Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Greg Godovitz: Toronto Mike'd #809

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

Mike chats wih Greg Godovitz about his role in Fludd, Goddo, his new book Up Close And Uncomfortable, playing Maple Leaf Gardens with Max Webster, his Rock Talk radio show, the Yonge Street music venues of yesteryear and what's next.

Welcome to episode 809 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. CDN Technologies, your outsourced IT department. Contact Barb, she's Barb at CDNTechnologies.com. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business. stickers, labels, tattoos, and decals for your home and your business. Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921.

And Mike Majewski, or as I call him, Mimico Mike. He's the real estate agent who's ripping up the Mimico real estate scene. Learn more at realestatelove.ca. I'm Mike from torontomike.com. And joining me this week, making his Toronto Mike debut, is Greg Godovitz. Nice to be here, Mike. And your show is also today brought to you by www.shopgreggodovitz.com. So I can sell stuff too.

Hey, please feel free. Sprinkle that liberally throughout. It's all good, my friend. Hey, thanks for making some time for me today. Oh, it's great. 809. I mean, that's a heck of a career you've had there. 809.

Let's see if I can get to 1,000 and then I'll just hang up my headphones here. Greg, when I said you were coming on the show, well, I heard from so many people. we're going to talk about that throughout, but one of the great FOTMs, Mike Richards, wrote me just to say how much he loves you. So that must feel good. Mike Richards loves you. Well, thank you, Mike. And even though I don't know you, I love you as well. So hopefully we can get together for a coffee sometime.

Mike's a longtime radio personality in this market. He had the TSN radio morning show gig for like five years. And now he's doing his own thing on this Mississauga station that I don't think you can get unless you're parked right outside the building. But he's also a podcast. So shout out to Mike Richards there. Yeah, thanks, Mike. And here, just a few off the top here, just to butter you up so I can then hit you hard. But Soccer Canuck said that he jammed with your band many years ago.

He said, The Carpet Frogs, he said. He said, you're a great guy. So Soccer Canuck. Oh, thanks. I was in The Carpet Frogs for a couple of years. We recorded one album. years we recorded uh one album uh i dragged the singer nick sinopoli kicking and screaming up to this place where there was no television no telephones no radio nothing all we had was a guitar and a notepad and we basically wrote a whole album in three days wow it became the first

carpet frogs album uh but the thing is know, they know what their strengths are. Their strengths are backing people up and doing cover songs. And we were doing some big gigs opening up, you know, places at Lulu's like that and opening up for bands like The Commitments. And I'd say, let's play the songs from the album. And, you know, they said, no, no, we're going to do Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf. And I said, no, I don't want to do that anyway uh they've gone on to have a great career backing up burton cummings and sometimes randy bachman so all the all the power to them well they had to do a magic carpet ride because i think the carpet frogs have to do any song of carpet in the title

yeah it's true the great musicians and Nick and I still talk all the time. My gal's always saying that I've never heard a better vocal blend with anybody than you singing with Nick. And I have to agree, it was pretty good. So off the top, I want to let people know that you got a new book out called Up Close and Uncomfortable, which is a great title. And I've read the book. So a lot of this, I'll be revisiting some stuff as I read. It's a great, great read. So off the top, just in case, before I bore people and they tune out here, how can listeners get Up Close and Uncomfortable by Greg Godovitz?

Well, they can go, I don't know if they can see it on the screen down below my big fat head, but it says shopgreggodovowitz.com. My daughter and my gal, Mrs. Claypool, I call her, not her real name. They set it up for me because my daughter called me up one day and she said, Dad, how much did you make off your first book, which would be this one, Travels With My Amp? And I said, very little. She says, you sold 8,000 i said i gave away 5 000 and she says that's right well now from now on you're when the mailman gives you a bill you're not giving him your cds or your books or your gato we trust hot sauce or your gato cds or any of that stuff instead you're going to sell them like a businessman which you should be and make some money.

So they set up www.shopgreggodovitz.com. And quite frankly, over Christmas, we did very well. Considering that there's no music business right now, I can't play if I wanted to. Nobody can. Right. No, no. And just, yeah, I see the display name down there.

So if they're looking at the Facebook page, but it gets truncated. That's the one thing. So it truncates. Oh, does it? Yeah. So it says shop Greg G, and then that's it. So thanks for reminding people.

I think we have to get rid of the Greg Ganoff. It's at the front because we don't need it twice and then have my head sitting here as well. Right. I'll get Mrs. Claypool to amend that next time. So first question comes from Keith. Keith, who tweeted me a question for you, I think it was just last night. Can you please ask him why he refers to and calls his, and this is his words, okay, his old lady, Mrs. Claypool. So what's up with Mrs. Claypool?

Well, I've never been a big guy for when you have a partner, you know, calling them honey, guy for when you have a partner you know calling them honey or poopsie or all that stuff lovey dove or anything so uh i started as a joke calling her mrs claypool because when we first got together we both realized that we we loved the marks brothers and uh margaret dumont uh this she's in all of their movies she was sort sort of Groucho's straight man. And in The Night at the Opera, her name was Mrs. Claypool. So I started calling whatever, I don't even know her real name anymore, but I started calling her Mrs. Claypool. And she would call me Grouchovitz.

In fact, over our kitchen, going into the hallway, I had the famous Toronto painter Al Runt, who did Lee's Palace and all. He does all those little monsters and stuff. He did about a four foot wide painting of us with Mrs. Claypool on one side with warts all over her face. And then Mia's Grouchovitz on the other side. And we've got straws in our mouth going into a brain, like we're drinking out of someone's brain. So vitz on the other side. And we've got straws in our mouth going into a brain, like we're drinking out of someone's brain. So that's where that comes from. And it's funny because I've created a monster.

She comes to my gigs. People come up to her and go, are you Mrs. Claypool? And she goes, as a matter of fact, I am. She just plays along with it. So to answer his question, her first name is Mrs. and her last name is Claypool. Okay, I'm glad we could clear that up. So, Greg, I do, of course,

we're going to talk a lot about Gato and some of the stuff that's in this new book. I'm out of here. That's right. I lose you there. That's a deal breaker. But can we start with Flood? And with all due respect,

I'm in my mid-40s, and I feel like Flood is a band that, I don't want to say lost to time, but unless you're of a certain vintage, and this is my own observation, you don't hear a lot about Flood. Well, first of all, the band hasn't been active in many, many years. I still see Ed Pillen, the lead singer of the band, all the time. years. I still see Ed Pilling, the lead singer of the band all the time. And, uh, Brian, Ed's brother, Brian, uh, I met him in grade nine. I was 13. I think he was 15 at the time. I got into high school a bit early. And, uh, you know, when I met, I had the first beetle haircut in, I'll just look up the picture here in high school. Brian was a bit of a greasy guy back in those days. So this is, this was, I don't know if you, can you see that? Okay.

Let me switch windows. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally can see it. Yeah. I mean, that's about as perfect a beetle haircut as you can get, you know, and that's 1964. So even though I look much older, I was only 13 years old then so i met brian in school and uh i remember they had a thing they called twerp day where where the seniors anybody over the grade nine could beat the hell out of your do whatever they make you know make you roll an egg with your nose and stuff we thought hell with that brian showed up with his hair ungreased combed down into a john lennon style and i that. And then we went running across the field, like a hard day's night pretending we were being chased by girls. Right.

And then he said, my brother's coming back from England. He plays the drums and shows up two hours late. Brian and I've been sitting in this little greasy spoon in Scarborough waiting for him, unaware of the fact or oblivious to the fact that we weren't getting served because of our hair. These little beetle clean haircuts, we were not getting served. And Ed shows up and Brian said, where you been, man? He goes, the bus drivers would not pick me up on St. Clair Avenue. So it was really like that back then. I mean, we were just kids, but if you had long hair, it it must have been like what you know African Americans went through in the deep south in

America you know it was the same sort of prejudice against what we looked like you know so anyway we formed our first band called the Pretty Ones which looking at me now is quite a stretch but we were all kids of course you know and and we played Beatles songs and Rolling Stones songs and kinks and all that British invasion stuff. And then when I was 15, Ed and Brian went to England, they joined up with Cat Stevens. He had his first couple of hits over there. And I joined my first blues band at that time. Anyway, went through the blues thing, went through the psychedelic thing.

We'll probably get back to that because I worked with some pretty incredible musicians. And then they came back and formed Flood. And I saw them at Midland Collegiate, which is just up the street from where I'm living now. And I said, I got to get into that band because I could tell that they were, you know, they were already great songwriters. We were doing their original material in the Pretty Ones. And now they were really writing great songs. So I weaseled my way into the band. And, you know, we had a hell of a career.

I mean, across Canada many times. We recorded our first album in San Francisco in Sausalito. We recorded one of our albums at the Manor, Richard Branson's place, shipped in on Sherwell in Oxford. It was, we had a hell of a career and we had eight top 10 records of which they're still playing a few of them on oldies radio daily. I want to shout out Dale Cadeau, who is a huge fan of Toronto Mike, but he's also a huge fan of yours. He's an actual, he's in,

I think he's in Vancouver. He'll correct me later, somewhere in BC anyways. Oh, Dale. Dale wants you to know that he saw Flood in his high school in 1972. And he loved it so much. He was rocking out to Gato from 77 to 81, he tells me. Well, that's great.

Was he originally a Toronto guy? Yeah, yes, yes. I think he was a street, yeah, Streetsville yeah streetsville yeah close enough i mean between flood and gatto i think i've played every single high school in this country except newfoundland never been to newfoundland it's the only province we've ever visited yeah because it takes a while yeah yeah i once did a road trip of the family to prince edward island and then i'm over there and i'm thinking oh i'd like to go to Newfoundland. I realize I need like a I need another week or something to do that.

Like it's like it's not so easy to just kind of keep going. Not to mention the Digby ferry that we took at one point during our touring days with Flood. And of course, you know, all the guys were in the bar drinking. I spent the six hours on the Digby ferry over the side of the rail, sending a chum line out to the sharks down below. I mean, I am for a Pisces. I am a terrible voyager. You can't get me on a boat. I wouldn't even go on a ferry. Right. Yeah. You don't want to go there. Now I'm going to play a little bit of a flood song because I'm going to ask you something I read in the book, actually, which I'm hoping you'll

retell part of that story. But here's a little bit of Turned 21. You make me feel my life is over. Pretend I'm singing. You make me feel my life has gone you make me feel my life is over although it's only

just begun turn 21 without a grey hair so Graham I'm playing this song because I'm hoping you'll share with us uh basically the circumstances and what it was like when you first heard your band flood on on the radio well much like I'm feeling right now I got goosebumps all over my body I mean that is such a great record and we were kids I think I was 19 when we made that record 19 or 20 wow I wasn't 21 I know that but I mean it was such a thrill I mean Brian and Ed wrote incredible songs, pop songs. You know, we grew up on the Beatles,

who were, of course, they set the bar for writing pop songs. And we love the Kinks, we love the Stones, and Jared and the Pacemakers, and all the rest of them. And it came out initially in their writing, because A, they were both from England, they were both from Birmingham. They grew up on the same streets with Robert Plant and John Bonham and all those guys and Black Sabbath and all them. And we recorded that song in San Francisco.

We were with Fred Cotero was the engineer at Pacific Sound. They flew us down there. We got off the airplane. The lawyer gave us each $100 in American bills. They stuck us in a stretch limo. The limousine driver took us overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, floored the car. We were all screaming because we were heading towards a sheer cliff. He slammed on the car's brakes. We fishtailed and fishtailed and fishtailed. One of us, I think, was about to jump out we we landed

10 feet away from the cliff and he started laughing he did it to every band that he picked up wow scared the hell out of us and then we went to the studio and we spent two weeks uh working with fred cataro who had done most of the san francisco bands during the Haight-Ashbury era Santana Mallow worked with Barbra Streisand and it was I mean just heady stuff for kids you know I mean to be recording our first album in a place like uh San Francisco right a little bit of time off to roam around and then working with someone as legendary as Fred Gutierre was great. And then Brian and Ed actually, they wrote the string lines in that string quartet. I always wondered who did that because I was just the bass player in that band and I sang all the high harmonies, but I didn't have much.

It was Brian and Ed's band, even though we were boyhood friends, it was their band. So tell me what it was like when you finally, because that's the song, right? That's the first single that you hear on the radio. Yep. Yep. And then that's here, right? That's 1050 Chum? Yeah.

Chum would have played the heck out of it. And I mean, it's one of the three or four songs in the Flood canon that's been played over 100,000 times on radio. Wow. that's been played over a hundred thousand times on radio. Wow. I remember when I worked for this company called Randall Amplifiers for a year, I was driving down on the East coast and I would flip around the stations and I would hear that song all the time. I would hear cousin Mary all the time. I mean,

they were just radio perennials. They were always there, you know, can I play a little Cousin Mary? Is that cool? Please, yeah. Okay, here we go. Great bass sounds. Cousin Mary was a lady That could really hold her own

She went fighting for her country, she went fighting for her home Then there's the time she lost her know, there's no delay. And what I love about that record, and once again, I'm just covered in goosebumps from head to toe, is how clean the bass guitar was on that track. You know, I mean, I played Fender Precision back in those days with a pick, and you can just hear the point on that pick. All the early Flood records, and even most of the bands from that era, like A Foot in Cold Water, guys who were our peers back then all had that great wonderfully compressed bass sound you know and so that's brian singing lead on that one and then during the chorus uh it's three-part

harmony with ed taking the middle and i always did the high harmony parts because i was the youngest and i could hit those notes back then and who's doing the harmonica on that? Ed Pilling did. I've got one of his original Cousin Mary harmonicas in my collection. I stole it. Sorry, Ed. I know he'll be watching this. Sorry, Ed. It was just such a joy to work with those guys, you know. They were such great songwriters.

And it taught me a lot. I mean, I actually was writing some of the Gato songs during Flood. I wrote Chantel then, I wrote Cock On then, a couple of other ones. But, you know, I remember my mother told me that she spoke with Brian one day. Flood was a real family atmosphere band. The families would gather. Everybody was real proud of everybody else. And she had a chat with him and said, you know, Greg Greg is my Greg is writing some really good songs you know and he actually she told me this Brian

said to her she missed you know forgive me Mrs. Garnovitz but but Flood is my band and Ed's you know and when she told me that I realized the writing was on the wall because you know they they had their own houses I was still living in my mom's basement, you know. Right. It was time to make a move. And the move was for me to become that guy in Gato and write all the songs, you know. Okay, let's talk about Gato then. There's a segue for you.

I was going to say, let's talk about Gato. So, I mean, so, yeah, so tell me more about, like, the beginning of Gato, like, assembling the band. And, I mean, there's a Canadian success story for you. Like, you talk about Gato. I mean, I'll read more, but Michael Moniz. Michael Moniz or Moniz? Mike Morin or? Moniz.

This is a gentleman who's a big fan of Toronto Mike and a big fan of Gato. But he just says, he goes, sweet, I love Gato, probably one of the greatest underrated Canadian rock bands that came out of the 70s. And he shouts out, so walk on, also has one of the greatest guitar riffs ever written. He talks

about seeing you guys in the late 90s and at the Collins Hotel in Dundas. He says it was a kick-ass show. So talk to me a kick-ass show. So talk to me a little more about Gato. We will play some Gato as well. I got lots of Gato questions. Thank you, Mike.

It's funny. I never thought we were underrated. I always thought we were great. But I know what he means. I started it out with, I went to high school once again with a fellow named Marty Moore. And we played music in high school. And then, you know, when it came time to put Gato together, I was still in flood, of course. And I called up Marty,

he'd been in a band called Truck, did quite well, recorded a couple of albums. And I said, I'm going to put a new band together. And I'd seen Gino play many times with Brutus. I was at the infamous Knob Hill Hotel in Scarborough one night. And I saw Gino play many times with Brutus. I was at the infamous Nob Hill Hotel in Scarborough one night and I saw Gino surrounded by all these very hot chicks and Wally Zwoll, the singer, I told him I was putting a new band together. He says, why don't you ask Gino? I said, because he's in your band. He goes, he's not happy. And I looked over and I saw him surrounded by all these chicks. I said, yeah, he'll do nicely. And he was a great guitar player so originally it was marty and uh and gino and myself and we i was telling somebody this yesterday a four bus ride from scarborough somewhere way the heck out where you live in the west end right

it was a place where in one part of the building these scientists were building observatory telescopes. And in the other part of the building was 50 cubicles where bands were bashing out horrible loud music all day long while these guys were building. Yeah, it was a very strange location. I happened to be very much into astronomy as a kid and had been to visit the David Dunlop Observatory with the Royal Ontario Astronomical Society. So I had a real interest in what these guys were doing. And when they found that out, the scientists let me come in and watch them sometimes working on the telescope. And one day, I had my $30 to pay the week's rent. I opened up the door to our section and started walking about maybe 50 feet down when two attack train Dobermans came around the corner on the other end. And I thought I'm about to die. So I turned around and ran as

fast as I could, which is a mistake. But when I went through the door, I could hear both dogs bang right against the door. So I'm glad I didn't stick around there but originally it was Marty and Gino and I we I think we learned 15 songs there was probably maybe eight covers but they were songs that nobody knew I brought back some records from England by a group called Blackfoot Sioux they had a song called Standing in the Road that we could stretch out for 10 minutes. There was a song called The Eagle Flies on Friday by Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, of course, bands that nobody knows about, and Pilling turned me on to them. And we did that. We did Waiting for the Bus by ZZ Top before anybody really knew who ZZ Top was. And then we did Louie Louie, and then some early songs that I was writing. And I remember we got to our first gig, Duffy's Tavern in Hamilton.

Not our first gig, but our first Hamilton gig. And the bouncer comes up. He says, my name is Lucky. I'm in charge here. You will do exactly as I tell you. And he looked like he sounded. He says, you'll do four sets a night, 15-minute intermissions. You won't say anything rude over the microphone and no drum solos.

So we get on stage and I looked at Marty. I said, you know what to do, right? Marty plays a 20 minute drum solo. First thing we did. When he stops, I looked at, I said into the microphone, well now that we know who's really in charge here. And then we did our thing. Now, by the time we got to our second set, we were already repeating our first set and we had to do four sets a night so we got tight on those 15 or 14 songs really quick and i got into songwriting even quicker because we needed the material i'll bet okay i got lots to cover here but you did say knob hill hotel so i just need to shout out topper harley who wanted to let you know that he saw Gatto and Rush at the Nob Hill Hotel in Scarborough. But then Barrett Real Estate says,

the Nob Hill Hotel should be discussed. I had many an underage beer there, a Scarborough institution. Greg did some storytelling when they recently demolished the old building. Can't wait. So would you mind sharing me a little bit of your Nob Hill Hotel? Well, once again, I'm back in Scarborough i grew up in scarborough i was born here my gal mrs claypool's from scarborough in this area midland and eglinton kingston road in midland where we live right and the knobby was just up the street like not quite walking distance not for me anyway but uh it was a famous place it held about five six hundred people uh there was a different band usually every night of the week there was something different happening and i always like

to say the knob hill was a place where you could draw 500 people you'd get three legitimate encores and somebody in the audience would still punch you in the face as you were leaving because their girlfriend liked you you it happened all the time i mean you'd want you'd be walking out you'd be feeling really good about yourself and some guy would come up and sucker you in the face right because his girlfriend liked you it was it was a tough bar they had uh the old-fashioned waiters with the white shirts and the bow ties with trays of five cent draft beer and a jug of beer for like a dollar or something it was your class and pickled onions you know or pickled eggs rather right classic old toronto bar but what a

place i mean every like like he mentioned rush played there brian adams played there uh max webster played there flood played there everybody there. Everybody played there. Incredible bar. And yes, they finally tore it down to make condos like everywhere else. And I went up one day and talked to one of the head foremen. And I got one of the dressing room doors that was signed by a bunch of bands. And I have it in my garage. Ted Nesbitt, because you mentioned Max Webster there. Now, I did have Kim Mitchell on the show very recently,

and I think between the Kim Mitchell appearance and your appearance, the number of people who wanted me to know they saw you at their high school was off the charts, I'm telling you. That was the two big ones. But here's a quick question from Ted. He says, how many times did Gatto play with Max Webster? Because he thinks the over under has to

be like 500 or something like that no no no probably closer to maybe 10 or 20 times we did a number of dates with him but you know we were all all of us in that time period were so busy ourselves that you know i i know i mean the biggest gig we ever played with max was we played with him on new year's eve uh bb gabor opened the show then we ever played with Max was we played with him on New Year's Eve. B.B. Gabor opened the show. Then we went out and then Max came on. And they had Getty sat in with him and they did Battlescar. But we had the secret weapon.

We had the pretty bad boy with us. And I don't care how cute Getty thinks he is. The pretty bad boy won. You got a four-year-old coming out in a tuxedo. You steal the show. the pretty bad boy one you know you got a four-year-old coming out in a tuxedo you steal the show and and and i'm gonna play i'm gonna play that very shortly actually because uh we have to talk about that jam uh and that cameo there with the the cute cute four-year-old you mentioned there uh i gotta tell you if i could just interrupt i love the fact i didn't know that i'm not seeing anything on the crawl with people asking questions. So I'm going to sort of back up my,

I'd like to hear the questions from your fans out there because this is great. So what I do is every time a guest is coming on Toronto Mic'd, I tweet. So I use Twitter for this one. And then I always say, okay, Greg Godovitz is coming on Toronto Mic'd, hit me with your questions.

And then I inevitably, especially with somebody like yourself, I get a lot of questions and I make sure I copy and paste them all into a little Google document that I'm staring at right now. So in fact, because Mike Moniz, because he shouted out a specific song and talked about the guitar riff here, I'm going to just play a little of that song.

So here's a little bit of Gato for us before we continue the conversation A psychosis, I think it's time to run the corner, baby Enough sex, it's time I had a little lovin', baby Short dress, you look so good with such a street walkin' A hundred in a mess It's time I had a little spending money Well, hey you Well, I can tell that you don't wanna know That's love and you Well, I'd do the same thing if I had a chance to walk on Now I'm awake.

You know what's funny about that is we recorded that album. It was our third album. This one here, Active Gato. More on that in a second. But we recorded that album in Orlando, Florida at a place called BJ Studios. And for some reason, our equipment didn't show up on time. So we had to go to a local music store and rent equipment. And I remember, I'm just digging the sound of that bass.

It was a Music Man, which is, I think it was a Fender derivative. And so we had to rent drums and rent guitars and start recording using equipment we'd never used before right but it gave us a different sound to what we were used to and i quite like that you know uh after that we started you know i at least i would start bringing in different instruments to interesting you know just bolster the sound so it all didn't sound the same all the time. You know, I realize I'm going to need a little more than an hour with you. I hope you don't have like a noon appointment or anything, do you?

Let me just check my watch here. No, I'm fine. Because obviously lots more questions from the fans, and then I have a few questions of my own. But I find this interesting. Can you reference the gig you did with Max Webster, the New Year's Eve gig. But of course, you didn't mention the fact

that that was at Maple Leaf Gardens, that gig, right? It was. It was the first time I ever played Maple Leaf Gardens, yeah. So tell me what that's like for a big-time music fan from Scarborough. What's it like when you're playing Maple Leaf Gardens for the first time? Well, once again, I got goosebumps all over.

I get goosebumps quite a bit, actually. I went down there to the gardens with the Pretty Bad Boy was with me. And we had our little suit of lights in a bag. And we went on the subway. And there was people on the subway going what are you doing on here I said I'm going to play a show yeah we know we're going to you're going to Maple Leaf Gardens on the subway I said oh yeah we have to transfer onto a streetcar too but yes we are and actually Denise Donlan our iconic princess of music queen queen of music, she called me up.

She was actually over here a couple of weeks, gave me a copy of her new book. And she says, I owe you an apology. And I said, why? She goes, because I have a quote that I attributed to Kim Mitchell in my book, but it's your quote. Right. And I found it. And it was a little bit different than what I'd actually said but I said you know only in Canada can you go to Maple Leaf Gardens get an encore

and go home on the subway you know which is a pretty good quote I mean it's true I mean it's what's it I don't think I went home on the subway but we certainly went to the gig on the subway right and and it was great because when I was standing backstage, they've got this, you can't see through the scrim from out front where we're hanging out back. And they put on the overture from Act of God, the song just before So Walk On, the classical music. And I'm standing there listening to it. And people by that time knew what it meant that we were coming on and all of a sudden everybody in the in the years before cell phones they were all

lighting their their big lighters so it was just like a sea of stars out there and I remember how many times I'd done that out there waiting for the stones or somebody to come on not not to mention the fact that you know I saw the Beatles there so to be able to you know it sold out and you're going out there to stand on that same stage where all those greats played it was it was incredible did you keep your ticket stub from the Beatles show? No, but I collect Beatles memorabilia. So I have, I certainly have them. I slept out when I was 12. I had all the money from the school, from my, all the kids that wanted to go. And my marks were good enough. And my parents were, they were loose enough to say, yeah, you could go sleep out

in front of maple leaf gardens when you're 12 years old with a few hundred dollars on you wow and i slept out overnight now there was a lot of other kids around it wasn't dangerous at all it was we didn't get much sleep down other there's people screaming all night and you know it was incredible but the next day when i went up i went up to the ticket wicket and I said, I'd like 167 tickets, sir. And he goes, no way, kid. Read the sign. And it said two per customer. Right.

So all of a sudden I had the only two beetle tickets in the school. Wow. Okay. This is all top of mind because one of my clients is Dr. Diane Sachs. She was a former environmental commissioner for Ontario. And she was just telling me. I know the name. Yeah.

She was going through her like, you know, she kept like a environmental commissioner for Ontario. And she was just telling me, yeah, she was going through her, like, you know, she kept like a box of like stuff from her youth and she just, she found her Beatles ticket stub. Cause she saw the Beatles at Maple Leaf gardens. And then it's just, it's right in here. I'm talking to somebody else who was, who was there. Now she did point out, and I'm sure you noticed that the audio wasn't very good at the show, but that didn't matter. Right. Because you were at a Beatles show.

Well, you know, I expected that after having slept out all night that I would be in the front row. As it turned out, we ended up in the sixth row behind Ringo. Wow. We were behind them in the end blues, I think it was. Oh, yes. Okay. Yes. I remember.

Yes. In those days, I didn't wear glasses. I was as blind as you could possibly be. I couldn't see anything anyway. And I mean, I was really like next to technically blind, you know? Right. Legally blind. Legally, right.

And I remember, you know, I could see them well enough, but it was incredible for me, even at that young age, to witness the Beatlemania from the same standpoint they were getting it you just see a sea of flash bulbs and screams and like and and somewhere out there and i've only ever seen it once i came home from a gig one night and late night on cbc they had a beatles doc visiting toronto documentary and i'm sitting there and i've got some potato chips and a beer and i'm watching and all of a sudden i went almost choked to death because getting off an escalator at Maple Leaf Gardens when I was 13 is me standing. Oh, my God.

Yeah. And because I remember it, I got off, you know, and I'm looking at this Kleg light. They had like one of those, you know, ones that they shoot up in the air for airplanes and stuff. And I'm staring at it like caught like a deer in the headlights and this guy goes keep moving kid keep moving and i'm looking like a 13 year old goofy little kid and then i i turned to the right and off i go and i couldn't believe that i was in the documentary as a child you know look i got a bunch of these 10 50 chum uh i'm trying to who do you remember which chum personality it was that it would have introduced

the beatles do you have any memory of that at all? I'm going to say it was either Dave Johnson or Jungle Jay Nelson or Bob McAdory. It would have been one of those three. All three of them. See, I believe it was either Bob McAdory or Jungle Jay Nelson. So I'm with you on that one. Go ahead. I've got all of those Chum charts.

I've got the first Chum chart that appeared with the Beatles, and it was from 1963, December. And they were on the chart then, but of course it didn't take off until the Sullivan show. I have a Bob McAdory quick story. Oh, yeah, I love. Yeah, let's hear it. The late, great Bob McAdory.

So Bob McAdory and Dave Johnson, who were big stars at Chum AM. My mother worked at the Friars Tavern down at Yonge and Dundas. She was a co-chat girl there. And she talked to Mr. Josie. His name is Gord Josie, but nobody ever called him by Gord. It was Mr. Josie to this day. He's still with us. The Pretty Ones went and played a Saturday afternoon matinee

because my mom had told Mr. Josie about us and we sat in with Levon and the Hawks wow who of course became the band you know right and they were very kind Rick Danko I used to sit and have coke and chips with him during the matinees and my my mother eventually bought my first bass amp off rick danko and levon helm gave ed pilling a snare drum after we played with him but that afternoon bob mcadori and dave johnson came in and they saw us and that night they took us up to club 888 which became the rock pile where led zeppelin and all those bands played sure and we played to a thousand people and I was only 14 years old. Wow.

And within two weeks, we were playing at a young street after hours club called the Rock at a Go-Go that we started at one o'clock in the morning. So how did I do that year in high school? I failed. I was up till one o'clock till four in the morning playing in an after hours club when I was 14.

I'm glad you brought, I'm glad you brought this up. It's like, you're reading my mind here. Cause I had a recent episode of a gentleman named, who calls himself Johnny Dovercourt. You probably know Johnny from his writing. I know the name.

Yeah. So he, if you're bored, actually go listen to the episode of Johnny Dovercourt on Toronto mic, because we basically do a walking tour of Toronto's music venues. Those that are no longer with us and some that are still here today, thankfully.

But, you know, the whole, like, strip of music venues on Yonge, like, when we did that Yonge Street walk and we started down the bottom and we kind of worked our way up, like, it's unbelievable. So, multiple questions, but here I'm going to read a comment

from a fan of yours. Was there anything better than coming of age in the early 70s and doing the Yonge Street and seeing bands like rush max webster moxie triumph gato saga david wilcox brutus and frank soda all local talent and all could be had for he says for no cover a jug of draft and you were there the best of times would you mind uh reminiscing a bit uh on some of these young street venues? I'm sorry, what was his name that I'm supposed to put? I don't have the name.

I don't actually have the name. I know. Okay, well, whoever, that's a great question. Coming of age, was there anything better? Yes, coming of age in the 60s and seeing before all those great bands that came as a second wave, seeing Levon and the Hawks

and Robbie Lane and the Disciples and David Clayton Thomas and the Shays and the Female Beatles and Lionel Hampton and all these other incredible acts that played Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. I met Ronnie Hawkins and David Clayton Thomas during a Saturday afternoon matinee at the Friars. And 40 years later, I'm Ronnie Hawkins' band leader for two years. Wow. My mother, just to get back to my phenomenal mother, the Kochek girl at the Friars, I come home from the Yorkville Village when I was 17, and she says, do you know a guy named Bob Dylan?

I said, well, I know who he is, Bob. She goes, well, he's been hanging around Robbie and Levon and the boys. And last night when we closed, Mr. Josie let them jam. And he was singing with Levon. She goes, he's not much of a singer. But my mother witnessed music history. Yes. Do you remember, because the Yorkville scene on Friday, which is what, this is Monday.

So on Friday, I have one of the founders of the Purple Onion on this program. Oh, lovely. Yeah, Barry Wittgen. Spent many days there. Saw the Miner Birds there and the influence. And remind us, who's in the Miner Birds? Because this is the fun fact

I like to blow people's minds with. But of course, who is in the Miner Birds? Well, Rick James, Bruce Palmer from the Buffalo Springfield, and some guy named Neil Young. Isn't that amazing that that was happening in Yorkville? You know, I lived in Yorkville from, I think, 16 or 17, maybe 17 on. And, you know, so we were looking at bands like the Ugly Ducklings

and McKenna Mendelson Mainline. Actually, Mike McKenna was in Luke and the Apostles back then. You know, I wouldn't change a thing about my life. I mean, it was destined that I would spend my life in music. And it started so young at, you know, 12. And now with turning 70, I mean, that's a, that's quite, that's a 57 year career doing exactly what you said you were going to do for the rest of your life. You know, let me answer his question. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. The young street strip, which when that developed,

with all those great bands that were mentioned, it was incredible. From the colonial down at the bottom King street up to bluer street when you had the gasworks and the piccadilly tube and uh oh god i'm drawing a bit of a blank but they're all they're all in this book here they're all mentioned it's incredible how many amazing famous bands happened during that era that you could go in basically for a jug of beer and maybe a dollar admission and see Russia, the gasworks. I used to see them there all the time. Yeah. I mean, the gasworks kind of now, if you know the gasworks as a youngster, you know it from Wayne's World, right? Because Mike Myers paid homage to it in Wayne's World.

But man. I'm going to try and find something. Oh, in my book here, this is now on Yonge Street. Tell me when you can see that. Can you see that there? Yep, I see it. This is part of a 22-story building on Yonge Street. And at the top is the band, David Clayton Thomas, Lonnie Johnson, famous blues guitar player that lived here.

Let me see, we've got Salome Bay. And right next to her is Gatto. And then Rush, Kim Mitchell, Dizzy Gillespie, Carol Pope, the Mandela, John and Lee, and Kathy Young. And they painted this 22 stories up. It's still a Gerard and Young. And on the other side of the building is all the pioneers, like Ronnie Hawkins, Glenn Gould gordon lightfoot wow uh jackie shade it's phenomenal so what they called me up my friend mark garner from the downtown young bia who was head he's that they should erect a statue

to this guy because he's keep he's placking all the old buildings. He did this project. He called me up and said, you're going to go on the other side of the building. And I said, who else is on it? So he said, all the band and David Clayton, Thomas and Rush. And I said, hang on a second. How big is this building? He says, it's 22 stories high. I said, you mean to tell me you're going to get my nose and Getty Lee's nose? Sorry, Getty. Getty, Getty. I just, coincidentally, I'm doing this jam kicking thing on Thursday night,

and one of the jams we're going to kick out is Tears Are Not Enough, okay? All right. How come you're not on that song? I feel like you're an oversight. I feel like Greg Godovich should have been invited to that uh recording well i can't answer i don't know i think i was i was definitely not on david foster's radar at that time okay because you mentioned salami i was also a troublemaker so okay well that explains it because you mentioned uh the fabulous salami bay and i she just passed away and she's in she's in it like so i was just just recently looking at the video and kind of naming everybody right and then anyways this is neither

here nor there except I just when you mentioned uh Miss Bay I have to admit when they did it I went hey yeah but because a lot of my friends but then we did one uh the the also rands as I call us uh the Cody Hatch guys and the Helix guys and stuff. We did the O Canada that they played at nighttime when the TV used to go off the air. Of course, I remember. And there was about 40 of us that did the same thing, just singing O Canada, which was a great honor as well. All right, I got to bang home a point about the Purple Onion, because this is a mind blow for listeners of Trotter Mike, that this gentleman, Barry Witkin, who's one of the co-founders of the Purple Onion, and he's going to be on the show Friday to talk all about it.

He now, he's 82 years old now, and he drives the StickerU mobile because his son, Andrew Witkin, founded StickerU, which happens to be a sponsor of Toronto Mic'd. So it's kind of a wild little coincidence that Barry Witkin drives the StickerU mobile where you can literally get stickers delivered in these covid times in the sticker you mobile he's driving that thing now that's what he does for his son is that a sticker is that a sticker you're holding there so this is a sticker yeah in fact i need i need one of those for my guitar i have toronto mic stickers i can't wait till i can finally i'm going to give you my address

because i have a guitar that's iconic now. Oh, perfect. Yeah. I have a telecaster that is just festooned in stickers. I'm good. Yeah. Yeah. Do that. So email.

Yeah. Give me that info because I'll totally take care of you. Thank you. Sticker you for the sponsorship, by the way. And just really quick shout out while I'm on the topic. I wish you were here in person, like the pre COVID days,

because I'd have some fresh craft beer from great lakes brewery for you. And you'd be taking that home. And I'd also have a frozen lasagna for you courtesy of Palma Pasta. No joke. You'd be taken care of. Okay. And I'm looking at the clock. So much more I want to cover.

Let me kick out this jam and then talk to you about it. Here's a, let's call this your biggest hit here. Let's hear some Pretty Bad Boy. All right. All right. How you good looking in the very front row You're the kind of sweet thing that I'd like to know Maybe we could make eyes after the show You can have it fast or you can have it slow I guess you figured out what's on my mind After the gig, we could have a real fine time You show me yours, I'll show you mine

Bring her with her girlfriend, she could be next in line I'm just a pretty bad boy I'm just a pretty bad boy You see that? That's a picture of Russell, the Pretty Bad Boy. And you can see my hand on my base. He's looking over his sunglasses at 20,000 people at Maple Leaf Gardens right there. Wow. When I took him into the gardens, he says,

this is bigger than a high school. Because at that point, he just said, oh, it's much bigger than a high school. But the story behind that song was... Yeah, please. First of all, I wrote it to be... It's sort of a rip-off of Werewolves of London and All the Young Dudes. Because it's, you know,

hey, you good-looking... It was like... So it was sort of a hybrid of those two songs. I actually had Warren Zevon's wife on my radio show. And I said, I ripped your husband off for this song, actually. You know? Well, they're both... Yeah, you know? Well, they're both,

yeah, it is, it's just, yes, they're both catchy tunes, but... Catchy is the word, and I definitely, you know, borrowed some of it from him. But Russell used to go

everywhere with me. Well, here he is now. Hold on, I'll bring it up. Hold on. Yeah. yeah i'm just a pretty bad boy so he was in the studio with me the day we recorded that and we got to the solo breakdown section and nothing would Piano wouldn't work. Guitar solo. Gino tried it. I tried it. Nothing worked. And then I went, I got it. Russell, come here. We turned the garbage pail upside down. I stood him on it, put a microphone. I said, when I point at you, say I'm just a pretty bad boy.

And he did it four times. We left the third one out. And then the last one, it sounds like he's totally resigned to being a pretty bad boy. And I went, that's a hit record. And it was. Woo. So yeah. Okay. So amazing. Amazing. Amazing. I need to get these fan questions in though, because this is- Yes, please. By the way, I'm in no hurry. Okay. No, I have an appointment at some point, but I'm going to burn you. No, you don't. You're staying right there. Scott Foster.

Scott Foster writes, I'm looking forward to the upcoming Greg Godowitz episode as Godo's Who Cares album was definitely one of my favorite albums in the late 70s and I saw them play live a number of times. Could you please ask him a couple of questions for me? So here's number one and then I'll get to number two. In fact, number one, I even have the music if you want it, it's up to you. But number one is, could he tell the story behind the song, Carol, Kiss My Whip? I turned

into a Rough Trade fan in the early 80s. So let's start there. All right, well, Rough Trade would play upstairs at the Gasworks while we were downstairs quite a few times chimney i think it was called and i used to go up and watch her and she she would be wearing either like black plastic or black leather and she had a riding crop that she would like you know hit herself across the behind her leg with right and i went home one night and wrote a black leather riding crop gonna make me squirm, undo your top. I got a different kind of fetish trip, slow down, Carol, kiss my whip. So I wrote it and then we rehearsed it and we were going to premiere it at the gas works one night and Carol lived around the block from me. So I called her up and I said, I got something I want you to hear.

So she came down to the gas works and we played it in the first set. Then we played it in the last set. And then I walked her home and, and I said, what'd you think? She goes, she's boy, they seem to like it, you know, for new songs. She goes, I couldn't really catch the lyrics, but boy, it rocks, you know, but then people started yelling. Carol kiss my whip at her, at her rough trade gigs. And she says one night, she goes, and I always love this. She says, listen, if you see God,

I was telling me he can kiss my ass. And we're, we're friends, but you know, I wouldn't mind somebody writing a song about me. I mean, we sort of immortalized her in it, you know? Yeah, well, she's in the Tears Are Not Enough video. Yeah, and she's also on that wall, too. Yeah, oh, yeah, no doubt. One of the Garys, I get my Garys mixed up sometimes.

This is terrible. Gary Top, I think, or is it? Gary Top, yeah, good friend of mine. Used to manage Carol Pope early in her career, I feel, in the 70s. It could have been him or Gary Cormier. You know what? I'm changing my answer. I think it was, and I apologize to the Gary's that I can't sometimes, because they've both

been on, but they came on separately. And sometimes Gary Cormier, I believe, used to manage Carol Pope early in her career. Another two guys that should have a statue erected to them. They did more for the Toronto music scene back in the day than nearly anybody. Great promoters have brought in incredibly eclectic acts to the edge and

Horseshoe and all those places. Now you're preaching to the choir. You're absolutely right on that one. Oh, but Scott has more questions. So Scott Foster also, he says, I always like the song Once Again. It's a beautiful ballad. i know it's a piano song but did gato ever play the song live oh there's good question this guy's got good questions uh i wrote that song during flood that's one of the songs i wrote during flood and i think we were playing an arena in monkton new brunswick and i I was always chomping at the bit to get the sound check. So I got there first. And Peter wrote Sean that went on to be with Saga. His keyboard was up there.

I can't play the piano, but I wrote that song. I figured out the chords and the melody. It always reminded me sort of a Jackson Brown kind of a song. And I wrote it and then played it on the Who Cares album. And Paul Irvinevine who traveled with us and played saxophone on it came in and did a four-part sax section because I didn't want it to have a string quartet like yesterday or turn 21 I thought let's do a string arrangement for saxophones so at the end of the year this beautiful four-part thing now what happened was we were the first band to do a chum fm city tv simulcast okay yeah you put your speakers beside your tv in stereo it was live to air and i actually even though i couldn't play the piano had a grand piano there and the four sax players dressed in tuxedos.

And I actually played piano on live television without really knowing what the chords were or what I was doing. And I didn't make one mistake. I must've been terrified, you know, but, and I think I played it once again when we first did the Alma combo, because I saw recently my, my diary entry and I got this guy here. I'll show you this. These are also available. The guy that, can you see that? Let me just change windows here. Yes, I do. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Long John Baldry did this of me back in 19 says LJB 1978.

He was managed by the same people that handled us and Angela Bowie and Roy Young and a few people. And I remember walking by him one day in the office and I looked over his shoulder and I said, Hey, that's me. And he, he writes Godot on the Jersey. I never get this backwards thing. And he goes, as a matter of fact, it is you. And he gave it to me. And I got the original one, but these are for sale on our thing. Oh, cool.

Anyway, Long John came and played with us at the El Macombo that night. And we had a four-piece horn section. And I think Roy Young that played with the Beatles in Hamburg sat in with us as well. So when was this El Macombo gig here that you're referring to? Like when, when could that have been? Because is this. Once again, 1978. I think the first time we ever played there. Wow. And then here's an interesting Gatto poster here.

Yeah. Numbered and signed. Can you see that? Yes. So Gatto live in concert with the special guest star, the Guess Who? Wow. Wow. so gato live in concert with the special guest star the guess who wow wow of course it wasn't the guess who with burton because uh he'd left uh or randy but it was jim kale's guess who with jim and it was a great friend of mine and gary peterson and donnie mcdougall uh did burton's great singer uh songwriter. He did Burton's parts.

And I remember Jim coming up to me at sound check at Minkler Auditorium. And I said, Jimmy, I feel really weird about having you guys open for us, you know, after what you've been through. And he puts his hand on my shoulder. He goes, Greg, this is your 15 minutes of fame. Enjoy yourself. He was so cool about it. Amazing. So we're live on the Facebook page. I see Paul Hockyard.

So Paul Hockyard is buying your book. So you've sold at least one book. And I see Dale's buying a book now too. Yeah! Get on there, guys. Shop Greg Godovich, please. We need the dough. Shop Greg Godovich. Now Paul has a question too. He says, Greg, what's your favorite Toronto

venue to play and your best venue story? Oh boy. I don't know if I could tell that this is cable. Anything goes here. Real talk. Let's hear it. Okay. Yeah. I've tried to keep the swearing. Oh, you can swear on this show. It's fine. It's fine. I don't want to, I said ass that's good enough. There's so many, I mean, that i love to play the gasworks certainly jumps out right and i haven't got a quick gasworks story uh they we couldn't get a

gig at the gasworks in our first two months but within our first two months we got a gig opening up for golden earring this is gotto now open up for golden earring at massey hall and the next day the newspapers and larry wilson on the six o'clock rock report on john vent all they talked about was us so the word was out hey there's a new toronto band you guys got to check out right so we get a week at the gas works and we get there monday night and it's lined up around the block. Every night, six nights, it was lined up. Well, one of those nights, I looked down, and there was a notorious girl that liked musicians standing in front of me. She goes, I've got two of the guys from Cheap Trick outside.

They won't let them in. So I said, ladies and gentlemen, I'll be right back. So I get off, and I said, these guys are on the cover of Rolling, let them in for God's sake so it was Rick and Robin and they come in and I'm talking to them and I said do you guys want to sit in and they both looked at each other and they went yeah like this they were like a comedy act I said well what do you want to play and Rick says I'll do lights and Robin says I'll do sound and that Robin says, I'll do sound. And that's what they did. They did sound and light for us. Wow. Yeah.

Wow. And they stayed the whole night. They didn't want to get on stage with us. And our roadies had the night off. And they did sound and lights for us. But you know what? We loved playing at Larry's Hideaway on Carlton. To me, that was the best sounding room.

Low ceiling. I don't think I ever used a washroom in that place or ate anything. Cause it was, it was pretty, pretty, pretty weird. I never saw the rooms that they supply. Cause we, of course we didn't have to. Right. But it was, this was like CBGBs in New York. It was a place, you know, you were careful where you stepped, you know, and then the other ones like uh the piccadilly tube which was underneath like an old english tube station right i do remember one night

i was like just a militant non-smoker uh back in those days and of course you could smoke in the clubs back then and i remember going around because when i did let that lizard loose i would run around with a guitar and i was grabbing cigarettes out of people's mouths until I had two in my nose two in my ears and about eight in my mouth that were all going I looked like my own visual effect so I think we got pretty crazy stories about all of those clubs amazing like when I was listening to pretty bad boy there I'm one of the questions I have, which I'm sure you've been asked far too many times and you can shoot me for asking it again, but why didn't Gatto break in the United States? Well, partially because I'm going to put it down

to a couple of reasons, most notably our own fault. I mean, I was the Johnny Rotten of Canadian rock. That's what they called me. The bad boy of Canadian rock. I didn't give a damn what I said to anybody because a, I knew we would get great press on it and you'd build a reputation, which happened sometimes not for the better. You know, I mean, when our first album came out, Chum FM would not, they were the only game of town they wouldn't play it i got a placard that said chum fm unfair to local talent london los angeles

uh and new york were cities where legends were created not deflated and i marched up and down in front of their station and they laughed at me until it made the press the next day and then they started playing under my hat right so i had no problems with doing that kind of stuff hey hang on uh what is that cry of the the owl must be noon uh ask me the question here i should have lost my train of thought with the owl going up what was the question again oh just essentially why uh why did the auto not break in the states i got you we were now playing small arenas across the country like i remember when i moved to calgary i i drove down the highway to go down to where i was living and we drove by the max bell arena we put 7 000 people in there right so we were playing venues like that now when you, when you're making that

kind of money, and granted, it wasn't a fortune by today's standards. It certainly wasn't Rolling Stone money. But when you put 7,000 people in at $5 a pop, you're making good money. And why send a band that's doing that well to America to start all over again playing for 200 bucks a night when you could keep them here doing that? When we finally went to America to start all over again playing for 200 bucks a night when you could keep them here doing that when we finally went to America we were so out of it on drugs and booze that we blew it down there I mean I'll say it I mean we did we went down a couple times I think our agent David Blustein who's still a great friend of mine told me that the guy that ran the Cardi's music chain a whole bunch of great venues in Houston and Dallas and Austin said, do not ever send that guy down here again.

That'll do it. You mentioned Under My Hat. So that's the first jam that Chum FM played. Is that right? That was the first one. Yeah. Chum FM played. Is that right? That was the first one. Yeah. So tell me a bit about the Eddie Kramer remix,

because I have that loaded up and I'm going to play a bit of that before I thank a couple more sponsors and ask you some more questions from the fans. Eddie and I were both involved initially in the restoration of the infamous and famous El Macombo where everybody played, including the Rolling Stones. In fact, Eddie was in the truck recording the Rolling Stones and April Wine for those couple of nights. Well, I met him the first night. I met the guy that bought the place. And they got him out of bed to come and meet me in the derelict El Macombo.

So it's Greg Goddard and Eddie Kramer. And I went, my head's doing a Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Eddie Kramer, you know. And of course, he didn't like me on site My head's doing a Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Penny Cramer. And of course, he didn't like me on site because they got him out of bed to come and meet me. But his wife, AJ, we were in New York together. And she said to Eddie, she says, you should play along with this guy because he wears his heart on his sleeve.

He's a really good guy. He doesn't want anything from you. And we became really good friends. And then one day Eddie says to me, how would you like it if I remixed some of your old music? I said, I would like that a lot. What's this going to cost? And he said, nothing, which is the best price. And he spent a couple of weeks uh in a studio remixing the first album and as they're about to hear it's incredible and uh i'm gonna put it out on vinyl in the next probably hopefully before christmas and get eddie to sign the copies of myself and put it up but now it's like now under my hat has got a lot of space in it anyway. But when you hear it in headphones,

that's the, like, you're going to hear it in headphones. That's the Eddie Kramer magic. It's all that panning that he does. So let me play this and then I'll fade it down and we can hear a little more about it. But here's Under My Hat. This is the Eddie Kramer remix. It takes a while for this to get going, by the way. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me dear brother What's driving you man Have you got the answer I'll keep it under my hat It's working frustration Get it off your chest. There's no motivation, no chance to get a rest. Yeah, it does sound great in the headphones, man. Holy smokes.

You know what's amazing about that track is the lead vocal there, I sang that while we tracked it. That's the tracking vocal, the scratch vocal, we called it. I was in a little cubicle at Listen Audio in Old Montreal where we recorded the album. And at the beginning, you can actually hear me cueing the guys going all right now and then we slid into it right and then we found another one during the solo where I went do it Gene when Gina was playing and we found that but what we found that was incredible we found another three vocal tracks that we never used. So there's

a double-tracked vocal, and then there's harmonies right there. Oh yeah. That's awesome. So Eddie found those and I went, God, we only recorded this on 16 track originally anyway. Why the hell didn't I use those other tracks? So now when the second verse comes in, my scratch vocal is doubled because, you know, I sang the scratch vocal pretty good for just, you know, jamming it. But we were excited. Right. Right. And then so it goes from two tracks of vocal, same same basic vocal to solo, two tracks to solo. And then a three part harmony like Beatle harmonies. And I just went and the whole album, we found little things all over that we'd never used. And the whole album, we found little things all over it that we'd never used. And now the synthesizer in there is great.

And that's the great Dwayne Ford that played with Atkinson, Danko and Ford and Barefoot back in the 70s. He was living in Montreal and we got him in to play Fender Rhodes piano on it. Most excellent here. Some more fan questions, though, because Jerry jerry the garbage man i like this question ask him do you know like this guy's got a great handle too so jerry the garbage man uh ask him about the time they toured with mick and bowie oh that's amazing uh however i did i did have a drinking contest with uh mick ronson if that's who he's referring to and uh i took we drank 240 ounce jugs of bacardi and we were so drunk i decided to take m Mick Ronson to my mother's place for breakfast, and just as we arrived at my mom's place, Mick sort of tossed his cookies in the back of this

guy's cab, and then he was covered in it, and I knocked on the door. It was about seven in the morning, and my mom came. She goes, what are you doing here? I said, we came for breakfast. I said, this is Mick from the spiders from Mars. And my mom says, I don't care what planet he's from, put them in the backyard. And then Mick, my mom brought us out eggs and bacon. And of course, Mick was like this. And he went bang and face planted. And I pulled him up by the hair and just like in Clockwork Orange, his face was covered in egg. All right. So go ahead. I sat in with Ian Hunter one night,

Brian Adams and Ian Hunter at Rock and Roll Heaven. And they introduced me and he goes, Greg Godwitz. He goes, Mick Ronson warned me about you. It's funny when I first saw this question and said Mick and Bowie, I was thinking, oh, Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Like what's this story going to be? There's the famous story that Angela Bowie caught them in bed together.

I know Angela really. In fact, the first time I met Angela it was in the back of a limo in Vancouver. She'd flown up from LA to come and see us play and get the hype going on the band. I was bragging on something I'd done the night

before and she goes oh boring i said oh you know and she kicked me with her stiletto heel right in the chest and knocked me back into the thing so we hit it off really well the first time i met her i know she's been walking that story back a little bit since it was first exposed many decades ago, but here, let me thank a couple of partners. Yeah, please. So I mentioned off the top Mimico Mike. I'm not Mimico Mike.

I'm Toronto Mike, but Mimico Mike is a gentleman named Mike Majeski. He's a real estate agent and he's been ripping up the Mimico real estate scene. His motto is in the know in Mimico and he certainly is. So you can find more about Mike at realestatelove.ca. But if you're looking to buy and or sell in the Mimico area, which is the other side of the Humber River for you, Greg, but Southwest Toronto, hit up Mike again, tell him Toronto Mike sent you. A lot of confusion with all the mics, but realestatelove.ca.

Toronto Mike sent you. A lot of confusion with all the mics, but realestatelove.ca. Ridley Funeral Home, they've been tremendous, tremendous supporters of this program. Shout out to FOTM Brad Jones at Ridley Funeral Home. They're at Lakeshore and 14th. So that's a little bit West of Mimico in a neighborhood called New Toronto. You can pay tribute without paying a fortune. Go to ridleyFuneralHome.com to learn more. And last but not least, I want to shout out Barb Paluskiewicz. She's the CEO of CDN Technologies. They're there if you have any computer or network issues or questions. I always say they're your outsourced IT department.

So contact Barb. She's 905-542-9759. contact Barb. She's 905-542-9759. Or you can write her, barb at cdntechnologies.com. Greg, yes, that Murph is the handle of a mutual fan, a fan of my show, a fan of your work. And he wrote in and said, Gato played my high school, Earl Haig in the 1980s. I was security for the band, LOL, he says. They were great. Always will remember Greg rocking that Les Paul in our gym. He was great. Big band back in the day for all of us.

And that one, Greg, that yes, that Murph comment, I got 100 pretty much the same, which is I think once you play for somebody when they're in high school, they love you forever, right? Well, I've always said, I must have heard that you played my high school line. I've always said, when somebody says it to me now, I go, you owe me a buck. And they go, why? I said, if I had a buck for everybody that said that to me, I'd be a multimillionaire. Because you play a high school, you got a thousand kids coming to see you that are potential fans.

And we played them, except for Newfoundland, we played every high school in this country, between Flood and Gatto, every single one of them. Wow. They were great gigs. I mean, you got paid really well. The girls were all beautiful because they were young and beautiful. And,

you know, and you could go in and bring in your full concert rigs into these places. We even played a place in Churchbridge, Saskatchewan. We were on the middle of a tour. We had a transport truck at this time because we were doing theaters and small arenas. And we drive through Churchbridge. They got the transport with the drivers in it, these grizzled old truckers. And then we had the roadies in a van. And then we were in a van. We all had CB radios and we, we stopped for gas in Churchbridge. There was a, there was a water tower. There was a bar. There was a gas station and a high school. And I said to my road manager, going to the high school,

I know it's a night off. Let's see if we can play a gig there. And of course, you know, we were well-known right across the country at that point. So they said, yeah. And we said, we'll play it for free and you can give the money to the school. And I remember we got dressed up.

Our dressing room was the band room, the music room. And I found these incredible, like, we all dressed up in their band uniforms. So mine was like, it was an orange jacket with gold epaulets and gold buttons and black pants with gold piping. I mean, it looked like a Sergeant Pepper outfit. And we all wore those. And the place freaked when we came out wearing them. And they gave me mine. And I wore it for the rest of the tour it was such a cool looking outfit. Oh, amazing. Before I run out of time I need to ask you about some I was sitting in front of a blank screen on my

computer and I wrote the words rock talk. And I thought, that's it. I'm going to do a radio show. And I put a one page prospectus together, gave it to a friend of mine who had an in with CFRB radio in Toronto. He took it to the guy. Then he said to me, don't start bugging me every day because you're not going to hear about this for six months. And damned if the next day he phoned me up and said, I don't believe this myself, but Steve Couch, who's the program director wants to have lunch with us. So we met and I outlined exactly, I said, what I wanted to do is exactly pretty much what we're doing, except the same room a few guys from music sitting around a table with some guitars and some beer like you've got there except no beer and uh

talking one-on-one about uh playing and then playing a couple of songs and you know getting calls from the audience and stuff and two weeks later we were on now i i not only hosted the show co-hosted it with another fellow but um i produced this show so it was like i'd phone up a you know one of the major record companies and say who's in town this week ray davis from the kinks is in can i get him on my show yeah so he won't come on into the station. He won't let me into his hotel room. He gets his personal assistants to bring a couch out of his suite into the corridor. And I have to sit on the couch with my technician and ask him questions. And I prided myself on good questions because I hated when I got asked bad ones. So he's giving me one word monosyllabic. Yeah. No, no. Can't remember. No. Until I said, you know, Ray, you've always reminded me of the Charles Dickens of rock and roll. And he went, really? And I had him. We ended up singing together. Wow. I mean, I knew I had him.

I mean, who doesn't want to be called the Charles Dickens of anything? Right. But it was like that. We could get anybody I wanted. I could get Meatloaf came on, Andy Summers from the Police, Alice Cooper, George Harrison's wife, Jeff Emmerich that recorded the Beatles, George Martin. I mean, I had anybody I wanted on the show. And then once I had Ray Manzarek from the doors, there's a big story about a rock talk in the new book, by the way,

there's a whole chapter on it. But I asked, you know, if anybody's ever seen interviews with Ray Manzarek, it's always, well, man, you know, Jim man was, it was like working with Dionysus, man. He was like a shaman, man. He would be spinning around. And Jim was a Dionysus. And I meant, Jim, man, was like working with Dionysus, man. He was like a shaman, man. He would be spinning around. And Jim was a Dionysus. And I meant, listen, man. So I asked him a question.

He goes, that's a great question, man. And he answers the question. And then I hit him with the zinger because I didn't like him anyway. And he goes, oh, that's a low shot, man. How could you ask me something like that, man? I said, well, look, man. I said, your audience wants to know about this, man. He goes, well, that's a low shot, man. I don't want to go there. I said, okay, let's change tack. You wrote a book on the civil war. Why? He goes,

why not, man? And I said, oh, okay, let me get this straight, man. So I started pretending I was him and he hung up on me. And my co-host is looking at me because I continued talking like him and going, well, I don't know. I don't want to talk about that, man. You know, I want to talk about Jim, man. And my co-host says, what are you doing? I said, well, he hung up on me, didn't he? He goes, yeah, but you can't pretend to be him. Gold radio.

Why does Rock Talk eventually come to an end? Like, how does Rock Talk? I moved to Calgary. And they were going to do an ISDN. I think it's called hookup. Right. And apparently by the time I got, so we could have done basically this. So it sounds like you're in the same room, but you're not. And I could have continued. And then they said, we can't afford it.

And that was the end of that. And you know, they kept the show going, but it just turned into a, you know, it turned into a local singer songwriter show. I mean, I once called up Sid McCain worked for, she was a publicist at Virgin Records. And I called her up to get my old friend, Sebastian Bach on the show. He was on the cover of Rolling Stone and all that stuff. And the woman on the phone said, can I ask what

this is about? And I said, tell her it's Greg Godovitz from Rock Talk. I want to talk to her. She goes, I have to know what you want. I said, well, I'll tell you what you're going to do. You're going to do your stupid job and get her on the phone for me. And cause I'd had enough of this. So Sid comes on and she says, Greg, I don't know if you know this or not. My father is Senator John McCain that's running for the presidency of the United States. I said, yeah, I've known that for a couple of years, Sid. I said, but until your dad is playing drums for the Rolling Stones I really don't care and she just laughed and we had she got me Sebastian but I mean so the

press was hounding her because her dad was running for the presidency right and I said yeah I know you know but until he until he's jumping for the stones I don't care who he is that's that's the Sid okay hell the story oh that's amazing. All those stories are in this book. Okay, share the books again. Cheers to write this. Okay, share the books. What's the first book called again? The first book is called

Travels With My Amp. I usually recommend people read this one first because this is the sex and drugs and rock and roll one. This is one. You know what's great about these books is that they are exactly the same length. Both books are 385 pages long. And that's a coincidence. I was going to say, that's an amazing coincidence.

No, it's just, you know, I wrote in the travels, I wrote the first line and the set and the last line, and then I just filled in the blanks and the same thing with this book. Now I realized that when the second book was finished, I hadn't finished telling my whole story. I didn't say anything about my eight years in Calgary or coming back to Toronto for the last five years. So I started writing the third book.

And the title of the third book is called The Idiot's Trilogy Part Four. Oh, because it's really part three. I get it. Yes. It's an idiot's trilogy. I get it. Anyway, so I'm working on it. And it's a completely different look at the music business.

And also, of course, I couldn't get away from talking about what we're going through with the pandemic. But you know what? When people finally read the third book, they're going to go, I never realized the pandemic was so funny. But to remind people, the second book, which is the one that's just came out, Up Close and Uncomfortable. Yeah, the new one. So, yeah, start with the first one, Travels With My Amp. Then get the second one, which is out now, Up Close and Uncomfortable. And then this third one will drop, what, for Christmas or something?

What are you working on there? You know, this one took me so long to write because I meant it to be a funny book. Right. And, you know, I've done stand-up and stuff, and I know I can be pretty funny. Being funny is one thing. Writing funny is totally a different ballgame. So I would get up uh ernest hemingway was the one that said write drunk edit sober right i said no no write drunk edit hungover is the way i did it you know and i would edit it the next day and go this isn't funny

you know i mean i need this to be funnier so i'd have to rewrite things to make it you know i mean like here's a picture of me in the Dominican Republic wearing women's clothing on the beach. Right. You know, I mean, I had no problem doing those kind of things. And this is just a few years ago. seven foot transvestite at a club through a snowball made out of icing sugar and hit me in the head and bounced all over my suit. So I had to walk around New York at four in the morning with a suit covered in icing sugar. That story's in here too. Now musically, so we got your books all sorted there, but musically, what are you up to these days um well not much like everybody else i did i did i know i gotta take the can you see that with all the glimmer on it and everything this i made this album in uh calgary with paul dean from lover boy right it's my first solo album um everybody that's heard it says it's the best well paul said these are the best songs you've

ever written and then we now have on shopgraygodovitz.com, we have the first three Godo albums, Who Cares, Godo, and An Act of Godo, that have got 15-page booklets. They're all different inside. So all the photographs have never been seen before. And I hate to be like a shameless huckster, but this is the only way that we can make money. To sell stuff, you know, I hate to be like a shameless huckster, but this is the only way that we can make money to sell stuff, you know?

Yeah. This is your chance. No, absolutely. I'm just glad I have it to sell. I've got a lot of friends that they're starving to death, you know? I know awful times. I'm going to read a quick comment in real time here from Paul Hockyard, who says, Mike, you need to pitch production of a new podcast to him. His stories are fabulous and endless and combined with the personality he puts in all caps, priceless. So people have enjoyed this episode of Toronto Mike.

And I can't wait. And, you know, I want to thank you, but I also want to thank guys like that and all the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that I've played for over the years that continue to support what my lunacy, whatever the heck it is I do. And, you know, somebody asked me, you know, you're going to be 70 in a month this month, March 20th, I'll be 70. Have you thought about retiring? And I say the same thing. I'm just getting started, right? I'm going to write a musical next year.

I'm going to record probably another next year. I'm going to record probably another hour. I've got another 25 songs kicking around. I'm not finished. And Eddie Kramer and I are going to go out at some point and do a two-man show in theaters. Amazing, buddy. Amazing. I feel like you made a hell of a debut here and we're going to have to get you back on Toronto Mic'd and pick up some of the stories, you know, the Ringo stories. And there's so many more stories. We're going to do a part two for this at some point. Oh, I'd love to, man. Anytime. You're really good at what you do. Oh, thanks, man.

And thank you to your audience as well. Great stories. Nobody told me they hate my guts, which is a rarity. Nobody says my book stinks. I mean, it's all good. Nobody says my book stinks. I mean, so it's all good. And that brings us to the end of our 809th show. Now, you can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Now, Greg, one more time,

what is the website people should go to to buy all this great stuff? It's called Shop, S-H-O-P, Greg, G-R-E-G, Godovitz, G-O-D-O-V as in victor itz.com and i guess you can when you put this up for people to see it you could run a crawl underneath it right because i know that you can't see ours down there uh well i'll put it i can we can stick it in the description there for sure that would be fabulous because i mean the object of the game for me uh getting a publicist and everything is so that people will you know know, I am proud of these things. I'm actually as proud of the books as I am of the music I've created.

I never thought I would ever end up a writer, but, you know, I'm working on number three. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery, they're at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. CDN Technologies are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta's at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. CDN Technologies are at CDN Technologies. Ridley Funeral Home is at Ridley FH. And Mimico Mike, he's not on Twitter. He's on Instagram as Majeski Group Homes.

See you all next week. Rosie and Grace Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow Wants me today This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Roam Phone. Roam Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls. Visit RoamPhone.ca to get started.