The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 259: Rick Beato—In Another Time He Could Have Been a Star

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Rick Beato drops by to talk Everything Music; his dinner with Joni Mitchell, his interview with Sting, and the TWO weddings where he sat next to Mike at a time when Mike was couch surfing.  

The ocean moves us, surfing a wave or savoring the view. The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean connects us. Visit Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. The podcast is the way I heard it. The episode is number 259, and this one is called, In another time, he could have been a star. That's a quote from Joni Mitchell, who related it to our guest today.

If I'm stumbling over my words and if I sound a little bit not quite myself, it's because I just went through one of the most shocking conversations of my life, Chuck. And it's not because Rick Biotto said anything that I found shocking. Right. It's that I've been a fan of this guy for five years. Rick Biotto is a musical genius who created a YouTube channel called Everything Muse. And on that channel, he's been doing a show now for years called What Makes This Song Great. I love this show. Yes, you do.

I've watched every episode. Right. I introduced you to this. Yes, you did. Yeah. Two years ago. Yep. It's so good.

And if you haven't heard of it and you're a music lover, well, you're welcome. Because you're going to love Rick Beato as much as I do. I stumbled across this guy in the middle of the night, one time going down this endless YouTube rabbit hole, found this series, and ever since I saw it, I've wanted to interview him. Now, here's what makes it so weird. I was actually a little nervous because I'm really a fan of this guy, and I was really looking forward to meeting him. And seconds before we started talking, he told me something,

stunning. Yes, yes, he did. Something shocking, Chuck. Yes. You articulated, because I'm not sure I can. It was that breathtaking. He said, Mike, we've met twice before at two different weddings. Not only that, we sat next to each other. We know the same people. We've met. Not only have we met, we sat next to each other at two totally different weddings. Yes. And in a second, I realized partly why I've always been a fan of this guy. I know him. Right. I just didn't recognize him as a guy I had met because our mutual friend, a guy named Dave Rolf, always talked to me. Dave, as you'll hear, played with Rick in a band many years ago. Dave, my friend Dave, is the most musically gifted guy I've ever met and become really friendly with. He's kind of a savant.

really, really just a musical genius. But when Dave talks about Rick, the guy you're about to meet, he just glazes over into some weird fandom. Dave thinks Rick is the biggest musical genius he's ever met, right? Right. Because of my friendship with Dave, I've always heard about this guy named Rick. And then, 17 years ago, I met him at a wedding. And then two years later, at Dave's wedding, there he was again.

The thing is, 15 years ago, Rick was very skinny with long, dark hair. He looked like every rock and roll guitar player you've ever seen. Chuck, what's he looked like today? Well, I'm not going to say he's not skinny, but, you know, like most of us, he's added a couple of LBs, and his hair is short and white. He's actually got a really good head of hair. He's got a great head of hair, but it is white like Santa Claus. Yep.

He's 60 years old. he's my age, he's a dad, and I didn't recognize him. And I don't know, maybe I'm making more of this than I should. No, no, it was very shocking, man. You were shocked. You were shocked and you almost were unable to continue. It was very strange. Right. It took my breath away. Like, imagine, you're looking forward to meeting someone, and he pops up on your screen, and there he is, and you're about to start interviewing him and he says, oh, by the way, we've met before. That's disconcerting. But then you learn you've met twice at weddings. Now, I don't, which means you sat together for two hours at a time. We talked for hours, Chuck. Yes, yes. We talked for hours. I don't know

if it's a senior moment. I don't know what to make of this. But. Well, in fairness, he did look different and he said that. He did look different. He looked very different. And I just had him in my mind as this completely different guy. But I mostly got over my shock and had one of my favorite conversations so far with a true music lover and a really gifted musician. This guy, this guy can play virtually any instrument. He's produced dozens and dozens of records. He's had his own number one hit song, song called Carolina, came out a few years ago. But mostly, he's a docent. He's the guide you want in a museum who knows more than you about the art on the walls,

except here it's not art on the walls. It's the music of your life. It's the music you grew up with. It's rock and roll. It's pop. It's jazz. He does it all. He understands it intuitively in a way.

that most musical people I know don't. And he's just a wonderful guy. And I know you weren't as freaked out as I was, Chuck, but I hope you got a kick out of listening to him. Oh, my gosh, yeah. Are you kidding me? I'm a fan also, and I love what he does. You're right.

He's a super smart guy. He really knows music. And he's able to convey what makes a song great, whether you know music or whether you don't know music. can speak to you about music theory if you're versed in that language or he can also speak to you as a person who just likes to listen to music. I think he's a really good teacher. I told him that. And I woke up, you know, thinking, this is going to be a good one. And I think it is. I think it was. It is. Apologies if I sound a bit scattered for the first 20 minutes or so. But in another time,

he could have been a star. You'll get to understand, I think, what that's all about. a little bit later in our conversation. But here he is. I'd like to say what a joy it was to meet him, except apparently I've known him for 17 years. The one and only Rick Biotto. Here we go. Right after this.

Right after this. Well, people are still raving. Raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical.

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because the minute I discovered you online, Rick, years ago, there's been something nagging at me, like a splinter in my mind. I know this guy from someplace somehow. And you were just saying to Chuck that we've been to a wedding together. Two weddings, Mike. And I met you in 1995 in New York at a studio. That would have been the music of paradise or rave, rave music. Rave music, yeah.

So under what circumstances in 1995 were we? No, I was just there visiting our dear friend Dave Rall. And that was the first time we met. And then we sat next to each other at two weddings. But I didn't look like this. Did you have long hair? Like really long hair? Really long hair.

And it used to be black. Yes. Now it's snow white because I had three kids. Chuck knows Dave Rolf. Dave Rolf was one of my closest friends for many years. We lived in New York together. We obviously, we were at his wedding together, you and me. Yeah.

And I always remember. Dave, whenever we talked about music, which of course was every day, your name would come up. This guy from Atlanta named Rick, what would Rick say? What would Rick do? How would Rick react to this song? What would Rick think? I never really knew what to do with that, except that the most talented musician I know, like naturally gifted, is David Rolf. And he talked about you with something that approached some weird combination of wonder, envy, and confusion. Did you guys play together? Yeah, we played together.

We've been friends since I taught at Ithaca College when he had left Ithaca College. I taught there, I think, when he was there for one semester and then he left. But we became friends there because we were only a few years apart. But I was a professor when I was 24 or something like that, 25, and I taught there for five years. So my God. I used to go see his band play and things like that in New York back in the 80s. And so we've been friends ever since then. And every time I come to New York, I come visit him.

And then I went to Rave Studios and he introduced me to you. I was sleeping on a sofa in those days at the music of paradise. Literally, right? Literally. I was literally there. I had a buddy still do, named Larry Balaban. Larry hired Dave to do some basic music scoring for this crazy business we were doing. called Future Call. We had partnered with William Shatner, right? Okay. And we had these phone cards.

And Dave was scoring some of the music. And I was interviewing soap stars. And look, I don't get freaked out a lot, Rick, but this, you're throwing a lot at me. I mean, one of my best friends right now, who I haven't really spoken to since the beginning of the pandemic. You know, the world's been upside down. But I can totally see you in my mind's eye when he was married to Brandy. I can see you, good God, man. You were a skinny, long-haired rock-and-roll dude. I was definitely a skinny, long-haired rock and roll. I mean, I'm not skinny anymore.

But people don't recognize me that knew me back then, Mike. That's why they see this old guy with white hair and they just don't make that connection. But you probably thought, why does that voice sound familiar? Yeah. You're on this podcast because a few years ago I went down a classic YouTube rabbit hole. I was searching for the name of the city that the asteroid burned into, right? Remember a few years back in Russia, right? I was working on a piece and I was trying to figure out the name of this town. And one thing led to the next. And suddenly I'm watching Leonard Bernstein

give a lecture in 1975 at Harvard on the Circle of Fifths. And I'm amazed by it. And then somehow you're in that chain. And suddenly, I'm watching a video about, oh, I think it might have been superstition, Stevie Wonder. I found my docent. I found my guide into just the bottomless well of music online. It was you. And so I guess to officially begin, congratulations. You have three million people on a YouTube page. I don't know if they're there because they're entranced by like Dorian, Mixolydian, Eolean, Phrygian, diatonic, pentatonic, or if they're just curious to know why they love the music they love. Well, it's probably a combination of all that. I think I call it like a music appreciation channel

as much as anything, as much as a music teaching channel. It was a music teaching channel that morphed into music appreciation through song breakdowns, through teaching about music theory, through talking about the music business and all these different things. I made over a thousand videos and just hit 3 million subscribers. I understand and appreciate how difficult that is, but I wonder how many people understand and appreciate how difficult it is to get a hit song in the music business, to have an album that anybody gives a damn about, to do the thing that so many great musicians

make look so easy. But you have said so many times in so many of your videos, don't be fooled. This is luck. There is a lot of luck that comes into this. So maybe we should start with digital dust. Maybe we should start with what you've been doing. And Chuck, I don't know how closely you're following, Rick.

But he is plucking songs from digital obscurity, oftentimes off a hard drive that he's kept for decades. And he's saying, you know what? This song should have been big. This song should have been huge. And then he plays it and breaks it down. What's happening as a result of that, Rick? And why are you doing this? A lot of these artists, most artists in whatever field are unknown. Whether you're a novelist, whether you're on YouTube, whether you're a songwriter, recording artist, you're an actor, if you're a novelist, most books are not read. Most movies are unseen.

Most records fail. Almost all of them do. So while I have a platform to put out to introduce people, I decided one day I was looking at a hard drive with backups that I've kept because I keep backups. You have to keep refreshing backups every few years so that they don't literally become digital dust on a hard drive. I used that term. I always laughed about that, just stuff that is sitting around on hard drives.

It never gets played. You know, if it never gets played, does it really exist anymore? So I saw this song called Down by the Riverside that I wrote with these two girls back in 2014. I just saw it on there. I was like, oh, I remember that song. I click on it. I thought, this is a great song. What happened to this band, these two girls?

Muddy Magnolia? Muddy and Magnolias. They broke up a few years ago, these two girls. That song never got put out. It was actually recorded by two well-known producers. I won't name them. They didn't like it. Nobody liked the versions of these famous producers.

Everybody liked the demo that I did, but they never released it. So I thought, well, I'll just make a video about it. And I held up the hard drives that, you know, I held a reel of tape. This isn't used anymore. And these things, you don't even know what's on them. I have probably 300 hard drives here. But I don't know what's on a lot of them. Because they're not really cataloged.

I just, I mounted, I listened. I opened it up with, oh, my God, there's 25 albums that I produced on this. Each of them have 10 songs. And then they kind of come back. You see the names and they're familiar, but it's 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 13 years ago. What do these things sound like? But I remembered that down by the Riverside and I thought, I'm going to play that. People love the video.

And they loved that term, digital dust. I wish I'd come up with it. I don't do so much with music. But every now and then, I posted, Chuck, do you remember the guy who wrote Chili MacMRE? Oh, right, right, right, yeah. I did a silly little song last year with John Rich. It wound up going up the charts.

It was a fundraiser for my foundation. Santa's got a dirty job. All right. I mean, I can't believe you've listened to my music record. This is deeply humiliating and very, very gratifying. But the guy who helped me score some of the stuff for dirty jobs wrote a song. And he's just one of those guys. There's so many out there who are super talented.

Ben Holtz is his name. And he just sent me a link. He thought I'd get a kick out of it on YouTube, Chile, Mac, MREs. I thought it was great. I shared it. Hundreds of thousands of views later, somebody's world changed, right? So, like, the ability to do that, I mean, it's such a small thing. but wow.

I mean, what did that do for Muddy and Magnolia? What did your latest one do for, what's the name, Owen Beverly? Okay, so I did one with Owen Beverly, and all the sudden it just, you know, he's been actually making records, but he's gone virtually unknown since we had done this record together in 2004. And all of a sudden, all these people know who he is. They're listening to him on Spotify. He's getting offers for gigs, things like that. I did it a third time with a guy named Alan Merns. Now, Alan came in in 2007.

He had a band Airspace. He's from Belfast. We made this great record together, and then the band broke up. One of the guys quit right after, and they never put it out. So then in 2014, he came in, and we made a duo record, or we made a singer-songwriter record. He's just playing a guitar and singing. But he's also one of the greatest. classical guitarists in the world. And so he made this Bach classical guitar record that is outstanding.

So I went and I looked on his Spotify, his singing, which is, I mean, he's a great songwriter and singer. He has 67 followers there and 24 for his classical classical guitar record. And now he has tens of thousands on here. And it, you know, changes his life. But it's not just absurd. to something. Sometimes, like, I watched your interview with Tommy Emmanuel twice because I've been watching that guy for years and I've never really heard him interviewed before. And it made me go back to find the video that sucked me in originally, which of course is him playing classical gas.

There are a lot of different versions of it, but I'm talking about the one where he's in his, he's just by himself playing in a way, really. that just seemed clearly he was just trying to amuse himself, right? And he just crushes it. It's the kind of thing. I think I said to Chuck when I sent it to you, I'm like, look, spiritualism and religion and all that stuff, that lives wherever you want to put it.

But you can't watch this and not believe in some kind of supernatural power. And I wrote something along those lines, and I linked to that video, and 9 million people watched it. There you go. Now, Tommy doesn't need 9 million. and new fans. And a lot of them weren't new fans. A lot of them were people who just said, God, I hadn't seen that in a while. And watching it again made me smile and weep at the same time. And that's your world. You make people smile and you make them weep, sometimes with a share and

sometimes with a breakdown. Well, I wept when I saw Tommy play in person. It's pretty amazing. The fact that I've gotten to interview Brian May and Sting and Pat Mathini, all these people that I, you know, Peter Frampton that I look up to so much. And to be able to, just from making videos for YouTube, just on a whim when I started it six years ago, to that is, you know, it's just like what you're saying, sharing Tommy Emmanuel's classical. gas when I got to sit there with Tommy and listen to him play from one foot away. There's nothing like that. It's one thing to watch them on TV or on YouTube, I guess which is TV, but to actually sit there and talk to Tommy and it's, wow. I don't say this to many people. In fact, the only other person I've ever said this to was Anthony Bourdain. But to find somebody who's doing precisely what I think they ought to be doing at this moment in their life is really, really rare.

You've had a number one hit song. You've produced more albums than you can remember. You've got more unheard of hits lying around your basement than probably anyone. And yet all of it has led you to a kind of notoriety or forgive me, celebrity that's not a straight line from when I knew you. When you and my pal Dave came up. but the internet didn't exist. No one's thinking about this. You and I are the same age. You're 60 years old and here you sit doing something. I mean, how, this stupid question,

but how does that feel to Forrest Gump your way into such a weird, weird place? Well, when people ask me, what's it like to do this? I say, well, you know, it's easy. You just have to work 100 hours a week. It's no problem. As long as you're willing to do that and have a lot of luck involved, how does it feel? My wife will say, what are you going to ask Sting when you interview him?

First of all, she says, by the way, I'm going to that. I said, wait, you're going to New York when I interview Sting? She said, yeah. I said, you never even watched any of my videos. Well, I'm going to watch that one. Well, I'm going to start now. So are you going to prepare for it? And I said, what are you talking about?

Well, what are you going to ask him? I said, I've been preparing for this. interview since 1970. I heard Roxanne. What's there to prepare for? By the way, you said a lot of things in that interview that I want to touch on, but the fact that Roxanne, if it were released today, all these decades later, it would still crush it.

It would still go right to the top of the charts. And I thought that was maybe, I don't know if you may. meant it to be, but that was a sublime compliment. And since synchronicity has rapidly become the theme of this podcast, I can't believe we went to a wedding. I just can't believe we went to a wedding together, Rick. I'm literally so in my head about this. I'm struggling to formulate. I'm sure, because we were literally sitting next to each other. I know, on those white folding chairs out by some cliff type situation. It was freezing outside.

I remember. It was awful. Scrotum tightening sphincter slamming cold, and our friend David was getting married. And now it's not fair. You don't look anything at all like you did then. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician.

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If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get good ranchers now. Hey-ho! Anyway, sting. Synchronicity. My favorite part of that interview, and I'm begging you all who are listening, watch this interview.

No matter what you think about music, just watch it for the pure artistry of unpacking a uniquely gifted musical genius. But my favorite part of the interview, you keep asking him, like you always do, what's your process? How did you do that?

And he, in half a dozen really polite ways, just told you the same thing over and over. I don't know. I take a walk and I come up with it. I walk in my garden. I look under a rock and I find some lyrics. Right. Right. And so I think this is so interesting because Fred King was our music teacher.

Chuck and I went through high school together. And we had a musician in our life who changed our lives. And he used to talk about music in terms of this, mix of magic and math, right? And you're like the magician's guide to helping people understand the tricks that bands play, but you're also this mathematician. And watching you talk to Sting about trying to understand the math of the thing he does and watching him respond to you in terms of like, look, it's kind of a trick. And I'm not even sure how it works. I loved that conversation. And I've watched it twice now, and I'm going to watch it again. So, congrats. That, as they say, was a get. Thank you.

It was, it's still the only video my wife has ever watched of mine. So she said, I watched your Sting interview. I said, what do you mean you watch it? You were there. Well, I wanted to see how you edited it? And I said, well, how did I do? She said, pretty good. And Mike, to be honest, I got offered a show in New York City.

I've done one show ever. This is in March. and some guys at Live Nation approached me about doing a live show. And I said, what should I do? What do you mean live show? What do you like 90-minute thing? A lot of podcasters do this. And why don't you talk to the audience, do a song breakdown, what makes this song great, do Q&A, you know, play guitar, whatever.

Just do your thing in front of an audience. So it's like, okay. So we announced the show and the show sells out. And I'm thinking still, as I'm walking up on stage, what I'm going to be? I'm going to do? And I had a little set list, just notes on a speaker, on a monitor. I had a wireless mic. I had it prepared a video as an intro. And I actually have two shows coming up. I don't know if there before you'll air this or not, but I'm playing in Seattle on August 6th at the Neptune Theater and in L.A. at the Wilshire E. Bell Theater on August 20th. So I go up there and I

talk in front of this audience. Well, when I told my wife, I was going to do this, I said, so are you going to come to this? And she said, is Sting going to be there? I said, no. And well, why would I come? And I was like, well, what? That's the bar that, you know, that's it. Well, nobody to blame but yourself for it.

You said it pretty high. I said, well, he might be there. I don't know. I mean, it is in New York. I mean, possible. I said, so if I do a show. show in Atlanta, you guys will come. You and the kids will come, right? She's like, yeah, we'll come to it. Okay. Tell me again the date in LA. August 20th. August 20th, yes.

So what are you going to do on stage? Are you going to play instruments? Are you going to deconstruct a song? I'm going to deconstruct some song, probably a couple songs that I can't do on my channel, because we have these artists that are blockers. A lot of famous, famous, some of the most famous bands like the Beatles, for example. You can't play their music on YouTube. They just literally take your video down if you use it, but you can do it live. So it's really fun to do these breakdowns with the multi-tracks live because with songs I never can do.

So this is actually the most fun thing. And even if people are there filming it, they can't put it on YouTube. So if you can do it live, but you can't tape it, what's the purpose? prohibition on streaming it live. If you stream something on YouTube that is from a person that blocks, a thing comes up that says, you're in violation of this copyright, your stream is going to be taken down, and they literally take you down midstream. If you play the Eagles, if you play ACDC, the Beatles, there's many blockers.

This is just, God, there's so many things to ask you, but Chuck's had a front row seat to all of it. The whole fair use thing has just chapped my ass from the beginning. I mean, there's so many instances, not just music, but music is the worst. And I've never seen, I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of what you do, how can anyone look at your channel and not see an educational outlet? You're using the music to educate. And you're not even playing the whole cut. You're taking pieces to explain.

That's enough to get it. Are they shutting you down or are they just demonetizing? Not that there's much of a distinction. I don't have a problem with the demonetizations, even though my videos, for the most part, are fair use. But it's the blocking that really bothers me. And it's very short-sighted. I did a Fleetwood Mac. I have this series, What Makes a Song Great.

I've done about 115 episodes or so. And I had one that was blocked. Everyone else has released. I had done two Led Zeppelin videos that got unblocked. Led Zeppelin or whoever their representative is unblocked the videos. But the only one that was still, I did a breakdown of, Love and Use their Eye thing to do. You make Love and Fun.

Go your own way? Yeah, thank you. Go your own way. It got blocked. After it had come out for a month or so, it got blocked. And it had been blocked for years. And it actually got unblocked a few months ago, just out of the blue. They never sent me a thing.

And one of the things is when Stevie Nix had. that big hit with a guy on the skateboard on TikTok with Dreams. This is when artists, a lot of the artists from the 70s, they're the ones that typically block are the big artists from the 70s. They realized that, wow, this can actually revitalize their catalog. I mean, it's so obvious. So she unblocked her things, but still Lindsay Buckingham wrote Go Your Own Way, and then finally that got unblocked, maybe sold his publishing or something. But, you know, the Eagles still

block everything. And I testified in front of Congress about fair use. This is probably a year and a half ago or so. Yeah, it was during the lockdown. I remember. And Don Henley was one of the other people. He didn't, he had done his testimony about a week before or so. And I referred to it. And he talked about in his testimony, how they have six people working 60 hours a week to, make sure all the videos are taken down. And I thought, they don't have six people working 60 hours a week. This is all done by bots. By this. Yeah, spiders. They're very adept at taking music down that they don't want to have up there. YouTube is. And it's not YouTube's fault. It's the publishers, the songwriters, or the record labels or a combination of them. So people understand just how insidious

this is. There's an argument to be made for copyright. And I appreciate it. Yeah. You know, if we create something. We don't want to watch it be stolen. But it gets real gray, real fast. And I remember a couple years ago, I did a shoot. What was it with the bear on the cover? Fast Company. Yeah. So I got photographed with this bear for the cover of, I think it was Fast Company magazine or fortune or something. Anyhow, the photographer was a big deal and she took all kinds of pictures. And one of those pictures I put on Facebook just to share it to let people know that the magazine was out and look, that's me with the bear. The bear was eating altoids out of my mouth. Okay? It's an interesting shot. So I put it up there. Well, her agent didn't complain and she didn't

complain, but some sort of spider found the photo and alerted somebody somewhere who alerted somebody somewhere else who lived and worked at the end of a long plastic hallway where crooks and pimps and thieves run free and people do this kind of thing. And I got a bill for $2,500 for sharing a picture of me. It's a picture of me. Well, and a bear, to be fair. And the bear had an agent who was a real son of a gun. That's really the problem, Mike, is the bear agent.

But the point is, it's probably confusing for people to comprehend that there's a whole sub-industry based on collecting money using robots and copywritten images of the actual people themselves. right? It's not much different with music, I suppose. But this is your livelihood now. And so, yeah, I watched your testimony in Congress. And then this is my favorite part. I watched you explain to your three million followers how it wins. That's the best. That's the thing that even when you lose, Rick, you kind of win. Because you know what? They didn't block that video, did they? They didn't. No. I've talked to people. You do. about this exact problem, they say, well, what do you do when you get a, if you get a block, a takedown is what I'm talking about. Content ID claim is when they just take the money from the

videos, which happens quite often. And you can fight those things. I could win them if I claim fair use. And sometimes I do fight them if it's really egregious. If I say Norwegian Wood uses the mixalidian mode and I play on the guitar the melody of Norwegian Wood, the Beatles song. And that's all I play. And I get my video, all the money taken from my video away that I've spent 15 hours making for demonstrating this. I'm not using the Beatles recording. And they're collecting all the money because I played the melody one time through on the guitar. I mean, it's ridiculous, right?

So I fight those things. It is. Let me just help the listener who hasn't seen your channel yet. What Rick does is he sits in front of a camera, piano, guitar, sometimes drums, nearby. And he has the mix of all your favorite songs, everything you grew up with. And he picks one for reasons I'm about to learn. And he just decides to unpack it and explain to you why you love it. And as he's doing this, he's playing all of the instruments and isolating the vocals and explaining how the producer did what producers do and so forth and so on. And when the dust settles,

you have a new appreciation for a thing. Sorry for the exposition. But I want to make sure people understand the simplicity of what makes this song great. It's the ultimate deconstruction of a thing. How do you decide what songs to deconstruct? A lot of the times there are songs that I really love. And so it's me wanting to find out why I love them. And it's funny because people ask me, I got asked this yesterday, Rick, do you just analyze everything you've hear and I said, no, I never analyze anything that I hear unless I'm making a video on it or someone asks me. I did a video on the song, Josie, a breakdown of it. It wasn't part of what makes this sound great, but it was basically what makes this sound great, the Steely Dan song. And I've been

listening to it for 45 years, but I never figured it out. I never played it on guitar or the keyboard or anything. And when I sat down to say, okay, I'm going to make a video on this, then I, I pick up my guitar and I can play it. And I listen to the mix and I was like, okay, it goes here, it goes here, it goes here, okay, I got it. And I write it down and then I make my video. But I, 45 years I went just enjoying the song without any analysis of it. But when I actually have to do it, I can turn something on in my brain and I know how to play it. Sorry, I want to jump in for a second here, Rick, because I want to say what makes Rick Biato great.

It's not just that you deconstruct these songs, but it's like Fred King and all great teachers. I mean, you are a teacher. And what you bring to each one of these videos is a passion for the music itself. First of all, you have a great wealth of knowledge about music in general. but the way you deliver it is so accessible. Like there's a reason you have 3 million followers because it's so easy to watch you talk about a song and you get sucked in so much.

And everybody like I was telling Libby, Mike, I said to Libby, I go, yeah, we're going to have Rick Beato on. Because I was trying to reach you. I knew you were in Atlanta. So everybody I know in Atlanta I'm talking to. And finally, I found your email on YouTube of all places. I could have called David Rolf for God's sense. Right?

I mean, how do we not know that? I'm still not quite back to my normal self, but go ahead, make your question. Well, I just wanted to say that, you know, because she wasn't familiar. And I said, well, just pick a song that you like and type it in there with Rick Biotto and see what you get. And she was like, oh, my God, it was a Dizer thing. She went crazy over. And it's not just that you're taking the great music. You bring so much to it that is just really watchable.

That's it. I appreciate that, Chuck. You know, I did a video yesterday where it wasn't what makes a sound great, but it was. I stopped naming them that just because it's easier just to give videos their own names. I did a breakdown on running up that hill by Cape Bush. I love Kate Bush because it was on the Stranger Things this past series. I don't watch Stranger Things, but my wife and kids love it. And I came upstairs.

You're stinging that? No. So I come upstairs and I hear this and say, oh, it's Kate Bush. What are you guys watching? Oh, Stranger Things is the finale of the season. season. So I'm watching and it's like, oh, I love this song. So then I make the video yesterday and I look in the comments section and I see, well, Metallica had Master of Puppets in there. When are you going to do a breakdown of that? And I write, I already did. Search it. So I went and changed

instead of what makes the song great. Metallic, I changed the title yesterday to Metallica, Master of Puppets Breakdown on YouTube so that people can find it easier. When are you going to do this? It's like, oh, I did it two years ago. Done. Yeah. Isn't it funny? You say Kate Bush, in a millisecond, I remember the date that I was on when the man with the child in his eyes played in the background.

That is the most beautiful song on her first record. Oh, my God, 1978, just like Roxanne and Van Halen won. And that was an amazing time, 10th grade. Haunting. haunting. I'll tell you, Kate Bush changed the soundtrack of my dates, and so did Joni Mitchell. Cort and Spark was the album for me that it just became a kind of, it's wrong to call it Muzac, but it was just always on in my apartment. It was just always on in the background. And you did a take down on, was it Amelia? Amelia. It was Amelia.

I have always wanted to do a Joni Mitchell video, but I said in that video that when I listened to Joni Mitchell, especially Blue, I cry. It's so emotional. I love her music. So I did the video on Amelia and Joni's assistant reached out to me and said, Johnny loved your video and watched a bunch more videos on your channel. And I thinking, Johnny Mitchell, wait a minute, I actually sang in that video. Oh, no. Joni Mitchell heard me attempt to sing Amelia. So she said that if you're ever in Los Angeles, get in touch, and Joni would love to have dinner with you. So I was there last summer and I called her assistant up. We met and had dinner together for three hours, Joni and I.

And funny that you should say, Courtney Spark, I said to her in our conversation, I hope to interview Joni actually on camera. But I said, Joni, if you think about all your records, what record or records do you feel that the songwriting and the production really met your expectations where you said, man, we really nailed it? And she said, Cort and Spark, that and Hejira, both those records. She felt that the production, that she felt the songs really were represented through the production, everything about. it that, you know, she was incredibly happy about. And I said, well, what about Blue? And then she said to me, she's like, you know, my dad used to say, or people used to say, oh, you're a folk artist and everything. And my dad, when he heard Blue, he said, man, there must be a lot of depressed people out there. And so she said that she never thought, like, those early records, like, her dad's opinion of that

kind of affected the way that she thought about it. But that she said, Cort and Spark, was really the first record that she thought that the production and that's such a beautiful record. Oh my gosh. Shameless plug! Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel

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It's my favorite way to support microworks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirates.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirates.com. Soon may the nobleman come to bring a bottle for everyone. When the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. I just can't tell you how weird. Back to synchronicity, not the album, but just the concept. Chuck, I don't know if you'll remember this, but the first time I went to L.A. years ago to look for an agent.

I went to interview with your agent at the time, Richard Lawrence and Sean Perry over at Abrams Rubloff and Lawrence. And they were in a meeting and it went long and they told me to come back in an hour. All right. So I walked down third street and I sat down at a little pub called Who's on Third? Little restaurant. Remember that place? Oh, of course. Yeah. He used to go there all the time. I'm sitting outside Who's on Third. I ordered a cup of coffee and I'm just sitting there going, I can't believe I'm in Los Angeles. I'm going to try and get an agent. I'm going to try and work

in this stupid, unforgiving, thankless, soul-deadening business. Why am I here? And I look over and there's a woman sitting two tables away, and she's reading her paper and sipping a coffee. And she catches my eye and I catch hers, and I nod, and she nods and smiles. I'm like, God, she looks familiar. Long story short, it's Joni Mitchell. It's Joni Mitchell. And when my brain finally gets, when the synapses square up, I walk over and I say, I'm not going to interrupt you as I interrupt her. Yeah, even as you do it. Yeah. And I said, but you are, I'm Joni Mitchell and she says, I am, and you are. And I said, well, my name's Mike Roe.

And she immediately hijacks the conversation. She's like, and what brings you here? And what are you doing? And I told her, my friend Chuck is introducing me to his agent and I'm here, you know, because maybe, I don't know, maybe it'd be fun to work in TV. And she was so interested and curious. And I really didn't get to ask her a single question.

She just grilled me for three minutes. And then I told her that Court and Spark was playing when I fell in love with Heather Klebe. And she said, isn't that nice? Do you remember what song? I'm like, all of them. I just played it over and over. Freeman in Paris.

But really, Court and Spark itself, that was the tune, Rick. Amazing. Blows me away. Why is Court and Spark great? Because of everything. Everything about it. It's like, why is Joni Mitchell great? Because she's one of the greatest lyricists that's ever lived,

one of the greatest melody writers, her delivery of her vocals just crushes me. I mean, everything she does is so right. And it just gets me right here. I mean, I just, every one of those records, oh my gosh. So I'm struck, and maybe this comparison is fraught, but my mom once described Joni Mitchell. She said, listening to her sing reminds me of watching a kid in a playground, like playing in the sand or on a seesaw, right? Like the melody goes where it wants to go. The time signatures. She's not going to be bound by that kind of thing. And I felt something similar from Sting when you were interviewing him. Yes. Same thing. So melodically, these two appear to have a lot in common.

And it's like the people who play around them are charged with catching up to them in many cases. And when it all comes together, it's, well, it's damn delightful. You'd agree, basically, that melodically... Absolutely. Absolutely. Very similar Sting in Johnny Mitchell. They also worked with jazz musicians eventually, right? Johnny Mitchell, if you look at the Shadow and Light record, Shadows and Light with Pat Matt Matheny on guitar.

Lyle May is on the keyboard. Michael Brecker on the saxophone. Jacko Pastorius on the bass. Alex Ocuna, I think, is on the drums. I mean, this is just the greatest, you know, most amazing jazz players. She worked, you know, she made the Mingus record. She worked with jazz players a lot later in her. Honestly, starting at Court and Spark with Tom Scott in the LA Express,

Tom did, brought in people like Larry Carlton, all the session players that really kind of jazz players that played with Steely Dan and Sting, Dream of the Blue Turtles. He had Bradford Marcellus, Omar Hakeem, Daryl Jones, Kenny Kirkland, playing in his band, all jazz musicians. So they have this really sophisticated sense of harmony and melody, both of them do. But in their own ways, and they have a really sophisticated, just the chord progressions. I mean,

everything about it. Their lyrics, chord progressions, melodies, just so sophisticated, so beautiful. See, that's what I meant before with the magic versus the math. You can't help but default to a mathematical explanation that somehow tries to make sense of this other quality. And it came out in the conversation with Sting. I think early on, you asked him, no, you told him that you were constantly surprised. Yes. And he said, well, that's the greatest compliment you could pay me. Because if I'm not surprised in the first four or maybe eight bars of anything, I'm done.

I'm just on to what's next. That's right. Yeah. Why is popular music today to generalize so unsurprising? To have surprise in music, you need to have things like key changes, dynamic changes. tempo changes, you know, just if we take just those three elements, okay, just key change,

dynamic change, and change in tempo, right? Most music today is performed with machines, so there's no tempo variation. Most music today is hyper-compressed. You know, the bandwidth is really limited. Their dynamics are limited. So there's no difference between loud and soft. It may get quiet.

you think of a band like Nirvana, it smells like teen spirit. The chorus jumps out, and then when they come to the second verse, it goes, decad, dig it diga, da-do, do-do, and it gets quiet again. Those sudden dynamic changes make things exciting. And when there is nothing like that, so if you take away the rhythmic, any type of tempo change, if you take humans out of the equation, or pitch changes, if you're singing the blues, you can't have auto-tuned blues. Well, you probably cut. Right. It would not sound very good. So if you take pitch out of the equation,

tempo out of the equation, and dynamics out of the equation, and then there's no key changes in any songs because most popular songs today don't have bridges. Sting mentioned that in his video, and that's one of the greatest things about Sting and Joni Mitchell's their bridges they wrote were incredibly good. If you think of every breath you take,

it changes key in the bridge when it goes from A-flat major down to E to F sharp then. Since you gone, I'm not without a trace. Right. Yes. Yes. It's a complete key change.

And it grabs your ear and transports you to a new place. To be transported to the new place, that's kind of the thing, right? I mean, everybody I know who calls themselves a music lover, Stephen King says the same thing about writing. You know, a good book is a time machine. It just immediately takes you to another place. And a good writer knows that he or she can go to that place anytime they want. That's what Cort and Spark did for me. You just did it when you mentioned Kate Bush, just like that.

I can hear a Billy Joel song, Cadillac, cack, cac. It's not that it's a great song, but it landed at a time. I can smell the perfume of the girl I was with when I heard that song. Yeah. What is that? How do our brains work? How does your brain work when it comes to music? When it's working, I have all these things associated to music, all these memories.

When I listen to a song, I remember where I was when I heard it first. I remember everything around it. I remember when Hey Jude came on the radio. They were building this convenience store one block away from my parents' house up in Fairport, New York. and here's the latest song from the Beatles. These guys were working there, the Masons putting some cinder blocks up and, hey, Jude.

Oh, my God, it's a new Beatles song. And then listening to it on the AM radio, while these guys were working, the first time I ever heard it. And I just never forgot that. So all these songs have so many memories. I just can visualize when I heard them. for the first time and, you know, Roxanne being on the radio.

You know, when I said to Sting, that his voice, even if the stereo was down low, you could hear his voice just jump out because of the high register of it and the intensity of it. It's like, what is that? Turn it up. Whoa. What is this reggae song? Wow, this amazing.

1978. You know, never heard anything like that. I've never heard a voice like that. And I just. Picture myself in the car driving around listening to Roxanne. And music just transports you to those places. Yeah, it does. That big tenor voice out in front of the band,

whether it's a big, sophisticated, complicated band like the police, or maybe something a bit straight, like Kansas, for instance. What was that guy's name? Steve Walsh. Right. That, I mean, it seems like Kansas, If they weren't on the forefront, they were pretty close to it, just having that voice that cut above it.

Robert Plant, obviously, Boston, but that it all seemed to like occupy that same weird space. Maybe it's because we're the same age. But that's the fat part of the bat for me where that sound, it was everywhere you looked. Yeah, Steve Perry from Journey. These guys had really high voices that were able to, I mean, frankly, Paul McCartney,

you know, a lot of the singers that were famous, Bono, were tenors because their voice was able to get up above the bands, you know, into a register that was easy to hear on the radio. In addition to having great melodies, great lyrics, things like that, also the timbre of the voice, the distortion, the whatever it is. Yeah. Why is Eleanor Rigby my favorite Beatles song? Because it goes between Dorian and Aeolian in the melody. No, I'm just kidding. Actually, you don't. Because it's a story.

Because it's a story and you're a storyteller. Yeah. That's why. It's an amazing story. I mean, the lyrics stand on their own. But for me, it's the, I mean, most people, I think, Rick, in your line of work, would give a finger to be able to come up with a melody like the one. the one in Eleanor Rigby except that there's not one

there's da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. So, no, these guys, they have to give you two. Two unforgettable melodies. And then, just because they can, they sing them at the same time. And, oh, look, they fit perfectly. And then I guess it was probably George Martin, right, who comes in and somebody.

What happens if we put a string quartet? That's right. Yeah, and the Beatles could fall out of bed and they just every melody, the most original melodies, just the thing that always amazed me is how did they write all these songs really between 1962 and 1970?

I mean, really between 1964 and 1970 and none of them had turned 30 when they broke up. They had broken up and then Lenin and Ringo turned 30 later that year. That's crazy. I mean, Harrison, was on let it be, you know, he was 26 years old when they broke.

26, 27. I mean, it's ridiculous. Sting was that old when he did the first police record. He was 20. Well, he was born in 51. The first police record came out in 78, so he was 27. So the first police record, Sting was as old as George Harrison was when the Beatles broke up. Wow.

I don't want to get this too personal, but I have to. ask in the same way that most people look at the people you just mentioned as magicians. Their talent is such that while anyone can appreciate it, very few can relate to it. You have a son, Dylan, who must be, what is he now, 14? He's all, I'll be 15 in about three weeks. Dylan can do something that most people can't do. He has perfect pitch. Or is it absolute pitch?

Same way. Or is it relative pitch? No, it's perfect pitch. Perfect pitch and absolute pitch are the same thing. Yeah, Dylan can hear anything. But first of all, explain what perfect pitch is and why people who have it are both blessed and cursed. Perfect pitch is the ability to hear any pitch or sing any pitch, for example, without a reference tone. So if I went, da, that's an A-flat.

Now, I don't know if that's an A-flat. I'd have to check because I don't have a perfect pitch. Let me check here. Close. Okay, so I thought about what does A-flat sound like, or I just sang a note, and I said, that sounds like an A-flat to me. Kind of a random note, but Dylan will sing it dead on any note, or I can play a 12-note chord, no matter how dissonant it is,

and he'll tell me every note that I'm playing. That's the thing that freaks me out. Every time I've seen that, that's just nutty. It just sounds like a wall of sound and he sings every note and tells you what it is that's in that. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the curse part of it, some people, not Dylan, are bothered by things that are out of tune if you have perfect pitch. Like the world.

Yeah, right. It's almost like they're hearing on a grid like auto tune. And if it's detuned at all, it actually makes them ill. And I know people like that. But the problem is that everyone leaves. loses perfect pitch if they live long enough. Most people begin to lose it in their 50s if they've had it their whole life. Almost everybody that I know that is perfect pitch that's my age, it's gone down by a half step.

It's gone off by half step or completely gone. It's debilitating and it can be debilitating if they hear things are out of tune. I have an organ here from the 1880s, a pump organ that is a quarter step sharp. When I play it, Dylan, he doesn't care. I said, what note is this, Dylan? I'll play a B flat. He goes, that's A B flat, he calls it. They'll play the no A, and it's between A and B flat.

A, B flat. That's funny. Right. So, I mean, yeah, Chuck, I felt the same way when I saw it. We have a friend called the Human Calculator, who's been a guest on here once or twice, and 419 times 677. And before you can enter in it, he'll tell you.

That's what Dylan can do. And it's not just a chord, right? It's not just a C major. It'll go, he'll do that. Yeah, exactly. Say, Dylan, what do you hear? A flat, B, fat C, see if I've had over this, over this, over this. You obviously infused him with a lot of music theory at a young age.

But I guess my question is, when you have a gift like that, is he impressed by his ability to do it? Or is he just sort of like nonplussed? Dylan plays in the school band. He plays obo, but he's not really big into music. You're kidding. He plays on the basketball team. No, he's into sports. That's his thing.

Wow. Dude, that's got to be very strange. You have a kid, your kid, of all kids, who happens to have perfect pitch, wants to play basketball? Yeah, so I go out and play basketball with him. That's amazing. Because I love playing basketball, too. Ultimately, Mike, it's like, whatever my kids are passionate about, that's what I'm passionate about. I'm from a family of seven.

I'm the second youngest. Me and my younger brother, John, are the only musicians. We're both guitar players. We both started right in the same week. My mom paid for lessons for us. No one else plays, but we all love music. And my parents were completely supportive of us. My mom worked at the American Can Company.

She worked on the lines and everything. My dad worked for the railroad. We're blue collar, you know, grew up in a three-bedroom house with nine people. Wow. And my mom bought me my first guitar. It was a 12 string for 120 bucks. Don't tell your dad how much I paid for it. It was like a week's worth of money for my mom.

And she said, just promised me that you'll play it anytime I ask you. And then she got my brother a guitar. And so every night after dinner, my brother and I would have to play for the whole family. I mean, forever. So that was part of the deal. But your old man, he worked on the railroad, but he was a music lover, right? Love music. He appreciated.

He appreciated it. In fact, you know what? Of the many things I need to thank you for was reintroducing me to Joe Pass. I hadn't thought much about him. He was somebody I heard in passing with the great piano play. Was Oscar Robinson? Oscar Peterson, yeah. Peterson.

Yeah. And so I'd like to talk to you a little bit about improvisation. Okay. and the importance of being able to do that. And guys like Joe Pass and guys like Oscar Peterson and the ability to sit down, maybe again, it's that math magic combination. But three or four guys who had never played the same song together ever before,

being able to do it with something like brilliance, that's magic. That is magic. And you picked two particular people that were so incredibly, gifted at it. Joe passed away in 1994, Oscar in 2004, I believe, something like that. And they were two of the greatest improvisers ever. Joe made a record that I talked about in the video about my dad gave me virtuoso. He made it in 1973. And my dad gave it to me when I was in 10th grade for Christmas. And he said, if you ever learned to play guitar like this, you've accomplished something with your life.

Now, for a guy that worked for the railroad and was born in 1919, I was like, my dad was a man of very few words, but that was a pretty intense statement. And I thought, okay. And I had heard Joe passed, but I never really paid attention. My dad played jazz records all the time. So one day, after about three months, I opened the record out and I put it out. It was just solo guitar, all improv, playing standards. And I started listening to it, and I would practice my putting in our living room on the carpet with a little cup and everything, and I'd be listening to it. And then I thought, wow, this is amazing.

He's just improvising this. He just takes the melody and he can just go for four minutes and never play the same thing. The most interesting improvisations, same as Oscar. Oscar could just sit down and do that. And I remember I said, I'm going to figure out one of these songs and play it for my dad when he comes home from work. So I picked the song, all the things you are. It was the fourth track on the record. And I sat there dropping the needle over and over and over.

I didn't learn the whole thing, but I learned a lot of it. My dad walks in from work, and I said, hey, check this out. And I start playing along with the record. And my dad could not believe. He's like, how'd you figure that out? And I said, I just listened to it. And he goes, from my dad, that was unbelievable. Wow, I impressed dad.

How did it feel for you? How did it feel for you to impress your dad to that degree at that point in your life? went in your life. It was unbelievable. It was amazing. It was really amazing. He's, you know, both my parents were just so supportive. Oh, the best. A word back to the lyrics for a second. I feel sometimes like that's, I mean, nothing gets lost in your deconstruction. You spend a lot of time talking about the vocals. But if anything gets second shrift, it is the lyrics. And I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it's because nine out of ten times are not that great. No. But that tune... Wait, which tune? You're going to talk about all the things you are? I was just about to say.

You are the promised kiss of springtime that makes the lonely winter seem long. That makes the lonely winter seem long. You are the angel glow that lights a star. That's amazing. The dearest things I know are what you are. Right. I mean, they even bend the language intentionally. That's bad grammar. but brilliant writing. Mike, the fact that you and I both know that, and Chuck knows that too, right? Chuck, of course, that we know the lyrics to all the things you are, which was written by Jerome Kern. Jerome Kern. Jerome Kern.

In probably 1935 or something. And then we know the lyrics to that. That's kind of, I mean, they're just brilliant. Oh, my gosh. This episode of Three White Men Talking was brought to you by a dip recruiter. Yeah, it's a miracle. What are the odds? It's interesting because I have an answer about the lyrics.

Why don't talk about lyrics? In my video about Kate Bush, I talked about the lyrics and running out of that. A lot of times, lyrics are so subjective that I don't want to say what I think that they mean, because then everything is just hijacked by that. Right. Lyrics are really have such a personal, I mean, how do you explain what Johnny Mitchell's lyrics mean? or I think of Sting, you know, under the ruins of Walled City, crumbling towers and beams of yellow light, flags of truce, no cries of pity.

Obviously, he's telling a story about this battle that happened and everything, but how do you discuss these things, right? I mean, I know the lyrics to all these songs, but to get into that is, especially certain writers, is to rob people or to put my interpretation on what I think the lyrics mean, whereas, I like people to draw their own, what do they mean to them? Because lyrics are so personal, you know. What other genres aside? I mean, you've certainly taken every aspect of popular music. But what about Jerome Kern?

What about Broadway? What about going back to stuff? I mean, when we were talking about improvisation, I was trying to snur my way into woodshedding, which is what barbers call it. That's right. because it's best done in a woodshed where nobody can freaking hear you except right but great woodshedding becomes improvisation and then you're oscar peterson and joe pass but you know it's a rocky road to

get there but yeah that weird fine line between making it up as you go and absolutely knowing where you're going to wind up well they did both though yeah they started making it up as they went and they knew exactly where they wanted to go that's that that was the genius of those two. I'd encourage anybody to go to YouTube and watch, there's an interview with Dick Cavett and Oscar Peterson. It's one of the greatest interviews that I've ever seen. You've seen it, Mike, right? Yep. I've seen everything that Dick Cavett has done on YouTube because it's the best. It's absolutely brilliant. This is how you interview a musician. Oscar Peterson demonstrated, This was on daytime, right?

Was Dick Cavett? He was daytime TV? I think so, yeah. And this was absolutely brilliant. Where are the, you know, well, this is honestly what I'm trying to do with my channel is to You're doing it, dude. Is to take what Dick Cavett did with Oscar Peterson and talk to Sting, talk to Brian May or Pat Mathini or whoever. But long form even, longer interviews and get them to play and talk about their music.

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Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. In high school, you could be among the people. people who are making this movement explode. Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself and see too how easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million

members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skills USA.org slash Mike. That's skillsusa.org slash Mike. I'm talking skills, skills, U.S. Skills, U.S.S.S.S.S.S. USA. Were you surprised when you started with your channel that people stuck around? Because, you know, I was always told, look, it's online. It's got to be short, it's got to be snappy. All that to me was wrong. I mean, and you're, you're one of the guys who are proving it. People will take a deep dive into some fairly arcane stuff if they trust their guide. Right. And people trust you, but it's also relevant to your point about improvisation and woodshedding. If the audience trusts the artist, then everybody's got all kinds of permission

to go in all sorts of different directions. And that's what it feels like you've decoded somehow. That's the secret sauce. People are going along for the ride because they trust you. Well, I never started out. I had my friends that would tell me, oh, yeah, if you're going to be on YouTube, you have to make short videos,

they have to be this long. And I said, well, shouldn't you make videos as long as they need to be? As long as it is good. Yeah, it should be as long as it is good. That's what we always say. Yeah, of course, edit them, but you want to really cover these topics that you're talking about. And sometimes you can't do it in eight minutes. Sometimes it's 28 minutes.

Sometimes it's an hour and 46 minutes, you know? How do you edit your what makes this song great? I mean, it just looks like a lot of flash cuts, yeah. Yeah, which I love. Me too. I shoot them in sequence. So I play the song and I just move along through the song and talk about. I talk about all the things that grab your ear.

That's not as catchy of a title. All the things that grab your ear, yeah. All the things that grab your ear is really the. It could be an infraction. It's kind of a, it's a music appreciation slash music production slash songwriting technique series essentially. I talk about the production of it, how these parts are, what types of sounds are being used, how they're played.

I did a breakdown of Kid Charlemagne. I played Larry Carlton solo. I had the drum part that Bernard Purdy played, who I interviewed recently. I notated the shuffle that he played. I had Chuck Rainey's bass part written out. For the people that want to go there, it's there. For the people that want to just hear the parts and me talk about them, they can get that. I try to have it so that anyone can enjoy it,

even if they don't know anything about music, or if they know how to read music and they want to know what Bernard Purdy's exact drum part is, they can take a screenshot and they can play it. That's it. That's the thing I was trying to articulate, Rick. Your channel overall, but this series in particular, you can geek out on it if you're a full-on music theorist,

hardcore music lover, and you can absolutely enjoy it in relative terms to the same degree, if you're just somebody who's curious as to why they like a thing. Yeah. That's very, very rare. Like, really, really unusual. And I know you know it, but I just wanted to say it to you because it's,

Chuck, do you remember, I think I introduced you to what makes this song great? You totally did. I can't remember exactly. I think it was a Boston song. Yeah. It was a Boston song. Which I loved Boston. I mean, that first album was like, whoa.

Oh, my gosh. I couldn't believe it. He did it in his basement. Yeah, right, the whole thing, right. He built all the gear. The whole damn thing. What's his name? Was it Tommy Schultz?

Tom Schultz. Yeah. Played every instrument, sang every part. This reminds me of another band that Mike and I are both big fans of, and I'm sure, Rick, that you know of this band, but they were only popular in, like, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and that's Crack the Sky. Do you remember them? Yes, I do.

John Palumbo. He did the same thing, didn't he? Didn't he record the first album in his basement or something? something? He did, yeah. Yeah, he lived over in Towson. So this is the thing that makes me crazy, Rick. It's David Rolf, the reason that we know each other, and it's just, I'm still, still not quite over it. He has so much talent. Yes. That it makes your eyes cross. And I don't know what he's doing today. I don't know if he's scoring movies. I don't know if he's back in a band. I know he's living up there in Park City with his beautiful family, but I have no idea if his best work is

gathering digital dust. And John Palumbo, he could have been John Palumbo. Cracked the sky could have been Boston, right? It's endless. How close, how many people in this crazy industry are adjacent to something like ubiquity? Most, Mike. Most. It's the space between and anonymity and ubiquity. It's so skinny, Rick. It's so skinny. We don't have, most other careers have a path. They're like lily pads, and you hop here and you hop there.

And here, no, you can spend 30 years of your life slaving away and then wake up one morning and you're famous. Or not. You know, I just, or not. Or not. have a measure of success, and then the technology comes along that enables you to say, here's a question, what makes this song great? Oh, I know. I'll answer it for you over and over again. Yeah. You can't script it, brother. It was just luck. I had an intern that came in and said, you should start a YouTube channel. I was like, what? Nobody's going to watch your white-haired guy on

YouTube. That was my thing. I mean, Dylan had those viral videos on my son on Facebook. before, like six months before, but I thought, oh, I'll try a video. I've never run a camera before, Mike, and I didn't know how to edit video, but I knew how to edit audio and come to find out editing videos exactly like editing audio. Very similar. Yeah. There's no good. Really. I mean, so you look at the waveforms and you edit via the waveforms. So it's like, I did know how to edit video. So I shot my first video is June 8th, 2016. Wow. What a trip. Yeah. What is your personal favorite what makes this song great. And while you think of an answer, I don't want to put you on the spot, I'll tell you mine. Okay. It was Make Me Smile. It was Chicago. Because I saw that concert

at the Merry Weather Post Pavilion. Wow. Maybe 78. I saw them with the moody blues. And the moody blues in concert, they sound like the moody blues on an album. Yeah. That was just, bananas. To hear Terry Cath, sing that thing live. I mean, you know the song. That opening drum thing, for starters, is not something that, I can't even imagine what that looks like on a chart. And then he sings some of the most complicated. That guy's voice is so weirdly high, but it sounds so weirdly low. I know. How does that... I don't know. That song is so incredibly great. I used to listen that over and over when I was a kid, that song. And I loved Chicago. And the idea that 50 years later that I would do a breakdown of that song and have the multi-track to do it is. Yeah, that's a good question.

How do you get the multi-tracks for these songs? It's funny. So I'll read in the comments section where people say, I usually will read in the comments section on the first few hours to see if I made any mistakes. Like, I did an ad for my gig in Los Angeles, and I spelled Los Angeles. In my video yesterday, I first comment within about five minutes, it was like, I don't want to be that guy, but you spelled Los Angeles, right? We know that guy. Yeah. We know that guy. They want to be that guy. And I was like, I'm an idiot. That was a typo. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. I apologize. I mean, what are you going to say? Well, listen, this just opens up a whole other category of stuff that I love to talk about, which is the correctors, the army of correctors.

And many of your fans are a part of this army. They love you. But part of the reason they enjoy watching you is they want to disagree with you. And they want to catch you in a mistake. Yeah. And been there, done that. I've made my piece with it. But you did a piece on, was it maybe the drum part on when the levy break?

where that was recorded, like, in a mansion? Yes. Okay, so people. Okay. In the video, I have Andy Johns who recorded and mixed the song. He was the, I mean, Jimmy Page produced it, and Jimmy Page said, oh, it's the reverb of this room. Or it's the echo from this room. And he claps his hand, and there is no echo.

There's reverb. Echo and reverb are two different things. So Andy Johns, in this interview, interview that I put in the video says, I put this Binson Echo, which is a type of echo plex that they had back then. And I put it on the drums to make the drums echo. And people in the comments section are disagreeing. Oh, Rick's wrong about this. Jimmy Page said this.

It's like, the guy in the video is the guy that engineered and mixed the record. Jimmy Page did not engineer and mixed the record. And he even says, Jimmy was down at the pub when I did this. you know, when I mixed it or whatever, he says in the interview. Like, why are you arguing with me about this? I'm playing a video of the guy that was there. Were you there? You know?

Well, no. Some people in the comments section, Mike, were said, there's a, I forget, like 250 millisecond. You need a 25-story stairwell to get an echo that long. You know, there are people that said, Rick is right. It's an echo. You need a 25-story building to get an echo. that lasts that long.

That's very clever, Rick, how you told us this story and didn't answer my question of how you get the multitracks. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, back in 2005 or so, I went to do a session at a studio down in Texas. I wouldn't say what studio. And I rarely would go anywhere else to produce things. I did most of my things in here, or I'd go to Los Angeles. but I'd never been to the studio before.

And it was to fix a record that somebody had screwed up. And this guy from this major record label, the president of the label called me up, can you go down and fix this thing? I was like, yeah, okay, no problem. So I go down and I'm there. And the second day I'm there, I come in and the engineers playing Smells Like Teen Spirit,

just the vocal. I was like, what is that? He goes, that's a smells like Teen Spirit. I said, I know it smells like Teen Spirit. Is it the multi-track? He said, yeah. then he starts soloing different things. Where did you get that?

Oh, I got it from a friend of mine. I said, is that the only song you have? He goes, no, I have thousands of songs. Wow. You have thousands of songs? Like what? And then he showed me his hard drive with all these famous songs. Like everything you can imagine, right?

So I said, what can I give you for that? And he says, nothing. I can't give any of this stuff away. I told my friend I would never do that. And I said, I said, you know, I have this snare and kick sample of a famous mixer. Okay, just one shot of a snare and one shot of a bass drum. And he said, you have that of a famous mixer that no one had these samples. He said, oh, I'll trade you that for this.

So he traded me thousands of songs for two, you know, 27 kilobytes. sounds. Okay, but then later on, you know, I did a breakdown of Bohemian Rhapsody with Brian May. People say, how did you get the tracks? Well, Brian May is in the video. Or you did

Kiss from a Rose. Where did you get the tracks? Well, Seal is in the video. I got them from Seal. So, I mean, nowadays, I get them from the people in the... Right. Now you can ask, right. But you wouldn't have had a channel

if you couldn't have jump started it with some sort of baseline library, right? I didn't start doing that until two years into my channel, and I had about 200,000 subscribers when I started that series. Well, that's not 3 million, is it? It's not 3 million. No, but it's funny because the biggest videos in my channel are these top 20 countdown videos that I do, top 20 acoustic guitar intros, top 20 guitar solos of all time.

And those are the videos that get, millions and millions of views. People love lists, you know. That's true. People love lists and they love to argue. They love to say. No, they don't. No, they don't. Yes, they do. Not even a little bit. Yes, they do. I want to be respectful of your time. I assume you have videos to make today. You got like a room for like his sting waiting right now somewhere. I mean, I actually have sting, a clip from sting in this video. It's funny that you brought up the topic of the video that I'm making for tomorrow. You literally brought it up about surprise in music because I'm making a video on that. Use a clip of this too. I'd be honored. Take five seconds of this conversation right now. You can have

it. I'm actually going to talk about this, about the type of surprises that what does it mean by having surprise in music? Why is it so important? I can't wait to watch it because you just reminded me of another one. In your video about Bohemian Rhapsody, you're talking to Brian May at the very end, and you do what you always do. You ask him about his process, not the layering stuff. That all was explained great. But he kind of shrugs his shoulders and he says, you know what? It's kind of good that Freddie's not here because he couldn't answer that question either. And he didn't say this, but I chuckled when I saw it because I thought he'd say the same thing, Joni Mitchell said. He'd say the same thing Sting said.

He'd say, look, sometimes you just don't know. You can deconstruct it till the end of time. But what you're doing here is proving that the sum or the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And you can't just break a song down into its component parts and go there. It's done. Because there's always this other thing, this magic that's in it. Every little thing you do is magic, Rick. I did a breakdown of that song.

Of course you did. Even. That was my third what makes this song great video, or my second, actually. It was my second. Okay, so here's my pitch. I've had this idea for a show for years, and nobody's ever going to make it, but we're all kind of doing versions of it already. Mine's called Rushmore.

Okay. And on Rushmore, for instance, this happened because years ago I was sitting in a bar with some friends, and we were talking about the presidents on Mount Rushmore. And somebody said, well, you know what? Reagan should be up there. And then somebody else said, you know what, Obama should be up there. And I said, okay, fine. But if you're going to make the case for either of those two, you also have to make the case for why somebody needs to come down. Because there can only be four. There's only room for four. So in my show, we build many rushmores to great chefs, great race car drivers, great guitar players,

great lead vocalists. And so the idea would be to get together a smart panel of credible insiders, people with vast knowledge of the topic at hand. So if the show happens, it goes without saying that you're going to be on it and you're going to be discussing the choices for anything music-related.

The question now is, if we were to build our own little Rushmore right here on the way I heard it, what four figures would be out there for the greatest guitar player of all time? Oh, man. You're going to make some enemies now. No, I can't even, I can't answer that because I'd have to really think about that.

It's a half hour show, Rick, so we're going to have to move things along. We'd have to define the genre of music because I have so many favorites in, I have so many favorite, you know, jazz guitar players, rock guitar players. There's so many blues guitar players. There's many different styles of guitars. And these things change from time to time, Mike. I'm giving you the most political answer I can. I am not going to. I knew you would.

I am not going to go to do that. This is the same crap you do on your videos where you'll say, okay, when we get into the top five, they're not in order. It could be any of the top five. And in fact, it could also be, you know, the bottom five. It could be you always do that. And I know why you do it because it's the truth.

It is the truth. Yeah, it's all subjective. It is the truth. But people say, Rick, Why is your, you know, this is just your opinion. It's like, my name's on the channel. Well, like, of course it's my opinion. Yeah, it's my opinion.

But I do make the decisions what order to put things in. When I make lists, list videos, that's kind of taking a stand. Although, sometimes I will put things on there just because I know it will tweak people. Sure. Like, why is that not on there? And I have so much fun with that. So let me just get your take on this real quick. I asked the same question to Alice Cooper.

It was years ago. We were in the basement of the Hard Rock, and we're just having this conversation. And there were a bunch of people there, and all the usual suspects were up, from Joe Pass to Gilmore to just go down the list, right? I mean, everybody you would think of, Jimmy Page and so forth. And Alice's answer was, I think if I had to pick one, it would be Frank Zappa. And I said, why? And he said, because if Frank Zappa were here right now, he could sound like any of those other guys, and you wouldn't know it. He could play anything.

He was utterly, screamingly original in his own skin, but he was also this guy who could put on a lot of other skins as well. Was that your take on him? I love Frank Zappa. It's interesting that you mentioned Alice Cooper, though, because I just watched. the movie, not sideman, what's it called? It's about sideman. I don't know why I can't, it's probably because it's not a good video title. You're 60. Yeah, no, no, no. You're 60. I usually have an incredibly good memory for it. Your perfect pitch is shot. You got the tinnitus you're dealing with. We should talk about that too because I think I got it. One of my best friends is in the movie here.

It's called, and Alice Cooper is in the movie. He talks about why. why he hires certain people. These are all like Liberty DeVito's in the movie, all these Steve Lukather, all these guys that play on record. Okay, here we go. Here we go. It's called Hired Gunn.

Okay. And Hired Gun interviews with people that are from all these different bands that played on records, that toured with people, and Alice Cooper is in it. And Alice Cooper talks about that he kept an A list

of all the best session players people he would take out because he always had amazing players that played with him, right? And he would hear people and he had a great ear for knowing who the great players were. Even if they were unknown, it's funny that you talk about him in particular because he's a guy that really knows and appreciates guitar players especially, but all types of musicians. But in the movie, my dear friend Phil X, who plays with Bon Jovi, he basically took over Richie Sanboras part. He's a lead guitar player and he sings and he's an incredible player. Phil's in the movie and but Liberty DeVito, who's Billy Joel's drummer is in there and he was fired from the band,

I don't know, I think, in the early 90s or so and never talked to Billy, I don't think, after that or maybe after this movie came out, they connected. But and it goes through and all these stories of guys that one night they're playing the Los Angeles Coliseum, the next day they're painting someone's house and someone recognizes them. and they had just gotten fired from their gig, and they had to make money. And it's a really, it's kind of a sad, tragic movie. Well, you really know how to sell it. I'm going to watch it tonight.

But Alice Cooper, though, he talks about, I always kept a list of all the A-list people, and those are the people I wanted in my band. So. What do you think of cover bands? As long as I don't have to play in them, I'm fine with it. I just ask because you mentioned Steve Luthaker. And I'm such a fan. That was Toto, Chuck, if you didn't know. I didn't.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, the guy's just a... In fact, I think you interviewed him recently. But he plays all the guitar parts, are a lot of the guitars on the Thriller record. He's on many records. He's one of the biggest session guitar players in addition to being in Toto.

Yeah, it's kind of a genius. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you've heard of Mike Massey, M-A-S-S-E. He's just a guitar player, and he covers all sorts of people. And if you haven't heard, heard of him. I don't know him. You might get a kick out of it. There's video of him and his buddy,

Jeff Hall, in a pizza parlor. It's online. It's got 20 million views. And they sit down. There must be six people in the joint. And they play a cover of Africa. Two guys. Right. And it ain't perfect, but holy crap. It's hard to know how to respond to it because it's awfully good. And he's just done hundreds and hundreds of covers. And he's just one of those guys who's got a real talent. And of all the things to cover, Toto. I mean, my God. And they did it.

So anyway, I was always wondering what your take is on imitation because you're a guy who values innovation so much. But then again, it is sort of the highest form of flattery. So there you go. Cover bands. When I had dinner with Joni Mitchell at the restaurant that we went to, I won't name she said there's a guy that she used to go and see play covers there. And I think Joni Mitchell went and watched a guy play covers. They said, what kind of songs?

She told me what kinds of songs. And she said, in another time, he would have been a star. And that was a profound thing to say from Johnny. I can't imagine Johnny Mitchell going out to watch a singer, like a cover guy doing, playing acoustic guitar and singing. But the fact that she said, in another time. He could have been a star. And I don't know if you've listened to this podcast before, Rick,

but typically the title of each episode is a quote from the guest. And sometimes you have to talk for an hour and 32 minutes before we get there. But we just got there. In another time, he could have been a star. Oh, that's right. That's it. That's the title of this episode. That's it.

Yeah. It's awesome. I need to talk to you briefly again offline about Dave Rolf because I'm still. profoundly freaked out about it and I'll talk about it in the intro as well but for now I mean this with all of the earnest shameless shameless pluggery I can muster what's the best thing for people to do is it everything music is it your YouTube channel where do they go to get more of you go to YouTube just type in Rick Biotto on YouTube and they'll find me subscribe he has a book on ear training

that I've ordered but have not yet dug into and so many interviews views. Who's the guy you just talked to the drummer? Greg, is it Bissonette? Greg Bissonette, yes. Oh, my God. He plays with Ringo. He plays on a million famous records. This guy in the space of 30 minutes. I mean, not since Whiplash has there been a more instructive look at what it really takes, you know, to throw down on the drums. Your conversation with him ought to be required viewing for any version of any music appreciation class. That was incredibly fun. And I want to do more videos like that because he basically went through the history of drums and talked about all the important beats to know and demonstrated them perfectly.

Yeah. In 30 minutes. In 30 minutes. It's just mind-boggling. All right. Well, we've sucked up enough. But to sum it up, I think you're one of the most important voices out there in the great wasteland, known as the World Wide Web.

And I'm so glad you've carved out a piece of real estate for yourself. And I'm deeply gobsmacked and troubled that I sat next to you at a wedding back when you looked like another being from another species. But what a blast of synchronicity this has been. I really appreciate it. Mike and Chuck. It's always great to discuss these topics like this. This is fantastic. Well, let's do it again sometime.

And maybe if you can make his show August 20th at the Ebel Theater in Los Angeles. We'll talk to our mutual boss, and if it can be managed, I'll come down and do it. I think that would be great. Yeah, no, that would be amazing. And the production company that I've been working with on the reboot of Dirty Jobs, they're down in Atlanta now called School of Humans. You would love them. Great.

You would love them. And they do a lot of work with some great local musicians down there called the Tune Welders, one of whom did that song I mentioned, Chili Mac MRE. Okay, cool. It all comes full circle. Great. This will officially end the podcast. Thank you.

Thank you. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go off. and leave us a rich. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge.

But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a lighter two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Definitely not too.

All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you got to do is leave a quick... even if you hate it. Five, stars, especially if you hear it. VEO! Thank you.

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