who played on those records? Because I could tell it wasn't the wrecking crew guys. And he goes, no, we always used our own band. Yeah. Like they had a great band. Yeah, Floyd and everybody. Yeah, that was a really cool band. And they sounded like a contemporary, that was kind of this secret sauce on Three Dog Night.

It sounded like a real band playing not. It wasn't like a studio band with those three guys. It was like a rock band playing with those. And that was all their guys and all. And, you know, Chuck and I have a lot in common, and he has been a, you know, we're both open about our recovery. He has been so generous. I mean, I'll go off to Mobile, Alabama and speak for the Alacall and Drug Council there or whatever. It is a fundraiser.

And I'm not even off the plane going home yet, and they're going, who we're going to have next year? First person I would always call his shot. And he was, he's endlessly generous. He would always say yes. It always show up, you know. It seems to me, and correct me, because, you know, I'm watching your life on the other side. You know, the television back then was, I mean, it still is, but it's hard to explain to people who are younger than us that the compression of the moment, you know, four channels or whatever. So when it was on television, it came across.

Yeah. And it seems to me, at least in my own experience with you, that you and the carpenters, that's the moment where somehow you seem to step forward. Was that how it felt for you? Yeah. You know, Roger and I were writing songs. We met the Carpenter. Incidentally, Roger and I were getting all these cuts, and nothing was ever on the radio.

I mean, album cuts besides nothing on that. Nobody knew who we were, but the producer. There wasn't really any big chart success. There was no, no, there was no real chart success. But we were making a great living. I mean, we're B sides of, I have, you know, I wrote the B sides of I, I am woman and Delta Don, all these tiny tens of a good sign.

Yeah, exactly. So all of a sudden, there's a knock of Rogers, we're running in Rogers' office instead of mine. And there's a knock at the door, and there's Chuck Kay or Herb Alper, and said, you know, this is our newest, newest acts at A&M wanted you to meet Karen and Richard Carpenter. And they looked at Roger and I were like, oh, man, we love your peppermint trolley cut of

trust and the Steve Lawrence recording of Drifter. And we're like, we're famous. Oh, my God. We're so excited because these two kids knew who we were. Wow. It's interesting that they kind of picked you out of the lineup. Yeah, they did. And, you know, when they recorded close to you, which was their...

the first huge hit, the B side was I kept on loving you, that Roger and I wrote it was going to be the A side, but they turned it over and played close to you. Thank you, Lord, because it was a major, major free ride. But then what happened after that was Tony Asher, wonderful songwriter, was supposed to write a commercial for Crocker Bank. And he had a skiing accident, and he broke his hand.

So he suggested Roger and I write a, wanted to write a little song, not a pitch. Just a little sales pitch. It's like a little video of a wedding. Show a young couple getting married, and it's going to say at the end, you've got a long way to go. We'd like to help you get there, the Crocker Bank. And he recommended Roger and I said to Roger.

I said, I want to write a bank commercial. I'm street. I'm white light and black leather. Which is true. And he said, well, there's a creative fee. I went, let's write this. I love writing for banks. I love Rodney Brook.

And so we wrote this, you know, in an afternoon, wrote the, you know, the song. And I sang it on the commercial. He did the background voices. The section played it, I think. Richard Carpenter heard it in the commercial and said, is there a full song? And it's, we've only just begun. And that's what, that changed our lives. Trying to think or I want to go with this thought.

It's like, I guess it's the sense that, you know, History has a way of compressing like the television did back then of how we view things. But because you were there and you were so instrumental in their success, it saddens me as a fan that usually when you think of the carpenters, you think of the tragedy with her. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But what the public often misses is it's tragic because there was something to feel sad about the tragedy. Yeah. So I'm interested in your ground-level impression. Like the first time you heard her sing,

did you think like, wow, this is a unique instrument? Yeah. But more today than then. I mean... So take me then because I'm kind of curious. You know what I mean? Well, it was just, it was an immediate, like, oh, my God, that's an amazing voice.

That's an amazing voice. And now that we know, really a one-of-a-kind voice. Yeah, it's... It was monumental. It's such an instrument as an instrument and all. But also there was this beautiful combination, this innocence and this sensuality. And also it tinges sadness, right? And the sadness.

And I think that the sadness came from the fact that her life was so controlled. Okay, it was controlling. Yeah. I think her parents. Okay. I think, you know, and I was not in that house, and I was not in the sessions with Richard and Karen. I know that their partnership.

And I mean, it's funny, there's a part of me that doesn't want to go out and say, you know, there's a part of me that actually wants to say, if you'd let her be crazy, if she'd, you know, run off with her, drummer got hooked on drugs, she'd probably be alive today. I see what you're saying, yeah. I mean, but the one thing she could control in her life was her weight.

I see. And I think that everything was happening. She was so young and so, I mean, and clearly an old soul. I mean, I don't know how much you feel about past lives and the life. I'm a believer. Yeah, yeah. And I think that there was just so much, so many layers of just. soulful, human, sweet spirit, that mix.

Yeah. And then there's kind of clamps around her about, this is your career, this is where we're going, get out from behind the drums is where she was, that's where she lived. Good drummer too, right? And they took it, and a good drummer. Yeah, they took it away from her.

And they took that away from it. So you go out and stand out front. Yeah, now you're a lead singer. You know, stand up there. And who knows how to stand. If I stand up in front of and now, stand up in front of it and look like, like you're comfortable.

It's like just, I think that she, I think, I just, I don't want to sit here and go, in my opinion, if they had been, whatever, they did. Yeah, I get it. But, but I think that it was a rare and amazing spirit that created the, that, the, that created the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, that you're talking about. Yeah. That sadness, that, that beautiful innocence. And yet, you know, it was funny because there was something really kind of sharp about it when you were around her and a little bit of a, I mean a little bit of a conversation.

And I never hovered around anybody when they were recording my songs. They don't hover around me when I'm writing them. I don't hover around them when they're recording. But oh boy, I would go over and when they'd call and say, You want to hear, I want us to do without you. I don't go over there. God, listen to that voice. I've told you a funny story.

And I've never told this story publicly, but it involves you. So I reformed, my band broke up officially end of 2000. Yeah. And the drummer and I decided to get the band back together around 2006. The guitar player was kind of, didn't want to do it. bass player was unfortunately not available. Go on a guitar player left at that point. Well, it's, you know, it's how, you know, bands are.

I mean, we're, the three. Hold on, I'll get this for you, folks. You're gonna love this. Yeah, here we go. We now tour three of the four original members. So there's peace in the kingdom, but at that point, there wasn't. So at that point, it's just me and the drummer. The, uh, so we go on tour in 2007.

We do a kind of a comeback record. Uh, we got excoriated because it only sold 500,000 copies. Wow. Well, pathetic. I had a journalist asked me, how do you feel now that this whole cycle has been a failure? And I said, it's a gold record. How much of a failure can it be? But, you know, when you have these highest sales, then it's always comparative. Anyway, so we toured for two years.

You know, we, okay, it's me and the drummer, so we have other musicians. You know, everywhere we went, the other people in the band called rent a band and all this. And it was just used as a way to kind of beat. me over the head with the idea that my band had not reunited around me. You know, I was the focus and typical stuff. So imagine at the end of this kind of 24-month cycle of intensity, who's in the band, who's not in the band? And in my case, the kind of the grumpy part was I'd written and produced all the records that people wanted to hear. So I'm on stage. And in many cases, the some of the most famous songs, the only people on the record are me and the drummer.

Yeah. So, I mean, we're here. We're in the building. Anyway, it's not that valuable now, but this is where you come in. So I'm a bit of an art terrorist, I think it would be the word I would use. And I needed a way to make the point that I wanted to make. So we decided to do a tour called, it was our 20th anniversary from when we first started. So we called it to her without even thinking twice about it, celebrating 20 years of sadness.

It was just a joke. It's just a joke. What we didn't realize was our most famous album is called Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness. So people assumed that the tour was the album, but it wasn't. Yeah. So we did this thing where we did it, I think, four times. And how quickly did you sense that? Oh, the first show.

First show, right away. Why don't we do the first show? Oh, shit. So, and we had done this curious thing to celebrate 20 years of music. We did this thing where we did two shows, and over the two nights, we played 48 different songs, but we didn't repeat one song. Wow. So I thought it was a way to really sort of demonstrate the breath of the band. And meanwhile, you got a bunch of people with their arms crossed thinking, this isn't what I thought I paid to hear.

Yeah. So within a few performances of this, I was so far. frustrated with the buildup and all the bad press. And now I'm facing a tour, which isn't done in all this vitriol coming at me, you know, the crossed arms and all this stuff. So I told someone to go out and buy kazooze. This is totally true. Okay. Totally true. I swear to God. So I get the band, the whole band up on stage. And we had extra horns, the guys from No Doubt that played in. So they were on, uh, uh, uh, we had, um, I think with the, entire ensemble for the tour because of the breath of the material was nine people counting me.

So I said, okay, and you know, you got the mixing guy and he's like, what are we doing, right? So we lined up like two or three microphones. Like, so this is the encore. And I gave everyone a kazoo. And I said, do you know, close, close to you. Okay. And the band's like, and I hadn't told anybody what I was going to do. This is sound check.

And I go, okay, and I get everyone to go, and they're all laughing like, okay. Phu-F-Fa-F-F-F-F-F-Fa-F-F-F-F-Suh. Right? Right. And I go, okay, so we got it where it sounded halfway decent. It was supposed to be a bit of a bust, but there it is. There's no mistaking what we're playing at this point. Is it just kazooz?

Just because. No drums, no bass, no. I think I might have had the drummer keeping a beat. I don't remember that part. But somebody was keeping time. And, okay, so now you get the, you know, when you've known people many years, like, you know, your drummer, with anything, you go, okay, now what, okay, what are you up to? You know what I mean? Like, what do we do it?

And I said, just play this part when I cue you and then don't play until I cue you again. I feel like there was, maybe we had a drum machine. No, let me ask you a question. Was the bulk of it, kazoo, or the minimal little thing in the middle of kazoo? Just to answer your question, the kazoo was the coda to buttress whatever I was going to say in between the kazoo's. Okay. Okay, so I didn't tell anybody what I was going to do other than cue, play the whole chorus, lay out, let me do what I'm going to do. I might have had something, you know what it was, I probably had somebody playing the piano, just the chords.

That's what it was. A lot of air, a lot of space. I'm sure it's, exactly. I'm sure it's on YouTube somewhere. So imagine, the band has no clue what I'm doing other than they know just to play the chorus melody. So we go on stage wherever the hell we are, and there's, you know, 3,000 people there. We come out for the encore. Right?

And the crowd's kind of like, okay, we know, like, where's this going? They think I'm going to sing close to you. No, when it gets to the break or whatever would it be the verse, I start going, you know, people wonder, who am I? Who are the smashing pumpkins? Am I the smashing pumpkins? Maybe you're the smashing pumpkins. Are we the smashing pumpkins? I don't know.

Who cares? It's music. So I'm doing like a Lenny Bruce riff. I love it. A spoken word riff. But to poke my finger in the eye of the audience, go for yourself. Good. Because if I'm standing here, okay, and I'm playing my songs, who cares what it's called?

Okay, but wait. Go ahead. Okay. So da-da-da, dokey in the eye, say whatever I'm going to say. Very Lenny Bruce meditate. And then... Fur, fur, fur, fur, fur, fur. And this would go on for four choruses.

Wow. There were one version, I think, one night went eight minutes. Yeah. Sudden death comedy. Thank you. All right. Please, I want to answer your question. Yeah.

You were Spartacus in that moment. I mean, it's like, you know what it is? It's absolute freedom. It's how dare you expect me to be the same person over. I mean, it's interesting to watch, you know what, Pat Benetar was kind of talking about that. too about how she doesn't want to go back to it. But it's the thing is that, you know, it's like trying to take a picture of,

of, it's like being in a mix master of life and your career and whatever like that, and that comfort of what you had had for all those years and then it changes. You're coming back and then you have that magical moment when you pick up something and you have just become a target. Yeah. And you know, what you've done. And I will tell you right now that the album that they may have hated,

you may see a day when that has cherished. Yeah. I mean, I've had a massive, massive success or rather failure that nobody really paid attention to it, except for two little towns. And probably, and I'm talking about Phantom of the Paradise, there was a hit in Winnipeg in Paris and was, I mean, as Samuel Gold...

It's a way in the French. You know, it's like Sam McGoldner used to say they stayed away in droves, you know. So, I mean, nothing. They stayed in droves. Again and again through the last 50 years since I made that, I've had people that loved it that all of a sudden could make movies

or make records. They came to me and said, Let's work. I mean, there are gems in those moments. Yeah. You know, when you are unjustly, you know, judged. I mean, I'm still waiting for his show to pay off, you know. We're going to wait a while. I'll think on that one.

Probably. So let's go back to your acting because now you have legitimate top level success over here on the music side. But then you start becoming kind of a movie personality, you know. What was, what for you was the, was it, was the Planet Apes movie or? Well, I did, I did, you know, before I did music, I did the loved one in the chase. The first thing that I did after I became known as a songwriter was, was Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Right. Okay, take me through that conversation.

Is the manager call? You know what I mean? That's got to be an interesting day. Yeah, it's a movie that's being, it's, it's, all I heard was that it's being directed by J. Lee Thompson. It's an appliance work. It's an ape's movie. you'd seen the original. I'd see, yeah. I don't know if I'd seen it.

I knew about them, but I don't think I'd seen it. Okay. You know, I didn't, it did not appeal to me. It did not something I wanted to say, evidently, I don't remember, but, but I knew that John Houston was already signed, was gonna play a part in it. And so I'm like, oh, now, we're talking about John Houston. I mean, we're talking about, I mean, Walter Houston,

John Houston, royal family in Hollywood. Houston played the heavy in that. I don't remember in the Battle for the Planet. The Battle for the Planet Air, he plays the Lawgiver. Oh, that's right on the first scene where he's there with all the orangutans and chimpanzees. Right. And gorillas and all. And he's there one.

I can see the scene in my mind. I just showed, I have young kids nine and six, and I just showed them these movies not too long ago. They loved them. Do they love them? Oh, for a kid, are you kidding? It's like, it's like the perfect movie. Exactly. You know, when you're a kid that age, it's like,

there's movies like this? It's like, you know, to them, it's like, this is the most awesome thing. Oh my God. The world dominated by apes.

It's like, you know, they want to live in that world. It's kind of, it's a pretty good movie, I think. It actually is a good movie. It is a good movie.

It is a good movie. I'm sure you've talked about 50 times, but you're getting up at what time to do that maybe. I think they picked me up at 4.30, maybe. I was staying at the,

at the, at the, at the Outrigger in Malibu. We were shooting at the Malibu Ranch, which is, you know, close by, the Fox Ranch, Malibu Ranch, whatever it's called. So they'd pick me up like a four, four-thirty, I'd do like two and a half hours of makeup. In a little makeup trailer with Claude Aiken's here

and Roddy McDell here. That must have been done. Well, first of all, one of my favorite movies ever was how green is my valley. When Roddy was a little boy in that, and he's like going, you love that movie, right up there. where the mine was, and on that hill was where the Welsh village was.

And like, you know, and he would always listen to classical music in the morning. And so there wasn't a lot of conversation usually. So it was very kind of quite, very ethereal that I'm like between Claude Aiton's and Ronnie McDowell and people don't know who Claude Akin is, but you would recognize him in a minute. What a great actor, though. Great actor, a wonderful character actor. and so and with classical music and everything and you know and then you've got got everything on except the jaw the jaw comes all the way out to here yeah like

about it's about two or three inches out in front of the rest of your your face so you have to eat before they put the jaw on because your noses out to here you can still get your food in but then when they put the jaw on that's why there's no there's no production sound ever used because there were really sounds like that. Oh, I see. You know, so you have, you have to go back and dove everything. It's all, you know, it's all ADR, automatic,

well, automated dialogue replacement. Wow. Just showing off. Was that movie a success? I think so. I think so. I don't know. I don't really know.

Yeah. I know that, that, that it was just, it was amazing to, I mean, to be playing, playing orangutans and gorillas instead of cowboys and Indians, you know, but with the guns. and the horses and all it was, you know, I mean, it was for me. And as I say, I'm still that way. If I walk on a shed and I'm hired as an actor, it's like I'm living my nine-year-old dreams. So, because, you know, you conquered all these media, right?

Now you start conquering television because now here comes you on Carson. Yeah. I mean, obviously that unfolded over years. But again, same thing. I remember seeing you on there, and you had a way of, maybe it was bravado, but you had a way of, he must have loved you because very few people could kind of take over his show and get away with it. But somehow, no, I mean that for real, because there were times where you could see sometimes, like, he'd bring a comedian over the couch and the comedian started trying to try doing the schick,

and you could see Johnny, like, give me the hell out of here. Yeah, well, the great thing, first of all, we never talked before. And like if he came into makeup, he went, he'd wave, but there was never any, how you doing, what's going on, whatever. So it was always fresh. Letterman's the same way. And, you know, I was always a little lit. And, you know, I mean, when I was a kid, when I was 14 or 15, I loved Oscar Levant. Okay.

Oscar Levant, you know, had a wonderful, cynical humor and was edgy and crazy and a drug addict. And he was, that was your, that was your, that was your. That was my spirit guy. Okay. Or spirit animal, maybe. My spirit animal was Oscar Levant. And, you know, it's funny, my wife, Mariana, talked to one of our, when we first started going out together, she said, one of the things that she said fascinating to me was, was you described yourself on Carson as a combination of Oscar Levant and Donnie Osmond. You know, it's like, you know, it's like that sort of trying to find, you know, and whatever.

But, yeah, I just, you know, and I, you know, I never really self-edited. I would kind of, you know, I'm sitting next to a young actresses talking about, she's just been in home with her family in Maine, and they were like cleaning the house, and oh, we did all this cleaning, we cleaned for three weeks, whatever. And I go, and the family's in amphetamine business, you know, and it's like, and the, and the producer, you know, is just like, God, damn it, Paul, you know, you don't do that. You know, I said, okay, I want it. something, I'd do it. Yeah. I just, if I thought it, I'd say it. And I, you know, as I say, my,

my heroes were some really interesting, powerful, colorful, colorful people. Not to assume that you knew Carson, but he's an interesting guy in the sort of the American Fermanent, Fermanent, Firminit. Is that word? Firminant? I don't know. You just level, it hit a level. American sky, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, he was, it was interesting, but also, like, I was great. friends with Ed McMahon. Okay. And so Carson, we'd finish Carson, and I'd go out with Ed and if there was somebody,

and exactly, have dinner and a bunch of drinks. And so, like, if there was somebody fabulous on the show, you know, if James Mason was on this show. Yeah. So then I'd go out and have dinner with Edmond, Wayne.

Orson Wells, Orson Wells hosted the tonight show, and he asked for the three guests that he had. It was myself. George Gobald, myself, and Reddardine. Oh, I know you're talking about. Geraldine Pay. No, that's the actress.

No, no, no, no. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Black comedian was great, though. What was his name? It was, well, it's like... Oh, Flip Wilson. Flip Wilson. Thank you. So funny. And it's like, I mean, what an honor I have him ask for the three of us. But we went out and had dinner that night. And so it's so, it's... it's like, again, here I am on the run of the litter, the construction bred from Omaha, Nebraska, Paul Hamilton and Williams II.

So that era... With Orson Welles. Yeah, that era, that early 70s, obviously it started in the late 60s, but that was that sort of dismantling of the Hollywood studio system. What was your impression of the town? Because there were still that weird transitory moment.

Like a lot of the old stars moved to television, but there was that awkward kind of vibe of New Blood, Old Blood. This is my just little bumper sticker moment of what it was at its best. I'm overdoing Hollywood squares, you know, with

incidentally I'm a Charles Nelson Riley? I love Charles Nelson Riley. No, that Charles Nelson Riley was on match game. Okay, sorry. But we have a... Who was, what's his face? Paul Lynn.

Yeah, Paul Lynn was, you know, was hilarious. Oh, my goodness. You know, where's the fire? In your eyes, the officer. I mean, God, it's so funny. But I'm doing Hollywood Squares and walking over to see Pat McCormick

on the Tonight Show's there because we just finished shooting squares, whatever, or the other way around, whatever. But I come around at McCormer. He was kind of, like, they had the ethnic comics and he was the Italian. Well, Pat McCormick was he was the writer. He wrote the monologue for Johnny.

He was, so he wrote But he did his own comedy in my car many. Oh, yeah, exactly. And he was hilarious. He was my daddy in the Smoking the Bannet movies. Big Pat McCormick, Little Paul, you know, it's like Bert Reynolds was on this night show, and I'm standing, just because I walked over to hang with Pat,

I'm standing there next to Pat, and he goes, I got an idea. And we didn't want to be doing three smoking the best. Yeah, thank you. Good idea, Bert. Vacation to making a job to watch, smoking the band, you know. But what was your impression of old Hollywood?

Because I'm curious about that transitional space. I know you loved old Hollywood like I do, but I'm saying is you still had that awkward period where they're still around. Like you watched those Dick Cabin interviews and it's Gloria Swanson. Hey, listen. Murnaloy. I wrote the lyrics to the Love Boat theme. Oh, yeah. So that was the graveyard for them all.

So that became a home for a lot of those actors. They got, you know, you had Charlie Fox and. And I wrote the last 11 years, Jack Jones singing it every week and all, and all those. So I did several of those as well, with Fantasy Islands and Elbows and all. Or you show up for Hollywood squares, and the first thing I do is I go on, I'd look and see who was there. Go, my God, Vincent Price. I love Vincent Price. I want to get to know Vincent Price.

I was a kid in a candy. Did you get to know Vincent Price? Pardon? Did you get to know Vincent Price? Oh, yeah, we actually had the same business manager, turned out. That's cool. Yeah, when they tore down his home on the beach in Malibu, I bought his mantle from his bedroom, the fireplace manel,

and a bunch of some stuff that I made into a headboard. So we were friends, you know. So this is like your basic Hollywood fantasy come true for little Polish. Speaking of Hollywood fantasies. I remember it was laser discs. Remember laser discs? Yeah. Basically.

I feel like this is my... Really. And I saw, I didn't... I seen reference to the movie Phantom of the Paradise, 1974. But somehow I ended up with the laser disc. And that's one of those movies like you put it in, you can sit back and watch a movie. You know, it's quasi-musical, right? Yeah.

And I don't know whatever I was on substance-wise, but I remember thinking, how did this movie ever get made? Like, it's so cool that it got made. And obviously it's become its kind of, I don't want to say it's a cult classic because I think it's better than that. But at the same time, you know, you think like, who the fuck green lit this movie?

Like, it's like a, like a, it's like things like that don't really happen, but they do. But, you know, it's like somehow when they, the inmates get to run the asylum for five minutes, look what they do. You know, they make a movie like Phantom of the Paradise. That's the best.

description of it I've ever heard, Billy. That's exactly what it was like. Well, that's what it feels like. Yeah. And I was on, God knows what, LSD, you know what I mean, I'm watching, and you're just going crazy. Yeah, I mean? Well, it was interesting because, you know, A&M hired a guy named Michael Arcega to, like, try to hook up some movie people with the music makers at A&M Records. So, I was stir up a little business. And probably the first meeting that Michael had was with Brian De Palma. Okay. He was going to do this, this film, Phantom of the Film War it was called.

Before it was Phantom of the... But they didn't want to be the name, yeah. Yeah. So, and it's like, it's a combination of like the, you know, the phantom of the opera and the portrait of Dorian Gray and Faust as a whole that as, well, I started working on, but basically, I don't know how or why. Michael Arceo recommended me. If you looked at what I had written and what I was known for at the time,

there wasn't a human being in Hollywood that was more absolutely wrong for writing this score for Phantom of the Paradise than me. And it was so, it was amazing that I got the opportunity to do this and satirize all these different kinds of music. Sure. And then Brian, you know, watching me work and went,

you know what, how would you like to play Swan? And I went, yeah, you know. Again, it was one of those things where it just, Brian went to see the opening night in New York and the theater was empty. Went there with Bill Finley, you know, amazing actor that played the Phantom. But, you know, this last year,

the closing night of the Cannes Film Festival, I introduced Phantom on stage. I'm standing there, and I'm thinking about Bill and I'm ready to cry. But it's like, here it is, 50 years later. In Cannes. At the Cannes Film Festival. Not at the Omaha. No, not at all, right?

I'm at the Cannes Film Festival, and it's the plagee on the beach, and it's like endless rows of beach chairs, everyone full of people, and they're screaming for Phantom of the Burr. I just did Phantom Paloosa in Winnipeg, 1,600 people tuned shows in a row of just a screened phantom, and then we did a Q&A, and I felt like a beatle. You know, it's like for me at this age, you know, the Little Pauley from Omaha, Nebraska, to stand on that stage and be treated like that big a deal is really, I mean, that's magical. How the hell did that happen?

I am nothing but I'm grateful for every breath, but I look at my life and I just go, my God, you are the luckiest little bastard in the world. Speaking of lucky, it's not luck, but Elvis Sinatra, Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Tony Bennett, Bowie, Carpenters, obviously, Diana Ross, Kermit. Quite a resume of people singing your songs and obviously thousands. more. That's pretty cool. Pretty cool, man. I mean, as a writer to writer, I had no idea you'd be this nice. I adore you. Mutual. It's absolutely mutual. Let's write something. I love it. But this business, you. And thank you. That's very kind of you. How can I put it? I feel like writers know writers. Yeah. And we when people miss, at least this is my opinion.

Writers don't focus on other writers' idiom or style. They focus on their chops. Yeah, yeah. These days, the glib way of saying is top line writers and all that type of stuff. Yeah, I don't know. It's a bit boring. Yeah, yeah. It's a knack for writing.

I was very dismissive of my writing when I was young, and then, you know, doing like a box that reissue. I had to go back and listen to a bunch of early stuff. And I had to replace my 18, 19-year-old opinion of where I was at on the song continuum. And at the age of, you know, whatever, 50, I'm looking back going, wow, I just, I know how to write melodies. Yeah. You know what taught me. Yeah.

You either can do it or you can't. Listen to your guitar riff, the opening of the new album, the first. Eden is the track, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. You know, it's just there's, there is the, and then I said, do this before we came out of her, but there is stuff you do

in the dynamics when it breaks down that is immediately feels it's compelling and comforting. I mean and we're coming out of you know it's like we're up here. And then you come down to

you come down to you come down to you come down to this place but feels so good I want. to stay there full river but then then you're trying to i think just like you we try to translate the the the moment we're in into something that sort of crystallizes pop music at its best has a way of crystallizing moments like they become a three-dimensional yeah holographic snapshot and the thing is that that that to me the words are already in the melody oh that's interesting Yeah, that's interesting you hear it like that.

You know, that I hear it like, it's like, it's like, you know, easier to let you go than I may have imagined. I mean, why is it there? There is, there is, there is also separate of the lyric and that is inherent in the, and that is inherent in the melody is, it's made more interesting by the lyrics sometime. But the lyrics sometimes, you know, I pointed it out to you that the most,

on the bullet with butterfly wings, the most tender thing you say in that, you'd go absolutely, in a totally, it's the most violent moment in the song. True. Isn't it? Yeah. Did you have any consciousness of that moment?

No, no. No. But it works for me. But you know what? It also makes it acceptable to a certain audience. I mean, you know, the smashing pumpkin audience is like that. Yeah. The difficulty, I think, is, and, you know, because of your work with running ASCAP,

you know, you're talking to writers all the time. Yeah. What I think the public has a hard time understanding is that great songs are like a great, it's like a spell or something. And if we could cast it every time, we would. You know what I mean? Because for every great song I've written, I've written 20 that nobody cares about. It's like trying to form up the perfect helix or something, you know.

And that's why I think with your great songs, they can be covered by such a wide variety of artists because, let's call it the core strength of the rhythm, the melody, the lyric. It endures no matter. Like, you can jump up and down on it. You could do the salsa version. you could do the reggae version. And I'm sure you've heard those kind of covers. It's funny because I almost can't, I'm not hearing you

because I'm sitting there thinking about there is something of the same soul that Leonard Cohen has that you have. No, thank you. And it's interesting because you delivered in a very different way or you have, I mean, and I just don't know all your music. I don't, you know. But I think like everything, it's a product of the time. But do you know what I'm saying?

Sure, I do. It's something. I guess what I would say to you in response is it's not something I totally understand because if I did a... Let me interrupt and ask you a question. Are there, are there, you know, that Leonard Cohen, you know,

but with the energy and all, is there, are there future songs that you already have a sense of that you can go very, very differently in what you're going to write coming up? Oh, yeah. Because I'm kind of going the other way. I've been writing with Portugal Demand

And it's as if we're just scribbling outside of the lines like crazy. And I love it, you know. Yeah, I think we've reached a, just as a sort of meta point, I think we've reached total saturation in the way we write songs. In essence, the pop world has so gamed. Like, they've stolen 3% from you and 1% for me. And so they've made it like, this is the template. Like Rick Biatto did a thing where he studied the last top number one songs.

And he said 84% of him, I'm probably misquoting, but it was a high number have no key changes. Wow. So they decided the average American person doesn't want to really hear too much melody, or they want to hear a lot of melody over one set of chord changes. And where vocals are being mixed right now, it's like, I can't, you know. I mean, I'm old. I'm half deaf anyway. We're hearing AIDS and all. Incidentally, I can hear you beautifully.

It's really nice. But it's just, I'm amazed where, how. And, you know, you listen to, like, you listen to the original Delaney and Bonnie and a friend. Yeah. Or you listen to a Leon Russell album. And the way he mixed, I mean, with, I mean, was just, a lot of the Beatles stuff, too, was mixed like this.

Yeah. You know, put it out. Yeah. Well, we've, that's what I'm saying, we've, collectively, because I like to blame us all, we've game, we've game the system of writing songs to the point. You know, you can go on and watch a video of Max Martin, explain. that he has a theory. The song should do this, and the vocal shouldn't wait past...

Once you get to that level, and there's no disrespect to Max Martin, one of the greatest pop writers in the world. But once you get to that level where you can game anything, that's where the magic to me goes out of it. Because at the end of the day, if you knew what you were doing to the level of gaming it, you would have written 40 more great songs than you did. But to call back to you with your kazoo moment, you went to a spoken word, like, that's, that's, you know, there is probably an unidentified urge to stay creative and stay original that, that it busts in. Maybe that's what. But is an interesting that I, excuse me, I chose, I chose a song that I associate with tenderness and warmth. What was the day you got to?

sober, sober in that sit, you're sober. I went to Oklahoma City to do a gig. It was 1989. It was September of 1989. I had left my wife and kids for a 22-year-old psych major, and she left me because she said, I love you too much to watch you die. I went to rehab for her,

it didn't work. She was gone. For probably two years after that, I just was nuts. I went to Oklahoma. I'm not going to say what were your daily? Probably an eight ball of cocaine every day. Alcohol on top of that? Alcohol on top of it. Yeah, because otherwise

you get too bunchy. So you have to find that nice little, you know, your jug. The perfect buzz, yeah. And the career that I, when I did get sober, the career that I thought I had had been gone, 10 years, basically. But I had a gig, and I went to Oklahoma City. I'd been up like three days and nights with maybe an hour of nodding out once in a while. But I'm in the hotel.

There's a knock on the hotel room door. It's the promoter to take me over to the afternoon gig. My band has done the sound check. They're ready for me. We're walking down the hallway. We're having a conversation as we are right now. now and the way he described it later as he said it was as if somebody grabbed you by the seat of the pants and the nap of the neck and threw you almost as high as your own head against the wall

just like an invisible monster that nobody could see but me and for 45 minutes i was tortured by a creature the i mean i was throwing down escalator stairs there's no escalator in that building but the steps were moving for me. I was tortured. He put me in his car to drive me over and looking in the side view mirrors. I saw this little monster version of myself with sharp teeth, twisting my ears, biting me on the neck.

I had a full-tilt, psychotic breakdown. Total cocaine, alcohol toxicity. They take me over, and he says to my band, does this happen before? And they said, no, never like this. He gets weird, but never like this. this. They canceled the gig. I talked them out of

taking me to the hospital. No, I'll be all right. I'll be, I'll be all or I'll be all, I'll be all right. I had a drink, which helped. Did the band, this show the next day and said to the audience that I had a reaction to my meds, which was the truth.

I got on the plane and I drank on the plane going home. When I landed in LAX, I called the dealer and I said, you know, there's anything happening and all. I was off and running. Four days later on a Saturday, actually, a Saturday morning, about five days later, the phone rings and I answered, and it's a psychiatrist. He says, I found a place for you. I said, what are you talking about? He said, you called me yesterday and said, you wanted to get sober. I said, somebody's using my body again. And and he did not laugh. He said, well, you called me yesterday.

And you said that you didn't want to have to keep lying for the rest of your life. Wow. You said, I don't want to drive with my kids in the car loaded like my dad did with me anymore. And I heard that. Yeah, I felt that. Yeah, I saw that. And thank you. Because it's the moment that my life was saved.

God bless. And I said, yeah. And I said, let's go. I went to a place called New Beginnings. I loved it. I was medically detoxed, and I woke up from the three-day detox. And there was something missing in my life, and it was the cravings. Because for probably 25 years, I would wake up with cravings.

I had a job, one job, and that was to find what I needed to take away the cravings. and I was gone. And my connection had always been through my music to the world around me. And for the first time at age 49, my connection is another community of sober men and women. So, I mean, I fell in love with it. I went to UCLA for a year. I got my certification as a drug and alcohol counselor. I entered what I called the Polylamma period of my life.

and basically felt like, I mean, the only thing that I did right away was probably about a year sober, the phone rang, and I was, nobody was hiring me. I was not the flavor in town. And it was Brian Hansen and the Muppets, and they said, we want you to write the songs for the Muppet Christmas Carol. Think about it. I'm having a spiritual awakening, and I'm being asked to write about a man as having a spiritual awakening named Scrooge. We have different addictions, but it's the same disease. I mean, I just, and slowly but surely I start writing,

and I'm loving and I'm active in recovery. At 10 years sober, I go to Nashville to write, write some more codependent anthems, staying at a hotel. And while I'm there, I'm asked to speak at the jail because I go to meetings in Nashville when I'm there. So I go to the jail and I speak, And it's like you come out of there after doing H&I, you know, hospitals and institutions. And you're just so full of it.

I mean, you're on fire with it. Oh, my God. And the ego is raging. Oh, my, we're fantastic. Was, oh, we saved some lives today. Like, go back to the hotel and I make my way through a really crowded lobby. So crowded, you almost can't get through it with a bunch of guys with badges on. I go up to my hotel room feeling like this magical combination of Jim.

many cricket and Gandhi, you know, like I have carried the message and I go to my hotel room and my goddamn magnetic key for the third night in a row will not work. So I have to go. It's a particular pay. It's a particular, it's a, you know that one. So you've got to go back down through that crowd and all. And it's a quick trip from Gandhi to Hemler for me. I'm just like, son, go down, I make my way through this crowd and I go to the kid behind the counter and I say, you know what, I know it's not your fault, but why should I have to go through this crowd three nights in a row at which point there's a tap on my shoulder? I turn around and there's a guy there, his name is Gary, it says, Oklahoma City. He says, I don't want to bother you. He said,

I just wanted to say hi. I booked you 10 years ago. I went, that guy, Oklahoma City. Were you the, when I did my Linda Blair, lick me, lick me, spinning my head around, you know, the exorcist's moment. He said, yeah, that was me. And I was like, well, I'm 10 years sober and I just spoke with the jail. I'm, you know, I've been going through all this, this stuff about, about how fantastic I am, poly this, poly this, poly, blah, blah, blah, blah. So certified drug guy, blah, blah, he said, yeah, I heard in the room as you were sober. And I go, that's, I said, are you a friend of bill as in recovery and he reaches into his pocket and he pulls out a chip for 17 years. And I did the math and I realized you were seven years sober.

I said, what did you think? He said, I was scared to death. Thought you were dying. I said, what did you do? He said, I called my sponsor. I said, of course you did. You don't want to be alone when you got some of fried gnome doing his impression of a demon, you know. I said, what'd your sponsor do?

He said, he hung up on me. I said, really? Why? He said, so he could start making phone calls. And he put together, and he says, which I did is, well, we put together a prayer circle. Wow. And we prayed that in or out of the rooms that you would find recovery. It's the most important story I get to share because there's an energy.

There's no, in a blackout, I called a doctor. I was not there. I was not my choice. And there is no way in the world that I can ever do. I mean, like, I have a higher power I call the big am ego. It's not a God of my understanding.

I don't understand. I don't understand electricity either, but I use it. I flick a switch and it lights up my life. There's something in the energy of that prayer that I will never claim my sobriety. I will always realize that it was an absolute.

a little gift. Well, I'll end here because I think what you're saying is very important to me. My father was an addict my whole life. He started playing music when he was 17 and probably became a professional when he was 19 in terms of like he was gigging the five sets, you know, like they used to do back in the 60s. So that's the world that I was born into. People in the basement spoke in weed. and of course when I went to bed they snort coke all night

and then I'd get up in the morning and they tell me to go clean the basement but don't touch the powder on the mirrors that's our special you know rolled $20 bills that's what I grew up in my dad never never found his success and I do believe he had the talent but and you know it was a convenient story you know the Chicago mob this and I could have done that

and let you I'm sure you've met those musicians you know there's a story. Yeah. But at the end of the day, it was that close, yeah. And my father was my hero. I mean, I looked up to him. He was like, he was the coolest guy on the planet, you know. And I watched my father just, you know, disintegrate to where he's playing holiday ends, hates music, very bitter about his missed opportunities. And I had no idea in the 80s when I was living with him when I was about 17, that he was addicted. to heroin and coke.

Had no idea. I knew that he partied. And for anybody who is either in that atmosphere or has had issues themselves, my father was one of those guys. I never saw him out of control. It was a functional act. Functional. Even when he was high on coke and heroin, he was cool and funny and he passed the

smell test. You know what I mean? I think there was maybe one time I saw him kind of over his skis a little bit fucked up. Considerate, nice man? Depended on the day. Very, you know, the word I would tend to use is a sociopath in the sense of he rotated his personalities depending on the situation. So with his friends, he was super charming, and then the minute they walked out the door, he'd all come. No talent hacks.

Wow. So I watched all this go on. I watched my father disintegrate. And then when I was getting successful, brought out the worst in him, the bitterness. Sure. How can my kid be somebody? And my father was jailed three separate times in three different decades, always with massive felonies, selling drugs primarily. Wow.

The last time he was busted, he was 61. a bag full, a crown roll bag full of heroin, 17 felony acts counts. He was sitting on a, in Florida, they, you know, they have these kind of dormitory type situations. So he's in a dorm with 300 other guys. And a lawyer walks in and says, hi, I'm a lawyer, and he says, who sent you? And he said, my son, he said, he thought, he thought she was lying, because why would his son try to rescue him when he's on his knee again? If that was the end of the story, that would be a nice story, but he ended up stealing money for me. And, you know, it never ended.

It only stopped when he reached a point of physical debilitation that he couldn't function. He couldn't be an addict anymore because he couldn't handle it. He didn't stop because he wanted to. He never got sober. You know what I'm saying? So he drank, but he developed heroin or whatever. It went from pills to, you know, you know what I'm saying? It's never ended.

So what I want to say to you is the soul. of an addict is I'm so glad that you found your way out of that because in my father's case he never did and the shame of it is is you and I could sit here and laugh and cry and tell that story and live to write another song you know I'm saying and so I hope that at least anybody who's either in it because Al-Anon's been very helpful to me so I highly recommend Al-Anon for people who are grieved and familial or relationship situations. But even those who are struggling with addiction, it's like you really need to understand that there are great things ahead.

But you've got to be there to experience them. That's the, you know, the hidden ingredient in this conversation I just got. Thank you. And it's your recovery that you know you didn't cause it. You couldn't cure it. that you can't control it. Yeah. And that's, I think it's one of the most remarkable, remarkable feats

is to come face to face with that helpless, that level of helplessness and the wisdom. You know, I heard a woman say, it was one time when somebody was talking about trying to get their kids sober, and I know very much about that world. she said you know you got to remember god has no grandchildren it's like yeah and it's like you know whatever your thoughts are about a higher power and spirituality and all that but but i could feel that from you and i think it's it

speaks to my level of comfort you know and and wanting to have a real conversation with you and instead of just showing off because i'm really uh it's really easy for my ego to just go, I got this and just be clever and, and, and, and, and, and I don't want to be that man. Yeah. I want to, I want to, I want to be this guy. You don't need to be that man. Yeah. But, but, but that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean, it's a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the thing is that it's, it is, it's ego driven and, and, and I mean, it's a sign that I would even have, I mean, it's, that's why I ask you, well, if I was going really, fast because I get into that and that's kind of an ego-driven edges of the enthusiasm sometimes.

But where you just took us, it just makes me love you more. God bless you. I love you too. Thank you. Thank you. This was a really good time. I had a really good time.