In The Studio with Redbeard

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  • Pat Benatar- Precious Time 45th Anniversary

    Pat Benatar- Precious Time 45th Anniversary

    One of the blessings that comes with maturity is the confidence to tell the unvarnished truth, and in my classic rock interview to mark  her #1-selling third album Precious Time, Pat Benatar makes a series of eyebrow-raising revelations here In the Studio.

    “It went platinum (1,000,000 sales) in thirteen days,” Pat Benatar states matter-of-factly about her explosive third album Precious Time, while she and hubby/musical director Neil Giraldo reminisce In the Studio. It headed rapidly to the top-selling perch in America by August 1981. There are some powerful perennials on her best-charting collection, including the timeless tortured love rockers “Promises in the Dark” and “Fire and Ice”. No doubt delivered with complete conviction, Pat was just attempting to rebound from a bad first marriage as she was falling in love with her new guitar player. But the real story wasn’t between the sheets.

    “You gotta understand, I was twenty-seven years old. I came off a few years of a very bad relationship, was around a lot of girlfriends who went through hell with (abusive) men. You have to understand that I grew up with the Women’s Movement. I was ready to stretch and flex. I was happenin’ ! (chuckles) So I would inflict serious injury if a guy gave me a lot of crap.” When husband Neil Giraldo recoils in mock horror, Pat quickly adds,”But I’ve mellowed, you see. But I’ve learned to put the glove on the fist. Except I always think that I’m big!” she blurted out in laughter,”I always think that I’m big, I do! When you’re a little person, when you got pushed around on the playground, that makes you into something else that big people don’t have to deal with. And it wasn’t limited to men, it was people in general.”

    It is important at this point to remind you of just how much the business of pop music has changed over the Precious Time of forty-five summers since Pat, identified by the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock’n’Roll  as “the most popular female rocker in the Eighties”, earned that accolade. “That was when we were doing twelve, even fourteen months (touring). During In the Heat of the Night  we did fourteen months in a row. It was nuts. But that was old way. That’s what you did. There was no MTV. You had to expose what you were doing to everybody and that’s how you did it. I look back on it nowadays and I think, ‘Oh man, that purple zebra leotard. What was I thinking ?!” According to Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, those who were supposedly on her management and record company team chose sexploitation as a business plan. “Redbeard, you gotta understand, in ’81 the record company was airbrushing ( her photos) ,” Neil says exasperatedly,”They were airbrushing…”

    “My clothes off !” Benatar blurts out.

    “You’re talking about management and the record company,” Giraldo continued,”that she really couldn’t do anything! We were trying to make records, and they were telling us what we can and can’t do, and would play both ends against the middle.”

    “What happened was that I had a record company and a management group who refused to be open-minded,” Pat pointed out.”It was a constant battle with them. I was already gone (figuratively) by the time this record came out. By the time this came out, I was already moving to another place. Except that they weren’t letting me. And at that time they still had control, they had contractual control. I didn’t have a choice at that time. And that was when I said, ‘You can do anything you want, but you can’t make me make records. And if you don’t let me make the kinds of records that I want to make, I WON”T make them anymore.” –Redbeard

  • Genesis- Invisible Touch @40- Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, Phil Collins

    Genesis- Invisible Touch @40- Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, Phil Collins

    The fortieth anniversary of Genesis’ biggest album in their long fifty year+ career, Invisible Touch  (worldwide sales estimated at 15,000,000) has arrived, so we convened Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, and Phil Collins here In the Studio  to discuss the blockbuster sales behind “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”, “Land of Confusion”, “In Too Deep”, “Throwing It All Away”, and “Invisible Touch”.

    Between 1980 and 1986, the British trio Genesis released a series of four consecutive hit albums, each more successful than its predecessor by as many as five times, which include 1981’s Abacab  and 1986’s Invisible Touch. Because drummer/singer/songwriter Phil Collins had a parallel solo career take off during that time, revisiting the critical reviews  from many respected music writers in that period reveals a prevailing assumption that Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks unwittingly (if not unwillingly) were somehow led by Collins in a more mainstream pop direction. However, the simple facts just don’t bear out that inference, as all three members explain here.

    The title song “Abacab” (named nonsensically after the three musical sections “a”, ‘b”, and “c” ) was nowhere near the pop mainstream. “Man on the Corner ” was indeed a hit, but in it Collins addresses the issue of homeless people and society’s reluctance to acknowledge them or, in many cases, feel any responsibility for finding solutions… not exactly your typical pop banality. “Land of Confusion” going Top Five as a single says a lot more about the changing mainstream tastes in 1986  rather than any musical agenda by the band, and the #3 hit “Tonight,Tonight,Tonight” from the astonishing 15 million-seller Invisible Touch  effectively silenced any silly debate about pop vs. rock by running over nine minutes long!

    Moreover , it wasn’t just Collins who was branching out. By the time his 1985 third solo album No Jacket Required   made Phil deservedly a star in his own right, Rutherford and Banks had each done no less than two solo efforts apiece. Instead of siphoning off creativity and diluting Genesis of strong material, the respective solo albums clearly inspired the group to lift any self-imposed restrictions to the Genesis sound, as you will hear in my classic rock interview In The Studio. – Redbeard 

  • Allman Brothers Band- Live at Fillmore East 55th Anniversary 6-22

    Allman Brothers Band- Live at Fillmore East 55th Anniversary 6-22

    To mark the fifty-fifth anniversary of the album widely hailed as one of the greatest concert recordings ever, we present my archival interviews with the late Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts from In the Studio regarding the Allman Brothers Band Live at Fillmore East.

    The Allman Brothers Band Live at Fillmore East featured spirited concert versions of several of the songs from the Allman Brothers’ first two studio albums, including an epic “Whipping Post” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”, plus crackling arrangements of classic traditional numbers “Statesboro Blues”, Muddy Waters’ “Trouble No More”, and “Stormy Monday”. The late Gregg Allman and dearly departed Dickey Betts are your ear witnesses to rock history here the week of June 22.

    And check this link to find movie tickets near you for the premiere of the Gregg Allman documentary “The Music of My Soul” one night only, Wednesday June 17. –Redbeard

  • Dave Matthews Band- Crash 30th Anniversary

    Dave Matthews Band- Crash 30th Anniversary

    After meeting and interviewing Dave Matthews during the 1996 Horde Festival tour just as their second studio album, Crash, was being released, none of the subsequent successes of the Dave Matthews Band since then has surprised me. Impressed? Absolutely, but not surprised. Sure, the fun-loving good time swing in their first big hit “What Would You Say”, with the Olympian harmonica solo from Blues Traveler’s John Popper on the Dave Matthews Band’s second album Under the Table and Dreaming, got my immediate attention in 1994.

    But it was the musical sophistication of “Rhyme and Reason”, the sublime “Satellite”, and the inventive arrangement featuring woodwinds and violin on “Ants Marching” that announced that this crack musical collective had already passed “Go”, collected the $200, and never missed a beat. Then Crash sold a headspinning 7,000,000 copies of the Spring 1996 release containing the lazy sunny day chestnut “So Much to Say”, the furious funk groove of “Too Much”, Crash Into Me”, and the “look Ma, no hands” band serious chops workout of “Drive In Drive Out”. Dave Matthews was already a wise resident of the world with a maturity that belied his tender age when we had the chance to talk  backstage. But even Dave himself could not have predicted that the DMB would become the first band in music history to debut six consecutive studio albums at #1 sales on Billboard!!!

    With the 30th anniversary of Crash, we dedicate this edition of In the Studio to band co-founder/saxophonist LeRoi Moore who passed away in 2008 from complications from an off-road ATV accident. An incalculable loss for music; heartbreaking for the band, family, and friends. – Redbeard

  • Emerson, Lake, and Palmer- Tarkus @55

    Emerson, Lake, and Palmer- Tarkus @55

    Listening now fifty-five years later to the Steven Wilson surround mix of the epic title song Tarkus, Emerson Lake and Palmer’s second studio album released in June 1971, is a revelation. Tarkus followed quickly after their stunning 1970 debut, with Greg Lake’s voice delicately yet nimbly bounding along to Keith Emerson’s piano runs, making it crystal clear that Emerson Lake and Palmer were much less “Be Bop a Lula” in their melodic grandeur and much more “Andrew Lloyd Weber”. Here is the story of progressive rock’s first supergroup in their own words regarding Tarkus, a top ten seller on Billboard  in America and a dizzying #1 seller in the UK.

    In 1971 I borrowed the debut album Emerson, Lake, and Palmer from a buddy, and was fascinated by the epic “Take a Pebble” featuring Greg Lake’s choirboy voice, Carl Palmer’s fantastic drum technique, and Keith Emerson’s impressive ability on a variety of keyboards including the new electronic invention, the Moog synthesizer. ELP were not so much about willfully breaking the unspoken rules of rock’n’roll as they were about boldly expanding the boundaries of it.

    Recalling Tarkus, the second Emerson, Lake, and Palmer album, allow me to share a personal memoir. In Summer 1971 there was a college bar not far from the local campus on the main street of  Findlay, Ohio where the “townies” congregated, just a safe haven for the newly-legal-age hippies to get a cold beer without fear of being hassled by rednecks. There was no room or budget in the narrow bar for live music, just a jukebox. Up until then every jukebox I had encountered was stocked with the Top 40 hits of the day, but this one was special. Someone had loaded up this baby with cutting-edge progressive rock that we couldn’t find on the radio dial, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young’s “Ohio” backed with “Find the Cost of Freedom” barely a year after the shocking killing of four fellow students at nearby Kent State University. But when somebody slipped a quarter in and punched up a new band called Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and their “Knife Edge” and “Lucky Man” two-sided single, that ‘box would rock!

    Photo by Alan Messer/REX_Shutterstock (44517f)
    KEITH EMERSON, GREG LAKE AND CARL PALMER
    – 1973

    Here is the story in their own words of progressive rock’s first supergroup from (left to right) Greg (who died in  December 2016), Keith (also gone, at age 71), and Carl In the Studio. –Redbeard

  • Bryan Adams- 18 ‘Til I Die 30th Anniversary

    Bryan Adams- 18 ‘Til I Die 30th Anniversary

    Bryan Adams’ seventh studio album 18 ‘Til I Die was a #1 seller in the UK and Top Five sales in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. The international popularity was driven by hits “The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me is You”, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman”, and the title song. This point thirty years ago, however, was also the first indication for Bryan Adams of a bizarre syndrome peculiar to American media whereby, in spite of over a decade of prior multi-million US album sales, 18 ‘Til I Die peaked on the Billboard sales chart at a perplexing #31.

    This baffling reaction by US media gatekeepers, particularly latter twentieth century rock radio programmers, was first pointed out to me by The Edge of U2 while conversing about that band’s late Eighties road movie, Rattle and Hum. The Edge pointed out a long-standing mistrust by  music writers of such early pop music idols as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley “…going off to Hollywood and never coming back.” So apparently, Bryan Adams’ original sin was to include, on his previous album Waking Up the Neighbours (packed with no less than a dozen flat-out rockers), a single ballad,”Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” that happened to run under the credits at the end of a hit chick flick that year. MTV played the video in saturation airplay because it had scenes from the blockbuster Kevin Costner film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Everyone benefited from this cross-marketing, by the way: North American rock radio played six great rockers from that album on the way to record high ratings, Bryan’s record company had a #1 seller worldwide, MTV had record ratings, & the movie company broke box office ticket sales records. So what p0ssibly could someone complain about?

    But when the next Bryan Adams studio album 18 ‘Til I Die  came out in June 1996, US rock radio programmers decided, in spite of the music actually on the album to the contrary, to brand Bryan strictly as a love song balladeer. Not rock enough, not alternative enough, not cool enough. “And don’t confuse me with the facts, all those millions of people in all of those other countries buying 18 ‘Til I Die are not in my town, so we are different here in the Greater Tri-State Area. See?” Yeah, whatever.

    So then, as much to remind everyone what an enormous contributor his music had been to the preceding decade of popular music, Bryan Adams performed on MTV Unplugged, which we also discuss in detail here In the Studio in my classic rock interview. Included were brilliant new arrangements of “Summer of ’69”, “Cuts Like a Knife”, “Heaven”, a stunning reworking of “I’m Ready”, a medley “If You Want to Be Bad You Gotta Be Good/Let’s Make a Night to Remember”, and a song composed specifically for Unplugged, “Back to You”. –Redbeard

  • Metallica- Load 30th- James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett

    Metallica- Load 30th- James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett


    Metallica have reissued Load with a 2025 remastering, which really makes an audible improvement on songs “Ain’t My Bitch”, “Until It Sleeps”, “King Nothing”, “Hero of the Day”, “House That Jack Built”, and the biggest sonic upgrades on “Bleeding Me” and “Mama Said”. Check it out here while James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett discuss Metallica’s Load thirtieth anniversary with me In the Studio.

    “He nicknamed me ‘Dr. No’ ,” chuckles Metallica lead singer/songwriter James Hetfield, regarding their early recording collaboration with producer Bob Rock. “Every suggestion he made I’d say ‘No’. Over time we learned to think about his suggestions…”.
    “And then say ‘No’,” deadpans Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett with a comedic rimshot. After the superstar-making 1991 “Black Album”, it took  five long years for the members of Metallica to catch their collective breath sufficiently to venture a follow-up, Load, in June 1996. Even pre-internet widespread use, the response in popularity and the attendant responsibilities to be available to a voracious worldwide fanbase left precious little time for writing and recording new Metallica music. 

    After almost a decade of struggle, capturing Metallica’s heavy metal sonic fury in the studio had eluded them. The tragic death of original bass player Cliff Burton, and being rock’s maladjusted poster children had made Metallica insular, and for good reason. Of course, selling an unbelievable 16  million U.S. copies of their first attempt working with hard rock veteran producer Bob Rock on 1991’s phenomenal  “Black Album” raised even the notoriously obstinate band’s confidence level to Def Con 4 for the follow up, Load  in June 1996. Hear all about it here in a refreshingly honest interview with Hetfield and Hammett while you jam at lease-breaking levels. –Redbeard

  • Steve Winwood- Back in the High Life 40th Anniversary 6-15

    Steve Winwood- Back in the High Life 40th Anniversary 6-15


    A real timeless gem from four decades ago, quiet, resigned blue-eyed soul man Steve Winwood scored a monster of a hit album in June 1986 with Back in the High Life. Winwood was surrounded with some of the finest musicians, including guests Joe Walsh, Nile Rodgers, and James Taylor, top-notch sound, and his deepest well of Will Jennings co-written songs including “Higher Love” (#1 Billboard), “Freedom Overspill”, “The Finer Things”, “Take It as It Comes”, “Split Decision”, and the delightful title song “Back in the High Life Again”.

    Steve Winwood joins me In the Studio in my rare interview covering the biggest album in his long illustrious career, Back in the High Life (three Grammys, over three million sold US), on its fortieth anniversary the week of June 15. – Redbeard

  • Deep Purple- Fireball 55th- Ian Gillan, Roger Glover

    Deep Purple- Fireball 55th- Ian Gillan, Roger Glover

    “Who do we think we are?” Good question, and if we’re talking the importance of seminal British band Deep Purple, the rock history books consider the question asked and answered. The first time I heard Deep Purple, with their cover of Joe South’s “Hush” exploding out of a car dashboard speaker in Summer 1968, I had no way of knowing that I was hearing the primordial hard rock bellow of what soon would evolve into Heavy Metal.

    Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Deep Purple widely has been  credited as the third jewel in the British hard rock triple crown. Without Deep Purple’s 1970 proto-metal album  Deep Purple In Rock  or the benchmark Machine Head  two years later, would Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Def Leppard have sold tens of millions of albums worldwide in the 1980s? Doubtful, and unlike Black Sabbath, Deep Purple made this impact musically, without the macabre death-obsessed lyrical themes that later mutated much of Heavy Metal into caricature.

    My guests lead singer Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, along with drummer Ian Paice, still lead Deep Purple to this day, and along with lead guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and the late organist Jon Lord they comprised the Mark II lineup which placed such classics into the hard rock lexicon as “Speed King” and”Child in Time”from In Rock; “Strange Kind of Woman” from the under-appreciated transitional album Fireball  in 1971; the international hit for the ages Machine Head  yielding “Smoke on the Water”,”Highway Star”, and “Space Truckin’ “; the benchmark hard rock live album of its time, Made in Japan; plus “Woman from Tokyo” and the riff rocker “Rat Bat Blue” from Who Do We Think We Are? , the top-selling January 1973 followup to Machine Head   and the final iteration of the classic Mark II lineup until the surprisingly popular in 1985 reunion Perfect Strangers  eleven years later.  Congratulations to the current and former members of Deep Purple for long-overdue recognition as inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And be sure to listen to Splat!  the new Deep Purple album in stores and online now! –Redbeard

  • Metallica- King Nothing- San Francisco 2-6-16

    Metallica- King Nothing- San Francisco 2-6-16

    When the Super Bowl was played in San Francisco in February 2016, hometown Bay Area hard rock heroes Metallica were the obvious choice for the event’s high-profile midpoint entertainment slot…except the Load  they were bringing was deemed “too heavy for halftime” by the NFL. So Metallica staged their own free concert the night before in Golden Gate Park in front of a quarter million fans while performing this version of “King Nothing”. No admission price, no abbreviated setlist, and thank God no dancers!

    Don’t mis  James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett delivering a full Load next week here In the Studio to mark the thirtieth anniversary of that Metallica multi-million seller. –Redbeard