Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Fred Mollin: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1771

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

In this 1771st episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with record producer, musician, film and TV composer, music director, music supervisor, and songwriter Fred Mollin about Santa Jaws, Sometimes When We Touch, 90210, duets and Disney Lullaby albums, and more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, the Waterfront BIA, Blue Sky Agency and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

Welcome to Toronto Welcome to episode 1,7701 of Toronto, of Toronto-Miked, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery A fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

Toronto's Waterfront, BIA. Get to the Waterfall Festival this coming weekend, the waterfront. Blue Sky Agency, the official distributor of Cylent's quiet, comfortable, and customizable office pods, create sanctuary within your workspace. Recyclemyelectronics.c.c.a.comitting to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Today, making his Toronto mic debut, it's Fred Malin. Welcome, Fred. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you.

I want to shout out, we have a mutual friend. And his name is Gary Chowan. How do you know Gary? I know Gary through just Toronto friends way back when and I had used a number of different hair cutters for years and frankly as I started to lose my hair and still am years ago I really realized I needed a surgeon and Gary was pretty well the best one I'd ever seen and he still is in my opinion the greatest haircutter I've ever had absolutely. Well that's high praise for Gary. He's worthy of that. I praise. You know, the man styled Shares hair. Yes. He is a legend. I also like symmetry and I like the fact.

This is, um, we're recording on a Tuesday. On Friday, we're having FOTM cast. That's where we discuss episodes from the previous quarter of Toronto Mike. And I find it interesting. The first episode of this quarter was a gentleman named Cliff

Thorburn. And Cliff was a world-class world champion snooker player and he visited the basement here because Gary told him to and you're the last episode and you're here connecting remotely because Gary told you to.

Love it. Where do we find you in the world today? Where are you? I'm based out of Nashville although I am a Canadian as well as an American. I lived in Toronto probably for a total of boy oh boy I'm going to say 27 years, 30 years almost

and so I've moved to Nashville I moved in 2001, and I've been based out of Nashville since, but certainly still a Canadian very much at heart. So I know you're born in Amityville, New York, but what brought you to Toronto in the first place? Well, I had, you know, my musical life started early, and I really wanted to have a life in music, and I quit school in Long Island, New York when I was 16, because I just couldn't wait to get. going and I wanted to get a record deal. I thought I was the next James Taylor. Turned out I wasn't. But I did in fact, I did win one victory, which was I never had to go to school again. That was really good. And then I, about a year and a half later, I was following my brother, who was seven years older than me, who was really my best pal. And we had started to write

songs together, and we had both started to become creative characters together. And he moved to Toronto to try underground theater in 71, and I went to visit him in 72, and I never left. Okay, there's a song. I'm going to play a bit of a song and ask you for every detail you can remember, but right off the top, I want to let the listeners know, you wrote a book, Unplugged. So maybe just summarize the book, and then we're going to get into some cool stories. I'm so glad you're here, and I love your Toronto connection here, but Unplugged, colon, stories and secrets from a life-making records, scoring film, and working with the legends of music.

What made you decide to write it all down? Well, the truth is, you know, about five years ago now, I just started to tell stories into my phone, dictate them into my phone, into my notes section. Just so I wouldn't forget, there was so many stories about my life and music and all the great people and interesting projects I've worked on, that I had a lot of tales to tell, and I didn't want to forget them.

So I started to dictate these stories, and when I had about 20, I would go back home, you know, after I dictated them, and I'd finish them off on a laptop, but, you know, mostly they were dictated. And when I had about 20, I said, you know, I can probably write a book. And the truth was, that may have been a dumb decision, because I was stuck then trying to write a book. But I am really proud that I got done. And it is very much about, it's really not about a, tell all about me as much as it is these behind-the-scenes stories of all these wonderful musical projects and musical people I've worked with.

Okay, now I will just let you know. I have a WhatsApp chat with some listeners, and I just asked this group for memories of one particular song. I'm going to play some of it, and then we're going to talk about it. We're going back to 1975 with this one. But the nostalgia tied to this song for people of a certain. and vintage from the greater Toronto area. Do you mind if I just play some of it

and then you give me all the details you can remember about this particular song? All right, here, let's play. It was the night before Christmas and all around the beach, not a creature was stirring, not even a leech. The stockings were hung by the boathouse with care in the hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

But Daddy had taken us down to the shore to spend Christmas Eve with the family once more. While mother and father lay snug in their bed, my girlfriend and I went down to the shed. We took off our clothes and peeled to the skin and jumped in the water for a midwinter swim. When out of the darkness, she led out a hoot. I just saw a shark in a Santa Claus suit. Then the silence was broken by a terrible din. Jingle bells ringing on a circling fin. We swam and we swam to get out of its reach

till we thought we were finally safe on the beach. When what to our wondrous eyes should appear but a jolly white shark who ate tiny reindeer. Oh, dasher, oh dancer, oh Donner and Blitzin. Oh, come at Cupid Prancer and Vixen! Fred, I don't actually want to fade this down, but I do want to hear you tell me everything he could remember about Santa Jaws. Wow, I'm so, I mean, I was thinking, what in 75 did I do? Man, you know, well, first of all, when I moved to Toronto with my brother and found a new life there and became a Canadian and blissful, by the way, we had started Canadians as Canadians.

We started the first truly Canadian improvisational comedy group called Homemade Theater. And then we actually wound up having a TV series called Homemade Television for Young Children on CBC for three years, I think it was from 76 to 78. During the time that we did homemade theater, we got the attention of A&M Records of Canada. And we decided to make some novelty records. And the first one we did was a takeoff on the movie Jaws because it had just become such a phenomenon. And so Larry, Phil, and myself wrote Santa Jaws and then the backside, which is a bunch of songs about sharks,

and done to the music of Christmas carols. It was really, it's one of my favorite moments, really, because first of all, those years doing homemade theater, while doing record production, I was doing a lot of other stuff. But the work I did with my brother and Phil Sabbath and Barry Flatman, we were brothers and we just laughed ourselves through years. And doing Santa Jaws, I remember recording it. It was done at Manta Sound.

I think Andy Hermant, I got to co-produce it with me, who was the owner of Manta. And, you know, we did a lot of sound effects. Like, you know, when the shark is eating the reindeer, those are different vegetables and apples and stuff that we used. You know, it was just a howl to do. And you know what? The great part was it actually went gold as a single in Canada. And Mike, here's the great part.

In the Juno Awards that year, we were up for song of the year. And it's not a song. You know, it's a spoken thing, except at the end, I wrote a little song that was just, you know, basically tags the actual record. And it's not really a song. I mean, you know, it's like a jingle almost. And there we are at the Ryerson auditorium for the Juno's, and we're all sitting there. And during the medley of the song of the year, they had to do ours.

And they had these gigantic boxes that the dancers would be dancing on to my song. and every box had a photo of one of us so literally like my face was this gigantic box Larry's face was gigantic and the dancers are dancing on top of the boxes singing Santa Jaws is coming to town which was just the most surreal and hysterical moment and of course we didn't win yeah who won do you remember not no I do not we could look it up you know it was probably whatever it was a 75 wow um I'm sure we can look it up. Yeah, it's probably the 76 Juno's, I would guess, if this thing, because Jaws.

You know, I've tried to find it, you know, see if CBC has it, you know, I'd love to see that visual of us. Well, if anyone listening, because you never know who's listening. I have a feeling there's some people who have access to a CBC archive or something. So if you can get me a recording of this and I'll share it with Fred and we can go down nostalgia lane together. I think that'd be cool. Yeah, it could be the 75 or 76 Juneos, yeah.

The fact that this novelty single Santa Jaws gets a gold record in this country, I think that's a heck of a star. You're still very young. And this whole chapter, homemade theater, I'm a tit young to remember this. It was probably in diapers when Santa Jaws came out. But as I was catching up, and I mentioned the nostalgia, people a bit older than me have the single, loved it. This was a hit. It was a hit.

It was a blast to hear it on the radio. almost was a hit in the U.S., but A&M in the U.S. picked it up too late, so we just missed it. But it was a smash in Canada, and we heard it on the radio all the time. One of the gentlemen who's got, I think he's got nine years on me, and he had the single, and he loved it, he would hear it on 1150 CCOC in, is that Hamilton? Yeah, that's Hamilton. Yeah. Is a gentleman from Burlington named Rob Proust. Rob gets lots of shoutouts on this show.

Rob Pruse wrote me, not only to tell me he had Santa Jaws and loved it, but he says, he was thinking about a song, I'm not going to name it because I'm going to play a bit of it and then we're going to dive in. But he says, I was thinking of this song, you know what's coming. And he goes, it is one of the best arranged pop ballads. Don't let the passage of 40 years since it's released fool you into thinking it's just another 70s love song.

The lyrics, the vocal, the orchestral arrangement, the piano, the rhythm section. everything. It's intense. I remember every note as if I heard it for the first time only yesterday. Now I'm going to play it. We're going to talk about it, but I need to tell you Rob Proust knows a thing or two about piano arrangements, etc. The man was the keyboardist for spoons during their heyday. So that's like praise from Caesar. This is, and you probably thought I had the wrong year when I said, I'm going to play your song from 1975. You probably thought, oh, he's messing up. This came later than that. But let me

just play some of this, a song sung by a fellow FOTM. FOTM means friend of Toronto Mike. Fred, you're now an FOTM. But let's hear this, and then we'll discuss. I'd rather hurt you honestly that mislead you with a lie. And who am I to judge you on what you say or do? I'm only just beginning to see the real you. And sometimes when we touch, It's too much And I have to close my eyes

And I want to hold you till I die Till we both break down and ride It's too much for me, Fred. I'll hold you till the fear in me subsides Okay, my goodness gracious please, what is your involvement in this Dan Hill hit sometimes when we touch? Well, I produced it. I produced it.

We were kids. I mean, Matt McCauley and I were producing it. Dan was the writer. Barry Mann was also the writer. And, you know, that was back in 77, and it became a hit. Amazingly, Mike, it became a hit at a time of the year that we weren't supposed to release anything except Christmas material. And we actually released it in spite of that rule, and it became a smash hit into 78. And it has been, it's chased me all my life.

It's the most successful single I've ever produced. And certainly I'm very, very proud of it. We were just kids, very, very precocious kids, all of us, Dan, me, and Matt. And we knew we had a smash hit. We did. I think it was just up to us to bring it home. So how did you meet Dan? You know, I had moved to Toronto, as I mentioned, to pursue my,

what I was hoping was going to be my life as a singer-songwriter, performer. And Dan was playing similar gigs and similar clubs in Toronto. And we started hanging out together, and I wound up producing a demo for him. And again, I had no particular skill at producing, but I knew records very well. I was kind of a musicologist, as well as a musician. And he just thought I'd be a great producer. And then he actually did a creative blind date with his old friend he grew up with, Matt McCauley. And Matt and I became partners, and we produced records until Matt decided in 1981 that he no longer wanted to do that.

But Matt and I are still the best of friends. he's my closest friend and I still stay in touch with Dan as well but that's how it started was just really literally being friends with Dan as a fellow singer-songwriter

and then him asking me if I wanted to help him. So we talked about Santa Jaws, right? Which was a Canadian phenomenon but that's a short period of time to go from Santa Jaws to this. Yeah, I mean by the time

I was doing Santa Jaws, I had already produced two Dan Hill albums. And then, which both went gold, by the way, in Toronto, in Toronto, in Canada. And then the third album, Longer Fuse, was the one that had some times when we touch. And now you're not, this is obviously not a, what I find is because I'm born and raised in Toronto and I'm still here, okay, what's wrong with me? You're in Nashville now, you're in New York, you're all over the place. But I always, growing up, I'd hear songs, and I didn't know initially, like, is this a Canadian

hit? Is this big in Canada? Or is this something, you know, they're singing in Nashville or in Germany or something like that? So it's like as you, you know, as the internet emerges and you start to dig in, you can kind of figure out like, oh, this Spoon's song I thought was an international

hit was actually just big in Canada and then you find out this Dan Hill. This is an international hit record. Dan Hill sometimes when we touch. Yeah, we had Canadian hits with Dan on the first two albums starting in 74 and

but sometimes when we touch became an international number one record for the most part Dan Hill's a sweetheart I'm just throwing it out there yes he is and I'm just remembering how I got connected to Dan was through Blair

Packham did you ever cross paths with yeah I love Blair we're Facebook pals these days but he's a wonderful guy okay he's reuniting the jitters they're playing at Hughes Room so oh that's great Fred you got to fly in for the jitters reunion.

I would love to. One fun fact I wanted to ask you about is, again, so that's 1977, when sometimes when we touch it as a big hit, of course. We all know it. It's like our national anthem here. But I was curious if you could just share a little bit. I think it's interesting, and I asked Dan Hill about this, but let's hear from your perspective as a producer,

Mani Pacquiao, okay? I'm married to a woman of Filipino descent. I can tell you when Mani would have his title fights. It was the biggest thing in the world for her family, Monica's family. And Manny Pachio in 2011 did a duet with Dan, a cover of sometimes when we touch that you produced. Can you tell me the Manny Pacchio sometimes when we touch story? Sure. Well, it was the first time I'd ever produced somebody who got beat to death for a living and also beat people to death for a living.

Mani is the sweetest, most lovable guy who happened. to be just a killer fighter. And I think he'll wind up becoming the prime minister. I really do. I think he's such a hero to his people. I think it's a president. Yes. Or is it

is it prime minister or president? I think it's a president. I only remember Dutarte, who I think was arrested subsequently, he had the National Guard or whatever they're called in the Philippines, shooting people for using drugs. This was happening. Yeah. No way.

But I think it's, I think it's president. Yeah, it could be. You know, my story with Manny is pretty interesting. We were recording, I think it had to be around 2010. In Nashville, Matt, Danny, and I had sort of a reunion album we did. It was lovely to do. And the album was called Intimate eventually. And we had a ball making that record.

And part of the time, we would just be yacking away and laughing at my house in Toronto. which is where my studio is for overdubs. And I remember Danny showed me on YouTube. I guess it was from the Jimmy Kimmel show. And it was Manny, this wonderful prize fighter from the Philippines, being asked what he likes to do as a hobby. And he says he likes to sing karaoke. And obviously it was set up.

And Jimmy just said, well, what do you like to sing? What's your favorite song? And he goes sometimes when we touch. and it turns out the Filipino culture love ballads and especially these kinds of ballads and so Jimmy Kimmel said well why don't you go to sit go stand rather over near where the band is

and sing it for us and the band already had the song ready to go and manny sang the song this this prize fighting guy sang the most tender ballad and he was so passionate about it visually we couldn't we didn't laugh at it we were just just really stunned by it And I looked at Dan and Matt and I said, boy, do I see a great opportunity here, like really great opportunity.

And he said, and Matt and Dan both said, what are you talking about? I said, we've got to get in touch with this guy, have him do a duet with the original guy who did sometimes when we touch, meaning you, and we'll produce it. And it might be a smash hit in the Philippines and who knows where. And we got a hold of his manager, and the next thing you know, we're flying to New York to meet at the St. Regis Hotel, and, you know, they'd booked the top floor, and we're all there just laughing, getting to know Manny. And a month later, we're at Capitol Studios in L.A. and we're recording sometimes when we touch with Manny and Dan. And it was really quite a lovely experience, and very hard to put that vocal together for Manny because it's English as a second language, so it was very, very hard to get him to pronounce. certain words and whatever, but, you know, I worked very hard on that. And it did come out. And I don't think many of his fight fans cared about him singing a ballad like that. But certainly

the Filipino culture loved it. Yeah. I could imagine the Philippines would eat that up. Yeah. Yeah. It was, we don't really have any idea of how it did, but I have a feeling that, you know, everyone knew that version. So hearing that little story there, which is wild, that's from 2011, that, uh, duet, which features Dan Hill, of course. But it makes me think of, okay, so I've become friends with Snow. Snow had a big hit with Informer. You might have heard it a few, a few dozen times. Okay. And basically, he doesn't record new material anymore, but, you know, if you want to do a, I don't know, if you want to make a fiddle version, because I'm working on this of Ashley McIsaac, I have this vision, but if you want to do a

fiddle version of Informer. Like, he'll go on that. And Informer did become a hit again in 2019 because Daddy Yankee made a reggaeton version of it, and it became a massive hit again. And I was just thinking, Dan could just keep producing Dan, remaking sometimes when we touch with different people. Just a thought of it. I think it would be a good reggae song. You know, actually, I could put this together. I think I'm talking to the right guy, okay, because Paul Faber, do you know the name Paul Farberman by any chance? I love Paul.

Paul is working with snow right now and all these things. And I think there should be a sometimes when we touch like reggae version with snow and Dan Hill. Love the idea. I can put that together.

Look, I'm going to connect you and make that happen. I'm being serious right now. I like the idea. Okay, good. Sometimes people play along with me on the podcast. No, no. I mean, again, I mean,

I think it's a great, you know, I think that'd be really fun. Amazing. Okay, and I realize now people definitely need to buy unplugged stories and secrets from a life of making records, scoring film, and working with the legends of music, because I realize now all the places I want to hit, I'm going to probably chat you up for four or five hours here. So I'm going to cut to a couple of notes I took, and then I have a whole different area I want to talk to you about.

But earlier today, I was chatting with Paul Myers, who also a dear friend. of Blair Packham, by the way, but he, brother of Mike Myers, and Paul and I are chatting because for six months, I've had Paul in the calendar to visit the basement to talk about John Candy, and now he's telling me his schedule is so crazy he can't actually get here.

Anyways, that's a whole separate. I've got to work that out with Paul. But I understand you, maybe this is during the homemade theater years, but you knew Mike Myers before Wayne's World was a thing. Am I right about this? It wasn't the homemade theater years. It was when I was back

in Toronto. I had moved to L.A. from 78 to 81, and so did my brother, which effectively ended homemade theater. And then I moved back to Toronto, because my wife and I wanted to have kids and didn't want to have them in L.A. And I wanted to try to, and I missed, frankly, Toronto. So we moved back in 81. And, you know, I was doing a lot of different kinds of work to try to, you know, make ends meet, found myself all of a sudden doing TV and film score and being very successful at it. And in 1987, which is probably one of my favorite years of my life, I was so busy on so many fronts, scoring Friday the 13th of TV series, scoring My Secret Identity, scoring a TV series out of LA called The New Gidgett. And I was also a co-host with

Ted Walshian on a show called It's Only Rock and Roll. And this was 87. It was a CBC show at night, and we loved doing it. It was so much fun. And about halfway through the series, John Brunton, the producer, said, hey, we've got to get some other people to be a part of the comedy skits. And he said, you know, so we're looking at people at Second City to see if anyone, you know, floats our boat.

And one of the people that we looked at, because Ted and I were involved, was a guy named Mike Myers from Scarborough, who probably was about 19 or 20, I bet. And we just loved him. He was so full of energy. He was so funny. you know he was just literally you know we knew he'd be a star and at the same time you know we also

knew that he would just you know probably eclipse us no problem but the bottom line was we wanted some really talented people on the show and along with with a few others we got mike to do the second half of the series and during that series Mike came up with the the character of Wayne and part of what I would do is I'd be this sort of straight man to Wayne in these different comedy segments of this variety show we did with rock and roll and um i just loved him and we had a lot of fun so you know those little bits exist um and they're really fun to watch but he did you know he created wayne and then he brought it to saturday night live and i guess what happens is when you bring things to saturday night characters or ideas to saturday in light live

Lauren Michaels owns everything. So basically the movie Wayne's world, Mike owned nothing. He, Lauren Michaels and Paramount owned everything. And when I saw Mike years later, he was doing the I'm blanking out

the other series. Austin Powers. Austin Powers, yeah. And he was, I met him at the Four Seasons Bar in L.A. And he was doing Austin Powers' second movie. and we embraced and he said oh my god you know your show bought my first furniture for me and blah blah blah and i said you know and he told me about the whole thing with wayne's world and he said yeah he said but on austin powers fred i own 70% of everything wow and i was like that's beautiful you know

so you got to have that you got to live and learn right you got to oh i need to own my shit if i'm going to make real money we all we all have lessons sometimes we have hard ones. So when you produce the show, I know you co-produced with Matt McCauley. Like when you co-produce a song like sometimes when we touch, because you didn't write the song, if somebody covers it, you don't actually see money from that? No, no. We only see money from our version that we produced. Okay, well, I'm going to ask you a moment about a song you actually co-wrote, so I know you'll see my own. But first, a couple of notes is Ted Wallachin's been down here, love talking to Ted. So hello to Ted, I suppose. And it's interesting.

to hear you say John Brunton's name well he's producing so much TV in this country but I just had Humble Howard Glassman over here last week and he was talking about working with Ed the Sock at City TV and that he was telling the story of how John Brunton saw him working with Deanie Petty

and that's how we got the hosting gig with Ed the Sock for Ed's Night Party so I just love hearing these names I guess is what I'm saying here I think Toronto really had I know it's so different now but we really did have such an incredibly interesting community for so many years that was so

such a brotherhood and sisterhood really you know and i guess i'm here to collect all these different stories so we could connect these dots here very much thoughts that's great but one story though that minor conflict i'm wondering if you could speak to this and uh i heard you tell the story about mike myers kind of inventing the wayne campbell character and another gentleman who's been on this show sort of takes credit for the TV debut of that character

Christopher Ward so Christopher Ward had a show we had city limits on city TV sort of a precursor to much music but he says

a young Mike Myers would come by and created the character of Wayne Campbell on his show so I feel like we have a coinciding

Wayne Campbell No I'm gonna I'm gonna say that's very possible that that wasn't on our radar. I'm just saying for sure that, you know, as far, let's put it this way,

as far as a national CBC show, Mike Myers came on with Mike, with Wayne for the first time ever with our show. Love it. And of course, famously, because he's on the record saying this, Mike Myers never envisioned a Garth character. Like this was something that I guess Lorne Michaels and SNL kind of forced upon him

and then it became Wayne and Garth, but the vision from Mike Myers was no garth, I suppose. Yeah, there was no Garth-like guy on our show. Maybe that was you? No, I mean, but boy, boy, I mean, I really played the straight man to Mike.

Right. You know, it was funny because I remember like, I mean, because generally I'm not a straight man, so it was pretty funny to be one. That's like when Leslie Nielsen became, I just saw the, well, I saw the new naked gun and then I have an 11-year-old. Me too.

Yeah, I saw. I saw that and then I was like, I have memories. Again, I'm a bit younger than you, but I remember about 14 years old. I'm in the theater to see The Naked Gun. I honestly haven't laughed that much in a theater since. This is honest to God truth. Like side hurting belly laughs. I'm not even a belly laugh guy at the movie theaters, but I found that whole movie The Naked Gun so ridiculously funny. And I should just point out, I hadn't yet seen airplane. I should just put that out. I saw that later. But I watched the original Naked Gun with my, my 11-year-old just this past weekend. And he also had belly laughs, I just want to say. I think the new one. I mean, I was sitting there watching it with my, with my fiancee, and she liked it, you know, but I was howling. Just so funny. Rob Proust, again, one quick thing. He wants me to ask you about Bobby Ogden, the piano player on the song, sometimes when we touch, he says he played for years with some guy named Elvis Presley.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. had, you know, when we did sometimes when we touch as well as other cuts on the Longer Fuse album back in 1977, we were using a lot of Nashville players who would come to Nashville, I mean, sorry,

come to Toronto, and we'd record with us. So we used half Canadian players and half from Nashville. And Larry London on drums would come up, and Bobby Ogden, the keyboard player on sometimes when we touch was also there. And so we would fly both of them up,

and they were just incredible to work with. And, you know, Bobby Ogden, who I still see around Nashville, he's still okay. You know, he's sort of retired, but he was brilliant. And Bobby is the one who came up with the piano intro on sometimes when we touch literally in the first run-through, and then the next run-through was the take. And that was Bobby's brilliance to come up with that piano intro. I'd love you to tell me a little bit about One Chance.

This is the, I know you co-wrote it. and you co-produced it for Stan Meisner. And, of course, it was covered by Eddie Money. So do you receive any Eddie Money for that version of One Chance? Well, you know, One Chance was Stan's solo, quote-unquote, Canadian hit. But he didn't do a lot to help promote it because he didn't play live. So I think we missed our shot to make it a bigger hit. But actually, it's one of my proudest productions of that time.

and I did co-write it with Stan. It's one of my favorite songs we wrote. And I love Stan. He's still one of my closest pals. And we did a... We had made a deal with Almo Irving, which is A&M Records Publishing Company. So they got the publishing.

We got the writer's share. And then Eddie Money did cover it on an album that went double platinum in the U.S. But I don't think I ever got the right money for the Eddie Money recording. Because I think that should have taken care of my advance and stuff, I don't think it ever did. What a shady business you're in there.

I feel like I hear this story all the time. I think that the great part about my years of where I didn't make records for quite a while, and I just did TV and film score nonstop, those were very profitable years because you get money from Airplay, and that money is not collected by, let's say, record labels collect on record sales. Ask App BMI and CSAC and then in Canada, so can. They collect all the airplay royalties and all the accurate, it's very accurate. It's very true royalty payments and statements. So it was wonderful to have to deal with that for 15 years as opposed to try to deal with a record label when you have a hit and you know you're not getting the proper payment because they

make a living out of sort of screwing people. You know, that's just their deal. But the nice part about the airplay royalty on ASCAP and SOCAN and BMI is that, you know, it was all very transparent. No, great. That's a great perspective there, absolutely. So I do want to talk about TV and film composing, but there's a name I'm going to throw at you. Well, two names I'm going to throw at you on our way there.

One is Jimmy Webb. Tell me about working with Jimmy Webb. I know you produced 10 easy pieces. I did. I've produced five albums for Jimmy over the years. I've worked with him since I was 23. I've been his record producer, his musical arranger, and musical director ever since. He is my longest-running client and part of my family.

He is America's greatest songwriter, in my opinion. I mean, probably along with Paul Simon and maybe Joni Mitchell and, you know, a few others who wrote lyrics and music together. And Jimmy is probably the least known of those because he didn't really make a living as a solo performer, even though he made a lot of solo records they didn't sell. But early on, actually, sometimes when we touch was a hit, I had already been a huge fan of Jimmy's first couple of solo albums.

And actually, no, he'd done maybe four solo albums. and they were all commercial failures but they were brilliant artistically and I loved his voice it was raw and unique and I loved his writing I thought his writing was absolutely frighteningly brilliant and I remember being

with Matt we were at the offices of Harvey Cooper at 20th century Fox Records which is where Dan Hill was distributed in the U.S. with and we had just had the hit with sometimes when we touch and I remember sitting in Harvey Cooper's office

and it was a great Hollywood moment and he looked at us and he goes listen, whoever you want to produce next I'm going to get them for you and I'm like oh wow you know and he goes so who do you want and I could have said

James Taylor you know Elton John Jackson Brown I said Jimmy Webb and he said why in a very very unhappy why

because he's the greatest songwriter I've ever heard, and he's got a great voice, and he's never been produced properly, and I know Matt and I could kill a record with him. And he said, okay. And so he literally did the old, you know, hey, Betty, get Jimmy Webb's manager on the phone. And all of a sudden he's speaking to Willie Williams,

who's Jimmy's manager, and the next day we're in the office meeting with Willie, and Willie likes us, and the next day we went to Jimmy's house, and we hung out and got hot, and laughed, and he just said, you guys have to produce me. Wow. Wow. That's a great,

I'm so glad I asked about Jimmy there. Yeah, and then it turned into the first album I produced called Angel Heart, which was recorded in 78 and 79, and came out in 1980. Who produced Santa Jaws? Santa Jaws was produced by me and Andy Hermant, who was the owner of Manta Sound. Just trying to correct all these public records here.

Okay. You didn't know. You'd be grilled, like ask the guys from Sloan. It's hot and sweaty on this show. Okay. Fun fact, I produce a show for a prolific film producer named Avi Federer Green. And the show is called Unleashed. And he, so I don't get to that. Although I do get to ask a question or two in the show now that I think about it. But he's interviewing people. He just had Megan Follows on the show. And of course, everybody wants to talk about Anna Green Gables and everything. But all I can remember is 10-year-old Mike excitedly tuning in to CBC because Megan Follows was going to play

a goaltender playing against you know males men and this movie which I erroneously thought was called she shoots she scores which makes no sense because she's playing a goalie

so she's not scoring it makes no sense but that's how I remembered it and of course this movie was called hockey night and then just for fun I'm bouncing around who's in it oh my god it's a pre-Murdoch mysteries

Yanik Bisson and Megan follows and then I see music by some guys named Fred Malin. Do you remember doing anything for hockey night, the CBC? Oh, of course. No, I wrote the music for it. But, I mean, that was really during that time when I moved back to L.A., I'm sorry, moved back from L.A. to Toronto. And my wife and I had made that journey back. And I thought I would be super busy in Canada because I had had such good years in L.A. coming off of sometimes when we touch. And I got to,

Toronto in 81 and literally it was crickets. There was nobody looking for me to work. I had one project to do and then it was really, really rough, you know. And so I fell into a few things where people called me and said, hey, would you want to try doing a music score for a little TV movie? And I had no experience doing that. And, you know, but I just said yes to everything. So a hockey night, after a while, I was working with people who liked. what I did when I was trying to earn while I learned. And they liked me enough. And so I think Hockey Night was one of the first, maybe four,

maybe it was like number four, number five of my first TV movies I ever scored. And I remember, you know, I didn't have a sampling, big sequencing keyboard to start working on. I had to use different synthesizers and live instruments. And it was a bit of a challenge. and I probably would really want to refund their money if I saw it again. But I did write a good song for it. I really felt good about the song I wrote.

Okay, what's the name of that song? It's called Making a Stand. And I brought in a girl named Taffy McElroy from Memphis to sing it. And I thought that was the best part of the movie that song. Okay, so we're now transitioning into some film and television composition stuff. I'm going to play.

I have a couple of things loaded. up. I'm aching to play with you, but one, I want to play a bit of this. This is better than my imagination. This is more than a dream come true. Without the slightest bit of hesitation, I knew what I was meant to do. You never guess my secret identity. Freddie Who's on the inside hide a hand You never know what you see

When you unlock a mystery Sometimes this double light gets out of hand And it's all in a day's work For all what you meant Freddie baby My Secret Identity I watched this show This show tricked me into thinking

Jerry O'Connell was Canadian Right, right I just assumed so Because it seemed like it was a Canadian production I just assumed he was Canadian I'd seen him in What's the Stephen? Stand By Me

I'd seen him in Stand By Me But please, you wrote that song? I did, I wrote and produced that theme song and also scored 44 episodes of the series. Okay, so just in the timeline of things, because you talked about Friday the 13th, not the movie, the series, but that's an 87 Friday the 13th.

So are we, so now as we talk about like hockey night and my secret identity, is this all work before you kind of break into American productions? No, I think 87 is when I broke into American productions with the Friday the 13th, the TV series, which was Paramount and just being shot in Canada and then I did the new

Gidget for Columbia and then I also did My Secret Identity which was a universal show but again all these were using Canada to make some savings and also to get some Canadian content they would get tax incentives

etc so I was Canadian and so I got a lot of those gigs but 87 I was doing all those series and I don't know who it was, but man, I was busy and I did good work. No, I'd say you did good work here. Now is a chance for me to ask you about another FOTM who comes up quite a bit on this program. So I'm just going to play a song. Then you'll tell me what it's from and who it is and all that important stuff here.

One more. It's never easy to leave the past behind. The only answer gets harder to find. The passion buzzer. The pages turn Break the silence Until the darkness away Break the silence

Let the silence Fred, who's beautiful voice. Fred, who's beautiful voice am I hearing here? That's Molly Johnson. Molly Johnson. Wow, break the silence. What series is this from? That's from one of my favorite TV series I've ever done.

It was Forever Night, and it was in the 90s. and ran three seasons and then was in reruns for a long time about a vampire cop a guy who wanted to try to get his life back in this new life as a vampire cop in Toronto played by Garant Winn Davies

wonderful guy and great actor and they would need during each episode songs for the vampire bar and it was called the Raven the bar and so Stan Meisner my dear buddy and songwriting partner. He and I would write these songs that felt sort of dark and creepy and weird and they would use those as the soundtrack for the vampire bar and uh and that was one of them that we did break the silence. You know, a lot of those because I was so busy scoring three TV

series at once that I would just write the lyrics and I would tell Stan okay you put the music to this and you produce that that diversion. So really Stan was the producer on all of those songs but I was the co-writer with Stan on those. So what was it like, did you work closely with Molly Johnson, or were you there when she recorded this? I wasn't there, no. I mean, I've met Molly. She and her sister, Tabora, would come on our, it's only rock and roll show in 87.

So I had met them back then. What a talented family. Yeah, it's a great, super talented family. But I was not around for the recording of any of the Raven songs. we used Laurie Yates as well a lot of times and Stan did a great job of creating these really cool very dark sort of moody musical backgrounds really cool now I would be remiss if I didn't ask you

how you got the gig working on some guy named Aaron Spelling show Beverly Hills 902 and oh well here's the deal nepotism does exist oh just asked Torrey right Yeah, and I'm not I'm not averse to nepotism. I mean, my brother became, from being an actor,

early on, he became a writer and producer of television. He was eventually hired on numerous great shows, including 90210. And during one of the later seasons of 90210, he was put in a position where he could hire a new composer. And that was me. And so I had no problem saying, Yep, my brother got me the gig, but of course, you know, I got the gig, but I had to prove myself to everyone involved at spelling.

And by the way, it was always Mr. Spelling, if you ever talked about him, you know. And I never met him. But, you know, I had to go through a lot of baptism of fire once Larry got me the gig. But I did a full season of 90210, and it was the season that Torrey loses her virginity. So I did that episode. Of course, to David Silver. Yeah, to David. And so that's the only one of the whole season where I did get notes from Mr. Spelling

before I wrote the piece and he said, please make this romantic. And please let me hear it when it's done. So that was a pretty heavy one to have to write, but I think I did a good job on that. Absolutely. What an epic, what an epic moment. in that series here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, how many Gemini's have you won? I think I've only won one. And I'm not even sure I won one. I think it was Beyond Reality. You won one for Best Original Music Score for a series. Okay, it was for Beyond Reality. Yeah, 91.

Yeah, boy, I don't even remember winning it. I remember being nominated a couple times. But I'll have to go see. I have an area of my kitchen where there's Socan awards and some other awards, and I'll have to see if that's there, yeah. Well, yeah, I was going to ask you, where's your Gemini? But it sounds like you're not even sure you won it, so it doesn't sound like you're... I don't remember winning it. Isn't that funny? I just don't remember winning it.

That's because you've been in America too long. I feel like... No, I think it was because it really was, it was, in 91, I was, you know, I was literally scoring like three TV series at once, producing a record. I mean, I just, I don't know how I, I don't know who that guy was. I hear you. No, I hear you. You're prolific. And there's a whole chapter I'm going to get to in just a moment here, and I'm going to shed out some names. But I just want to throw one more show I'd see. I feel like in the days before internet, like you'd kind of come home from school, I'm speaking for myself here, and you'd throw on something.

So you inevitably would watch hard copy at some point. Like, hard copy was just on. Like, I can't believe I did that, but I definitely saw many an episode of hard copy. And what did you do for Paramount's hard copy? That was in the 90s. And it was because I had done so much work in TV and film, including work for Paramount, that the person who was now in charge of Paramount's TV music happened to be one of the sort of people who was a part of a team during the years

I did the new Gidget for Columbia. So we had a friendship, and he said, listen, we're, you know, we're calling a few composers to write a hundred different music cues that we use as a library for hard copy. Now, by the way, this was a fantastic gig, because, you know, if they used five minutes of your music every episode, you know, by the end of the year, you made $100 grand in royalties. Wow. And all you did was these initial library music things,

and then they used them at their discretion. So I was never a part of placing the music, but I did do this 100-song library for hard copy. You know, smart. You're a smart guy. You figured out how to make a great living at all this. I'm now thinking of a story long time ago, Robert Altman, you sadly no longer,

this of course but Robert only was talking about how his son made more money from the mash movie than he did because his son wrote the lyrics to suicide is painless and yeah like this it was really eye-opening for me who's not in the business at all like to oh it's this guy he directs the damn thing you know it spun off into a you obviously didn't own it but he spun off into a most one of the most popular series of all time but his son got a credit for writing the music which of course played on every episode of mash the TV series so his son made bank for that

we call that a lottery win I mean that is so fantastic you know the story behind that is great because in the movie mesh which was a wonderful movie Altman directed there's that one scene where one of the characters plays this little song on guitar

suicide is painless and it's really only a verse and a little bit of a chorus and when it came down to making the TV series they just loved the idea of that melody being the theme and so it became the theme now if Altman's son wrote the lyrics

it's still the copyright was that was Johnny Mandel who wrote the music and Altman's son as the writers so even though they didn't sing the lyrics at the in the actual TV series Altman I mean Altman yes

and Mandel and Fox publishing would have received all the airplay royalties so by the way I know for a fact that Mandel because he was managed by one of my managers for years. He made, on the average, a million five every year from his side of that theme. Oh, my God. Wow.

Okay. It played all over the world, sometimes three or four times a day. And still does. Absolutely. Now I just dropped this. I was talking to Paul Cole last week, and Paula Cole wrote the song that became the theme song to Dawson's Creek. But that's not what happened

with our Toronto band Bare Naked Ladies when Tyler Stewart was convinced to come home from the cottage to record something because there was a new show that, hey,

we could be the theme song for and that was Big Bang Theory. Right. It's just... Oh, boy. Wow, bottom, I think that paid for the cottage. Okay, so...

And more. So, okay, here's what we're going to do. You've been amazing. How is this going for you so far? You're enjoying your Toronto mic. debut. I'm loving it. I mean, ever since Santa Jaws, I've never stopped smiling. Well, I was going to, I threatened in this not so secret what's app group. I threatened to do 45 minutes on Santa Jaws and 45 minutes on sometimes when we touch. But yeah, yeah, sure. I'm going to ask

you about some, just anecdotes about some big names, but here's big name to me, okay, but I, I know you worked with Frank Stallone quite a bit. How did that, like, how does that come to be that you're working with Frank Stallone and how is it working with Frank Stallone? Well, interestingly enough, again, in the early part of my moving back to

Toronto, 81, I started to do a couple of little music for TV films, you know, short little film shorts or whatever, really learning while I earned and Sid Cap

and Nick Stiliatus had a small company, and when they decided to do their own first feature film, it had to be around 1984, 1985, and I was still by no means yet a seasoned TV and film composer. I really was just learning and struggling at times, but doing okay at times. And I was able to somehow be considered as the music super, for this film they were doing called, I think it was called Pink Chiquitas. And Pink Chiquitas starred Frank Stallone as a private eye, I think. And of course, you know, this is Sylvester Stallone's brother.

He'd had some success with one song, but otherwise was living in the shadow of his brother. But he was very, very lovely and very funny. I mean, Frank is like a stand-up comedian. So I just, you know, got this gig. And the next thing you know, I'm working with Frank on this movie, producing a couple songs for him in the movie. And then he said to me one day, he said, you know, I want to do a big band album. And he said, I want to use Sammy Nestico on arrangements.

And I knew Sammy Nestico as being probably the world's greatest living big band arranger and legendary. And I was so thrilled. Frank said, so you'll produce it with me. And so we did this record, which was financed by Frank and his family. and we did it, I think, again, probably 1985, I think. And we used a 65 piece

big band and orchestra, which Sammy Nestico arranged and then he came in and conducted. And Frank happens to be one of the greatest big band type singers that you've ever heard. I mean, he literally, he can channel Sinatra, he can channel Bobby Darren, and man oh man, the record I did with him,

which has been called different records over the years, day in, day out, or I think it's called In Love and Vane. It's a masterful album, the most beautiful arrangements. Frank sings his butt off, and, you know, I mean, I don't know how much producing there really was, because, I mean, it was so beautifully arranged and well recorded by my engineer, but I'm very proud of that record. Thank you for asking about that. Day in, day out is how I see it listed on discogs.

Yeah, for what it's worth there. Frank Stallone, wow. Okay, I need to ask you about this duet productions, okay? So you sort of have a reputation for bringing like iconic artists together for duets. Can you tell me what I'm talking about and then maybe we can just name check some of these months, bigger names than Frank Stallone, believe it or not? Yes, bigger, yeah, for sure. You know, over the years, because I've produced a lot of records, It started to become a bit of a thing where, you know, we'd get to a certain part of the album and the artist and I would be talking and maybe I'd suggest it or maybe the artist would suggest, you know, this song would be a good duet.

Maybe we could get and, you know, sometimes we'd be guessing or wishing for something or sometimes the artist might know known somebody or I might have known somebody. So, you know, wouldn't it be great to have a duet with, so let's say, you know, Michael McDonald. and it turned out that I've known Michael forever and we're very, very close friends and have been for years and years and years. So calling Michael's not a problem and so, you know, maybe one of the first duets I did

was with Michael. And then, you know, there's a big long list in the book that talks about the people I've worked with and believe me, it's a stunning list and I can't believe I've had the chance to produce them. Well, I teased monster names. I'll just throw a few at the listenership,

but really Mel. Wilson? Yeah. Billy Joel. You know, speaking of Carly Simon, Vince Gill, Glenn Campbell, Crosby and Nash, Art Garfunkel, Jackson Brown, Linda Ronstant. These are big freaking names. And then if we want to get a little more moderns, you, you, was it Billy Ray Cyrus and Miley Cyrus? Yeah, we had Miley do a duet on a song called Ready Set Don't Go that I was producing for Billy Ray. and actually at first we weren't going to ask her because she wasn't even really singing back then she was on the Hannah Montana TV show

but really was not much of a singer and it just turned out that the record label which was Walt Disney Records really believed that it would be a hit if we had her on it and I by no means I didn't disagree I thought it was a great idea and so Molly's on there

singing along with her dad well my 21 year old daughter attended the church of Miley back in those Hannah Montana days so that was a big deal. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. That's, you know, I was running Disney's A&R out of Burbank with my first and only

real job for a year, and that year was the big Hannah Montana and high school musical year. Look, they were staples in my home, that's for sure. One name I'm going to ask you about here, and then we're going to change well, I'm going to ask you about two names because it's my show. What are you going to do? Leave the Zoom? Come on,

you can't do that. Chris Cornell. I freaking loved Chris Cornell. What did you do with Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Audio Slave Fame? Well, I produced an album, I think around 2011, for Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks's wife and a great actress and singer herself. But I produced her first album where I really had to sort of mentor her in how to sing at the mic, etc. because she really had done it before, but we made this beautiful record called AMFM. And it was all songs that we covered from the years of AM radio as well as the years of FM radio.

And there were a lot of guest duets on that record. You know, their particular Rolodex went very deep. Mine was pretty good, but, you know, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson's Rolodex was really good. And we did a version of All I Have to Do is Dream by the Everly Brothers, which is one of my favorite songs. and we did a gorgeous version of it and we were thinking about who could do the harmony

and some solo lines as a duet overdub and it turned out that because Rita's she's got sort of Greek genetics she had become friendly with another Greek who was married to Chris Cornell and they were great pals and so she called this gal who's married to Chris

and said would Chris consider doing a duet with me and apparently he said no problem you know when do i do it he was one of my favorite singers i mean the guy was monstrous died terribly unfortunately and terribly young um but i did i do have some lovely memories of hanging with him and doing that vocal and uh it's a beautiful record and he sings just in a whole different way in a beautiful way and uh i'm sure i'm sorry he's gone terrible loss well listeners of this program know i'm a big 90s alt rock guy and for my money there was no better singer in that scene than chris cornell no i agree yeah and can you name there's a pop quiz for you can you name the movie uh on which which is on which is on the where tom hanks

and rita wilson met the movie they met um i'm trying to think i phrased that awkwardly i realized in my head. No, no, I know. I did know this, but I'm not remembering now. I'd be guessing. Sure. Was it sleepless in Seattle? No. No, it's before that. It was volunteers. I wouldn't remember that. Tom Hanks, yeah. And you mentioned the Greek heritage of Rita Wilson, of course. She was a producer of some sort on my big fat Greek wedding, which was a Toronto phenomenon as well. Yes, and she also was one of the producers and, you know, makes a fortune off of Mamma Mia. And you want to hear the mind blow of the day that Rob Pruse, who sent in that question early that we talked about, Rob Proust currently

working on the Broadway touring version of Mamma Mia, the musical. Wow. So it's all connected to that. Rita is one of the producers. Wow. Okay. Well, I'm going to tell Rob because Rob's here tomorrow morning, coincidentally, for Toast with Bob Willett, Rob Proust.

I will tell him to get Rita Wilson on Toronto mic. How does that sound? I hope you do. Yeah. One last name here, and then one more song, this whole different wild world that we haven't even referenced yet what did you do with Shania Twain, Canadian's global superstar

I did nothing except we had to threaten to sue Okay tell me this story because I understood you wrote a song for her I'm not sure I can actually I don't think I can I think we're actually Yeah I think You know she had

Before she was Shania And she was Eileen Twain. She had a career in Ontario and also sang at the Deerhurst Inn for years and she had a bunch of tracks

recorded by a different producer way back when and one of the songs she cut was a Stan Meisner Fred Mullen song and I can't go any further than saying that no one knew that she had done it and

unfortunately there were reasons for our concern. Well, I'll just say one word, which is interesting. Yeah. Okay. And by the way, it had nothing to do with her. I mean, she had, you know, she had signed away everything probably at that point. And so whoever was involved with that record is who we really were trying to get at, so to speak.

And you can always stick in your bio now that you wrote a song recorded by Shania Twain. I do. I think I do. Well, I read it somewhere. I read it somewhere. All right, so a last musical note here before we, well, we changed to a different genre, a different, you know, style. Jesus, take the wheel. I was reading last week, somebody who co-wrote the song, passed away. Yes. You know, Gordy Samson, who is my dear friend from Nova Scotia, who I basically moved to Nashville so he could have success.

Once I moved him here, within a year, I had negotiated a publishing deal for him, which I got a small piece of. and one of the first songs he wrote that was a smash was Jesus Take the Wheel which was awfully lovely to have and it was co-written by Hillary Lindsay and Brett James and it was Carrie Underwood's biggest hit and he was monumentally successful

Brett James who was the co-writer with Gordy just recently died in a small plane crash that's right I'm sorry to hear that yeah yeah terrible But that sadness aside, this was a lucrative song for you. It was a lucrative song for everyone involved. I mean, I just had a small piece, but I was so proud of Gordy and so proud that he, you know, had such great success, and he has continued to.

Okay. In two minutes or less, I'm going to just tell the listeners, I know you're in Nashville, so you probably won't make a trip to the GTA to attend TMLX21. It's November 29th at Palma's Kitchen. It's at noon. I'm going to do a live recording. Fred, let's get you up here. How about it?

You and Gary Chowen can come by. I would love that. I would love it. November 29th. Palma pasta will feed you. And Great Lakes Brewery will make sure you have some fresh craft beers. So it's going to be fab. I like everything you're saying.

Everyone's invited, especially Fred and Gary. Okay. Blue Sky Agency just decided they want to do two more months of sponsorship of this program to keep these conversations going. So much love to Doug Mills. You can write Doug now. Doug at bluesky agency.ca.ca. He's eager to chat with you

and any Toronto Mike listeners looking for dynamic and creative work environments. I can tell you, my wife was ordered to get back in the office four days a week. This is literally a new thing where she works. And I think it's happening across this continent. So, you know, you need to configure your office space

and reimagine it. Doug's your guy. I have a convo, Doug, at blue sky agency.ca. Ridley Funeral Home, they have a great podcast called Life's Undertaking, Brad Jones and I, and we record new episodes every two weeks. So subscribe and enjoy Life's Undertaking from Ridley Funeral Home. And last but not least, RecycleMyElectronics.ca. That's where you go, Fred, if you have old electronics, old devices.

Well, you can't. I think you have to be in Canada. But everyone else, okay? Go to Recyclemyelectronics.com. put in your post of code and find out where you can drop things off to be properly recycled so those chemicals don't end up in our landfill. May I play one more song, Fred? Of course, yeah. Don't fall asleep on me, okay? Very soothing. I'll move this to the background here. I am getting a little bit relaxed over here, Fred. My goodness gracious, we haven't talked at all about this, but when I'm doing my homework, I realize you have a whole.

career, which I don't even know how to describe it, except it's like children's instrumental favorites. How would you describe this part of your career and how did this come to be? You know, I think it's, again, I think my career is so goofy because it's predicated on me getting phone calls and me just saying yes to anything. So I just basically always took stuff on because I figured a gig is a gig is a gig, and I probably needed to make a living. So in the middle of, again, a very busy time in my TV and film score years, I think it was 1998, I got the phone call from Jay Landers, who was then at Walt Disney Records, and he said, we want to do an instrumental lullaby album using Disney songs and do them in a very meditative, very calming manner of instrumental music that would put the child to sleep. And he said, do you want to do it? And of course I said, like I said, yes. So, um, I had never done one before, so I had to sort of decide how to do it. And I brought in a few people that I trusted, and I played some keyboards on it myself,

and then we used a real orchestra. And we did this very calming, beautiful record, and it was called Disney's Lullaby album. And it was, again, music to put this small child to sleep. And it became a tremendous success. And to this day, I'm, you know, I, you know, I, you know, I can't believe, but it begat six other instrumental lullaby albums for Disney. I've done a ton of other work for Disney. I ran Disney's A&R in L.A. for a year.

And so I had a tremendously great run thanks to Walt Disney Records. But the lullaby music is really something I'm beyond proud of. It actually makes wonderful money for me, which is fabulous. And on top of it, it does a good thing. It puts little kids to sleep nicely. And I'll give you a quick anecdote. You know, I didn't realize, you know, first of all, I didn't realize how many, we're talking over 250 million streams of this music,

not to mention the album has gone platinum, et cetera. And then the others have done extremely well as well. So I was looking for a new car about six months ago in Nashville. And there was about a 30-year-old gal who was my salesperson. And we're looking at cars, and halfway through when she's showing me cars, she looked at me and she said, are you the Fred Mullen who did these instrumental music lullaby albums? And I said, yeah. And she almost started to cry.

And she said, you know, I fell asleep to your music ever since I was a baby. And I still listened to your records. And I was so moved. Then I, of course, I said, can I get a better deal now? and I think I did actually no but I was I was so moved that you know I've run into people like this for years and years I get fan letters all the time

and I'm very very proud of that music and I have to say out of all the things I've done as an artist because I am the artist on these records I've never had a more successful run I was on YouTube just what is the most popular because they're all so heavily streamed but the one I played, you'll be in my heart.

That was the most popular one in terms of number of streams. Really? Yeah, unless it was just the keyword I looked up. Maybe there is others. That's just, I mean,

it doesn't surprise me, but also does surprise me. Well, that's beautiful. And again, you mentioned you did other work of Disney owns Pixar, but Disney owns everything.

If you're in doubt who owns something, Disney probably owns it, but they own Pixar. And I know you did like a Ratatooie album, what's cooking it's called. you did a Finding Nemo album. Of course, Lightning McQueen's fast tracks. These are big deals for a certain demographic.

So good on you, man. I'm glad I got to meet you. And I, again, urge the listenership to pick up unplugged stories and secrets from a life of making records, scorn film, and working with the legends of music. Is there any story you were itching to tell that I just didn't prompt for? Is there anything you wanted to do? Well, you know what? I mean, of course there are.

but I'm going to tell you, first of all, thank you so much, because I'm, you know, the book is very, very much takes place in Canada because so much of my career is in Canada. But I can tell you that if people want the book, you can get it on all the normal situations, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., Indigo, but I do want to mention that if you want an autographed and inscribed copy, you go to Fred Malin unplugged.com, and then the publisher sends me, a book that I will then personally autograph and inscribe. But I can tell you that it is a very Canadian story on many levels. It's really, again, a story about my life and music and

the wonderful and unique people I've worked with and cool projects. But I can tell you this was a blast to talk to you about, I mean, you had me from Santa Jaws on, you know? Love Santa Jaws. Again, I was too young at the time, but loving it now.

I forgot to ask you, how many Junos have you won? I think I've won three. I think I won two for some times when we touch and then longer fuse the album. And then we had a kid's album for A&M called the Rugrats, not to be confused with the cartoon Rugrats that stole our name. Did you lawyer up on that one? We did. And the problem was that our lawyer, who had originally started with us, had not trademarked our name. So we didn't really have the kind of cloud we needed. and should have used Paul Farberman

who were you thinking? Oh man that was a long time ago you know I would love to have used Paul but yeah we sort of we lost out on that because we know for a fact that they actually called their show the Rugrats because they had they had seen and heard the A&M records that we had done so that was my third Juneau

I've been nominated for a bunch but I think as producer those three wow were you at the recording of tears are not enough by any chance in 1905? No I was in Toronto But, you know, at that point, I mean, I don't think I was really, I didn't really know. I mean, I knew David Foster quite well. Well, Dan was part of it. Yes, but yeah, but it was David Foster who was doing all the reaching out.

Yeah, and Bruce Allen was those guys. Yeah, and I knew both of them, but no one would have reached out to me as a behind-the-scenes person because, you know, because David's the producer. So, you know, but I certainly got a kick out of it. Well, I got a kick out of this, man. This was awesome. So thank you, and I owe Gary Chow and another lasagna for this because he had the first episode of the quarter, which I loved, the last episode of the quarter I loved. Thank you, Fred, for doing this. Well, I'm, again, this was a treat, and I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you.

And that brings us to the end of our 1,771st show. Go to TorontoMike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. member at patreon.com slash Toronto Mike. I have decided to actually do stuff in there. Like I'm posting behind the scenes, thoughts and different tips and who's upcoming and taking questions and comments. So if you dig Toronto Mike and you dig Toronto Mike or you dig both, become a Patreon at patreon.com slash Toronto Mike.

Go do it now. Okay, welcome back. You know the craft beer of. choice around here is Great Lakes Brewery. We love GLB. You'll be providing fresh craft beer for TMLX21 on November 29th. That's a Saturday

at noon at Palma's Kitchen. Palma pasta will feed everybody. Go to the second floor of Palma's Kitchen in Mississauga. We'll be recording live. I'll have the beer there. You get a free meal from the hot table. It's going to be amazing.

Sadly, I need to say goodbye. for the season to Toronto's Waterfront BIA. I have loved the last four months talking up what's happening on our waterfront. I hope Toronto's Waterfront BIA returns next summer.

If you'd like this spot, please write me, Mike, at TorontoMike.com. There's room for a partner. Recycle myelectronics.ca. Blue Sky Agency, Doug Mills, again, two more months. He's a good guy. Write him now, Doug at blue skyagency.

and Ridley Funeral Home. See you all tomorrow morning. Toast with Rob Pruse and Bob Willett. Be there. We're going to be able to be. I'm going to be able to be.