Rick Rubin
In addition to being a podcast host, Frederick Jay “Rick” Rubin is an American record producer and former co-president of Columbia Records. Along with Russell Simmons, he is the co-founder…
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Susanna Hoffs rose to fame in the 1980s as the lead singer and guitarist of the Bangles, the Los Angeles band behind hits like “Manic Monday,” “Walk Like an Egyptian” and “Eternal Flame.” Inspired by the Beatles, the Byrds and the melodic pop of the 1960s, the Bangles brought jangling guitars and rich vocal harmonies to a decade dominated by synthesizers. Hoffs’ distinctive voice and gift for melody helped give the band its signature sound.
Since the Bangles’ heyday, Hoffs has continued to explore her musical influences through solo records and collaborations, while also branching out into fiction with her bestselling debut novel, This Bird Has Flown. Now she’s returning with The List, a deeply personal collection of original songs that grew out of informal writing sessions with producer and multi-instrumentalist C.J. Camerieri and a group of collaborators. Drawing on stories from her own life, the album explores love, loneliness, memory and the passage of time, pairing Hoffs’ unmistakable voice with the kind of timeless melodies that first made her famous.
On today’s episode, Bruce Headlam talks with Susanna Hoffs and C.J. Camerieri about the making of The List, the musical influences that shaped her, and the stories behind the album’s songs, including a chance encounter with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. They also discuss her approach to songwriting, what writing a novel taught her about storytelling, and how she’s finding new ways to express herself more than four decades into her career.
This is not a cautionary tale.
00:20
Speaker 2
But it's the truth of an.
00:23
Speaker 1
Epic winding trail A list that ends with you First name was Mark All lost, all spark The first one to break through The next name on my list A very dapper Brit Who I never could resist Then he faded in the mist He was in a band from Birmingham What a smile, oh what style He said he could have married me Every name was true But none of them were you Then came a suave and handsome actor You would know his name But the disqualifying factor Wasn't his fortune or his fame The movie star, fancy car Black heart, he played the part Turns out he wasn't acting Every name was true But none of them were you Quiet forecast Looking through the lens Unassuming I couldn't have known then Love is as much about trust Everything else fakes You were the last name on my list.
03:00
Speaker 3
All the years.
03:02
Speaker 1
That led to third treat, blind date. I forget the restaurant. I couldn't eat or think straight. You and me, those other guys never stood a chance. Cause none of them were you. None of them were you.
03:42
Speaker 4
Welcome to Broken Record, Susannah Huffs. It is such a thrill to have you here. And you're with your producer. CJ Camareri, who not only produced the record, but some of those beautiful trumpet lines you will hear on this album. We do want to talk about your new, really wonderful album, which I've been enjoying so much because I got a preview. Let's talk, first of all, about the title.
04:06
Speaker 3
The List.
04:07
Speaker 5
The List.
04:08
Speaker 1
Yeah.
04:08
Speaker 3
So The List came from a conversation that popped up in our writing sessions about a that I had cobbled together a list over the years in pencil from an old Filofax diary. So it was a very small little piece of paper, three holes, but a little size of my original Filofax when people had Filofaxes. And I had just cobbled together this list for my memory banks as I went along. And it was decades ago when I made the list, but it was just the names of anyone that I dated or canoodled with or so there were demarcations of or things denoted like if there was like a one or a two it might have been that there was two two nights with that person or two you know stuff like that it was color-coded no not color-coded it was in pencil and just like a it's a small page about this size from a file effects when file effects is where it was an 80s thing they were.
05:13
Speaker 4
Very popular Most rock stars would not be able to fit that on a small piece of paper.
05:21
Speaker 3
You mean other rock stars had longer lists than mine, you mean?
05:25
Speaker 5
Yeah.
05:26
Speaker 3
Something along those lines, we're thinking.
05:27
Speaker 4
Mick Jagger would need like a teraflop of data or something to, you know.
05:32
Speaker 3
I love the Rolling Stones, just FYI, as an aside. You might not think of that because... You might think Beatles, influence for bangles, which it was, and why the name, we wanted a B name. And we all had the same affinity for the songs that we grew up listening to on the radio in the 60s.
05:52
Speaker 4
And that started with the Beatles?
05:54
Speaker 3
For me, because my mother's friend had a connection, well, she worked at Capitol Records. So I have all the original Beatles records from the 60s.
06:05
Speaker 1
Wow.
06:06
Speaker 4
Do you remember the first one she brought?
06:07
Speaker 3
It would have probably been the first Beatles album.
06:11
Speaker 4
Okay, so from the beginning.
06:12
Speaker 3
Yeah.
06:13
Speaker 4
Was that Meet the Beatles?
06:14
Speaker 3
It was Meet the Beatles.
06:15
Speaker 4
Yeah, amazing.
06:15
Speaker 3
Yeah, Meet the Beatles.
06:17
Speaker 4
Those amazing photographs.
06:18
Speaker 5
Yeah.
06:19
Speaker 3
In the bangles, there was four of us. So it was like based on the Beatles, like the kind of, the four players, a drummer, a bass player, and two guitar players, and everyone sang. Because there was a lot of shared singing in the Beatles, taking turns. And even Ringo got... his turn in the Beatles to sing lead. So yeah, so it was sort of like, it just felt right with the Bangles to kind of, because we all had that intense affinity for their childhood memories of loving the Beatles. That's sort of how it came about.
06:57
Speaker 2
Yeah.
06:58
Speaker 4
Well, we've wandered from the title, The List.
07:01
Speaker 3
Yeah.
07:02
Speaker 4
The way you describe it, it sounds like almost kind of a jokey thing but in fact it's this very beautiful yeah i'm not gonna say earnest i found it a very touching song.
07:16
Speaker 3
Oh the song itself the song is touching i can hardly uh get to the to my own husband's name on the list when it and there's a little gap and he's at the bottom of it and Sometimes I have to hold back this feeling like I made it all the way through all of this stuff, all of this weird history in my 20s and being on the road and a bangle and blah, blah, blah. And then I just got to Jay. And that was it. That's the last name on the list.
07:49
Speaker 4
Has he heard the song?
07:50
Speaker 3
Oh, I think so.
07:52
Speaker 1
He loves it.
07:52
Speaker 3
He loves it. Yeah.
07:55
Speaker 4
Throughout this album, I found there's this People who are longtime fans of yours, they'll love the guitar work, they'll love the singing and the smart lyrics. But there's this sort of melancholy that runs through this album for me. Am I misreading it?
08:12
Speaker 3
I don't think you're misreading it. I think there's something about yearning and longing for things and being, you know, you could even be in a long-term partnership with your beloved husband and feel lonely and in the same house, you know, under the same roof. Those feelings are part of human nature. I'm the daughter of a shrink, a psychoanalyst. And some of it is beautiful. And some of it is just how it's life, you know, it's how it unfolds. And, you know, there's even the emptiness part of it when your kids leave or feeling you're under the same roof with your your spouse of however many years, but you still can feel at sea somehow and alone. And there's happy songs and sad songs. I mean, that's why we love music. I mean, I grew up on music. My mom always had the radio on. She was always driving us around in LA here and there. And I just, it would cast kind of this magical spell over me. And I would sing along and try to memorize and and learn, I didn't know what I was doing when I was doing it, but I was studying it and realizing how nuanced, how much care you can put into a syllable, you know, that will change the trajectory of why that song will punch you in the gut with emotion and that kind of thing. So I'm drawn to that kind of music.
09:53
Speaker 4
You're also, I forgot to say off the top, a bestselling author.
09:57
Speaker 1
Thanks.
09:57
Speaker 4
A novelist.
10:00
Speaker 3
Since I was a little girl. There was, not far from where I currently live, but there was a library in the neighborhood and I was an avid childhood reader. I was obsessed with reading. And it was a lot of sort of like witch stories. I don't, I couldn't even tell you the names of these books now, but I would sit on the floor of the of the Brentwood library. And my mother would bring us there, my brothers and me, and we would just consume books there. And so that was just part of what interested me, stories, stories. And then that led to, in some ways, the stories that live inside of a song and why we love them and why they move us and why we care and why it makes life better. You know, certainly music.
10:50
Speaker 4
Did the experience of writing a novel, which is a very different kind of writing, did that change your lyric writing, do you think?
11:00
Speaker 3
You know, I found myself liking alliterations or like things in the book that had a melodic flow. It wasn't overt, but I was definitely aware that I liked... rhythmic sentences and I liked alliteration and I liked just things that made it a little bit musical and also obviously it was really fun to write about a musician and what it feels like there's a scene in the beginning of the book where she has to do a crappy Vegas gig after being dumped and cheated on by a boyfriend so her manager who's British says you know I got you a gig It's kind of a crappy Vegas gig. And Jane Start, the protagonist, is like, okay, she's so despairing of her life with the breakup. And then she's like, yeah, just rescue me from my own head and just get me there. And she has to open for a stripper at the Vegas bachelor party. And it's her turn to sing. It's kind of like what happens with me where I'm just like an ordinary singer. gal getting through the day and then it's time to sing and it's like I flip a switch somewhere in my body and my brain and then I don't know what how I do it but I just it just starts it just comes out and then I'm in the story of it I'm on the road map I'm driving the car here comes the high note okay get ready and then please God let it work let it be perfect or let it be great and it's all that kind of stuff and I didn't as I was writing the book I was realizing oh, I know all this stuff, but I haven't articulated it. It's just something I do when I sing. But I was able to put some of that stuff in the book.
12:54
Speaker 5
Nice.
12:54
Speaker 3
Yeah. In the book, as I said, I found myself kind of writing in a lyrical style. And I also was able to connect some interesting things like the Jonesy character was kind of like the way Prince had been in my life. I'm jumping around here now.
13:11
Speaker 4
That's all right.
13:12
Speaker 3
But it was fun. And sometimes I didn't even know that I was thinking about some of the interesting conversations and encounters that I had with the brilliant Prince. As I was writing the book, all this stuff was sort of flooding my brain and things would come to me. And it was just, I didn't really have it all mapped out. I wasn't organized that way. It kind of just unfolded. And as it went, I delighted myself because I'd be like, oh, I just, that idea, that, I can do that. It's like playing with dolls, but not really, like grown-up dolls.
13:50
Speaker 4
But now tell me, because this is, I think this is your first new album since the book.
13:54
Speaker 3
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right.
13:57
Speaker 4
So having written a whole 350-page book, you're sitting down to write a really focused, concentrated lyric again.
14:06
Speaker 3
Yeah.
14:06
Speaker 4
What was that like?
14:08
Speaker 3
It's kind of very different, I think. Songs are more like writing a poem or something, but you get the melody part too. So that's like, wow, a double whammy.
14:21
Speaker 4
So tell me about making this album. First of all, what made you decide to make this album? You sat down with some great, well, she's pointing at her.
14:32
Speaker 3
Her fearless leader. CJ Camerari.
14:35
Speaker 4
Tell me how this came about, this album.
14:37
Speaker 5
Sue and I started making a different project, which was kind of like a reimagining of her Bangles hits. And we had such a great time doing that. She just casually said one day, she was like, we should start writing together. So I brought over some friends to her house. And it was just this magical, I think we spent 16 writing sessions and ended up with 12 finished songs, which is like not how songwriting normally goes.
15:01
Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
15:02
Speaker 5
And we would sit down and Sue would make us coffee and she would just start telling us stories of her life. And at a certain moment in all these songwriting sessions, we'd all get out our phones and start like, taking notes of these stories she was telling or get out a little yellow legal pen.
15:18
Speaker 3
It wasn't intentional.
15:19
Speaker 5
She didn't know she was writing a song yet.
15:21
Speaker 3
I was just like, something would come up and then it would, anyway.
15:24
Speaker 5
And we'd finish our coffee after like an hour or so of hearing these amazing stories or just talking about, you know, emptiness or how she was feeling or relationship or anxieties. There's a lot of anxiety talk. Or a list of past boyfriends or whatever. And we'd have so many notes of these little nuggets of wisdom, nuggets of gold. And we would just transition to the music room, to the studio she built in her house, and we'd have the song ready. And so it was this really easy process. And I think by song two or three, we were like, I think we're making a record. I think we're going to forget about this other thing we were working on for a while and concentrate here. Because I think that Sue's lived an amazing life. It was a life well lived. And the perspective of somebody who's 67 looking back on her life and relationships and, you know, family is, is a beautiful perspective. And then she still has her voice. Like I think a lot of people who have had a 40 year career don't have this instrument that sounds like it did 40 years ago, but she sounds exactly the same. And so it's, yeah, it was just a really rewarding process. Yeah.
16:35
Speaker 3
Thanks CJ for all that.
16:37
Speaker 1
Yeah.
16:38
Speaker 4
Your father was a psychoanalyst. This just sounds like you were in analysis. The way you're describing it, it's almost as like you were having psychoanalytical sessions with your co-writers.
16:50
Speaker 3
Totally.
16:51
Speaker 5
Definitely.
16:51
Speaker 1
Yeah.
16:52
Speaker 3
Yeah.
16:53
Speaker 4
And then did you all work on the music together or was that?
16:56
Speaker 5
Yeah. Yeah. And we turned Sue's house into a recording studio.
17:00
Speaker 3
It was fantastic.
17:02
Speaker 5
And.
17:02
Speaker 3
You never had to leave. I never had to leave.
17:04
Speaker 5
You just had to go downstairs.
17:05
Speaker 3
Yeah, just go downstairs.
17:06
Speaker 5
Get pajamas on.
17:07
Speaker 1
Yep.
17:07
Speaker 5
And it just felt like this record is so personal and all these stories are of Sue and how she's feeling and, you know, this life she's led and having the luxury of writing the songs and recording the songs and performing them for the record in her home really gave her the, you know, sort of the comfortable safe space to tell these stories and to be really emotive with the singing and with the, you know, sort of the narrative of the record. And we were really fortunate to.
17:34
Speaker 1
Be able to.
17:35
Speaker 3
Emotive is such a good word.
17:36
Speaker 1
I know.
17:37
Speaker 4
You know, there's a lot of things I want to talk about your writing, but there's one thing I've noticed, and I know these were co-written, but I think really from your days in the Bangles, you're such a natural melody writer. You know, people will hear of None of Them Were You, which is just a picture-perfect melody. It's got that descending line. Yeah. It's perfect call and response.
18:02
Speaker 1
Yeah.
18:03
Speaker 4
And the second time the descending line comes in on a different beat.
18:06
Speaker 3
Yeah.
18:07
Speaker 4
It's really, like I was just, even when you're just playing, I was listening, like, man, this is perfect.
18:12
Speaker 2
Wow.
18:13
Speaker 5
Thank you.
18:14
Speaker 4
I think of a lot of your, when I think back, November Sun, other songs of yours that I've really liked. How do you see melody? I know that's a tricky question.
18:25
Speaker 3
Well, I love melody.
18:26
Speaker 1
I love melody.
18:28
Speaker 3
Melody, yeah, I mean, from my earliest childhood, I... I was always singing and I was always mimicking what I heard. But the more beautiful melodies have always been what I gravitate towards. So I guess it found its way into the songwriting once I became a songwriter too. Beyond me as a little girl listening to Dusty Springfield and copying every swoop every, you know, it's the, it's again, it's the roadmap of it. It's like, uh, there's movement in it and, and a design kind of, and also even when I was just singing a few minutes ago, I just want every moment of it. I just want to be inside of it and like not thinking of anything else. It's a singular focus, which is such a relief in life. Like with all the chaos and the noise and the thing we're worrying about and what's the day going to be? If I just listen to a song, it's just like peaceful and quiet and it's focused on the thing that it's about.
19:45
Speaker 5
One thing we thought about, we talked about a lot during this writing process. is this great Paul McCartney quote where he was like, we had to write hooks because we didn't have a way to casually record. We didn't have voice memos. We had to remember the song the next day. Oh, that's so interesting. And I thought about that a lot when we were writing these songs. It's like, everything should be a hook. We have to be, you know, like, let's pretend we can't record this and remember it the next day. How can we write this song in a way that we'll be able to remember it later? You know?
20:15
Speaker 4
Oh, that's really interesting. That is so interesting.
20:17
Speaker 5
And I thought that was like a really fun, you know, challenge. And the other thing is, I was thinking the other day, if you listen to the demos of these 12 songs, you'll hear 12 folk songs. It's kind of how we wrote them. And then we turned them into... pop songs or songs that could be on the radio and, you know, added all these other elements. But the core of all of these songs are folk songs. And I think that would be surprising when you listen to the record to then think about these songs.
20:42
Speaker 3
Well, those are all the old folk songs that my uncle Carmi Simon taught me. And when he put a guitar in my hand and showed me, you know, a little batch of chords, and then I was off to the races. But yeah, they were all like old school, like hang down your head, Tom Dooley. They're all these like, when you think about them, hang down your head, Tom Dooley, one day you're gonna die, you know, or whatever. I don't remember the lyrics exactly, but it was like, they were all those songs.
21:14
Speaker 4
So the lesson for songwriters at home, write melodies like they're hooks.
21:19
Speaker 5
Everything should be a hook.
21:20
Speaker 4
Everything should be a hook.
21:21
Speaker 5
Everything should be a hook. If it's not a hook, it's probably a little bit lazy, you know?
21:25
Speaker 4
Wow.
21:26
Speaker 5
Okay.
21:26
Speaker 4
That is great advice.
21:28
Speaker 3
That is good advice.
21:29
Speaker 4
By the way.
21:30
Speaker 1
Well done you. Yeah.
21:31
Speaker 5
Thanks.
21:31
Speaker 4
Yeah. We're learning here. So you were surprised an album came out of it or that wasn't the aim?
21:39
Speaker 3
I was just in for the whole experience, to be honest with you. Like meeting CJ, all his friends. friends who are all talented musicians. And it was just, you know, I was just a little kid in a candy store. I just like, what are we doing today? And then I didn't even know that me mentioning some story or something or that I sharing something would lead to this suite of songs coming to be. But I just really loved the process. And now we're even in another iteration of the process by being here and talking to you about it.
22:22
Speaker 5
Yeah, I mean, the aim wasn't like, hey, we should write a record of original material. We just were, you know, Sue's had this beautiful 40-year career and has built up the most goodwill amongst the Los Angeles musical community I've ever seen. And so, you know, I had the.
22:42
Speaker 5
Immense luxury of just being able to call anyone in town and be like hey do you want to write a song with susannah hoffs tomorrow and they'd be like yep see you there you know and or you know the list of players you're greg lease you know john bryan you know everybody jumps at the opportunity to work for her and work with her and all of a sudden we're like i think we have 12 songs i think that's a record.
23:02
Speaker 4
Well one of the people you called was rufus wainwright yeah who plays on uh.
23:08
Speaker 3
Well, Jay's movie, my husband's movie, The Roses, we did a duet. I think it was a cover of a Turtles song now.
23:16
Speaker 5
Yeah.
23:17
Speaker 3
Happy Together?
23:17
Speaker 5
Happy Together.
23:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
23:18
Speaker 3
I do love the Turtles.
23:20
Speaker 5
Jay wanted it to be a duet, a male-female duet, because the movie was a duet. you know, sort of a divorce comedy.
23:25
Speaker 3
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, two of the greats.
23:29
Speaker 5
And I had, I played in Rufus's band for a while and, and he wanted to be, the song to be happy together. And I just immediately heard Rufus's voice go happy together. Rufus's way.
23:40
Speaker 3
And the vibrato.
23:41
Speaker 4
Yeah.
23:42
Speaker 1
Yeah.
23:42
Speaker 5
So we did that.
23:43
Speaker 3
His tone is amazing.
23:45
Speaker 5
So successful. And their, their two voices just sounded incredible together. And so we wrote the song bad case of loneliness with Ryan Lerman.
23:51
Speaker 3
Yeah.
23:52
Speaker 5
And the idea of, A song about loneliness in a relationship. Yeah.
23:59
Speaker 3
You can be lonely in a relationship.
24:02
Speaker 5
The last line of the song is, this bad case of loneliness is better with you here. And to have Sue and Rufus sing that as a duet about being lonely together just seemed really obvious and beautiful. He heard the song and was like, come here, I'll do it.
24:15
Speaker 4
You see, had you asked me, I wouldn't have guessed your voices would mesh so well.
24:20
Speaker 3
I think they do because we both have vibrato.
24:22
Speaker 4
They do, but I wouldn't have thought that.
24:24
Speaker 3
You know, we both sing, we both have a vibrato.
24:26
Speaker 5
Well, they both are lead singers, which is like a funny thing, you know.
24:30
Speaker 3
Am I right about that? He has vibrato too.
24:31
Speaker 5
Oh, yeah, tons, yeah.
24:33
Speaker 1
Yeah.
24:33
Speaker 5
They're both like big emotive lead voices and, you know, my thought was that it'll either work or not. really not work uh and and thankfully.
24:45
Speaker 3
We've done a couple things now yeah so it's a kind.
24:48
Speaker 5
Of thing on this folkocracy record oh that's right i think that was the first thing.
24:52
Speaker 3
Oh yeah that's that's when i first encountered uh working with him.
24:58
Speaker 4
Yeah he also does or you guys do one of my favorite things which is occasionally you hear this sometimes in country music The male voice, he'll go above your voice.
25:08
Speaker 5
Oh, yeah. Almost always on that song.
25:10
Speaker 3
He almost always does. Yeah. Which is, I was so surprised.
25:15
Speaker 5
And I was like, okay. That's just where you naturally went. People don't do that.
25:18
Speaker 4
I mean, it's such, you used to hear that, everything but the girl used to do that a bit because she had a low voice.
25:23
Speaker 1
Right.
25:24
Speaker 4
But there's some country songs, of course, I'm blanking. If you know Spanish Johnny. Waylon Jennings' Emmylou Harris.
25:32
Speaker 1
I don't know if you know that song.
25:34
Speaker 4
He sometimes goes above her, and it's just a magic sound.
25:37
Speaker 3
Well, the Graham Parsons, you just made me think of it, Emmylou Harris thing was really amazing.
25:44
Speaker 4
Yeah.
25:45
Speaker 3
Yeah, there's been some great duet singing.
25:51
Speaker 2
Back in the day.
25:52
Speaker 4
I love the wordplay.
25:53
Speaker 5
I love the.
25:54
Speaker 4
Better With You.
25:55
Speaker 5
Oh, yeah.
25:56
Speaker 4
That makes it sound like an old, I'm name-checking every country song I can think of, but like a Loretta Lynn Conway Twitty song or.
26:03
Speaker 5
Something like that. We were writing this song, we kept, starting with the title, we kept, like, kind of Googling to make sure, like, This hadn't been written already because it immediately felt like a song that's existed, you know, a bad case of loneliness. We're like, this has to exist.
26:19
Speaker 3
No, we were just very clever.
26:21
Speaker 5
We were just very clever.
26:22
Speaker 3
And we figured that out.
26:23
Speaker 4
But again, it's, you know, you mentioned it. There's lots of songs about being lonely. Being lonely in a relationship is a different kind of.
26:33
Speaker 3
It's definitely different.
26:34
Speaker 5
Yeah.
26:35
Speaker 4
And I found that running, I mean, there's that, there's Without You, there's This Island.
26:40
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah.
26:41
Speaker 4
A lot of these songs have that sense.
26:44
Speaker 3
Shit, maybe something's going wrong in my life now. But you know what? It's just part of life. It's part of life. I don't think it's just unique to me or you. I think loneliness is, I mean, think back on the Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles, All the Lonely People. It's like, It's been touched upon in songs.
27:08
Speaker 5
I think what's unique is how open you are to sharing all.
27:14
Speaker 3
Of it with us. Yeah, because I'm an open book. Maybe it was all the psychoanalysis or something like that back in the day when I was in my 20s.
27:23
Speaker 4
Maybe I should finish the interview and I'll say, we'll discuss it next time.
27:27
Speaker 5
No, we had the role of.
27:29
Speaker 3
Let's pick up next time where we left off.
27:31
Speaker 5
Me and whoever we were writing with kind of had the role of psychoanalysis. We'd be like, well, why do you feel that way, Sue? I know there's a lot of.
27:38
Speaker 3
Questions that analysts do, being the daughter of one and having done psychoanalysis.
27:43
Speaker 5
But it was great.
27:44
Speaker 3
It's a series of questions you have to answer.
27:46
Speaker 5
So open and we'd be scribbling notes and, you know.
27:48
Speaker 4
It also feels like a lot of, not just the None of Them Were You song, there's a lot of Casablanca. It feels like there's a lot of Ghosts.
27:59
Speaker 1
Oh, I love that.
28:00
Speaker 3
That's so true. That's so interesting.
28:04
Speaker 5
Casablanca.
28:04
Speaker 1
Well put.
28:05
Speaker 5
Well, yeah, I mean, Casablanca was kind of exactly that. It was through Bob Weir.
28:10
Speaker 3
Yeah.
28:11
Speaker 4
Tell me the story.
28:11
Speaker 3
It was Casablanca. Oh, so I was doing my usual thing. Who was there in the room that day?
28:20
Speaker 5
It was me, you, and Dan Wilson.
28:21
Speaker 3
Yeah. There was a special day because Dan is so brilliant, and we had Dan in the room, and I don't remember. Did I bring up my Bob Weir experience?
28:33
Speaker 5
You did, yeah.
28:33
Speaker 3
But did Dan already know about it?
28:35
Speaker 5
No, and you had seen Bob at a Grammy event like the night before.
28:39
Speaker 3
Oh, is it that?
28:40
Speaker 2
Oh, okay.
28:41
Speaker 5
Thank you for.
28:42
Speaker 3
Putting the timeline together.
28:43
Speaker 5
Yeah, you were like, what'd you do yesterday? And you had both seen Bob Weir at that Grammy event. And then I came home and I watched Casablanca.
28:50
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, I do.
28:51
Speaker 5
And so she had just casually mentioned that she had watched this movie.
28:53
Speaker 3
Just casually, I'd revisited Casablanca.
28:56
Speaker 5
Because it's so good.
28:57
Speaker 3
Here's looking at you, kid.
28:59
Speaker 5
You told us your Bob Weir story, which is so beautiful.
29:02
Speaker 3
So, yeah, the Bengals were on tour opening for George Michael. It's 1988. We're realizing that on the routing of the tour, we keep noticing all these kids in hotels and hotel lobbies in tie-dyed shirts and So we go, we do our George Michael gigs in New Orleans. There were a few of them in a row and we were in our hotel in New Orleans and I have a few days off. I find myself wandering in the lobby and then I kind of go towards where the, the, the glass doors open of the Marriott or whatever the hotel was at the time. And I see a van pull up and I see a bunch of guys flow out of the van and there's a definite tour manager guy with the briefcase. And I realized, oh my God, it's the Grateful Dead. I put it together. It was so easy to identify Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir and whoever else was in the band at that time. And this is how I am as a person. I thought I could say nothing or I could go up to the tour manager and like before he got in the elevator, I said, wait, I'm sorry. That's the Grateful Dead, right? He goes, yeah, he was really kind and sweet and didn't. blow me off. And I said, oh, I'm in the Bangles. I'm staying in the hotel here because they were in the same hotel. And I said, we're opening for George Michael. And he said, oh, well, somehow it came up, do you have days off? Or maybe I said, we have a day off. And he said, oh, you have a day off? Come to the Neville Brothers hang at Lake Pontchartrain. And that's when I met Jerry and he had a baby. And that's when I encountered Bob. And Bob was the one who said, Do you want to go on a walk? And I said, yeah, I love to walk. And so we walked all around the lake. And then when it was time to be back in New Orleans for their gig, he invited us. I was so blown away by their whole operation. They had like chefs and rolling tour cases with spices in them. And then so we got to, they were invited to sing harmony. And then people were throwing Mardi Gras beads. And I think Vicky caught one. Vicky, the lead guitarist of the Bengals. And anyway, it's what predicated the song. It's what led to the song. It was the stories that you, me, and Dan talked about, right, that very day.
31:39
Speaker 5
You know, she told us this tale. And what was amazing was, yes, we hear the story from Sue, and we write the song sort of about it and tie in the movie Casablanca.
31:50
Speaker 3
And....
31:52
Speaker 5
A couple months later, we ran into Bob's old tour manager. And I was like, oh, my God, you tour manager Bob Weir. Sue, come over here. Tell him this story of going on these walks with Bob. And he cut us off. He was like, are you kidding me? That was Bob's favorite story to tell. He loved telling the story of when he got to go on a walk with Susanna Hopps. It was still in my heart. Beautiful moment. Oh, my God. I think there was a lot of, like, was there something going on there? Was there a flirtation? Was there a thing? And, and it was fun to write about that.
32:24
Speaker 3
If I had to say, say it, I think that it was unspoken, but it was like kind of a, what, what could have been, that's the Casablanca tie.
32:34
Speaker 5
Yeah.
32:35
Speaker 3
You know, when Humphrey Bogart says, he was looking at you kid to Ingrid Bergman. It's like, they go their separate ways. They've been through the war, you know, they've done all this, all this stuff has happened.
32:48
Speaker 4
And, uh, We'll always have Paris.
32:50
Speaker 3
We'll always have Paris. You got the line. We'll always have Paris. Oh my God, thank you for that.
32:56
Speaker 5
I remember the moment when Dan was like, Casablanca, I think that sings well. And we were like, yeah.
33:03
Speaker 3
It is because it has that melodic quality to the way that it sounds when it comes out of your mouth.
33:08
Speaker 4
Lucky you didn't watch King Kong that night. I can't make this into a song. That's what I mean. There's sort of like ghosts a little bit. So tell me about There's a couple of songs I do want to talk about. This Island.
33:23
Speaker 5
This Island, another song about loneliness. And we wrote this one with a great songwriter from Topanga named Nayo, who makes beautiful records. And I remember writing this song. We were talking about loneliness and feeling like you could do it on your own and sort of like female empowerment. I remember her sitting cross-legged on the floor looking up at Sue and just really probing her and really doing the psychoanalysis thing. I love the lyric, moored on the shore, but I love the view of me, my loneliness, and you.
33:54
Speaker 3
I think it was that. It was like you could be so lonely under the same roof with your beloved partner or spouse.
34:02
Speaker 5
Lonely but happy. Lonely and strong.
34:04
Speaker 2
Lonely but happy.
34:05
Speaker 3
Well, I think there's a mix within the song. Because you can feel like you're on an island all by yourself, even though the person is there. It's not like. a complete downer or anything like that, but maybe I'm missing the part.
34:23
Speaker 5
You were talking about. No, no, it's exactly right. Like just being like, sort of like comfortable in your loneliness and like realizing there was like opportunity there. And like, what am I going to, what am I going to step forward and do with this feeling and this sort of how do I fill this time? How do I fill this, you know, how do I use this feeling and harness it and use it to push myself forward? Yeah.
34:48
Speaker 3
Loneliness is a thing.
34:49
Speaker 4
A related song for me is time.
34:52
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah.
34:53
Speaker 3
I know. That's a tearjerker.
34:55
Speaker 5
Yeah.
34:56
Speaker 3
I mean, my kids have been out of the house now. I don't know if you have kids or what their age, yeah. So the emptiness thing is really interesting and kind of melancholy in its way, but it's... It's the cycle of life, not to do the Lion King thing, but just saying, I don't know why that popped into my head, but it's beautiful to see them become grown humans, mature humans.
35:24
Speaker 4
That's your job, to set them up to leave.
35:27
Speaker 3
And I think I did a very good job.
35:30
Speaker 5
We wrote that with a songwriter named DeJure, and I have a almost five-year-old and a seven-year-old and he had a six-year-old boy. And so we were talking about just them growing up and, you know, you know, you sort of like can't remember life before them and all of that. And then Sue started talking about her kids being grown and the empty nest thing. And it was just like, I remember it was just, was crushing to think about like this inevitable day when you're back to an empty house and they're not there anymore.
35:57
Speaker 3
You got such a long way to go.
35:59
Speaker 5
We've got a long way to go, but I think it sneaks up on you. And it was, that was a, powerful day of, you know, just thinking about that circle of life. It's funny how.
36:07
Speaker 3
The, it's, it's funny how songs work. I was just thinking there's like the joy mixed with the melancholy. There's something about the rub, you know, I don't know. It's, it's partly why it works in a song, isn't it? Like, yeah, it's not that straightforward. It's a little dash of this and a little dash of that.
36:29
Speaker 4
I guess it's the same way you need dissonance to make the, The melody.
36:33
Speaker 1
Yeah.
36:34
Speaker 5
Conflict resolution, you know.
36:35
Speaker 2
Yeah.
36:35
Speaker 1
Yeah.
36:36
Speaker 3
Because what would it be if it was just all, you know, up with people? Whatever that song.
36:41
Speaker 4
I don't remember what that was.
36:43
Speaker 5
I played Time for My Mom and she, you know, totally broke down and started crying. And I looked at her. I was like, what's wrong? She was like, that song's not fair. And I was like, well. It's true.
36:53
Speaker 4
It's kind of true. I have a friend who always said his kids are a little older than mine. And he said, having kids is the longest breakup of your life.
37:01
Speaker 1
Yeah.
37:02
Speaker 4
Yeah.
37:03
Speaker 3
That's a good quote. I mean, because it's so interesting and poetic.
37:09
Speaker 4
You're thinking of using that in your next album, right?
37:12
Speaker 5
Mm-hmm.
37:12
Speaker 4
It's yours.
37:14
Speaker 5
Somebody told me that when my daughter turned six, my older daughter turned six, they were like, all right, there's some really depressing statistic that was like, you've already spent 90% of the time that you're going to spend with her. You've already done that. Because now she's going to go to school and then she's going to move out and then she's going to live the rest of her life. But you got to be there for like every moment of those first years. And it just like floored me. I think we were talking about that statistic too when we wrote this song. It was like, you know, she's six years old and I've already, most of the time I'm going to spend with her has passed.
37:46
Speaker 3
But I'm here to attest to the fact that it's kind of great too.
37:50
Speaker 2
Yeah.
37:51
Speaker 3
When they've done all their... they're all the school stuff and then they've moved on to jobs actually. And they're adult humans and it's kind of good. I don't worry about it. I'm here to tell you that you can feel really proud. And if, and especially if they've been raised in a way that was cool and, and they enjoyed it, they enjoyed their childhood with, even with all the, you know, once they're in high school and there's girlfriends or boyfriends, you know, you know, the breakups and all the things that happen. It's just the, it's the part of the whole journey.
38:29
Speaker 4
See, I would think being a girl dating your sons would be.
38:33
Speaker 3
A girl dating, wait, a girl dating my sons.
38:37
Speaker 4
Yeah.
38:37
Speaker 2
Yeah.
38:37
Speaker 4
You'd be like, well, I can't be cooler than your mother.
38:39
Speaker 1
So.
38:40
Speaker 3
No, it's not like, I'm so, I'm so happy that, I mean, You'd be happy.
38:46
Speaker 4
I think it would be tough for them. Like, oh, your mom's a rock star. Great.
38:51
Speaker 5
It's true.
38:53
Speaker 4
I did want to ask you about Fool.
38:56
Speaker 1
Oh.
38:57
Speaker 3
What would you say? What's your first thought?
39:00
Speaker 5
We wrote that with the great Jesse Harris.
39:03
Speaker 3
It's a very suave song.
39:05
Speaker 5
It's a suave song, like the suave songwriter he is.
39:07
Speaker 4
Like a bossa nova.
39:07
Speaker 1
Yeah.
39:08
Speaker 5
Sue just immediately, when we got there, was listening to all those great Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach songs.
39:14
Speaker 3
I grew up on that stuff. That's another thing that I learned to sing.
39:17
Speaker 5
And she was like, do you think we can write a song like these? And I was like, well, no, but yes, we could try. So that was just sort of a direct... Maybe that's the only song on the record that was like, let's try to emulate this style in this song.
39:31
Speaker 1
A Dionne Warwick song.
39:32
Speaker 3
Those Burt Bacharach records, I still have them.
39:35
Speaker 5
And the arrangements are unbelievable.
39:37
Speaker 3
They're unreal.
39:37
Speaker 4
Mm-hmm.
39:38
Speaker 5
Yeah, that was trumpet.
39:39
Speaker 4
And you were like, yeah, they always have good trumpet parts.
39:41
Speaker 5
They always have really good trumpet parts. I was excited.
39:43
Speaker 3
Oh, you're right.
39:44
Speaker 5
I very embarrassingly, as a trumpet player, thought Burt Bacharach was a flugelhorn player for like the first 15 years of my life. Really? Because everybody would be like, oh, do this, you know, can you play a Burt Bacharach thing? And I knew what that meant, and I had heard that music, but I just assumed, like, how could he write these melodies and not be a flugelhorn player?
40:00
Speaker 4
I do want to ask you about the last song on the album. Oh, what's... What Are Wings For?
40:04
Speaker 3
Oh, okay. That's one... CJ and I wrote with Edie Brickell.
40:10
Speaker 4
So how did that come about?
40:12
Speaker 5
I work with Edie a lot, and we're writing a musical, and she loves writing, you know, for theater and for the stage. And we were working on this other project, and at the end of it, when I left, she's like, bring me more musicals. And I was like, I'm never going to come up with an idea for a musical. But sure, if anything comes up. And I was talking with Sue about her novel and stuff, and she was like, I feel like I should just turn this into a musical. And I was like, oh. Ding, ding. I do have an idea for a musical. And that process was incredible. So we went down to the ranch they have in Texas. And Edie is this incredible improviser. She improvises these songs. It's just mind-blowing. You can't really explain it because no one would believe you. But she literally just will improvise a full song. So we had this great process where I would sit at a piano and Sue.
41:00
Speaker 3
Had her novel.
41:00
Speaker 5
Had the book.
41:01
Speaker 3
And I was just, yeah, you go.
41:03
Speaker 1
No, no, no.
41:04
Speaker 5
You would earmark different passages. parts of the book that could be like inspirations for songs. So Sue would just read page after page after page of the novel. And in a certain moment, Edie would go, stop. And she had a song in her head.
41:18
Speaker 3
All written already in her head.
41:19
Speaker 5
Already written in her head. That was the.
41:20
Speaker 3
Freakish and brilliant thing. Like it was, it blew my mind. I was like, she just channeled some.
41:26
Speaker 5
This song is a full on Edie Burkell improv. Wow. With me kind of playing chords based on Sue reading this novel and And I remember we finished sort of hearing Edie improvise the song. I looked over at Sue and she's just sobbing.
41:41
Speaker 3
It was really amazing.
41:44
Speaker 5
To witness it. It was incredible. Because she hadn't read the book.
41:49
Speaker 3
She hadn't read it, which is fine.
41:51
Speaker 5
No, but she was encountering this inspiration like in real time and having it feed her imagination and just going.
41:57
Speaker 3
Me reading a few passages that might work for a song moment that you would want.
42:03
Speaker 5
Watching her process is unlike anything.
42:05
Speaker 2
Okay.
42:05
Speaker 4
Have you buried the lead here? Are you turning your book into a musical?
42:10
Speaker 3
Well, it's on the, it's, it's, it's a plan.
42:13
Speaker 5
Yeah. It's a plan.
42:15
Speaker 4
So this is, it was a song written from the character in the book. Yeah.
42:20
Speaker 5
Yeah.
42:21
Speaker 1
Amazing. Yeah.
42:22
Speaker 5
It's sort of the, the book is kind of a, you know, redemption story where she, the protagonist is a one hit wonder. And then she finally like, you know, uh.
42:32
Speaker 3
Oh, and the person, I don't want to say it's based on Prince or something, but it's a guy who's like a huge icon in the music world. And she had only ever covered his song because she revered him.
42:47
Speaker 5
So it's kind of a redemption moment where she's like, this is my time. She sheds that baggage and stands on her own.
42:53
Speaker 3
She finally writes the song that is her own song, not the cover of the Prince song or whatever.
42:59
Speaker 5
It would be. Okay.
43:00
Speaker 4
But when you're... out there selling this musical, mention Prince.
43:04
Speaker 1
I will.
43:05
Speaker 4
Thank you so much for coming in. This is a wonderful album. It's a wonderful sounding album. Thank you so much for coming in.
43:11
Speaker 3
It's our treat.
43:14
Speaker 2
Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rhodes with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Talladay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening.
43:33
Speaker 5
For $ 4. 99 a month.
43:34
Speaker 2
Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast Subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.
The Hosts
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is co-founder of Pushkin Industries and host of the hit podcast Revisionist History. He is a journalist, a speaker, and the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Tipping…
Justin Richmond
Justin Richmond is producer and co-host of the music podcast Broken Record with writer Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times editor Bruce Headlam, and music producer—and Def Jam co-founder—Rick Rubin. Justin…
Bruce Headlam
Bruce Headlam is one of the co-creators of the music podcast Broken Record. He worked at The New York Times for 19 years, including two years running the 50-person Video…
Leah Rose
Leah Rose is a senior producer and hosts episodes of Broken Record. A former music editor at XXL Magazine, she also served as an on-air personality for Eminem’s SiriusXM channel, Shade 45.…
