GLENN HUGHES - OCTOBER 2001
Building The Vocal Machine

xx

Hey Glenn….so how are things with you anyway?
So everything's good man, the reviews this week are strong so I'm just, I don't know, startled. All I can tell you know is, I just made another record and people are digging it.

Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely. And I'm one of them.
Oh yeah? You know, Andrew I've got to tell you, I guess being married and having no… I didn't want to listen to anybody's advice on what my album shouldn't be like. I get a lot of people, trust me, telling me what to do. Like for instance, you can't, you know, be funky. Or you can't have echo and you can't have background vocals. And you shouldn't have any chicks. And you can't have any horns. And whatever you do, don't have… I get people all the time suggesting. And I just locked myself in my studio and I wrote songs. Off the record I said, I wonder what Trapeze would sound like doing this or let's put an acoustic track here. Let's put some real Hammond on there. Let's, let's put some more vocal on the record, let's have more vocals. Let's um… I just had fun.

Yeah. It sounds like it.
It's a good album. It's mournful in places because there's two songs about people that died. But it's, it's a very… I mean look at Kip Winger's stuff, some of the stuff he's done has been mournful, but it's good, your know?

Oh absolutely, absolutely.
I just got off the phone with him.

Ok. So you guys are friends?
Yeah. Well, I'm going to give you an exclusive. You might be seeing something from the two of us in the next two years.

Really!?
Yeah, we're actually talking at the moment, but I mean, we're thinking about putting our heads together. The music obviously is going to be, what it's going to be, it's going to be Kip and Glenn doing… and it's going to be a mix. But we are actually talking about it and Rod Morgenstein and Andy Timmons are the other two geezers.

Oh wow! What a powerful line up.
Yeah, we haven't... Once again, we haven't written anything. Kip's writing now and I've got some ideas. But we're really, really into pursuing something special.

Yeah. Kip's got an interesting sound on his own, his solo sound these days. You two mixed would be very interesting.
Yeah well, you know, I like his lush arrangements and I like… see I dig…, you know he's had a lot of bad luck in the last few years, we know that. And I'm akin to the soul of him. Not the soulfulness of his voice, but the soul of who he is as a man. And I admire him as a man. I get asked so many times, write with this guy or write with… and all these prats out there you know. But you know, I don't have any time to work with anybody that's not loving and nurturing. And he's a lovely bloke. But it's been a heavy week. This is the last interview and it's been great because some of the interviews I get normally, some of the people are difficult, because of different languages they are really difficult. And they're like, rude.

Oh really? (laughs)
Oh, some of the Germans are rude, yeah. But, all in all, every interview and review have been very strong. And they want to know what I did differently. And I said well, I just wrote some more music. You know I just wrote and I sang. You know I have that gift where sometime… you see I'm living inside this body and people go, 'how do you…God, you're Glenn Hughes.' I say, what do you mean? I said like, I'm just a human being for Christ's sake. I just happen to sing because God chose me to sing.
And it really is that simple you know. I mean I have been blessed with this, with this beautiful gift that, let me tell you, I tried to abuse that for so long. In the eighties you know. I was so out of my head. And I had no idea what I was doing to my soul. I was in like an empty, you know, tank. And now I've got this life ex… and here's the deal, I have so much life experience to draw from in my music. And I don't, as you know sing about weasels and goblins, I sing about human conditions.

Yes you do.
And it all is coming from deep, deep down.

Whatever sort of part of your life you moved onto, I just think the songs on Building are really a strong collection of songs.
Yeah, and I'll tell you what. I hate to say this but the next one, I'm even going to get even more melodic.
Not because you've got melodicrock, I'm not saying that to appease you. I've got to tell you that I sometimes in the last 5 years have gotten lost in the performance of how great a singer I'm supposed to be or how many great licks can Glenn sing. I am trying to not derail myself on the ride by keeping to a great melody. I keep forgetting it's the tone of my voice that is strong. We all know that I can sing rips and all that stuff and I can do all that stuff with my voice. But I'm coming home now to a place of – this is a great tonal instrument. Just that one note can change people's lives. Just the one single note, you know, like Paul McCartney has that great tone. That's what I'm coming… in my older years, I'm coming to grips with the voice. Not just the rips and the ad-libs and all those screams and those long, winding notes. Which like the Mariah Carey syndrome. You know what I'm talking about?

Yes. Yes I do.
So, you know, some of the album smacks heavily of a young Glenn Hughes in like “Out on Me” and “Slip Away”. Those performances I could… an 18 year old kid. I was blown away when I sang out on me. I'm going, listen to this little bastard. I sounded like a child. I'll tell you, I have not felt so enthused singing on a record in since probably Play Me Out.

You know what? You really can hear it. When I put this on I could really feel a spirit in the record.
Even in ”Can't Stop”, the first track, when I go up-down the second verse It's like it's whoa! It's like, a guy that really means it. And let me tell you Andrew, I'm not kidding you, all of these songs, pretty much first takes.

Really!
Yeah.

Wow!
You know I don't really sit a home mapping out the structure of the melody, what I'm going to do. I just, well I sort of blues it out you know. It's a beautiful thing to have that thing.
Whatever tools we're given. I mean the tools I've been given, it's taken me almost half my life, more than half my life to realize that I sustain my soul by singing, either to one person, or one thousand, or ten thousand, or twenty thousand. I write music to sustain my soul, to make me a better person. A Glenn Hughes that isn't writing and producing is not a happy guy. And I've got nothing to give back to the human race. And I do change people's lives. It might not be millions anymore. But people do get affected by my music.

They do. You've got a very vocal fan base.
I do. And they are very sweet. And even the die hard, let's call them the die hard Purple fanatics that have grown over the years to love the funky, ballad Glenn too. Because if you like Glenn, you've got to know Glenn comes from Trapeze. You know, and that was 30 years ago. And I'm so proud of that man. When somebody says to me, I'm a Trapeze fan. That really tickles me.
When somebody says, I'm a huge Trapeze fan, whether I'm a Purple fan or a Sabbath fan. I go, Oh my God, you must know who I am. You know? Coverdale got his copy two days ago and he's very, brutally frank with me. We talk about all of my releases and he was blown away by it. And I was really happy 'cause he really criticizes. In a very good way, we talk about our records.

I like David a lot. Actually I did a really good interview with him.
He's a good interview. He gives great interviews.

Yeah he's very intense, but he's also got a…. he's aware of himself. Got a good sense of humor.
He's gearing up right now to doing a record. I think he's told you we're going to do a duet.

Oh, on the record. Are you really?
Yeah, well you can go to his …, he's talking about it on his web site, so it's not going to be a secret.

Yeah, great, great. I'd love to see you two do a record together.
Andrew, you know the deal is for me, and this is the beauty of it. You interview lots of artists. And you'll ask the question, 'Well what's up coming up for you?' And they'll probably tell you what's coming up. I know what's coming up for me.
You know JLT's coming in this week and we're going to do the album. But what's coming up for me in the next two or three years is I don't know, but it's going to be fun. 'Cause whatever it's going to be, I'm going to be there for it. I shall be present and correct, standing at attention, ready to go.
Whether it's with David or Kip or whether it's with another KLF type crazy venture or whether it's a bloody opera. I'm up for it. And, the deal is, I'm not chasing the double-platinum success I had in Deep Purple every year 'cause I'd kill myself. It's that Dorian Gray thing. I'm going to be fifty-years old, I feel fucking great. People say I look great. And the thing is, is that… Did I tell you that story of David Lee Roth, years ago. About five-years ago. We're having dinner and he said… I'd lost all this weight. And he said to me, 'Man,' he says. 'You can lose like another twenty pounds, you like, you can hit those notes you used to hit.' I said David, I can hit them and more. I said, well, what about Pavarotti, for Christ's sake? He was looking at me like, it's like a physical thing. Singing for me isn't about that. It's about, deep within. It comes from somewhere so deep. It comes from generations of life. There are certain singers, that obviously you know, in your feeling that sing from somewhere that is so deeper than most people. They draw it from somewhere, you go, 'Where are they finding that?'

Ah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Right? Like for me, where does Jeff Beck find those notes? A certain, whatever. A certain soccer player. How did he do that? It comes… It's just deep. And I don't mess around with that. So what I do is, I flow with it knowing, there's something coming here. And whatever it is, I'm present and correct. You know what I'm saying? I'm actually using it now as the tool that God gave me. Now I'm not talking religiously crazy Andrew. I'm telling you that the world now knows that the s????????? Glen uses is a little deeper than most peoples, singing wise. So it comes from a place were it's special. And I tell you, Andrew, I'm a humble, grateful man for that.

I can tell. I can absolutely tell. I can tell the difference between what you're saying now and what you said the first interview I did with you about three years ago maybe now.
I remember that. The Way it is, right?

You were sort of searching a bit more then. You're sounding more comfortable now.
At that time, I think I'd just done The Way it is, or I was making it. I took a two and a half year hiatus from Addiction. The Addiction album damn near killed me. I was revisiting the period were I got sober and the album was so dark.

It is dark.
I'm telling you I got ill making that album. And I was hard pushed to promote it. I promoted it and I was sick, I had my band… at that time I wasn't playing bass I had this 5 or 6 piece band we were going out and playing it. And some of the songs were so exhausting. Drawing from that experience, I don't want to live that way again, that song was damn near frightening to sing. That's why Building the Machine, although some of it is mournful, I found it to be refreshing to sing, you know, refreshing.

Yeah. You sound revitalized. That's probably the best word.
Revitalized and comfortable in one's skin. Comfortable again…um, I'll tell you, I've come a long way these last ten years of sobriety that It's like…, the spin of the coin Andrew is, is I should be dead for Christ's sake. You've seen these Behind the Musics, these Motley Crues, 'Oh I was dead, I turned blue'. Well you know sort of the same thing with me, you know, I came back from the dead. And I'm not, you know, wearing like diamonds and dripping with gold and wanting you to think I am some sort of super god. I came back in a spiritual path. Which I don't really talk about that much, but I did. And low and behold I met a wonderful woman and I've got great friends. Rock and roll is not going to kill Glenn Hughes, like it's killed many of people. You know like the Phil Linnots and the John Bonhams and you know the drugs and the alcohol have just killed the '70s legends. All of those, Jim Morrisons and Janis Joplins and Jimmi Hendrixes you know.
You don't see so much Kurt Cobain, you don't see so much of that anymore do you? Hopefully I won't be one of those statistics, I won't be a statistic like that.

Yeah, never. You've got another 50 records left in you.
Well, you know, it's scary isn't it? Because I'm producing…I think since I've got sober, I've been on about twenty, twenty odd records. Eight of my own, well, nine of my own and then tribute records. You know I've done, in the…, since I've spoke to you last, I've done…Christ…in the last four months I've done an Aerosmith tribute, a Queen tribute and a Nazareth tribute. After I said I was never going to do any more tributes, I did three in like a week.

I've heard the Queen one.
How is that?

Fantastic!
I haven't got a copy of it.

Haven't you?
No. I'll call Bob Kulick.

Yeah, I had to buy one from Japan myself. I still enjoyed it a lot. And the Nazareth one, I have not got yet.
That's 'Piece of my Heart', the Janis Joplin song.

Oh, that'll be good.
And the Aerosmith song, I've got to tell you the truth, it's a song that wasn't a hit in the '70s. And I can't remember what it was called. Something about kings or something. Well they chose that track for me 'cause it was like an obviously not a Glenn Hughes…, I just turn it into something new. Steve Lukather to play guitar. It's great. It'll be coming out in the next year or something. Kind of cool.

Yeah, ok. Well they're good fun to do aren't they?
Ah, you know, Bob Kulick's the tribute king.

He's the best producer of them isn't he?
He is for that you know, and I get to play with like Steve Lukather and all those guys. I like those guys. People say to me 'what do you do that for man, you're taking away from your record sales.' Bullshit! In the big picture, it don't mean a diddly squat.

No, I agree, it doesn't.
'The mystique of Glenn Hughes…' Well I should be dead already. Let me sing. Let me sing for Christ's sake.

I tell you what. I did my own little compilation of a bunch of tunes that you'd covered. You know, from tribute albums or from whatever. And there are some really fantastic versions of some songs on there. I mean just to hear you sing 'Whiter Shade of Pale'.
Of that's a nice moment. Did you get the live version of that?

No.
Because you know, Keith Emerson, and Mark Benear and myself recorded it live in San Francisco two years ago. I thought you might have got a bootleg of it.

Oh ok. No.
There's not a bootleg going about but there's a live album coming out with that song on it and I sing 'The Talk is Sweet' and there's about…, there's 12 cuts that Keith and I are going to put out, I think in the spring. The live version is great too. It's a great live version of that song.

Yeah, fantastic song, it really suited you. And I also liked 'Video Killed the Radio Star'.
Oh that's wonderful. I was, I think, sick when I sang that at Jeff's studio. I love that. You know, it was his idea to strip away the… to just have the piano. It was just totally… 'cause that was a quirky song wasn't it?

Oh absolutely.
And then all of the sudden, here comes this melodic voice, like an angel singing it. I thought it was very cool.

Oh it was, it was. I enjoyed that one immensely. And I must say, I probably told you this before but still as much as I love all of your records, my favorite is still From Now On.
Well to tell you the truth, I didn't listen to From Now On for a number of years because I thought it was. Let me just say this honestly to you, I thought it was an unhip album. Probably because I did it with players that were very, very good, but very technical in their way, and not at all soulful. And here's the kicker…I didn't listen to Burning Japan Live for the same reason. Because everybody thought it's a great live album, and it is vocally, it's great. But then again, I, six months ago, started listening to those two albums and I was bowled off my feet. With the song content, number one. And the… it was a… From Now On is a great album. So I've actually gone on print and said, you know, I take it back. I was wrong. It's a great album. And I'm actually thinking about playing some of those songs live again.

Oh great, great.
'Cause, somebody sent me a video of some of the stuff from somewhere… some footage of me singing some of that and I went…this is a good record.

Yeah, it is, it is.
It did really well you know. It was a big one. Some have said that if I'd have kept on that path, probably would have done more with my career. But you know, because I don't have an A & R guy like a John ????? nor a huge Columbia records or you know, ten producers on my album. I'm not Aersomith. I get to conceive an album, produce it, arrange it, write it, sing it, play it. Because that's who I am. It becomes a little bit much sometimes.

Yes, I can imagine that.
I would love. I would love to have the money and label that would afford me to have a top-notch producer. Somebody to come in and produce me. 'Cause man, you know, it would be wonderful. I would love to be produced by someone. You know, I'm telling you, a lot of artists wouldn't say that. But I would love it. To have a label, a big label and a producer come in. Lilly, that is not very cool. My dog is eating shit, again. Come on outside, outside, outside Lilly.

(Laughing) What kind of dog have you got?
She is a long-haired Chihuahua. Now when I say that, she probably would freak if she heard me saying that she eats shit but she is the cutest, physically, the cutest looking dog. It's not like a Chihuahua in the aspects of bulging eyes and small. She's got long legs, beautiful blue eyes and she's white with fawn markings. She's like a little princess, with her little diamond collar. But she eats her shit. And it drives me and my wife fucking crazy! I mean, she'll do it and we'll go and get some toilet paper to wipe it up. And before we can get it, she's eaten it. Now I'll tell you, it's horrible. And it happens all the time, and we have people over.

But all I'm doing is keeping busy, and keeping busy means that, I believe… see now one thing, I really want to you remember this… I'm not chiseling away to get double platinum. It would be nice to have platinum records you know. And a guy at Columbia, this big cheese at Columbia said to me a month ago, he said, “You possibly Glenn, in the rock genre of your peer group, you're probably one of the only guys at your age that could actually come back and have huge radio and TV success doing rock if you really, really, really found the right label, producer, manager, etc.” And you know something? He's probably right. So I say this to the universe: I'm welcoming a label and a manager and producer to come in and put the ship together. David Coverdale my dear friend, will tell you the same thing. He's a very wealthy man. But I'm sure David…, I don't know where he's going to go, I think he might produce himself again. But you know, we're all in the same boat, the guys from this generation. The Limp Bizkits of today are ruling because twenty-year-old kids don't want to be me and David, they want to be Fred Durst and all those other geezers.

It's a shame thought, isn't it? But if you look at it, it's just near the top and it's about the MTV music awards that were on the other night.
Listen, that was absolute… I waited to the last second saying, OK, somebody blow me away.

Yep. And they didn't did they?
You know Andrew, it was absolutely…it was a bloody… Here's what I'm predicting. I might be wrong. I'm predicting and this is, as you know, the Led Zeppelin catalogue is mammothly successful. I'm predicting because people, young kids now are being told by their parents go listen to Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or Deep Purple or something like that. I'm predicting the age of the rock gods, guitar players and singers is coming aback.

I hope so.
It's got to man. Because rap is huge, is never going to go away. It's going to be huge for the next fifty years. But rock music as we like is teetering. It's on the brink of sort-of doing something. But this Limp Bizkit stuff it's like bubble gum, for me.

Yep!
I predict that the song-writing, singer guy with the guitar player foil, you know good looking. Doesn't have to be eighteen, could be thirty, thirty five, is going to come back.

I hope so.
Stripped down, bass, drums, guitar, vocals, a little bit of Hammond organ.

Oh yeah, good ol' Hammond.
You know why? Because it's everything. Be it clothes, be it whatever, it comes full circle. It comes full circle. So you never know where we're going to be. I mean, all I know is I'm plugging away. I'm singing, I'm writing, I'm producing. I've never been so creative. I don't hardly get any sleep. People say, 'How do you sleep'? I say I don't get a lot of sleep.

(Laughing). And next week you're back into it again.
Joe arrives on Tuesday, we rehearse on the 15^th, 16^th, 17^th and we start cutting the 18^th. And we're done the 12^th of October. The album will be released world wide, February.

Great!
Called 'HTP' and the album will be called HTP. The songs I can tell you now are pretty much, 90% of it…, there's always going to be one song on the record that's a bit of a twist for Glenn, but it's not that much of a twist. There's one epic song but the rest of it is… you could actually find… For me I wrote in a way that it would definitely fit on a Deep Purple or Rainbow record in mid '70s to mid '80s.

Wow, you know that sounds pretty cool to me.
Yeah, and it's going to be authentically produced in a Fender Stratocaster, Hammond again, acoustic drums with Glenn and Joe trading vocals. Two songs, one song sung by Joe, ballad, alone. One song sung by Glenn alone, ballad and then the rest is Glen and Joe at toe-to-toe going at it.

That's what we want to hear!
It's just the two lead singers, you know there ain't really anybody done it since me and Coverdale. So you're going to get it with me and Joe, and let me tell you, Joe's no slouch.

Oh I know that. I just got his new record.
How is it?

Ah, great, really.
Is it good?

Yeah, good, rocking album.
I was in New York when he was cutting it. It's called Slam, right?
I heard a couple of cuts while I was in the studio and it sounded great. That guy Akira is coming to town, he's playing a couple of songs on our record too. That guy Akira is a Blackmore influenced.

Yeah, he's quite a swift player.
He's good.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Look Glenn, that's about… anything else you want to throw in? I think that just about covers it.
You know, I'm… this is personal to you. I just…it's really good since you started your company that you've got a lot of people go there and it's very influential. I want to leave this on a personal level, to say, the first time we spoke you were very nice to me and I'm a huma…I'm just you know…rather than... I want you to know me as a friend. I just happen to be a singer. I think it's very cool we have this relationship where you can call me anytime, that you know that.

Thank you.
Remember this. I should be dead. So every day of my life is a fucking gravy. So I have been given this tremendous gift of life which every day I wake up going, Yeah man, I'm fucking still here!! So just remember me for being like that. And I'm glad you like the record and there's way more to come.

All right, Glenn, thank you.
Thank you brother.

Great talking to you again.
And you bro'.

Eric Bazilian
T h e T h e O p t i m i s t  I n t e r v i e w

Eric Bazilian is a man with several faces. He's part of the pop-rock sensation The Hooters, who took the world by storm in the summer of '85, he's also a man with a darker side that likes to write about God - scoring a second Grammy nomination for his efforts.
And he's the guy that can adapt to write in just about ay style, co-writing one of the best tracks to last year's Journey album - the track To Be Alive Again.
He also at the drop of a hat scrapped all the work on his second solo album and instead wrote and recorded a new one on his Powerbook computer in six days in Sweden this past summer.
His new album is now called A Very Dull Boy and will be released on his own label Mousetrap Records soon.
After this interveiw was done Eric added this update, adding that the new album features "...two guitars, bass and drums and a lot of singing. It rocks and I like it a whole lot."

Eric Bazilian - Outside of Philadelphia.
"I've been here my whole life, and until just a few years ago I was absolutely determined to live anywhere but here. And then, having toured for forever and met the woman who was becoming my wife, from Sweden, and spending a summer there, I realised I had traveled and would continue to travel and continue to spend my summers in Sweden. I like it here [in Philadelphia]. I like being able to come back here. This time of the year,
there's nowhere on Earth nicer."

Having a home-base and the freedom to travel is a good thing. I guess being
a musician, that's what you do.
"I used to, a lot. I haven't toured in a long time and I don't know when I will again. To do a solo tour, you need to have a successful, well promoted solo record. I have a good solo album, but the other elements are........I shouldn't be disappointed or bitter about it because my whole modus operandi, the point of putting out and the reason I called it Mousetrap Records was because I thought I'm going to build a better mouse-trap and
just let it out there and let the world beat its path to my door. Now, the thing is that it hadn't occurred to me.....I would prefer it if that path were beaten while I'm alive!

To shop it to the major labels is a hard sell. The same thing that opens their doors to me...and they're all open. They want me to write songs for their artists, produce records....sprinkle magic dust over them, but at the same time they know how old I am, what I've done, and I guess they think it would behoove them better to milk me for my ideas rather than invest in me as a long term thing. It's kinda infuriating, because the reason I do any of the stuff they want out of me is because I want to get up on stage and
perform. All I really want to do is plug my Les Paul into my Vox amp and turn it up to 11 and shred!"

You shred pretty well on 'The Optimist'!
"Thanks. You know, I could have shredded more but at the end of the day, the song was the king and whatever would serve it best would determine how 'shred-like' I could allow it to be."

It's a pretty raw and stripped back record, isn't it?
"You know it's funny. Within a week I read two reviews, one of which said it was over-produced and too dense, and one that said it was under-produced and sounded like a demo. It's raw because I wanted it to sound raw, but it's got a lot of stuff going on, and if you listen with headphones you'll hear all these cool little bits coming and going. I actually redid things because they were too perfect and I wanted to mess them up a bit. It's rock and roll!"

I wouldn't agree with either of those reviews. My review fell somewhere in
between.
And now you're already finished or are working on a second one?
"I'm working on a second one. I thought I was finished...I was hoping to
finish before I went away this summer, but I got side-tracked a little. I was simultaneously working on the solo record and an album with a guy in Sweden, who's sort of my musical hero. His name is is Mats Wester, late of the group Nordman.
They are the largest selling Swedish language act of all time. He plays this instrument which is the Swedish key fiddle. He's a folk musician originally, but he wrote some pop songs and put these tracks together in his basement with drum machines and synths and all these folk instruments. He got a singer from a heavy metal band and a woman to write
some brilliant lyrics in Swedish, and they put this thing out and it was just this phenomenal success. I hunted him down and it turned out he was greatly inspired by The Hooters to do this project. So we got together and I got to play with him on stage at this festival in front of 10,000 people. I told him, not only am I going to play mandolin with you, I'm going to sing the second verse of this song in Swedish! So we've been best friends ever since, and we started doing a record together last summer, which was really
exciting. But one of the songs from 'The Optimist' we re-cut....he had a piece of music which I just loved and I was trying to write a new song to it.
I was sitting in his basement in Stockholm and I started singing 'Until You Dare' over his track and suddenly I liked the song a lot better, and his track a lot better. It's just this intense thing with fiddles and heavy drums and fuzzy guitars on it, and we thought it would be a slam dunk in Sweden, but I think it was too American for the Swedish labels who expected him to do another very Swedish folk thing, so that sort of hit a wall.
Then I encountered a couple of interesting, young talented guys here, one of whom is a singer who is very like-minded spirited guy. He's much younger than me, but he went to my high school and we've become very good friends.
I toyed with the idea of actually making him my singer, kinda like my Roger Daltry, because he can just do things with his voice that I cannot. However, it's hard to ask somebody to just step into your shoes and be you instantly. So that's probably not the right thing to do anyway, but it side-tracked me a bit. So I'm glad I'm going away because it'll give me some perspective on the twenty or so songs I've written and recorded since I came back from Sweden last September.

It's all very interesting, trying on all these different hats. I get so excited when I work with other artists, and at the end of the day I come back and it's like 'I want to be Dylan, I want to be John Lennon, I want to be Paul McCartney'. Just thank God I'm able to hock my wares to the Philistines for shekels and wampum, haha."

Well, you've done better than most in your field, in that you've already got
a fair legacy of music behind you.
'You know, you can't really sneeze at that."

Yeah, my Hooters CDs are some of my most prized possessions. I got into you
guys the first time I heard 'All You Zombies'.
"I still like that one. That's one of the songs I can still listen to."

Actually, you had an album before 'Nervous Night'?
"Yeah, we had an indie album. We have boxes and boxes of vinyl copies, so
I'll have someone at the office send you out a copy."

Thanks Eric! So what do you class as your favourite Hooters record?
"I can tell you which is my least favourite! Unequivocally it would be 'Zig
Zag'. That's my 'What on Earth was I thinking' record.
You know, even as we were finishing it I knew this was not a record I wanted to make. It was a record totally devoid of attitude, devoid of edge, but at the same time I was there for every second.
I got excited with the other guys, I said 'Okay' and I have to take full responsibility for it, but at the same time we had come off of our second big tour, we were a rock and roll band and we were kicking ass live, and we should have made a major rock and roll record.

I would say my favourite is probably 'One Way Home', even though I have
issues with most of the songs for various reasons. I think the songs on 'Nervous Night' are probably better songs, at least knowing where they came from, the motivation behind the stories....they are so much more real. But just the sound of 'One Way Home', the attitude....it rocks!
And it actually has the worst song I've ever written on it, 'Hard Rocking Summer'. The problem with that track, and this was a great lesson in what to do and what not to do. Our rehearsal place at the time was in a kind of funky little neighbourhood, and all these heavy metal kids would hang out outside our door....and they were all into AC/DC and the like.
We walked out to get pizza for dinner and we looked at these kids, and it was the beginning of summer, and we said 'Yeah man, it's gonna be a hard rocking summer'. We were kidding, but we were like 'That's a song'. So we went back and did this track and got this really nasty sounding drum pattern, and did this guitar riff, and then Rob started doing this screaming rap.. 'Teacher says I gotta stay after class, I say that teacher better kiss my ass'. It was a hilarious thing, but it was just so unlike us, but it rocked. And I remember the day we cut the basic track for that with our drummer and I walked from the
studio into the maintenance guy's room and I heard 'Fight For Your Right to
Party' for the first time.
And it was the same, exact record, except it was guys who were ten years younger than us and they did it better. Basically what happened was we tried to write a real song to that track and to that title, and we couldn't. Well we did, but all the original spirit was totally gone. We tried to get serious. Rule #1...do NOT get serious."

But it was a pretty serious record though, wasn't it?
"Well it was, but that was our downfall. That was the thing about 'Zig
Zag'....it was so bleeding heart liberal serious after a while. We lightened
up a bit on 'Out of Body' thank God."

Yeah, that's my second favourite album, and depending on my mood can sometimes slip into #1, because I love the sound you guys got on that.
"The sound on that was great, I was really happy with the sound and the
playing. And having Mindy in the band was wonderful. She was just such a
great player, and our live shows with her....do you have the live album?
That jam at the end of '500 Miles'.....You see, Rob and I had this great
sympathetic musical thing going on, but we could never really jam like that
because being a keyboard player....he's not a shredder, it's just not his
way. Mindy, on the other hand, is totally that way. By the time we recorded
those shows, at the end of that jam we would sit down together on a monitor
and light a cigarette."

The only thing I was disappointed in was that it wasn't a double live album.
"We toyed with the idea, and it could've been. There was a lot of good stuff
and it was almost all from one show. We taped one in Stockholm and two in
Germany. I did the artwork for that album. I bought a computer just to learn
how to do that. Looking at it now, I could have done better but it's got
some attitude.

And then after that tour and the year after, we were poised for absolute
world domination, especially in Scandinavia and Germany, and we had a new
record deal with Polygram and I was totally determined it was going to be a
rock and roll record or nothing, it turned into 'Largo'."

I don't even think I've heard 'Largo'!
"It's a very nice record. The people who liked 'Zig Zag' liked 'Largo'. A
beautiful record, but for me that was just the writing on the wall."

But 'Largo' was never credited to The Hooters, was it?
"No it wasn't. The kind of wanted to for a while and I said 'No way is this in any shape or form a Hooters record'. The record company decided they didn't want to use the guys in our band as regular players...they'd only play on a few tracks, and that there were going to be all these other singers on the record.......okay, I think I'm going to build a studio behind my house and make a rock and roll record!"

And was that the last time you worked together?
"Just about. I've done stuff with Rob since then. They're actually making a Broadway show out of 'Largo' right now, and they've got some cool ideas.
They have a very, very noted playwright who has come up with some story for it which I've heard bits and pieces of, and it really completes the picture a bit....it still ain't rock and roll! And to me, that's the alpha and the omega of it."

What's Mindy Up to these days? She released a record, didn't she?
"At least one. She's raising kids now, she's got two. I love her, she's like a sister to me. I think the world of her. In fact, if this project with my Swedish buddy ever comes off, I'm going to bring her into the band. I love touring with her, and love performing with her."

It was mentioned there might be the possibility of The Hooters touring again
this summer.
"Well actually, I was very game for it but it was Rob that put the kibosh on it, which I was surprised about. But he has stuff going on here that he can't get out of. Rob and his very serious keyboard player.......we sat down to discuss it and they were like 'If we're going to bring The Hooters back then what does that mean? Shouldn't we make it more?' and I'm like no, let's just have some fun with it and see what happens."

It's funny. I talked to Jonathon Cain of Journey, and he's the same way, the
serious one.
"I had a great time working with Jonathon but he totally reminded me of
Rob."

You two wrote some killer tracks together. I've only heard 'To Be Alive
Again'.
"So he didn't play you 'Rhythm'? This track was by far the better. He sang it great, and it absolutely would have had to go on the record with his lead vocal. It was actually kinda Hooter-esque in its way. It's kind of a song that could have redefined Journey for a new generation, but it didn't really sound like Journey. Jonathon's talked about putting it out under his own name as a side project."

I'll tell you something I absolutely adore and it's on the American official
Greatest Hits record, is the live version you did of 'Time After Time'. One
of the rumours I have heard is that you were going to make an album of all
the songs you've written for other people like Cyndi Lauper and Joan
Osborne. Any truth in that?
"Never, ever, ever heard of that. It's intriguing but the thing is....taking the two most notable songs which are 'Time After Time' and 'One of Us', those songs are recorded as they were intended. 'Time After Time' Rob wrote with Cyndi and the recording was done so quickly. It was a real inspired couple of days. 'One of Us', when I first wrote it, the voice I heard in my head was Brad Roberts of the Crash Test Dummies.
The day after I wrote it I brought it into Rob and Rick and Joan, who were writing for her record at the time, and I played it for them, just to say 'Check this out. I did this
last night and it's whacky.' And then Rick looked up and said to Joan 'Do you think you could sing that?' And before she had a chance to think about it she said 'Yeah, I guess so', so I wrote the words out and plugged the guitar in and it was recorded live guitar and vocal, and I got in my car afterwards and started practicing the Grammy speech I never got to give."

So who robbed you of the Grammy?
"Well Seal won, but I know that I did write the song of the year. I also know that I came in second. That's what Rob said, because he got robbed with 'Time After Time', which got beat by 'What's Love Got to Do With It'. The Seal thing was an industry thing....it was a movie theme. Seal's a great artist. In fact, I ran into him the day before and said to him 'If you beat me in this, I don't mind.' And then when he won I said 'You know what? I
lied. I mind.' But I've already gotten my rewards for the song. It defined the times and kind of captured a whole movement in human consciousness, I think."

And dare I say it, you were also instrumental in Cyndi Lauper's success.
"Well yeah. 'Time After Time' did the same thing. Making that record was a lot of agony and ecstasy. It took a lot of time and a lot of blood was shed."

Did that get your foot in the door at Sony?
"It helped. It certainly didn't hurt. When Rob and Cyndi played me their first draft of 'Time After Time' that was my first brush with greatness, with immortality. I said to them 'You know what? This is 'Yesterday'. This is a standard.' And they even offered me to jump in on it with them and finish writing it but I said 'You know what, the song's written. You may change a word here or there but you don't need me for this one.' I did come
up with the signature guitar line, which they always use for movies and TV commercials, so if I'd known then what I know now, I would have made them put my name on it anyway, hahaha."

I love that record. 'Money Changes Everything'....
"Oh yeah! And Richard [Rick Chertoff - producer/collaborator] absolutely deserves all the recognition and respect in the world for that record, and for the Joan record too.

I look up to Rick. I still think 'What would Rick do', especially now when I'm flirting with the idea of working with other artists, and really co-ordinating and producing entire projects.

I try to put myself in his shoes. It's very different though, because he's not a hands on guy. He doesn't play, he's not really a writer per se, although he's great to have in the room. Me, I'm like such a megalomaniac. The records that I want to make I play everything, I engineer, do it in my home studio and I let the other person sing. But it works out great, like the Amanda Marshall record. She and I had an amazing synergy, and I was going to produce that whole record but it was a political business thing that kinda broke my heart, and then they came running back to me at the end having spent a fortune on a record that nobody liked, and asked me to finish the songs that became the singles."

The other rumour I heard was that you were going to team up with Cyndi
Lauper for a new album.
"I know Rob has done some stuff with her on this new record of hers. I have no idea when it'll be release. You know what? If she called me I would do anything she asked, although I would kick myself later. Cyndi is like family. I think the world of her....she sang at my wedding. She can make you, feel so good about yourself and then make you feel like a piece of shit. She has that kind of power, that kind of magnetism....if only that power could be turned to good. No, it has been. She has a great heart, but she is really
intense, and when you are making a Cyndi Lauper record you are making a Cyndi Lauper record. It's all about her, and it's her way or the highway, and I respect that about her. But I can't work in a situation where I'm only allowed to use five percent of my brain."

So what's the next chance we have of a Hooters record?
"You know, I wouldn't keep your fingers crossed. I just don't think that we could agree. What happened was, the Largo record came by default. Rob and I had been working, trying to write songs for two years and we weren't finishing anything because we were just pulling in opposite directions. I found my voice in 'One of Us'.
I wrote that song, I played those guitars...it was really what I had been doing twenty years earlier. That's what I do...I play guitar like that, I write lyrics like that, melodies like that.
Rob had kind of found another voice which was a much more kind of esoteric......and we were just not able to make it work. I wanted to make something rock and Rob wanted something else. So now, I just don't know that we could do it. We hang out all the time, I love the guy. He's my brother, and anything's possible. And again, it was particulars that prevented the German tour from happening this summer.
If we get offered next summer, I think we'll probably do it. And who knows, perhaps we'll go out and play those rock and roll hits and get excited and do something new."

mm

This interview was conducted before the untimely death of Loverboy bassist Scott Smith. It's an interveiw that unfortunately didn't get aired at the time, but is still highly relevent today. Hope you enjoy it. I hope to follow up the interview with some new comments from Mike shortly....


Thank you for calling Mike...
My pleasure.

That's great. I must confess, I'm a longtime fan - since about '85 I guess.
Yeah. Great.

How are things?
Things are great. Busy, working hard. Lots of concerts, you know, traveling around.

Loverboy have been on the road haven't they?
Yeah.

Who have you been touring with? Just yourselves?
Yeah.

OK. What do you see the recording status of Loverboy right now? Is there anything planned?
We just finished a live album. (Live, Loud & Loose - OUT NOW!)

Oh you've done that, great.
We just mixed it; it'll be out soon. Sony Records is handling it.

Oh, great!
We will be touring to go along with it, as usual, but we thought we'd try something that's interesting. We're going to play live just like the CD is recorded, so we're going to come bang right out of the box just like the CD. Just for fun. We've got about 80-100 shows; they just keep piling in. We've been having a lot of fun.
We just recorded a few new ballads. We wanted to record some ballads that we'd written, just to get them recorded. It was kind of fun, we had Phil Collen, the guitar player from Def Leppard, help us produce one of these songs and it turned out great. It was that Diane Warren composition, so it can't be all bad.

Wow. OK.
That just got finished, and maybe we'll place them in soundtracks or something.

Yeah, you guys have had a long history with soundtracks and you as solo as well haven't you?
Absolutely.

It's a great medium to get a song out there, I think.
Sure it is.

OK. So you're back on Sony for the live album. Is that because they own the songs or are they just interested for a change?
They liked it. We'd run it past them a few times. We went out and recorded a bunch of stuff from the last few seasons on the road.
We sent it to them and they said, "You know what, this is a good idea." But then they wanted to try something different, of course, to throw a little bit of a pain in the ass back in there.
They said, "Instead of releasing this newly recorded live record, let's go back to the vault and find the old King Biscuit Flower Hour, Westwood One, Rockline type shows and release those." So we found those tapes in the vault and we spent 3 weeks mixing them. So we've got live from Dallas, live from Vancouver, live from Cleveland, live from Kansas. You know, a mixture of live from everywhere and a little story to go along with each song. Nina Blackwood from MTV fame, she did our biography on it, or our liner notes.

Right.
She talked about the '80s and stuff, so it was kind of a good package. I just OK'd the thing three days ago, I checked it all out, checked out the artwork, and said, "Just go to press."

Sounds interesting. Is there anything off the latest tour on there then, or is it all classic?
It's going to be classic.

Right.
We pushed to put a few new songs on it, and we had a meeting with the record company and the guy said, "If you want me to be perfectly candid with you, your new songs are going to get buried, because it's going to be sold as a live album with classic hits on it; nobody's going to push the new singles, so you're wasting your time. Let me just look around and find a soundtrack for the two new songs." Because they really like the new songs.

Oh good.
But they didn't want to waste it putting it on an album that won't be promoted as…you know, they won't send it to radio and they won't do the promotions on it.

Sure.
Lazy bastards.

Typical!
I saw your web site by the way.

Thank you. You did? Excellent.
I saw your web site through a friend of mine, Brad Gillis.

Oh Brad? Excellent!
A friend of his and a friend of mine. I was down in San Jose doing a show and we were hanging in my hotel room, and he says, "Pump this on," so I pumped your web site up and I went through the whole thing and I said, "This is great!" I get home 10 days later and my manager, Gail at the office, says "This guy wants to talk to you," and I said, "I know that web site!" It's a small world huh?

It is a small world. In fact, I've been trying on and off to get an interview probably for 12 months, but I guess I just struck it, last time I called, Gail wasn't working there or something and I kind of got the right channels this time I guess, so I'm really pleased.

<Mike talking to someone in the background: It picks up again. It picks up again on the other end of that area. No. Go up the street, past the school, take a left, go up through the stop sign and back around the other side. OK.>
Sorry about that.

No problem, no problem. So do you guys maybe do a studio album sometime soon?
We're looking forward to it. We've got some new songs and we've got the creative juices flowing.

Excellent. How did you perceive the success of Loverboy VI? Were you happy with that?
No.

It got buried a little bit by CMC, or whatever, in the States?
Yeah, there's no hard feelings. What it is, is it's a small record company that kind of has a certain amount of exposure in a certain amount of area. They're very limited. We knew it going in, but we had all these songs that we'd recorded and we wanted to put them out. Sony wasn't interested at the time. Of course, Carlos Santana comes along and now Sony's interested in everything, right?

Yeah <laughs>.
They're just a bunch of fuckin' idiots. But the only thing is, they're our idiots, right? So you've gotta go with the flow.

They're a major label, they're all the same aren't they?
And consequently, we did what we did and we're proud of it; it's just something that's there and we move on and forward and sideways and wherever we move. Just keep movin' baby.

It was a different style, the rest of that catalog, wasn't it?
You know what we did? We just recorded a bunch of eclectic tracks and we had fun experimenting with things, and we did it all in-house just down the street at Paul Dean's house, and we just had a ball.

Awesome. I love "Big Picture" that's my favorite track. I think it's a smokin' track, great vocal to it.
Appreciate it.

I did hear rumors or a suggestion that you guys might do a box set either live or studio or both or unreleased or everything or…Has that been thought of?
Well we've just finished digging up some tracks from two different eras; from the Get Lucky era and from the Lovin' Every Minute Of It era. What these tracks are, are tracks that didn't, for some reason or another, didn't make the cut. And if you recall, back then they didn't want more than 10, 11 songs on an album because it would make the album sound too thin.

Yes.
So a lot of times, we'd cut 16, 17 songs for these albums, and then we'd pick from…get the top 10 or top 11 songs. Well, what Sony wanted, and we just finished getting, for those 2 eras that I mentioned, the Get Lucky and the Lovin' Every Minute of It, we found tracks that didn't make the cut for those various reasons, and we're remastering them, and they're going to be re-releasing Get Lucky and Lovin' Every Minute Of It with maybe 3, 4 new tracks on each CD.

Sony's going to do that?
Yeah.

Killer. I'd love to get that. I've got the old CD's but they could use remastering. You know what I'm a big fan of is your…not the official big remastered Best Of album you did, but the Big Ones you did from earlier, the three Bob Rock tracks.
Right.

They were a killer sound, a big sound.
Yeah, thank you man. That was a lot of fun doing that.

It sounds like you were having fun actually, kind of loose and rocking.
Well we went back in to Little Mountain Sounds, the infamous little studio that started it all for us, and we went in with Bob Rock and Mike Frazier and all these guys we work with, and they've all gone on to become super-huge producers in their own right, and we had fun.

Did those three tracks get a little lost, you think?
Absolutely. They got totally lost. It's the old same old, same old.
What do you do when you live in a shoe, huh?

<laughs> Employ a record label, I don't know.
You just go for it and you hope everybody does the right thing. Nine times out of ten, somebody drops the ball. I don't harbor any grudges or keep clinging on too much to negativity; just let it go, if it happens it happens if it doesn't, oh what the fuck.

Cool.
That's what you've gotta do, I think.

Yeah, otherwise you'd kill yourself almost wouldn't you?
Absolutely.

You know what I've got a rough copy of here, it's not A grade, but it's not bad either, it's a copy of your as yet unreleased solo album from…I don't even know when your recorded it. When did you record this one?
1991

Is it that old?
And, I'm trying to find out how people get copies of the goddamn thing; it's driving me crazy because I just got the tapes back from Sony who said they couldn't find them, and when we were gathering tapes from the archives to remix these live broadcasts, the archivist did me a favor and looked around for my solo album and he found the tapes, which they said they had lost. So now I have those tapes back and I'm just in the process of remixing it and putting in some better sounding drums and things.

OK. So you're still working on it; that's great.
It's a work in progress, and I will probably be putting it out on this company I'm involved with right now called Rockforever.com.

Sure...
We're setting up to do MP3 downloads and we do as of now…it's a little thing I do on the side, with a bunch of my singer friends from The Cars and Survivor and John Cafferty.

Right! I was just recently talking to Jimi....
Yeah, well, did he talk to you about that Voices of Classic Rock thing we're doing?

No.
We just do stuff that's private and it's usually involved with corporations or the Army bases of America all over the world, and/or things that usually surround fun stuff like we'll go golfing for a few days, play a concert and it's with Ben Orr from the Cars, Mickey Thomas from Starship, Mike Reno, John Cafferty, Jimi Jamison.

Mickey Thomas is a particular favorite of mine.
Yep. I'll see him tomorrow.

Oh really? Tell him to make a solo record already.
OK. Will do.

<laughs>. He's a great singer.
Yeah, he is.

This is a very classic solo album, I must say.
You like it?

I love it.
I should put it out then?

Oh, absolutely, yeah.
How did you get it, just out of curiosity?

<censored!>
Well, when we formed this company Rockforever.com, I decided that might be a better place for it so I kind of cut all ties thinking that maybe this might be a better place for it, and since I've done that they've given me a bunch to remix it and remaster it so I'm going for it.

I know MTM was interested at one stage, are they not part of it anymore?
Not so far. So far it didn't work out that way.

OK. I'm sure they'd still be keen to release it though. It's a great album.
Some guy in Statton Island was printing copies off and selling them on the web.

Oh shit, really?
And it's really hard to track this guy down because it's all postbox and stuff.

Statton Island, OK.
It was a Statton Island post office box. It was Vinnie Carmosy or something, I don't know. It was an Italian name, but his first name was Vinnie, I know that for sure. From looking in the files I can remember that much.

If I hear anything, I can pass it on I guess!
I just find it a little unfair that some guy can beat you to the gun on your own music.

Oh sure, absolutely. That's why when I got a copy of this I kept it to myself!
What song should I release as my first single?

Well. Let me see. "Still in Love" is such a huge ballad, which is fantastic. But I really like "Take Me Back" though. That's a fantastic track. And "Affection" is obviously a killer rock radio song I would think.
Yeah. I agree with you on all three of those.
"New Messiah" kind of catches you off guard, but it's pretty weird.

It is actually....it's different. Absolutely different, and "Guilty As Charged" is a good up-tempo track. "I Say Go Again" is another good value track.
I guess I should release it.

Yeah. Absolutely. I think you'll get a great response from it personally.
Yeah. I was recently in Japan and Korea.

OK. What were you doing down there?
We were doing shows for the U.S. Army bases, for the, once again it was The Voices of Classic Rock.

Oh really?
We were hired to play a series of Army bases in Japan and Korea. We were over there for eight days.

Oh, wow. Damn, I wish you had an Army base down here. You could fly over… <laughs> That's a great collection of voices you wouldn't see in your average day concert is it?
You know what, it's really a fun thing to play because you get to hear all the singers singing their hit songs and the band doesn't change; it's Mickey Thomas's band. He's got a cookin' band, right?

Really?
So it's one band playing all the music and the singers change. You get 3-4 songs from one guy, then the next guy comes up and so on and so forth, so it makes for a real fun night.

Damn, that would be….You should record that.
Well, we do uplinks, so if you want to keep on track of that, try to get Rockforever.com up on your computer and just follow it a little bit. I know we're doing a show pretty soon. I think it would be half a week past Easter Sunday from Euro-Disney; it's going to be a live uplink.

Oh. Wow.
That'll be with Rockforever.com, and I think it's be sponsored by Yahoo! and/or one of those companies like that, or maybe even a company called, oh gee I'm trying to think because we just did a big concert for this corporation, all these young geeky looking guys from these computer companies, they're all billionaires and they hire us to come down and play concerts for them. Oh, Pulver, pulver.com.

OK.
Pulver.com. You can find out about it from either that or…

I'll give you a huge plug on my site, you'll probably get some extra traffic through there.
Yeah, so the company that we formed, all the partners, and all the band mates that I told you that I was singing with…we all formed a little company so we can release new songs and we don't need a record company and kiss their ass.
We can release new songs and we can uplink live concerts all over the world, and we can have chat lines, and special events and things. So that's at Rockforever.com. And, that's going to be a good thing for us, because we can almost feel like we're in control of our own destiny a little more so than we have been in the past.

Hey look, whatever my site can do, please let me know...
That's a fantastic site you've got.

Thank you. Great.
Get the challenge going. All these corporations that want to have staff parties. Put the challenge out. Bring Loverboy over.

Fantastic. I'd love to see it. That'd be great. Tell me, I must ask you while I'm here, I'm a big fan of the Just-If-I album.
That was…when did you record that? That must've been '92 or something.
Yeah, '92-'93. It's tough to remember exactly, because I do things for the love of the art. I don't necessarily get locked into what the hell it was and when it was.

Yeah, it was such a small label wasn't it?
Well what it was, was there was a bunch of guys that got together for recording's sake and then put it out and then we never really found a label, we just found some people in town that wanted to run with it a little bit.
We let them run with it, but it was very limited. But one of the songs, "Cindy's Song", actually ended up being on a Movie of the Week thing over here and it got a lot of attention.

OK. There's some really pretty deep songs on there wasn't there?
Yeah, it was pretty cool.

Yeah, it was a side step for you I thought.
Well, that happens. You work a certain venue all your whole life and you really have fun if you get to go out of it a little bit.

Was it good fun working with Neal Schon?
Yeah it was. It's always fun working with him. He's a high energy guy, you know. A really great musician. A good friend. He's touring with Journey again.....

He is indeed.
I was actually working in a CD store in Canada when Just-If-I came out and I nearly fell over when I saw it. Otherwise, I don't think I ever would've heard of it.
What part of Canada were you working in?

I was in Toronto.
Oh yeah.

You're in Vancouver, right?
Yeah.

Unfortunately, you guys didn't tour there that summer.
I guess not. We used to play the CNE quite a bit, but it kind of died down. We were at the Juno awards this year.

Oh really?
For a tribute to Bruce Fairbairn who passed away untimely.

Yeah, that was sad.
And his wife... they were inducting him into the Hall of Fame, posthumously.
And his family was asked to come out and receive the award. And she asked if Loverboy would give the award rather than the person they had chosen. For some reason, even though we've won more Juno's than anybody else in one year, I think they harbor some kind of grudge; I think it's because we like to tell jokes and go off the script.

<laughs> You know you can't go off the script on awards shows.
Piss on them, I say.

<laughs> Good idea. You've had a lot of solo stuff yourself, not only…well you haven't had a solo album have you, but you've had Just.if.i and several soundtrack tunes, there's almost enough there for you to do a solo sort of collection, best of, yourself.
OK, I'll do it.

Yeah! <laughs>
Send me the budget, and I'll get it done for you.

Yeah, I wish.
See how it works?

Absolutely. You'd like to do something like that?
You know what? All I do is sing, tour, and write. Nothing's changed for me. What's changed is the record business because all the old guys have retired and all the young guys are trying to find new bands.
We get left in the lurch; nobody gives a shit about us, so it's really a tough situation. Hence, I feel…that's why I feel so happy about having the Rockforever.com thing in place because it's giving me the chance to do whatever I want. And sure as shit, if it starts to catch on, record companies will come up and say, "Gee, we really love you. We were wondering if we could make some money off of you."
You know how they are; they're just a bunch of fuckin' idiots. I don't know what else to say, because it's the truth. I have very little use for these pigs; however, there's no hard feelings.

<laughs> I do like that. Can I ask you about a couple of other songs that you've sung?
Sure.

How did you get involved with the David Foster album, the track, "All I Ever Needed"?
That's a song that's going to end up on my solo album.

Oh really?
I have a version of it with me and David writing the song. Just him at the piano and me on vocals. It's killer.

It is a killer song. Yeah.
He asked me to come down to do the backing tracks for his solo album. And while we were there, he asked me to come over early one day and see if we couldn't write a song and that night I had a dream. I dreamt all the lyrics and I woke up and wrote them down and I hummed into my tape recorder the melody. And I went over and he said, "Do you have any idea what we can do?" and I started him off on this thing. And he started playing it and it developed in about an hour into that song.

That's a killer song. So you're going to add that to the solo album?
Yeah.

That makes the solo album even more amazing.
I got the OK on that one, because it was a 50/50 co-write, so it's OK for me to go ahead and put that on; I talked to Foster about it.

Brilliant.
That was a cool fun thing, because we were recording down in his Malibu place and some of the other singers that were there were Bill Champlin from Chicago and a couple of girls, and we were just doing the backing tracks and having fun. You know, singing a few songs and then standing outside and soaking in the sun. It was really awesome. That was a fun trip.

It sounds hard!
Well it's not hard when you're with all those pros, you know. You start singing and WHAM.

Absolutely. Another track I love is the Dream a Little Dream track, "Whenever There's a Night".
I forgot about that one!

Yeah, that's another killer ballad eh?
I should put that one on the solo album too.

Oh yeah.
<starts singing: Whenever there's a night I need love …>

I must say, that is one of my all-time favorite ballads.
Really? What is it on? How do you get that? I don't even know where that is.

I actually got it when I toured the States from a second-hand store. I finally got the CD of it from a cut-out bin or something.
I'd love to get a copy of that one.

The Dream a Little Dream soundtrack? Do you want me to burn off a copy for you?
That would be awesome!

Yeah. I can do that.
That would be awesome.

Give me your mailing address Mike, and I'll burn one off for you.
<Mike gives his address>

Done!
That would be awesome dude.

Easily done. No worries at all. That's just such a great track. The other one that's a favorite of mine, is from Iron Eagle, "Chasing the Angels".
I forgot about that one too.

Did you really? <laughs> Yeah, that's a big rocker.
Oh that is a big…oh just hang on half a second <pause>

Sure.
The kids are just running in from school and I have to let them know that mom is not home

Very cool.
<To his kids: Hey, mom's not home and I'm on the phone, so you guys just come in and settle down, get something to eat if you want.....I don't know, we've got company> <to Andrew: my brother's here>.

Oh really.
We've got three kids.

Fantastic.
When Uncle Steve shows up, everybody likes to Rock and Roll.

Oh Party Time?
Well, kid's party time, you know.

Fantastic.
Jumping on Uncle Steve.

Keeping you busy.
Oh yeah.

Yeah, I've been to Vancouver, just for a week; I enjoyed it a lot.
We're getting the early summer here, it's like 80 degrees and sunny and beautiful out.
What part of Australia are you in?

I'm in Hobart, Tasmania believe it or not.
You're in Tazmania down by the devil.

Yeah, with the devil, that's right <laughs>
How do you get over there? Do you take a ferry?

Ferry and fly, yeah.
It's got to be pretty over there.

Well, that's about all I had for you I think Mike.
Well, if you plop me a line on the e-mail I gave you once in a while, I'll fill you in on some of the latest.

That'd be great, and I'll continue to plug and look for Rockforever.com and see if I can send some people your way.
I appreciate it.

I will burn off a couple of tracks and send them to you, I guess.
You are awesome.

A pleasure, a pleasure. Absolutely anything I can do. And I expect to see this solo album released shortly. <laughs>
Right on.

All right. That's great. Thanks Mike.
All right Andrew.

Good talking to you.
Nice talking to you.

You too. Take care.
Bye now.

Say hi to Mickey for me.
Will do.

Thanks mate.
Bye now.

Bye, bye.