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[00:00:02] My only complaint is that it's not a direct flight from Los Angeles to Milan.
[00:00:17] So anytime I travel, it always becomes a journey for a day to get from one place to the other.
[00:00:27] Like on Thursday I go to Miami to get on this, I'm playing on the Blue Cruise and it goes
[00:00:34] out of Miami.
[00:00:36] A year ago there was a direct flight from Milan to Miami and now I went to Bookett and nope,
[00:00:42] no more direct flight.
[00:00:43] I have to go through London.
[00:00:47] So yeah, that's the only downside of it.
[00:00:49] Otherwise in terms of when I'm here or there, you know, it's, you know, I find them to
[00:00:57] be complementary both places, one to the other.
[00:01:00] They're very different, but both work for me.
[00:01:05] You know, so.
[00:01:07] Complementary in what sense?
[00:01:08] Well, they're very different in terms of climate and in terms of, you know, my life in either
[00:01:21] places are very different.
[00:01:22] In LA, you know, I have many friends, you know, I have daughters and grandchildren
[00:01:28] there and, you know, I'm kind of like on the American time frame.
[00:01:35] And when I'm here, I have a lot more space and a lot more time during the day because
[00:01:42] everybody in America is asleep while I'm up.
[00:01:45] Because I'm basically nine hours ahead of LA, six hours ahead of New York.
[00:01:52] So I have a lot of time to, you know, daydream and write songs and go walks and read books
[00:02:00] and then usually about late in the afternoon is kind of when other stuff starts happening.
[00:02:09] So I basically get a full day in of just daydreaming, which I like to do.
[00:02:17] Are you a morning person generally?
[00:02:19] Not really.
[00:02:21] I mean, I probably wake up at seven and, you know, go from there.
[00:02:27] But but but not like a super early morning person.
[00:02:32] And I'm a really slow riser, you know, it's like so I wake up at seven and then
[00:02:37] I'll sit in bed and I'll look at emails and I'll read the news and I'll drink
[00:02:43] a couple of cups of coffee and, you know, you know, my my wife,
[00:02:53] who is Italian and who runs an art gallery.
[00:03:00] You know, she's up and out, you know, and I just kind of get up, but I don't get out.
[00:03:10] I kind of I kind of lollygag my way into my morning and work my way through,
[00:03:17] you know, some coffee and a shower and maybe a Pilates class and and then over to a piano
[00:03:25] or guitar or something like that.
[00:03:28] You know, I've been dealing with some some back problems over the past year and a
[00:03:34] colleague recommended Pilates.
[00:03:35] I was a little I was a little hesitant at first because I had tried yoga during the
[00:03:40] pandemic and didn't love it.
[00:03:42] But then I really like Pilates and I can't quite nail down why, but I've really
[00:03:47] enjoyed my time doing it.
[00:03:51] Yeah, Pilates is I've probably been doing it 10 years now.
[00:03:58] And it's a great way to stay limber, to, you know, stay kind of tone.
[00:04:09] And so, yeah, I love it as well.
[00:04:16] And, you know, I remember, you know, in the past,
[00:04:21] I kind of always, you know, like looked askance at Pilates, you know, be like,
[00:04:29] you know, like, OK, Pilates really.
[00:04:32] But but it's it's a great thing to do.
[00:04:37] And you can do it as you get older, you know, and you can get better.
[00:04:40] I still get better.
[00:04:41] I still get stronger, you know, and so, yeah, do it.
[00:04:47] It's good.
[00:04:48] What what tip to you in that direction?
[00:04:51] What finally won you over?
[00:04:53] Well, you know, I'm a bit of a thick head.
[00:04:59] You know, my late wife did Pilates for a number of years.
[00:05:06] And, you know, I had the whole, you know, I had the reformer in my house.
[00:05:11] You know, I had the Cadillac in my house.
[00:05:12] I had all the gear in my house and she was always on my case to do it.
[00:05:19] I was like, no, I'm not doing it.
[00:05:20] I'm not doing it, you know.
[00:05:22] And then, you know, life twists and turns.
[00:05:25] And, you know, I lose my wife.
[00:05:29] She died.
[00:05:30] She passes away.
[00:05:32] I have to reconfigure my life, figure out how do I navigate after being married
[00:05:39] for 32 years and who am I and where am I?
[00:05:42] And, you know, I meet another woman and, you know, she's big time in Pilates.
[00:05:49] It's not like you need to do Pilates.
[00:05:51] And I'm like, OK, I think I'll finally try it.
[00:05:54] And then, you know, I tried it and I'm a convert.
[00:05:57] The universe was kind of pointing you in that direction.
[00:05:59] It sounds like exactly.
[00:06:01] Exactly.
[00:06:02] So, you know, the universe will do that.
[00:06:06] It will.
[00:06:06] And it will repeatedly even if you try not to pay attention to it.
[00:06:09] Yeah.
[00:06:10] You use the phrase reconfigure my life, which, you know, I think is almost is understated.
[00:06:18] It would be in any situation where one loses a spouse.
[00:06:22] But you not only lost a spouse, but you, you know, you have these children.
[00:06:30] And she was really like the two of you were tied together so closely in professional terms
[00:06:37] as well.
[00:06:37] It just it sounds like there's a sense in which you kind of just had to completely start
[00:06:45] everything over.
[00:06:47] Yeah, I mean, it wasn't starting everything over because honestly, I had songwriting.
[00:06:57] You know, I mean, that's always been kind of like the soul of who I am.
[00:07:03] of who I am.
[00:07:04] And in that moment of being lost, it was a refuge.
[00:07:11] It was an outlet.
[00:07:12] It was a creative tool.
[00:07:15] And it was the door to my evolving of my life and career.
[00:07:25] So, you know, and, you know, and it's kind of always been that for me.
[00:07:33] I mean, it could be even in smaller situations where, you know, you feel off kilter for whatever
[00:07:42] reason for a few weeks and you're like, what's going on?
[00:07:45] You know, for me, it's always like when I get back to the instrument and I just
[00:07:50] start to sing and play.
[00:07:52] And I have an idea and all of a sudden I get this kind of like sigh of relief of like,
[00:07:59] okay, now I know who I am.
[00:08:01] You know, it just kind of centers me for everything.
[00:08:04] And so, you know, when Donna died, it became my instinctual place to go and it kind of
[00:08:16] showed me the way out and through.
[00:08:20] And, you know, and it gave me a lot of creative inspiration.
[00:08:27] It gave me a lot of real deep emotion and life experience to create out of.
[00:08:37] And it helped set the identity of who I was to be and to evolve into as an artist.
[00:08:45] So these last, you know, 12 years now that Donna's been gone,
[00:08:52] I've been on this journey as a solo artist, you know, singing my own songs and touring
[00:09:00] around and building an audience and growing and, you know, taking on different challenges
[00:09:08] and refining what I do.
[00:09:10] And, you know, so life is full, you know, and somewhere along the way, you
[00:09:18] try to figure out, you know, can I fall in love again?
[00:09:21] Should I, you know, wow, I could be alone.
[00:09:25] I hate being alone.
[00:09:26] You know, all this stuff is songs that I was able to write, all these challenges
[00:09:31] and all these emotions that I was dealing with.
[00:09:38] And then, yeah, then wow, you fall in love again.
[00:09:40] And you're like, wow.
[00:09:42] And then, you know, you could write a whole album of falling in love songs.
[00:09:45] And so, you know, that's kind of how it's been for me in this last part of my journey.
[00:09:59] Identity is a really interesting word in this context because there is a sense in
[00:10:06] which you were really discovering yourself not only personally but also musically
[00:10:10] because so much of your output was tied to her songs and songs that she performs.
[00:10:18] So there is a sense in which you really did have to figure out who you were creatively
[00:10:25] musically.
[00:10:26] Absolutely.
[00:10:27] You know, I mean, even personally, you know, it was almost like I didn't know
[00:10:35] who I was supposed to be because, you know, we were married.
[00:10:40] We were together for 35 years.
[00:10:42] So it was like who I was when I started my relationship with Donna and who I was
[00:10:52] when that ended.
[00:10:56] I was a completely different person but so I only had been the guy before and the guy
[00:11:01] that I was then.
[00:11:02] I didn't know who I was supposed to be now because I couldn't go back to being the guy
[00:11:10] who was single and in his 20s.
[00:11:14] That wouldn't have worked.
[00:11:15] You know, so I was like, okay, so what is this?
[00:11:19] You know, creatively, you know, so much of our life, as you said, was intertwined
[00:11:28] and so much of what I did was related to Donna and her career and our family, which was fine.
[00:11:38] You know, I did my first solo album in 1980.
[00:11:42] You know, I did four albums with the Brooklyn Dreams and then I did a solo album in 1980.
[00:11:49] That was also the same year I got married, that Donna and I got married.
[00:11:53] And it was at that point that I realized that there was no way I could maintain me trying to be a solo artist.
[00:12:02] Donna having the career that she was having, us having children to raise,
[00:12:09] maintaining a family, maintaining her life.
[00:12:12] I said, okay, I'm happy.
[00:12:17] I always wanted to be a songwriter.
[00:12:20] I can still write songs.
[00:12:21] I can write for Donna.
[00:12:22] I can write for other people.
[00:12:23] That's fine.
[00:12:25] And so I put, you know, the singer-songwriter solo guy down,
[00:12:31] not knowing whether or not I would ever pick him up again.
[00:12:36] And I kind of did in a sort of half-hearted way.
[00:12:41] You know, at some point in like the year before Donna got sick,
[00:12:47] she kept saying to me, okay, now it's your time.
[00:12:50] You know, the girls have grown.
[00:12:54] Now it's time for you to be you.
[00:12:56] And I'd be like, well, okay.
[00:12:57] I mean, what do you mean?
[00:12:59] And I started recording and not really having a sense of direction of
[00:13:09] who I really, what the core of what I was as an artist was.
[00:13:13] It was a little unclear, but I was searching.
[00:13:15] But once I hit this first album that I started writing when Donna got sick,
[00:13:21] I really broke it down to, you know, guitar and voice.
[00:13:25] And, you know, and because I just wanted it to be the solid foundation of guitar and voice.
[00:13:35] I didn't want any thrill to distract it, to dilute it.
[00:13:42] To, you know, I wanted to make sure that the song was solid and it had to stand on its own.
[00:13:49] And I had to be able to, as an artist, perform that song by myself.
[00:13:55] And so that was the concept of how I began it.
[00:13:58] And so in all the productions of the records that I've done since then,
[00:14:05] it's been an ongoing kind of, you know, evolution of production in terms of minimal
[00:14:13] and how much to add and what not to add.
[00:14:16] And this current album, Talking Ugly Truth, Telling Pretty Lies,
[00:14:21] is kind of like the evolution into me being, you know, secure enough
[00:14:29] in my identity as an artist to really dress it up in a more postmodern kind of production.
[00:14:41] And so that's kind of how I wound up here.
[00:14:45] Soterios What does postmodern mean in this context?
[00:14:48] You know, to me it's a contemporary production, you know, modern sounds,
[00:14:59] but at the same time it has a foundation in the past in terms of genres.
[00:15:15] It's contemporary production, but it still has a sense of tradition
[00:15:19] in what it's doing.
[00:15:20] Jono It strikes me too that whether consciously or unconsciously
[00:15:30] stripping things down to just a voice and a guitar is really sort of going in the
[00:15:37] opposite direction, you know.
[00:15:41] Famously, the work that you did with Georgi Rorotar, you know, in the disco era is very,
[00:15:47] in a lot of ways, is very maximalist.
[00:15:49] So it's almost as if this was a response to some of that early work.
[00:15:56] Soterios Oh, absolutely.
[00:16:02] I've been most of my life, you know, as a collaborator, you know, and
[00:16:09] you know, in collaborating, you, you know, play a different role.
[00:16:17] You know, when it came down to me by myself, that's why I think
[00:16:24] I felt like I had to build it from the ground up because,
[00:16:28] you know, when you're working with other people, you're compromising and you're
[00:16:32] acquiescing.
[00:16:34] You're serving, you know, a different purpose.
[00:16:37] You know, when you're writing a song, it's for another artist.
[00:16:40] It's being produced by a producer of that artist.
[00:16:45] So it's a different thing.
[00:16:50] You know, that's why, you know, in agreeing with you, that's kind of why I broke it down
[00:16:56] to starting from, you know, just the guitar.
[00:16:58] And that's why I'm saying now, now with the new record, it's evolved back into
[00:17:04] more of a production, you know, than when I first started.
[00:17:13] You know, because I feel like I'm secure enough, you know, in who I am as an artist now
[00:17:20] that I can have fun and do that again, you know, to do it more.
[00:17:24] Soterios Was there a fear initially putting yourself out there in that way and without
[00:17:29] that? One of the nice things about being in bands and, you know, having full music
[00:17:35] production is not necessarily you have a place to hide, but that you're not taking
[00:17:42] that everything doesn't necessarily fall on your shoulders.
[00:17:44] Michael You're absolutely right, you know, and I was hiding, you know, and I knew I
[00:17:52] was hiding. And so, you know, on the psychological side of all this, when I arrived at this place,
[00:18:01] you know, and I had to choose, well, do I go on with my life or do I curl up in a corner
[00:18:07] and just, you know, let it go? It was the fact that psychologically, I knew that I had been
[00:18:18] hiding all these years because it was easy and it was comfortable. And, but at the same time,
[00:18:26] I understood that I had this, you know, not to use a pompous word because I don't meet it in
[00:18:32] that way, but, you know, I felt I had this calling to be this guy. And I avoided it because
[00:18:40] I was afraid to do it by myself. I was afraid to sing on my own. I didn't want to bear all
[00:18:48] that weight. I didn't want to bear all the weight of, you know, and the truth of the matter is,
[00:18:57] I believe in looking back at myself is I probably wasn't even ready then. It took me all this time,
[00:19:08] you know, and, you know, we spoke a little bit about, you know, how life will do its thing
[00:19:14] with you earlier. You know, it took me all this time to where I got to this time where
[00:19:21] I was actually ready. You know, it was, you know, I almost could have said to myself,
[00:19:27] Bruce, it's now or never, you know, so you've avoided this all these years and now it's time
[00:19:34] to put yourself, actually put yourself on the line and, or not, you know, but I chose to,
[00:19:42] and I'm very glad that I did, you know, because as we, you know, can easily recognize, you know,
[00:19:49] a big part of life is facing your fears. As you said earlier, it wasn't exactly starting
[00:19:54] from scratch, but you know, perhaps there is a sense in which it was in that
[00:20:00] certainly you can't take for granted that there's going to be an audience there when
[00:20:04] he first sit out and do this. There was no audience. You know, I still don't have a
[00:20:09] really big audience. People, you know, I'm far from a household name. You know, again,
[00:20:16] I was always in collaboration and in service to another purpose. So in many ways it was
[00:20:24] starting from scratch. And but there again, I mean, it's why not? You know, you know,
[00:20:35] why not? It's the goal is, you know, my goal is to improve what I do, keep refining what I do,
[00:20:45] keep staying engaged with life, still responding to that engagement. And,
[00:20:53] you know, thus far I remain inspired. So, you know, and that's the core of it,
[00:21:03] and, you know, and then I also have this model of keep living, keep writing, you know, so,
[00:21:13] so far it's served me well. You owe it to yourself to set realistic expectations too. Like,
[00:21:19] for example, Donna Summer was a superstar when she was a she was a genre defining
[00:21:28] superstar. You have to you have to put your your expectations for success into perspective.
[00:21:38] Yeah, yeah. Well, absolutely. And that's why I'm saying my expectation of success is to keep
[00:21:48] improving, to keep refining my craft, to keep being inspired and responding emotionally and
[00:21:55] creatively. And the rest of the things will happen as they're supposed to happen. You know,
[00:22:08] those are things that you can't control. You know, a big part of many people's lives,
[00:22:17] especially artists, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of serendipity in success.
[00:22:27] You know, and, you know, the thing is, is that you have to show up, you have to do your job,
[00:22:33] you have to whatever but, you know, you also have to be lucky, you know, if for lack of a
[00:22:44] better word, you know, I mean, Donna was supremely talented. You know, she had amazing voice. She was,
[00:22:52] you know, a great entertainer, a great personality, a very empathetic person,
[00:22:59] you know, but she had a great team, you know, she, you know, Giorgio is great. Neil Bogart
[00:23:06] was a visionary, you know, there was so many elements that come into play with that kind of
[00:23:12] success where and there's, you know, and there's a synergy that happens when, you know,
[00:23:18] you can try and create the chemistry and you always do. But, you know, when it actually
[00:23:25] happens, it's something that is actually beyond you. And it's something that you're swept up in
[00:23:32] and you're just flying along in that moment. And, you know, so yeah,
[00:23:44] don't know where I was going but that's how I landed.
[00:23:46] I think you're spot on, you know, and this is something, something I talk to artists about a
[00:23:52] lot and I appreciate when they can recognize it in themselves that we almost need to
[00:23:57] destigmatize luck as, you know, we use luck as almost a bad word as though saying the word luck
[00:24:05] takes away from the talents that you have. If those talents aren't there,
[00:24:10] you're not going to have that success in the first place. So I like,
[00:24:16] I like that people can re-appropriate that and can appreciate that, that yeah, that you could
[00:24:22] also be the most talented person in the world and that things could just never quite
[00:24:27] hit right. Yeah, and that happens more often than not.
[00:24:33] You know, I know many, many talented people who, you know, for whatever reason
[00:24:42] don't get anywhere, you know, so... It's interesting because, you know, so much of
[00:24:48] this work that you're doing now, as you said, is really an effort to discover yourself and to
[00:24:54] almost have the second or third or whatever number of career that you're on at this point.
[00:24:59] But then going back and reconnecting with a song like Bad Girls, which, you know, was
[00:25:06] one of her signature songs, what was that experience like?
[00:25:12] How I do the song and how I started doing the song in my shows is I say that,
[00:25:23] you know, Bad Girls was a very big record. You know, it had great horn parts and it had
[00:25:29] great hooks and it had a great rhythm track. And it was a number one pop song and a number
[00:25:34] one R&B song and a number one dance song all around the world. But this song was written on
[00:25:40] an acoustic guitar just like this. And this is how we wrote it, you know? And so that's the
[00:25:48] essence of how I approached my version of Bad Girls. I just did it basically the way we wrote it.
[00:25:57] And, you know, and when I do it that way, it sheds a whole different light on the song.
[00:26:08] You know, it still has a rhythm, but the story of the song and the import of the song and the
[00:26:16] message of the song seems to resonate stronger than, you know, Donna's record because Donna's
[00:26:26] record was all about toot toot beep beep. And that was great. It's an amazing record.
[00:26:32] You know, and I'm not at all taking anything away from that record. That is a great record. But,
[00:26:44] you know, I'm just saying when I do it and I break it down to where, you know, what it was
[00:26:51] inspired from, and it's just the words and the guitar more or less, it has its own life
[00:27:00] and it also has its own resonance because as a song, it holds up. You know, and that's the thing.
[00:27:09] When Donna and I used to write songs, we would do two things. We would keep the music basic.
[00:27:19] In other words, it would be either I'd be on guitar or piano. And we would do the song
[00:27:27] slow. And so this way we could analyze every aspect of the song, every aspect of the lyric,
[00:27:35] every aspect of the melody. Is it holding up? Is it holding up? You know, and then, you know,
[00:27:41] you add a little rhythm to it and, you know, but you always want to come with the foundation
[00:27:46] of a strong song. That's really the most important thing. I've heard the sentiment echoed
[00:27:51] from a lot of musicians and sometimes there's a reason why cliches are cliches is that
[00:27:59] a great song is one that can be played on any instrument.
[00:28:04] Yeah, yeah. That's the thing. So, you know, and that also speaks to why I wanted to break it
[00:28:14] down in the beginning of Just the Guitar and the Voice, you know, so the song had to be
[00:28:18] able to hold up, you know, on its own. You know, I grew up in the 80s and 90s
[00:28:25] and I grew up in a time when I think disco was still a bad word for a lot of people.
[00:28:32] Like, you know, I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock and I think that's something that
[00:28:38] people have since come around to but that critics didn't appreciate at the time was that
[00:28:46] that the skeleton was always there. You know, a great song is a great song regardless of how much
[00:28:53] production is layered on top of it. Yeah, you know, and, you know, the disco bad rap,
[00:29:01] you know, it doesn't exist without some truth to it. You know, because of the
[00:29:14] the bigness, not the word I'm really looking for but the extravagance, let's say,
[00:29:19] of the production of the strings and the horns and the four on the floor and the,
[00:29:24] you know, and the bells and the whistles and all this stuff. There were many times where you
[00:29:30] had a song that wasn't so great, you know, and, you know, I think that, you know, that's something
[00:29:41] that, you know, Donna and I, you know, and Giorgio and Pete and everybody in that camp,
[00:29:49] you know, we all had made a commitment to wanting to write really great songs and record
[00:29:58] great songs, you know, whether it be MacArthur Park or whatever. I mean, you know, it's
[00:30:06] just to stick with the foundation of start with a great song and let's go from there. So
[00:30:12] I think that commitment was there but for Donna, but I think, you know,
[00:30:20] there were other disco songs that didn't have that, you know, methodology, let's say,
[00:30:26] but I think we could say of any genre. I'm sure there were punk songs that were trite and then
[00:30:33] there was, you know, others that were screaming the truth, you know.
[00:30:37] It's funny. I was talking to a friend of mine the other week, somebody who I talked to about
[00:30:42] music a lot and speaking of things that for whatever reason have fallen out of favor and
[00:30:47] just don't get the love that they deserve, I don't understand. I mean, I have a theory and
[00:30:52] we could talk about this, but largely I don't understand why Tommy James isn't regarded as
[00:31:02] just one of the great performers of the era. I mean, when you look down at
[00:31:08] the just great all time songs that he performed, I just don't understand why he's not
[00:31:13] on that short list for people. You know, look, I'm right there with you.
[00:31:20] I'm a big proponent of Tommy James should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
[00:31:28] I don't know what the answer to this question is, but first of all, one thing about Tommy
[00:31:39] that I recognize now because I spend a lot of time in Europe is that he's not famous in
[00:31:44] Europe. Oh, that's interesting because he was really in a lot of ways. He was one of those
[00:31:49] almost responses to the British invasion over here. Yes, yeah, but even in the UK,
[00:32:00] because I tour in the UK and sometimes I'll play tighter and tighter in my set.
[00:32:12] I'll be telling my story and I'll say, oh yeah, I was in a band, I had a hit record
[00:32:16] with the song, you know, and they don't know. I mean, they know Mony Mony. If I say Tommy James,
[00:32:25] they may or may not know. If I say Mony Mony, they go like, oh, and maybe that's
[00:32:28] because of Billy Idol. I mean, I'm verbalizing this now. I've never really verbalized it
[00:32:37] before because I never really thought about that, but that may be a reason why.
[00:32:41] But when you think about, I think we're alone now, Hank, even Hanky Panky, that's an early,
[00:32:51] sexy rock and roll 60s garage band song. I would say I think people know I think we're
[00:33:01] alone now, but for a similar reason why they might know Mony Mony, which is because of the
[00:33:05] Tiffany song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you got Crimson and Clover and they probably know it
[00:33:14] because of Joan Jett. Crystal Blue Persuasion was on Breaking Bad famously. Yeah, I mean,
[00:33:22] great and they're great records. They're great records. Tommy was, I always say he was my
[00:33:31] mentor. He was the first person to take me into a recording studio. The first records I saw being
[00:33:37] made was Crimson and Clover and that album. So I am forever indebted to him. He should be in
[00:33:50] the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And so maybe that's part of the reason why those are the
[00:34:00] things that I was saying. And also, Tommy is a very humble guy. He doesn't toot his own horn
[00:34:13] very well. He's nice as he can be. He's very gracious. He has a very cheerful personality,
[00:34:23] but his own sense of the ego and pride is
[00:34:32] not, it's really in a very humble place. And I have something but great things to say about
[00:34:41] him and great respect for him as an artist. And I hope that something changes in that
[00:34:48] awareness thing. Because things can change quickly. Like one little thing could happen and
[00:34:54] look at Tracy Chapman. Because this is a rare opportunity, I can bounce this off of you,
[00:34:58] but I'm curious to get your take on it. And I was thinking about this last week.
[00:35:04] I mentioned obviously the response to the British invasion, but on top of that,
[00:35:08] I think it's because I think in a way, him happening at the time that he did and then
[00:35:21] the world of music shifting so dramatically into like largely because of the Beatles,
[00:35:26] but shifting dramatically into the albums for albums versus singles.
[00:35:30] I think that had a big impact on his legacy.
[00:35:32] Yeah, it probably did. He was definitely caught in that window
[00:35:39] of where the bubble gum was the phrase that was used back then. It's bubble gum music.
[00:35:50] And then it became album rock. And he probably got caught in that window, as you're saying,
[00:36:00] and the perception of him at that moment was probably not as highly regarded
[00:36:18] as his music has stood the test of time. But I think you're exactly right. That was a very
[00:36:30] distinct shift right there at the late 60s into 1970 and 69. And he tried,
[00:36:42] and in many ways succeeded in hindsight. There's the long version of Princeton and
[00:36:48] Clover. There's that whole album where that Crystal Blue persuasion is also on, where
[00:36:55] I mean, he's producing in very cool experimental ways. And that was Tommy producing as well.
[00:37:12] Production work is always fascinating to me, especially for people who are also musicians and
[00:37:17] create their own music. It seems to me, I'm very much not a musician. I just talk to a lot of them,
[00:37:25] but it seems to me that the best producers are ones who give themselves up to the band that
[00:37:36] they're working with, that understand what makes the band work and then almost morph into
[00:37:42] that function. Yeah, well, I mean, yes, there are different kinds of...
[00:37:53] I guess I'm saying that as we were just discussing Georgi Muroder, which and he's
[00:37:57] obviously one of the best, but he very much had his own thing as well. So I take that back
[00:38:02] as such a concrete statement. Yeah, exactly. Because my mind went to Mot Lang, for the
[00:38:09] same reason that you're pointing out to Giorgio, but yeah. But there are different kinds of
[00:38:13] producers and there was Phil Ramon, who I thought was a great producer and he was somebody who
[00:38:27] shaped himself to the artist a little bit more than most. But yeah, production is an
[00:38:38] interesting thing. For me, as an artist, I don't know, I think this is maybe the sixth album
[00:38:48] that I've done in the last 10 years or something like that. And I've used a few different
[00:38:56] producers and although I don't collaborate with songwriting, or I haven't in these years,
[00:39:07] I do collaborate in terms of producing and I enjoy seeing what somebody else can bring to my
[00:39:21] song and my music and what I do. And on this most recent record, Ken Lewis
[00:39:29] is my first record with Ken and he brought a whole other energy to it, which I'm really happy with.
[00:39:47] You bring up something and it hadn't even occurred to me, but it makes a lot of sense that
[00:39:53] we were talking about these songs that you're writing before and that maybe there was a
[00:39:59] sense in which they can't necessarily be a pure expression of yourself because you're writing them
[00:40:05] for somebody else. But also, I hadn't taken into account that, I don't know, I may be wrong in
[00:40:12] this, but is it right to say that pretty much all of your music up until you really started
[00:40:17] doing solo stuff was, they were all co-writes? Well, not everything, but the majority of the
[00:40:29] success that I had was as the co-writer, put it that way. One of my favorite songs that I ever
[00:40:41] wrote wasn't a big hit song but it was a song that Donna cut and it was called I'm a Rainbow
[00:40:47] and there were a couple of songs, that song and I think Starting Over Again,
[00:40:56] which was a co-write with Donna that was a country hit for Dolly Parton.
[00:41:05] I look at those two songs as essentially Bruce's songs in that they kind of
[00:41:17] highlight my strength as a songwriter and were my strengths as a songwriter.
[00:41:26] But other than that, yeah, everything was co-write. The things that I did for the
[00:41:35] Jacksons and those were co-writes with Michael Amardian and Michael was a great producer and
[00:41:43] a great musician. So with him, frequently he would give me a track and I would just have to
[00:41:56] write to the track. I would get with Jermaine and try to understand what Jermaine was going
[00:42:02] on in his head or his emotion, get some understanding of who he was as a person and
[00:42:08] where and get some fuel to write some words that he could sing and feel like he related to them.
[00:42:21] But a song like Starting Over Again that Dolly did, that was a personal song. That was a song
[00:42:27] about the divorce of my parents and it was only because Donna decided to sing it on
[00:42:33] the Johnny Carson show one night that Dolly even heard the song and decided to record it.
[00:42:39] Otherwise, it might never have seen the light of day.
[00:42:42] Was that written to be a country song?
[00:42:47] No, it was just a Bruce song. It was a song I wrote on the piano.
[00:42:57] I'm not 100% on this philosophy but I think many songs can be dressed up
[00:43:13] in different genres and that's where production can really come into play.
[00:43:20] That's where production does very well. Production can influence the direction of a song
[00:43:27] very easily. Even Dolly's version of the song, if you listen to it,
[00:43:34] it doesn't really sound that country. It almost sounds like an adult contemporary
[00:43:40] production of that time. When I do it and I just do it on an acoustic guitar,
[00:43:51] it sounds like a singer-songwriter singing a song.
[00:43:57] This has probably been really interesting for you to watch unfold. Obviously, again,
[00:44:04] Beyoncé is one of those genre-defining superstars but that there was any surprise or any backlash
[00:44:10] to her recording a country album strikes me as very strange for a number of reasons.
[00:44:15] But one of which is I think that some of the work that you and Donna were doing definitely
[00:44:23] crossed over decades ago. Yes, there's another song on
[00:44:31] the Bad Girls album called On My Honor which very easily could be a country song.
[00:44:41] It was also interesting. A couple of weeks ago, I played at the Folk Alliance International
[00:44:49] Convention and I did starting over that night. I introed it because this was basically the week
[00:44:56] that Beyoncé's song went number one on the country chart and everybody was still talking
[00:45:05] about Tracy Chapman. Tracy Chapman may have been the first black female to write a number one
[00:45:22] country song by herself but Donna Summer and I co-wrote a number one country song for Dolly
[00:45:29] Parton 30 years ago. In some ways, Donna broke that barrier as well.
[00:45:40] One of those things is you describing Tommy James as being gracious and humble where
[00:45:48] I wonder if there's just a certain extent to which it's like, yeah, she broke those barriers
[00:45:54] but you can't let that take away from the work that people are doing now and the fact that
[00:46:01] those barriers still very much need to be broken. Absolutely. I continued my thought in
[00:46:10] introducing the song was I said, change. I said my point in saying this is that change happens
[00:46:18] slowly until it actually happens and it breaks and then it's sudden. You don't notice that
[00:46:25] things are changing because it's like a simmering that's going on and it's like all these atoms
[00:46:31] are moving around and then all of a sudden, boom, this is the explosion. There have been
[00:46:36] seeds of that for a long, long time. We can officially say that it's happened when
[00:46:43] these things no longer feel notable. Exactly.