The Questlove Show - Questlove Supreme: John Oates

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

In the first of a special two-part episode of Questlove Supreme, John Oates details his hand and history as one-half of music's best-selling duo. John discusses the evolution of Hall & Oates, being next-door neighbors with Hunter S. Thompson, and which classic song began as a Reggae jam. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed human. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits,

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode. This time this really is a special episode of Questlove Supreme. We have our team Supreme with us. This is going to be a special team. Kind of an

instant two-parter. I will say that our guest today simply not only an accomplished musician, singer, songwriter, but in my opinion

he is hands down one half of one of the most successful duos of all time in the modern rock era he'll popularize the burgeoning blue-eyed soul movement of the late 60s and early 70s

and into the future from my native town of Philadelphia along with his partner Darrell Hall who incidentally will have his own episode to himself as well I want to preface by saying that usually

when we have guest on the show I kind of like the one-on-one thing just like one artist for Team Supreme. I know it would have been easier to have a group aesthetic, but I feel like you get more in-depth stories when it's one-on-one. And I'm not being a smart,

I like by referencing one of their classic songs. But play my game tonight. Exactly. Man is that when that was the NBA, do you remember a certain age when that was the NBA theme song when that when they had one on one was the NBA theme song oh you don't remember this what yeah man yo one-on-one they that was a promo they cut and it would be like you know I'm a UC bird and magic like you know playing this motion and it was one-on-one they cut it the one-on-one that shit was

amazing they used it for the all-star game John where are you right now as we speak I'm in Nashville. Okay, and this is your home, home? Well, yeah, we still have a place out in Colorado where we live for about 25 years in the 90s and into the 2000s. But yeah, we've been here now for about almost 15 years. And yeah, it's a great place to make music. Yeah, I see. So when were your Philly days over?

Oh, man, you know, that was a long, long time ago. I think Darrell and I both moved to New York together in 1972. And that's when we got our Atlantic Records contract. And we made our first album in New York at Atlantic Records. The one I produced? No, no, no. This is Arif Martin. Oh, wow.

Arif produced our first two albums, an album called Whole Oates, which hardly anybody knows about. And then the album of Band of Luncheonette, which is kind of the one that I think, most people think is our first album was actually second. But Arif Martin produced both those, and we couldn't have been in better hands, one of the greatest producers of all time. He was, he was. He surrounded us with the greatest musicians in New York City,

and it was an amazing experience. So, you know, having you on the show is special for me, at least, because even though we had Todd on the show, I feel like I'm going to get way better mid to late 60s Philadelphia music community stories that otherwise my dad wouldn't have been able to tell me about or, you know, a lot of cats and that I've always wanted to know these stories about the music scene in Philly, especially right before Gamble and Huff started their empire, I always been curious about that sort of thing. were you born in Philadelphia? No, I was actually born in New York City. My family's from New York, but when my father's job was relocated to Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia in 19, who I'm going to date myself, but hey, you all know I'm old, so don't matter. Fifty, 1954, 53 or 54.

And so we moved, you know, the whole, we moved our family, the rest of my, the rest of our extended family stayed in the New York area. But, no, so essentially, even though I was born in New York, you know, I was such a little kid. I grew up in Pennsylvania and in the Philadelphia area. Okay. And what part of Philly were you in or Pennsylvania? Well, it was a little town called North Wales, which was near Lansdale. Oh, Lansdale, okay. It was about 20 miles north of Philadelphia.

Okay, cool. Do you know what your first musical memory was? I sure do. I absolutely do. right after we moved to Pennsylvania, there was a place not too far away called Willow Grove Amusement Park. And now it was an air base as well. But anyway, at the time, it was an amusement park,

and my folks took me there, and Bill Haley in the Comets were playing in the band show. And I don't know if you remember, but Bill Haley was from Camden. Of course. And so I was probably four maybe. And of course, I had this musical sensibility at the time, even though I was a little kid. And I remember running down to the stage, and it was the band shell. So the stage was only maybe two feet high.

And I remember being this little kid, and I ran right down to the band show. And I remember the bass player, the upright bass player, at one point in the show, he wrote his bass like a horse. And I thought that was the most amazing things I'd ever seen. And that was actually the first live music I ever heard was rock around the clock. and, you know, Bill Haley in the comments. Really? So they were just performing at the... They were performing at the amusement park, yeah.

I was going to say, I think, I believe that I too saw a latter-day Bill Haley perform at. Then we used to, we had something called the Steel Pier. Oh, yeah. I played at the Steel Pier. Yeah, the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. It was in Atlantic City, right? Or Wildwood. Yep, no, it was in Atlantic City.

And when I was a really little kid, around five or six, I sang at something called Tony Grant's Stars of Tomorrow, which was a kiddie talent show at the Steel Pier. Am I dating myself? I mentioned the word Al-Aa-Alberts. Do you remember the Al-A-A-Albert Showcase at all? Yeah, yeah. It was around that time, and there was a guy,

and it was actually before Dick Clark took over bandstand. And it was, what was his name? There was a different host before Dick Clark. But it was during that period of time, it was the mid-50s. So you were there for like the Duop era of Philadelphia? Yeah, Duop and Jerry Blavitt and all that stuff. Jerry Blavitt was a big hero of mine. Oh, snap.

The radio show that he used to do from, I think it was from Trenton, where he'd play all B-sides. And, man, I heard, you know, songs like B-Lah by the versetones and, you know, and guided missiles. and these songs that were just unbelievable. And, you know, your father, man, Lee Andrews and hearts, man. I mean, you know, tick, ticking of the clock, hey, Lee. Wow.

You got to call my name. That's, oh, man, that's so dope. So, okay, during that period, I'm assuming that you're a teenager. Like, for you, like, when did you know, what was your moment of, or your calling, of knowing that you were going to be a musician, like how old were you? And was guitar always your weapon of choice? I was, I just had, I guess I had musical talent. When I was a little, little kid, you know, I would sing.

I would sing these little songs. In fact, I have a recording of me singing a little children's nursery song that was done at Coney Island in one of those record booths, you know, where you go into the booth and you'd put some money in and you'd sing and a little record would come out. I still have that record. I did that when I was like four or four. or five years old. And then I started playing guitar at seven.

I originally started on accordion because the only music teacher in this little town where we lived was an accordion teacher, but I hated it. And then I started playing guitar at about seven or eight. And that was it. You play accordion? No. I mean, if you were to pick it up now, would you be able to be able to be able to be? Yeah, I could fumble around on it.

But what happened was, seriously, my mother just thought, My mom said, you know, he should take some music lessons. Well, the only teacher was an accordion teacher. And, you know, he was doing all that Pennsylvania, you know, poca stuff and all that kind of stuff. And so, I mean, I hated it. I literally, I remember it used to sit in the closet. And then I think I took two or three lessons.

And finally on the third lesson, the teacher went, he's not practicing. I said, I hate this. I'm not doing it. And I said, I want to get a guitar. So I got a guitar and I started there. Okay. How old were you when you got your guitar? guitar. About seven. Okay. Do you remember the first album that you yourself purchased? I didn't

purchase an album at the first. I purchased singles. It was always singles. Okay. Well, yeah, your first record that you got. Oh, man. Let's see. Shirley and Lee. Well, it was the Everly Brothers, Shirley and Lee, and well, it's probably an Elvis song, too, I'm sure. And a Chuck Berry song. Probably Johnny Be or something like that. As you were a teenager, how, what was the, you know, I guess for a lot of us could say that,

you know, I grew up in the era of the Philadelphia Sound just being developed, you know, in their early 70s. But of course, I know that a lot of those cats like not only Gamble and Huff, but Bunny Seagler and all those guys were just local Philadelphia musicians.

So could you talk just about that that environment, atmosphere sort of in the mid-60s to the early 70s? Like, what was happening in Philadelphia musically? Well, you know, during, when I was a teenager

living, you know, living right outside of Philly, you know, I would take the train down on the Reading Railroad into Center City and buy clothes and go to go to the record museum on Chesson Street by record. And what I'd always do on Saturday night was I'd go to the Uptown. And I went to the Uptown theater almost every Saturday night. And who would be there?

Oh, I saw the greatest of the greats. So give me a typical weekend. Oh, all right. You know, I saw Sam and Dave. I saw, you know, the temptations. I saw Stevie Wonder do fingertips when he was like 12 when he first came out. I actually saw him play that song. And I remember he'd jump on the drum kit.

and his little kid, I mean, man, there were so many great, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Four Tops, you know, all the great Motown, but, you know, Barbara Mason, you know, the Delphonics, stylistics, well, the Delphonics were first, the stylistics came a little later, but, I mean, you know, I was taken with a lot of the great, I remember this one group from Memphis that I love, the Mad Ladds. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, the Mad Ladds. and it just went on and on and on. It was, to me, it was, it was, I learned how a show is supposed to go. You know, what, what got people off, what made, what got people to scream and yell and clap. And it was just amazing experience. Okay. So, you know, again, I'm a Philadelphia, and so I've not heard any shows about the uptown. What would be the typical format of a show?

Like, for instance, if, if James, Brown is coming to Philadelphia. Would he normally play at the uptown? Or was he? At the time, yeah, he would. The uptown theater, well, you know, it was part of the Chitland circuit. You know, it was the Apollo, the Howard in Howard Theater in D.C., the uptown in Philly. I mean, that was the circuit, you know? So, like, what would the format be? Like, would shows, would you go there at 12 in the afternoon and stay there all day or? No, no, they were evening shows. They were evening shows. And they would have a house band. They always had a house band. And part of the house.

house band later became a lot of the cats who played with Gamble Huff, became the studio guys for Game One Huff. But in fact, Kenny Gamble might even been playing piano in the house band. Darrell will tell you a little bit more about that too, because he was, he worked with with Kenny and Leon on his first record. But I, you know, I, I worked with Bobby Martin. Bobby Martin arranged the first single that I did. And I didn't even know who he was.

We were looking, I was basically my high school band and we wanted to make a record. We went, we went down to North Broad Street to a place called Virtue Studios, Frank Virtue, who had a song called Guitar Boogie Shuffle. That was his claim to fame. It was an instrumental. Okay. He had a small studio in North Broad Street. And we recorded this track and Frank Virtue, who was the owner and the engineer, he said,

man, you guys need some work. He said, I'm going to introduce you to somebody. He gave me Bobby Martin's number. and we went down and paid him a visit and he was working out of a small office just south of a city hall on Broad Street. And he arranged it and kind of, he kind of, you know, gave us a little professional, you know, spit and polish

and made it sound good. So we were, both Daryl and I were kind of involved with the core of the Gamble and Huff people before they became kind of Gamble and Huff. What was your group situation before Hall of Notes or was Darrell your... Well, I had a band called the Masters, and Darrell had a group called the Temptones.

Darrell's group was pretty much a four-part, an a cappella group, very similar to The Temptations. That's why they call themselves the Temptones. Really? Yeah. And my group was more of a combo. You know, it was funny, I use that word combo, and nobody uses that word anymore, right?

It was, you know, guitar, bass, drums. We had a trumpet and a trombone and a saxophone. I got my sister to sing background. So we were like a self-contained, you know, rhythm section and vocals. And we did all, you know, we did what bands did in those days. We played the hits. We played the songs that we heard on the radio. And, you know, leaning a lot on the stuff that came out of stacks and bolt, too.

I did a lot of that. And I did a lot of Curtis Mayfield as well. So for you, though, as a teenager, Did you instantly know that you wanted to be in the music business, or were you just rolling with the win and see what would happen? I don't think I had a choice. You know, and I'm not bragging when I say this, but I've never had a job. So the only thing I've ever done is play music. The closest thing I've had to have in a job was teaching guitar lessons when I was in college.

So that's, I'm a blessed, you know, a very grateful person because I got to do what I, you know, what I think I was born to do. All right. So how did you meet Darrell? Well, it's an unusual story. His, he, the Temptones had recorded on, on Jimmy Bishop's label. Jimmy Bishop, you might know, was the top DJ on WDAS. Their family is legendary in Philly. Oh, yeah.

And so Darrell, Darrell was assigned to, and I think it was Arctic Records. he'll tell you he'll give you all the details on that on his side of this this group i had as i said it's called the masters and we made this track with bobby martin and went down to the record museum on chestnut street and said hey we made a record and the guy said let me hear it put it on the turntable said what are you going to do he said well we're looking for we want to put it out he said sign here uh-huh threw a piece of paper in front of me and of course i was you know i'd sign I signed anything. In fact, I think that was, I think I did that way too many times in my career, but that's

another story. You don't have enough time for that. I was going to say, I got to ask you about the 70s years. But we did get, you know, so my song was getting played on HAT and DAS. Darrell's song was getting played. So we were both aware of each other, but I didn't know him. And we were individually invited to. a record hop that Jimmy Bishop was doing out in West Philly at Delphi Ballroom.

The Delphi Ballroom, right, you know, and so we went out there, and we were standing backstage. It was an afternoon teenage thing. It was the five stair steps. Howard Tate, Howard Tate had a song called Look at Granny Run Run, and so Howard Tate, five stair steps, me and Daryl's group and my group, and we literally didn't know each other. And, but I had heard his record. He had heard my record. And then a gang fight broke out in the crowd. Wait, what? And so, yeah, so we all went down and we never even got to perform. We were going to lip sync our record.

We went down onto the street level. And when we went downstairs, we went, hey, man, I saw you, yeah, yeah, you know. I said, and we were both going to Temple University, and I started seeing him around the school on Broad Street. And eventually. But, John, excuse me, I have to ask you, because this sounds like so regular. This is in the 70s. No, this is in the 60s, correct? Yeah, this was in the 10.

this would have been 1968. So the question is, was it common? Because DAS at the time was still an R&B station, right? And I'm guessing that Mary Mason and then we're playing nothing about R&B music. So how common was it that two dudes, white dudes, two different groups, had music on these black radio stations? Well, did ever hear our music? I mean, yeah, I did.

But I'm just saying to, in the moment, though, in the moment. Listen, we were accepted by the black music community long before we were accepted by the white rock and roll community. So it was not a surprise to us at all when our records crossed over. You know, that was totally, seemed normal to me. We just made the music that we made, you know, I mean, if you grow up in the Philadelphia area and you listen to Philadelphia radio and you're a kid, you're going to make the music that goes in your head, you know. And so we made the music that we made. And I guess we must have done something right. So, you know.

But for you, but for you, growing up in that time period, you weren't at all drawn to the other acts of the era era, like the Dovels or, you know, like Frankie Avalon, Danny McGee. Yeah, you're talking about the Cameo Parkway era. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, you see, what happened was when Darrell and I first met, two of the guys in my band got drafted into Vietnam. My band fell apart.

Darrell's group was kind of falling apart anyway. So I joined up with him as a guitar player, backup guitar player, and when both groups fell apart, he and I gravitated toward each other. And we became songwriters at the Schubert building, the guy named John Madera. John Madera was from the Cameo Parkway. He was the guy from the Dovels and Chubby Checker and Frankie. Okay. And we knew that that music was on its way out.

And, you know, it was really the end of that Cameo Parkway era. So, but we, you know, we knew Len Barry and all those guys, you know, they were all around the whole time. And then at the exact same time that Darrell and I were writing on the, I think we were on the second floor, Gamble and Huff opened their offices on the fourth floor with Tommy Bell. and everything. So we all kind of started at the same time. Was that building that you referring to? Was that kind of like the Brill building? Well, it was Philadelphia's version of the Brill building. It was the Super Theater building. Okay. Gotcha.

But there were offices in it at the time. And yeah, so that's how we started. And, you know, yeah, we knew all those guys. And, you know, we were involved in that era. But as I said, the Doevels and Chubby Checker and those guys were kind of, you know, they were, they were, they were last year's model, you know, they were kind of gone out. I went to Performing Arts School for elementary at least, even though it went up to high school, but oftentimes we go to that Schubert building to learn like our musical craft, like take piano lessons over there

and take drum lessons over there on Broad Street. Yeah, so you guys met when a gang fight was breaking out like yes in your mind like even like was how typical i mean i guess i was born way after like the gang wars but you know if you're a teenager in the 50s and 60s like how prevalent was gang activity in philadelphia you know i think in the 60s the city was much more integrated. There wasn't as much violence. I think a lot of the, you know, the black, black power movement, black pride movement, really started more in the 70s. And, you know, by that time, Darrell and I had gone on to New York. But, you know, and of course, there was, you know, there was racial

stuff happening all over the country. But we felt, I always felt very comfortable in Philadelphia, especially in the 60s. I never had any problems with it. And, you know, if you really look at, if you look at Gamble and Huff at the great, you know, T-S-O-P rhythm section, you know, it was an integrated rhythm section, you know. I see. There were black and white players playing, working together in the studio and the head engineer,

Joe Tarcia, he was a white, white cat, and, you know, Vince Montana, who did all the string arrangements, you know, he was a white guy. But so there was, it was really, it didn't feel that unusual to me at the time. So, in your opinion, what year do you feel as though, what we know is the sound of Philadelphia,

or at least the first draft, it doesn't have to be the less strings like that was Philly International, but, you know, like the earlier intruder stage of like gamble records before Philly International, before. It was a little more raw.

Yeah. So for you, like, especially the stuff they did on Atlantic, when do you feel is like the the actual sound of Philadelphia got established? I think it, I think it happened around the same time, around 1970, I would say. Okay.

I feel like, you know, like you said, The Little Sunny and the Intruders, the Delphonics, those records, they were street records. They were essentially du-op records with musical backing, you know. And it wasn't really until later on when Tommy Bell, I think, was responsible for adding a real high level of musical sophistication to what, was coming out of Gammon Huff's place. You know, if you listen to Tommy Bell, and I mean, his chord changes are so unbelievable

and so unique and so complicated, really, if you think about it. And, you know, in a way, and I had a conversation with Bert Baccarac about this, Tommy Bell, to me, is like the Black Burke Backerach. You know, I mean, you listen to Bert Bacacac Bacharach songs and the way he voiced his chords, and you listen to Tommy Bell and the way he voiced his chords,

I think they were listening to each other because I think there's a lot of similarity there. Could you talk about the period that led up to the actual record deal with the Linnick? Yeah. Well, it goes back to the Shrewford building. We were working with this guy, John Madera, and we were just songwriters. We were kind of staffed songwriters. And we would, you know, we'd write some songs, and he'd try to pitch him for us, and nothing was really happening. And he had done a deal with chapel music in New York City.

I guess he sold his catalog. And when he sold his catalog, we kind of came along with the deal because we were like his new writers. And so he was kind of bragging on us as the new writers that he was bringing along with the sale of his publishing catalog. So we went to New York City and we auditioned for chap music, basically. You know, he kind of, it was, you know, he would show us off, you know, and me and Darrell would play our little song.

you know, that we had written. And Chapel music seemed interested, but then nothing would ever happen. So then we'd go to New York and we'd do a showcase. So he and big, just Darrell and I, just the two of us. He'd play piano, I'd play guitar, and it was like a kind of a little bit, kind of a fokey R&B duo kind of thing. And everybody always loved what we did, but we never, we never got any traction. We'd go back to Philly and we'd find out that, and always the thing he'd always say to us is, yeah, they like you, but they passed. They passed. We couldn't figure out why. Why did they like us? But nobody ever offered us a deal.

And we later found out that he was trying to cut deals on the side that were just so, so bad that nobody wanted to touch us. Because it was just, you know, I don't like to get into the music business, the dark, seamy side of the music business a little bit. That's a different podcast. That's what it's going on. No, it's education, though. Not going to. Yeah, man. In Philly, was it as, was the, be what I will say. say the Morris Levy of it all, was that kind of a presence in Philadelphia as well? Absolutely. It was all over the place. It was everywhere. So when do you feel as though, what I, you know, for those who are listening to the podcast, I'm sort of speaking on

kind of the wise guy mafioso era of the music business where we thought so. We was following you. We were following with you. Well, yeah, I know we're following because we know each other. I was speaking for the people. I'm, yeah, okay. Oh, yes, you represent the people. However, you know, eventually, well, it's like that episode of, I don't know if you remember the Sopranos when, you know,

Tony's guys were trying to shake down a Starbucks and the person was trying to like, explain to them like, we're not a local. We don't have any money. This isn't a local mom and the pop thing. like this is a chain. And they sort of felt like dinosaurs. It was like, oh, we can't shake down. Right.

I got this metaphor. But for you, when did that sort of, did that era ever end? I think it did. And I think it kind of went out in the 70s. And by that time, Darrell and I were so frustrated because we couldn't get anything going. And every, you know, it was very frustrating to have people like what you did, but yet not respond to. you. And we, we, we, we, we got to the point where we couldn't deal with it anymore. And we, we, we kind of put our, pulled our money together. We, you know, we didn't have anything at

the time. I mean, you know, if I could buy a cheese steak, you know, that was a big deal for me. Um, you know, so we put, we pulled our money together when we flew to California. And neither of us had ever been to California before. And we didn't know that you had to have a car when you got there. We, we just, we just showed up. We just sucks. This guy from Chapel Music picked us up at the airport, and he let us stay at his house, and he said, I'm going to get you, you know, I'm going to let you guys play for a few people and see what happens. We just thought maybe California would give us a chance. And sure enough, we played for this guy at his house, literally in his living room. And he was friends with

Ahmed Erdogan, had Atlantic Records, very good friends. They were, he was actually, he wasn't really a musician. He was an art dealer. But Ahmed Erdogan was a big art collector. And that's, I guess, That was their thing. So we played at this guy's living room, and this guy said, it was funny, we played a couple songs and he started laughing. And we said, what's the deal? He goes, are you guys for real?

And he's like, well, why are you playing in my living room? He goes, how come you don't have a record contract? I said, well, we can't get one. We got this guy in Philly who can't help us and we don't know what to do. I mean, it was kind of crazy. And he said, I'm gonna call on it. He says, you guys,

guys go back to Atlantic and you auditioned for them. And we went, okay. And so we flew back to Philly and then we went, took the train to New York. And we walked into a room with Jerry Greenberg, who was the president of Atlantic at the time, and Arif Martin. And we played our songs just like we did every time we played. And a reef stood up at the end and said, I want to produce these guys. That was it.

Wow. Record deal. A win is a win. A win. Okay, what you're saying? Yep, that's me, Clifert Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media.

Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music.

The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no.

I vowed, I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live,

and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day. And I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.

I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah.

He goes, but there's so much luck involved. Mm. and he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there.

Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What was it like working with him? Because I became familiar with Areef because of, I guess, my love for the average white band records. That's when I started seeing his name on a lot of the credits.

But at the time, were you excited? Were you familiar with his track record with like Aretha? Yeah. I was very, very familiar with Areef. I thought the Aaritha stuff, and in particular, his arrangements were so spectacular. and so beautiful string arrangements and just his just his musical sensibility and you know he he was an interesting guy because he was he was Turkish and he had this deep deep love for american jazz and American music what was great about a reef was he thought like a pure musician he didn't care about styles and genres and what was hip or what was happening at the moment he just cared about

what would serve the song the best. He thought like a classical, like a classical arranger. He, you know, if it needed an oboe and a viola, he would do an obo and a viola. He had no, there was no, it was no kind of thing where, well, so-and-so is doing this. This is the sounds on the radio. So let's do something like that. It had nothing to do with that. And he was, I learned so much.

In fact, I think every recording session I've ever done since that time, I pretty much tried to conduct the way he did. He just put the best people possible in the room, the best players that he thought was appropriate for the music in the room, and he just guided them and let them do what they did, but he just kind of guided them. He never asserted himself and made it seem like he was running the show. He was always there, and he was always made sure that he got exactly what he wanted,

but he never was out there telling, oh, you do this and you do this, And you know. So it was really, it was really an education to be with him. And to see what, you know, when we were doing our, the second album with him, he was producing the Divine Miss M with Bet Miller. So we'd leave the studio. Bet Middler would come in. And then he was doing the John Prine album, the first John Prine album, which was an unbelievable album. So he was doing singer-songwriters. He was doing R&B. He did Solomon Burke. He did Hubert Laws, the jazz floutters, yeah. So, I mean, he was all over the map because he was so good as a, just as a musician. He didn't care what it was. It was just music to him, pure music. And I think that's what I learned from it. So, okay, so back then, I know that the sort of, I mean, the technology is different

in the 80s than it was the 70s. But when you're working on an album, like, is he having, is it one-on-one time with him? Or is it for him like a day job where it's like, okay, I got a refill on Tuesday,

and Donnie Hathaway on Wednesday. Yeah. All the notes, I'll squeeze you guys in for three hours. So it's not like he's spinning. No. He didn't squeeze us in. He didn't squeeze us in. We had full day sessions or full night session.

mostly day sessions. And he usually did two sessions a day. So yes, we would be in there for maybe 11 to 5 or something like that. And he would take a dinner break and maybe he would have another session that evening. But we worked. I mean, we know we worked. We were right there. I mean, right in the thick of it.

And it didn't feel like cut and paste to you like in terms of, you know, can I spend more time with him to figure out a song I do? Yeah. We felt we felt that he cared as much for us as he did for any of the other artists he was working with. And, you know, he put us, we didn't have a band at the time. It was just Daryl and I. So our rhythm section for that second album was Bernard Purdy, Gordon Edwards, Richard T, Hume McCracken, Dave Spinoza. Yeah, these are the kind of players we were with. And so for the first time, Darrell and I got to play with these, you know, I mean, we had Joe. Farrell, the saxophone solo and she's gone is Joe Farrell.

Yeah. Oh, wow. You know, so we had we had jazz musicians and R&B musicians and classical musicians and you know it was just an amazing thing to be he just he would hear our songs and then he would think, I know who's right for this and he would make the call. We didn't even know who we'd be walking into that day, but we knew that whoever we walked into that day was going to be just right for the music we were making. Okay, I have a question. about abandoned luncheonette. Yeah. Specifically, she's gone.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I've gone through this story a lot of times in the pandemic where it's something about keys modulating that scare the living bejesus out of me. And, you know, I mean, be honest. Like, you guys were definitely for drama with the end buildup of she's going. But whose idea was it to just? just do those five modulations, like, is this gonna be the key, no?

Is this gonna be the key? Is this gonna be the key? Is this gonna be the key? Oh, in the beginning? Is that what you talking about? No, the very end of she's gone, there's like, just, just, are you know, like in a soap opera where you have that, da, da, da,

sort of thing? So there's a part of the song. Or like the end of, I'm trying for something for our listeners, I understand. Love on top by Beyonce. Like the end, where. going up. Yeah, it modulates like 14 times, whatever, yeah. Right. Or Golden Lady by Stevie. But the thing is, to me, it's, I always knew the boogeyman was waiting for me at the end of every. Mayor, you got to get over this at some point, man. I mean, I'm sorry. Steve.

I'll tell you what, I, you know, I believe that that was, that was a reef's idea to do that. And it was a, it's kind of a cheap shot to modulate, to kind of, you know, to, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to make this song more exciting because I'm going to modulate up a half step. Oh my God. I'm going to pick it up. But I'll tell you what, Darrell and I have modulated four times in that song. We never modulated again the rest of our career. That's all I got to say about that. Okay.

But there's also, okay, what's even stranger about that song? is one of the very first musical videos I've ever seen was she's gone. One of these strangest things. I believe where I see she's going? I think Jerry Blabbit had a... I know where you saw it. You saw it on Philadelphia TV on a dance show,

on a teenage show. Yes, I did. We got a story. I got a story for you on that one. So the thing is, is that I remember I was, I was five years old. I believe that you guys actually did have a devil. You know, a woman was a devil.

So whatever the lyrics were, I paid the devil to replace it. I just remember you guys sitting on a, you guys are sitting on a couch. And I just remember a devil was running around in this video, which the thing is, is that, you know, for listeners that don't know, music videos was a promotion tool.

So in case you couldn't go, overseas and tour, they could at least have something to play on those top of the pop shows or shindig or any of those shows that you weren't able to get to, you know, if you were big enough to fly to Europe. So you would make performance videos. But soon afterwards, they started putting some concepts in there, like Frank Zab would do some concept videos. So I definitely remember this being a concept video. But for you guys, did you, because you used music videos to your band. Do you feel the time like this was advantageous to the song in your career?

Well, you have to remember, this was over 10 years before MTV. Yes. What happened? And I'll tell you what happened. She's gone and began to get some popularity. It was on the charts. They wanted us to lip sync our song at a show in, New Jersey at the steel pier.

It was called Ed Hirsch summertime at the pier. It was a teenage dance show, right? I believe it was like Saturday afternoon. Saturday afternoon, right? Yes, yes. So Darrell and I were thinking about it and we said, wait a minute. I said, we can't go down to the steel pier and lip sank she's gone while a bunch of kids started dance to it.

So that's to where we said, so we said to them, can we just come to the studio and just we record the song, you know, videotape the song, and then you can show that. They didn't know what we were going to do, though. So let's just remember it was 1972. Yes. Whatever we were doing at the time, there was, let's put it this way, there was some mind-altering substance involved. There you go.

Okay. So we decided that we were going to do this weird thing where we brought literally the furniture from our apartment. and my sister who was a student at Temple University, she was going to direct it. The girl who walks by in the video is Sarah, Daryl's girlfriend from Sarah Smile. Right. And the devil was some kid from Long Island who was our road manager. When we rented him a devil suit, I rented a penguin suit with flippers.

And Daryl was wearing a bathrobe. So I would encourage anyone out there who has not seen this video to go on YouTube. YouTube. It is on YouTube. Oh, wow. It never wants it. That's so weird. Like, I have a list of childhood memories that not once that I think, like, yo, I got to. I totally forgot to see was it ever on YouTube. It is on YouTube. I can't believe this. You can watch it.

Oh, wow. So we did this, and they got so angry. They got so pissed off at us because they thought we were mocking them. And I guess in the way we were. But anyway, so they told us, they got mad. They called Atlantic Records and said, these guys will never get played on Philadelphia Radio. Who do they think they are? Oh, it was bad.

And we had a backpedal to all this stuff with the record company. And we were just having a crazy time because we were, that's where we were at. And so anyway, that's how that happened. You know, my dad had a lot of records in the house. Shortly thereafter, almost immediately as that song's going to the charts, I know that Tavares also covered, she's gone. So there was, this is almost the same similar situation with the Fifth Dimension and Dina Ross, like releasing Love Hangover at the same time.

Like Tavares and Calla Notes are kind of fighting for airplay time for she's gone. At the time, were you guys cool with that? I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but not quite. We had released, we had released she's gone and went into the top 40, but it didn't go much higher than that. Then after that, Tavares recorded it and went to number one. It was a number one R&B record. Right.

Okay, that's what I do the Tavares version. And people said, people, people said, oh, man, do you believe it's the number one R&B record? And Daryl and I were like, yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. And then we released it again after Tavar's when Sarah Smile was out, It went into the, it was, I would think it went to number two. Man. Okay.

But you guys were fine and cool with that, you know. Hey, no, I was happy, but even Lou Rawls cut that song. That's right. The next record with War Babies, could you talk about working with Todd, Todd Rundgren on that record? Yeah, well, we had moved to New York City. And so the War Babies record was a direct reaction to leaving Philadelphia and being in New York and experiencing New York.

and the difference between New York and Philadelphia. New York was so big, much bigger and more faster and chaotic. And we really, you know, even though the Abandon Luncheonette was a great record and it's still one of my favorites, it didn't really, it wasn't very successful. So at the time, the record business was completely different than it is now. You know, I mean, you know how it is now. If you don't have a hit on your first record, you're not making a second record. Yeah, you want them and done.

Yeah. Well, in those days, record companies signed you because they actually believed that you could have a career, that maybe, you know, you could evolve and develop creatively. So, but we had no, we had no reason to do the same type of record because it wasn't successful. So we said, well, let's just try something different. And, you know, Todd had, having moved from Philly to New York, we figured he'd have something, you know, he could relate to it. To be honest with you, we were just trying to be experimental. We were trying to push the boundaries and see how far we could go. It's not one of my favorite records.

I didn't feel comfortable in that style. It was a lot more. I think the thing about Todd and his style of production is that, you know, if you want Todd Runger, you get Todd Runger. You know, there's no denying what you're going to get. And so, you know, for me personally, not one of my favorites. But I think what it did was it gave us this ability, to be more kind of in that experimental rock genre.

And then going forward, we combined it. We combined the Philly R&B, the fokey stuff that we were doing, and that war babies thing all together. And that's what enabled us to find a sound of our own. So for your, the next record, I mentioned this at the Rock and Hall of Hall of Nose record. The Hall of Notes record. Yeah, I know what you're going to say. Whose idea, what was it for the cover design to do the, because, you know, the Androgyz thing was coming into play with, like, what Bowie was doing? And I think, like, I think the Stones did it with Go Ted Suit. Like, for you, what was the marketing idea of that cover. And it was, that's exactly what it was. It was a moment in time. That's what was happening in New York City and Greenwich Village at the time. You know, it was Rick Derringer, Ty Rungren, Mick Jagger, Bowie. And,

We were, you know, we caught up in that whole down scene that was happening in New York, rather. And we met this guy named Pierre La Roche, who was the stylist for all those records, for every one of those records that you mentioned. And I remember we had dinner with him. And he said, I remember what he said, he said, I will immortalize you. That was his role. And that he did.

And you know what? It's the only album cover anyone ever asked us about. And it has nothing to do with the music inside. See, I would ask about H-D-O, but... Okay. Of course, the breakout single from that is Sarah Smile. At this time, are you guys coining the term blue-eyed soul? Like, how...

You know, we never really liked that phrase. You know, to me, to be honest with you, I just think, you know, it's... To me, it's kind of offensive. And I'll tell you why. I think it connotates white guys trying to sound like black guys. Okay. And I don't think that's what we do. I think we sound like the way we sound. And if we've got soul, then good. And I hope it comes through. And, you know, to me,

and I don't want to get too philosophical about this, but to me, soul is not, is, doesn't belong to any race, creed, nationality. I mean, you know, I hear music, I hear soulful music and all sorts of music around the world. I mean, you know, there's Irish music that's very soulful. There's American Indian music is unbelievably soulful. So I think soul is a thing that touches you. It moves you emotionally. And that's what soul is. If you hear music that that makes you move, whether it's physically move or makes your your emotions move, to me, that's what soul is. So at least I got it out on the table. It's very similar to what Bonnie Reid said.

Yeah. On our show as well with regards to the blues and her experience growing up listening to that stuff. I think the thing is like, you know, I think when I listen to artists, you know, if it was white artists, I think more so than anything, you just want to see those artists give credit to what they grew up on. You know what I'm saying? I don't think it's, you know what I'm saying? And, you know, that's what I kind of always saw with you guys and just with the white artists that kind of fell into that, you know, that what you call blue-out soul, like a Michael McDonald or whatever, you know, they always bigged up the stuff that they grew up on. And I think the only time it really becomes an issue is when, you know, a white artist is like, oh, no, this is just all me. And it's like, no, the fuck it ain't. You know what I mean? That's where the problem comes in. But I agree. I mean, you can find the elements of soul in all music. It's a feeling more so than it is just a, a or whatever. You're absolutely right. We, you know, we are all products of what came before us. You know, we, we, there's not one person on this planet who just comes out of the womb and is a

total, a unique original. Maybe there are a few. What we do and who we are is, is about our, it's our, it's our, it's in our DNA, it's in our upbringing, it's in the place we live, it's in the experiences that we experience. And that's who we are. And, you know, and I've, I've always made a point to be very clear that, you know, to point to my roots and the music that made me who I am. And I honor it and I try to, and I'm very respectful for it. And I always try to to make sure that, you know, people understand that, hey, this is where it all comes from. Facts. A win is a win.

A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Clever Taylor the fourth. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.

And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment,

and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space. For honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be.

Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, stupid prizes.

And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care.

So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone?

I'm Ego Vodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice. ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was

based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. if you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think on this record, well, one, you guys are producing it. And two, you have the monsters on here. So I can assume that Ed Green is drumming on Sarah Smile. I believe it was Ed Green on Sarah's song. We had three out, three drummers on that record. Well, based on them drum fields, I hope that, you know,

Ed Green of Barry White fame and whatnot. And also on bass, Leelan. Lee Sklar, yes. Yes, and we had Scotty Edwards as well on base. And here's Steve right back. Yeah. That's right. Yeah,

I love the. When you're using, when you're using these, these monster musicians, like, can you just, because I will also say that consistent levels,

spec once you get to the faces album, that you guys capture and consistent, you know, I know that musicians were, quote unquote, dime a dozen in the 70s and whatnot. But how do you, is it just a matter?

of whoever's available or is there a particular musician that you're looking for to give you a particular sound? Like, how do you grab the musician that you want? And how do you know who's the best guy to use? You know, musicians through their reputation, obviously, you know. But the silver album that won with Sarah Small on it, that was the first album that we made in California. We made that in LA.

And we made that in LA for a reason. We had an interest Bond, who was actually from Philadelphia, who was in our band, very briefly. And he went to L.A. to try to make his mark as a session player and a producer. And after the Todd Runger album, when that didn't connect, and, you know, we realized that wasn't the right direction either. He said, you guys should come to L.A. He goes, I've got great musicians. I've got the best studios. Come out here, and we should make the record out here. And so we took a leap of faith. We just said, hey, man, why not? And we went to California. And, you know, in, in the, in the

mid-70s in California, they did have the best recording studios in the country. It was all the best recording technologies, the best engineers. And Chris found, you know, he found, he was friends with Ed Green and he brought in Lee Scar and, you know,

we had Jeff Prokaro, and we had who was it on, who else on drums? Jim Keltner. Yeah. We had all sorts of amazing musicians. And they were all available because we were in L.A. So it was definitely it was definitely a new experience to be in L.A. and record with those guys. And we got great results. And we made three albums in L.A. So there was there truth to the rumor that you guys were initially going to do something for the rocky soundtrack because of the Philly Connection at one point for the first movie?

Yeah, there was a song called Grounds for Separation. Grounds for Separation was on that album. So Vesso Stallone, he used that song as temp music in the movie when they were editing. Okay. And you know how it is with a film? If you start using temp music, you kind of get married to it and you can't speak it. Demoitis. Demoitis. That's the movie game.

You know, I have no idea why it didn't happen, but it was a big mistake. Was part of your management team then? Oh, Ixnay on the Matole? Oh, right. Okay. Okay. You know what? I don't know who, I don't know who thought that was, wasn't a good idea.

But whoever thought it wasn't a good idea, wasn't too sharp. Right. Let's put it down there. Actually, ask Daryl about that. Yes, Darrell about that. He'll have a good. I will ask Daryl about that. Um, okay.

Well, okay, for what I, what I'm allowed to ask. about him. Were you his first clients? Yes. Okay. So you had him when he was like a 20 year old, like out of college or something? Well, let's, if you can, if we can wind back a little bit to the story I told you about when we were going from Philly to New York, yeah, auditioning at Chapel Music. On one of those trips, when we went and played our new songs for Chapel Music when we were songwriters, this young kid, Tommy Mottolla, was in the room. He was song plugger for chapel music at the time. Okay.

And after one of those sessions, he came up to, he said, well, you know, what do you guys? What's your deal? And we're like, we don't have a deal, man. We got nothing going on. We're, you know, we're playing our songs for people. People seem to like them, but nothing's happening. He goes, let me see if I can help you.

And that's how he became our manager. He basically, he had never managed anybody in his life. And he was just a, he was saying, age as us. And, you know, we were in our 20s, early 20s. And he said, I think I can help you. And he started to help us. And when we wanted to break out of our deal with that guy in Philly, he kind of helped us with that. And that's how he became our manager. For the bigger, the both of us records that has a rich girl on it. Can I ask, was it, was your label ever, did they ever ask you?

guys to slightly change the lyric to get on radio. Okay, I'm only asking this, and I hate bringing up the story. When you're young and you live with strict parents, it's not like it comes with a manual on words that you're allowed to say and not allowed to say. It's just that you know it's a curse word if you get hit and you said the word and didn't know it was the curse word. So, of course, I'm reading the song lyrics. I kept singing, it's a bitch girl.

And I swam- Oh, wow. Why would you live in? Okay, okay, let's think about that. Let's think about that in the context of the music that's out there today. No, no, no, dude, I'm not blaming y'all for it. No, no, I'm laughing about it because it seems so silly to me. It's like crazy.

And you, okay, so you know what they, you know what happened with that? It was okay, here's, here's, here's, I messed up the music businesses. Okay. It was okay for the album cut, but the single, we had to change it for the single. So they made Daryl go in the studio and sing, Britch. He had to put an R in the word. He's a bridge, if you listen to the single, it's Britch. You can barely tell, but it's there.

And so just by doing that, that was okay. It was so stupid. I guess it asked, Brits. So wait, and Titch was, bitch. I'm confused. Wait, the intention was, bitch. Yeah, the lyric was bitch, but you couldn't say that. He couldn't say it on the radio on those days. All my life. I did not, all my life, I'd all my life.

What did you think it was? She's a rich girl. Yeah, but then he goes back and says, it's a bitch girl. He does do that. You know what? Okay. All right, I'm not the only one in this moment. Are you familiar with the Felipe Wynn, one of a kind love affair, story? No, I'm not familiar

to the story, but he's one of my favorite singers of all the whole time. Yeah, no, he's definitely out there. He did a rogue move. I always wanted to know when, how did he get kicked out the group? And

this, they can get kicked out the group, but this sort of put the group on high alert that he could be rogue. So the next time you listen to one of a kind of love affair, towards the end, I had gotten a four of this maybe back in 1997. And I saw that it said edited version.

And at first, no, no, it said uncensored version. Censored version. And in my mind, I'm like, wait, this is the spinners, not NWA. Like, what could be censored on the spinners thing? And I happened to ask somebody who used to work at Atlantic. And they told me the story that basically, basically, Felipe in the very last rounds

of atlibs, one of a kind of a fair is. He says, you know, you want to love her. You just got to fuck her. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, he got away with it. I think they got away with it for like 11 weeks. And then suddenly

the FCC started, you know, like someone caught it on the radio. And then like... He used to love catching that kind of shit. And he didn't deny it at all. And I like him even more now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You go to the rogue one.

Right. So could you talk about, in your opinion, because you guys won't basically have kind of hit your stride, at least with the hits, until four years later. So that period in between, like with the No Goodbye's record, yeah,

with Beauty on Backstreet and, the Lifetime record. Oh, and also the, I think, ecstatic, for those five records, what was generally happening with you guys in terms of where you wanted to go? Yeah, I can tell you exactly what's happening. So we went out to LA to do that silver album,

and it was successful with Sarah Smile. Then she didn't really, she's gone. That was successful. Then Rich Girl came on the next one. That was successful. So we were on a role and we were playing bigger, you know, bigger arenas and things like that. Then came the beauty on a Backstreet album. And what happened was, and I can tell this story because, you know, God bless him, Chris Bond had passed away a few years ago.

He was a brilliant musician and producer, but he was a very, very damaged individual. And as we got more successful, he began to lose it. and he began to overindulge in substance abuse. So when we went out to do the third album, which ended up being Beauty on a Backstreet, he was very, very iraic. In fact, we had to cancel sessions because he passed out,

it cracked his head on the control, you know, on the console and you got to be taking the hospital. It was a bad scene. And so we barely made through that album. And that album, to me, is a darkest thing we've ever done and I don't really care for it. And I never listened to that record ever. So what happened was because we had no hits and that record wasn't very successful,

we kind of, you know, kind of fell off the radar a little bit. And Darrell and I, I think, one of the smartest things we ever did during that period of time was we said, you know, we've been recording all our albums with studio musicians and it's been great. But what we really need is a great live band. And we need a live band that's so good that we can take that same band into the studio. And at the time, right at that time, Elton John was just finishing up Yellow Brick Road. And we made friends with the Elton John band, which was Caleb Quay, Kenny Passarelli, and Roger Pope. And we basically adopted them. And all of a sudden, we had this kick-ass live band that we could take into the studio. And we did an album called Along the

Red Ledge. Right. And we had a lot of guests on that album. And We put in David Foster, who had never produced a record before. We were his first artist, Dave Foster ever produced. Oh, this is the year before after The Love is gone. So, okay, so he worked with you guys first. And I got to tell you about after Love is gone, too, because when we were getting ready to do the album with David Foster, he said, I got a song for you guys.

Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. And he said, here, check that he had written it with Day Graydon. Yes. And so he sat, me and Darren were sitting in his living room and he played it on the piano. He can't sing for shit. But he's an amazing piano. And he was singing and he was doing after the love is gone.

And we're like, yeah, yeah. Oh, y'all would have to tip it up. I know. The background vocals do, Fonte. I mean, if you think about it now, you can hear us do it. Oh, no, I told me. In many major mistakes in our career, we all. What did you think about when you heard the Earth went in?

Oh, I was just curious. And he went and did it with Earth 1st, When you heard Earth 1 in Fire version, was that, like, did you get it then in a way that you didn't get when David had trying to sing it? I think I got it the first time, but I'm more. It's also, Fonte, it's also a little weird because even Philip himself says that that song for him was sort of like, yeah, it was. a success. But you know, you also got to understand that Charles Stephanie just died. And they, I'm not saying they got back. It's weird to think of all in all as the earthwood and fire gets by off the skin of their teeth.

But just the fact that Maris was able to make that record without Charles' employees. He's creative. Yeah, he's kind of creative. He still did some mind-blowing. I sort of wanted, he had that one record and then, you know, called him for David to help him, but I remember a lot of fans kind of feeling the same way about after the love is going as maybe like about cool new gangs,

part of the celebration or like, yeah, Joanna or something like that. Yeah, it's like that. But now to think about it, man, it had all had all the notes done after the love is going, I think that that would have, with the right musicianship, that probably could have just ousted Bobby Caldwell just as far as the definitive slow jam, like, yeah, the blue eye, like that thing. Yeah, we would have crushed it. Yeah.

But it speaks to David Foster because the song was banging either way. Hey, listen, David Foster wrote a great song. He's an incredibly talented, amazing guy. But he wasn't right for us as a producer, but at least, you know, we did get to work with them for a couple albums. And then you mentioned ecstatic. We brought David to New York to record because we didn't want to be in L.A. anymore. And he, in the middle of that record, he said, what am I doing here? You guys are making this record yourself. You don't need me. And that was the last time we ever used an outside producer. It's almost like you guys became a brand new group

with the Voices record. Another career misstep. We were finally back in New York where we wanted to be, and we had a band that could, that we finally achieved what we knew we needed to do. We had developed a live band that could play live and kick ass, and we could take them in the studio. And but we were also producing ourselves. There was no one else except us in the engineer. And so we did it. We made the kind of record we wanted to make. And I think it was just a very inspiring time.

Great musicians, great songs. And it was just, it was happening. We were glad to be out of L.A. And I think we had a, New York had a big energy in 1980, you know, and we got to happen to it. Speaking of your bands, you know, by that point, at least that to me was like the last era of musicianship where not only did you care about. the artist, but you also cared for their band too. And you guys had a really charismatic band. Yes.

Longtime fans will instantly recognize that, you know, the great G.E. Smith was your guitar player long before he was a... SNL. Yeah, the SNL musical director of like the 80s and whatnot. Yeah. also Tom Tebowm walk

one of the greatest of all time do you know how crust I was so Steve do you remember they were coming on the night show to perform

and they had to cancel because we have booked you in 2010 and Tom had passed the morning of but could you talk about that band, but just your whole, just your whole crew by that point, like, is 80 when you

sort of solidified that band? Yeah, that's when it started. That's when that band jelled right after the Voices album. And that band here again was finally the, you know, we still were in that searched for that ultimate band that could play live and be in the studio. And that, that's when we found him. GE joined us first, and he brought in Mickey Curry on drums. Right. Mickey was a friend of his who had played in bar bands with him. And Mickey had never played in a professional band before us. When we had GE and Mickey, and it's kind of a funny story, we were looking for a bass player.

And we did some auditions at SIR. I don't know if you got time for this, but it's funny. Let's go. 100%. We were looking, we had GE and M. Mickey and we really needed it. We knew we needed a really great bass player. And we had done some auditions and most of the guys were not up to up to it. And we had come down to two guys. And there was this one kid from Long Island. He was tall and skinny. He had a great haircut. He was a good

looking guy. And then there was Tom Wolk who had not been named T-Bone yet. He was just Tom Wolk. Right. And he was kind of a, you know, he kind of wore flannel. shirts and a cap and he lived in Austin, in New York, and, you know, they were both really good players, right? We didn't, you know, we didn't play with them a lot, but we kind of tested them out. So it came down to these two guys, right? So we finally had the finals. We had the, we're going to have the audition between these two bass players. So the guy comes in, the kid from Long Island, the good-looking guy comes in, he was kind of cocky. He felt like he had the gig. And, you know, we played a couple songs, and he was good, you know. So after,

And T-Bone came in. No, no, I'm sorry, hold on. Teabone came in first, and he played. He was amazing. And he left, and then the other kid came in, and he played. And after he was done, he felt like he really was in the band. And I remember he turned around to us and he said, he actually turned around to Daryl.

And we were sitting around. And he said, hey, Darrell, when I'm in the band, I think I should sing kiss on my list. Hello! And Daryl, I remember Daryl turned around and he said, Hey, John, go. get the bald guy. Oh.

Wow. You serious? Yeah. Yeah. Darrell said, let's get the bald guy. That's awesome. And that's how we got T-bone, man.

It was the best decision we ever made, ever. Talked himself about a gig. Wow. He didn't, was he serious or just joking? I don't know whether he was serious or not, but if he wasn't serious, he was an asshole, so it doesn't matter.

word on voices the original voice the original version of every time you go away was on that record yeah um was that ever released as a single off that record was that just an album cut it was it was it was the last track on the b side and you know back in the days when you're making vinyl records the last track on the b side was was either the the art record that you couldn't fit anywhere else or it was like the throwaway record. And if you didn't think of it, if you listen to our version, it sounds like a stone,

Stacks, bolt, stam and Dave track. I mean, it is, it's real authentic and real raw. And, you know,

to give Paul Young credit, those guys heard it and they turned it into a great pop song. But if you listen to our version, our version is, I think, is great too, but it's not a single.

It's not a pop single. A long time QLS head should also know that Piano Paladino is playing based on the Paul Young version of every time you go away. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.

And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment.

And the next, we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream,

this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care.

So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone?

I'm Ego Wode. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give. give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based

solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Why were there two album covers for voices? Because we were trying to control everything. We didn't want the record company and tell us what to do. So we made our own album covers. cover is black and white and we didn't know what to do. So we took a picture of Darrell and a picture of me

and we tore him in half and we pasted it together and we sent it to the record company said, put this on the cover. And they didn't want to do it, but they did it because they had to. Because we made them do it. And what happened was the record got released. We were really popular in Japan at the time.

And we were going to do the Japanese tour and the Japanese record company said, we hate this record album cover. And so they made their own album cover. without telling us. Oh, man. So when we got to Japan, there was that album cover with me with the pink pants on. Right.

Yeah. And the Japanese people, they had that picture. It was a publicity picture that they had. And they just stuck it on the album. They didn't even tell us. And we said, hey, so we get to Japan and we have a new album cover. And so that's, so then America re-released the album with that Japanese cover. That's crazy because I like the black and white version better.

Well, it's because you have good taste. With the transition of the 80s, were you guys thinking about, you know, the burgeoning new wave movement or the stuff that like Gary Newman was doing with drum machine technology and whatnot? Like, how is modern technology coming in to play with the band starting with that?

Because I think it was notable to not just use the drum machine as a click track, but to actually make it part of the song. We were using something called a rolling compi rhythm. It was a little wooden box, a little square box. It had four presets, rock one, rock two, Basanova and Samba. And you had a rotary knob that you could adjust the tempo by rotary knob,

but it didn't tell you what the tempo was. It was just, you just had a feel. We would use that for feel for just when we were, you know, kind of going over the track and trying to get the right tempo and the right feel. What happened with Kiss on my list, Kiss on My List was never intended to be on the record. That was a song that Darrell wrote with Jana Allen, who was Sarah's sister, who was a young and she came up with the idea Darrell helped her with it, and she wanted to make a record. So it was at the end of one of our sessions for voices, and we were all done for the day.

And Darrell said, let me go just make this demo from Jan because, you know, I promised her I, you know, lay it down for her. So he went in on the piano with the compi rhythm and hit rock one, you know, and he just played the song. So we didn't want to waste tape. So we recorded it at 15 IPS instead of 30 IPS because it was a throwaway. It was a demo. So after it was done, it was just the piano and the compi rhythm. And we played it. I guess Darrell played it.

It might have played it for Tommy Mottola or someone, and everybody flipped out and said, that's amazing. You guys got to cut this. So we didn't really want to recut it because it sounded really good the way it was. It was on 15 iPS. So the song has this kind of warbly thickness to it. Yes, it does. And all we did was add a couple instruments to it, bass.

guitar, you know, some little pads. And that's the way we put it out. So it really, it was supposed to be a demo. And that's why we kept a compy rhythm on it just like that. I always wanted to know. I think on my 45, on my 45 of Kiss on my list, I believe the B side was Africa. Was that you guys doing sort of your Bo Diddley homage there?

or yeah that was my that was my song that i wrote for um my girlfriend at the time who was a model working around the world and she was she was in africa and i just thought it was kind of funny my baby one too africa yeah yeah like i don't know it's like bow dittily kind of feel yeah africa was just one of those songs where i constantly had it on rotation of my 45 you know if you put the arm over to the right then you can have the song repeat over and over and over again I just always remembered like the summer of 1980 like that was always the

I just always kept it on the B side for the private eyes record all right I got a cut to the chase man I you know and due to the lasting power of it to this day you know DJ gigs are not complete

for a half of Americans DJs if I can't go for that is not played could you please give us the story of how that song came to be because it's such, it's such a reverber. The way that it's just stripped down and sounds sounds so revolutionary, but the session was over. Everyone had gone. Me, Darrell, and the engineer were in the studio, and we were an electric lady. And Darrell walked out into the studio with the electric piano and here again,

the Roland Compu rhythm, which always sat on his piano. so we could basically work through tracks. And he had an idea, I guess he had that idea in his head, but he never said anything to me or anybody. It was just maybe something that was just going around in his head. And he hit Rock One, and whatever tempo was on it, I don't know, whatever that was set at. And he just started playing his left hand.

He just started playing bong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong. And then he started playing. And then he said, hey, John, get your guitar. And I got the guitar. And he actually suggested to me to play this line. He goes, play a muted like a funk line. And I started him, and all of a sudden, it just went like this, you know.

It was like, okay, this doesn't need anything. This is like it right here. It's the left hand of the keyboard, the guitar thing. And that was it. On that song, the only thing it's on that song, is the keyboard, the guitar, sax solo, and one synthesizer thing. Right. And then background vocals.

That's the whole song. Whose idea was it to make it sound as stripped down? Because to me, that drum machine is such a radical sound to it. I mean, there's two versions of it. The 12-inch has more brighter drum mix to it. but the album cut version, I can't describe. To me, it was almost like an improved version of the drums that Sly was trying to achieve on. There's a right.

There's a rhythm ace joint. That album, you know, there's right going on. That had that same quality to it. You said it was stripped down and raw and it was dry. There was just this thing. I mean, sometimes when, you know, you don't have to have a lot if it's the right combination of, you know, of tonalities. When you get the right tonalities and they're not fighting each other, they all have their place. You know, they're all in the right place sonically.

That's all you need. You don't need anything else. And I think we were smart enough to realize that it was, the groove was major and it was just, that was it's all you needed. no one told you guys like this group might be undercooked a little bit like it needs something else or nobody nobody told us anything because we never let anyone

in the studio I love it just the engineer engineering fan yeah no record for people it's the great engineers from electric lady I don't know what's going on

must be something in the water over there I have a question for you John was privatized the first album that you did go to Electric Lady Forks. I know you went there for a few. Yeah, I think we did Voices at the Hit Factory. I'm pretty sure of Voices was done at the Hit Factory. And then we started Private Eyes at the Hit Factory.

And Darrell and I both lived in the village. We both lived very, very close to 8th Street. And we just wanted to walk to studio. That's why we picked Electric Radio. We wanted to be able to walk. I wanted to be able to walk to walk to the studio and walk to Baldurcys. And that was that was the criteria for What else do you need?

For me, at least, my era of Electric Lady, there's this revered thing for Hendricks. Like, wow, was the House of Hendricks? But back then, was it like that? Or was it just like, hey, there's a studio on 8th Street. Let's just go there and make a record? Yeah, I mean, sure. Or did it have a vibe to it?

It was, yeah, it had a vibe. There was no doubt. It was at a vibe. And Eddie Kramer used to pop in and out. Wow. You know, and, you know, you walk in there and there was that big mural that went down the hallway, psychedelic mural. But the reality was it was on A Street and we could walk to it. Okay.

It almost took 10 years for you to reach the promise of what you were, I guess, initially planning on doing back in the early Atlantic days. But as a duo, like, how are you two getting along with this newfound success? we've always gotten along really well. We really leave each other alone. You know, back in the early days, you know, we were together constantly and traveling constantly, always, you know, everything was shared. But as we got older and as we got more successful, you know, we lived separate lives with separate families, you know, and but, but we, you know, we met as teenagers. So it's almost like a brotherhood, you know, it's like it's a family thing, you know. We don't have to even talk. We can be a part for long periods of time. And we get together and it's like time

stops. It's a very unusual thing. And it's amazing, to be honest with you, that we're still able to work together. You know, we do our own thing. We do separate projects. You know, I'm doing a tour next week, actually, an acoustic tour with a guitar player friend of mine here in Nashville. and Daryl's going to do a tour. He's doing a new solo album tour. And then we'll come back and play together, you know, probably over the summer. So, you know. I know that I, for one, am very tired of anytime someone sees me alone in public,

nine times out of ten, they're going to ask me, where's the rest of the guys at? Where's the band? I'm almost certain you get asked more every day. Yeah. Where's how, you know? They think that they think that we just, yeah, we're just, well, you know, our company's called two-headed monster. So that gives you an idea what, you know, what it's all about.

I remember one time I was sitting in a dressing room and it wasn't long ago sitting in a dressing room and I was by myself in the dressing room. And one of these security guys at the venue stuck his head in the dressing and goes, and he looked at me. And there was nobody else in the room. And he said, which one of you guys is hauling oats? I said, I guess that's me. I don't know. All right. So for H2O, first of all, while on this streak, what is the, what is the pressure like for you?

Like going into private, I said, it's like, damn, you got a top, you know, voices. And with H2O, it's like, oh, man, we had like. four top 10 singles with the privateized record. Like, are you feeling the pressure at the time? Or is it still like we still have to prove ourselves? Or do you now feel like by this point, at least like you arrived? I think, well, we definitely felt like we arrived. We felt like we were doing the right thing.

You know, we had to achieve what we wanted to achieve. We were producing ourselves. We had the band that we wanted that we could take live and be in the student. and we thought that that's we were there we and things were rolling you know the band was amazing the vibe was amazing we were writing really great songs and i don't think that there was no exterior pressure we didn't have pressure for the record company i mean it might have been there but we never let let it get to us we just just wanted to make a great record and we just went in there and did it i've heard rumors of it but can you tell me whether or not

I don't know if it happened that we are the world sessions or whatever. Was it truth to the rumor that Michael Jackson actually told you guys that Billy Jean was inspired by the DNA of I Can't Go for that? He didn't say that to me. He may have said that to Daryl. He did say he came backstage with his brothers when we were playing in California and L.A. And he said, he said, I can't go for that. It's my favorite song to dance to.

He goes, I work out all my dance routines to that groove. So just that alone kind of tells you that if he liked it that much, he must have said to himself, man, I'm going to write something sounds like that. Yeah. What about so with that said, man eater and part-time lover. Ooh. What are your thoughts on that? You know, Man Eater, I wrote the chorus of Man Eater as a reggae.

song because I had come back from Jamaica and oh wow now that you say it now that makes sense I wrote it as a I wrote it as a reggae song was like it was like it was like you know here she come watch out boys he's going to choose to love oh yeah oh yeah it's like it's like a like a lover's rock kind of thing I like that. Yeah, and I, and I played it for Daryl, and he was like, man, he goes, I love this. He goes, he goes, I don't know, man. He goes, I don't know if a reggae groove is right for Holland Oates.

And I said, well, what do you got? And he, he went, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong. I said, okay. And, I mean, at least I was smart enough to listen to him. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th.

You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music.

The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right what you need to be. Listen to The Clifford Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford

and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no, I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live,

and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's

so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know the question I always wanted to know. All right. This is more of an arrangement question. Sometimes there will be some songs that get released. And in your mind, in retrospect, in your mind, you think that the course happens a lot.

Great example is, Fonte, the rock master Scott and the dynamic three's, the roof is on fire. like, of course, that powerful, but it only gets said once in the song, and that's like four or five minutes. Yeah, you gotta wait five minutes before you even gets to that part. And for me, a song like one-on-one, I always swore to God that the whole back and forth between you and Darrow,

what a, what a fan I get tonight, want to want to want to want to want to find out to night. Like that only happens once yet in my mind That's That's a course that just goes On and on which is so tricky Who That's a very intricate

That song has a lot of intricate background parts Like whose idea was it to I'm surprised that it was a hit because you guys didn't take the easy route And just saying the easy part of the course but there were other subcourses in there. We really pride ourselves on those background arrangements, and that's a Philly thing. I mean, that's really,

that's coming from that duop background vocal thing. And if you listen to some of our songs, and I think a lot of people don't realize this, but a lot of our songs, the hook is actually the background part. Yes. It's very unusual. People don't realize that.

But the hook, like, for out of touch, that's just a giant background vocal. And the lead is bouncing off the backgrounds. We do that a lot. And that's a thing, you know. You want to know how I know that that's true? Maybe five years ago, I got the master to, I can't go for that. And just as an experiment, I took the vocals and put them over where the backgrounds should be.

And I took the backgrounds and put them where the vocals were. Yeah. To this day, I mean, I've been playing it and my DJ sets to see if one person notices that Darrell's singing over the chorus music and the chorus is over. Not one person has noticed it yet. And that's all the only version I play. That's cool. I didn't really. That's that.

I would like to hear that. How did you guys get Family Man from Mike Oldfield? That was just an accident. We were making the record. And one of our roadies, our keyboard tech, who was helping us with keyboards, he came in one day and he said, hey, man, he was a big Michael O'Field fan. And he said, I heard this new Michael O'Field record. He goes, and there's a vocal on it.

Because Michael O'Field was predominantly instrumental. And he said, there's this cool song with this girl singing this vocal. this vocal tune. And he said, you guys got to hear it. And we just played it for fun in the studio. And we went, wow, we should cut that. And we did. We just cut it.

I also remember you had two versions of that video. One version was like extremely long. Like, it was almost like, again, the early days of MTV where they just needed a lot of content. Yeah. I definitely remember, yes, it cut like 10 versions of Leave It. But there was two versions of Shadows. I'm just, I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, Ghali and Cream of Tennessee. They did like 10 remixes of not of owner of a lonely heart too. Like there's 100 mixes of that. Trevor wasn't messing around.

Trevor Warren. Yeah, but I remember you guys did two versions of an extended version of family man, is like eight, nine minutes long. And we were always doing club mixes, you know, on some of those records. Did you have anything to do with that, you and Darrell, or did somebody else just to take the track? Well, the first club mix that we had success with was for, say, as and so, with jelly bean benedas.

Right. Yeah. That one. And then we, then the really extreme stuff that we did later on on the big bamboo mountain done by Arthur Baker. An important summit meeting of a record. You were part of USA for Africa's. We Are the World.

What was that experience like? Quincy Jones and Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson, they were smart because they knew that it was the American Music Awards were going on in L.A. And back in those days, you know, you only had two things. You had the American Music Awards and the Grammys. They were really, it was not a million different award shows like there is today. And so they knew that everybody kind of who was anybody in pop music was going to be in LA for American Music Awards because pretty much everybody went. So they just said they sent invitations to everybody to select people to come to the studio at A&M after the awards.

And the invitation said no managers, no agents, no hangers on, just come, just come. And it was a green room out in the lobby for all the people. you know, all the other folks. And just the artists were allowed in. And that was the, that was brilliant because all the artists let their hair down, you know, there was no hangers on and agents and managers trying to, you know, control anybody. And everybody just got real. Everybody got real.

And, you know, I remember, they had little names on these little steps where we all stood for the chorus. And I had, I had, Ray Charles was wrong. right in front of me off my left shoulder. And Bob Dylan was right behind me on my right shoulder. And I was just looking, I was, you know, through the years, I think I've tried to be more very aware of certain moments when I realized that maybe this is something that, you know, could, might never happen again. And I remember very distinctly being very aware of what was happening, where I was

and what was going on. And I thought to myself, this is a very, very. unique thing. And I don't know if you can see it or not, but I'll show it to you. Oh, everyone signed. I got everybody signed it. I think this is the only copy that exists. Wow. Wow. That's crazy. And I mean everybody. So we're looking at the sheet music and everyone's signature from We Are the World. That's right. That's amazing. For once, for once I had the presence of mine to go around and get everybody. Oh, yeah. Everybody else is mad at it. They even got, They even got Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder sign this thing.

Wow. I'm like, where would that look? Okay. That's myself. How long was the process for you? It was a couple hours. But, you know, all we did was we just sang the chorus. We all sang the chorus in unison.

And then we said, okay, everybody just throw a harmony part on. And, you know, of course, you had a room full of great singers. So everybody just picked a part, sang a third, third of, you know, octaves, whatever it was. And then everybody broke down. And then they did all the soloists, solo stuff. So the backgrounds were done first. I mean, that one went home. And it didn't, it didn't take long.

It really didn't. There was a couple little snafews, a couple little issues where, you know, you put a bunch of A-list talent in the same room and somebody's going to think they're going to start producing. And there was a couple little things where I won't mention any names, but. Stevie. Yeah. We had Huey Lewis on the show. Did he tell you the same story? No, no, no.

I don't know. I know it's another story. What's your story? You know, Stevie made some suggestions that he thought would be a good idea. And it kind of derailed the whole thing because they were trying to get a lot done, you know. And finally, you know, Quincy Jones just came out from behind the console, you know, behind the glass. And he just, once Quincy came out, it was like,

and I remember, I think, I think Ray Charles said something like, hey, man, I think he said, as I recall, he said, it is his line on Michael's song. Let's just do it the way they want. And that was, and that was it. Once he said that, everything kind of got there. Steve's trying to get that published. It's all up.

Imagine Stevie versus Ray. I just love it. I know they were friends and I know it's all in fun, but it sounds hilarious. Wait, you guys, were you guys also on the Sun City record? as well? Yeah, I was. I don't know. Was that recording thing the same way or was it just like?

No, that was all the individual stuff. Yeah, it was a group thing, but it was small groups. I think Stephen brought different people together. And it was all done in New York and a small studio in the city. You know, you guys are basically the gold standard. Like for you, was it, were there any regrets of that period in that rise of, of, being at the top of your game of having like number one singles, number one albums.

Has there been something that you haven't achieved or wish that you could have redone or something? I think the people who perhaps still realize that when you have this mega success like that in the pop world, the biggest thing that you lose is time. You lose time and you lose yourself because there's so much. much demands on your time for obviously to make the music, to promote the music, to tour, to play live, to write new songs. It just never seemed to end, really. And I think when we got it right after, you know, we did, we did three things that were really big. We did, we are the world. We did live time, live aid in Philadelphia at Veterans Stadium. And we headline that with,

you know, with Jagger and Tina Turner and, uh, and, uh, Eddie Kendrick and David Ruffin. And then we did, we, and we had done the Apollo theater show. Right. And we also had Eddie Kendrick and David Ruffin. Once we had done those three things, I think Darrell and I actually looked at each other and said, what more could we possibly? What else? Right.

We had more success we could have ever dreamed of. We had, as you said, number one records, two of the world, you know, on the top of the pop charts. And I think we, I think we were smart. I think we realized that there was only one way to go from there and that was down. Because I don't think you can sustain that sort of success. I think it's very difficult. Very few people can sustain that sort of success for a lengthy period of time. And I think what we did was we stepped away. And maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to do from a business point of view commercially. Of course it wasn't. But it was a smart thing to do for psych life, you know, for life, for

how, you know. How difficult or challenging was it to pull off the Kendrick and Ruffin project? Because, you know, I've read a lot of autobiographies of various temptation members and, you know, they don't look too fondly, of that

that reunion album that came out in 1981. So I don't know. I would assume that, you know, when they're doing this album with you in 1984, 85,

that the sort of temptations proposed seven member reunion thing went a bust and they both want their separate ways to do the separate projects. But for you,

what was it like, you know, I know that you two were big to, fans, but at the time, you know, was it rose-colored glasses like, this exciting? Or maybe, I don't know. We were asked to reopen the Apollo after the Apollo had been closed for a bit for to be renovated.

Renovated. And it was a big, you know, we, Daryl and I felt like it was a big honor. It was a, you know, it was a charity event. It was in New York City, obviously. And it was a big honor to be asked, you know, to reopen the Apollo. And we wanted to do something special. And so what we wanted to do was we wanted to go back to some of the music that kind of brought me and Daryl together back in the 60s. And that was our mutual love for the temptations.

And Eddie, you know, Eddie was Eddie was a sweetheart. Eddie was playing in holiday ends in Alabama. David, David was David was a very, David, we know. He was very challenging, challenging individual. We know. And but we managed to corral them together. And we told them flat out, they said, look, here's what we want to do. We want to try to replicate the thing that we remember as teenagers when you guys were at your peak.

We want to wear the suits. We want to do the steps. We want to do the whole thing. And we're on the stage at the Apollo. We want to, we want to try to recapture for that moment. And it was really kind of in a way, I mean, not in a way. It was really, it was really me and Darrow want to. to have that experience of performing with our teenage idols on the stage and kind of having

this. And to be honest with you, it was one of the most amazing things I've ever done because it was like time had stopped. And instead of me being in my bedroom trying to do the temptation steps and singing those songs, I was on stage at the Apollo doing it with them. And they were so cool about it. And they wanted to do it so authentically. If you, If you watch the steps, they are exactly the same choreography. And it was just one of those things. And honest God, it was a psychedelic moment. And by that, I don't mean taking drugs.

What I mean is, is that I felt like I was watching myself. I felt like I had out of body experience. I had gone out of my body. And I was watching myself do that. And it was really something that I don't think I could ever, you know, well, I can't really describe it any other bit way in that. But it was just. something that was just very, very, and that's when me and Darrell decided to step away after that.

It was after that show in the reception after the show, we were, all the people were coming around and everybody was saying, you know, how great it was and all this. And I remember me and Darrell sitting down together and we said, you know what? Probably a good time for us to just stop. Wow. Quitting while you're ahead is not clear. For us, it was a full circle. We had met because of the temptations in a sense. And now we were, we had done that. And it really felt like we had completed this thing in our, in our life, you know. Was there something in your mind you wanted to do after the circle had completed? Because it seems like a whole error. So now, I wanted, I wanted to live. I wanted to, I wanted to do all the things that I had never done.

You have to remember, I was on the road from 1972 until 1986 and I never, ever stopped. Not one time. There was no breaks in that whole time. Had you made a live? Yeah, my list was, was live in a house. Right. Get married. Not sleep in a bus. Get married. Wow.

Get married. Have a kid. And that's exactly what I did. I sold everything I owned. I moved to Colorado and met my future wife. And we built a house and had a kid. And for about 10 years, I hardly did any music. And I lived in the mountains.

And I kind of. I became a different person. So it was just something I needed to do. All right. One last question I have. I know that you're, you once live next door to Hunter-Ass Thompson. Yeah.

Oh, God. What was that shit like? Psychedelics. Well, that's, that's what happened. When I, when I left New York City and I kind of started my life over again, moved to Colorado.

I was with my, my girlfriend, who later became my wife. And, And we found a little piece of property. She actually found it in Woody Creek, Colorado, which is, and we, we, it was, it was just a piece of land with a little cabin and we were going to build a house. And so I remember one day we went out there to look at it and we were standing with a real

estate agent and on the property and we heard a shotgun blast. And then on the roof of the cabin, this metal roof, we heard all the shotgun pellets. you know like that and we're like what the hell is that and the real estate agent oh that's your neighbor hunter thompson he said don't worry he's fine you you'll you'll get to meet him later i was like i said is this going to be a problem and he said he said no no no it's going to be all right and so we we ignored that and um his if you if you know anything about hunter you know he had that red car land that he drove in fear loathing well that was parked that was part that was was parked in our cabin. He didn't own the property, but that property had been abandoned for years.

So he just stuck his car in the little cabin. So we were going to take that cabin and convert it into an apartment where we could live while we built our house. So I kept going up and knocking on his door because he literally was right across the road. I would knock on his door and hopefully, you know, to introduce myself and say, hey man, we've got to get your car out of the cabin. And he never answered the door ever because he would sleep all day and stay up all night and i would always go during the day so finally i just the keys were in the car i put a jumper cables on it i jumped it i started it i drove it up onto his lawn i parked it directly in front of his kitchen door and i left it there and i knew him for 25 years he never said a word to me about it he probably thought he did it he

He probably got to do it in the middle of the night. Yes. Or it just appeared there for some reason. Wow, man. We used to go up to his house and we used to watch Monday night football with him and the sheriff. And he did something normal, like watch football? Oh, he was a major sports junkie. He was a huge sports fan.

That's all his whole thing. And then we went to the funeral, too, with Johnny Depp did, you know, where they shot his ashes out of the cannon and all that. we were there for that it was wow i didn't know they did that at the funeral wow wow wow just who you want uh for a neighbor when you're trying to get away from it all right he was actually you know what though he was actually a really good uh good guy he he liked being hunter thompson you know he liked the image you know he liked the hat and the cigarette holder and the motorcycle with a glass of bert you know gin but down you know he was a southern gentleman he was from Kentucky. And if he liked you, and it broke all that down, he was really cool. And he was

really smart. And it was a real experience to have him as a neighbor for over 20 years. Well, we thank you for coming on the show on behalf of Team Supreme. Frantigolo, Boss Bill, Sugar Steve, Laiae. I'm Questlove. This is the great. John Oates. Thank you very much. Questlove Supreme is a production of IHeart Radio. For more podcasts from IHeart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A win is a win. A win is a win.

I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Cliver Show. This is a place for raw,

unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to. to it. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down

what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider,

you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slica Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok.

In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test once.

It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian. Michael Mancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.