Interview with singer, songwriter and musician: Steve Young

You can’t help but like Steve Young, the low-key, self-effacing, singer-songwriter who’s been seriously been making tasty, thoughtful rootsy music since the early 1960’s. I sat with him in April, 2010, while on the Roots on the Rails expedition from Los Angeles to Portland and back, after having seen him perform four sets. He’s a very accomplished guitarist, a fine singer, a great interpreter of songs, and he writes superb ones, which is why the Eagles cut “Seven Bridges Road,” one of their staples in concert, and Waylon Jennings made famous “Lonesome, Ornery and Mean.” I subsequently bought three of his cd’s, and can enthusiastically recommend his work. Steve is a class act, highly regarded by his fellow performers. Go see him live if you get the chance.

TREVOR: How’d you get into playing music?

STEVE: I couldn’t do anything else and I always wanted to be a musician from when I was a tiny kid, and I told people I would be.  Of course, they didn’t believe that. And they thought it was a pretty bad idea, too …

TREVOR: This was in Montgomery, Alabama?

STEVE: The nearest thing I had to a home town was Gadsen, Alabama, but I was actually born in Noonan, Georgia.  That’s still far from Atlanta. My family was unsettled and would move around, and I would sometimes live with my grandmother.  She lived in Gadsden, but all these people originally were from Georgia.  But, you know, I was fortunate in the music of that time and that place was very rich and real, more real, than it is today, you know.  So it had a lot of influence on me.

TREVOR: Mom and dad, they didn’t want you to play?

STEVE: Oh, no.  Nobody did.  Their idea of security would be to become a mailman.

TREVOR: When did you get a guitar?

STEVE: I couldn’t get one.  They were too poor, and a guitar to me was like an astral dream as a kid.  It was a magical thing and I really wanted one, but I could not get one.  I even sold seed.  I took the ad in the back of comic books and sold seeds door to door to get this pictured guitar, and they said it was made out of cardboard. (laughs)  When I was about 14 my mom became convinced enough that she bought me a real guitar.  It was a Gibson ES 125.  Little thin body electric.   Simple guitar.  And from there I really started to learn, or how to play.

TREVOR: Did somebody teach you?  Did you take lessons?

STEVE: There was a guy that helped me get some fundamentals and he believed that I was a real musician, and he went out of his way to help me, but other than that, I was mostly self-taught.  That’s one reason my playing is kind of eccentric.  And I would watch and listen, and I heard, and the street singers, whom I loved.

TREVOR: What were you playing, folk music tunes?

STEVE: I would play different things, some folk, some gospel because my grandmother wanted to hear some of that, blues,  country, and also at that time the hit parade was on, and the top 10, whatever, the standard type coming out of that era of the big bands. So it was a wide variety of music that I heard, and really liked all of it.  And then when I was a teenager I saw flamenco guitarists.  That had a big influence on me, because I didn’t even know what flamenco was.

TREVOR: That was Montoya?

STEVE: Carlos Montoya.  And the sounds that he could get out of one guitar just blew me away.  I was just a kid in high school.  He played at a community college in Beaumont, Texas, which is a terrible place near the Louisiana border.  I was just obsessed with guitar, and I learned the basics of what I know between 14 and 17.

TREVOR: When did you decide to try and make a career of it?

STEVE: I never thought in terms of career.  I just saw it in terms of being able to play and sing and doing what you wanted to, and being a free guy.  I never had ambitions to be a star or anything like that.  I wanted to do my own thing and do it my way, and people could take it or leave it, which was a pretty arrogant attitude.  I mean it’s a tough enough business to try to…

TREVOR: I take it you never really had any other job other than music?

STEVE: No, I tried to have other jobs.  I did have some.  I couldn’t hold them very long.  You know, the people would say “Ah he’s,” whatever, “He can’t do this,” or else I just couldn’t, or I would just bail on them, and getting’ up and going in, and doing the whole thing.  I think the longest I ever held a job was about six months.  One time I was a mailman in L.A, the worst mailman they ever had.  But I’d made a high score on the tests and they thought I’d be a good mailman.  (laughs)  I told them I would never play music again.  I quit.

TREVOR:  Did you have recording agreements?

STEVE:  My introduction to the recording world… There were two guys in Gadsen, Alabama named Richard and Jim, and they did this Appalachiany, folky, whatever, weird bag, mixture, and they had comedy.  They were really trying to make it, whereas I was just kind of a wandering bum, but they wanted me to open shows and to play guitar behind them and they really appreciated what I did, and put up with me.  In Montgomery, I was always getting in trouble about local politics and the junior Klansmen were pissed off at me, and Montgomery was getting’ pretty intense and one day they said “Hey, we got a contract with Capitol Records in Hollywood, California.  Do you wanna go?  And I said “Yeah, let’s go.”  That was 1963.

We went to Capitol Records and we did an album.  They did their album and the producer really like me and he wanted to produce me, but I was just too crazy.  I was drunk all the time. I know they secretly recorded me in the old Capitol studio singing a song.  As I’m playing it back on these huge speakers, I said “Hell that sounds good.  Who is that?”  They said, “It’s you, you fool.”  (laughs) I would get in sessions.  I was doing session work.  I’d go down to the Musician’s Union, and get what to me was a lot of money.  But I didn’t know what to make of L.A. or California, and I said “Well, I’m gonna go back home, but when I went back it was more miserable than ever.  So being in California did something to me,  in a way that still goes.

TREVOR: So you, how did you make your career?

STEVE: It was tough because, because I was uncertain and there was nothing really that commercial or ever has been in a way about what I did, or do.  So I would try to do gigs, and a lot of them were miserable and just didn’t work, but I finally made a record for A&M.  It came out and nobody got it, but a few people got it.  I was invited to the Newport Folk Festival in ’69 by Jim Rooney because he got it.  So there was a little sparkle of…

TREVOR: Who’s Jim Rooney?

STEVE: He’s a musician who now lives in Ireland, but he was instrumental in the old folk world.  He either ran or started Café Lena in the Northeast, which was a famous old folk club. I played the folk festival.

TREVOR: And it went over well?

STEVE: I was stirred up, very conflicted personally, looking back.  So when I would present myself, it wasn’t clear what I was doing.  It created problems and it went on like that for years, and finally I wanted to stop dealing with the whole music thing, and I opened a little guitar store with a friend, in San Anselmo, California.  I did that for a couple years and then I couldn’t take it anymore, and finally Joan Baez cut “Seven Bridges Road.”  That was my first significant event.  Over the years I became more respected, slowly but surely people heard things and liked them.

TREVOR: What are some other cuts that were successful?

STEVE:  “Lonesome, Ornery And Mean” was my next most successful cut, which Waylon Jennings did.  It’s still a song that even today is loved by a lot of young people, apparently.  So it all worked out in a pretty good way because I don’t require a great deal. So, between getting some royalties and doing some gigs that I really wanna do,  I can make a living, I have made a living, but it was a lot of hard times in between there, just struggling and trying to find some kind of footing somewhere doing something.

TREVOR: So, these days right now you’re happy?  You enjoy it?

STEVE: Oh, yeah, because I do it pretty much on my terms when I wanna do it, and I’m very lucky in spite of me.  I’ve had a wee bit of success, and, because I’m the worst self-promoter in the world.  I really don’t care about a “career.”  The thing that bores me the most is Steve Young promo.

TREVOR: How many albums have you made?

STEVE: There must be about 11, and I’m well overdue.  I need to make some more.  I’ve become too much of a perfectionist now.  I have to come off that.  I got a lot of good ideas I need to finish, and just go ahead and record them and accept that nothing is perfect.

TREVOR: How many songs have you written in the last year?

STEVE: I’ve finally finished a couple.  They must be 100 or more songs that are almost there.  If I would just do the final work.  I get distracted with all these other little things and somehow I’m just not finishing them.

TREVOR: Do you play music every day?

STEVE: No, not necessarily every day.  I go in spells, and I got a bunch of recording gear and I try to understand how to work it, and it’s more difficult than I thought. I like to fool with the stuff and I go up in my little studio and once you get into it, you may stay there hours doing it.

TREVOR: Give me a couple high points that have been thrilling for you as a musician.

STEVE: When Waylon Jennings did “Lonesome, Ornery & Mean.” Everybody else was thrilled when the Eagles did “Seven Bridges Road,” and I really appreciate them doing it, and it certainly has helped me be who I am and be kind of free.  The little things that thrill me now are not really very significant in terms of big career or anything. For example, I have a memory of playing one time at a place where they treat alcoholics, which I am one, drug addict/alcoholic; I just don’t use or drink anymore. I did a song I wrote about alcoholism.  There’s a bunch of old black guys there, and they gave me standing ovation and that was a thrill.

TREVOR: You live in Nashville.  Why?

STEVE: I was living in the San Francisco Bay area and … oddly, it’s crazy, I’d forgotten about some of my great differences with the South, and I went back and it was a shock.   I went through a divorce there.  My son had been born in San Francisco; he was just about two or three years at that time, and out of the necessity in about ’81, I bought this house in this old neighborhood when they were cheap, and then I would go away other places and rent it out to some friends.  Over the years, I just got rooted there, and it’s a place that I know in a sense, but if I had a lot of money, I would probably really buy a place in California.   Or keep this house and then have another house.  I really, I did a lot of years of commuting back and forth.  I had an apartment in L.A. in Echo Park.

TREVOR: How many gigs do you do a year?

STEVE: It depends on what I want to do.  A lot of times I do gigs in order to get somewhere.  If I want to go from Nashville to L.A., I’ll go to Texas first probably and do several gigs.  Texas is the most supportive state for what I do.  I’ve got a guesthouse where I can stay and hang out.  So I’ll go down to Austin and look around, and then I like to go from San Antonio to El Paso on the back roads.  You go through Del Rio and Langtry.

TREVOR: You’re driving yourself?

STEVE: Yeah.  That’s what I love to do.

TREVOR: What kind of car do you drive?

STEVE: Toyota Camry.

TREVOR: Is it lonely being out there?

STEVE: Oh, yeah.  You get lonely, but I’m a loner.  I need friends, I need people, but I’m essentially a loner person as far as big family commitments go.

TREVOR: What do you do for fun?

STEVE: I look at good old movies, good old music.  Try to record it.  Try to play and write some.  Go to the gym and work out.  That’s about it.  That’s about as fun as it gets.

TREVOR: Is there anybody contemporary you’re listening to or a fan of?

STEVE: Contemporary?  What the real meaning of contemporary?  Would Dave Alvin be contemporary?

TREVOR: Yeah.

STEVE: Well, well I can appreciate very much Dave Alvin, Tom Russell, people like that.  I’m serious.  But most of the young folk people?  I don’t get it.

TREVOR: It’s, uh, Sunday morning, and you’re going to put on some music.  What will you play?

STEVE: I’d probably play some Blind Willie Johnson or Elvis’ Sun Sessions, or something old probably.  The past fascinates me, and a lot has been lost and will never return.  It’s like the modern country, so-called country, it has no roots, no soul.  The old guys that produced this stuff worked out in the fields, and I know what it was, because I was there at the tail end of it.  I was there when Elvis came on the scene.  People don’t understand, and certainly young people think he was some fat, burned out old guy, a joke.  Well, before that, he was something for real.

TREVOR: Tell me the three best shows you’ve ever seen.

STEVE: Carlos Montoya, then I would have to say, and I’m not just saying this because they’re here now, it would have to be probably some of the shows I’ve seen Tom Russell and Dave Alvin do.  I’ve seen Waylon do some good shows, and I say this kind of reluctantly, David Allen Coe with his band.  It was comical in a way; he put down his band at one show they did then on the stage they slowly came together and became friends again.

TREVOR: Okay, you’ve just been on Roots On The Rails for four day, what’s your take on this?

STEVE: This is my second train trip, and only now do I get why these people are addicted to this.  There’s a magical camaraderie, and even though being on this train is a form of suffering in a way, it’s a wonderful suffering, an escape from the folks’ real world,  to this wondrous, friendly, creative, appreciative little bubble.  So it’s really a great thing, and now I see why as some of these people have told me, “One reason we come back is because of the other people.”

TREVOR: The fans are respectful.

STEVE: Very respectful and they’re very supportive and accepting.  It always worries me a little bit.  I had a conversation with somebody here about, “Don’t think because some songwriter writes a great song, that he’s a wonderful person. That’s a big mistake.”  I’ve seen a lot of musicians play that, and I don’t want to do that because I have a saying that most artists are failures as human beings.

For more on Steve Young, go to: http://www.steveyoung.net

Interview with Brian Ray: Guitarist for Paul McCartney

Photo by Tom Ruddock

I’ve known Brian Ray for 35 years as I used to work with his sister, Jean. I always found him to be a very personable fellow. I ran into him a few years ago and we had a nice chat; I was thrilled to then learn and impressed that he was in Paul McCartney’s band. Brian was nice enough to sit for this interview in April 2010 at the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, one of the best stores in the nation (and I’m not kidding), for the best in all things fromage, wine, and other delicacies. It’s owned by Norbert Wabnig, my dear friend, and a huge McCartney fan, who joins in the conversation later on as we savored an exquisite meal.

I’m particularly fond of this interview because it gives hope to all musicians. Stay with your craft, do your best, keep it together and it will turn out all right, just as it did for Brian Ray.

TM: What do you currently do as a musician?

BR: My day job is that I play guitar and bass for Paul McCartney in his touring band and on several of his recordings, and have done so for eight years now.

TM: Where did you grow up?

BR: I was born and raised in Glendale, the gateway to Burbank, and now reside in Santa Monica, California.

TM: How did you get into playing music?

BR:  I was lucky enough to have a half-sister, Jean, who was 15 years my elder and in love with music herself.  She was a senior in high school, homecoming queen when I was 3 or 4 years old.  She would baby sit me and play for me Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Rick Nelson, Everly Brothers, and show me pictures of these people with their girlfriends, and they’d be fawning over these early rockers, and something about that moment just caught my imagination.  At four years old I knew what I wanted to do when I got older, and I have a very vivid memory of looking at Elvis, and looking at his image, his taste in clothes, and what he did to his hair.  All this stuff was apparent to me at four years old, and then I heard the music and it was done.  I had this sense from an early age what was the real stuff and what was the counterfeit stuff in pop music, and it just caught my imagination.  I knew then and there what I wanted to do.

TM: When did you get your first guitar?

BR: My first guitar was a $5 nylon string guitar from Tijuana, and it was given to me by Jean, my half-sister.

TM: Did she teach you some chords?

BR:  No.  What happened is, my brother, who hadn’t really displayed much interest in guitar at all, but he was the eldest of four kids, was given a beautiful, brand new 1962 Gibson guitar, and lessons as well.  When he would come home from his lessons I would ask him to show me what he had learned.

TM: How old were you?

BR: I was 8, something like that.  He would show me what he’d learned.  I would take what he’d learned, practice the hell out of it, and by the next lesson he had, I’d be ahead of him, and he lost interest.  I passed him up.  I kept going.  Never got lessons, I just kept going.

TM: Did you play in bands in, in junior high and…

BR:  I was performing before I could tune a guitar to be honest with you.  I was doing show and tell in the fourth grade or fifth grade, fourth grade, and mimicking records that I loved.  In front of the class I would do lip syncs of Beach Boys and other classics.

TM: Did your parents encourage or discourage you from music?

BR:  My parents were great, very encouraging to me.  I don’t think they thought it through to the degree that I might choose it to be my career path, but among my friends, we all knew that I had no plans to do anything else.  From the age of four I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up.  So it was just a matter of getting better at the craft and dedicating myself to it.  I was already dedicated, but it was a matter of applying myself then.

TM: I take it you were into the Beatles when you were a kid.

BR: Absolutely.  I loved the Beatles and I saw them the first time they appeared on Ed Sullivan, just like so many people of our age.  Sunday night, probably 8 p.m., if I’m not mistaken, cross-legged on the floor, four feet from the screen, knowing full well that I was about to be blown away.  I just had this great expectation, because we had heard “Please Please Me” on the radio, which was my first memory of them.  And there they come and changed my life.  But even before the Beatles, I was a big R&B fan, and early rock and roll fan.

So the Beatles spoke to me in a few ways, because they were younger, they were a band, they had a similar look to each other, and they were doing something new and rare.  They were playing original music as a band, all from the same town, and they were all joking around on TV as if they all knew some inside joke, and I wanted to be in on that joke, and I wanted to be in a band, and it made me want that, you know.  Radio had given me an impression of music that I couldn’t shake, but seeing the Beatles live solidified the dream to me.

TM: When did you start playing in bands?

BR: My first guitar playing on stage was with my sister Jean, funny enough.  She was in a folk rock duo called Jim and Jean, and both of their albums are out on Collector’s Choice right now, really great stuff.  Some of Dylan’s players are in the band.  So when they split up, she continued with her solo career and I played the Troubadour, the Ashgrove, which is now the Improv, and all these different shows.  The Icehouse.   By the time I was 17, I was playing on stage with her quite a bit, and all the while I had bands in junior high and high school as well, forming bands and covering other people’s songs, writing our own songs, and rearranging other people’s songs at a very early age.

At 17 years old, I would take songs I loved and rearrange them for our band, or I would take bits of famous songs and string them together in a medley set to a blues song.  The strangest things — I was using West Side Story songs like “America” and setting them to a blues shuffle.  We’d do this great breakdown as a band and go into that melody.  I just loved playing with music.

TM: Did you go to college at all?

BR: No, I did not.

TM: You went straight into show biz?

BR: I was really lucky in that after touring with Jean, my sister, my next professional job was with Bobby Boris Pickett doing the “Monster Mash.”  That was a blast.  We would do Six Flags Over Texas and these amusement parks and these scary Halloween shows and in full zombie makeup and the whole bit.  He had had a whole bunch of songs, and we’d do a couple covers and “twist” songs.

TM: What was Bobby Boris Pickett like?

BR: He was hilarious.  He’s a comedy writer.  We lost him about a year and a half ago, but he was a fabulous guy, very gentle, very funny, very affable and very kicked back.  Really good guy.

TM: Did you stay in touch with him after all these years?

BR: He came to one of my last gigs in my last lineup at the Viper Room.  I had no idea he was suffering from cancer, he was just there in full spirit backing me up and being such a sweet guy and I find out after he passed away that he was suffering a long time before I saw him at that show.  So, anyway, I loved that guy.

TM: Did he make a pretty living as being Bobby Boris Pickett?

BR: Sure he did. It’s a huge song.  We got contracted to play a backyard benefit show for a guy named Phil Kaufman, the legendary old pal road manager of Gram Parsons and for the Rolling Stones, Flying Burrito Brothers, and Gram Parsons old best friend as well.  They had a tipsy vow they made to each other that they loved each other and that whichever one of them went first, the other would take the body out to Joshua Tree and dispose of it in the way that two brothers would want — have a bunch of drinks and incinerate it there in Joshua Tree, and Phil Kaufman took that very seriously and when Gram OD’s, Phil Kaufman did just that.

There we were in the San Fernando Valley playing a show for Phil Kaufman to raise money to pay off his bail or his fine for grand theft of a coffin, and guess who we were? — “Bobby Boris Pickett and The Crypt Kicker Five.”  Kinda crazy story.

We played there along with The Modern Lovers, Dr. Demento and some other people who joined in that day.  This is all documented in Phil’s book, Road Mangler Deluxe.  Phil took to me for some reason.  He’d just lost his best friend.  He hung out, he was helping teach me how to drink.  Drink like a man.  (laughs)  Drink like a cowboy, which meant Jack Daniels, of course.  Anyway, he asked me to stay over because then the next morning he was going up to a rehearsal for a rhythm and blues singer named Etta James, who he had just taken me to see at the Troubadour, and he said that in the morning Etta would begin rehearsals and the guitar player couldn’t make it, could I just come along and bring my guitar, and, “You never know,” maybe I could sit in.  I said, “Sure, you kidding me?”  So there I was in the back of his green equipment truck with my old Les Paul, tooling up the road to Hollywood Hills, and inside there was Etta James, and she didn’t say much.  We started playing, I started jamming along, very insecure.  I might have just turned 19.  I had white blond hair down to my chest.  I was skinny as a rail and white as a ghost and I was jamming along with Etta James, big blues mama.  At the end of rehearsal – I was keeping up okay, I guess – she goes, “I like that white boy,” and she asked me to go play a gig with her in Long Beach the next night.  That was the beginning of what turned into 14 years together.

TM: 14 years!

BR: As her musical director and guitar player.  We would go out to shows and I would put together a band, and the promoter would get musicians in the various towns…

TM: So it would probably be just you and her most of the time on the road?

BR: And her husband, and her son sometimes.

TM: So what was that experience like?

BR: Oh, it was ridiculous.  It was so fun, adventurous, crazy, dramatic — her husband was a jerk.  They were both recovering addicts.  There was probably more going on than I ever realized, and there were times when her husband would take off with my money.  So the biggest show of my young life at 19 was the Montreux Jazz Festival… and in the band was John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin and Rick Wakemen from Yes on keyboard.  These great horn players like David Fathead Newman, Tony Poindexter, these legends.  There I was and Sam, her husband, stole my $350 bucks!  I never got paid for the show, but it doesn’t matter; to me it’s just a wonderful memory and a great story with a little bit of drama on top.

TM: What was her biggest hit?

BR:  “At Last.”

BR:  And then also, “I’ve Got to Go Blind.”  Two huge records.

TM: Who wrote “At Last?”

BR:  I don’t remember who wrote that (It was Mack Gordon and Harry Warren in 1941 for the film musical “Sun Valley Serenade”), but she wrote “I’ve Got to Go Blind.”

TM: And she always put on a good show?

BR: Oh, my God.  She’s one of those rare performers who can literally make you laugh and cry within eight bars.  Reach in, take a hold of your heart, grab it, show it to you, and then put it back in your chest and pat you on the back.  You know, just a rare, rare performer where her insides were just right there on her sleeve, right there in her voice.  She’s very connected to herself.

TM: And did you record with her as well?

BR:  Yeah.  First record I did with her is way out of print but it was called Etta Is Better Than Evah. And that was my title by the way.  (laughs)  That was in 1976, recorded for Chess Platinum records in Fort Lee, New Jersey.  I was 20 years old, 21.  And then I did another with, with her in 1977 that is available called Deep In The Night, and that was produced by the great Jerry Wexler for Warner Bros.

TM: It must have been a thrill to work with him.

BR: Oh, my God, yeah.  A very cool guy.

TM: You traveled all over the world with her.

BR:  I sure did.

TM: And that, that must have been a great experience.

BR: Yeah, sure.  Going to London and Germany and Switzerland when you’re 19 years old is monumental.  It was huge.

TM: Is Etta still alive?

BR: She is, and recovering from some setbacks health-wise, but she was recording and playing live as recently as 8 months ago.  So she’s still around.

TM: How come you left working with her?

BR: I had gotten lucky after doing a bunch of records with some various artists and being a session guy, and I had gone into songwriting, and I had played with various artists like Nicolette Larson, and Reggie Knighton, a band called Crackin’ on Warner Bros., and Laura Branigan.  I decided that I wanted to start concentrating more on songwriting, so I found a writing partner and we wrote as if it was our job, 9 to 5 every day, five days a week. From that came a very big song that we wrote for and got over to Smokey Robinson in 1987 called “One Heartbeat” from the album of the same name. It was a hit on three formats, and it’s now nearly 3 million airplays.  So I had thought I had it all going on in about 1988-89, rolling in royalties and I wanted to write more and do my own band thing.  I’d been with her for 14 years by the time ’88 rolled around, and her husband and her  manager were starting to change the way they were gonna do things.  They wanted me to be the band leader but they didn’t want to let me do the hiring and the firing of the band, so it was a strange, stressful kind of position, and I just decided to move on.

Oh, but man, did I miss her and, oh, I tried to get back in the band.  That was big drama years later where I really wanted to be back in but she had moved on — but we’re very close now.

TM: Where does she live?

BR: She’s out in Riverside.

TM: Have you played with her since you left the band?

BR: Sure have, I sat in with her a number of times at the House of Blues.  She was really kind to offer her vocals to a song of mine on my first record called Mondo Magneto. It’s a song called “Soft Machine.”  The unmistakable Etta James.  There she is.

TM: So then you did the songwriting thing for awhile.  What happened with that?  Where did you go?

BR: I wasn’t able to create another smash, but we kept working away at it.  I did put my own band together.  We played around.  A band called Charm School and then I did a solo band for awhile and then I started playing with Rita Coolidge.  I had stopped drinking in that time, around ’88.  I think that was part of my decision as well to leave, because sometimes it was a little bit dangerous for a guy who’s newly sober around Etta’s camp.

TM: And what was the name of your partner that you wrote with?

BR: Steve Le Gassick.

TM: What happened to him?

BR: He still makes some music.  His wife’s got a great cosmetics business and he helps with that.  They travel quite a bit.  He’s got a band and they do WAVE-style soft jazz.

TM: Playing with Rita Coolidge, was that good?

BR: Oh, it’s great.  I mean to play with a woman who had been out with Joe Cocker and Leon Russell and Clapton and all that stuff.  It was a big thrill for me.  And finally, they are recognizing publicly that Rita Coolidge actually wrote that end bit of “Leila” where the piano breaks down to that lovely piano thing.  That was Rita Coolidge’s riff, and their keyboardist, maybe Bobby Whitlock, started playing it.  Stuck it in the song and never had credit for it.  Heard a DJ say it the other day.  Good for her.

TM: How long did you play with Rita?

BR: Four or five from ’91 through ’95.

TM: And then you went where?

BR: Then I went to France and auditioned to play with a cool artist named Mylene Farmer.  She was like a Madonna of France with a very reedy thin voice, an Enya-type voice but singing provocative deep lyrics with a very flashy show, and doing big arenas.  I was just lucky to get the audition. In the band, the drummer who also won the audition out of many auditioning drummers, was Abe Laboreal, Jr., who would soon figure into my life in a big way.  Then, after Mylene Farmer, I got another French artist gig with a guy named Johnny Hallyday, the French Elvis, who’s still kicking and a remarkable performer.

I became his guitar player.  I would go between Mylene and Johnny back and forth, because they’d use some of the same crew guys, just go back and forth between those artists and had a wonderful time together, all of us.  Touring in France.  Nice times.

TM: So you learned to speak French?

BR: Uh peu.  Un petit peu.  Abe Laboreal, Jr. also won the audition to play with Johnny Hallyday, so Abe and I went back and forth between these two completely polar opposite artists and in doing so became best of friends.

TM: Give us the scene, what’s it like being his guitar player?  Was it fun, was it hard, was it unusual, was it weird?

BR: It was the first time I’ve been with an act who was about to do a 3-hour show  and we were playing at the Stade De France, the big football stadium, soccer stadium in the middle of Paris, and a brand new stadium.  We were the second music act to come in there, and it held 85,000 people.  And he was going do it for three nights!  The Stones come in there and they played for maybe one night.  He’s a big deal over there.  I was very, very excited.  I’d warmed up to the French experience by playing Mylene Farmer just before that, but in arenas, more like 12 to 17,000 people per.  They pushed me forward and got me into some crazy rocking clothes and gave me a lot to play a lot of emphasis, and it was just a total blast.  He’s a real rocker.  He’s a fun guy.  Nice guy to work with.  It was very demanding of you musically.  They also had an 86-piece orchestra and 200 choral singers arriving, coming up from a hydraulic lift in the middle of the show.  Is that insane?

TM: Do you read music?

BR: I don’t.  I read charts, but as far as reading notation, no.  I but I read chord charts and make my own charts when I hear a song, or just play by ear.

TM: How long did you play with Hallyday?

BR: Johnny was from ’98 through 2001.

TM: And then the next job was what?

BR: Next big thing after Johnny was Paul.

TM: We’re about 2001, how did you actually hear about the gig?

BR: Abe had left the Johnny Hallyday tour before our last leg. Got a new drummer.  I was unhappy and I was calling Abe, “Man, oh, dude, I miss you so much.  You get me outta here.”  And he’s like, “Oh, I’ve been with K.D. Lang,” and says, “You’re not gonna believe what I just got,” and I said “What?”  “I got a call from Paul McCartney.  I’m doing his upcoming record.”  I went, “Oh, my God.  I’m gonna run back to town just to shake your hand.  Don’t wash your hand.”

I come back to town and he tells me all about it and they’re gonna be touring in a couple of months, and I said, “Okay, so you have Rusty on guitar, you on drums, Wix on keyboards and Paul, but who’s gonna play bass when Paul moves to piano, and guitar when Paul’s on bass?  And he goes, “Well we’re looking for a guitar player who plays a little bass,” and I put my right hand in the air and said, “I’d love a shot at that.”

TM: That was one of the things that astonishes me when I saw the show, how much bass you did play and how well. How did you get into bass if you spent so much of your career focusing on guitar?

BR: The big secret is I didn’t.  I put my hand up in the air knowing that I would have to run home and woodshed and beaver away at it until I was good enough to be that guy.  And I had played bass on my demos and stuff like that.  Maybe on a demo or two for other people.  I had a bass.  I was more of a bass owner than a bass player.  I always thought that guitar players who played bass basically sucked and so I guess my objective would have been just to do the best I could to honor Paul’s amazing bass parts which are among the best ever recorded ever, and not blow it, and not play like a guitar player when I play bass.  And so that required just simplicity and I did just that.  I got the first job with Paul was one song for the Super Bowl, the pre-National Anthem song right before the 2002 game, and I flew out to New Orleans to meet Paul for the first time.  Did this one song.  I thought that was gonna be it and I’d never see Paul again and Paul comes back to the hotel after I had already said goodbye to him and he comes back to the hotel bar and he’s getting ready to now go to bed after telling some stories, and he’s giving everyone a hug goodnight. We’d played one song.  He comes up to me and he says, “Okay, Brian, welcome aboard, stick with Abe and Rusty and they’ll show you the ropes.  See ya in five weeks for rehearsals.”

I turned to Abe and I said “Did he just say what I think he said?,”  and he goes “Yeah, Dude.”  You know how Abe talks.

That was the beginning.  I ran home and got the right bass, got a guitar, got an acoustic guitar, put them in stands in front of me, got two amps, mike stand standing up, a stack of CDs and CD player all within my reach and I just woodshedded for five weeks straight.  Just immersed myself in Beatles, Wings and solo stuff, and I must have learned 70 songs just all on my own, not knowing what the set list would be, I just worked, and worked, and worked, and worked.  The first week I thought, “I’m not good enough.  This might suck, but I’m gonna do it anyway.”  The second week I go, “Aw, it’s better.”  The third week I had Abe come over and he said, “Oh, it sounds great!,” and by the fifth week I was ready, and I went and got the job.

TM: So then you went out for rehearsals, and what were they like?

BR: By then I’d been woodshedding for five weeks and I was pretty prepared, and we fortunately had five days to rehearse as a band before Paul showed up.  So by day five of those five days, we were sounding pretty good and we knew 45 songs.

TM: You play rhythm and lead?

BR: Rhythm and lead, and acoustic and 12-string, and bass.

TM: And you switch off with Rusty Anderson.  How did he get the job?

BR: He came at the same time Abe did for the record called Driving Rain, produced by David Kahne.

TM: How did Paul know to call Abe and Rusty?

BR: He didn’t, but David Kahne did.

TM: So then you rehearsed with McCartney for how long before that tour?

BR: We rehearsed for five days before he got there and then six days with him, and then we went on tour.

TM: Wat were those rehearsals like?

BR: Insane.  I mean to hear that voice come out of those monitors on those songs.  There we are playing “Hello, Goodbye” and he’s asking me, “Brian, what’s the chords at the end?”  Aiiiee, I can’t even talk.  You’re just in that Nirvana and just feel so blessed and it’s really surreal, and otherworldly.  I did not accept that I was gonna go on tour with Paul McCartney until the end of the first day of that six days together where we finally played together, and he comes in at the end of that day and he says, “Okay, guys, sounds good.  I’ll see ya tomorrow.”  And it wasn’t until then that I really owned that, “Hey, I think I’m goin’ on tour with Paul.

TM: So let’s now rate McCartney as a musician, it’s so softball but…

BR: You’re right, it’s a softball; anyone who doesn’t know should come and see him play live because he is from another planet, basically, for one thing, because he sings better than anybody and he sings more dynamically than anybody, he’s got more range than anybody, plus he plays great guitar, great lead guitar, really great on piano, he’s a great drummer.  On a bunch of Beatles’ tracks he played drums, and then he’s this amazing songwriter and arranger, and he’s self-taught.

TM: Have you come reached an opinion as to whether or not it’s innate talent or because he’s been such a hard working musician all along, or both?

BR: It’s both, but you can’t have one without the other.  You can’t have the kind of genius that he displays without great innate talent, and he’s just born with a bunch of magic.  Sorry, there’s no other way to say it. You can’t do all those things self-taught at that level and explain it any other way.  His dad was a piano player and he liked show tunes and vaudeville, and you hear that come out in Paul’s writing, but he wasn’t the singer Paul was and he wasn’t the guitar player or the drummer … He was just gifted.  It was a gift.

TM: Why is he performing so much now? He clearly doesn’t need the money.

BR: That’s a good question.  I don’t even know to answer it except to say that what he tells me is it’s fun.  Fun you can’t buy, and he’s not an ostentatious guy anyway.  So he’s not out there trying to buy fun.  He’s a simpler, cool guy, his houses aren’t giant.  His life isn’t giant.  He doesn’t have a butler.  He has a very simple, groovy life.

TM: Where does he spend his time?

BR: He’s usually in London or in New York.

TM: Is he here in L.A. at all?

BR: Sometimes, when we come here to work.

TM: I know he has a house, but he doesn’t spend much time here.

BR: No, I think he’s got a place that he uses sometimes but he’s not here a lot.

TM: So what’s it like on the road? Do you travel with him?

BR: Yes, we do.

TM: Do you have a private jet or…

BR: Private jet.  Chartered.  He doesn’t own.  He charters.

TM: How many people are on that private jet?

BR: Well usually it’s the band, Paul, mostly, most of the time Nancy, his girlfriend, and maybe four other people.  A core group, maybe 15 at the most.

TM: And then you’re touring all around the world, right?

BR: We’ll hub out from the city and go to various cities and be back in bed by 3 or 4 in the morning after partying together, and do it again in a day or two.

TM: How many months working?

BR: Paul doesn’t work at this time right now more than six weeks straight.  The most we’ve ever gone out together was I think 12 weeks with rehearsals included.  But he’s into shorter stints right now, which suits us fine.

TM: The band is all based in L.A.

BR: Except for Wicks, the keyboard player.

TM: Where’s he based?

BR: He’s in London as well.  English guy. Paul “Wicks” Wickens, his nickname is Wix.

TM: Do you, Abe and Rusty look at each other and say, “Can you believe this?”

BR: Yeah, ’cause we’re all old friends.  It’s a funny thing, I played with Abe for 6 years by the time we got together with Paul.  Rusty I’d known since 1989.  He was my neighbor, and a buddy, and we used to trade guitars and borrow each other’s gear, and play on each other’s demos, but we were never in a band together.  And Abe and Rusty knew each other, but the three of us never played together, so you had this awareness of each other.  It just happens to be a really good chemistry and we get along with each other.

TM: Is it fun on the road?

BR: Oh, yeah.  It’s great.  We’re gifted with liking and appreciating each other, and after 8 years that’s saying a lot.

TM: And he treats you all with respect and decency and…

BR: Great guy. He’s funnier than hell.  He likes a good time.  Treats you good.  Makes sure you’re happy.  He’s not too demanding or tough on you but he wants the stuff done right.

TM: What is the experience of actually playing on stage and playing these songs night after night to the adoring crowd that you find?

BR: What the audience who comes to a show doesn’t understand, and maybe could never understand, is that for us they’re our show.  We stand up there playing these songs that we know are gonna strike chords within them, but watching that happen is quite another thing than just knowing this might happen.  Watching their faces light up and you see these memories just flash by on their faces and they tear up and they cry and they shout, and you see these giant emotions.  It must be really something for Paul knowing that he wrote those songs and that he’s had that effect on people.

A guy who quite literally, one of a handful of people who changed the world in the ‘60’s, you know, I mean he was at the head in the top of the cultural revolution in the ‘60’s.  He and Dylan and John… and Kennedy.

NW: (Norbert, sitting with us) Just an observation…the generational gap that he’s managed to bridge.  Abe gave us some wonderful tickets and on this side was Ozzie Osborne, who was totally in awe of McCartney… and sitting behind us were the Jonas Brothers.  And they were totally in awe.  You could tell.  It was amazing.

BR: It is amazing that he’s traveled the time and the distance in the generations and stayed relevant.  It’s a strange phenomenon and no one else can really say that.  Do you see that kind of spread at a Stones show?  No, you see great fans, but you don’t see that same sort of emotional hit.  You see a physicality and a party memory hit, but you don’t see that deep visceral… life resonance going on.

NW: McCartney manages at the same time being very casual and very open, very professional when it comes to the music.  He’s really true to the music.  Just to use the Stones as an example.  The last time I saw them, they’re really sloppy and maybe they take it for granted or they’re just not as professional as …

BR: They’re not as reverential toward, towards their own music and their own records.

TM: I was astonished at the quality of the musicianship overall and the ability of five guys in the band to recreate so honestly and correctly and fully the music on a wide variety of the records.  I take it that he and the band are all sticklers to do that.

BR: We could be even more like the record if we were asked to or if we chose to, and the truth is is that Paul was smart enough and lucky enough to get the guys together that adored his music as much as we do and respect what each of our instruments did in our songs that were hooky to us, and pay attention to those little funny details, and when we’re all doing that at the same time, it’s not karaoke, but it is louder and bigger perhaps than some of the records, but it is in the spirit of … I think that’s the point.  Geez, we’re just actually having fun playing.  We’re not being reined in to play the exact same thing at the exact moment all the time.

TM: A friend of mine said that the band has been longer with Paul than any other band and it’s the best band he ever had.

BR: That’s awfully kind.  He’s had some amazing players.  If people say that it’s amazing, but to hear Paul in an interview recently say, when asked, “Of all of these great players who have come across your threshold over the years, who among them, here or not, would you want to put a band together with?  Be with again?”  And he goes, “Oh, really just the band I have right now.”  Wow, it just took my breath away.  He’s got a lot of choices in this, and great players that have come and gone, but it’s kind of him. He doesn’t say things like, “We’re better than the Beatles.”  He won’t go there; that’s the best band ever but he’s really kind to us as well.  More to the press than to us directly.

TM: On a personal level, it’s been great for your life, hasn’t it?  In terms of achieving what you wanted to do as a musician from Glendale?

BR: What I wanted to do when I was 4 years old, somehow, someway, I got to do it, and it’s a good thing, because I was not prepared to be able to do much else, and I’d never had a desire to do anything else.  This is what I wanted to be good at and it’s just what I put my energy towards.

TM: You’re single?

BR: Right now I’m single.  Just out of a relationship that ended in November and enjoying my life right now…

TM: And did you do another record since the one you talked about?

BR: Just finished it and it’s going to be released this summer, 2010.

TM: Do you have a name for?

BR: The title is This Way Up.  It’s a follow up to my ’06 album called Mondo Magneto.

TM: The plans are to continue touring indefinitely with Paul?

BR: Yeah, Paul hasn’t said a word about slowing down.  In fact, more dates just keep coming in, so I’m happy.  He doesn’t talk about stopping or retiring or anything like that.  I think he mentioned it once.  He says, “Well, we’re never really hired, so I don’t think I need to retire.”  Something like that.  Some clever little thing.

TM: Do you wanna ask any questions?

NW: I wanted to compliment you on “Hey, Jude,” where Paul goes in the front and gets the audience to go… Nice bass line.

BR: Thank you so much.  That’s really nice of you.  Do you wanna hear the story behind that?  Very interesting story.  Check this out. We do that break down in the “Na, na, na, na, na.  Hey Jude.”   Then he asked the girls to sing.  He asked the boys to sing and then the girls to sing again. Now everyone together, and out of nowhere, in Chicago, and this is documented on our first live DVD called, “Back In The U.S.,” I just was struck by Abe’s playing that night, a little rhythm behind the “na, na’s.”  He’s the only thing that’s playing and it’s just the audience singing and Abe playing drums, and as usually, big drums.  And he’s playing this really chilled R&B beat, and Abe’s always inspired me, so I decided right then and there for some reason to just start playing a bass line along with him.  And I started playing boom, be, be, be, boo, boo, boo, bi, di, pi. Boom, pi, bi, boo, be… a boogaloo bass line from the days of old, and then I stopped it and started it, like a remix record or a dub record.  And I saw Paul kind of turn over to me like, “What in the hell’s goin’ on?”  and I just kept doing it, and on the bus on the way out Paul said, “I really liked that.  That’s really great.  So here’s what we do.  Let me ask the boys to sing, then I’ll ask the girls to sing, and I say ‘Everybody sing,’ then you start that bass line.”  The funny thing is that now four years later, we’re all in Las Vegas to see the LOVE show. The Beatles’  Cirque De Soleil show ends with “Hey, Jude.”  There at the end of “Hey, Jude” is the cast getting everyone to clap along and there’s the Beatles version of “Hey, Jude,” playing loud and there’s a breakdown, and all of a sudden, there’s a boogaloo bass line that was never there before, never any of us had heard on the record.  I turned around and go, “Wait a second.  How in the hell did my bass part end up in LOVE?”  So I ask George Martin’s son, Giles Martin, who did the LOVE soundtrack, “What’s the deal with the bass?”  And he goes, “Well, in listening to the original record, they went on for three minutes on the tag, and we’re listening down to the tag, and Paul starts playing this boogaloo bass line.” Isn’t that weird?  Somehow he sent forward 40 years, a little bass idea and I picked up on it.

NW: That’s amazing.  By the way, did you do the bass line on “That Was Me?”

BR:No, that’s Paul on that one.

MV:  That’s Paul?

BR:   Ba, do, do, do, do, do, do…  Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it?  He’s such a master bass player.

TM: You’ve recorded with him?

BR:   We’ve done a number of live records of course. But we also did Memory Almost Full and Little Bit Of Chaos And Creation.

TM: I saw the U.S.S.R. show on television… That must have been fun?

TM: Aw, yeah.  Pretty amazing to play for that crowd who was basically starving for a real Beatle, and they’d been so infatuated with the Beatles.  While they were having one of their toughest times in their long history in the ‘60’s, and everything was prohibited, it was illegal to own a Beatles record in the ‘60’s in Russia.  So they’d trade ‘em on the black market.  They’d have people in other countries cut Beatles records onto X-ray film and you’d go and buy what they call “bones,” which are X-rays.  There’s some guy’s broken ankle.  You’d drop the needle down on it and “Please, Please Me,” so they were starving to see Paul McCartney by the time we showed up there.

TM: So you’ve met a lot of interesting people in the last eight years?

BR: Whooo.  Yeah.  I got to meet Gorbachev.  Here are these guys, these world leaders, shaping relations with the West, talk about being a Beatles’ fan, but not being able to talk, not being able to tell anybody.

TM: Give me a couple other interesting people you’ve met.

BR: Bill Clinton is pretty interesting.

TM: He wanted to meet McCartney?

BR: Yeah.  Brian Wilson, amazing, interesting guy.  The Royal Family.  “The Queen’s Jubilee,” so meeting Prince Charles.  I didn’t meet the Queen but she stood right in front of me and smiled.  (laughs)  I guess that’s like meeting the Queen.

TM: Thanks, Brian.

BR:  My pleasure.

For more on Brian Ray go to http://www.brianray.com and find him on Facebook

Performing at Molly Malone’s on the 24th!

TREVOR MCSHANE ROCKS MOLLY MALONES THIS COMING SATURDAY, APRIL 24 AT 10 PM

You are invited, in fact, you must attend the upcoming show of Trevor McShane this Saturday night at Molly Malones at 10 PM. Trevor will be performing for the first time with a full horn section, and his band includes some of the top musicians in the world. The gig celebrates the release of his new CD, Adventures in Modern Recording (the New Mexico Sessions/Conflict Contract, and the first 50 attendees will get a free copy of the cd …. or a copy of the exciting new mystery “Conflict Contract,” which includes a copy of the cd, for a next to nothing or maybe even for free.

Trevor, who has now admitted publicly that he is also Neville Johnson, the entertainment attorney, will be performing with Fred Sokolow on guitar, John Barnard on keyboards, Merrily Weeber on vocals and guitar, Robert Tessier on bass, Robb Greenspan on drums, Steve Sadd on sax, Paul Literal on trumpet and Craig Kupka on trombone.

Trevor will be performing new material from his new release and others coming out shortly (there are three new cd’s being released in the near future) and you will have the opportunity to meet the writer of “Conflict Contract,” Jonathan Miller.

On top of that, the act following us, David and Devine, just rock the house. They are a duo fronting a hot band and have been selling out shows and blowing the roof off recent engagements. They have earned a great following and you won’t want to miss them.

Plus it’s a Saturday night, time to mingle and quaff a few.

Paul McCartney at the Hollywood Bowl

Hi Friends,

I was able to get in to see a great show of Paul McCartney at the Hollywood Bowl last night!

Paul McCartney rocked the Hollywood Bowl last night. For three hours, fronting a first class band, he executed one hit after another flawlessly. It’s nice to see that at his age, he can still put on a first class show, and arguably, this is the best he’s ever been. The new songs were pretty good as well. The audience was comprised of all ages and Sir Paul certainly made a bundle, with ticket prices as high as $375, but then how often do you get to see one of the Beatles.  In these modern times, binoculars are no longer needed given the big screens. The sound was excellent. He hit the stage at 8:10 and played continuously until 11 P.M, closing with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club” band.

Five musicians were able to duplicate the hits, there was nary an errant note played or sung. A good time was had by all, the weather was compliant, and I’m inspired to write more good songs.

My profile with Paul McCartney in a blaze of light singing "Day Tripper"

A fan of my music wrote in…

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I arrived to work with this email from a friend and fan.  I thought to share it with you all.

“So today, I decided to get lost in some of Trev’s music…..and BOY did I !!!!!!

“It’s really hard for me to believe that this music isn’t on the radio…

“All you need is exposure you have HITS and you can be an artist too….just one hit, that’s all you need and the rest will be history…how to market you? another story, actually, your story is probably amazing without inventing one….well, there is the story of T.M. I LOVE that……

“Trevor McShane, one of those magical mystical musical talents whom do not come by very often, almost ”fairy tale” like in the sense of being so special…the story alone is captivating and then the music takes you to places that you’ve never been before, or differently to say the least….like Disneyland, Trevor McShane is for most everyone…and any kind of ride you’d like to go on, there is one for you….:-) ” – F.H.

If you are interested in listening to my music, purchasing or downloading, check out this link for more information:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mcshane2

Trevor

An article about me in LA’s Daily Journal

Friends and colleagues,

Thought you might be interested in this article about me, front page of the legal newspaper in Los Angeles, The Daily Journal, last Friday.

By Jean-Luc Renault Daily Journal Staff Writer LOS ANGELES – Neville Johnson, the 60-year-old founder of Beverly Hills’ seven-attorney firm Johnson & Johnson, sat hunched over a counsel table during a morning hearing last week at the Central Civil West Courthouse. Superior Court Judge Carl West was about to decide if he would give final approval to a settlement in a long-running class action involving $30 million in levies on video rentals and cable retransmissions in foreign countries the Writers Guild of America West failed to disburse to several thousand writers. If West signed off, it would be the second time Johnson, a plaintiffs’ lawyer who spent his career representing individual clients against institutional defendants, prevailed against a powerful Hollywood guild. He already reached a nearly identical settlement over the same issue in 2008 against the Directors Guild of America. With a similar case against the Screen Actors Guild nearing a settlement, Johnson is poised to go three-for-three. But West put the brakes on that momentum temporarily after he directed both sides to tie up a few loose ends in the agreement. Johnson has an intimidating presence. He’s a big, gruff guy whose gravely voice is punctuated with expletives. He’s got a sense of humor that puts others at ease, and his toothy smile glints with the same impish charm flashing behind his crisp blue eyes. “He’s a funny guy,” said Lincoln Bandlow, a Lathrop & Gage partner who defended several clients in the entertainment industry against plaintiffs Johnson represented. “In one case, I had won a motion after Neville lost an earlier one,” Bandlow said. “He said to the judge ‘If you’re going to give him one, you should give me one, too!'” That’s how Johnson has been able to aggravate opponents while, at the same time, win them over. “He can be fun to argue against in court, and he can be frustrating to argue against, too,” said Bandlow. “He’s a pit bull with a bone – he’ll grab a hold of it and keep shaking even after you think you’ve prevailed and moved on. But whenever I get a call from somebody who wants to sue a record label or a big company, Neville is the first guy I tell them to call.” Tenacious as he is, peers say Johnson can sometimes get carried away when arguing for something he believes in. Paul Kiesel, a partner with Kiesel, Boucher & Larson who is co-counsel on the WGA and SAG class actions, said Johnson “can, at times, be unbridled in his passion.” “Neville brought me into these cases to provide a calming influence over a very passionate personality that he brings,” Kiesel said. Johnson, who often describes his cases as David versus Goliath, would be proud of that characterization. “Everyone in this town wants to make a deal with someone we want to sue,” Johnson said. “And that’s what we do.” Johnson knew he wanted to be a lawyer by the time he was 12. That’s when he was awestruck after watching Marvin Freeman, a lawyer and family friend who later became a Superior Court judge, argue in court. But after studying sociology and journalism at UC Berkeley, the Loyola High grad took a detour on those plans and founded the “Night Times,” a Bay Area newspaper. He said journalism, like law, had always appealed to him as a career. “In both areas, I like that you can take on large adversaries for the benefit of society,” he said. But after a dispute with a business partner a year later, Johnson left the news business and to pursue a law degree. “Law school was the single most important event and turning point in my life,” he said. “It sort of gave me a reason for being on the planet.” After graduating from Southwestern Law School in 1975, Johnson had stints in private practice and as a public defender. He went solo in 1978, and his big break came three years later when he started representing Yoko Ono and the estate of John Lennon. In 1984, he sued Earth, Wind & Fire’s publishing company in a separate case and won. Johnson represented Mark Sanders, a telephone psychic service employee, in a lawsuit filed against ABC in 1993. A reporter from the network had used a hidden camera and microphone to record conversations with Sanders at the service’s office as part of an investigative report. The 5-year case, which Johnson eventually won before the state Supreme Court, redefined news-gathering laws. The win also kick-started Johnson’s invasion-of-privacy and defamation practices – strange pursuits for a former newsman. “I do find it somewhat ironic that I became one of the lawyers who had significant success suing the media for right of privacy and defamation,” Johnson said. “But media has its problems like any other industry. I did a valid public service by keeping them on the straight and narrow.” That’s how Johnson views the majority of his cases: public services benefiting the little guys. The guild cases are a prime example. The money, known as foreign levies, came from European and South American countries that began collecting taxes in the 1980s on video rentals and cable retransmissions of movies and TV shows to compensate copyright holders. In 1991, the countries started sending the funds to the three guilds, which were supposed to disburse the money to union and non-union directors, writers and actors. But the guilds said some recipients were impossible to locate, and after nearly 15 years the unions were sitting on tens of millions of dollars in undistributed funds. Johnson learned about the money from Eric Hughes, a candidate for WGA president in 2003 and 2004. Hughes had gained access to the union’s financial records from a board member and, through his research, learned that the directors’ and actors’ unions were also holding large amounts of undistributed levies in trust. He passed along that information to Johnson, after which the lawyer asked current clients who fit the mold to serve as lead plaintiffs in each of the suits against the guilds. “He was a mastermind behind all these,” said law partner Doug Johnson, who is not related, and who also worked on the cases. The DGA case was the first to reach a settlement, the terms of which required the guild to do a full accounting of its foreign levy program and keep a database on its Web site where directors can claim their portion of the more than $10 million in undistributed funds. The 2008 settlement netted $399,538 in attorney awards and fees for Johnson’s firm, just short of the $400,000 the lawyers had requested for their 436 hours of work. Lead plaintiff William Webb was awarded a $15,000 incentive fee for his involvement in the case. West, also the judge from the DGA case, approved a similar settlement agreement with the WGA in September. Although the sum of the WGA’s undistributed levies was larger, the settlement arrangement involving a Web database was essentially the same as the DGA’s. Pending West’s approval, requested attorney fees in the WGA settlement range between $500,000 and $1.75 million. Johnson is also requesting that William Richert, a non-union screenwriter and one of the lead plaintiffs on the case, receive an incentive payment of $20,000. The other two lead plaintiffs, Maude Feil and Ann Jamison, would receive $3,500 each if approved. Johnson is also representing Ken Osmond, who played Eddie Haskell in “Leave it to Beaver,” in another class action against SAG involving $8 million in undistributed levy funds, which is set to follow the same path as the other two lawsuits. “I’m not going to say it was cookie cutter, but our work did become somewhat easier as each case developed,” said Johnson, adding that the lawsuits were necessary to dislodge the funds being held by the guilds. “The Number 1 goal in all these cases is to provide accountability and transparency, and I think we’ve gone a long way in achieving that end,” he said. “It was the only way.” On the weekends, Johnson pursues eclectic hobbies. Fifteen years ago, the opposite was true. Johnson was all work, all the time, and it was taking its toll on the wearied lawyer. That changed when a priest friend pulled the busy lawyer aside one day. “He told me to respect the Sabbath,” said Johnson, who was raised Catholic. “Hey, I’m down with that! One does not have to spend their entire life working.” Johnson’s most recent side project is recording and releasing albums under the stage name Trevor McShane, which was, until recently, a secret identity. As McShane, Johnson’s deep, twang-inflected vocals are laid over a bed of bluesy rock n’ roll – the kind one would expect to see married baby boomers dancing to after having three too many beers at their local bar and grill. But during the week, he insists that he’s all Johnson. “First and foremost, I practice law,” he said. “I don’t want to be perceived as someone not serious about being a lawyer – by clients, judges and opposing counsel. But I’m serious about getting my music out to the public.” With big plans this year – he’s releasing one new song for each week of 2010 – he said it would have been hard trying to keep his identities separate to fans and music critics. Besides, it probably would have been even more difficult to sell some of the dubious claims in McShane’s biography, which tells about the reclusive musician’s stints as a Tibetan monk-in-training, a merchant seaman, a graduate student in Bulgaria and a science professor at a small Midwestern university. It sounds a bit kooky, but McShane’s sort of an inside joke for Johnson, who laughs when talking about pursuing his other passion in life. “We’re only on this planet for a limited amount of time,” said Johnson. “I don’t want to be one of those people at the end of my life saying, I should have done this.”

POEM: THE VOCALIST

THE VOCALIST

From Maine to Vienna

The North Pole to the South

How come everybody says

I got such a big mouth?

Is it because I love him

And I’m so very proud?

I just want to tell the world

Wherever there’s a crowd

Once I had a wish

Then it all came true

My baby babies me

The only time he’s cruel

Is when he teases me

When we do you know what

Then I retaliate

He can’t get enough

So let the word go out

Magnificent it is

He really loves me

It can’t get better than this

Just give me a podium

Anywhere there is a stage

Let me swear my love to him

We’re hotter than a blaze

From his heart to mine

From ours to yours

Share the love we feel

Let your voice be heard

Go  ahead, be vocal

Spread the mighty word

Another Poem: The Dreamer & The Diplomat

THE DREAMER AND THE DIPLOMAT

The dreamer and the diplomat had their rendezvous

Their irregular tete a tete about the usual truth

That love was on the horizon

That it had never left

That there would not be an end to their romance

The protocol was the same as usual

Fresh morsels of info about business and family

Amidst smiles and knowing nods

So civilized to see these two

Facing reality, the risks and rewards

Of the simple pleasure of knowing that love exists unconditionally

The dreamer was a diplomat

And vice versa

It was not about age or time or money

But respect

She was his

He was hers

At that irregular rendevouz

Further words are superfluous

Tommy Emmanuel – outstanding musician

I saw Tommy Emmanuel in concert on February 8, 2010 at the Smothers Theater at Pepperdine University in Malibu.  Simply put, he is one of the finest musicians in the world, a virtuoso, and in his prime.

I started hearing about Tommy a few years ago and saw one of his concerts, whereupon I became hooked on him and his music. I’m fortunate to know him, and he is first class all the way, a consummate professional, and a gentleman, managed by the professional, diplomatic, and organized Gina Mendello. McCabes is one of the top small venues in Los Angeles, which was the scene of my first encounter with Tommy, who has now vaulted from 125 seats to 500 at Pepperdine, with two sold-out engagements.

Lively, energetic, charming, amusing, way beyond technically proficient to — “can you believe what he just played” — are a few of the attributes of Mr. Emmanuel. It’s him, alone, non-stop for two hours and one is never bored. The musical variety is broad, from “Over the Rainbow” to Beatles to originals, to the sounds of the Australian Bush. I kid you not, he duplicates the howl of the land with screeches and rhythmic drumming with the help of special effects he’s incorporated into his guitar. There you are in the midst of an Aboriginal ceremony.

He’s intriguing, in a special class, as extraordinary as a Marcel Marceau, who can hold attention, which is why the audience is so adoring. He earned the three standing ovations.

Tommy Emmanuel is in the same league as his heroes: Chet Atkins, Joe Pass,Django Reinhart, Wes Montgomery, Les Paul, and Merle Travis, to whom to which he pays musical tribute in his concerts, but he’s his own stylist, with a unique approach to the intricate fingering, finger-picking and lightning-fast runs up and down the fret board, which at times astonish. Atkins and he made record together, which alone puts Tommy in the legendary class, as Atkins is the master of country guitar and only recorded with peers. Atkins awarded him the status of Certified Guitar Player, which he shares with Jerry Reed, Steve Wariner and John Knowles.

Tommy is a major star Down Under and very popular in Europe and the upward trajectory and ultimate conquering of North America by him is inevitable.

It is so rare to see talent of this quality, breadth, and skill who also delivers in a melodic fashion that pleases all musical palates in such a variety of styles. Oh, and he’s witty and engaging when not playing, so the show rolls along smoothly when it’s time for Tommy and the audience to catch a collective breath.

You owe it to yourself to investigate and become entranced by Tommy, champion melody maker, a human Wonders of the World. Talent, hard-work and discipline are necessary elements for anyone rising to the top of a profession or discipline. They are clearly evident in Mr. Emmanuel, along with the love of what he does and of music, of accomplishment, of perfecting his craft. It all comes together, resulting in an experience that resonates and inspires us to do our best.

Tommy Emmanuel and I backstage

Tommy Emmanuel & I backstage

Tony Emmanuel, Guitar Legend and Certified Guitar Player and I backstage