Welcome to a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. Hello my friends, thanks so much for joining me. Another really special guest for you today.
It’s original Eagles member, Bernie Leadon, who was perhaps the group’s most underrated and valuable player from 1972 through 1975, as he alternated between vocals, guitar, banjo and mandolin, as well as lending a hand with songwriting. Bernie has a brand new album out, so we took the opportunity to have a chat about his incredibly stellar music career. He tells me about how he was born to make music and about some of the experiences he’s had as a country rock pioneer, playing with groups like Hearts and Flowers and Dillard and Clark, before joining the Flying Burrito Brothers.
He was also signed as a member of Linda Ronstadt’s backing band, where he met the guitarist singer Glenn Fry, as well as the drummer singer Don Henley. The Bernie Leiden era of the Eagles lasted for a total of four albums, and saw Bernie write hits like this one. Bernie also shares the reasons he left the Eagles to settle in Nashville, where he’s been in high demand ever since, as a session musician, producer and songwriter.
He also talks about his latest release, his first in 20 years, it’s called Too Late to Be Cool. I love that title. First off, though, let’s back up a bit and find out how this talented musician got his start.
When my mother was in high school in Minnesota, she was a great piano player already and she could sight read. So in the Dayton’s department store at that time, a hit song might be that people bought a piece of sheet music, the written out piano stave and the lyrics. So they had a sheet music department and people would bring my mother, a teenager, a piece of sheet music to say, hey, I think maybe I like this song.
Would you play it for me to see if I want to buy this piece of sheet music? So she could do that. So she was a great, she had a great feel as a piano player. So fast forward to she gets married, she’s pregnant with me.
My dad was teaching in university and she was at home with me. There was no television, not much radio, and she had not much to do during the day. So she would play this wonderful old piano that her mother had given her when she was pregnant with me with her stomach pressed against the keyboard.
So I was being programmed in utero with this wonderful music. Then when I grew up, I mean, after I was born, I would crawl among the piano legs, working the pedals. Then I’d go to church and she played the organ in church.
My dad sang. Then I took piano lessons at six and I studied trombone at 11 and more piano, was in a marching band, played trombone. And then when I was about 13, discovered folk music, guitar and banjo and started ditching school at 14 and going to a guitar shop instead of class.
And the rest is history. Because I ran into, San Diego was a Navy town and a lot of ex-Navy people and people from the southern states in the U.S. that stayed in San Diego because of the weather after they were in service in the Navy. And so they all played bluegrass and folk music.
And so there was a guitar shop that I hung out at. And Chris Hillman, who was the bass player in the Birds a little bit later, he was a mandolin player in the bluegrass group. So I just, I just was immersed in it from that point.
I read recently that Tom Petty said he decided when he was 12 years old, he was going to do this for a living. No plan B. And I was like the same thing. No plan B. I’m going to play, play music for a living.
Started playing in clubs when I was 15, non-alcohol clubs. My parents let me. Then we moved to North Florida, where I met Don Felder, who was an Eagles, and I met Tom Petty, who was in junior high and had a band with my brother, Tom.
And that turned into Mud Crutch. You guys have had the album Mud Crutch down there by Petty? Absolutely. In a little park by the side of the road.
I could have had the Army, I could have had the Navy. But no, I had to go for a mobile home. Yes, I gave it all to you, babe.
All to you and that trailer to me. I kept up my interest. I kept up my payments.
She never said goodbye. I never asked why. Man, we used to dance, too.
Leather and skin. Oh, she used to look so good at times. Yes, I gave it all to you, babe.
Wet and bruised and that trailer to me. That was the Petty band at the time. And then I got an offer to come to L.A. in 67 when I was about 20 to join a group on Capitol Records, Hearts and Flowers, to make their second album.
And that producer produced Linda Ronstadt. And so I started playing on her records. So it’s really a matter of being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people.
Yeah. And so if I look at the story we just told backwards from now, I can see that it was this person introduced me to that one, you know, and it was a continuum from that guy, Larry Murray, who invited me to Capitol in 67. So that led to Ronstadt, which led to the Eagles.
And in between, I was in the Flying Burrito Brothers. So music was your life right from the get-go. In fact, even before the get-go.
Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? Yeah. And you would have received an awful lot of encouragement from your mom as well, her having been so into music, too.
So there were never any challenges to this career that you’d chosen for yourself and no other options. There were no challenges. My dad, who was a college professor of aerospace, thought perhaps I should go to college to study music.
And I said, Dad, at the time, the problem was they only trained orchestral people in college music departments. They didn’t have a pop, rock, you know, anything other than classical music back then. So I said, that’s not what I want to study.
I need to go to Hollywood and get my feet on the ground and learn on the job, you know. This is what I did. You know, I lost a friend the other day.
She said she’d like to stay, but she’s on her way. And I can’t believe that she’s leaving me. And it’s been so long, so long since she’s been here.
Well, it’s happened, oh, but I never dreamed. Happened, oh, all the same, oh, see. And it can’t be true what she tried to do, be the death of me.
It just can’t, just can’t be. One thing certainly led to another. When you say that you’d become a member of Linda Ronstadt’s backing band, that band actually included Glenn Frey and Don Henley at the time, didn’t it? It did a couple of years later, maybe a year or two later, because I was busy with the Flying Burrito Brothers.
I kind of was in Linda’s band and the Flying Burrito Brothers at the same time. And eventually that became impossible because both bands got busier. And so I dropped out of Linda’s band.
And at some point, Henley and Frey joined it. And then Graham Parsons left the Burritos, and I decided I was going to leave. And somebody told me Don and Glenn were putting a band together.
Why don’t I call them? So I did. We got together one afternoon and decided we’re going to be a band. As you do.
What was the experience like with Burrito Brothers? How was it for you? The Burrito Brothers was a different kettle of fish, really. So I was on their second album. By then they’d spent their advance money, and they spent it on nudie suits, you know, those sparkly suits that were on the first album.
So they’d already spent their money on that. And so we were kind of a workaday band at that point in Hollywood. We didn’t have a lot of money.
Graham was a trust fund baby, but I wasn’t independently wealthy. I didn’t have an endowment. So I had work sessions, and eventually Graham quit to go hang out with the Stones in the south of France.
And he invited me to come along, and I said, well, Graham, I don’t have a trust fund. So I’m not going to go over there and expect to be fed by everybody. So I’m going to stay here and work.
But it’s good I did, because a year later I left the burritos and discovered at the right time to join the Eagles. Graceless lady You know who I am You know I can’t let you Slide through my hands Wild horses Couldn’t drag me away Wild, wild horses Couldn’t drag me away He didn’t offer to pay for your trip? No, I don’t think after he paid for his own drugs, he really had much left over. It certainly was the time, wasn’t it? Everyone was into it.
So you join the guys and you form the Eagles. You said that that just came up one day, let’s form a band. And of course, then you added ex-Poco bassist Randy Meisner into it to round it out to a four.
How does that just happen? You go, yeah, okay, let’s do it. And then what happens next? It wasn’t myself that made the initial decision, right? So Hindley and Fry were in Linda’s band and they decided they wanted to be their own bands. So the two of them committed to one another and they had already gotten Meisner.
So I was actually the one that rounded it out to four. But anyway, we were in a rehearsal hall one day. We played a bunch of songs and we decided, yeah, this sounds good.
And Glenn Fry already was in the David Geffen management office because he’d been signed with J.D. Souder. They were a duo. Long Branch Penny was still in there.
Where I’ve been, who don’t know And what I’ve got, baby, don’t show Won’t try to teach you how Don’t talk now Don’t talk ghosts Don’t talk sin Don’t talk dust Don’t talk no man Don’t talk rules Don’t talk vows Don’t talk now Geffen was wanting to keep J.D. Souder but not Glenn Fry. So Glenn and Don decided to form a band, kind of quick-like. And they got Meisner and then they found me and they wanted to get it going so they could go into the Geffen office and say, we’re a band.
Do you want us or not? Which we did. We literally said that to David Geffen. He came to one rehearsal and said, OK, yeah.
It was rather easier to get signed that thing. It was. But was the idea behind the Eagles to kind of popularize that Burrito Brothers country rock style? Not exactly.
We had a simpler business plan. So what I’ve realized lately is not only was I all in for this music career thing, but each of those guys were. They had all come to town in a different band.
The Eagles were my fourth band in town. So everybody had been through working with people that didn’t want to do it or couldn’t do it. And we were all looking for consistency, people who were also all in.
But we also realized you had to have the business side vary together. So you needed the best manager, the best record label, the best producer. You needed a whole batch of really good songs.
And we had three other songwriters near us, Jackson Brown, J.D. Souther, and Jack Timpson, who contributed to the first album. So we had good songs. We could all sing and play.
We had a good manager, a good label, a good producer. So we had all the pieces that you needed to succeed.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. But we all studied what other people had done and how they either succeeded or did not succeed and what was missing and what was present and so we knew what you had to have.
And so we set out to get all those things. And then our business plan was literally we wanted it all. We wanted to be rich, famous, successful and have the admiration of our peers.
In that order? Not necessarily. But we did achieve that, which is pretty remarkable. music I’m trying to loosen my load I got seven women on my mind Four that want to hold me Two that want to stone me One says she’s a friend of mine Take it easy Take it easy Don’t let the sound of your own wheels Drive you crazy Light it up while you still can Don’t even try to understand Just find a place to make your stand Take it easy music You were quite unique in terms of having that business plan all set out because there’d been so many artists in that day that just went for it without considering any of those bits that you just spoke about.
So I guess you all learnt from past mistakes. Other people’s, our own and other people’s past mistakes. Yeah.
Did it start off with a big bang for you? What happened when you first got together then? You start writing together? Tell me the process. Okay, so it all happened really fast because I told you we decided in one day and then Henley and Fry came down that night or that week to hear me play banjo in a folk club in Hollywood. And Henley really liked banjo and bluegrass so that kind of clinched it.
But here’s the other thing I was going to say about the composition of the band. We were all either decent or very good singers. We all understood harmony.
And actually Glen Johns passed on the band twice. Once in Colorado and he came to L.A. to hear us again and he passed again like, hey, you’re very nice people but I’m not going to make this record. And the second time just before he left to go to lunch and he had invited us to lunch.
I said, hey, before we go to lunch, would you just listen to us sing this acapella thing with one acoustic guitar. It was like an old folk song, Fair and Tender Ladies, but we had a four-part vocal arrangement. And we sang that for him in the room with our heads all closed where the blend was really great.
And he went, aha, stop the presses, you know. Because what he heard was the vocal blend sound. And if you think about all the different styles that the Eagles did, the consistent thing is the vocal blend.
My daddy was a handsome devil He had a chain five miles long From every link a heart did dangle For every mate he loved in Rome He called it a vocal stamp, you know, like. But a group has to have something original. And the one thing we had that was very original was that blend of voices.
Four singers, that’s pretty rare. Even to have three. Most groups are not vocal groups, but the truth is the Eagles are a vocal group who happen to play country rock or rock or R&B or whatever, you know.
Or in one case, beachies, disco. Like, One of These Nights is kind of a beachies disco song. One of these nights One of these crazy old nights Been searching for the God I’ve been searching for an angel in white Of course, the Eagles stuff always featured the harmonies.
How did you slot into your voices? Did everybody just accept their part Was there bustling amongst you? I want to go this level. I want to go that level. I want to take the lead.
How did that work? Well, actually, that’s another really interesting question because people have natural vocal ranges. So I’m a baritone, meaning in the male voices, I’m near the bottom. In the bottom quarter, it’s a third or half or something.
And Randy Meiser was a true tenor up on top. Henley could sing on top. All of us could strain and do it falsetto or something, but you had a couple people that were kind of in the middle, Henley and Fry, and they both ended up singing most of the leads.
And both I and Randy did sing leads, but when we sang together, I was naturally on the bottom, and Meiser was naturally on top. And the key to a great vocal blend is everybody singing relaxed in their range. If you have four people that are all in the same range, you can’t really do the four-part harmony thing and sound, somebody’s going to be strained.
Yeah. Was there jostling for lead singing position, or that just came naturally too? Some of that was connected to the songwriting. I mean, in some cases, not, because take it to the limit, Randy was a songwriter, but Henley and Fry, on the History Tour, they said that they wrote it with and for Randy Meiser.
So we did write for one another too, to some degree. And to some degree, somebody would be handed a song, like, hey, why don’t you write a song, like this or something, because we always wanted to have one or two songs by everybody singing lead. But Henley and Fry were writing and singing most of the hits by the second and third album, so then that became self-reinforcing.
And yes, of course there was competition. Yes, brother Why don’t you come to your senses You’ve been out riding fences For so long now Oh, you’re a hard one But I know that you’ve got your reasons These things that are pleasing you Can hurt you somehow Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds, boy She’ll beat you if she’s able You know the queen of hearts Is always your best bet Now it seems to me some fine things Have been laid upon your table But you only want the ones That you can’t get Desperado Oh, you ain’t getting no young Your pain and your hunger They’re driving you home And freedom, oh, freedom Well, that’s just simple talking Your prison is walking Through this world all alone What was that songwriting crisis like? Did you all sit down together to write? Or did you pair off? There’s a song I’m in rehearsal right now for a show and there’s a song that we’re doing called Hollywood Walls, on maybe the third album. And my brother Tom and I wrote that song with a different set of lyrics.
And I showed it to Hindley and Fry and they rewrote the song, a new set of lyrics, except they kept the first line. It’s springtime and the acacias are blooming. And they rewrote the rest of it.
And it’s really kind of a precursor to the Hotel California thematically, you know, about California captures you and it’s dangerous and all that. It’s a cool song though. It’s a waltz.
So four of us wrote that. My brother and I wrote the original song and then Hindley and Fry rewrote it so there were four writers. So to get up to four writers, you might have something like that happen.
Like there’s an original song and then you rewrite it. Yeah, right. If I wrote a song and somebody else changed it, I know I’d be really pissed off about the change of lyrics.
Did you respect their prowess enough to go, right, yeah, okay, I like what you’ve done here? Yeah, yeah, and you might change your mind after you’ve got a large check. Yeah, you might be right about that. There’s pain and time And the occasion’s okay Southern California We’ll see you one more day We ran and business is good Birds are singing As I drift away She looks a number year older From too many lovers Who used her to make me Some nights Before she looks like a muse She’s always willing To hold me She can learn this dance She can’t be forseen Learn how to love her With all of her thoughts She gave more than she’s taken I’ll go down to end The Hollywood boys How were you living it? You said that you grew up quite modestly and all of a sudden you are in the money.
How did that change your life? I didn’t allow it to change it much, you know? I mean, so, I mean, I’m not, I wasn’t exactly working class. My dad was a college professor, a graduate college professor, although he was in school when I was young, getting his PhD. But it was the hippie time and we were, I was living up in Topanga Canyon, which was actually quite rural and I won’t say semi-developed, but let’s just say it wasn’t, it wasn’t Beverly Hills, that’s for sure.
The houses there were kind of shacks, they’d all been built in the 1920s. It was a fun bohemian area with horses and goats and interesting people, writers and musicians, you know. So it was a fun place to live and we were near the beach and up in the mountains and so, and we were young.
What else do you want? Yeah, yeah, what else do you want? But you said earlier that you’d all had the mouse to set yourselves up with that business plan to learn from others’ mistakes and make sure that you had all the elements into forming a successful group. What about in terms of when that money came in? Were you experienced enough? Were you guided well enough to actually plan what you did with your money or was it just going on hedonistic pursuits? Well, we were given, I’ll say, a business manager, which is another element in at least the American music business. At the level where you have a major record label deal, you know, and you have a good manager, you will have a business manager.
They get five percent of gross, but they make sure that you’re putting money in a retirement account, you know, that you have credit cards, that gives them an itemized invoice every month of all the stuff and they could code it, this is deductible, that’s not, you know, so they were a huge help in making sure we didn’t spend every dime we got. You’re lucky. And good tax planning, you know, but I was thrifty enough that, and I didn’t get a chunk of money until like the fourth or last year I was in the band, so I knew enough to not spend it and I knew enough to not buy stupid things, but I bought real estate and I bought collectible instruments and things that had real value and appreciated over time, so I was smart to do that.
Yeah, so you were with the Eagles over four albums, 72’s Self-Titled, 73’s Desperado, 74’s On the Border and 75’s One of These Nights. You’ve played on most of the group’s biggest hits. Audiences went completely mental for the Eagles.
Did you just take that in your stride? How was the experience? Yeah, believe it or not, I kind of did. The thing is the band blew up so fast, but the Beatles blew up to like some, they launched into some, you know, beyond the atmosphere or something. The Eagles were much more workaday band, we were kind of an anonymous group, we weren’t the celebrated personalities of the Beatles, you know, and we were kind of a faceless group in a lot of ways.
But the last show I did with them was Anaheim Stadium, which was a baseball stadium. I think there were 45,000 people there that day. So it was kind of a shock to stop, you know, having gotten off at that point.
But it went from driving around in a station wagon opening for Yes or Procol Heron, British groups, to headlining Anaheim Stadium in three and a half years. Well I heard some people talking just the other day And they said you were gonna put me on a shelf Got some news for you true And then you’ll have to eat your lunch all by yourself And I feel it’s all I will see I expect it’s all No matter that you owe me I guess you felt like you had the stars It was just a lot. We outed a member and it just got very crazy.
And cocaine showed up in my life, which warps anybody’s perspective And so I was actually happy to go at that point. And I literally went to the beach because I started working professionally at 15 And I missed some of my teenage years, so when I left the Eagles I went surfing for two years
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. You said that the Eagles were a faceless group.
Why was that? We weren’t built up by the media or the manager to be individual celebrities like the Beatles were. Mind you, they came earlier and the Beatles were the first such thing that had ever happened, right? So the Eagles were taking that pop band format, but it had become all professionalized by then. When the Beatles did it, they didn’t even have big PA systems that could do it.
Nobody could hear them at Shea Stadium when they played in New York. So by the time of the Eagles, the PA systems were really great and you could hear fabulous sound from the stage. What I meant by faceless is we weren’t celebrities by ourselves.
You weren’t, because in most bands, the lead singer is absolutely recognizable and a personality in his or her own right. I mean, I’m sure that you could walk down the street and nobody would recognize you, as was the case probably with the other guys as well. You were more musicians’ musicians.
Yeah. Glenn Frey eventually became an actor. He acted with Tom Cruise in some film and did a TV show, Miami Vice.
So he became more recognizable and wanted to be at that point, maybe around 1980. But I don’t know that Henley did. Well, Henley became a solo artist too, but I didn’t have to worry about it.
I’d left the band. I’d kind of left it all behind. Yeah.
While you were there, though, you wrote some amazing songs. Which was your favorite? I’m not sure. I mean, right now, I’m very happy that I was involved in Hollywood Waltz because I’m singing it for the show and quite like it.
I don’t know. My Man was written about Graham Parsons because we were in the middle of starting our third album and he passed away suddenly from an overdose at 26. So I like that one.
And what can you say? Just go along till they turn out the lights. There’s nothing we can do to fight it. No man’s got it made till he’s far beyond the pain.
We who must remain go on living just the same. Obviously, Bernie is still writing today because that’s where we’re heading to this new album. So you went to the beach and went surfing for a couple of years after you left them.
It sounds like it was a great idea leaving because you saved yourself from all the perils that surrounded the band at the time. Yeah. But then you started missing music again.
Yeah, periodically. I mean, I think it was actually it’s a good business plan to walk away from it periodically because like many people, I chose music because I loved it. I wanted to make it my career.
But people often will tell you that they chose a profession because they loved it. And then they immersed into it for 40 years plus straight and they grew to not love it so much. So I mean, but music is very important to humans.
And I did want to keep my love for it. So stepping aside, I worked in a church, played at church services, different kind of experience. And then I did other things other than music, too.
Like I joined a group of people who run, operate vintage rail maintenance of way equipment, which are small carts with cabs that run on the railroad. So I’ve done that all over North America. How did you feel about the Eagles replacing you with Joe Walsh? I was a little surprised, but Joe had done a lot of shows with us when I was in the band.
Often he would open for us and then he’d come and sit in and do Rocky Mountain Way and I’d play steel guitar on it. So I was really familiar with Joe and I thought, well, that makes perfect sense. Plus, back to the business, they had the same manager.
So the manager just went, oh, plug these two things together. Simplify his life, you know. So I think it worked out great.
I love Joe. Was there ever a time that you regretted your decision? To watch them go on and have more success and for you to be doing your own thing. Did you regret it at any point? So here’s my joke about that.
So my son asked me that once when he was about 15. And I said, well, son, if I hadn’t left when I did, I probably wouldn’t have met your mother and you wouldn’t be here. And he said, good answer, Dad.
He’s got to be awfully proud of you, Bernie. I wouldn’t think he is. Yeah, he tells me so.
Do you also believe that our day was the best day for music? Music being a universal language and a spiritual language and something that’s a necessity for humans to live, really, music is. So there’s a cycle to everything. I mean, rock and roll is how old now? 80 years old.
So the styles rotate around maybe every 30 years or 40 years. I don’t know. But, you know, stuff comes back in style.
And we recorded all this analogue, not digital. So it sounds a little different. We recorded everybody in the same room at the same time on analogue tape.
And so you have to make decisions in the present moment, not defer until later. So we made the whole album in about three and a half weeks and mixed it in half a week. So that’s really fast for today.
You’re talking about Too Late To Be Cool, the new album? Yeah. I love the title. Did you come up with that? I did, yeah.
It’s not too late to be cool, is it? Please tell me it’s not. No, it’s not. Actually, it’s kind of a joke.
It’s about two things. One is so I know the exact moment I stopped being cool is when my son was born. And he couldn’t tell me right away.
But by the time he was about 13, he did tell me that I wasn’t cool. He was cool. I went, you’re right.
But now he thinks I’m cool again. See? Everything old is new again. Yeah, exactly.
So tell me a little bit about Too Late To Be Cool. Yeah, so the genesis probably was when I was out with a band in 2013 to 2015. And I was playing a lot and started writing more.
And realized I had a lot of recording gear, old stuff. I wanted to put it in a building. Set it up properly.
Took three years to get started. It took four years to build it. Took a couple years to break it in.
Meanwhile, I was writing songs because I had to have something to record, right? Then last year, Glen Johns called up and said, hey, maybe I should come over. We’ll see what’s going on. Came over to help me sort it out at the studio, you know, like acoustically.
So he came over and we did five songs in about eight days. And he agreed to come back. So I got some friends of mine who were session guys to come in and play.
And it just was a lot of fun. It went very well. And we had 100 songs and then pared it down to 30 and then recorded 15 and put 11 on the record.
Right. You’ve maintained this friendship with Glen Johns for many, many years. And it was him, wasn’t it, that had hired you to play with lots of other people, including The Who and Clapton, The Faces, Joe Cocker.
He’d been responsible for quite a portion of your career. Yeah, he liked my rhythm guitar playing, so he would hire me to come in and provide whatever was needed, you know, because I have a lot of what I call colour instruments, you know, mandolins and steel guitars and dobros and different things. So you can kind of use those instruments to paint extra bits around a recording, you know.
You’re often called the quiet architect behind some of America’s most iconic music, and I guess that’s exactly the reason that you’ve just described. Yeah. Nancy Griffith, Linda Ronstadt again, Emmylou Harris.
I did a lot of projects with Glen through the years. I don’t want your lonely mansions With a tear in every room All I want’s the love you promised Beneath the halo moon But you think I should be happy With your money and your fame And have a second sorrow While you play your cheeky game Silver thread and golden needles Cannot mend this heart of mine And I dare not drown my sorrows In the wonder of your eyes You can’t buy my love with money Cos I’m never worth that kind Silver thread and golden needles Cannot mend Another high point for you would have been co-writing Witchy Woman and saying where that soared to. Yeah, that was interesting.
That was one of the first songs that the band wrote. I already had the music to it. I knew it was probably pretty good because some professional musicians I knew had said, oh, that’s a good riff.
But Henley wrote all the words. So I say, you know, don’t blame Witchy Woman on me. It was he that dated her, not me.
I won’t even ask you who that was because I know you won’t tell me. I have no idea. You’ll have to ask Don.
Raven hair and ruby lips Sparks fly from her fingertips Echoed voices in the night She’s a restless spirit on an endless flight Ooh, Witchy Woman See how high she flies Ooh, Witchy Woman She got the moon in her eyes Alice fell down in the night Dancing shadows and firelight Crazy left in another room And she drove herself to madness with a silver spoon Ooh, Witchy Woman See how high she flies Lyrics were always written about things that you saw and felt around you, weren’t they? I mean, that’s where everyone draws their inspiration from. Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure.
What have you drawn inspiration from for this latest album? Well, whatever’s going on around me. I mean, I haven’t been one to write most songs about love. I remember when I went to L.A. in 67 to start working at Capitol.
I pick up Billboard magazine for the chart. You know, I read them all. And the titles were Love, Love, Love.
I love love. What about love? Love was in the title of every song. And I was like, God, isn’t there anything else to write about? So I guess I decided maybe somebody should write about trees and water and the moon.
I mean, I don’t know. So there are some songs on this to be cool that are about love. But one is the reverse thing.
It says love is not a zero-sum game. But it means love is infinite. But instead of saying that, which is kind of twinkie, I said love is not a zero-sum game.
So if love is not so lovely today She took your love and left you a game Don’t go searching for somebody to blame There’s always more love from whence it came And there always is a lesson to explain We chose a path of fortune and fame One will always meet oneself yet again The next time around the refrain Because love That was a tricky way to do a love song. And then the song’s about running away from things, Coast Highway, and trying to get far away from you. There’s kind of a cool song.
It’s a jazz acoustic song. It’s called Everyone’s Quirky. One of the lines says, But we should dance in the kitchen Even if dinner is late That was based on my wife doesn’t think she can dance.
So at one time she was making dinner And I just said, Come here, just let me hold you like we’re dancing. Okay, now just sway back and forth. Can you feel the rhythm now? And so we didn’t move any feet, but we were dancing according to our own criteria.
Can she cook better than she dances? Yes. Everyone’s quirky And a little bit strange But I’d rather be quirky Than be boring and damn straight I can see that you’re quirky And a student of fate Would you dance in the kitchen Even if dinner is late We can dance to the music of Ella and Frank We can sway to a song And make it a take to the bank Bernie, I love this album and congratulations on it again. Is there stuff still left on your bucket list or have you ticked all the boxes now? Have I ticked all the boxes? Far from it, ma’am.
Great. Just goes to show that it’s not too late to be cool at all. Oh, thank you.
That’s very kind. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Pleasure talking with you. Fabulous chat. Thank you, ma’am.
Bye. It’s just a beautiful day You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye Beautiful day Oh, baby, any day that you’re gone away It’s a beautiful day