Welcome to a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. Hello and welcome to the show. I hope you’re enjoying a fabulous week.
Of course, you remember the song Sister Golden Hair, I Need You, Daisy Jane. And I’m playing my crazy game. Does she really love me? I think she does.
Like the stars above me, I know because the sky is bright and everything’s alright. They’re all songs that bring back a lifetime of memories. Well, my guest today is the man who wrote and sang them, America co-founder, Jerry Beckley.
With his latest solo album called Merciful, Jerry now turns his attention to time, memories and making every moment count. In this episode, we catch up on this new chapter in Jerry Beckley’s life, as well as the remarkable journey that brought him here. Hello, how are you? Good, how are you? Good to see you again.
Thank you and you too. You butterfly flitting from continent to continent. I’m bi-hemispherical.
Lucky you. It’s the plan. I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but as you know, I’m stepping back from the road.
I certainly did my time, did 53 straight years, but there was no part of it that was like the 54th year is going to be the winner, you know, and stuff. And I just felt my voice was starting to go and I just didn’t want it to be a series of diminishing returns, you know. And to his credit, my partner, Dewey, is out there and he’s doing a fantastic job and they’re selling out and standing ovations and stuff.
So I’m very proud of him carrying the flag. On the first part of the journey, I was looking at all the life. There were plants and birds and rocks and things, there was sand and hills and rain.
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz and the sky with no cloud. The heat was hot and the ground was dry, but the air was full of sound. I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.
It felt good to be out of the rain. In the desert, you can remember your name because there ain’t no one more to give you no pain. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la And the story it told of a river that flowed made me sad to think it was dead You see, I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name It felt good to be out of the rain In the desert, you can’t remember your name Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain It must have been difficult for you though, letting go of your baby, there’s an ego component there that goes, I’ve built this thing up all these years and now I’m stepping away.
How did you reconcile that? To tell you the truth, I gave it a lot of thought over the years. There used to be a cliche that I quoted quite often, which was Mick Jagger saying, well, I can’t really be singing Satisfaction when I’m 40, can I? And I thought even at the time, had Mick or anybody of that stature took a look at Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard or whatever, you would see they were still out there playing. Who said that you can’t? And so it’s a dynamic that you don’t address until you get there.
In my case, I was watching it very closely. I think it’s a little uncomfortable to see people, you know, sitting down because they can’t, you know, and again, I don’t mean to tell anybody how to do their life. I just know how what I felt.
And I just wanted to make sure that everybody’s memory was as good as it could be. And frankly, the last decade, you know, of the band is as good or better than it ever was. So I’m really proud of what we built it to.
Satisfaction, I can’t get no satisfaction, yes I try, I try, I try, I try, I can’t get no, I say. I did have an interesting thing where I was asked to get up with the Killers a few years ago and their friends and it really went fantastic. But as I left the stage, it wasn’t a part of me that went, oh, I really miss this.
You know, well, I guess you get to that point, don’t you? And your maturity, you’ve made the successes that you have and time for other things has become you. Not always. You know, I mean, there’s a reason why Paul is out at 80 some years old and Mick and everything.
It’s because they want to be. They don’t obviously don’t need the money. They just get an immense amount of pleasure.
They’re bringing joy. You know, it’s a personal call. You have to make.
But it’s like anybody, we tend to associate ourselves and identify ourselves with the work that we do. And when you detach from that work, even for a short period, you’d have to say, well, who am I now? What what do I do now? Right. I get it.
And you know what that is? That is actually more the case. There’s more people on that side of the fence than on my side, so to speak. Most of my musician friends have said to me, oh, I don’t know what I would do.
You know, it’s what I do. I every I get on a plane every other day in my life. I’m very busy and happily married.
I have healthy kids at 71 or whatever it was. I just felt I would like a decade, you know, to enjoy this and just not be racing from gate to gate at O’Hare Airport, you know, to try connection. But for others, they don’t know what to do with themselves.
And I understand that, you know, if you’ve been successful and had thousands of people, you know, cheering you every night, it’s kind of hard to give up. Well, I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed that I set my sights on Monday and I got myself undressed. I ain’t ready for the altar, but I do agree there’s times when a woman sure can be a friend of mine.
Well, I keep on thinking about you, sister golden hair surprise, and I just can’t live without you. Can’t you see it in my eyes? I’ve been one poor, poorest partner, and I’ve been too, too hard to find, but it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind. Will you meet me in the air? Will you meet me in the air? Will you love me just a little? Just enough to show you care? Well, I tried to fake it.
I don’t mind saying I just can’t make it. You don’t miss the applause? No, no, I don’t. And I’m also quite busy.
I just finished scoring a short fashion film. I do these solo records, which allow me to keep writing and recording. I’m in pre-production on a documentary that I’m directing and a podcast.
So there’s all kinds of stuff. Ah, that’s fantastic. If anything, it’s a case of, now that I’ve freed up that time in my life and my calendar, to just be careful not to then fill it with a bunch more crap, you know, like that was not the point.
Yeah, no, I think that’s really good advice for all of us. No, absolutely. It’s going well.
Excellent. I want to talk to you about the new solo record. Do you still get up and play with that little band in the Sydney pub weekly? I do every week.
We’re on a three-week break because Roy Valentine, who I back, I’m just kind of the bass player in this band, and he’s a dear friend. And I don’t know if you know about Roy, but he’s the son of James Valentine, who we just lost recently. Absolutely.
And James is just an institution in Australian media. And I used to do his show, and so that’s how I got doing this pub gig. So we’re just incredibly saddened with the loss of James.
But I get to keep his memory alive and play every weekend. Roy is on a three-week hike. Now, hike is apparently a term I’m not that familiar with, but I’m hoping he’s going to, he’ll be fine and be back and we’ll pick it up.
But I do every Thursday that they are available. How amazing. Yeah, they do a great, it’s a great show.
And, you know, I think I might have said, I have my rules. I’d like no rehearsal. I don’t want to do rehearsal.
I’m just going to wing it every week. But I seem to be holding my own. It’s a whole different culture here, isn’t it, in Australia, where young bands can still play in pubs and get paid for it.
Someone was telling me, I spoke to the other day, that in the old days in America, if you wanted to play at the Troubadour or somewhere, often the bands themselves had to pay in order to play. Pay to play. Yeah, true.
That was a real thing. And also, as you might know, Dewey, Dan and I, we grew up in London where pubs were a big thing. There were a lot of pubs that were known for their live music.
So we were going up playing pubs, get on the M1 and go up north, and Brinsley Schwartz and, you know, Jerry Rafferty. Just a lot. It was an incredibly lovely time.
John Martin was always busy, you know, playing these gigs. And we’d often cross paths or share the bill. It was lovely.
Oh, I can’t take another heartache. Oh, you say you’re my friend, but I am at my wit’s end. You say your love is bona fide, but that don’t coincide with the things that you do.
When I ask you to be nice, you say, you gotta be true to be kind in the right measure. True to be kind, that’s a very good sign. True to be kind means that I love you, baby.
You gotta be true to be kind. Whoa! That’s how you all got your chops up, didn’t you? Yeah, sure. In our case, it was a pretty quick education, because it blew up pretty quick for us, as you know.
But I had great memories of, you know, you play up in Manchester or Bristol or somewhere, and you’re coming down the M1, and everybody would meet at this truck stop called the Blue Boar and have your kind of 1am English breakfast. Junk food. Yeah, junk food or whatever, you know, on your way home.
It was a lot of fun. Right. So, Jerry, you have now released a new solo album, it’s called Merciful.
There’s 13 songs on it, and it’s kind of a different one for you, because it’s reflective and it talks about the way the world is at the moment. It’s really deep and meaningful. Can you tell us a little more about it? Thank you.
You know, it’s a challenge. I always try to make the analogy, there’s a great old Brian Wilson line, I think it’s, I’m bugged at my old man. You know, it’s an old Beach Boys song.
I’m bugged at my old man. I’m bugged at my old man. Cause he’s making me stay in my room.
Darn my dad. I came in a little late. And my old man, he just blew his mind.
Blew it bad. Why did he sell my surfboard? He cut off my hair last night in my sleep. It’s fantastic and funny and great, but you can’t really be singing I’m bugged at my old man in your 40s or 50s or God forbid later.
So the challenge is, how do you make structures and popular songs within reason? I know that Paul Simon wrestled with this. He did a lovely thing called Seven Songs recently. That was him trying to put how he is now in his life.
Now, I don’t want it to just be a constant. There’s 13 songs about looking back over my shoulder. You know, I mean, it’s, you gotta try and get that balance right.
I try and throw in a few cover songs so that it isn’t just 12, 13 out of the same mind with the same voice, you know, try and mix it up. I’d like to think I know what makes a good album. Whether or not I’m successful every time, but variety, pacing, you know, all of these things.
But those messages are inevitably going to include more looking back than looking forward. It’s just where we stand, you know, at the moment. Oh, to be sad, or to be lost in a crowd, and to be found, and turn around laughing, to laugh while you know, you leave just a shadow, like trains forever leaving stations.
Merciful are these stories we spin. You’re not altogether happy with the way the world is currently, are you? Well, I don’t know who could be. I mean, I’d like to find the sun in every scenario.
But sometimes, I mean, we’ve been so fortunate to live in a semi-war-free existence in our Western world. You know, Doudan and I just barely got out of the Vietnam era, you know, without getting called up and stuff. And so, it would be wrong to just take that, if you read your history and study, you know, that those are rare moments in life, and that fantastic that we happen to experience them.
But my parents were war kids, you know. My dad flew in two wars. He was retired by Vietnam.
But so, we’ve been very fortunate. And, you know, there are dark moments in this, as we well know. There’s lovely moments, but there’s also dark ones, too.
Yeah. We’ve certainly been a very lucky generation. I don’t know that many of us actually appreciate the fact that we grew up beyond the Vietnam War and haven’t seen anything like what we’re seeing today.
It was all just peace, love, fun. Yeah, and I’m all right, Jack, you know. Yeah, that’s fine.
But also, now that with 24-hour news and cable and satellite, it’s impossible, if you want to engage, it’s impossible to ignore the horrors of Ukraine and Iran. Of course. Iran.
I mean, there’s always… Take your pick. There’s always… Yeah, absolutely. Totally different times.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Has the rest from touring had an impact on your voice? I mean, this album, your voice sounds perfect on it, so obviously not doing it every night has indeed helped.
It has helped. Aging doesn’t help. I mean, I really trashed it over the years and it was going downhill, but you’re right, if you give a breather.
But let me remind you that when you’re making a record, you’ve got multiple takes, you know. You can do, let me do that line again. You don’t get to do that on stage.
So I use all the tricks to just try and pull it off. Some of the vocals are actually from maybe a demo that I did 8 or 10 years ago. A monster exposed himself from underground Burning his face as he ran through the town Hoping the patrons just don’t hear a sound Hard court and harmony just ain’t the same My black and their green playing some games I’ve got all these pictures, just need the frames These are the things that you never do Feeding the wife on the phone I think I’ve done a good job with new vocals and old vocals, so it’s not like, oh, this is the new Jer and this is the old Jer.
Right, yeah, because a lot of these have come out of your vault, haven’t they? They’re songs that you’ve written over the years and have never recorded. They always do. I mean, I’ve got a big vault, a big barrel, as I call it.
And I always said, I wrote, I come from the school, if you got to write 10 to get two. So every time you pick two, there’s eight sitting there that are not necessarily crap. You know, you’ve got to they might need a bridge or something, you know.
So thank God Jeff Larson, who’s now my collaborator and not only co-co-writer and co-producer, but he has been our archivist and he’ll call me up and say, I found this thing. It’s a beautiful chorus. I don’t know what you want to do with it.
And we’d say, you know, you’re right. That needs that needs a verse. You know, that kind of thing.
What is the collaborative process between you and Jeff look like? How do you write together? It’s pretty constant, to be honest. You know, people are amazed when I say that even after 54 years of professional, that Dewey and I speak or text almost every day. Well, it’s likewise with Jeff.
Jeff, if you follow his particular career, he’s incredibly prolific guy. And so we do an album, you know, there was an album recently of Jeff and Jer, where it was like where we co-sang things. And we thought this is kind of a more of a Larkins and Messina kind of a project.
You say you never hurt someone, so that’s okay. You’re living in another world so far away. Where you gonna run to now, when you’re older than you? Riding like a lonesome cowboy, you were born to run.
Why don’t you come on? Somewhere in the dark of night, you’re wide awake. Any piece of an afterthought, you can’t escape. But what about the here and now, boy? When your cover’s low, lonesome cowboy.
Into the great unknown, why don’t you come on home? We stay busy. I’d like to think that I do other things, but I’m in my studio as we speak, and I’m working on a few things. I’m always, I’m in here every day.
So do you catch up with Jeff in person or you do it like across the phone? Mostly Zoom and stuff, because I’m here for months. And when I get to LA, he lives in San Diego, so he’s not. But he will come up at least one of my visits, and we make sure that our hard drives are matching and everything.
Everybody has the same data, so to speak. But he will almost daily send me, I’ve got this ukulele thing, do you mind playing some bass or piano on it? Are you kidding? So a lot of the stuff you do out of your own home studio, don’t you? I can’t believe that on a lot of these tracks, you’ve played most of the instruments. Yeah, I’m adequate at most things, you know.
And if it truly is something like, you know, this really needs, I’ve got a lovely string players in Nashville that I use, and that I will lay it out. And if I really think this really needs the pros. They used to call it in the movie MASH, they called themselves the pros from Dover.
So sometimes I call in the pros from Dover. Nick Lane, my dear friend, does a lot of the horns. There’s a lot of horns on this album, believe it or not.
Going right. From a moment in time, rest of my days, I’m beginning to think, see through the waves, I feel it coming. Something’s on the verge of going right.
When I walk through the door, I won’t turn out the lights. When I pull across the door, reaching for the lights. Spending all this time, getting right, getting right.
Yeah. My heart ain’t got no sunshine. I can’t tell where I’m going.
I could go anywhere, make any sound. I could dance till the sun comes back around. I hear it coming.
Something’s on the verge of going right. I hear it coming. Something’s on the verge of going right.
There’s even a collaboration with Graham Nash singing vocals. Yeah, isn’t that lovely? Yeah, tell me about that. Well, we were, my wife and I go to the opera house on occasion when there’s some lovely things.
And we had a year or so go back to back where Graham was playing one night and we went with our friends Wilco who were in town because they were playing the next night. So we all sat and watched Graham. And the next night we went to see Wilco and there was Graham sitting with us in the guest seating, you know.
And I’d known Graham for years and he said, and he had done a wonderful show the night before and he said, Jerry, if ever you need anything, which, fantastic, but he had never offered that before, you know. And I thought, be careful, you know. And I had cut Norwegian wood and it was not for the album.
I’m always messing with cover songs. And so Jeff and I had been batting around the idea of maybe an album of cover material and stuff. And I had it and I thought, oh, that would be perfect for Graham.
And I sent it to him and within a day he wrote right back and he said, oh, I’d love to do this. So we ended up with a lovely version with Graham, the legend Graham, singing on it. And I played it for Kirk at Blue Elan.
And he said, oh, Jerry, I’d love to include this. So I then said, oh, I’m happy to. I think it means we should take Monster out or, you know, don’t want the album to be too long.
And he said, oh, I hate to lose Monster. Is it OK to just include it? So it got added. So there was a third or fourth cover then, I guess, in this album.
I once had a girl Or should I say She once had me She showed me her room Isn’t it good Norwegian wood She asked me to stay And she told me to sit anywhere So I looked around And I noticed there wasn’t a chair I sat on a rug Biding my time Drinking her wine We talked until two And then she said It’s time for bed Are all the tracks on this album like all your babies? You can’t pick between them? Or do you have a couple of top favourites? It varies. I listen, you know, and to be honest, sometimes I’ll go back and I’ll listen to like Horizontal Fall or some of my earlier solo stuff and I go, that’s pretty good. I can’t really say that I’m beating it every time, you know, but I do the best I can.
I tend to repeat myself sometimes and that’s a blessing and a curse. Sting famously when he was approached with that. You know, that’s a lot like this other song.
He said, well, how many times did Monet paint the lilies? It’s a good answer. But I try not to repeat myself. And again, when you’re doing 12 songs with one guy singing and one guy basically writing, that’s the challenge to make an album a listenable experience, you know, and I think I’ve got it about right.
Most people, I think, are overcritical of their own performances. How do you manage to remain objective and kind of give it the thumbs up when you know something’s good? Yeah, I think I’m probably guilty of that too. There are just as many times I have realised, if you don’t mind me saying that, but you’ll get the theme here.
When we very first started, it wasn’t but within a year where I had met some of the Beatles, all of the Beach Boys, Jimmy Webb. I was very close with Harry Nilsson. All of my idols were now my friends.
And it was a miracle, first of all, and unbelievably inspiring. But it was also, whether you wanted it or not, a direct confronting of and I’ll never quite be there, you know, meaning that you’re surrounded by all of these geniuses, you know. So it was a blessing and a curse.
I am critical. There are times when I’ll listen and go, that could have been better. But there are other times when I listen and I’m actually quite pleased with it.
I listen to, there’s a lullaby at the very end of this album called Angel. It’s a very simple song with just piano and a flugel and I think it’s a euphonium horn. And I listen to it and I go, it’s about perfect.
I mean, it was a one-take vocal. It really sounds personal, you know. And I think, I don’t think I could have done that any better.
It’s good. Angel, my sweet angel Close your eyes Angel, you fallen angel We are lions If you try just a little bit harder That might be all it’ll take Turn now to Try just a little bit harder That might be all it’ll take You know how they say behind every good man is a great woman. Do you bounce all the songs off your wife? You know, I don’t bounce the songs off her.
She’s a very busy lady. She has a, what I call a real job. And I don’t want to go, get up here, I’ve got to play you something.
But she does come up and listen and she knows. I mean, she does. Because whether you like it or not, I mean, the studio, the door is open.
So even if they’re all down, and I have stepdaughters here in Sydney, so they’re listening whether they want to or not. But I am my own critic, I think, you know. I think it’s got to please me first.
And then, of course, Jeff. Jeff helps me a great deal with lyrics. If I can’t be bothered on the third verse or something, he’ll just come up with something really lovely, you know.
And all the stuff that you have written in the past that’s sitting in that vault, does it surprise you that it does still hold up today? I think that it was a gift. I wasn’t planning to give myself this gift. But very often you go to even our greatest writers, the Paul Simons and the Paul McCartneys, and there is an arc to their creativity.
And it generally is their 20s, maybe into their 30s. Jimmy Webb wrote, you know, most of his masterpieces within a five-year window. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t incredible songs still.
But the reason I mention this is that if you’ve got 20 or so sitting in the vault from that era, it’s kind of lovely to go back and go, this came from that same mind, you know, that was writing The Sister or Daisy Jane or something, you know, as opposed to I’m trying to recreate it. Chewing on a piece of grass Walking down the road Tell me, how long you gonna stay here, Joe? Some people say This town don’t look good in snow You don’t care, I know Venture a highway in the sunshine Where the days are longer The nights are stronger than moonshine You’re gonna go, I know Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa Cos the free wind is blowing through your hair And the days surround your daylight care Seasons crying no despair Alligator lizards in the air In the air Falling star, waiting for the early train Sorry boy, but I’ve been hit by purple rain You can always change your name How many have you got sitting in the vault still? There’s a lot, there’s still a lot of stuff. They’re not all recorded, but there’s never a shortage.
No, it’s not. If anything, I mean, obviously, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Ryan Adams. Ryan Adams is an incredibly prolific songwriter.
The joke is, he worked on one of our albums years ago, and we joked that he probably wrote five songs in the cab on the way over. That guy does like three albums a year. I don’t want to get to that point.
I really don’t. I would love to do more scoring. I really enjoyed working on this little 20-minute film.
That was a lot of fun. And it freed me up a little bit from three-minute pop-up songs. Yeah, right.
So how does the music come to you? Do you hear it in your head in the middle of the night and then get up and take notes, or you sit yourself down in the studio and concentrate and play? Yeah, always. But unfortunately, that first one is a very real. I’m sure you’ve heard Keith Richards’ tape, Satisfaction, and the tape, you’d listen to it in the morning, couldn’t remember it.
I’ve had that happen quite often. My wife tells a story. We were in Paris staying at a friend of ours’ lovely place, and he has a piano there.
And two in the morning, I was awoke with this song called Amnesia, and it was waking me up, and it was like, I thought, oh, there’s a part of me that goes, oh, dear, I’m going to have to put this down. You know, it’s too good to just let it rip. Because whenever you say, oh, I’ll pick it up in the morning, it is four o’clock.
It’s gone.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Sometimes I scribble it on my iPhone, or I will dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.
But in this case, I was wrestling with… There were two ways that the chords could develop, and I could hear them in my head. I don’t need an instrument, but I needed to just kind of let me play them both. So, two in the morning, and so she wakes up, and I’m not in bed, and she goes looking for me, and I’m writing this song.
And it really came out lovely. It’s one of the best things I’ve done recently. It was on the last album.
Some things are hard to remember. Some things are hard to forget. Why is it all that the things we recall are the ones that we truly regret? You were afraid of the water.
I was afraid of the dark. Now we’re alone at the end of the phone. Constantly missing our partner.
Egypt. Amnesia. Where are you now, babe? Amnesia.
Amnesia. Amnesia. Where are you hiding now? I can’t forget her.
God knows I have tried. All of my letters written in sand at the edge of the tide. Amnesia.
Amnesia. Where are you now, babe? Amnesia. This song’s called Amnesia, and it’s about, you know, some things are hard to remember.
Some things are hard to forget. Why is it all that the things we recall are the ones that we truly regret? I thought, oh, this is really a good idea. Amnesia, where are you now that I need you? Like, let’s treat, rather than it be a curse, let’s think of maybe, you know, when amnesia can be a gift, you know.
Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. And I just thought, oh, there’s a song here.
So, anyway. Yeah, you’ve always been known for meaningful lyrics and beautiful melodies, and I guess nothing has changed with this album. Either Merciful is full of meaningful lyrics.
People can sit with it and really get a lot out of it. I, you know, I think that’s the value of a pop song. I used to lecture at Loyola, and I would play students.
I would play the wonderful Paul Simon composition America, which is a 3-4, but let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortune together. And I’d play it for the class and say, you know, what is unique about this? And they’d all kind of wrestle with ideas. Nobody would usually pick up that there’s not a rhyme in it.
The entire song is prose, and I use it as an example of, you know, when you are engaged and when you’re enthralled in a lyric. And I’ve said that to many a well-known songwriter, and you can see, I freeze them, and they go through, and they go, oh, you’re right. People don’t realize it.
Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together. I’ve got some real estate here in my bag. So we bought a pack of cigarettes, and Mrs. Wagner pies, and walked off to look for America.
We are sick as we’re born in a greyhound in Pittsburgh. Michigan seems like a dream to me now. It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw.
I’ve come to look for America. Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces. She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy.
I said be careful, his bowtie is really a camera. A good lyric to me is, in every song, you know, I’m a doo-wop fan like anybody else, and some of the best and the biggest hits are down dooby doo, down, down, comma, comma, down. You know, they don’t have to mean a damn thing.
A Horse With No Name is such a lovely example for all of its cryptic, surreal, Dolly-esque imagery. The chorus is la-la-la-la-la-la, you know. So a little of this, a little of that, and hopefully you get the mix right.
And only you can tell at the end of the song whether you think you’ve got it right or not. Well, you’re the judge. And frankly, I prefer that to, you know, writing with a committee of eight or ten people.
I don’t go for that. I think that’s the problem with contemporary music now. It’s done by committee.
I think there’s just too many cooks in the kitchen with most of these things. And I think that’s why we’re not getting the true classics. I might be wrong.
I’d like to think that, you know, whatever the lights, the weekend song that’s been streamed to billions, I’d like to think that’s going to be a classic, like classics from my era. Yeah, but you highly doubt it, don’t you? I often ask people, you know, who are interviewers going to chat to in the next 50 years who’ve done songs today, and I can’t think of very many people that are going to be classics. You know, I was following the wedding, Taylor and Kelsey’s wedding in the Met, and I just think she’s a lovely role model, and she’s managed this immense, almost immeasurable success with just grace and everything.
But to be honest, I can’t tell you that I can really sing Taylor Swift songs. I just don’t know them. I guarantee my kids, my younger kids could maybe, you know, but I can sing you every Beatles song ever written and every Simon and Garfunkel, you know.
I’m of a different era. You are, and your kids, you say, can sing the Taylor Swift songs now, and I guess it’ll be them that are interviewing, looking back to interview Taylor Swift in, you know, 20, 30, 40 years’ time to say this was a classic hit. And I think perhaps that is because music is the most important to us when we’re that age, right? What is it about that? Well, you’re coming of age, there’s puberty, there’s all of these elements, your first boyfriend, all of these pivotal things in life, you moving out to your first apartment, these incredible, therefore songs that you’re listening to are glued to those memories.
Whereas you get a little bit older and kids and, oh my God, I’m late for the soccer practice or whatever. It slips down in a priority and it can’t be helped. It doesn’t mean, for example, I will, I will add to that discussion that my kids come up and say, hey, when I told, you know, my friend that you, you were the guys that did Ventura Highway or Sister Goldner or something, they’re amazed.
Those songs have stood the test of time and songs like Ventura and Sister and stuff, they’re showing up in commercials and things. And I’m very proud of that. I think it’s a sign that we did it right.
You know, we did it well, and they have stood the test of time. I never believed in things that I couldn’t see I said if I can’t feel it, then how could it be No, no magic could happen to me Then I saw you, I couldn’t believe it You took my heart, I couldn’t retrieve it Said to myself, what’s it all about Now I know there can be no doubt You can do magic You can have anything that you desire Magic And you know you’re the one who can put out the fire You know darn well when you cast your spell You will get your way when you hypnotize With your eyes, a heart of stone can turn to clay Hopefully these ones that you’re doing now, because your demographic that you want to appeal to is not necessarily your kids’ age audience. It’s the people that have grown up with you and with America and with Sister Golden Hair, all of those songs.
These songs are very much in the Jerry Beckley style. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think so.
I joke about our nine fans, that I think our nine fans will like it. But we got to know these people that would come to every show. There’s a guy named Tom that the last year, I think I did 50 shows, he came to all 50.
So you get to know these people and it’s really an amazing story and journey and stuff. So I’m very proud of it all. But yes, that’s the point.
Am I still representative of what am I trying to say? And if I’m not, I’ve got other things. I’m a bit of a photographer. I go out and shoot every morning and stuff.
So there’s other outlets. Absolutely, but in the meantime, you’re leaving very powerful messages for audiences of any age that will listen to this music. Thank you.
It’s always nice to hear. Reach one, you might have reached ten. That’s exactly right.
And you’re obviously a great believer in the power of music, that it can change attitudes, change mindsets, really influence people. I just think that, you know, again, with the Killers, my friend Brandon, and you go see a Killers show and they do Mr. Brightside and you see 20,000 people. Now, that was 20 or so years past our prime, you know.
But boy, does it mean the world to see that go nuts. Coming out of my cage and I’ve been doing just fine. God, I gotta look down because I want it all.
It started out with a kiss, had an in and out night dance. It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss. Now I’m falling asleep and she’s calling a cab while he’s having a smoke and she’s taking a drag.
Now they’re going to bed and my stomach is sick and it’s all in my head but she’s touching his chest. Now he takes off. He sounds a little silly but I’m proud of him.
He’s such a lovely dude and a great front man and stuff. But when you see a show like that you go, oh, music still means something to people, you know. It’s great.
And that’s really the most important thing, isn’t it? Jerry, we’re very proud of you, of all your successes and in particular this latest solo album called Merciful. It’s a wonderful album and it certainly won’t be your last given the number of songs that still lie in the vault. I don’t think so.
But I do it for myself. I do it because I’m a creative guy and I just really enjoy it. It’s an outlet for me.
I’ve done it all my life in the same way that I love to read. I read all the time. I’m a photographer.
I love to shoot. These things are still a big part of my life. But I have been so fortunate in that I’ve had this working relationship with Kirk and Bluelon because, you know, these things all might just end up on hard drives of like I don’t really know what to do.
We can all put our own records out on Spotify and I get lovely reviews and there’s enough of a reward in my head and heart for me to keep at it. Thank you for listening, as always. See you next time.
Bye. Bye. Bye.
Bye. Bye. Bye.
Bye. Great chatting with you. Talk to you again, I’m sure.
Bye now. Bye.