The Music Creeps, the only show anywhere with Gusto.
You might ask yourself what Gusto is.
Gusto was the magical secret ingredient in Schlitz beer
that made it so damn good.
And that's what makes this podcast so damn good.
Burp.
And now, deep thoughts with Mark.
Why can't I just buy a can of thin paint?
Why do I always have to go buy paint thinner?
I may never know.
Oh!
We are the music creeps.
Fuck it.
Anyhow.
There we go.
Trying to work in some percussion there, I'm sorry.
Okay, we're the music creeps, obviously.
See, look at the looks we're getting.
I know.
Look at him.
You know what?
We don't care.
When you hit your coffee, everybody's like burp.
Oh, pretty cool.
Pretty cool.
I want to start with a little bit of news here, okay?
All right.
In a new interview with Gusto, you're going to be talking
about the fucking nine or 10 inches of snow we're supposed to get tonight and tomorrow.
X-Typo Negative guitarist Kenny Hickey, he was the guy that signed his name.
John Caravi.
Everybody thought he was.
I was trashed, otherwise I would have one, recognized, well I did afterwards.
And two, think, wait a minute, he's not out here, he's backstage.
But anyhow.
He was asked if he would be open to teaming up with the band.
And he did.
He did.
And he did, and he did, and he did.
He was asked if he would be open to teaming up with other surviving members of
X-Typo Negative to stage a Peter Steele tribute concert.
Oh, I'd love that.
With various guest musicians.
He said, as transcribed by blabbermouth.net, and who else?
I mean, they got the metal scene covered.
I think so.
I would do something like that, absolutely.
Because at this point, the band seemed to transcend into a whole new generation and stuff.
I love the end stuff.
It would be really cool to get a couple of key singers, real guys, or maybe one guy or
whatever, to come up and do it as a tribute.
Absolutely.
Maybe four or five shows, something like that.
If we can get Josh Silver, former X-Typo Negative keyboardist to do it, yeah, I'd be up for it.
Cool.
I'd go see that concert.
Yeah.
Yep, I would too.
Like we've said, X-Typo Negative is one of the bands, I think, that should have hit it
much bigger than what they did.
And everybody I know feels the same way.
I don't know why it didn't catch on.
Yeah, they're one of those bands that was very influential among other musicians, but
the general public just didn't really quite get it.
There are movies like that too.
Yeah, I think that one of the things is, was Peter Steele's voice that he did on purpose.
Was a very ghoulish, low...
Not radio friendly.
No, and I think that's it.
Radio stations probably like, I'm not playing that.
I mean, and also it doesn't lend to pop popular.
Because most people are like, why is he singing like that?
Well, people that get the gimmick get it, and it's good music.
But anybody with any kind of crossover ability was going to get preference.
Yes, and that's what happened.
When you're like strictly in this area and that's all who likes that kind of music, you
gotta be really damn good.
Radios for Def Leppards and ACDC and stuff like that is not for X-Typo Negative, which
sucks, but Type O Negative without really any publicity or any radio play did pretty good.
I mean, they have a really good following.
So, anyhow, that'd be cool.
I would love to see that.
Definitely.
Yeah.
I wonder if his Greg Steele, his brother, would be willing to do something in that too.
That's an interesting thought.
Yeah.
He could play bass.
Because Hickey said nothing about the bass, he just talked about the keyboardist.
Yeah.
Hickey was a guitarist, so they'd still need a bassist and a drummer.
Yeah.
So, hope...
Yeah, because if they're looking for someone just to do the vocals, then they'll need both
of those, because...
Yeah.
I was trying to think of somebody who could do the vocals and play bass for them, but
yeah, they should just split it into two jobs.
Yeah, and also I think that Jason Bonham is going to volunteer himself, or Dave Grohl is
going to volunteer himself as drumming.
Yeah.
Because they do that on everybody.
Wherever he's at, if it's a special guest, it's one of those two usually.
Yeah.
Or Chamberlain does a lot of them, doesn't he, I think?
Anyhow.
Yeah.
I was trying...
My first thought was Matt Sorum, but I don't think he would quite fit.
Yeah, Matt Sorghum.
He was pretty...
I always call him Sorghum.
Yeah, Matt Sorghum, really good drummer.
He went back into the cult.
Yeah.
Yeah, Guns N' Roses stole him out of the cult.
Yeah, they were pissed too, because...
Yeah, the cult was their opening act, and Guns N' Roses were like, hey, we're taking your
drummer.
Steven Adler's kind of like really fucked up constantly, so we're going to kind of just
take your guy.
Oh, they were pissed too.
So, I mean, Matt Sorghum would be a great...
Yeah.
Yeah, why not?
Yeah, Matt Sorghum would fit that type of music.
The cult would be more of that type of...
A little bit more poppy, but...
Yeah, but typo negative never really did anything fast.
Actually, Ian Ashbury might be a good guest singer.
Yeah, you're right.
No rule says he has to do it in the lower registers.
No, no, I would love to hear him doing that.
I think he could, because he played Jim Morrison of the Doors on Broadway and did very well.
He can do a low register, and he does it singing a lot too.
So, he also hits it to high notes.
He's a very good singer.
He's very underrated too.
But obviously, if he played Jim Morrison on Broadway and did so well, he's versatile.
So, I would like to see him do something with this guest tribute, but I don't know.
I have no idea if they even like him, know about him, nothing.
And then the next one I want to go to, a new interview with Lindsay Parker of Gold Derby.
Well, I don't know what Gold Derby is.
Maybe it's a podcast or a website.
But Judas Priest-Frumman Rob Halford would ask where his positive attitude comes from.
He responded as transcribed by blabbermouth.net.
My sobriety.
I just celebrated 39 years this past January, the sixth.
One day at a time, it's a great way to live because you're living in the moment.
It's pointless worrying about tomorrow because you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow.
Plans and ideas and dreams are vital, but tomorrow hasn't happened.
Yesterday's gone.
It's in the past.
You can't change anything.
You can maybe look at things that could be utilized to fix things in the next opportunity.
So, living in the moment is just so important.
And look, where I'm at in my life, I've got nothing to complain about, absolutely nothing to complain about.
I say this all the time.
I agree with him 100%.
And also living in the moment.
Too many people are always going, well, I got this vacation coming up.
And I'm guilty of it to an extent, too.
But like right now, I enjoy every second of this because this is stuff we enjoy to do.
You know, I don't care if it's just riding in the car.
Sunday morning, I go to work early.
It's my early shift.
I got to be there at seven or eight.
I always leave early.
And I drive around town for a half hour.
Yeah, just enjoying it.
Yeah, it's an enjoyment.
Yeah.
Nobody's on the road.
So I go, oh, I wonder how the streetcars come along.
Let's go over there.
OK, all right.
Let's take a look at Flush Creek.
OK, that's all right.
Oh, let's look over here.
Did they get this new building?
Oh, wow, they're almost, you know, it's living in the moment.
Yeah, taking your time.
I'm doing a lot more of just living in the moment, as you said, and rejecting the idea
of, oh, I can't wait for tomorrow.
I can't wait for next week or next year.
I'm looking forward to this so much.
I don't even do that anymore.
It's like, oh, this might happen in the next year.
All right.
In the meantime, I'm enjoying right now.
I'm tired of wishing hours and days of my life away to get to something that I think
might happen.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm the same way.
And you know, that's something they teach a lot in not only addiction recovery, but
mental health recovery, because people drive themselves crazy worrying about what they've
already done and what they might have done.
Oh, the what ifs.
The what ifs are something else.
Yeah, reliving the past and trying to rewrite the past.
Yeah, it just drives you nuts.
I'll bet you the chiefs aren't sitting there right now mulling over their loss.
I bet you they're already thinking about next year.
Yeah, I would think so.
They probably had a day of, no, I probably could have done this better.
A number of them probably got together and complained.
And then said, this is what we need to do better.
All right, guys, we need to sack up and we need to right this wrong.
And then that's it.
Yeah, yeah, it's done and it's gone.
And the really the only thing you can take from it is the lesson and the knowledge and
the information.
But the emotions and the feeling dump them.
Yeah, they're gone.
They're gone.
Absolutely.
You're not in the same area of your life.
So you're not going to be feeling the same and just go on with it.
So he said, so what I try to do is find balance and harmony and mental health is really, really,
really important.
And I agree with him 100 percent.
Rob Halford has always demonstrated to be a really good chap because he's English.
Yeah.
And he's absolutely correct.
I've always liked him a lot, even when he wore the leather and the weird haircut.
But now he just looks like an old biker.
So he's cooler than shit.
Yeah, there's plenty of old bikers out there.
Yep.
And then I got another one here.
I spoke about Paul Stanley and Bobby Brown, the Janie Layne's ex-wife, you know, the blogger.
You know, the blonde on cherry pie and a lot of other videos, too.
OK.
Bobby Brown, the ex-wife of late Warren frontman Janie Layne and the video vixen in Warren's
cherry pie video recently fan submitted questions via the Fuse TV website asked, who is the
creepiest rock star?
I've already spoke about this and you'll remember when I do that ever hit on her.
Bobby said Paul Stanley from Kiss.
He was just infeminate, extremely infeminate.
I mean, I don't know.
It was pretty creepy, I have to say.
I mean, no offense to Kiss and all that stuff.
And there's another one of all this stuff.
I have to say, I mean, I mean, no offense to Kiss and all that stuff, but it was bizarre.
And I think it may be, I don't know.
Who knows?
I don't know if he's gay or not, but then she laughs.
I really had the feeling he might be.
I don't know.
Or he could just be a lesbian trapped in a man's body.
That could be.
Well, you know what?
You see him on stage and he menses and he really is infeminate, but I don't think that
translates to gay.
No.
He's never had anyone accusing him.
You know what I mean?
Like someone going, oh, I used to be his lover or nothing like that.
He's never had anything like that.
He's been married for a long time.
He's had very famous girlfriends.
I think here you're coming up with nothing.
Look at Bruce Jenner.
When Bruce Jenner was Bruce Jenner, he was into women.
And then Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner and she's still into women.
He's still into women.
It's like, well, I just don't want to be a guy anymore, but man, I still love women.
Yeah, and it could be possible that Stanley Eisen, who that's Paul Stanley's real name.
Oh, that's another name.
Maybe he identifies, maybe he really has felt all his life that he's a girl and wants to
be a girl and act like a girl, but he still likes girls.
He's Team Vagina.
That could absolutely be a thing.
Yeah, yeah, very much so.
I just thought, I think I brought that up before and then I seen the article again and I said,
yeah, I'm just going to print it out and talk about it a little bit.
Look, I love Paul Stanley.
Great musician.
Great front man.
Definitely.
I don't think Bobby Brown has anything reason to lie about it.
So, you know, okay, maybe he's a little feminine or whatever.
And I've seen it before too.
On stage, he really kind of makes you wonder.
And maybe that's all she saw is the same things we saw, but she's just really overreacting to it.
Maybe for her it's like, eww, creepy, weird, gross.
And the rest of it's like, oh, that's an odd choice and we just move on.
For one, he's considerably older than her, so automatically that would probably make it creepy.
She would not want to date Bill Belichick then.
Yeah.
So I was thinking, there's really good stage names out there and there's really good real stage names
and stage names, stage names, you know, ones they came up with.
What I was thinking is this.
What are some of the best real ones and what are some of the best stage names that we have?
Oh, yeah.
One of the oddest that turned out to be good, we were talking about, was Gene Simmons.
That is actually a really, really good stage name.
Yeah.
No real reason why. It sounds really just like some guy down the road.
It does. And there was actually a very well-respected actress by the name Gene Simmons, spelled J-E-A-N.
Yeah, that's right. Not J-E-N-E.
Okay.
Let's see, Axl Rose.
Axl Rose is a very good one because...
He was Bill Bailey?
Yeah, that one's not going to fly.
Yeah. Slash was Saul...
Saul Hudson.
Yeah.
That's another good one.
I think here, Nicky Six.
Nicky Six is a good choice.
Really good one. Mick Mars.
Oh, yeah. What is his name?
Oh, shit. Bob Deal, I think.
That's it.
Yeah. So yeah, he sounds like a car salesman.
Come on in and see Bob Deal for your good deal.
Yeah.
That's right. I got your caddy right here, bitch. Come on over.
Almost as good as Boots Williams.
Bet your boots.
That fat fucker being a barrel on top of that fucking Boots Williams.
By the swinging 71 exit, is that what they said or something like that?
The swinging Red Bridge exit.
That was it, the swinging Red Bridge exit.
So was that Iggy for swingers or... I mean, I don't know.
Could've been.
Did they meet up there and act like they're buying cars and swap out or something? I don't know.
Kansas City was a pretty wild city, notoriously.
Yeah.
Yeah. Let's see now.
Iggy Pop was a really good deal.
Oh, Iggy Pop was great.
Yeah.
Johnny Rotten.
Yeah.
Sid Vicious.
Johnny Rotten was John Lydon.
Sid Vicious, I don't remember what his name was.
No, I don't either. It was pretty plain.
That'd be funny if that was his real name.
I'm trying to find this list here.
A real one that worked really well was John Paul Jones.
Yeah.
That sounds like a stage name, but...
It was actually a name.
Yeah.
Man, I used to have this book called The Book of Rock Lists, and it had a list of some of the best...
It didn't bother with the punk rock band names. It had the punk rock musicians names.
Oh, yeah.
But the book came out in 1984, so it's hopelessly out of date.
Let me see if I can look on the internet here. We're a little bit unprepared, but we don't give a shit.
Yeah.
Because that's what we do.
I've got a ton of names of punk rock bands, but...
Black Sabbath's final concert, Ozzy's final concert is coming up.
Sharon admitted finally. She said that the Parkinson's progressed, but we've known this.
We've seen videos of him trying to walk to the mailbox.
Yeah.
It's obvious that the Parkinson's has really taken hold on him, which is a disease where it just destroys your body.
It is.
You deteriorate into nothing, and finally wither away, and you're gone.
So it has affected his legs, and he can no longer walk.
I don't know how they plan on doing this concert. This is his final hurrah, if he's in a wheelchair or not.
They might prop him up and have him sing. I don't know.
But the sad fact is Ozzy has probably not got a long span to live now.
Because Parkinson's looks to me like it's taken over his body, and unfortunately I'm very well versed in this
because my friend Davey's mom passed away from it, and it was horrible watching her deteriorate and watching the disease take over her body.
And it is a neurological disease, so if the medication isn't managed exactly right, then you can get hallucinations.
It could mimic dementia. There's just all sorts of issues.
So even if he's not very close to the end of his life, he's probably very close to the end of being coherent.
And he doesn't want to be out there in the public not being able to control his body and his mind.
Yeah, and so after that, at the very least, you're not going to see him.
Yeah, yeah. And why not? I mean, Freddie Mercury squirreled himself away.
Oh, for years.
Yeah, the last few years of his life.
It was rumored that he had a sickness, and that was it.
People speculated because of his lifestyle, I guess, that it was probably going to be AIDS.
And I mean, look, nobody dies from AIDS. They die because of what AIDS does to your immune system.
Exactly, the opportunistic infections.
Yes, and that's what he died from, I think, is a lung infection because of advanced AIDS.
Yeah, a lot of people with AIDS who die get some form of pneumonia.
Yeah, and there's pneumonia, I believe.
Yeah, polycystic pneumonia is one of the defining diseases of AIDS.
If you have polycystic pneumonia, then pretty much guaranteed you have HIV.
Yeah, so that is probably what he had from what I read.
And he managed to keep it out of the, I mean, I think it was three years, wasn't it, or something like that?
It was about that, yeah.
They released It's a Kind of Magic. No, Innuendo.
Yeah.
Innuendo. It's a Kind of Magic was on Innuendo.
Innuendo and not the other?
Yeah. So, yeah, and there's a lot of speculation on that album, too, because in one of the videos it shows Freddie Mercury,
number one, he's wearing loose clothing and had a lot of makeup on, a lot of stage makeup, pancake makeup.
So they were hiding the fact of how frail he looked.
And the carposi sarcoma lesions on his face, which is also another frequent.
Yeah, they had that hit very well. The angles they shot from him were shadowy.
But the thing is, they said that they were actually tipping their hat because I think it's a Kind of Magic.
No, no, no. I think it's Headlong.
Well, whatever song it was, they offer Freddie Mercury in a box.
Ah.
And he jumps up and starts singing.
They say that box was to signify to people's minds subconsciously.
He's not going to be here a whole lot longer.
Yeah, you picture him in his coffin.
Yeah, and I think it might have been Headlong, but one of them, only him is in this box.
It resembles an old fashioned coffin, nothing fancy.
You know how they had that kind of octagon thing coming down.
Yeah, it looked kind of like that, but not overwhelmingly.
But the whole fact was he was in a box and he had his arms crossed.
And then he jumps up and starts singing.
So people speculate is he's going away here soon, but he's still here now.
So anyhow, I think that Ozzy's going to probably do the same thing because let's face it,
an illness like that is so personal.
Yeah, it really is.
I don't want to watch him in bad shape.
I'll just remember him like he was.
Matter of fact, I love the idea of a final concert, but I'm not sure if I want to see it.
Yeah, it's going to be kind of rough.
There are some aging musicians where I've seen a concert late in their career
and their voice is just gone.
Their presence is gone.
It's like, oh, I wish I hadn't seen this far.
You guys really need to.
Okay, let me think what else here.
Okay, well, Ozzy, another thing that concerns me about Ozzy is this right here.
They're in the rush to do this.
Yeah, yeah, it sounds like this has been accelerated.
So that would indicate to me at the very least he's not going to be the same person.
Yeah, clearly something has changed.
They've moved their total time table up.
And also, Sharon's admittance.
She admitted that it's progressed significantly.
Before that, it's like, oh, he takes a couple of pills.
He's okay. Nothing's wrong.
But then you see him on video and he's shaking.
It's like, wait a minute.
They're getting us prepared for what we're going to see.
Yeah, yeah, now they have to admit it because, yeah.
So anyhow, Ozzy, we love you, man.
We wish this never happened.
But unfortunately, we can't live forever.
Yeah.
Or who wants to live forever? Queen.
Seriously, if you live forever, everybody you know is going to die around you.
Yes. How depressing would that be?
Okay.
But yeah, I think this is, they're preparing us for how Ozzy's going to look and perform.
And then it's up to us individually to decide, do we want that to be the last thing we see of Ozzy?
Well, I'm going to watch it because this is for Ozzy.
Yeah.
Ozzy wants to do a final goodbye.
And I just want to see the joy on his face.
Yeah.
This guy's entertained me my whole life.
I love this guy.
I felt like I've known him my whole life.
I got to shake his hand, get an autograph.
It was one of the big things in my life.
I love it, you know.
I have a tour book that he signed.
Cool.
And it's a very cool, normal guy.
I talked to him for a minute and he wasn't like trying to shove me off or nothing.
He listened to me.
And he was very polite and very nice and thanked me for all my compliments.
He goes, thank you, I really appreciate it.
And you know, above all, you're a fan obviously.
And he was just so down to earth.
He had bronchitis and he was shaking, but he still did the signing.
Yeah.
So.
And I thought Zach Wild was going to be there, but it was Joe Holmes instead.
Yeah.
And he actually played the concert that they played at Memorial Hall, I believe it was.
And anyhow, I was a little disappointed in that because I really wanted to get Zach Wild's...
I just love him.
I mean, he's such a guitarist and such a unique person.
But Joe Holmes is a really good guitarist too.
It's just you don't hear of him.
Yeah.
You know, he pretty much did Ozzy and then he had a band called Pharmacos.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I remember hearing the name, but I don't know if I've ever heard of their music.
Yeah, it's Greek for farm.
Yeah.
So whatever.
So anyhow.
I definitely have heard of that band before, but I don't think I've heard this.
It's a great guitar on it.
I can't say it's like a hit maker, obviously.
But great guitar.
You want to hear a good guitar.
You can look at it online.
So I don't think I've actually heard this concert on July 5th.
Is it being broadcast live at the same time?
Okay.
I read a little bit about that on I think it's Classic Rock Online possibly.
One of those reputable ones, they're working on that.
Okay.
They're working on that.
They want that to be an option because they know not everybody can get down there to Birmingham to do this.
Yeah.
And a live pay per view event, you don't even have to do it in a theater anymore because people have home theaters that are even better.
Well, they might charge you too, but it's going to go to a couple of foundations.
One of them is for Alzheimer's research.
Or no, not Alzheimer's, Parkinson's research.
And then the other one I think is a benefit children like maybe psychological or something like that.
They're two very good reputable charities.
I support this 100 percent.
Buy it.
It goes to a good thing.
It doesn't go to these musicians.
They're dedicating their time and money to get there to make these charities money and honor Ozzy.
So I say buy it, watch Ozzy in his final performance, cherish it, and just go on after that.
Go back and relisten to Bark at the Moon.
Jakey Lee is going to be there.
Now?
That's going to be cool.
Show us his bullet wounds.
Yeah, yeah.
They just get done motherfucking each other in the press for like three weeks.
And then, oh, by the way, Jakey Lee is coming to the event.
I want to see him and Zack come out.
But not only do I want to see him and Zack come out, I want Brad Gillis to come out.
I want Joe Holmes to come out and Gus G to come out.
And I think there's another guy in the middle there.
There's a guy that went before Brad Gillis and did one show.
I want him to be there too, whoever the fuck he is.
From what I've read, Sharon's planning that Ozzy is going to go out with a group of musicians.
And as he's doing songs, certain musicians will leave to be replaced by others.
But it's not like they're swapping out whole bands.
It's like, OK, we've done these three songs.
Now let's get a different guitar player in here.
And then they'll play a song and then change the drummer out.
So they might do like Bark at the Moon and then Jakey Lee is going to jump on stage.
Yeah.
It's going to be kind of like an open jam where the musicians come and go.
But Ozzy is still there.
Who's going to take Randy's place, I wonder.
Wow.
They're just going to have to skip him.
I think Zack.
Yeah, maybe so.
I think Zack.
Yeah, you can't skip him.
No, you have to.
Yeah.
And they may not even do full songs.
Oh, the medley is your best friend in a situation like that.
Yeah, so I think it's going to be a medley.
So wouldn't that be great to see Zack Wild and Jakey Lee on stage together?
That would be cool.
And those two specifically, because those are the ones, those are the guys who've done albums with him besides Randy Rhodes.
But he obviously can't be there.
Yeah.
Maybe in spirit, who knows.
But, you know, I would like to see the two guys that did most of all pretty much all the music on album with Ozzy at one time.
To me, that's just me.
That may be a nerd thing.
I'm sure you look like you're like that would be cool.
Yeah.
I mean, there's several things you really want to see is you want to see all the best musicians from his touring bands.
Yes.
You want to see all the best musicians from his albums and you want to see all the best musicians that helped him write these songs.
And that's going to be a lot of overlap.
But the outliers, you still want them invited in.
You know, maybe there's somebody helped him write a bunch of hits, but that was it.
He never played on the album or went on tour.
Bring them in.
At least have them walk on stage.
Yeah.
Brad Gillis, he was still friends with Ozzy.
Well, I mean, it doesn't matter, obviously.
Jakey Lee and Sharon were at it really big time when he showed up.
But Brad Gillis was a very integral part of Ozzy's band because they didn't have anyone to play Randy's stuff.
Yeah.
And the one guy that filled in, they just did Sabbath stuff to satisfy that concert they owed.
Oh, yeah.
And then when Brad Gillis had to learn it like three or four days and he did it, he did it very well.
He's actually he is a shredder.
Yeah.
But you wouldn't guess it because he does Night Ranger.
Yeah, he plays what plays with the song needs and what the band needs.
And that's it. Yeah.
Yeah.
He does shredding, but he's not interested that in his music, which which is a sign of a really good musician.
Yeah. Yeah.
Why not learn, have the ability to do all these different things?
You know, so when if you need it, you're called, you know, called on to do it, you can do it.
Yeah. Maybe that's not what you like doing all the time.
Matter of fact, Brad Gillis, Brad Gillis's book is the next one I'm getting.
Ah.
Because he's been in a lot of parts of the music industry that I want to know about, including Ozzy.
He tells one of the best stories I've ever heard about Ozzy.
I'll tell the two stories, the Zach Wild story and the Brad Gillis story.
This is in Brad Gillis's book, I guess, from what I read online and possibly I might have heard on Eddie Trunk too, maybe on his.
Oh, yeah.
Show shows on his show online, maybe not on TV or, you know, Sirius XM or radio or whatever.
But Brad Gillis said that Ozzy used to go on benders and disappear.
And then when the show was coming up, Sharon would be like, APB, find Ozzy.
OK, so I guess he shows up and his head shaved.
And everyone's like, you're Ozzy Osmore.
You cannot have your head shaved.
He did the Britney Spears.
Yes. And it's like, what the fuck are you doing?
So then Ozzy, no problem.
He goes into the drawer and he grabs a wig and he throws it on.
There.
And everyone's like, OK.
But then they're getting ready to go on stage.
Ozzy goes over and gets a bottle of ketchup.
He pours it all over his head.
He puts the fucking wig back on.
And everyone's like, oh, my God, this show is going to be horrible.
This is going to be fucking horrible, man.
He's blasted out of his mind.
He's not going to be able to sing.
People are going to throw shit.
We're going to get ran out.
And he does perfect, man.
People are screaming.
He's like going nuts.
Then he tears his hair off and it looks like blood.
He just scalped himself.
Man, that was genius.
Yes.
And meanwhile, he doesn't say anything to anybody.
They're like, oh, shit, this is going to be the worst thing ever.
And he's like, watch this.
He's the master.
That's just like what Motley Crue said, too.
They said, it didn't matter what we did.
Ozzy would come out and outdo it.
Yeah.
It was like they're talking about a festival over in Europe.
And I think this was maybe Motley Crue.
They said them and Bon Jovi were fighting over who's going to be the headliner.
Yeah.
Oh, this is on Ozzy's Don't Blame Me.
It was released in like 97, maybe 96.
And it was like up to his life, his solo career, a little bit of Sabbath, too.
Yeah.
So they're all arguing over who's going to headline.
Ozzy goes in and put me in whenever.
And they said, Daylight, he killed them.
He said that after Ozzy got off stage, they're both looking at each other like, it doesn't fucking matter.
And it's like, this crowd is gone.
They're spent.
He just took every ounce of energy they have and now they don't care.
A lot of them left.
Yeah.
Yeah, they didn't realize they're going to have to follow Ozzy.
Yeah, they didn't think about that.
They should have made him the headliner.
Yeah.
But they were all fighting thinking they were the big shit.
They were not.
And then Zach Wild, he just joins the band and they're going to Japan.
And he didn't understand that like a lot of these mini bars in Japan, the wine are like thousand dollar wines.
Oh my gosh.
Well, Zach Wild is like going crazy, you know, probably fucking ripped off his shirt.
He's like, yeah, you know, hanging out the fucking window and stuff.
He's going nuts.
OK, he's a brand new rock star, one of the biggest bands ever.
And he's in Tokyo in a plush hotel.
All right.
So he grabs a bottle wide, opens it up, starts drinking and Ozzy goes, easy, easy, kid.
That's a thousand dollar bottle of wine.
You ain't made it that much.
What?
No, that's a thousand dollar bottle of wine.
So he goes, oh, OK.
He takes the cork.
He sticks it in his ass, not all the way, you know, just rimmed it around his asshole.
He rimmed it around his asshole, pulled his pants back up.
He calls down and he goes, I need someone up here immediately.
So the steward comes in there and he goes, the wine no good.
He goes, no, no, no, good wine.
The wine no good.
He goes, oh, yeah, smell.
He stuck that up his nose.
And the guy goes, bad wine.
He took it and left.
Perfect way to get it taken off your belt.
Yeah, and they're all just, they're like, this is it.
This is the guy.
Yeah.
They're like, this is the guy for our band, no doubt.
Yeah, you know he fits in at that point.
Definitely.
I'm not sure which one, which story I like better.
Yeah.
He had to be pretty young at that point, too, because when he joined, he was pretty young.
Oh, he was.
He was like 19.
His name was like Zach Adams.
And he was on the Jersey scene.
He was just tearing it up.
Yeah.
I think Terry Dunn from Banshee was like one of the finalists.
And I've heard this, this allegedly, I don't know.
I heard this from pretty good sources.
Terry Dunn was supposedly gay.
And Sharon got, you know, the message from somebody.
She got the Iggy on him.
And she said, we can't have a gay band member.
We need our band members out there getting pussy.
Yeah, that's part of the image at that time.
It was thought to be extremely important.
Supposedly that's why Zach Wilde got it.
And he could have got it anyhow.
He could have got it anyhow.
He was good enough.
But supposedly it was down between him and Terry Dunn, which he's a fantastic guitarist.
If you don't believe me, listen to Banshee Records, old ones, not the ones they put out later.
The ones in the 80s when they signed with Atlantic and should have done really good but didn't.
And allegedly Tommy Lee Flood did something stupid, like slept with some fucking producer's wife or something.
Allegedly.
Yeah, yeah.
That's what they call artistic differences.
Yeah, yeah.
And then the guy from Lanning said, don't push him.
Do not push this band.
Fuck you.
But who knows if it's true.
You know, he could like fucking hit on someone's girlfriend or something or been a dick to someone.
They could have started that, so who knows.
My favorite audition story is an Ozzy story too.
When he was putting his band together and looking for a guitar player.
Everybody was showing up with these big stacks.
Oh yeah.
And there was a whole bank of pedals in front of them.
And Randy was there with one guitar and a small combo amp and that was it.
And he made the first cut just based on that.
Because it was about, hey man, if this is all he needs to get his point across, then he's worth another listen.
Yes.
Yeah, no, I read that story too and I thought that was excellent.
He's like, I don't need any gimmicks.
This is it right here.
And also, I think the fact that he was classically trained and all the other bands were coming at it from the blues standpoint.
Blues, maybe some soul.
Big difference in sound.
Yeah.
The blues had a baby, they called it rock and roll.
That saying is for a reason.
Most of them are blues chords, they're blues bass, the songs are blues.
Blues progressions.
Yeah, the progressions, everything.
But Randy is like, doing kind of like Richie Blackmore.
Yeah.
A composition type of a song.
Cary Livgren was another for Kansas.
Yes, he was a really good example.
Yeah, he wrote complex music.
Yeah.
So Richie Blackmore could write a rift like anybody and Randy Rhoades could too.
Yeah.
Very easily.
But the thing is they had the ability to step outside of there and go into a classical realm and go into different types of music where a lot of, and same way with Kansas, a lot of bands can't do that because their guitarist is blues.
He's locked into the scene.
Yeah, he's locked into it.
And that's a comment I've heard over and over throughout my musical career is people like when something unexpected happens.
Yes, and Jimmy Page, great guitarist, but he couldn't do that.
Yeah.
He was pretty predictable.
Yeah, he was pretty predictable.
I mean he came up with some really unique riffs or songs, but you send them on stage and get them, you know, okay, come up with something that blows our minds.
He gets a violin bow.
Yeah, he gets his heroin solo.
Yeah.
But yeah, as an audience member, if the song goes in an unexpected direction, or as a band member, someone in the band takes the song in a different direction, it's like, oh, well, that's pretty cool.
And if you've got, you know, training in various other kinds of music, you can throw that in and make it work and you stand out.
And that's a big deal.
It really is a big deal.
Yeah, rumor had it Jimmy Page was on heroin and he thought he was an octopus.
Maybe he thought he was Doc Ock.
Doc Ock, yeah.
Yeah, who never gets enough credit.
Yeah.
Doc Ock was a great villain.
When I was a kid, I got a Spider-Man comic and I saw Doc, Doctor Octopus and I identified with him because he wore glasses.
I had just started wearing glasses at the time.
I loved it because he had...
I liked Doctor Octopus.
He had still...
He was a bad guy, but I loved him.
Spider-Man had some great villains like Batman did.
They weren't just like, I'm going to out-brawn you.
They're like thinkers like Doctor Doom and all them.
I mean, they were like crafty like, hmm, how can I destroy my enemy?
Let's have this panel here.
James, come here.
What do you think we need to do to get rid of this Batman character?
It was that type of a thing, you know.
You watch Bonanza and the villains there are just so predictable and boring.
Yeah, they pull out a gun, bam, someone gets them first.
Yeah.
Yeah, should have been a little quicker.
Yeah.
So anyhow, oh yeah, Doc Ock.
Yeah.
His tentacles were steel.
Oh, I was just like, oh, that's the best thing ever.
That was so cool.
Yeah.
And I also appreciated that he's kind of like Lex Luthor, kind of a nerd.
Loved it.
Yeah.
I loved it.
And back then, timeframe, we're talking about late 60s.
Spider-Man didn't mutate to where he could shoot web out of his wrist.
No, he was still.
He built an actual device that was strapped to his wrist and he would occasionally run out of web juice.
And he'd have to do a miracle.
Yeah.
He had some superior balancing and jumping abilities.
So like one time he was in between buildings and he ran out of web.
Yeah.
He had to do a little jumping and balancing.
Yeah.
And that's funny in the reboots, it's all a physical, biological mutation that suddenly he now produces web out of his little hole in his wrist.
I liked it when he...
I liked it when it was a device.
I did too.
He had a combination of ingenuity, devices, and superpowers.
Yeah.
And one of the reasons I liked him and Batman so well and Daredevil is because they didn't have all these abilities like Superman.
And Iron Man in the same way.
Iron Man too, yeah.
Yeah.
He's smart and he builds stuff.
Yeah.
That was kind of how Spider-Man...
I mean really the only effect he got from the Spider was his balance and ability to jump and like cling to a wall.
Yeah.
But the web was...
Everything else he figured out on his own.
Peter Parker.
Yeah.
But...
You know, he's a chemist and a radioactive spider bit him.
So there you go.
Yeah.
Anyhow, we were on music, weren't we?
Yeah.
We were on music like that.
Yeah.
Well, pop culture.
What kind of spider was it?
They never did identify it.
Wasn't it a black widow?
Was it a black widow?
That's the picture in my mind.
It was a black widow.
Yeah.
Hang on.
Let's get to the Google.
Which is really odd because they're not jumping spiders.
That's right.
Usually the jumping spiders don't spin webs and the web spiders don't jump.
And they're usually not venomous unless you go overseas and they have some jumping spiders that are venomous.
But usually here in America, a jumping spider is not venomous.
Yeah.
They kind of wrestle it to the ground and eat it alive.
A brown recluse.
Yeah.
A brown recluse you have to step on.
And black widows are recluses too.
It's just not in their name.
Yeah.
They would rather hang out underneath a chair or something than get anywhere near you.
Yeah.
I mean, they're too busy devouring their mail after he impregnates her.
Yeah.
Hence the name, black widow.
Hang on.
Okay.
That's, you know, the downside of...
What type of spider bit Peter Parker?
The downside to eating the mail after mating is he ain't never getting child support.
A black widow.
Black widow.
That's how I thought so.
All right.
Look at that.
Yep.
Yeah.
The spider jumped on him.
And then in 1975, there was Alice Cooper's album where a black widow was featured prominently.
Yes, that's right.
That was pretty cool.
Yep.
There are also false widows.
They get killed all the time.
Yeah.
That's true.
Yeah, they look like a black widow.
Some of them are a little bit more brown, but people see that hourglass and they flip
out and kill it.
Yeah.
And also not all black widows have them on their abdomen underneath.
Some of them have them on their back.
And some of them don't have them at all.
Yes.
Some of them just have red spots.
Have you ever heard of the robber fly?
Yeah.
Looks just like a bumblebee, but it's a fly.
It's a fly.
It's developed that disguise so birds won't eat it.
But now it gets killed by people who don't want to be around.
Yes.
Oops.
Yeah.
Oops.
Yeah.
So I've always been a fan of the black widow.
I don't want one around me.
I don't want one to bite me.
Look, they don't kill you unless you're in very bad health or you refuse to do anything
about it.
You get a blood infection.
Blood disease.
Yeah, true.
So traditionally, them, the brown recluses, will not kill you.
I think actually a brown recluse is more venomous than a black widow.
I think so.
Yeah.
But you always get the black widow like, oh, you're dead.
Get you and that's it.
Forget it.
Life's over.
And there are certain types of snakes too.
I think I read where a copperhead is more poisonous than a cottonmouth and rattlesnakes.
Yeah.
And even that doesn't necessarily kill you.
No.
My grandfather had a fishing partner that wasn't all that bright and this guy said,
I'll bring the worms next time we fish.
Well, he went out into the woods and was turning over rocks and logs and picked up a whole
nest of baby copperheads.
Oh, shit.
And they're just as venomous as the adults.
Actually I think they might be a little bit more.
They said that it's more potent, but you don't get as big of a dose.
Yeah, and they don't regenerate quite as fast.
Yeah.
But he got the crap bitten out of his hand and arm by all of them.
And then he brought them along and he said, I got some worms.
They're the bitest worms I ever saw.
Oh my God.
He was not right.
And my grandfather was like, those are snakes.
But the guy's arm swelled up a bit, but that was it.
He got bit like five or six times by baby copperheads.
I think he was too dumb to die.
Yeah, maybe so.
Yeah, I think death is like, no, no, no, too much trouble.
Yeah.
I looked into that once.
It was like how many people in Missouri got bit by copperheads last year, reported getting
bitten and it was like 172.
Wow.
And then I said, how many people died from copperhead bites last year?
Zero.
Yeah.
It was like three went into the hospital, five or six went to the ER and the rest was
like meh.
Oh yeah.
But we hear about the ones that die.
It's like, oh my God, a copperhead bit him.
These things are terribly deadly.
Oh, I know.
And a lot of people live back in the day when they didn't have medical treatment.
You know, as a matter of fact, my dad told me a story because he grew up in Northern
Missouri out on a farm and they just bought some land that's all woods.
And anyhow, the whole thing is, it was riddled with timber rattlers everywhere.
Wow.
Yeah, you couldn't even walk in the field before it because they were out there too
hunting for food or whatever and they were laying eggs and very vicious, pissed off because
you were there.
That's their land.
And my dad was like, shit, I don't know what we're going to do.
My dad's just like, just hang out.
He brought four hogs.
He let them loose and they ate every one of them and their eggs.
Yeah, yeah.
The hogs have that kind of almost like a cartilage shell under the skin.
They're real tough to get through.
They can't penetrate.
Yeah.
So the snakes would bite them.
It would just, you know, soak into the skin a little bit and then that was it.
Yeah.
And they thought they have, I think they might have natural immunity to.
Yeah, a lot of animals and creatures do have natural immunity.
But like you said, the venom would soak into the fat and they'd be like, oh, that's all
you got?
We'll watch this.
The only thing is you have to watch the hogs because they become feral.
Oh, very quickly.
After nine days.
Yeah.
And if you don't know a feral hog, they will destroy everything in its sight.
They develop huge tusks and they'll kill you.
The majority will run away from you, but the ones that decide that they'd rather face you
will kill you.
Yeah.
They will gore you to death with those husks.
And you better be able to climb because if you stay on the ground with them, they're
faster than you and they're stronger than you and they will try to kill you.
Yes.
And have you ever heard the old saying, it went to shit and the hogs ate them?
Yes.
That came from somewhere.
Yes.
It happened.
It does happen.
The guys came over and said, he's already on the ground.
Hey guys, come on, we can take him.
It did happen.
It did.
It didn't happen all the time, but it did happen.
Yeah.
So you go, hey, where's Henry?
Went to shit and the hogs ate him.
No, where is he?
No, he went to shit and the hogs ate him.
I got his hat over here.
Yeah.
Or he could be like hamsters.
Oh.
If they have more babies than they have teats, the mom eats the extra babies.
Yes, they do.
And the mom eats them alive.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, I got 12 teats and I got 13 babies.
I'm eating that one.
I need nourishment and this little fucker ain't eating anyhow.
And those are cute little hamsters.
Yeah, those are cute little hamsters.
Imagine what the ugly animals do.
How about a rat?
They probably baseball bat their fucking prey, their little ones to death.
Oh my God.
That one sickly, give me the bat.
I set mousetraps out in my garage a couple years ago because I had mice.
I remember you had that one rat that was really smart.
I didn't realize I had a rat until I caught a mouse in the mousetrap.
Uh huh.
And I found it on my way to work and it was like, oh, I'll deal with this later.
And I came back later to get the dead mouse out of the trap and it wasn't there.
It was like four feet away and only the head was left and the rat had eaten everything
else out of the trap.
Oh.
And I thought, oh my God, I've got a rat in this, in this garage.
But that rat caught and ate every one of those mice.
I'd leave the rat.
Every single one.
I'd leave the rat then.
One rat as opposed to 30 mice?
Yeah, except the problem is that one rat doesn't say one rat.
Oh, wait a minute.
You're right.
And also it died, didn't it, in the wall or something?
I had my garage door fixed so it didn't have a way out anymore.
And rats need to drink water every single day.
Yeah, yeah.
And they have to eat constantly too.
Yeah, well they have to chew to get through.
Chew, yeah.
To wear their teeth down.
But they can only go about a day without water and there was no water in the garage.
So after two days it was dead.
Because you just couldn't get out to drink.
Did you feel bad?
No.
No, I'm going to have to get rid of pretty much all of my fishing equipment.
Because it made a big nest out of all my fishing equipment.
Oh, that's right.
And it's all going to smell like rat and no fish is ever going to bite on it again.
Yeah, they're going to go by.
Ah, solid pass.
Yeah.
I had a friend of a friend whose body chemistry was so weird that if he touched the bait no
fish would go near it.
It was just that the oils and chemicals on his skin would make anything he touched just
repellent to fish.
That's interesting.
I never even thought about someone could do that but I guess they could.
He would always have somebody bait his hook for him.
It's like I can't touch it or I'm never going to catch anything.
See I think he was fucking lying just getting me to bait his hook.
Maybe so.
But he could have made millions as being shark repellent.
That's true.
Yeah, if you want to go swimming in shark waters just get this guy to go with you.
They're not mammals are they?
They're fish.
Okay, yeah, yeah, same thing.
Dolphins are mammals.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, the real ones that are actually porpoises.
Yeah, the porpoises not flipper.
The actual dolphin is an actual fish with a big giant forehead.
It looks like Peyton Manning.
They're kind of ugly, yes.
They're kind of an ugly fish.
So those are actual dolphins but what people call dolphins are actually porpoises and they're
dampers.
Yeah, I think they changed their name on porpoise.
I think so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, dad joke.
Yeah, yes, yes.
It's just like, hey man, I just flew in from San Francisco.
My arms are tired.
Woo, knee slapper.
We were talking about music, weren't we?
I think so, yeah.
Okay.
I've been watching some reaction videos lately and I've learned that these are a whole lot
of fun.
Oh, they are.
Yeah, and I have been watching one guy in particular.
His channel is called MollyboyTV and Mollyboy is actually an insult.
It's what you call a somewhat effeminate androgynous young man.
Yeah, I forgot what we call them over here.
We have a name like that.
Nelly?
Yeah.
Is it Nelly?
I've heard Sissyboy and Nancyboy.
Nancyboy is another one.
I think it started as Nelly and it progressed into Sissy and Nancy.
Yeah.
Anyway, this young man, he apparently isn't gay because he's got a girlfriend who pops
up every once in a while.
But I branched out to watching some other people.
I'll find a song and it's like I want to find reaction videos to this song.
It's really interesting watching different people from different genres of music reacting
to the same song like Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel.
Most people get moved to tears by that who have never heard that song before and never
heard of Simon and Garfunkel really, never played that kind of music.
You know they have brothers?
They listen and they're like, oh my God.
They have brothers, Seymour and Garfunkel.
They're pretty cool.
Anyhow, no, they're moved to tears, huh?
Some of them are, yeah.
Another good one was-
It is a really good song though.
The Righteous Brothers performing Unchained Melody.
A lot of people are really moved by that one.
So it's been a lot of fun to watch reaction videos to some of my favorite songs.
And then I found kind of a subset of that is they'll take a famous, or not famous, but
a very well known and well used drummer and play them a song that they've never heard
before but remove the drum track.
And they'll say, okay, listen to it and come up with your own drum track.
And then we'll play-
I like that a lot.
And then eventually they play them the real one to hear how the actual song went and they're
like, wow, I never thought of that.
A lot of these, man, I mean, a lot of songs start with a drum track actually.
The one I saw recently was Kenny Aronoff, who was the drummer for John Mellencamp.
John Mellencamp and also Sammy Hagar.
He came onto the scene as the drummer for John Mellencamp and then he had a lot of gigs.
Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that.
Yeah, he was with Mellenhead for a while.
Mellen-Twaad, I don't know.
But the song they gave him was Changes by Yes off the 90215 album.
And he actually got it pretty close.
It was interesting to listen to him picking things out.
And there were some sections where he was half time when he should have been straight
time or even double time.
Well that stuff there, I mean-
It's just like little choices and little decisions.
Yeah, it's kind of like, I mean, actually you could probably get it to fit.
But, I mean, that's kind of like a feeling thing and that's where a really good drummer
trumps an average drummer.
Yeah.
It's just like, you know, you can tell.
You can tell by the progression.
We talked about John Bonham.
Jason Bonham's completely different.
Take the father and son.
Jason Bonham's a better drummer but he doesn't sound better.
Yeah, yeah.
The guts and the soul and the feeling are there with John.
Yes.
Technically, Jason Bonham would school his dad.
But sound wise, John Bonham got it.
But anyhow, you were going somewhere with this.
I was trying to remember the other ones I've seen.
There's Dennis Chambers who did the Tool song.
Which one?
I can't remember which song it was.
Dennis Chambers.
Where would I know him from?
Oh gosh.
Most of the places I've seen him are on showcases for the products he endorses like Pearl and
Siljan and things like that.
He's like a really huge, beefy, solid looking black guy in his 60s, maybe 70.
And he's incredibly fast.
And one of his gimmicks is he can sit and appear virtually motionless and just his wrists
and his hands are moving.
And he's whizzing around the kit like crazy.
But it looks like he's just sitting there chewing a stick of gum.
It just blows you away.
Wow.
But I have no idea what other musicians or artists he's played with.
But he's like amazingly technical proficient.
So a Tool song should be right up his alley.
Yeah, absolutely.
Sticking with Les Claypool would be insane.
Oh, that's Primus.
Oh Primus, shit.
Yeah, Tool.
Tool, Maynard.
Maynard Ferguson, yeah.
And see Adam Jones is a guitar player.
Danny Carey is the drummer.
Yeah.
Speaking of Primus, they've settled on their new drummer.
Who was it?
John Huffman or something like that?
A friend of mine was auditioning for him.
I always get Primus and Tool mixed up.
I know.
It's tough.
And both of them, the music's really out there.
Yeah.
Let me see.
Primus.
Oh, I know what I was going to ask.
Okay, John Huffman, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, a friend of mine, Sean Sharp, was auditioning.
But he apparently didn't get it.
So this Huffman guy, the band was looking for somebody who wouldn't be a clone of the
guy who left, Tim Herb Alexander.
They're like, we don't want you to be just like him.
We want you to bring your own style and flavor.
We don't have to sound exactly the same.
That's not what we want.
So that was a challenge for the drummers to not only learn the Primus material, but their
own take on it.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, I got a question for you.
You spoke of Yes.
You know what 90125 stood for?
I always figured it was a take off on that Hollywood 90210 show.
Okay, no.
I think what it was was this right here.
This is what I read, and I don't know if it's true.
It's going to be the release dates of albums coming up, but they never made it that far
with that lineup.
Oh.
Yeah, so it changed.
They kind of had their release dates.
They're like, the next three albums we plan on releasing this day, this day, and this day.
It was like, I don't think it was in all in the-
Not the same month.
Yeah.
So they put them all together, and that was supposed to be their albums coming up, but
they switched so many members, it never happened.
That's what I read online, whether that's true or not, I don't know.
I never bothered to try to figure it out, but how could I because the albums never came
out like they should have?
Yeah.
I know of two albums that were supposed to be someone's solo album that wound up being
a band album and one that went the other way.
The Pink Floyd album, Momentary Lapse of Reason, was supposed to be a David Gilmore solo album.
Oh, yeah.
But it just kind of didn't work out that way, so it became the next to the last Pink Floyd
album.
That's right.
And then 90215-
Which is a great album, Jim.
It was.
It was what I really enjoyed.
It actually sounded like Floyd.
It did.
It really did sound like Floyd.
It didn't sound all that much like David Gilmore solo stuff, which is why I think they decided
to release it.
Was that the one with Division Bell?
No, that was the one after.
That was the one after.
Yeah.
Momentary Lapse of Reason, Learning to Fly, Dogs of War.
Yeah, Dogs of War is a good song.
Sorrow was another one that has that awesome guitar intro.
The next one was the one we were just talking about, Yes' 90125.
That was supposed to be the guitar player Trevor Rabin's solo album.
But he kept getting members of Yes to come and work on it and finally it just became
a Yes album.
And they had him join Yes for a brief time.
So that would have been a Trevor Rabin album.
And then the only one I know of that went the other way was a band called The Motels.
Martha Davis was the singer.
And they were in the studio working on an album when she decided, you know what, I don't
want to be in this band anymore.
Let's just all split up.
So the band was in essence fired.
And then she continued working on the material and released it as her first solo album called
Policy.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
It was supposed to be a Motels album.
And the songs where she still had songwriting rights to, she used all of those on her first
solo album.
There's actually several albums that were supposed to be solo albums but became band
albums because of the record label.
Ah, okay.
These are the only ones I knew of.
I was hoping you'd have some more.
Okay.
Tony Iommi, 7th Star.
It came out as Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi.
But he wanted to not only use Glenn Hughes but some other singers too.
But Glenn Hughes is going to be a stage guy too.
But the record label said no.
You have to use your name Black Sabbath or we're not backing you.
Yeah, I can see from a business standpoint they got to protect their interests.
Yeah.
And then let's see, what was the other one?
There's another one too.
Damn it.
Shit, I had another one that I remember now, I forgot it.
But I'll remember it I'm pretty sure.
It just popped in my head.
But most notably Black Sabbath.
There's been a couple other ones too.
Anyhow, you know what, I'm blanking on it.
I recently learned about another case where the people playing on the song aren't the
ones you think.
They're not even in the band.
That's right.
In, let's see, it was 1971, Alice Cooper's band was working on the Killer album and the
first song is called Under My Wheels.
And it's got a really good blues riff to open up the song.
And it turns out that all of the guitars on that whole track, every one of them was played
by Rick Derringer.
Really?
The band had written the song.
Rock and roll, Hoochie Coo guy.
Yeah, okay.
Turns out the band had written the song and they were playing it and it just didn't have
that feel.
And the producer was like, this just isn't working.
You guys aren't selling it.
So he got Rick Derringer in to play it.
And the band was like, oh, okay, that's it right there.
So after Derringer recorded all the parts, the band went back and learned the way he
played it.
The two guitar players, Buxton and Bruce, were like, okay, let's learn exactly how he
played it.
And that's the way they played it on the tour.
But on the album, that's all Rick Derringer on guitar.
Wow.
Yeah.
It's like Train Kept A-Rollin', Aerosmith, that's Steve Hunter on guitar.
That's not Joe Perry and Brad Hamilton.
Oh, that's right.
And also there are several albums that they erased the original because they didn't get
along with the guitarist or whoever.
And they erased all of their parts and put in someone else playing their parts.
ZZ Top did that with...
The first one with the 32 Ford Coupe on it, was that Eliminator?
Eliminator.
Yeah.
Their drummer, Frank Beard, they had him actually recording drum parts during the day.
And then at night, Billy Gibbons would go in and replace them with a drum machine.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then eventually when the album was being mixed and they were listening to it, the drummer,
Frank Beard, was like, who the fuck is that playing on this song?
That's not me.
They were sneaking in here to replace me.
And then they had to tell him, well, it's a drum machine because this sounds better
than how you play.
So from that point on, from Eliminator on, it was drum machines on the album.
And then Frank Beard would have to learn the parts that Billy Gibbons programmed into the
drum machine and play them on tour.
And he'd have to fake along on the videos.
But that was all drum machines.
I got an interesting story.
This is in Tony Iommi's autobiography.
There are a lot of interesting stories in that.
That is one of the great books that never got enough credit.
It's called Iron Man.
And OK, so he the reason Dio split with them, they did two albums, two very successful,
really good albums that they they broke up during their prime.
I mean, you know, it came hard hitting with Heaven and Hell and then the Mob Rules.
Both of them did very well.
And so they were they were mixing mob rules and for some reason, during the night, Iommi
and Butler would do the tracks and then Dio and Aposi would come in and do their tracks
and then they'd mix them together.
Well, Iommi and Butler kept when they came in, they said, this is not the same song.
They're changing it.
And Dio swore up and down.
They did nothing to it.
He said, we did not touch it.
And then they would do it again.
And they'd say, no, this song is different.
And then supposedly one of the recorders, one of the guys that helped record it, come
in stinking a scotch one day and he goes, I got to admit it, they were messing with
it, they were doing stuff with the song and I helped them and all this stuff.
So then they went back to Dio and they were already mad at him because he got a record
when he got Sabbath, the Warner Brothers deal.
He got a record deal solo and they were like, hey, wait a minute, you're our guy.
You're not your guy.
You're our guy.
You would definitely feel used at that point, wouldn't you?
Yeah, they did.
They're like, this guy's trying to prop his own career.
And so that already caused dissension in the band.
And then after the taking over the music, supposedly, allegedly, was the final straw,
and then they all got into a big fight and that was it.
He left and he had his two album deal anyhow with Warner Brothers.
So he went on to do his solo career and Sabbath got Ian Gillum, which did turn out to be very
bad, although they're friends now.
Yeah.
Yeah, a lot of cocaine, a lot of fights, and allegedly Ian Gillum's boat being blown up
by Gieser Butler.
Oh, what is it about people blowing up other people's boats?
I don't know.
I mean, is that like a pleasure thing?
It's like, I'll get you.
You like to hang out on the, you know, hang out on the ocean, don't you?
I'll blow up your fucking boat, Dick.
Hold my beer.
Yeah, hold my beer.
So anyhow, and then there's another story in Iommi's book.
He was on cocaine really bad for many years, right?
His house in Beverly Hills, he thought was haunted.
He kept hearing things in the walls and he's like, number one, he's like, well, you know,
and I am pretty much coked out.
Yeah.
But I'm pretty sure what about I hear.
It's got to be haunted.
Turns out a year or so later, there was people living in his walls, homeless people.
Oh, that would be so creepy.
Yeah.
And that was in his book too.
Very good book.
So anyhow, what are you looking up?
Well, I was going to mention about Leonard Skinnerd's first album.
It's the one that's, that's a, is titled to pronounce Leonard Skinnerd.
The bass player on the album was someone they brought in last minute because the bass player
who worked up all the songs and wrote all the bass parts was in jail for some reason.
I'm trying to, was desperately trying to look that up.
I remember reading, reading the back of the album and it says right on the album that
all the bass parts you're hearing were written by, you know, this guy who wasn't able to
do the recording.
And so they hired a different bass player.
Apparently it was, was showing Ed King as a, as a bass player.
And he was, Ed King was also one of the guitar players.
So I think he filled in on bass.
Okay.
That was Kerry King's cousin.
Oh, okay.
No, not really.
No, whenever someone has the same last name, always tried to do that.
And then everyone goes, really?
Hell, like that?
Not really.
And then on the second album, it's Leon Wilkerson.
That's the guy who apparently was in jail and couldn't record their first album with
him.
And Ed King is back to the guitar and backing vocals.
Oops.
So that was kind of interesting that somebody missed the recording of the album because
they're locked up.
How many times does that really happen?
Oops.
Well, that happened a lot in prior early Motley Crue.
No, that's true.
Yeah.
But they weren't necessarily recording albums at that time.
When Vince Neil was on probation for his vehicular manslaughter.
Yeah.
Boy, they got him good.
They had to get, he had to get special dispensation so he could stay in the band because part
of the probation was you can't hang around with other convicted felons.
Little Nikki Sixx was a convicted felon.
So he had to get permission to hang around just this one convicted felon.
Wow.
So he could stay in the band.
Meanwhile, Mick Morris Bob Deal was over there going, these guys are fucking idiots because
he was older.
Why did I sign up with these guys?
Yeah.
And he'd already been playing classic music and he wanted to make it really bad.
So he answered an ad I think or no, he put out and had loud, rude, aggressive guitarist.
Yeah.
And then they answered it and he came over there and his, his tuning of the guitar, number
one is different.
I'm not sure what he tunes it to.
Do you know?
There's all sorts of variations of alternate tuning.
So it can be different for different songs.
But wasn't like a grunge down tuning.
It was something else.
It was a little bit sharper.
Yeah, Stevie Ray Vaughan tuned all of his strings a half step down.
There are some players who will use the DAD GAD tuning instead of the standard tuning.
It's not really called drop tuning necessarily.
It's just alternate drop tuning is just when you drop the E down.
Yeah, actually alternate tuning.
Yeah.
So there are a lot of alternate tunings out there.
So Mick Morris did that.
He changed his name to Mick Morris too.
And he decided he was going to kind of tried this whole new scene in LA out.
And it turns out, I mean, his tile of blues with that different sound, he's pretty heavy
guitarist was a perfect fit for Motley Crue, except their personalities.
Yeah.
They pretty much hated him and he hated them.
And they've been admitted in a lot of a lot of interviews.
They're like, yeah, we don't really necessarily get along that well, but we play.
Yeah.
And you really don't have to like all your coworkers in order for the business to be
a success.
I'm pretty sure Vince Neil doesn't like any of them.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, he got kicked out of the band.
Yeah.
Or maybe he quit.
I forgot.
I forget which way it goes, but they all snubbed him when his daughter died.
Yeah.
Nobody bothered to say that happened in Led Zeppelin too, actually.
Robert Plant's son died.
Yeah.
How much would you want to talk to these or like these guys after that?
Well, you'd be like, not anyone could reach out and say, hey, sorry.
You know, nothing.
The only time the next time they talk to you is because they need you in the band because
the record company was going to drop them.
Yeah.
I've been like, number one, I got enough money.
Fuck you.
I do good on my own.
I'll just keep doing that.
You guys go get John Karabi.
See how well that works.
I've been hearing stories that Steven Tyler's voice is starting to come back.
Yeah.
He played a concert.
Oh, he did?
I was going to say if they try to get Aerosmith back, I really seriously doubt Joey Kramer
is going to come back.
I don't think so.
He really, yeah.
I mean, he lost his job from Aerosmith.
They were going to do that residency and he needed some surgery.
So he lost his job to a fill in who they just paid union scale to.
And then when he got better, the band said, well, you still need to audition for us.
You don't just come back and get your job.
Yeah.
I was astounded.
Why in the fuck would they do that?
I mean, because they weren't planning on hiring him.
This is just gives them an excuse.
And he said, screw you.
Yeah.
No, he worked hard at learning and send in an audition tape and they kind of, so he sent
in another one and they're like, yeah, you're not good enough yet.
You can try again next year, but for now you're not good enough yet.
Wow.
At that point, he said, fuck you guys.
What a pussy thing to do.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Well, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry are like Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx.
They want the money.
Yeah.
They want the money.
The toxic twins that hated each other most of the time.
Same way with those guys.
They don't like each other that necessary.
If it ever was about the music, it isn't anymore.
No, no, no.
It was about the music before, but it's like Motley Crue.
It's not now.
Joey Kramer had such an intricate part in Aerosmith too.
Yeah.
Their songs would have sounded so different without him.
I know.
They really would.
I don't realize how much his sound is in Aerohead, or not Aerohead.
Aerosmith.
Aerohead, yeah.
Yeah.
Joe Perry was not all of it.
He was not all of it at all.
People seem to think that, but if you want to know that, listen to The Joe Perry Project.
Yeah.
And go look up Brad Hamilton on Google search, on YouTube.
He is one of the most well-respected rhythm guitarists out there.
Oh, Brad Hamilton is awesome.
Yeah.
No, his sound is a lot more of Aerosmith's sound, but I mean all of them.
Well, look at Steven Tyler.
Steven Tyler, without him, would they have been Aerosmith?
No.
No, but Joey Kramer, no, he's not coming back.
I wouldn't think so.
He would probably have enough pride, and I don't think they would ever offer him the
money it would take to get him to come back, because I'm sure he'd want to be an equal
partner again.
They're so used to not having to pay a fifth band member.
No, I mean, he's not going to come back anyhow.
I really don't think so.
I mean, do you think he was that slow, really?
No, no.
He's always been an amazing drummer, and what the band was saying is your endurance isn't
enough to make it through the whole show.
Oh, just like Bill Warden, maybe.
They said that about Bill Warden, too.
Yeah.
And it's such a subjective thing that if you've made up your mind you don't want him anymore
because it's cheaper to hire somebody else, then that's one thing.
Oh, your endurance isn't good enough.
Like, no, in the second hour we can just hear it's not as good.
How do you say your line?
How do you prove that they're just making that up so they can fire you?
I mean, it's a perfect excuse.
No, they could listen and go, well, you kind of sound like you slowed down.
I mean, Lars Jurek, I mean, you'd think he could maybe not play his stuff anymore, but
he can.
He can now.
There was a point in time where he couldn't replicate what was on the album.
Oh, did he?
Yeah.
I went to a drum clinic put on by Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater.
It was after their second album came out, Awake, and they had toured with Metallica
on their first album, Images and Words.
And he said all that tour, there was a drummer backstage doing the double bass parts for
Lars because he was too out of it.
He didn't have the endurance and the stamina, and he partied too much, and he wasn't practicing,
and he was in no physical shape to do it.
So on that tour, yeah, he had someone play his parts for him.
But yeah, then he's cleaned up and he's back to being himself again.
He's very obviously back playing and very fit, et cetera.
But on that tour, he needed someone propping him up.
Oh yeah, yeah.
And let's see, I was going to go back to Aerosmith.
Another thing is, Joe Perry was notorious bad with drugs.
So yeah, the toxic twins are right.
They necessarily didn't care for each other half the time, but they would gang up on the
rest of the band.
Yeah.
In a situation like that, if you can come to a situation, an agreement where we don't
get along, we don't like each other, but this is working for both of us, let's protect it.
So you fight against each other to some degree, but you fight with each other against everybody
else.
You know, okay, have you seen Aerosmith in concert?
Just videos.
Okay.
I haven't seen them live in person, but I have seen whole concerts on video.
Hamilton played a lot of the lead.
Yeah.
He really did.
And I never knew that until I watched him.
STP opened up for him at Sandstone.
And I was watching that and I was like, wow, I never knew that.
I always thought it was Joe Perry because he was the prolific one.
They're the toxic twins.
Yeah.
I think on the albums, it's probably Joe Perry a lot on the solos, but in the studio, you
can stop the tape and swap guitars and then play another part of the solo or you can play
the second solo on a different guitar with different effects, but live, you just give
it to the other guitar player.
Yeah.
And to me, it reminds me of Adrian Smith and Dave Murray.
You know how they both play lead and both switch over?
It was kind of like that.
So I mean, anyhow, I mean, but there's also, let's see, I was trying to parlay into something
else.
How many people don't realize that a band member isn't doing, I'm trying to figure out
how to say this.
They think that a band member is doing everything when actually there's another guitarist doing
something or how would you word that?
It's a skill you have to develop to be able to pick out the different instruments you're
hearing and realize when you're hearing one guitar, two guitars, three guitars.
I still have a lot of trouble with that.
There's some songs I'll give it to a guitar player and say, is that one guitar playing
or is that two?
And they're like, hell, I don't even know.
Well how about K.K.
Downing and Glenn Tipton?
Downing is no longer with the band.
He's never going to be with a band again, according to them.
So evidently Glenn Tipton is a very good guitarist, but K.K.
Downing had all the recognition.
Everybody thought that he was the guy.
And Tipton plays a lot of it too.
There's a lot of bands like that where they have two dual guitarists.
Oh, Steve Clark and Phil Collins was like that.
Phil Collins is a shredder.
Steve Clark was more of a rhythm guy, but he did play a lot of the leads.
Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley.
Another one.
That's what I'm trying to say is people that have the idea that the one guitarist did it
all but actually it was more of a kind of a Whitfield parry, but there's a better example
than that.
How about Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clark?
Well Gilby Clark too later.
But Izzy Stradlin and Slash.
Izzy Stradlin played a lot more of the guitar parts, but there's more that I'm not thinking
of.
Damn it.
I really wanted to do this before it too.
Where you think one guitarist is a guy, but actually the other guy is doing just as much
if not more.
Yeah.
I've seen that a lot in live performances where the rhythm guitar is the guy over there
playing everything you remember from the record or the recording of it.
And the lead guitar player is standing there really not doing anything until the vocalist
stops and he noodles a little bit and then he stops while the vocalist sings and he noodles
a little bit.
And then it was time for a solo, he's over there shredding.
But it's the rhythm guitar who's carrying the song.
Paul Stanley's a classic example of that.
Paul Stanley also did a lot of the licks and the leads on it too.
He didn't do the solos, none of that.
The note bending, Ace Freelie, he's just so good at that.
The feeling though, a lot of the feeling came from Stanley.
You have a song and you have the feeling of it and that is what would you say generated
through the feeling, kind of like the melody and how the guitar goes with or against the
singing.
Yeah.
You can do a lot with counterpoint.
It's like the song is doing this so the little lead comes in and does a counterpoint to it.
Yeah.
To where you don't just go along with it and mimic it or harmonize with it.
It's like you actually play off of it.
And that can add some interest and excitement.
And the tone you get can make a difference, the way you play it, whether you're pushing
or you're laid back or you hold notes or just all sorts of things can really influence the
feel of a song.
How about this?
How about bands that didn't need two guitarists and bands that needed another one?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, that would work better.
Not quite the same of what I was getting at but a little bit easier to explain I guess.
Yeah, Bad Company was one like that.
In the studio, Paul Rodgers would play some rhythm guitar.
He's actually pretty good too.
Yeah.
He plays piano too.
Yeah.
But live it was all McRalphs.
Just McRalphs.
Yeah, and you know, I mean, I guess they were the type of band that live you wouldn't really
care.
You know, they had the bass back filling and the drums.
You know, a concert's a concert.
It's not going to sound exactly alike.
And Paul Rodgers really good at what he does.
He's not my favorite singer but really good at what he does.
So they necessarily wouldn't need another guitarist.
I always thought that ZZ Top needed another guitarist live.
I did too.
Because on all their albums when Billy Gibbons is playing the lead, you also hear Billy Gibbons
doing the rhythm behind it.
And at least Eddie Van Halen, he would stop playing rhythm long enough to do the lead
then he'd go back to rhythm.
He was good enough.
He was good enough to work with him.
Yeah, he could do that.
He could play both parts himself.
ZZ Top, I remember I saw them at Starlight.
No, not Starlight.
That was different.
I don't remember what venue I saw ZZ Top.
But when Billy Gibbons would go into the leads, it just sounded so thin.
It just really did.
Well a guitarist like Eddie Van Halen was actually so classic at it.
But I would see him mute the rhythm strings and then he would have the same progression
and make a completely different sound.
But it was the lead.
And it's just like how in the fuck did he do that?
You spend pretty much every waking moment with a guitar in your hands.
You just come up with stuff.
Yeah.
And then he would reverse it.
He would do the rhythm and mute the...
Plus I'm sure he talked to every other guitar player he came across and they swapped secrets.
And then he would just play neck.
He played chords, picking, everything on the neck.
He didn't have to do that but he did.
He was just like watch this shit.
Steve Vai did that.
He had kind of a heart shaped guitar and then neck coming out to the left and then neck
coming out to the right.
So neither hand was picking but he was playing two guitar parts just by pressing the strings
down with either hand.
And if someone that...
Yeah.
If someone never knew guitar, if you have a guitar amplified pretty good, you can hit
the string and you don't have to hit...
You don't have to pick it.
Yeah.
It's a hammer on.
Hammer on.
Yeah.
And Steve Vai was so good, both hands he would do a scale down at the same time on that guitar.
Yeah.
Just like wow.
And he would sound good.
Yeah.
It's just like look, anyone could finger tap like I had an email, a guy that kept pestering
me about music.
And he said that finger tapping, anybody could do it is easy.
I said yeah, anybody could do it.
It is easy.
Make it sound good.
Yeah.
Go onto YouTube and Google Corey Feldman guitar solo.
He finger taps his ass off and it sounds like shit.
Vinnie Vincent.
A solo.
Not with Kiss, not Vincent Cusano or not when he did the albums with Kiss.
Because I'm pretty sure he did Creatures of the Night.
If you listen to the solos and the rhythms on that, that's not Ace Freely.
So anyhow, Vinnie Vincent, same thing on his solo album, especially Invasion, the first
one.
He does his stupidest shit on finger tapping.
It's fast but it has nothing.
Nothing.
Yeah.
It's like the nude scene they throw in a movie just to get the R rating.
Yeah.
It's like oh this song, we throw some finger tapping in so the radio will play it.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean something happened with Vinnie Vincent from being a very good songwriter.
I mean look at Lick It Up and Creatures of the Night.
Those two are such underrated albums.
They were two of the best Kiss albums ever because they were hard.
To me, I like the Harder Edge Kiss on those.
Yeah, they did great with Shandy and Hard Luck Woman and all that stuff.
They were great with Balance.
Yeah.
But those albums were unique because you could separate them and put them in a different
category and they were more of a harder rock, not so much of a pop hard rock.
It might have been the combination of Vinnie Vincent and the producer.
Probably.
Yeah.
Probably.
But he was such a terrific songwriter.
Yeah.
But then when he went on his own, I think he started going crazy a little bit.
Now he's just crackers and crayons fucking nuts.
But he needed that producer to say no, no, that's stupid.
Let's get back to this.
Well that led to the end of him being in Kiss is because he was going out there playing
for like 15 minutes solo and Paul Stanley's out there going, get the fuck back here.
So he finally comes out there and he grabs him and I forgot, he's like in Georgia, Atlanta
or something, grabs him and goes, all right, enough Vinnie.
And Vinnie turns around and he goes, don't ever do that to me again.
And Paul's like, uh-uh.
And James like, uh-uh.
You're fired, dude.
You just don't know it yet.
And Eric Carr was new.
So Eric Carr was new.
So he's like, yeah, yeah, get rid of him.
Whatever you say, boss.
Yeah, whatever you say.
So I don't think Eric Carr was ever a member.
No, he was a paid guy.
He was a hired guy.
So he had no vote.
I loved him though.
Man, he loved his, uh, he was a heavier guitarist.
He wasn't a jazz drummer like Peter Chris.
And that's another reason they were harder with Eric Carr is because the beat was different
completely.
It wasn't a jazz or anything like that.
There was a period of time in rock where it seemed like jazz drummers were getting all
the jobs with the harder rock.
Oh, there was.
Yeah, gosh.
How many examples are there?
You know, there's Peter Chris.
Um, Steve Smith with Journey.
Perfect.
Total Jazz drummer.
Yeah.
Um, remember that band Candlebox?
Yeah.
Oh.
Their drummer was a Total Jazz drummer.
I can't think of his name, but man, you could hear it in everything that he did.
Boy, there's some really good examples I can't think of right now.
I think it was a push by the music industry to kind of tone down the slamming and the
hard rock.
It's like, okay, we've got these hard guitars.
Well, let's just put in some drummers that aren't slammers and pounders, you know, kind
of gentle it up a little bit.
And that's one of the things Steve Smith said.
He's like, I'm following Ainsley Dunbar and that guy hits and he rocks out.
He said, I don't know if I can hit these drums hard enough, especially using the traditional
jazz grip with the sticks.
So I don't know if I can hit them hard enough to get that rock sound, but you know, amplifiers
can do all sorts of amazing things.
Yeah.
I remember a good producer too.
A good producer is like, don't worry about it.
Steve Smith, excellent, excellent drummer, phenomenal jazz drummer.
I saw him in a clinic at UMKC.
But there was a video from the first tour they did with Steve Smith as the drummer.
And when it came time for the drum solo, technically it was well done.
But as far as a composition, it was crap.
It was like, here's things that rock drummers do.
So he did that for a little bit.
Oh, here's another thing that rock drummers do.
So he did that for a bit.
Nothing fit together, nothing flowed.
It was just this choppy mess of your standard rock drummer licks.
It was like, wow, he got so much better at it on the next tour.
But at that point it's like, I've never played rock and roll before.
I've never played a rock drum solo before.
What the hell am I doing here?
But he's a fast learner.
So I mean, he got very good quickly.
But it really seemed to be a concentrated push to kind of reel back the music.
Yeah, Carmine Eppice.
I don't know if he was jazz, but he was different.
What would you call his...
The other place that a lot of those drummers came from was big band style.
I think Carmine Eppice was kind of big band style, if I remember correctly, in what he's
done.
He was completely different than his brother, Vinny Eppice.
Vinny Eppice is more of a hard rock metal type of a drummer.
But Carmine Eppice...
Yeah, that's weird too.
Carmine Eppice and Vinny Eppice.
Yeah, Eppice I think is the family pronunciation.
Yeah, and then Eppice is what everyone calls him over here.
It looks like a piece, but it's actually the correct is Eppice.
It's an Italian name.
He was Keith Richard.
Oh yeah, that's right.
They just added the S to his name.
Finally, he changed his name.
I'm never going to get anyone convinced that my name is Keith Richard.
He just went in and added the S to his name.
Just like the guitarist of Typho Negative.
He is John Krabi.
No.
When I got reminded of that, I'm like, I can't believe I forgot that.
That was one of those really classic moments.
Hey, I got...
I can't ever think of his damn name.
Anyhow, I got so excited in John Krabi's name.
It's like the time that Nazareth kidnapped the representative from the Ludwig Drum Company
that was out there checking on the artist, the A&R guy.
Oh yeah.
He was with them at one show.
The singer took him out to the bus.
He said, just hang out in the bus.
We can talk.
We can catch up and stuff.
At some point, the bus started.
He's like, oh, don't worry about it.
It's just so they can run the ventilation, get things warmed up.
Then the bus started moving.
He's like, oh, it's all right.
We're just repositioning because we're going to pick up the rest of the people and get
stuff.
Then after like 15, 20 minutes, the guy from Ludwig Drums realized, we're on the interstate.
At that point, Nazareth Singer is like, oh yeah, we're kidnapping you.
We're going to Detroit next.
That's funny.
Well, moving on to the world of guitar amplifiers, which I tend to pay attention to.
We've recently had the sale of the Marshall Amplification Company to a Chinese firm.
A year or so ago, we had Mesa Boogie that was purchased by Gibson.
Now Gibson has fired the founder of Mesa Boogie, Randall Smith.
Then a recent brand that has rocketed up, Blackstar, now is starting to really lose
favor because people are looking at the overall circuit.
Basically they get their tone by building a tube screamer into the circuit.
It's like, it's an old tube amp, but it basically has a built-in tube screamer.
People are starting to think, and there are a number of amps that claim to be all tube,
but they've got solid state rectifiers and amplifiers.
I never thought I'd ever see that.
There are still a lot of tube amps coming out, but the prices are going way up.
Anything Mesa Boogie starts at over two grand, so you've got to be willing to spend there.
During the time of COVID, there was a shortage of vacuum tubes.
The majority of the vacuum tubes are made in Russia and China.
Some American firms have started up again, but there is a vacuum tube shortage.
At that time, the push for modeling amps got really big.
It's like, okay, this amp really doesn't have a sound on its own, but you turn this knob
and now it sounds like an orange rocker verb.
You turn it again, now it sounds like a Marshall Silver Jubilee, just on and on like that.
You get approximations of famous amps, and some of them can be really good.
A lot of people are releasing a lot of content done with modeling amps, but solid state amplifiers
are really starting to make a comeback.
They're way cheaper than tube amp technology.
They're way more reliable.
They use less power.
The maintenance is very low on them.
I've seen a lot of manufacturers starting to put out good quality solid state guitar
amps, whereas before the solid state amps were regulated to the beginner and student
models and maybe some intermediate.
Now we're seeing solid state working all the way up to the really high dollar ones.
Part of a subset of that is the profiling amps.
Have you ever heard of profiling amps?
Yeah.
I don't quite know, but go ahead.
Yeah, somebody explained this to me the other day on a video.
Kemper is one of the main companies of this.
Basically what you do, instead of buying a modeling amp that the factory says, oh, here's
how we think a Fender twin reverb sounds.
If you have a Fender twin reverb, you can set it up exactly how you like it and get
it mic'd up and sounding exactly the way you love.
The Kemper profiler will learn it.
Wow.
Then the profiler will reproduce that tone exactly.
That is cool.
That's cheating, but I love it.
Isn't it?
It is.
You notice the piano guy?
Look at him.
He looks like Elton John even with the glasses.
He doesn't play like him, but he looks like him.
He looks like he might be a little taller because Elton was a short guy.
Yeah, he is a little bit lankier.
You can tell even sitting down.
That's funny.
Yeah, it is.
Okay.
Later we should yell, hey, Elton, and see if he turns around.
Oh, I bet you.
He'll either flip us off or laugh.
If he understands us.
No, that's true.
That's true.
But another thing about these profilers that's fun is, say you've got this one high dollar
amp and your buddy has a different high dollar amp.
You can take your profiler over there and get it to learn his amp too.
And then you can switch between the two.
Yes.
And then you find all your other buddies with all these other amps you like.
All right, that's cheating, but I love it.
Isn't it?
It is.
And now you can trade those profiles.
Hey, there's some people that call distortion pedals cheating.
That's true.
I mean, if you think about it, if you hit a couple of chords on distortion, it sounds
like it should have been a song.
Yeah.
I mean, of a certain type.
And it hides mistakes really well too.
It hides mistakes so well.
Led Zeppelin thought that a double kick setup was cheating.
Every time John Bonham put a double second kick drum there, they'd steal it and hide
it and say, ah, it's just unnatural.
Do it with one.
That probably led to the sound though.
Yeah.
He learned to do things with just one that is really tough to do.
You know what?
It worked.
Yeah, it did.
Wow.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
So anyway, you've got this Kemper.
What was the John Bonham story I heard the other day?
Anyhow, go ahead.
You've got this Kemper profiler and now you can swap and trade these profiles with people.
And Kemper has come up with a new one called the player, where this one won't record and
learn your amp, but it will play back the profiles of everyone else.
So you can just buy the player, which is a lot cheaper than the profiler, hook it up
and then just download profiles.
It's like, oh, here's the exact tone of Mark Tremonti and his amp setup because he recorded
it and posted it on his website.
And that's a great example because Tremonti has his own tone that's very good.
There was a previous version of this that was done with hardware and there was an amp
that had plug-in modules.
Well, how many guitars you think are going to subscribe to this though?
A lot of them already are.
Oh, are they?
A lot of them.
Okay.
Then probably someone that's like real prolific with their own sound like Zach Wilde probably
would not.
I wouldn't think.
There are some that will jealously guard their tone, but there are others that's like, I'll
just use my name and put out some tones I like.
So these aren't necessarily my tones, but here's what I created.
Yeah, you know what?
If you had me on, we wouldn't exactly give out his tone, but he'd come up with other
stuff.
And so would Zach probably too.
I don't think anybody wants their signature tone being anywhere and I can understand that.
That's theirs and people recognize it.
I don't know.
It's like someone stealing your cologne and wearing it.
Yeah.
It's like, hey, wait a minute.
I smell like that, not you.
There was an amp.
It's already still out.
It came out a number of years back that had plug-in modules.
So it came with one standard module and that's how the amp sounded.
And then they got various guitar players to go into the studio and kind of do an early
version of the profiling.
And then they would sell that to you in the form of this module.
It looked like a very short stubby vacuum tube, but it wasn't a vacuum tube.
So you pull out the existing, then you plug in this one and now your amp sounds just like
that.
But in order to change, you've got to shut everything down, cool it down, pull the thing
out, plug the next one in, power it back up again.
So that's really inconvenient.
So this profiling amp does it with software instead of a physical piece of equipment you've
got to plug in.
I'm trying to find a certain article that I got to and that's interesting though.
I mean, that's going to go so many...
Everyone's going to sound like everybody now if they get the right amp.
I was looking on this story about how many times John Bonham told someone to fuck off.
There's like a collage and like all of these stars, some of them before and some of them
during, where like he'd get drunk, he'd tell everybody to fuck off.
And they all have a fuck off story from John Bonham.
And I can't find the article.
I have to go home and down.
I'll figure it out later.
But there's like 30 prominent musicians go, oh yeah, he told me to fuck off.
And he's, oh yeah, he told me to fuck off.
And they all have their own story.
I guess that was just a standard thing for him.
That was a standard thing with him.
And especially if you weren't big yet and he didn't know you.
Oh yeah.
Oh, he'd really tell you to fuck off even before you started to say anything.
Fuck off.
You could come over there and go, man, John, I really...
Fuck off.
It's a pretty common thing to have a hole in the front head of your kick drum, the resonant
head.
And that's generally where the sound, the audio engineer or the recording person would
stick the microphone.
Bonham never cut a hole in his.
He used it as a full resonant head.
And there was a story of him going into the studio.
That's right, part of the sound is powerful sound.
He went into the studio to record one of the albums and the sound engineer came up with
the microphone and said, where's the hole?
And he said, they're in one.
Well, how am I supposed to mic this?
We need to cut a hole in this.
And Bonham said, no, these are my drums and they sound the way they sound.
Your job is to mic them up and make them sound awesome.
So you're not touching my drums.
You're going to mic them up so they sound great.
And he was very adamant.
No one was putting any padding or muting or anything.
And for the most part, they used room mics, not close up mics.
But they wouldn't put microphones on each drum.
They just scatter them around the room and blend them all together.
That's part of his big sound is room reverb.
And also another thing is the kick drum.
I really like that, actually.
It would just kind of like concentrate the sound so much more.
And you know who got Bonham his endorsement deal with Ludwig?
Vinnie Apiece.
Vinnie, really?
Yeah.
Or was it Carmine?
Carmine.
Yeah, it was Carmine.
Vinnie Apiece is quite a bit younger.
Yeah, it was Carmine.
So yeah, Carmine was out and he had pretty much the biggest drums that Ludwig made, like
26 inch kick drums and the double kick set and all these huge drums.
And Bonham was touring with him.
He's like, oh man, those are so awesome.
I love these.
He's like, well, let me introduce you.
And he got an endorsement deal just like that.
And then he wanted just his basic four or five piece setup, but giant drums.
His kick drums, probably 26 inch, are huge.
Because Carmine was in the same circles as him, being in different bands and a lot of
metal bands.
I mean, even Rod Stewart.
I mean, yeah, so Carmine was the guy.
Wasn't he in Uriah Heap?
Yeah, yeah.
He was also in a couple of other bands.
Geez, I can't remember.
He'd been in a lot of bands.
A lot of, let's see, Vanilla Fudge, Cactus.
Vanilla Fudge.
Cactus is, yeah.
Vanilla Fudge was mentioned in a Frank Zappa song.
Really?
He was mentioned in some band playing somewhere.
He says, I don't know if it was really Vanilla Fudge or not, but anyway.
And Frank Zappa was mentioned in a Deep Purple song.
Frank Zappa and the Mamas.
Yeah, oh, that's right.
He had the best place around.
Yeah, and then some-
Stupid with a flare gun.
Some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground.
That's a true story.
It was, yeah.
They're all in Montreux and they're watching Frank Zappa.
If you've got the original album, they have pictures of the fire in the album.
Yeah, and it's smoke coming over the lake and they said, smoke on the water.
It's a story about some fucker burning the place down with a flare gun.
And they should go kiss that guy because he made their career take off.
Yes, he did.
Because not only was that the king of riffs, but it was also the king of lyrics too.
Yeah, I mean everybody wanted to learn the song, play along.
When you went out to hear a local band play, you wanted them to play that song.
But 99% of people play it wrong.
Yeah, yeah.
Watch, Richie Blackmore demonstrates it on a couple of videos that he did.
And he said, most people play it wrong, so I'm going to show you how it's supposed to
be played.
Yeah, everyone plays 035, but that's not what it is.
That is not it.
And they go up and down the scale.
He does not.
He does it with strings.
Very good.
Yeah, that's something I'm picking out of a lot of songs that I'm trying to learn is
the rhythm guy isn't playing chords all the time.
He'll play a chord and then he'll pick a few strings and then hit another chord for emphasis.
Where I was just like churning through with chords all the way through.
I was like, oh, that's why his sounds so much better.
There are certain guitarists that do that and the ones that do that do it very well.
I mean, Zach Wild is one, you know, but the thing is, is they also know how to play the
chord too and play the strings.
There's no problem.
They're not hiding anything by doing a scale because there's a lot of guitarists I feel
are hiding something doing a scale.
You know what I mean?
They're hiding the preciseness, their clarity.
It's like the fallback positions.
Like I've done this million times, I don't know how I can do it.
Yeah.
And then it got to know as noodling and then it was just like a joke.
Yeah.
I mean, Ozzy even talked about it.
It was noodling.
Yeah.
And he also did an interview not too long ago where he said the best guitarist he ever
played with was Tony Iommi.
And you would think, really?
Randy Rhodes, Jake Lee, Zach Wild.
Now, he said that American guitarists play too fast.
Yeah, I can see that.
And he also bitched about noodling, not on this interview, but another one.
He said every guitarist that always comes in, noodles.
Yeah.
I don't want to hear noodling.
I want to hear songwriting.
Yeah, something intentional with purpose.
Yeah.
And that's one reason Jake Lee got the gig is he didn't come in here.
He didn't come in there going, doodly-doodly-doodly-doodly-do.
George Lynch was supposed to get that gig, but he had short hair.
And Sharon said, nobody in the band.
Yeah, no short hairs and I guess no gay guys.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah, when I joined a local band called Weatherhead and everybody in the band except, well, the
singer, the singer had long hair and everybody else had short hair.
And he said they were actually losing gigs because they give them a band photo and the
guy's like, nah, you guys are all a bunch of short hairs.
Yeah.
So I joined the band and had much longer hair.
And he's like, great, we'll get more jobs now.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
But no Ozzy said, everyone come in noodling.
And he said, you know, certain guys came in and played chords that sounded, you know,
pretty close to what the noodlers were doing.
It's like, those were the ones that went to the second audition.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
When I'm playing the drums, I can be very precise and I'm very purposeful with every
note I play.
When I pick up guitar, I'm real sloppy and I hit more strings than I'm intending to.
And if I try to do solo, it just, it sounds like it has no purpose.
Most guitarists do that.
I do that too.
Yeah.
I'm trying to work on just hitting the strings I'm intending to hit, but I get excited and
start.
No, me too.
That's a problem with, that's a problem with guitars.
Yeah.
They sound so good that you don't care.
Yeah.
You're like, Hey, these two chords sound really good together and it's sloppy and you may
be even hitting the wrong strings.
But it's like, that's pretty cool.
Yeah.
You're not like, okay, I'm going to sit down and learn this song.
I'm not going to, I'm going to learn this, learn this acoustical piece.
There's no fun in that unless you're really, really into musicianship and guitar.
Other than that, you're into that.
There's a lot to be said for learning how to do that and make it sound good.
Yeah.
That is part of it.
What really helps me is I've started recording when I just, you know, I'm just bashing around
playing whatever improvising and then I'll listen back to it.
And it was like, Oh my God, my timing's off there.
And then, Oh, I hesitated there.
There's the wrong, Oh, look at all those strings I'm hitting extra there.
I really started learning all my mistakes.
Yeah.
At the time it sounded awesome.
And I thought I was really rocking out, but I listened back.
It's like, Holy cow.
I'm glad no one else heard this.
Yeah.
You know, I think Ozzy is talking about something like GATT2.
A lot of people, they turn up the distortion and play real fast and assume that that's
great and people are going to love it.
But actually it's kind of viewed as you're hiding.
Yeah.
You know, you can have a beauty contest and everybody in there has had plastic surgery
and their body sculpted and everything.
It's like, y'all look the same.
I mean, it's nice, but y'all look carbon copy.
It's like, where's the person who's different?
Yeah.
And another thing is all the guys that can do that, like Jeff Beck was a really good
one.
He can play all different styles.
There's so many of them.
So anyhow, they could play the noodling.
They can do all of that, the scales, they can do it all in very fast, but they rarely
do that.
They don't need to.
Yeah.
It is really important the choices you make of what to play and what to leave out.
A lot of times it's what you leave out and not what you put in.
And the thing is, is you got to know when to stop a song and not add to it.
It's like, okay, we could put this in, but no, we don't need it.
The song is perfect the way it is.
Yeah.
You get those overproduced songs and Phyllis Fector was one of those with, it was just
a wall of sound coming at you.
He puts so much into the mix.
It confuses you because it's too many.
I think that a lot of sophomore albums, that's a problem with them.
Yeah.
Or the first album where the band gets to co-produce or produce on their own.
Yes.
They just start micromanaging everything.
Yeah.
Yep.
And then usually they ruin the sound and that's the sophomore jinx.
Or a lot of times even more prevalent is the third album jinx.
The third album is the album that they all learn their musicianship much better and they're
going to clarify their sound.
They're going to make it quality, but instead they fuck up their rawness.
And that's why a lot of bands break up after that third album is because they can't recover
and get back to where they were for the fourth album.
They're like, I want to do it this way.
No, I want to do it that way.
And they all split apart, musical differences.
Yeah.
So yeah, but I mean, oh, but that is a problem with guitar.
It sounds too fucking cool.
Yeah.
You got to learn to play wild with just a pure clean tone.
No distortion, no overdrive, no effects, no nothing.
Drumming isn't like it.
Drumming either sound good or you don't.
With drumming you just play really loud and then you can make some mistakes.
Yeah, no loud getting through.
But you got to have a certain rhythm.
Otherwise people are like, what's he doing?
Yeah.
Everyone would look at each other going, I don't know what this is.
I don't get it.
Yeah.
There's a very big difference between a precise drum roll and a sloppy buzz roll.
Yeah.
They both sound similar if you're not really paying attention, but the very precise roll
just really makes the song sing.
It's so crisp, it gets your attention.
You're like, hey.
Another one is just kind of like, okay, yeah, just another one.
Let's say Lars Jurek.
Okay.
Kind of sloppy but fast, right?
Now put him against, let's see.
The precision of someone like Simon Phillips.
Yeah, yes.
Who else was insanely precise?
Danny Carey, Tool.
Perfect one.
He's incredibly precise.
Yeah.
Neil Peart.
Neil Peart is a good example.
Yeah.
Phil Collins wasn't so precise.
He was more of a feeling kind of drummer.
No, he was a feeling guy.
He was actually a little bit sloppy.
Yeah.
It sounded good.
It suited what he did.
He could write a hit too.
I remember they thought Peter Gabriel was going to be the big shit.
He did okay.
Phil Collins fucking busted.
He busted every top 40 station down.
Here's another one.
Rick Allen from Def Leppard.
Before he lost his arm, he had a totally different style.
It was more kind of Keith Moonish.
He played with a traditional grip, which is more used for jazz and big band.
He had kind of a sloppiness to him.
When he lost his arm, he got insanely precise.
Yes.
I mean, he was like a human metronome at that point.
Have you ever seen how they have him drumming?
Yeah.
Isn't that interesting?
Every drum, everything he can hit with his right arm, he can hit with either foot too.
Yeah.
Absolutely everything is available to his three remaining limbs.
Like you said, learning and relearning that had to be hell.
Yeah.
I mean, you know the basics of drums and how they should sound, but you have to completely
relearn the movements and forget the ones you learned before.
That'd be tough as hell.
I remember thinking, jeez, what a tough break.
They just hit it big and he loses his arm and he's a drummer.
Yeah.
I mean, that was part of how come they, what album was it they took a long time.
They had a bunch of shit happen.
Hysteria.
Yeah.
They said they recorded enough stuff to make the whole album, but then realized it just
wasn't working, so they scrapped it all and rewrote.
Yeah, they played it to people and people hated it.
Then in between, I'm not sure if Steve Clark died during it, didn't he?
I think it was just after.
Right after, okay.
Oh yeah, they released it or something.
Yeah.
But Rick Allen had his wreck after Pyromania.
So yeah, Hysteria followed Pyromania.
Yeah.
Pyromania is most people consider to be the pinnacle of Def Leppard's recording career.
Yeah, because they changed their sound so much on Hysteria and Wet Poppy, pour some
sugar on me.
When you're looking at Pyromania or Rock of Ages, I prefer Pyromania more too, but Hysteria
launched them into top 40.
Yeah.
It's kind of a mixed blessing.
It's like when Foreigner released I Want to Know What Love Is.
Yeah.
Made them enormous and huge, but destroyed them as the band they were.
I mean, they were a rocking out guitar band.
Sticks.
They never got another job that way again.
Sticks?
Yeah.
Mr. Roboto.
Oh my God.
Yeah, that was their number one selling album and it ruined them.
It did.
The rock people said, no, no, no, and they left.
Yeah.
And apparently the live act was just horrid.
Yeah.
I mean, who was the...
One of the guitar player was Tommy Shaw.
The other was what?
Wayne Young?
Wayne Young, I believe.
Yeah.
He was saying, when we take the stage, it's 18 minutes before someone actually plays
a note.
The first 18 minutes are dialogue and choreography and playing out some storyline.
18 fricking minutes.
No.
Yeah.
And he was saying, night after night, we're getting booed because we're taking too long
to actually play a freaking song.
And then they play a song and then they stop again for some more acting out and the audience
is just booing and booing and booing.
That was probably Denisty Young.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, okay, what made them destroyed them too.
Denisty Young and Tommy Shaw, you got the rocker and the operatic guy, kind of like Queen, kind
of like so many different bands.
Those two together fighting it out and coming up with the compromise makes great music,
but it also destroys bands too.
Queen almost split up so many times.
Yeah.
They were always fighting over sound.
Him and Brian May, as in Freddie Mercury and Brian May, loved each other, but hated each
other on the same spoon.
It was crazy.
They had a little bit of that in REO Speedwagon between Gary Richrath and Kevin Krumm.
There was an interview with Kevin saying, it was for Keep On Loving You, was the ballad
that came out.
And he said, there's always some push and pull because Gary's hearing all these power
chords and screaming guitar solos and Kevin's hearing all these nice ballad-y chords on
the piano, but they made it work.
Gary Richrath was an awesome songwriter.
He was a better songwriter than he was a lead guitar player.
He was mediocre at lead, I thought.
A lot of one-note guitar solos.
Yeah.
You know what?
You're right.
He'd pick a note and he'd hang on it forever.
But they made it work and eventually Richrath left the band.
But REO Speedwagon kept going until just last year.
How about Kim Thal, the sound garden?
There's several songs where he plays one note and that thing is the whole song.
He played one not too long ago, Room, a Thousand Years Wide.
He does play riffs on that.
He does play lead on that on some of them.
I mean, some of them was Chris Cornell, too.
He didn't always play guitar, but on certain songs he did.
But Kim Thal wasn't worried about putting some notes together and making it.
He made the feeling with just guitar sounds.
And that's one of the beauties of his.
He was so underrated as a guitarist because he was not a virtuoso.
He was not a guy that shredded.
Yeah, he was very well known among guitar players.
Guitar players loved him because he was a musician's musician.
He was like, that's not going in there because it doesn't fit.
Yeah.
And some of his stuff wasn't all that accessible unless you know music pretty well.
No, and also, I mean, they had a good following before they hit it anyhow.
I mean, a lot of the West Coast knew of them.
Louder Than Love did good over there, but when it was released nationally, it didn't
do anything because their sound was quite a bit different.
But people are like, no, we want this stuff right here.
And that's where Kim Thal did what he really liked to do in the heavier stuff.
So yeah, it's interesting.
He played a guild guitar, which most people don't.
There's not a lot of people playing guild.
They're not sexy.
They never have really been, you know.
But he's got one that looks pretty close to a Gibson SG.
Well, I saw the second to Cornell's last concert in Soundgarden before he killed himself.
And he was playing that on stage.
It sounded great.
Yeah.
But I was also amazed at Cornell.
He sounded great, too.
He played a lot of it, too.
He kind of reminded me of Paul Stanley, only not, you know, his flamboyant and jumping
around and stuff.
But he was a lead singer frontman that could play a lot of guitar.
And it didn't bother him.
A lot of frontmen that play guitar are like Vince Neil, where they can play like one chord
at the beginning of a song.
Like S.O.S., I think it is.
And he does that and then they give the guitar back.
No, Cornell is a player.
Yeah, yeah.
It's more important to be the singer.
Yeah.
The only guy that could do it, but he doesn't, is Ronnie James or didn't Ronnie James Dio.
He was a guitarist and a bassist.
As a matter of fact, Black Sabbath has a song out, a new old song, Jeff Richards.
No, Nichols.
Jeff Nichols, their keyboardist for a long time, but he wasn't that well known before
he was backstage.
And then he came center stage after Dio left.
And he was not center stage, but he came up on stage and was actually mentioned as a part
of the band, Jeff Nichols.
And his son released it because Jeff Nichols died a few years back and is called Slapback.
And it's a song unreleased with Dio.
And Dio is playing the bass on it.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, if you get a chance, do it.
Awesome that, yeah.
The only other one I can think of is Mark Torian, singer for the Bullet Boys.
Yeah.
Was a guitar player for Rat.
Yeah.
And then they fired him and so he became a lead singer.
Yeah, and he was great.
He was good at the lead singer.
Amazing range.
Yeah.
And also pretty good frontman.
I always wanted Van Halen to replace Saverly Roth with him because I was like thinking...
Oh, that would have been cool.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking Sammy Hagar.
I wasn't thinking Chrissy Hines.
I was thinking...
Mark Torian.
Because that guy, he kind of looked like him.
He had the range.
He had the high range.
He could sing better than Roth.
And he had the flamboyancy.
Yeah.
High kicks, jumping around on stage and all that.
I think it would have worked well.
Wow.
Yeah.
What could have been?
Yep.
I think we're going to end this bitch.
So anyhow, thanks for listening.
Go fuck yourself.