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lot of people will get very angry at that, disc jockeys in particular.

Herbie calls me in sometimes and says "Listen to this": I mean he played me that thing A Taste of Honey. My engineer Larry Levine won best record of the year production for that record at Naras, but never won with me on anything—was never even nominated! The only thing we were nominated for was the thunder in Walkin' In The Rain.

So I guess the best thing to be is not apprehensive and to not give a fuck. I should be smart enough, knowing Dylan and knowing the Beatles, to know that they don't give a fuck anway, and I don't give a fuck what they do—realistically. Because I don't sit and criticize their albums. They can't do anything wrong, and it I don't like it, so what? But who do they really have to impress? They have to impress all the people. People got to buy. So that's really where it's at.

Everybody should be in some kind of a union, because the unions are the most powerful things. They almost put me out of business twice. I mean they put a black mark on me for overdubbing. That's it. I couldn't make a master, I couldn't even get a dub 'caus everybody was union. There was a letter sent out to all the unions. "Don't do business with this company." That's it. I called up—nothin'. Couldn't get arrested, couldn't hire a musician 'til I paid them $50,000 and some nonsense fees that they wanted for the dead musicians fund or the trust fund for dead musicians' wives or some shit. There is $28 million in that fund, and ain't nobody ever got none of it. Nobody knows ... I ask all my musicians, where is all that money? They ain't never seen it.

Just like David Susskind says to me, "What's it like on Tin Pan Alley?" I said, "Where the fuck is Tin Pan Alley?" I mean you tell me where it is, and I'll go. I mean they jive ass you and the people don't know. David Oppenheimer, big producer for CBS, man, he comes here and he's sittin' in my room and he says, "Are the young people really takin' over the record industry?" And he's sittin' in my house askin' me that question! He's got cameras on me, he's got the microphone on me, and he's askin' me if the young people are takin' over the country. Now why ain't the camera on him? I mean they don't understand. I can't change the record industry just like I can't change Jerry Rubin or I can't change Ted Kennedy; it's impossible.

I feel like an oldtimer wishin' for the groovy young days, but I listen to the Beatles' album and I know they're wishin' for it too, because you can hear it. Lady Madonna was such groovy oldtime thing.

And Dylan is yearnin' for those days, because this was the first time he was ever able to come out and not be influenced by the people around him. They probably didn't understand a thing Dylan wrote on John Wesley Harding, but they probably said "Yeah, man, yeah." He probably thought a long time before he did it. Instead of writing, "I've been sittin' in my mind, lookin' out the windows of the world"—that's what they were used to heasring—he just fucked 'em all up by writing just what he wanted to write. It must have been a big, big step for him, 'cause it's hard when your people around you are all tuned to one way of life, and then you just come and change it for them. He took a big risk, as an artist, by doing that. A big, big risk. He really deserves a lot more credit. He can't get any more I guess, but that was a big, big step for him to do that. "Cause the people really wanted somethin' else from him.

Now in the production world, I may be similar to what Dylan is in the popular world, but I know people expect me to come up with another River Deep momentous production. But that's not where it's at. It's in pleasing yourself and making the hit records. That's all that counts. That's the only reason people come to see you. That's the only reason people want to talk to you and get your opinion, 'cause you're the best; 'cause you're makin' money and you're makin' a lot of hit records. If you don't work and you got enough bread, well then you're cool, too.

There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all.

I don't care if people put me down for what I say, but society sets a standard of living for you, and they create rules and record books . . . they force you to live by them. It's almost like being psychotic. It's like, if you can take a couple of pills and just cool it, that kind of life becomes a lot more exciting than going out and working and grooving. So they put you in a hospital and every day you stay in. That's why people go in the mental hospitals and very rarely get out, because they dig it. It becomes easier than to go out and face society with the cabs and the horns, and the people. They make it almost impossible for you to want to get out of there.

The underground sort of does the same thing. They get your standards all twisted—like the Los Angeles Times ignores your standards. It's almost like the people running the underground press must be a lot of frustrated people; a lot of them who really want to be important, like agents want to be actors, musicians' agents want to be drummers, etc.

Do you find any black resentment against the whites. You worked at Atlantic, another white-owned company, dealing primarily with black music. Was there any resentment from the artists?

Oh yeah, man, "We bought your home, goddamn, and don't you forget it, boy. You livin' in the house we paid for, you drivin' a Cadillac we got, man. It's ours. You stole it from us."

You heard that from the beginning of time. All the Drifters were gettin' was $150 a week and they never got any royalties. It wasn't that Atlantic didn't pay them; it was that everybody screwed everybody in those days. I mean I was in the Teddy Bears and what did we get—one penny a record royalties!

What has disappeared completely is the black groups, other than what you have comin' out of Motown and your other few—and I don't mean Stax-Volt because I don't consider that what I'm talking about. The group on the corner has disappeared. It's turned into a white psychedelic or a guitar group, there are thousands of them. There used to be hundreds and hundreds of black groups singin' harmony and with a great lead singer and you'd go in and record them.

You used to go down to Jefferson High or 49th & Broadway and could bet sixteen groups. Today you can't find them; they're either involved in the militant thing or they just passed, like it's not their bag anymore, or like it's just disappeared. It's not the big thing to get together after school and harmonize. And it used to be a real big thing. It was very important. I guess they just got tired of knocking on record doors, and they saw that a whole new regime had taken over.

This is why you have the music business dominated in the black area by just two companies. Because there is just really no place for them to go. They've just sort of disbanded. Other than Motown you don't see any groups, colored groups. The Dells happened for a while on that Cadet label from Chicago or whatever. That's where black something has affected it. I don't know if it's black militancy or whatever, but something has definitely effected the complete destruction of the black groups that used to be dominating the record industry.

How has that changed the music?

It's changed the music drastically. It's given birth to English groups to come along and do it like Eric Burdon. It's also given birth for the Stones and the Beatles to come along and do it—not that they wouldn't have done it otherwise—but the first place the Beatles wanted to see when they came to America ('cause I came over on the plane with them) was the Apollo Theater.

As bad as a record as Book of Love by the Monotones is, you can hear a lot of Book of Love in the Beatles' Why Don't We Do It the Road. I think you hear a lot of that dumb, great-yet-nonsensical stuff that makes it—even though it's silly. It's got the same nonsense.

I believe that the English kids have soul. Really soul. When I watch Walter Cronkite or Victory at Sea, or You Are There— any of those programs, 1 see bombs flying all over England and little kids running. Now that's probably Paul McCartney running. You know, 'cause that's where the bombs fell. They say soul comes through suffering. Slavery for the blacks. And getin' your ass bombed off is another way of gettin' some soul, so I would say that these English cats have a lot of soul legitimately. You're gonna have Dave Clark in there who don't know too much about it, and just like you're gonna have a Rosy and the Originals in America who don't know too much about it.

What do you think of groups like Sly and the Family Stone or the Chambers Brothers who have such a large white audience, almost primarily white?

The Chambers Brothers have been around so long that they're just like a group I think of as "having" to have made it—a most. In other words, if they hadn't made it, it would be as much of a crime as Roy Orbison not being a star today or the Everly Brothers not making it today. It was criminal that they weren't big before.

The fact that they appear for white audiences is, I think, only because black music—ifthere can be such a phrase—or music as interpreted by black people—is a lot more commercial than music interpreted by white people.

The biggest English records are really when they are imitating. It's much more commercial when Eric Burdon sings a black copy. Just like Al Jolson was much more commercial when he did the black face than he ever was than when he went out and sang My Yidishe Momme. They love "mammy" with the black face—Stephen Foster, I mean. Which is probably why the black people resent so much of America. "We are the most commercially imitated people, we write and sing the most commercial music and yet we are the least talked about and the most oppressed."

So the black man got to figure that maybe the reason he's passed from the musical scene to a large extent. Now when I say passed, I really mean passed. I mean it's as good as Sam Cooke being dead. You don't hear Ben E. King or any of the real soulful music anymore, and that was really commercial music, and it was good music.

Do you judge art in terms of success?

Art is relative. Because everything and anything can be art. It's just a matter of taste. Warner Brothers has an idea of art . . . Their art was bringing back Fats Domino. They didn't do it, so they fucked up. John Lennon's got a different approach to art—so he puts out Do It In The Streets and that's groovy, that's his terms. So, art is relative. Each person has their own interpretation of art.

What I'm asking is if you are evaluating the record in terms of success.

I'm evaluating it in terms of what their goal was. Warner Brothers' goal was to bring Fats back, and they didn't. So in that area, they failed. Did they make a great record? No, they didn't. I could make giant records with Fats.

What's the effect of drugs been upon you? Have they had an effect on your music?

I haven't made any music since that whole drug thing started.

Do you think it will?

Well, the listening audience will be affected by it. I mean, I've gotten a lot of letters and a lot of people said they've listened to River Deep stoned, and they had the ear phones on, and they just freaked out, you know, with the sound. Well, you know nobody was stoned when they made the record, I can tell you that.

David Susskind once said that rock and roll records are out of tune. Was he stoned? Well, I've never used anybody but Barney Kessel and those kind of guys, the best musicians, they don't know how to play out of tune!

So you can get a tag—psychedelic or drugs. I don't know, maybe drugs will affect my music. Drugs tend to frighten me a little in an audience because it doesn't make for good hearing and concentration. Now I'd hate like hell to have an incoherent jury listening to me, when I'm tryin' to plead a case . . . just spaced out. I'd get frightened. Just like I hate to bet on a fighter or horse that's drugged. That's scary. I don't give a fuck what they do in their own time, but if a disc jockey is going to review my record, and he's stoned, well, you know, he can go either way. It depends on how good the stuff he took was, and he's gonna either love my record or hate my record. But I mean, you shouldn't be judged that way. In fact—art can't and shouldn't be judged at all! Because it's all a matter of taste.

What do you think the difference is going to be between the audience today and the audience's reaction to music today as compared to five years ago?

I don't know. Everybody's a helluva lot hipper today, I'll tell you that. There's 13-year-old whores walkin' the streets now. It wouldn't have happened as much five years ago. Not 13-year-old drug addicts. It's a lot different today. I tell you the whole world is a drop-out. I mean, everybody's a fuck-off. Everybody's mini-skirted, everybody's hip, everybody reads all the books. How in the hell you gonna overcome all that? Sophistication, hippness, everything. They're really very hip today.

The music business so different than any other business. You know, Frank Sinatra has a hit. Sister Dominique or whatever her name is, has a hit. I can show you six groups out there today who are opposite. I mean the Archies have a hit at the same time the Beatles do, so it really doesn't mean anything.

Now who's buyin' the Archies' records? That's what I can't understand, and who bought all the Monkees' records—same cats who bought all the Stones records? If they're not, then that makes the buyin' public so big ... 'Cause the four million that bought the Monkees and the six million that bought the Beatles are different, then there's ten million kids buying records. That's a helluva lot of a better throw at the dice. I'd rather have a chance out of ten million times instead of six million times, so it probably will be easier. You know, I don't know if there has been a change, because if six million kids still buy the Monkees then there hasn't been a change. They're the same six million that bought honky records five years ago.

The only real difference there is in the record industry is in black music. That's the big difference. But I don't consider Motown black; I consider them half and half. Black people making white music. The Monotones, the Drifters, the Shirrelles, Fats . . . I mean, all those artists, not making it and around anymore. That's a big debt. But maybe it's only because nobody's doing it. We'll find out soon enough anyway.

Does it worry you at all, that there's been a change?

Well, anything that deteriorates music bothers me a little bit. I mean, if when Beethoven lost his hearing, if I was alive, it would have bothered me. I have to be affected by it. It bothers me that some music is very boring. I hear a lot of disc jockeys saying "Let's throw this shit out." I hear them saying there are so many fucking groups—so boring. I hear this so much, that I believe it. If it's true then yeah, it bothers me. It bothers me enough to get back in.