WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1188 - David Ritz

Episode Date: December 31, 2020

David Ritz is one of the most prolific biographers of music industry titans, writing about the lives of artists from BB King to Willie Nelson to Janet Jackson. David tells Marc about his obsessive pursuit of Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin and how chronicling their lives changed his. He also explains why he often enjoys ghost writing for a musician more than writing in his own voice. Plus, David talks with Marc about finding faith through the Blues and writing his own story for a change. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fucksters what the fuckettes how's it going i'm mark Mark Maron. This is my podcast WTF. Welcome to it. Today is Thursday. If you're downloading and listening on the day it comes out. Today is New Year's Eve. Tomorrow, Friday, the beginning of a new year. It doesn't feel like it usually does, does it?

Yeah, I don't know. I spent a few hours today, a little time yesterday, trying to figure out what to say. Do I have a list? Is there a top 10 of 2020? Is there a countdown of bullshit this fuck that that this or that what's trending now what are my thoughts on what are my likes and dislikes 2020 what do we do with it i think for a lot of us there's no reason to necessarily get involved with the pop culture rationalization or distraction or relief attempts at uh contextualizing this last year on an entertainment level, on a recipe level,

on a pop culture level at all, is there really? I mean, a lot of it helped us get by, but all of it seems like a blur, like a smear, like a haze. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted I'm exhausted from 2020 I mean I've never felt like I feel now for a lot of different reasons and I assume many of us have had probably the worst year of our life my body and brain is exhausted from distributing cortisol I'm worn out on a thyroid level from four years of the pig king, chaos master, and everything that came along with that. I'm exhausted from almost a year of COVID and belligerent irresponsibility on behalf of so many people. Childishness. on behalf of so many people. Childishness.

I'm exhausted by the fact that now after four years and a plague, I know exactly who my fellow Americans are and what many of them are made of. I'm exhausted because I know who I am more clearly now because of grief, COVID, isolation, Trump, panic, wildfires. It's been a fucked up year, man. I mean, I know tangibly what happened to me. I know that I had to put two cats down this year. I know that someone I loved a lot

basically died in my house. I mean, I know those things happened. I know the plague came. I know how it was handled from the top down, from my neighbor down, from across the street down. And I know all of us have had a difficult time. and I want to feel optimistic. I want to feel hopeful. I want to take this opportunity like we do every year to lie to ourselves that this one's going to be a good one. I don't know about you, but you know what I'm hoping for? Some fucking relief.

Just a little relief would be great. You know what I'm hoping for? Some fucking relief. Just a little relief would be great. Sure, we got a little relief in early November. But I mean tangible. You know, walk outside, look around kind of relief. That's my hope for a new year. I'm sorry you've all gone through what you're going through and what you've went through this year. I am.

My empathy can only reach so much, but I do get a sense that some people had a much worse time than me. A lot of people still having a bad time. I'm grateful that I have some things in place that enabled me not to lose my mind or wallow in a sadness that could have proven, you know, chronic, disastrous. I'm grateful for my friends.

I'm grateful for the audience. I'm grateful for the people who reached out to me during this last year. I've said this before. I don't know. I guess I'll say it again. I have a lot to be grateful for and a lot to be sad about and not unlike anybody else, a lot to be afraid of. And we move forward. I want you to have a better new year. I'd love it if you had a happy one, but I don't know what you're hoping for, but I'm hoping for relief. Just a little bit of relief would be so welcome.

Just a little bit of, okay, okay. It's okay. It's going to be okay. It's okay. It's going to be okay. That's my hope for this new year, for some relief and that it's going to be okay.

Not great. Not even necessarily better. I just want some relief. And I want things to be okay. And I'd like us to be able to see past right now again. A little bit. With a little bit of excitement. Hope.

I don't know, man. That's a stretch. A lot of things have been laid bare. But my hope for us all is that if you can find some gratitude, find it. If you can find some way to frame the last year positively, maybe because of what you now know about yourself, about your family, the connections you made, the love that you found, how you took care of people, how you took care of yourself, how people took care

of you. You can find it. Good. Be grateful for that. of people, how you took care of yourself, how people took care of you. You can find it good. Be grateful for that. I hope for a little relief for us all, a little relief. And maybe just occasionally the ability to go like, tomorrow's going to be okay. Tomorrow's going to be good. I can't wait till tomorrow. So today on the show, David Ritz, I talked toid ritz now david ritz is one of the most prolific biographers of music industry stars he's the guy he wrote biographies on marvin gaye jimmy scott

aretha franklin he's co-written or ghostwritten biographies for dozens more ray charles bb king edith james janet jackson buddy guy don Rickles. He co-wrote the autobiography of Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler, which is how I got hooked up with him when I played Wexler in the movie Respect. He's also written his own interesting autobiography called The God Groove, A Booze Journey to Faith. This is not your average Jewish guy's story. I just found him to be an interesting guy who's been through some interesting things. And he's met a lot of amazing people and he's gone through a journey of his own. And I thought I would talk to him. So talking to David Ritz is a bit of a musical history. And he definitely has some insight through all his experience into some of the great artists of our times.

You can find links to all of his work at Ritz, R-I-T-Z, rights.com, RitzRights.com. This is me talking to David Ritz. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Me talking to David Ricks. you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance, mind your business. Death is in our air.

This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive.

FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Nice to see you, David. I know we talked once a while back, and you helped me out a bit with Jerry Wexler, your friend. How did that go, by the way? I sort of meant to call you and ask you,

and I didn't ever. Did you enjoy the process? Yeah, I did. Having read your book about Jerry was very helpful, and then talking to you a bit about Aretha and a bit about Wexler was helpful, and I think the director was very happy with my performance. But I think that ultimately the Wexler was helpful. And I think the director was very happy with my performance. But I think that ultimately, you know, the Wexler you described, you know, in the book that you wrote with him and also in your book, The God Groove, was probably a deeper dude than the one

you're going to see in the movie. Well, because it isn't his movie, it's hers. Exactly. You can't go that deep. You know, I mean, you don't have time, and he's incredibly complicated. You're incredibly complicated. I've got to be honest with you. I had this book of yours sitting around for a long time, and I know you've written books about a lot of different people. Right. But just the other day, I'm like, well, I'm going to talk to him.

I don't like really reading books that people have written before I talk to them because it makes me lead too much. So that being said, I read most of it. So I did not read the end. So you're going to have to get to that naturally. But The God Groove, your book, A Blues Journey to Faith, is a great book. It's a ballsy book. And I don't say this about much, but I think a lot of it has to do with the things we have in common. I found not just a Jewish thing, not just a narcissistic father thing, not just the black culture, black music thing.

But maybe that's, well, there's a lot of things that we have in common. But like I said, I don't know how it ends. I assume that you have Jesus in your heart now. I think, was that where we were going? Well, yeah, no, I am definitely, I definitely believe in Jesus. And that's interesting, because that's the other thing we have in common. I don't mean we have in common that particular word Jesus, but I think we both come out of the 12 steps. And that's how I got into Christianity through the 12 steps. And the irony is that when I first went into one of three different 12-step programs that I've been in for the last 30 years, if they had told me you had to be leaving Jesus, I would have gone the other way. So part of the genius of the program to me is to re-language Christianity

to take the Christian part out of it. Right. It's structural Christianity without Jesus. Exactly. Right. I get it. It's the deeds without Jesus. Exactly. Right. I get it. It's the deeds without the dude. Yeah, but the deeds to me are the dudes. I mean, in other words, the deeds are the dude in that, first of all, I don't care what anybody calls anything. I think our job as we communicate with other people is to be sensitive to their cultural history with certain words.

So I won't use certain words with certain people because I know it will kind of trigger them. Therefore, it's only out of ego that I have to tell you, you have to use the word Jesus. You don't have to use any word. I mean, to me, it's about the brotherhood and the sisterhood of the 12 Steps program is all about sort of allowing a spirit to wash over us, to hear it from each other, and to heal us as a result of embracing the Spirit, period. What you go on and call that Spirit, how you, what ideology or theology you adapt, I don't care. I am not at all evangelical, and I don't like proselytizing, because I believe that proselytizing comes out of ego.

You've got to use my language. I get it. So you're saying that what you've got to get hip to is God consciousness, and either you're going to tap in or you're not. Or don't even call it God consciousness if the word God is abhorrent to you. If the spirit moves you, whatever. Yeah. I get it.

But what's interesting to me is that you're about as Jewish as you can be. I agree. Really. And, you know, I mean, it seems to me that you were, where were you born? I was born in New York and lived there until I was about five and moved to Newark, New Jersey and lived there till I was about 12. out five and moved to Newark, New Jersey and lived there until I was about 12. And then we went to Charleston, South Carolina for a year. And then I went to Texas where I went to high school and college. My old man was a traveling salesman.

Traveling salesman. But they come from, like, your grandparents were the immigrants? Yeah, yeah. Eastern European, the traditional thing. What part? Did you ever track it? Nope. You never did it? You don't know where? They're not from behind the pale or pale of settlement?

Generally, I know the territory, but I've never done. And in a weird way, I mean, I don't care in a certain way because I kind of knew them very, very well, and they were not articulate in English, and I don't know. What did they speak? Well, my old man's parents spoke English, very broken English with a heavy Yiddish accent. But their first language was Yiddish. Do you speak Yiddish? No their but their first language was um yiddish and and do you speak yiddish no i don't no i only know what the usual curse words are and did your parents did your father yes he did and he was good at it and he was proud of it and and and i enjoyed hearing him uh speak it but again i never never bothered to learn it.

It never even occurred to me. So your memories of New York when you were very young, it seems very clear. Very clear because it had to do with jazz. I mean, in other words, my first passion as a child, because my old man loved jazz, my first passion as a child was jazz. And I was born in 1943, so I still got to hear the titans, you know, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday and so on and so forth. And that's what really kind of marked my early life. And by the way, going back to Christianity without without trying to kill it here is that the two

things and and we don't ever have to talk about it again in these interviews i'm not trying to push it but the two things that led me to christianity were both the 12-step program and african-american music because no i mean that's clear you know and it's like but when you were a kid so you were in new york until you were five and then you're in Newark, New Jersey. Yeah. You know, from seven to 11. Yeah. But, and your father, you wasn't, you weren't a religious family, were you?

No, he was, he was one of the reasons I got along so well with Jerry Wexler is that Jerry was my, my father. Right. He was, I'm rich. My old man was not. Yeah. He produced Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, which my old man did not do.

He hung out with Wilson Pickett, which my old man did not do, but he talked like my old man. I mean, my old man, and Jerry was an intellectual. He was a literary intellectual. And your father was too? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, they read high-powered books. They knew Einstein and Freud well. They knew, they read, you know, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud. It's interesting that that generation, right, of Jews that, you know, your father was a traveling salesman.

But the but the premium put on education by, you know, second, you know, first generation, second generation Jews to to sort of like, you know, to to define us as a culture that, you know, you better. You know, knowledge is power. Education is how you get ahead because they're not going to let you as a culture that you know you you better you know knowledge is power education is how you get ahead because they're not going to let you do a lot of things so you better be smart right yeah and also they were killers i mean they were intellectual killers in other words part of why i understood jerry as well as i did is because he was like my father. And if you got into an argument with him about whether Sonny Rollins was a better tenor player than Sonny Stitt, or whether T-Bone Walker was a better guitarist than Ba'Adi Gai, his argumentation style was to sort of destroy you if he could.

On those important subjects. Exactly. I mean, he had to. And so there was a passionate antagonism as a conversationalist. Now, it doesn't mean underneath there wasn't love and affection. There positively was. But he beat you down. Is that what you're saying? He beat beat the shit out of you down and and and that's one of the reasons why i could

tiptoe through his tulips and become his um ghost writer uh oh who's jerry but but your father what about your father did he like we what no we we had a falling out pretty early on because I understood he was an intellectual bully, as was Jerry. Yeah. And so I had to take him on. I didn't have to take him on, but my personality was... You have to. When you're a son of a narcissistic father, at some point you're going to push him over the edge you gotta kill him off at a certain point i and and i know that sounds like kind of straight ahead eat a bullshit but in my case it was true because

because they will eat you up well they deny you a sense of self exactly because because they only my dad only saw me as an extension of him. Exactly. That's exactly something we share. And that's deep shit. And, you know, realizing that is, it's a weird and deep thing that, you know, that you're just seen as an appendage. And, you know, it's hard to see you as an appendage when it starts hitting you. appendage when it starts hitting you. Exactly. And even in my own career, once it got off and I was doing okay and I was writing these books, he was never happy that I was a ghost writer because he wanted me to be, you know, Philip Roth or Saul Bellow or one of these guys. Yeah, but he would undermine you no matter what you did.

Probably so. I think so. Yeah. I think that's probably true. He was proud, but he could never tell me that. And also he could never stop criticizing my work as being superficial as opposed to doing the poet's surprise biography of, you know, being a... But either way, it sends us out into the world sort of like, you know, having... They implant a self-consciousness and a self-loathing in us because of our own judgment of ourselves. And then you're kind of wandering around, you know, emotionally untethered looking for guidance,

you know, from a very early age, because your parents are incapable of it. What did your mother do? She was strong. She was a seamstress. She sewed. Ultimately, she became one of these people. She worked for Sears or JCPenney's, one of the two, where she would get in the truck and come to your house and sort of measure your windows for the drapes, and she sold drapes. And she was a great salesperson and totally unintellectual, but very, very intelligent and very kind of practical and down to earth and cold. My dad was very emotional and warm and huggy, and my mother was rather kind of distant.

But, you know, I'm kind of one of these idiots who believes that we get the parents that we should get, or at least in my case, I got exactly the parents who I needed to have. Yeah, but David, I mean, like, look, I understand. You know, I do that too because, you know, honestly, that idea of, you know, nothing happens in God's world that isn't whatever. But the truth is, is that you gain nothing from not seeing it that way. Exactly. You know, without it being, you know being a regret.

You have to frame it like that way at some point, or else you're just going to have a regret. Well, but it's also helpful to frame it that way in that my goal is to live in gratitude because I think it's the only way we don't go crazy doesn't mean they weren't shitty and in and and in very important ways they were shitty and I can look at that and in other ways they were great but in in any event because I'm happy with who I am now I sort of needed them to go through whatever I went through. No, I appreciate that. Yeah.

And so if you can get to gratitude, however the hell you get to gratitude, whether it is sort of a ploy like you suggest that I need to frame it that way, which I don't disagree with. But in the end, as I sit here talking to you now, I am grateful to my mom. I am grateful to my dad for being where they are. I feel that way. So your connection with jazz and African-American music, black music at the time, it's something that I identify with as well. And this was something that your father loved and it was the jazz age. And you were did you get to see a lot of live stuff when you were very young? Yeah, I did. I saw. Yeah, I saw the Titans, you know, or to me, the Titans. You know, how old were you? Like your father took you. What? How do you do that?

Yeah, he took me. He took me to Carnegie Hall. He took me to jazz clubs in Newark. I saw a little Jimmy Scott who later on became a guy whose biography I wrote. I saw Bird and Billie Holiday and Max Roach and Clifford Brown. And also sort of getting back to the religious part of it, as I look back, these were religious epiphanies. At the time, I couldn't call it that, but I was so moved and so amazed and so shook and so transformed. By this early music. By this early music, it made me fucking crazy. I know that you frame this as your journey towards the Godhead, but when you're a kid, you're just excited, right? towards the Godhead.

But when you're a kid, you're just excited, right? Yeah, but you're also transformed. In other words, you are ecstatic. I guess that's the word I was looking for, like ecstasy. So it is kind of like going, I remember, I got a scene in the book where I go to an African-American church and it looks great in there. There's kind of music. And I can't go in the church because I'm Jewish and Jesus is kind of creepy. And I've been told it's creepy and everything in my culture tells me that's not me. And yet everything is drawing me into that church. The people are happy. The music's jamming.

And what it's taken me forever to understand is when I went to hear Charlie Parker at Birdland or Count Basie, whoever it was, I was entering into a church. And I was an experience in ecstasy that was transformative and that was lifting my heart and exciting me and taking me beyond what is the normal human condition. And I didn't know what to call that, except I had to go out and I had to buy every Billie Holiday album and every Lester Young. And then when I moved to Texas, the big deal that happened to me was moving to Texas when I was 12 and a half, because New York was all jazz and Texas was the blues. And I didn't know anything about the blues. So you went to the source. Exactly. And so when I heard Abhi Bland and B.B. King and Lightning Hopkins, I understood it all comes out of the blues. And it's a blues experience. And again, it's a transformative experience. And the cliche is you play the blues to lose the blues, but you also listen to the blues to lose the blues. that, we are in the human condition, at least for me, is the blues condition. We are born to die. So we've all got the blues, you know what I'm saying? What was it that B.B. King told you about his conception of Jesus? He didn't say that much. His...

No, wasn't he the one that told you that God had the blues? Yes. yeah no he did definitely tell me god had the blues he sent his son his human son down you know and and that that in some ways jesus was a personification of what the blues yeah man and then i guess you asked you know when j Jesus was resurrected, were the blues gone? And Bebe said, no, of course not. The blues don't go away. It's just communicated differently, right? Yeah, yeah. And I believe that is true, that I think once we embrace the blues sensibility of life, I think we are seeing reality well that's also a great

point another point in the book with the jimmy reed story you know which i mean i would encourage anybody to read these books for these i mean you're like zealig you just sort of lucked into these fucking moments because of your passion for something yeah but i don't think it was because of your passion for something. Yeah, but I don't think it was luck. Lots of people tell me that, but my feeling about it, I chased after Jimmy Ray. I chased after Marvin Gaye. And Ray Charles.

Right, and I was rejected a lot by people who didn't want to hang out with me. So, I mean, I just made it a point like, hey, man, I want to know who you are. Okay, well, I guess luck I just made it a point like, hey, man, I want to know who you are. Okay. Well, I guess luck is not the right. I mean, I think what was lucky is not that you got in that car with Jimmy Reed, but that, you know, he happened to pull out a razor and you guys and cut his girlfriend. And you guys end up at the fucking emergency room. And he tells you that in order to understand the blues, you got to live the blues. I mean, that was a gift, dude.

I mean, I agree. No amount of persistence was going was a gift, dude. No, no, I agree. No amount of persistence was going to deliver that to you. No, no, no, no, no, no. I agree. And that's always been, it's like chase after Marvin Gaye the way I chase after him and getting together with him. But let's talk about that for a minute. Let's talk about the arc of it.

Okay. You know that this music gets you going. You know that you love this music. You love all of it. You love the entire spectrum. The blues and the gospel are what sort of come together to make the R&B and make the jazz. And the jazz comes full circle and pulls the Jesus all the way out of it and creates a new spirituality. I get all that. Now, a couple of questions I have before I go into the arc of your career is like, how much thought have you put into, I was just talking to my producer about this before we started talking, that there is a type of Jew that is completely compelled and immersed in black culture. I don't know if it goes both ways. I don't feel like it does, but there's certainly, you know, Jewish blues players and then also Jewish blues and Jewish music intellectuals and Jewish civil rights proponents.

I mean, the Jews have been, you know, enmeshed with the black experience for a long time in America. And where do you think that comes from? Have you put serious thought into that? No. And the reason I haven't is no, honestly. Am I wrong? No. You can make a great argument and you can show historical evidence for it. I mean, no, it's a highly intelligent argument. I have never put myself – I mean, there are other Jewish people I know.

You know, there's Peter Goranek, who's's Jewish who's a great scholar and a great writer I can name a lot of other Jewish people Mike Bloomfield Peter Green and Paul Schaefer whose book I wrote and who's a great

great musician and a scholar of R&B and blues and then you get the great exploiters of the black people in the Jewish religion. Right, the chess. And, you know, so it goes on and on and on. Yeah, yeah. So, yes, there are books that have been. I think one book was called Rhythm and the Jews.

I mean, there's been a whole, there's got to be a hundred PhD. But it's not just music. It's politics as well. It's politics as well. And social, you know, the kind of, I guess it comes from social activism and from the initial kind of like Marxist sort of social activists. Exactly. But

again, the reason I have not, that is of not kind of primary interest to me is because my own experience with it rests in mystery. I don't know why when I heard Louis Armstrong for the first time when my father took me to Carnegie Hall, or when I heard Charlie Parker or Coltrane or whoever it is, I don't know why my heart started beating. I felt this connection. It didn't have to do with politics.

It didn't have to do with, it was a visceral, emotional experience. When we moved to Charleston, I was 12, I think, or about 11 and a half. And I didn't, my parents really didn't prepare me for segregation. This is, I was born in 43 and 12, 1955. So I got on the bus and I sort of naturally went to the back of the bus to sit with the African-American people because they, I was more comfortable. And I didn't have any attitude. I was just, they were more comfortable. And, you know, the bus driver yells at me, what are you doing? I didn't understand. I didn't understand. And more than politics, it wasn't just music, it was sports, because I was an incredibly passionate Brooklyn

Dodger fan when I was a kid. And that was the Dodgers of Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson. So in my mind, African-Americans were a superior race because the two things I was interested in, which was the Dodgers and jazz, they were they excelled at all. All my heroes were black. So and also you brought up in a house where your father was, you know, incredibly embracing. There was not judgment. There was not separation. There was respect and appreciation. Yeah. And also I'm not particularly political.

So, I mean, you know, I'm a liberal Democrat, but I am not. I was never an activist. I've been, you know, writing forever. Um, and, and, and so anyway, what did you set out to do though? I mean, the writing seemed to, you know, kind of overtake you. Well, I began, you know, I've got kind of a weird history in the beginning. Um, I went to graduate school at the State University of New York at Buffalo with this guy, Leslie Fiedler, who is a kind of a well-known critic and an famous guy in the world of Jungian criticism. And I sort of wanted to become him. So I got an MA and I went through a PhD program and I passed my PhD, but I never wrote my dissertation.

I got tired of academics. I didn't feel like I was a true academic. And I moved to Dallas and I began an ad agency because I wanted to make a lot of bread. You moved to Dallas with your family and you grew up there and that's when you started. Right. And I began this ad agency because I kind of said, okay, I'm going to make a lot of money. Right. And I had worked my way through college writing ads, and I was good at writing commercials and shit. Yeah. And I did that, and some pals of mine and I began an agency, and we did that for about five years.

And I got sort of bored. I didn't care about the products that I was selling. care about the products that I was selling. And so that's when I began to think about chasing after Ray Charles. I went to the library. I thought there was no biography or autobiography. What was that moment though? I mean, it's like it was there that you decided. I mean, at some point you're tired, you're bored with your life as an advertising agent, then out of nowhere you're like, Ray Charles is my ticket. Well, here's why. And that's why, again, I'm kind of grateful for everything. I'm a good salesman, and I can hustle. And advertising showed me that I could hustle. So I just looked at him as a potential client. But you loved him.

I loved him. I loved him. And I didn't love the products I was advertising. But you decided you wanted to write about, did you want to be his friend? Did you want to meet him? I wanted to write his biography and win the Pulitzer Prize. But then I met an agent who told me his biography is not as commercial as his autobiography. And I told him him i don't care i've got to win the pulitzer prize and be a biographer because i didn't know what the fuck because you wanted your dad to be proud of you exactly yeah and then the agent asked me

a question a question that changed my life and the question was what book would you rather read? A book about his life written by an egghead like you, or a book in his own voice telling about his life? And I said, oh, I would much rather read the book in his own voice. So then the agent said to me, write the book you want to read, not the book that you believe you should write. And that changed everything. And even today, I continue to write the books I want believe you should write. And that changed everything. And even today, I continue to write the books I want to read. Right. So but but this whole compulsive kind

of process of chasing down Ray Charles. Very compulsive. Yeah. But it was like, you know, it was it became your your the main object of your life. And high on pot. And I was nuts. I mean, I checked into the Hot Sheet Motel on Washington Boulevard across the street from his office. You're stalking him. I'm stalking him. I'm going to the office and there's this tough guy named Joe Adams, who's his manager, who's telling them, you can't have anything to do with them so then i call uh western union i say can you uh send telegrams and braille and they said yes so then i start sending them telegrams and braille every day about how i was crazy about him and i loved him and i knew everything about him and i wanted to work with him and ultimately he calls me up and he and he says who are you

and i said i'm a guy across the street in a motel. I'm the annoying Jew that keeps coming around the office. Just come over. And I knew once I got in a room with him, he would feel me. And he did. He could really feel my heart. He could feel my spirit. And I did love him. I mean, he was the artist.

And I did love him. I mean, he was the artist, he was the earliest artist who had that kind of impact on me. Early Ray Charles sucked me up as much as any artist. And so it just happened. And I could talk to him. I wasn't intimidated. I mean, I was intimidated, but I could hang in there. I mean, I could ask him tough questions. When did you lose you? I mean, I discovered I was good at it. And once I knew that it was his book and that my own book, everything changed because I gave him the power. And once you give away power in a creative collaboration, you turn out to have more power because power is off the table and people are more willing to give and take and be free in the discussion. I get that. But like, you know, in that moment, you know, where you finally sit down with Ray Charles, you sit down, you know, as you as you got the hang of it. sit down with Ray Charles or you sit down, you know, as you, as you got the hang of it, you know, you, you, you Smokey Robbins and BB King added James Aretha, all these people, all the way, you know, you buddy guy, you wrote about everybody.

But, but I, I have to assume in that moment, a guy like you, who's got, you know, your boundaries probably weren't great. Your sense of self, not great, you know, your boundaries probably weren't great, your sense of self not great, you know, so your ability to kind of almost in a innately symbiotic and codependent way to lock into somebody who is, you know, a self-centered but amazingly giving artist was probably almost innate. Like you probably became an appendage fairly quickly, no? Yes, and also helped again by advertising. Because in advertising, where I did them well, you have a client.

And the client's in charge. And you learn the job is to please the client. So I'm coming out of advertising. Now, the academic part was helpful in that I knew literature to an extent. I mean, you know, I knew the trade. But you wanted to be close to Ray Charles. I wanted to be close to him, and I also wanted him to know he didn't have to be scared of me because these people have been interviewed a zillion times.

I know. By journalists who twist their words and they're angry at the press. And I kept on telling them, man, this is your book. And the truth is we translated it into Braille and he put his hands over the Braille and he made changes. And he was a great editor because he was a brilliant guy. He was a brilliant, brilliant guy. But he was willing, not unlike. I mean, there's different degrees of caginess on behalf of people, public people. Right.

But it sounded like Ray, you know, was willing to engage you and trust you. And when you did, you know, present him with a book that was written in his voice by him with you, you know, he was okay with it, even with the darker elements. Exactly. Because he didn't give a shit. In other words, he was a guy who was so confident about who he was right and arrogant i mean to a degree i he knew he was great and he was the most confident guy i've ever met as opposed to you you know uh marvin gaye was the opposite he was completely insecure but the first book brother, that was a big book, right? And you know, it did well. Did they base the movie on it? Yeah, they did, but it's a whole long story. You mean they screwed you?

It's just a long story that doesn't have a happy... that's not a particularly interesting Hollywood story that you've heard a zillion of them. But, alright right so you do but you do Ray and then you think you're going to start just you know you're going to be the guy exactly that does the by the the helps these guys ghost write their stories nothing happens exactly yeah and that's where the hustle has to kick in. Because at a certain point, and you're exactly right, I thought everyone was going to call me. I had done Ray Charles' autobiography, and nobody calls me.

And that's when I understand that I am in the advertising business again. I have to chase after clients. I have to get some work. I got to chase after Marvin Gaye. I got to chase after the Neville Brothers. I got to chase after Marvin Gaye. I got to chase after the Neville brothers. I got to chase after this one and that one. And I, at a certain point, Mark, I also realized I enjoyed the chase. I mean, you are the honorable in that you don't like to be rejected, but I can take the rejection.

You know, I mean, it ain't going to kill me. And also, I knew Ray gave me a lot of confidence because he's a tough, you know, he was a tough cookie. I mean, really tough guy. Yeah. And not particularly cordial. And so, you know, when I finally got Marvin Gaye, who happened after Ray, it was the opposite. Like, Ray was sort of the tough uncle who was very sort of demanding

and you have to be on your toes. Marvin was your relaxed older brother. But it was weird, though. You know, the way you kind of characterize what you're saying to me now, but it seems to me that out of the 50 books you wrote, or however many it is, about all these different artists,

that, you know, you spend some time in the book talking about buddy guy you know you talk about bb you talk about you know there's a good story about uh you know lightning hopkins and the the song about the stuttering kid that helped you sort of frame your own stutter differently right but but it seems to me that Ray Charles, for the reasons you just said, was impactful, but that once you got into this skin and the life of Marvin Gaye, that your mind was fucking blown for light and dark.

You were in, I have to assume initially, way over your head. Well, I'm not sure. Tell me what you mean by way over my head well i mean like you know you know who you are you know you get a sense of who you are but so like all of a sudden you're with you're with marvin gaye who is like you're saying is fundamentally insecure like you know ray knew who he was and he accepted who he was and you know and and i think that comes from you know a lot of things you know getting through life blind you know, and I think that comes from, you know, a lot of things, you know, getting through life blind, you know, and having, you know, I mean, it plants you in yourself in a way that you're not going to have otherwise.

But and also being a great artist. But Marvin being fundamentally shattered, insecure, a broken person, you know, with with deep, you know, deep seated conflicts around sexuality, around his parents, around his relationship with Jesus and with his mother and with his father. I mean, I'm just saying that over your head in the sense that you had similar problems, but through Marvin's journey, which was ultimately tragic and horrible, you were able to come to grips with some of your own stuff. That was sort of hard won. But initially, it must have been terrifying. I was never terrified with Marvin because he was such, I got to do this right because it's really kind of a precious thing.

But Marvin Gaye was, you know, I just did a book with Lenny Kravitz, who's an enormously charming man and a very sweet, loving man. And Marvin was in that category. I mean, now, again, Lenny doesn't have nearly the turmoil and the kind of mishegas of Marvin Gaye. the kind of mishigas of Marvin Gaye. But Marvin was, you just wanted to be with him all the time because he was so cool. He was relaxed. And now, again, we were high most of the time, smoking dope and snorting cocaine. So, I mean, that was part of it.

And I also think I didn't get sober till 1990. Marvin was killed in 1984. So our whole experience together involved not just listening to music and talking about theology and literature, but it also involved being high. Yeah, but I mean, but this guy was like, you know, going down hard, man. But this guy was like, you know, going down hard, man. Well, when I when I met him, he was not going down hard. When I met him, he had just done Here, My Dear, which is a great sort of masterwork. And I was thrilled with that album. This is the album about his divorce from Anna Gordy Gay.

And I was a champion of that album. And I wrote a letter to the L.A LA Times comparing it to Charlie Mingus and Ellington and Stevie Wonder. So, I mean, this album was, and again, I adored his music. I adored his music. And then I adored him. So it was not, and the other thing about Marvin, which was interesting, even when I went to Europe and we had our last meeting when we wrote sexual healing together, Marvin was always able to stay, keep me away from him when he was really in the kind of darkest periods of his life. For example, he told me, don't touch the pipe. You know, when he began fooling with the pipe, he told me, don't touch it. And he would never tell me anything. I mean, that wasn't

typical of him. So he was very protective of me. And when he did have these extremely dark periods, he kept me away from him. Because I think he saw me as someone with the chops to write his story. And also maybe vulnerable to not being able to handle the pipe. Positively. And chances are, if he had offered it to me, I probably, you know, because, you know, now, recently I've done books with Willie Nelson, and I'm doing a book with Snoop Dogg, and I'm a recovering marijuana addict. I mean, marijuana to me was my main drug. And I had to go to MA. I didn't even know there was ma yeah marijuana anonymous to get straight but i can be with willie or snoop and not worry about getting high or you know and but back in 1982 being with marvin gaye and the idea of turning down a joint from him wasn't even remotely possible.

It wasn't even remotely possible. But you didn't get involved with smoking coke? No, no, no. You did it once though, right? I did it one time and it was so good. And so every green light went on in my brain. I wanted to get on the roof and tell the neighbors the good news. And it turned out that the person who got me the stuff was killed after he left my house in some drug deal.

And that got me so scared that I never kind of touch it again. But that didn't keep me from smoking pot. I mean, because that happened in 85 or 86. I continued to get high for another four years until I got sober in 1990. But I think what you really characterized in the book for me, you know, and that we're not leaning on too much in this conversation is that, you know, the through line of the God groove of your book and in talking about working with these artists was sort of like, you know, seeing your path to spirituality and belief. And it seemed to me that Marvin Gaye, you know, and his struggle with himself, with drugs. And I mean, this that Marvin Gaye, you know, and his struggle with himself,

with drugs. And I mean, this is a guy that, you know, lost his fucking mind from cocaine psychosis and pushed his father to shoot him. And, you know, and, you know, you talk about the aftermath of that and about his father kind of like not, you know, forcefully, you know, intentionally not remembering killing his own son. But I guess my question is, it seemed that the reason I said over your head was that it seemed that the way that Marvin framed his relationship with Jesus in the midst of everything that he was going through, in the midst of what, you know, was seemingly someone surrendering to the devil, you know, was inspirational to you or some sort of cautionary tale or somehow strengthened retroactively your idea of what

belief was. I totally agree, because when you are with him, when I was with him, I could see the Jesus in him. I could see that. And when I listened to his music, particularly, you know, What's Going On is a Christian album. I mean, you know, so that he was a gospel artist to me. And, you know, there's an old D.H. Lawrence thing that he said, trust the story, don't trust the storyteller. said, trust the story, don't trust the storyteller. And Marvin's story, as it's expressed in his music,

is filled with hope and light and love. Now, it's also filled with turmoil because he's a blues artist, and blues artists have to work their way through the blues. But because he was a gospel artist, I am inspired byvin and continue to be i i probably listen to marvin more than any artist uh and i listen to music all day long which album do you go back to well i you know i love what's going on i love i i love you know i love them all i mean i like the concept album more than the singles. So I do love Heard It Through the Grapevine. But, you know, I love A Trouble Man. I love What's Going On. I love Let's Get It On.

I love I Want You. And I particularly love Hear My Dear because it spoke to me so powerfully that I had to meet him. And my Hustle Marvin story, I don't know if I put it in the book or not, is that when it was attacked, because the album was attacked when it came out as being kind of personal and who cares about his divorce and why isn't Marvin talking about what he talked about what's going on. So it was attacked by a guy in the early times and i thought to myself if if i answer the attack and i write a letter to the editor diff ending the album marvin will read the letter get in touch with me and i'll get to me and that's

exactly what happened he called me up and he went who are you and i said well i've this guy i've written a book on rate and he said well come on over man let's talk i really appreciate your understanding this album so now again i was completely genuine i mean and but but but but but i was also wanted to meet him well but yeah i mean it seemed like through him you were able to sort of like you know find like he became the barometer of your ability to accept yourself because of your own sexual identity, you know, issues or discomfort, you know, through him, you know, and his, you know, proclivities around cross-dressing and his father, the preacher's cross-dressing, which, you know, which almost ultimately damaged Marvin a bit. And, you know, it just seemed that he, not unlike Jesus,

was the guy that, you know, you look to and said, well, if this guy can rise above this and still have God in his life, that there's some pathway for me yeah i mean i believe that's true and what's also true is that we'll just take um sexual um healing which is an interesting sort of metaphor for the whole thing we're together in osten in april of 1982 But this is him. He ran away because he was so fucked up, right? Yeah, the IRS is after him. He owes his wife's alimony. He's depressed. He was in England.

He was in Hawaii. He hasn't had a hit since Got to Give It Up. I mean, he's at the lowest date of his life. Yeah. And he winds up in this beautifully quaint town in northern Belgium looking at the North Sea. And again, me being the hustler, I'm chasing after him. We got to do me being the hustler i'm chasing after him we got to do the book we got to do the book yeah do the book and i don't you know i've got two young kids i don't have any bread i don't care i'm gonna go see uh fucking uh atovin or mozart which is what marvin was to me you know i'll do anything to hang out with him

yeah so i get there and on the coffee table um is this kind of snm book of cartoons which is very kind of you know kind of disturbing and yeah and this um music track is playing on the boom box and he needs a story to go with it. And I'm not really thinking about the music track. I'm thinking about this book and I say, Marvin, this is some sick shit. What you need is sexual healing. And he says, what's that? And I said, well, you know, you kind of love a person for who they are and it doesn't involve pain and you're healed from all the complexities and you accept blah, blah, blah. And he said, would you just write some poetry to that? How would that work as a poem? So, you know, I'm glib and I write when blue cheer drops.

And he takes these words and he puts them to the track, which was written by his keyboardist, Odell Brown, and the song is written. And in my mind, and this is what's so interesting to me and where I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head, in my mind, I'm working as a ghost. In other words, I am ghostwriting for Marvin Gaye, his script. Right. But it turns out to be my own script.

What I needed was sexual healing and acceptance of the complexity of my own sexuality, because one of my primary addictions is sexual. So it took me forever to understand that what I thought was a song written for him, which was, was also a song that became kind of a mantra of my own life. And what is the spiritual component of that? spiritual component of that? That the resolution of my sexual compulsivity and my sexual neurosis happened at 12-step meetings that had to be brought into the church of the 12 steps that needed a spiritual resolution because I had tried to go to shrinks and, you know, as I did with cocaine and marijuana as well, I don't want to go to public meetings and admit I'm a sex addict or admit I'm an alcoholic. I wanted to go as an upper middle class Jew. I wanted to go to the privacy of a shrink, pay him $150 an hour and get cured. It just didn't work. It just didn't work. Well, but in, you know, that somehow Marvin was able to sort of balance, you know, your message with something that, you know, he believed

that, you know, that sex and Jesus, you know, that there was not, you know, that you talk a bit in the book about a few of the artists who, you know, initially there was something about gospel being sexualized by Ray Charles, that it was seen as the devil's music. And then there was an evolution where it wasn't the devil's music. You know, all music is God music. And that Marvin sort of exemplified this guy who was able to hold both of those worlds in each of his hands until he, you know, went out of his mind and decided that the devil was winning. So what impact did that have on you? I don't believe it. I mean, in other words, that's where the Jew in me was great, because I had at least what I call, now I don't mean this couldn't have happened if you were a Hindu or Christian, but I had the critical acumen to argue with him and go, that is crazy,

you know, that Charlie Parker or Max Roach or Ornette Coleman is just as much a spiritual instrument as God as you are, or Lightning Hopkins or Patton, or whoever. And this kind of, this kind of binary thing is crazy. It's an old superstition. I understand where it's coming from. But I reject it. And by the way, intellectually, Marvin rejected it. But from an emotional point of view, given his upbringing in his dance church, he couldn't reject it. we were together in Belgium, there was a documentary on Coltrane, and we were watching Coltrane, and this was Coltrane's kind of spiritual period after Love Supreme. He's really preaching, and Marvin going, wow, this is, you know. And he's really out there, dude. And he's really out there, and Marvin got it. I mean, he completely understood that we were in the church of John Coltrane. And so he didn't say, this is, you know, the devil's music.

But his childhood conditioning and his kind of trauma, he was traumatized as a child. And so was Risa and so was Ray. Ray and when you have childhood trauma and you don't have the means to you just need help do you know what I mean yeah but also like that in that community that's not something you get that happens a lot dude yeah yeah you know you keep it you know at home. Yeah. Well, in the case of Ray, he was so strong that— I mean, but, you know, losing your brother and then losing your eyesight. I mean, those are— But that's not the same as, like, a Pentecostal minister father fucking your brain up. No, but it's—well, I don't know how you compare trauma.

I mean, that's a hell of a trauma to go blind and watch it. But it's not abuse. It's not gaslighting. It's not – That's an important distinction. I agree with you. It is not abuse at the hands of a parent. And I – right.

And I think that's important distinction and that may be why ray was able to live a relatively long life but it's also important to remember about ray and this is a story that was not told in the movie but i think it's an important story that ray died of alcoholic liver disease you You know, he drank himself to death. Yeah, those junkies, it's hard. If they don't, a lot of them switch to the weird booze. Exactly. He gave up heroin, and that's the triumphant thing in the movie.

But every day he mixed gin and coffee and five tablespoons of sugar and drank it from morning till night. And now, again, he was operative. So he would argue with you when you would tell him he was alcoholic. Right. But it's funny that they can't. It's hard to get that monkey off your back. Like Keith Richards, William Burroughs, they all did that thing with the vodka or whatever.

They had to figure out how to keep tamping it down. And I, by the way, I'm not sure, I'm not in that category. I mean, again, I don't drink or drug or, you know, but I'm an extremely compulsive person in my work. I'm compulsive about clothes. I love clothes.

Look, all right, so if it's not making your life unmanageable, David. Right, yeah, yeah. But no, I just don't want anyone to get the idea that I'm cured. I mean, I am, I'm pretty, you know, but the other thing I want to say about it. No, we just put it out. You're still fucked up. Right.

Right. And also, I accept the fact that I'm a mess. And one of the things I like about jazz and funk particularly, I love funk. I like the Ohio Players. I just talked to Bootsy. Oh, yeah, Bootsy's a genius. One of the reasons I love funk,

and it is because it's a mess and it's raw and it's wrong in some ways. You know what I'm saying? And I think that is – I'm just going to be that way until I die. I think I am a mess. I think the human condition is a mess. And I think that's why we relate so much to the blues, because the blues is a kind of messy music. Yeah, but the blues, the magic of it, and also like, you know, the magic of comedy. Oh, comedy.

You know, having, you know, you've done a couple of books with Don Rickles as well, is that, you know, they are able to, there's a catharsis in the simplicity of the blues and of a good joke. And that, you know, if you can take the pain and the chaos of what it is to exist in the human world and kind of render it down to a phrase or a one, four, five, or, you know, a few good runs of, you know, well-timed jokes, you know, the relief afforded the heart by those things is magic. I couldn't agree with you more. And I am so glad that you mentioned that because every day I write a thousand words. I read a lot and every day I write, every single day. I don't take off times because I'm juggling four books at once because of my compulsive nature and my love of my work and I like to sit and I like to type but one of the things that keeps me going is going on

YouTube and listening to Coltrane or Carmen McRae or whoever it is but also comics yeah I'll go and watch a George Carlin thing for half an hour and it's like Charlie Parker I mean Carlin is just a crazy genius and it's funny I never it's like I don't go to Carlin like so much I if I'm going down the rabbit hole like I'll like lately I've been doing some Rodney and I feel that way about him I've I've actually kind of rediscovered him in the last four or five he's the he's the king of He's the king of pain, dude. The king of pain. I underestimated him when he first came out. Everyone did. I'm going back and I'm seeing he's a blues artist, man. I mean, he is something.

Oh, for sure. But I'm also getting off on, you know, they got all the old Johnny Carson stuff. So I've been watching Carson with Buddy Hack um hackett sure buddy is great telling old time jewish stories and catskill stuff and and that's a a kind of blues genius and for sure man um you know and then a prior of course without saying and and so comedy to me i agree with you. I mean, comedy to me, these are sort of nutrients. You know, we live in this toxic world that we live in, and we're always kind of living in toxics. You know, we're watching TV, and this guy is toxic, and he's poisoned our culture so that we need sort of nutrients to be healthy and not go crazy. And to me, the nutrients are Nancy Wilson and Richard Pryor and Buddy Hackett and Rodney Dangerfield.

Yeah, what I've been saying is you use whatever means at your disposal to maintain your sanity without hurting yourself or others well and and also i put it up you know i think we kind of see things basically the uh i put it a tiny bit differently which is my job i got two jobs one is not to go crazy yeah and one is to make a living uh because if i if i go crazy i won't be able to make a living. But hey, man, you might have to go crazy. Yeah, right. What if you have to be crazy to make a living, though?

And I think it's a controlled kind of craziness. Sure, of course. Yeah, after a certain point, once you get the hang out of how to work your own crazy, you can fucking do it. What was your take, you know, spending time with Don Rickles? What was your, like, how did you assess his heart? Well, I caught up with Don after he had lost his fastball. So it was challenging. I mean, you know, he was great. And, you know, he's one of the kings in in in the jackie uh leonard miltonborough

tradition you know i was honored to do it it's hard you know i have worked with three comics the hardest thing for me to do is to voice a comic i'm not sure why well i mean because like you know they've got uh they've they've got a like i imagine it's a little easier to but not with aretha but it's probably a little easier to chip away at a musician uh by blowing a little smoke up their ass you could probably get a uh an easier route to their heart maybe whereas a comic is pretty well guarded all the way down guarded and also lots of comics and you know more about this so i should be asking you i don't know i don't know if that's true comics have sort of a mean

streak i mean i kind of think meanness is an important ingredient it's the same thing yeah and i don't see that as a uh as anything wrong or sort of negative. I think the expression of anger is important for our culture. And that's why Rodney is great and Rickles is great. Milton Berle was great. Who were the other ones? Who did you do, Don Rickles? Groucho is the angriest of them all. And Groucho was a crazy genius.

Yeah, you've got to layer that charm on top of that rage, buddy. Right. was a crazy genius. Yeah, you got to layer that charm on top of that rage, buddy. Right. But under the rage, there is a kind of a meanness and a sort of nastiness that's difficult for me. Because under Marvin Gaye or Aretha even, there is a love and a sweetness and a kind of, again, a kind of a godliness. Childlike. Childlike, right.

But so in Don's case, he didn't have his fastball, which is very important to him. The funny thing about Don and compared to like Rodney is like almost almost none of don rickles jokes were were great or written he was it was all driven by timing and and and beats and rage but like you know like rodney wrote jokes i mean don you know most of the things he says don't even make sense no no no no exactly and it's all the vibe of his rhythm and the vibe of this kind of perpetual thing. And so that I didn't have that because he was older and not well. So anyway, I mean, it was a great experience. You know, I was honored to do it.

I had to go through four or five drafts until I got the voice right. And it's like you were talking about there, there aren't jokes. There's just this kind of rhythmic compulsive stream of consciousness. And on, on paper, it's not as funny as it is out loud. So,

but you know, it turned out it was a hit book and made you, you know, I was happy with the whole thing. We did it. We actually, we did two books and I would love to do more comics. Who were the other two? Andrew Dice Clay

and Sid Band. Oh, he's a good, he's a sweet guy. Right. And that was an easy book to do. He's like he knows how to talk about his heart. Andrew was tough. Dice was tough and there was how to talk about his heart andrew was tough dice was tough and there was a lot of heat between us and it was tough but by the way if you watch that bad tv show vinyl yeah and you see andrew's part in it yeah he's a hell of an actor man no he's good

man i've talked to him i know i know dice you know i really really really talented brilliant guy in a certain way but as a collaboration it was not easy but also like you know you kind of you know your if your trick works you know you get these people to kind of you know present a well-rounded um uh portrait of themselves you know that they you know but a lot of people don't have the equipment to get into their hearts or the courage to speak openly about their bisexuality like you do or, you know, your struggle with spirituality and as a Jew, you know, kind of like landing on Jesus or sexual abuse or sexual trauma as a child. So, you know, there are just some people that you're never going to get there. And I thought that was sort of interesting about, you know, again, with Aretha, that you had this persistence and this, not unlike originally with Ray, that, you know, this

was the Godhead for you was to talk to her. And you talked to everybody around her and everybody that knew her about everything. And they all told you she ain't going to give you anything. And that's a dark tunnel, dude. And did you ever because I remember talking to you about respect and you said, well, look, you know, because they originally were involved and you're not involved in the estate is protective. I mean, in retrospect, you know, what was that experience for you? I mean, you wrote a book with her and then you wrote a book about her. Do you feel like you got to where you needed to be with her?

Well, let me go back to me as a hustler because I hustled that book harder than any book. You know, I chased after her for 18 or 19 or 20 years. Wow. Because, again, to me, it was Ray, Marvin and Arisa. And I just I just had to do it and ultimately i caught up with her and when i caught up with her it was one of the happiest moments of my professional life when she told me yes you can do the i was jumping out of my skin man i was up for nights i was just um giddy and i remember the first time i went to her house I went there the night before just to make

sure when I went there the next day I wouldn't get lost and lose my way and then everybody told me like Jerry and her brothers and said they all told me you aren't going to sort of get anywhere she's got this wall built around her but I was arrogant and I was happy I was arrogant because my arrogance But I was arrogant and I was happy I was arrogant because my arrogance allowed me to do this autobiography. But my arrogance was I'm going to be so charming and so sweet. I am going to kind of melt her and I'm going to get the intimacy because to me, these books are all about intimacy. You know, they're all about intimacy.

And I did not make a dent in her armor. I mean, we had some good times in the kitchen eating food, and she's a wonderful cook, and listening to gospel music, and listening to Nancy Wills. I mean, it isn't that we didn't have— Yeah, but she was trying to hustle you, man. Right. But there was—I didn't get to the heart of the story. I don't think so. In either book?

heart of the story. I don't think so. In either book? No, I think, again, this is my ego talking, but I think Respect is a good biography of her. I think it represents, because it isn't just my point of view, it's a lot of people's point of view. I think if you read Respect, you get a pretty deep understanding of Arisaa and i'm proud of the book okay well what was your relationship with the production that i was in i didn't have anything to do with it why they optioned they optioned my book and and and also hollywood let me be sort of candid hollywood is not particularly interesting to me because i mean it's interesting to me and i you know love to watch movies and you know but as but as a participant, I don't have any control. I'm just a guy at home on a computer. I have no juice. Usually people, if they option a book, they option the book and they go off and they make it

and there's a director and a producer and no one's calling me to say, ask me anything. So I knew I was grateful to Harvey Mason Jr., who was one of the producers for having optioned the book and i know he had a high regard for the book and i hope the book was useful to the screen writers but i have had nothing to do with the screenplay and have had no input and i wish it well i hope it's a great movie i I hope you're great in it. I hope Jennifer's great. And I hope it helps. Well, she can fucking sing, dude. I know.

I mean, she is crazy good. So I hope it helps the legacy of Aretha. I hope that the television movie on Aretha is great, too. So, I mean, I hope they're all great. But all I could control, well, I couldn't control the autobiography. So the autobiography comes out, she takes it over. She keeps me around, but she's really rewriting everything, the book is that and I'm and I'm not happy with it, because I think it's very superficial. Takes out the dark parts.

with it because I think it's very superficial. Takes out the dark parts. Takes out the dark parts, really doesn't own up to her childhood traumas. Then 15 years go by and I just can't live with myself because I feel like I know the story. I knew John Hammond and Jerry Wexler. I knew her brothers and her sisters. I did a interviews. And I kind of feel if I die, who else is going to tell this story with the intimate knowledge that I have? And again, there isn't anybody else. And I know her, you know, I worked with her for two years. So I made up my mind, I'm going to go out of my comfort zone. I'm not going to be a ghost

writer. And I'm going to write a biography. Yeah. And, and I knew it would make her unhappy. And that's what took me so long to do it, because I don't like making people unhappy. Yeah, going back to my advertising client orientation, keep the client happy, you know, so so but I just knew that I had to tell her story according to my understanding of the story and utilize all my intimate relationships with people who are close to her. So consequently, I'm proud of the book, and I'm happy I wrote the book. I'm not interested in doing another biography. I'm still, you know know ghost writing is my main thing

yeah but she didn't like but after that she didn't talk to you anymore nope she was angry and understandably right and then also the other thing that it seems in the book that you know marvin gay cuts you out of the loop on the royalties on sexual healing and that and that was friction up until he died. What happened with that? How did that resolve itself? I won the case because I had a tape of us writing the song together. Posthumously? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I won the case and have been a copyright co-owner of the song since 1989 or 1990 and and and but that was an instance where Marvin was not well at the end of his life he was not well and he was angry and you know there was litigation but and Wexler told you to do it you You were fighting Wexler. Wexler said, sue him! Sue him! And I said, I can't sue Marvin Gaye. Sue him! Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, looking back, obviously you've got the hang of this, and it's what you do, this ghostwriting thing,

and you're sought out now by a lot of different types of people. It seems that there are people that you loved doing and did because of your own need to do them, and then there's people that you do because you can. Like, you know, it runs the gamut. Jerry Lieber, Mike Stoller, you've done, you know, Natalie Cole, Joe Perry, Buddy Guy. You know, on top of Willie Nelson you talked about. on top of the original ones that you were compelled to do like Ray and Smokey and BB. And now I guess my question, you know, kind of landing this thing is that what do you find in creating these symbiotic, intimate relationships with all these different types of artists primarily in music what is the thread between them i think learning to listen you know i grew

up in a household where you waited for a pause in the conversation so you could interrupt the person and make your own point and win the argument. Yeah, I have that too. You learn how to empathetically listen. Yeah, and listen with your heart. You know what helps with that? What? Fucking meetings. Yeah. Well, that's where one of the first places I learned to listen

because you only get to talk for two and a half minutes to three and a half minutes. And the other thing, you just have to shut up and listen to people. So I think as I look back And the other thing, you just have to shut up and listen to people. So I think as I look back over the whole career, what I've learned is to listen to people with my heart, be curious, inject humor is incredibly important. I think, you know, I'm 77 years old. I'm going to be, next week is my birthday. I'm going to be 77. And as I look at, and I'm enjoying old age.

I love old age and I feel, you know, energetic. But to me, all this ghostwriting and I'm doing more and more and I'm loving it more and more. The thing that keeps me going is loving to listen, loving to be curious, and loving to inject humor and not taking it all that seriously. Yeah, I think that's what we share.

I'm coming upon that very same thing with what I do. You know, Mark, most people who struggle with writing books and people ask me, why are you so prolific? I'm having a good time. I don't take it all that seriously. It's a book. Maybe it's good. Maybe it's bad. I'm kind of playing.

What do you find all the artists as well? What do you find in common that they are? What do they all share? They are driven. And that's the other thing that keeps me going. I am driven, you are driven. And I'm intrigued by what is the origin of the drive? What is the nature of the drive? And the answer is, I don't know. And I love the fact that I don't know, because I keep on trying to understand it. Why?

Isn't that interesting? You're willing to accept the mystery of God. That's it. And also the mystery of— But you're compelled to find out what drives people. But I'm also willing to accept the fact that I may never know. I mean, just take you. I mean, you've done all sorts of things in your life. You continue to be driven. You continue to hustle your way through Hollywood and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Why? I mean, why didn't you drive sort of... Into a ditch? Yeah, as opposed to keep going down a highway and looking for it right and i don't know either i mean i i mean the idea of how long have you sat with yourself it's difficult exactly exactly so so so so all i can tell you is that i am grateful i am driven towards other people who are driven because i relate to them and I'm intrigued by them. And in this world where it's so easy to be depressed

and drive off the cliff and give up and not do shit, people like Philip Roth, I'm going through the complete novel, 10 volumes. Oh, that's great. Where are you at? Just driven, driven, driven. I've actually read a lot of the books earlier, but now I'm beginning at the beginning. I'm at A Portnoy's Complaint. Oh, wow.

Which I just loved it more this time than I did the first time. But the whole thing about Philip Roth, he's never stopped writing. I can't stop writing. Why? I know. Yeah. You know, sometimes I ask that question in two ways. It's not it's not the curious question like I want answers. It's like, really, do we need more? Why? I'm glad the guy's got enough momentum and he's famous enough to keep working. But Jesus, not getting any better, is it? Well, but also I think stimulation, I want to be stimulated.

And I'm really grateful that I love Louis Armstrong as much today as I did when I heard him when I was eight. Well, that shit's magic. You hear music, dude, and you hear music when you're eight years old, and a lot of music just grows with you. It gets deeper. It gets different. It gets different. It means different things, you know, over your whole life, you know. I agree. It's quite an amazing thing.

Look, it was great talking to you, David. Hey, man, I enjoyed it. I had a great time. And here's a hug through virtuality. Thanks, man. I think this was one of the better interviews I've ever had. But I was pretty sure that it would be. Thanks, David.

See you soon. Okay, great. Bye. That was David Ritz. Many books. The one that I last read was The God Groove. A Blues Journey to Faith is his memoir, but he's also written books with or about Marvin Gaye, Jimmy Scott, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, B.B. King, Etta James, Janet Jackson, Buddy Guy, Don Rickles, Jerry Wexler. It's all at RitzWrites.com, R-I-T-Z-W-R-I-T-E-S dot com.

Again, find gratitude if you can if you can't find hope let's uh let's just hang on for a little bit of relief maybe things will get back to something we are familiar with something comfortable or at least at least okay i'm hoping for okay people happy new year here's some guitar guitar solo guitar solo Boomer lives. Monkey lives. La Fonda lives. La Fonda lives. guitar solo I miss you, Lynn Shelton. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category.

And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative.

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