Fanny has a distinguished place in rock and roll history as the first all-female rock band to record a full-length album (the self-titled Fanny in 1970) for a major label. In this pioneering band, June Millington sang and played guitar, and her sister Jean Millington played bass guitar. Fanny released a total of five stellar albums in the 1970′s (the last without June), and toured with many of the era’s biggest artists. Both June and Jean played on albums by Ringo Starr and Barbra Streisand. June also played guitar on Cris Williamson’s classic Women’s Music album Changer And The Changed, and co-founded the Institute for the Musical Arts. Jean also performed on albums by David Bowie and Keith Moon. The sisters recently released the album Play Like A Girl.

This interview with June and Jean was conducted by phone on 8/19/11.

Jeff Moehlis: I’ve been enjoying listening to your new album [Play Like A Girl]. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it came together?

June Millington: I would say that it was a confluence of things. One is, Jean’s son is a great drummer, and he’s been playing off and on with us for about ten years. So we know that if we ever have material that we want to perform or record, then he’s there for us. He’s really, really good. So that’s a fun aspect that’s always in the mix.

The other thing that happened was I shattered my left kneecap about two years ago, in a really odd accident which was I was walking out of our own barn here at IMA, where we do our own Rock ‘n Roll Girl’s Camp, and I slipped on our own handicap ramp [laughs]. I shattered my kneecap, and what happened was I was immobile for, I think, two months. I had to have an operation, and then physical therapy. And somewhere in the middle of physical therapy the song “Play Like A Girl” came to me from out of a dream. So now I see it as it happened for many reasons, and that’s one of them. So the second verse to “Play Like A Girl” which is “Two little girls staring out at the sea / Water touching China, it’s as blue as can be”, in fact we were standing in the China Sea when we went to my mother’s hometown in the Philippines when we were kids. So that song came to me as a gift, literally overnight, and Jean and Lee [Madeloni] happened to be here for his birthday, kind of a family gathering, and I mentioned it to Jean, thinking we really should record it. We managed to slip ten days of recording in between Lee’s birthday, which is in March, and the start of our Rock ‘n Roll Girls Camps.

What was great about that schedule, I mean we had to literally cram ten days in, was that right after we recorded was pre-teen camp, and all the girls at pre-teen camp sang on “Play Like A Girl” as the encore of their show. Because we have a recording studio in the barn now, and it’s connected to the performance, we were able to set up a special mix, and take a little break, and make it an event. That’s all on video, and it’s very, very powerful. So, essentially what I’m saying is that the entire experience is bridging from when Jean and I started as kids playing ukuleles and then acoustic guitars, to electric guitars in ’65, bridging our entire career essentially through our playing and what we’re saying now. That’s all contained in the album, in that one song.

And, as you know, there are twelve songs so there’s quite a bit of material and it’s really varied, and that’s because of our own interests and the longevity of our career. The fact that we’re still alive, believe me, is amazing to me. I never thought [laughs]. Number one, in the ’60′s one of the catchphrases was “Don’t trust anyone over 30″, and I actually believed that, you know, in ’67, ’68. And then here we are, I’m twice over that and I’m still playing, so it’s pretty amazing.

Jeff M: Do you have any plans to tour in support of the album?

June M: Yeah, we’re playing here on the East Coast a couple of gigs. We launched Wednesday night at the Highline [Ballroom, in New York City]. We’re playing here tomorrow at the Institute for the Musical Arts in the barn, where the whole thing happened. We’re playing here as a benefit for the IMA. And then we’re going to California in September, early October, but unfortunately we don’t have anything in Southern California yet. Right now we have Berkeley, Santa Rosa, Davis, and University of Southern Oregon and up into Portland and Eugene. That’s what’s booked for about a two week stint. And then we’re just booking musical jaunts from there as they happen.

The thing is, for us, we’re not going to play for free anymore, so it becomes a little bit of an ordeal to book gigs, because the days of flinging ourselves against the musical wall, as it were, and hoping we don’t lose money, that’s over with. So it becomes a bit more of a formal structure to get things to happen.

Jeff M: You mentioned the IMA, which I guess is where you’re at right now.

June M: I’m sitting in the living room at the Institite for Musical Arts, yes.

Jeff M: Could you give a quick summary of the mission of the IMA?

June M: IMA is to support women and girls in music and music-related business. I mean, that’s in the mission statement. The subtext, which is also in the mission statement, is to give particular attention to women of color and single mothers. As a result, at our Rock ‘n Roll Girls Camps, if we are approached by a single mother and she needs help getting her girls to camp, we will respond to that. Because, as you can imagine, single mothers have a hard time supporting and raising their kids. And Rock ‘n Roll Girls Camp is something that really adds a nurturing and confidence-inspiring component to these girls’ lives. No matter where they come from, and they do come from different social and class strata. They all come.

I mean, we don’t try to edit the content of the girls coming to camp. In fact, you don’t even have to play an instrument to attend an IMA Rock ‘n Roll Girls Camp, because we have three instructors, three sets of classes a day, and we have all the equipment that you would ever want in the barn, including a recording studio. It unfolds in its own way every time, and works, somehow we’ve figured out a way to make it work.

IMA is a way really for me, personally, to give back to the fifteen and sixteen year-old girls that Jean and I were who started in 1964/65 with an all-girl band and had no support and no way to get information. We had to just make it up ourselves. So now we have a place where its codified, and the bureaucratic structure’s there, and not only the bureaucratic structure but the actual materialization also. We have twenty-five acres and a barn, two barns in fact, but the larger barn is converted to a facility that hosts the camp. Then we [June and partner/IMA co-founder Ann Hackler] live in the house, and it’s pretty large. It’s an 1816 estate outside Northampton, Massachusetts. And Northampton, I don’t know if you know this, is the Five Colleges area. They have five colleges here, so it has that infusion of the intellectual aspect of any group of people who get together with colleges and universities, but it has also got a lot of great music here. I mean, Ray LaMontagne lives down the street, for example. It’s quite an infusion of minds and music and different lifestyles here, which is great.

Jeff M: Of course, you’re well known for being in Fanny. Could you reflect on the legacy of Fanny?

June M: On the face of it, the legacy of Fanny is that we played at all. That we defied the odds, that we learned how to play our own instruments and learned the mechanics of being in a band all on our own from ’65 to ’69. By the time we got to Hollywood we could play, we knew how to set up a P.A., we knew how to book gigs, we had all of that basically covered. And then it was honing all that with recording skills with our producer Richard Perry, who’s really good. So the fact that we, number one, did it, and number two, were good and always got better. We worked really, really hard. You have no idea how hard it was to do it. When I say you, I mean people in general. I’m actually writing an autobiography, and it’ll get a little bit into the depth of just what it was like for us. It’s almost indescribable. So it was a tremendous effort. The fact that we did it at all, and we knew other girls were going to come after us, is a huge accomplishment.

That being said, after leaving Hollywood and that rock and roll part of my life, which I’m returning to in an interesting way right now, I got involved in Buddhism and Women’s Music, which is also very spiritual and feminist. A lot of other parts that I needed to welcome into my life were actually contained in Women’s Music, so that was really good for me. After going through Women’s Music, Jean and I actually did an album during the disco years called Millington, so there’s a lot of music that was going on all through the time that I left Fanny. And Jean had “Butter Boy”. A lot of music.

And co-founding IMA in 1986, we got our 503 [nonprofit status] in 1987, essentially what we’ve been doing since then is building the foundation of this place to make sure that we can pass it on, because this is our biggest legacy. I mean, yes the music, we got the music, and now we’re very interested in doing a direct transmission by standing onstage and just playing our fannies off [Jeff M laughs]. So that direct transmission is, to me, the quintessential component along with this site, and everything that gets left to the future generations, because the physicality of this place, the twenty-five acres, all the equipment, the barn, the archives, gets passed on to the girls. And everyone who comes to camp, the first day I announce that. You know, “Look around, this is your place.” So we get the care and feeding of our souls, because we’re reaching back to where we were at fifteen and sixteen, starting out. We’re giving ourselves that solace now by doing direct action in the moment.

You know, really, time bends because with these camps. Our very first was 2002, we didn’t know what we were doing; I mean, we ran electrical lines from the house to the barn, we didn’t have enough places to plug in. But clearly I could just see in every single camp we do it’s like looking at myself [laughs]. Because they all are going through the same thing. How do I do it? Gosh, how do I find the confidence? I’m scared. How do I learn how to do countoffs to songs? All that kind of stuff that has to come together. You have to realize that there some sort of responsibility involved, you can’t just bash about and everybody plays loud. It’s a conversation. So these girls learn how to settle down and realize there’s a responsibility here, you have to work hard, and P.S. this is a conversation. And you can take that out into life. You don’t have to talk loudest all the time. That’s a big deal.

Jeff M: You mentioned working with Richard Perry. Geoff Emerick was the engineer on the third Fanny album, then Todd Rundgren was the producer on the fourth album. I’m curious, what did those different individuals bring to the music and the recordings?

June M: Well, Richard is very much a taskmaster. The good part of it for us is he was very interested in teaching us how to record, how it was done. Working with a click track, how you get sounds, how you put the components together, how you played less to get more, how the pieces come together. That was extremely great training for us. Where we started to get frustrated was when we had learned how to do that, then he kept trying to contain our sound even more. Like, he would literally come up to my amp and turn the sound down, you know? You can talk to Jean about this, but he might have done that to Jean as well. But she definitely saw that happen to me. That was a defining moment over and over and over again for us, that he wanted to control it so much and we felt like, hey, we’re growing up here. We’re girls turning into young women right in front of your eyes. It was both really great, and just like anyone else growing up, you want to have some say in the whole matter.

Geoff Emerick was just a complete and total sweetheart. The thing is, he so knew what he was doing. And we found that the better that people are, in this case mostly guys, the more relaxed they are. So here Richard would be trying to control our sound at Apple Studios, and Geoff would be so accommodating to me and he basically took my side. Which is part of why I think Fanny Hill has that kind of edge to it, because we got to turn up just a little. You had somebody like me turn to someone like Geoff and say, “How did George Harrison and John Lennon get their guitar sounds?” and he just backed me up by saying “Well, they gave me their sounds and I miked it.” And that really is a true story. That was wonderful.

Then Todd was like going back the other way. He was like a super control freak. And we got good results, but that was really trying, and there’s going to be some anecdotes in the autobiography that go into that in a little bit more depth. You know, I guess I walked away from the Todd Rundgren experience not feeling so great about that amount of wanting to have control. I mean, he didn’t want us there for the mixes. I literally kept kicking at the door until they opened the door. And I was the only one who did that [laughs]. I was kind of a pain in the ass, you know, because I always wanted to be involved in everything. But I was interested, I was very interested.

Overall, I’d have to say that I’m really grateful that we worked with all these guys, because from every situation we learned something, and we can pass that on now. I’ll tell you, one thing I’ve noticed about people recording now is they have no scheduling skills. They don’t even know how to do pre-production. They think it’s just like what’s the interface you’re using. Are you kidding? To me it’s still the musical component, and how you plan everything and organize everything to fit. It’s not just, you can edit [laughs]. So I’m really old school, but that’s what I learned. And it works.

Jeff M: Were there any musicians back when Fanny was active that you found particularly supportive?

June M: A lot of them. Lowell George would be at the top of the list. He was extremely supportive. He taught me the lick that became “Charity Ball”. And Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, still a really good friend of mine. For Jean, Will Lee was great, a great friend, a great mentor.

It just goes on and on and on. I mean pretty much anyone we did gigs with that was good, we could say, “Could you show me something?” And we took advantage of that. We did a lot of gigs with Edgar Winter. I should actually write down all the people that I feel like I could sit down with for a minute to ask something. There are just scores of them. The guy from Chicago, my God the guitar player who accidentally shot himself playing roulette with a gun backstage or wherever he was [Terry Kath], he was a great player. Nobody talks about it because they all talk about that accident, but he was a great guitar player. He used to come backstage with his guitar and just show me new licks he was discovering. He was really a great, great guy.

Jeff M: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

June M: I’d say, number one, practice. Eat well and get enough sleep. And learn how to schedule, learn how to prioritize. This is a business, it’s not all just glamour. It’s not a hologram. It’s a lot of work. So if you can get your head behind the work part, then all the exciting stuff happens. And if you can not blast yourself out of the universe through bad eating and sleeping habits – it can’t be that forever, it can be that for a bit but it can’t be that forever. So you just kind of have to fit all that in, because, you know, it’s so much fun [laughs]. But the fun isn’t the thing. You get to the fun through hard work. I bet that’s kind of dull and boring, but that really would be my advice.

Jeff M: Well, you’re speaking from experience. I’d also like to ask, would you like to set the record straight on anything?

June M: George Harrison did not think of the name Fanny. It’s amazing how many people repeat that story. What? We didn’t meet George until ’72. Fanny, the first album, was ’69. I mean, you do the math.

[June hands the phone over to her sister Jean]

Jean Millington: Hi, this is Jean.

Jeff M: Hi, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Jean M: You’re welcome. We’re probably not going to talk for long because June I think said it all. [laughter all around]

Jeff M: I have a few new questions, and a few that are the same. You and June just released the new album Play Like A Girl. Could you comment on how that all came together?

Jean M: Well, June is quite the prolific songwriter, and just because we’re not actively playing doesn’t mean that she doesn’t write. I think she wrote “Let Love Linger” in 2002, or something like that. It’s been quite a while. So once she wrote “Play Like A Girl” it just seemed like the right time to finally get all her new tunes like that onto CD.

Jeff M: Here’s another one I asked June. Of course you two are best known for being in Fanny. Could you reflect on Fanny’s legacy?

Jean M: The thing is, like June said, when we first started playing it was really unheard of. In so many ways I feel like we’ve blazed a trail, even though there certainly were other all-girl bands around. But none of them had a major label record deal like Fanny did. And we toured extensively, we did all that. So in other words, we were able to prove that women could be a self-contained band.

Now, they call groups like Destiny Child a band, and I just so disagree with the terminology. To me, a band is self-contained. You write, you sing, and you play your own instruments. So in that way, Fanny was quite innovative. For instance, The Runaways were put together by Kim Fowley, and we do remember one time we were playing at the Whisky A Go Go, it was the New Year’s Eve gig or something like that, and Kim was doing his number backstage. He used to come to a lot of our gigs. And we remember this one time he came to us and he said, “Hey, guess what? I’m gonna put together a band, and I’m gonna call it The Runaways.” So in that way The Runaways were not an organic band. They didn’t come together by way of how fate would have it, if you know what I’m saying. So in that way, we definitely did show and prove not only to the world but to ourselves that we could do it.

Before we ever went down to L.A. and got the record deal and did all that… I mean, I was probably fifteen when we decided we wanted to stop playing folk music. We wanted to have a band. Didn’t know exactly what that meant, or what we would play, but we just knew that we wanted to start performing electric music. So I guess I was eighteen or nineteen when we signed with Warner Brothers, and so we had three or four years of all these gigs. We played so many different clubs. In those days there were so many venues, which was a wonderful thing. And we did county fairs, we did Air Force bases and Army bases. We used to play at Fort Ord, and that was quite a tremendous experience as well because that was during the Vietnam War, and I remember a couple of times we played there the guys had just gone through basic camp, and we were the last entertainment they were going to have before they were deployed to Vietnam. Really profound things like that.

But back to your original question, about the legacy. What I’m saying is that we were a self-contained band. We figured out how to rent a trailer, I got quite proficient with pulling a trailer. We used to carry our Hammond B-3. You can imagine three or four girls lifting a B-3 and a Leslie – it was really something else. So we did all of those things. We were absolutely a self-contained band. We really did show that girls, women, were capable of doing this.

Jeff M: You mentioned The Runaways, who got a huge amount of publicity recently [with the release of the movie called The Runaways]. How did you feel about all that, because obviously Fanny did come before them and a lot of lazy journalists were billing them as the first all-female rock band?

Jean M: As you can well imagine, I had a lot of mixed feelings about it. You know, on one hand bless their hearts, they got their story out there and they got all that publicity. But, I couldn’t help but be somewhat upset and jealous that they were getting all that publicity, and we had come before them and really in so many ways blazed the trail. So it was rather disconcerting on certain levels, that a lot of people just presume and think that they were the first all-girl band. It’s just ridiculous. And there wasn’t only us. There were The Freudian Slips from San Francisco, there were The California Girls from down in the Palo Alto area. I mean, there certainly were other girl bands who played way before The Runaways ever did.

Jeff M: Are there any musicians in particular that you feel were particularly supportive of Fanny when they were together?

Jean M: You know, like June said so many of the bands that we opened for when we were touring. This is part of the thing, that literally every single gig we played when we started doing the larger venues, at least the first ten minutes, all we were doing was proving we could play. On one hand it was extremely tiresome, and on the other hand it turned out, because we were such musicians and we were good, by the time ten minutes passed we had a lot of converted fans.

June already said Lowell George from Little Feat, who really was so helpful to her. And Will Lee, who plays with the David Letterman Band, he was so much of my influence for really learning how to play the slap bass. I hung out with him, and he has this funny story that he used to tell his friends that I asked him something and he went off and took a shower and when he came back, there I was doing the licks he had shown me. It just blew him away.

I wish I could remember all the musicians, but basically whoever we played with was, as June said, if someone is secure, then the nicer they are and the more magnanimous they are, and they’re willing to sit down and show you and share with you in so many ways. I would say, “Hey, that tune, how did you do that?” And for the most part the guys would comply.

Jeff M: In the booklet for the Rhino box set, it says that Fanny played on Ringo Starr’s album Ringo, but uncredited. How did that come about?

Jean M: That was because Richard Perry produced Ringo’s album. So then, of course, he asked us. I mean, we didn’t play the whole album. Frankly, I just don’t even remember, it’s been so long. I haven’t listened to it. I have absolutely no recollection how many tunes I played and sang on. But it came about because of the association with Richard.

You know, another time both Nickey [Barclay] and I cut an album with Leon Russell. And then at one point Nickey and I also played on Keith Moon’s solo album.

Jeff M: I’ve spoken to other musicians who have played on Keith Moon’s solo album. It sounds like it must have been quite an atmosphere there.

Jean M: Well you know what? When we played, as I recall it wasn’t a whole bunch of people. It was pretty much one on one. It wasn’t like this whole production. So I think we played on one, maybe two songs – I honestly don’t remember.

And even with Ringo, a lot of it was overdubs. Ringo wasn’t even present. At some point we had direct contact, but a lot of it was just the overdubs kind of thing.

One other person that we did play with was Barbra Streisand.

Jeff M: I understand that for at least one of the albums, that was cut live, right?

Jean M: Yes it was. And I have to say at that time – everyone knows who Barbra Streisand is and all that – she was actually quite gracious. I remember just being completely blown away. I think “Where You Lead” was the track that we had just cut, and then Barbra proceeded to get up and do a vocal, and then she proceeded to do a second vocal that was really different from the first vocal. I mean, that was just beyond my experience. She was very kind to us, and she sat and laughed and had a good time. It was really a wonderful experience.

Jeff M: Another thing I think it’s cool you did… I’m a big David Bowie fan, and I understand that you sang background vocals on “Fame”. What was it like working with Bowie at that time? And was John Lennon around?

Jean M: John Lennon was not around at that time. I more or less hung out with David for a period of a year, year and a half, and I happened to be in New York when he was cutting that album. I was hanging out with David in the studio, and he decided to put background vocals on. So it was really just quite on the spur of the moment. You know, I was just hanging out with David. And he was extremely gracious, all the way around. He was very supportive, and the liner note that he wrote for Rhino Records was really quite something. I was quite touched when he wrote what he did.

[From the liner notes: "One of the most important female bands in American rock has been buried without a trace. And that is Fanny. They were one of the finest fucking rock bands of their time. They were extraordinary: They wrote everything, they played like motherfuckers, they were just colossal and wonderful, and nobody's ever mentioned them. They're as important as anybody else who's ever been, ever; it just wasn't their time. Revivify Fanny. And I will feel that my work is done." - David Bowie]

Jeff M: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jean M: It’s so funny that June said what she said, because I haven’t heard that. But the first thing that I would say is make the decision that nothing’s going to stop you. And practice your butt off. Because that’s the only thing. When I first started learning how to play slap bass, I literally sat in my room for three months, and that’s all I did day in day out. I got tunes, I played along with them, I learned how this thing went. What they call woodshedding. I’m sure they don’t use that term anymore, it’s so ancient.

And one of the most important things is also to keep your mind and your health together. It’s so easy to get caught up with all the addictive behavior, because it’s so darn inviting and seductive. So, I mean, when you’re young, of course you’re going to do that. But the thing is, it’s about trying to keep a balance, to stay in the middle ground. And moderation is the key. The most important thing is you have to take care of yourself.

Jeff M: Do you have any specific advice for females, or pretty much the same?

Jean M: Pretty much the same.

We really thought it would’ve changed so much by now, the attitude toward girls. It hasn’t really changed, and as a matter of fact, with all the single performers, it’s become more sexist than ever. It’s just unbelievable to me, what even say Beyonce has to go through or Rihanna. I mean, the kind of images that they try to live up to. But that’s with the pop music.

KT Tunstall, I just so admire her. She plays like a dream, her compositions are great, it’s very original. And she retains her sense of rock and roll looking sexual, but not being that overt horrible thing. And I very much respect that.

But there still aren’t any girl bands out there. You have all of the individual performers that you admire. You have women as musicians who are recognized just for being a musician, but it’s not an all-girl band.

Jeff M: I like The Donnas. They’ve been around since the late 90′s. They came through town recently, and really just blew the place away. There are some, but certainly it is a rarity.

Jean M: It still is nowadays. It’s still surprising, but you know, it’s a man’s world as the song says.

Jeff M: Do you want to set the record straight on anything about the music, the band?

Jean M: When we first started out Fanny was very much a rock and roll girls band. I mean, we played in jeans and T-shirts, and of course we had some make-up and whatever, but it was really because of the record company and their desire to have us be more accessible, so that meant more sex appeal. They wanted us to be more sophisticated, and we did go into the whole thing with Mother’s Pride and the costumes that were made by Warner Brothers, the movie people and all that stuff. We kind of got, in a way, really moved into trying to have a more, for the lack of a better word, sophisticated look, even though to me they just wanted us to be more sexy and appeal in that way. It wasn’t part of our natural evolution. But still, as far as I’m concerned, our playing always spoke for itself.

Jeff M: Well, that was getting into the glam era also.

Jean M: Yeah, after June left the band and Patti Quatro, Suzi Quatro’s sister, was in the band, that was when all that glam rock was happening. Rock & Roll Survivors was thought of basically as a rock opera, so we did that whole thing. We came onstage, we had the capes, we had the masks, and recited some stuff, and whatever. So we were totally into the glam rock thing, but as far as I’m concerned we still really rocked.

Todd Rundgren has worn many musical hats, from principal songwriter and guitarist for the 1960′s Anglophile band The Nazz, to the pop meister who wrote the 1972 hit “Hello, It’s Me” and co-wrote the 1983 anti-work anthem “Bang the Drum All Day,” to a member of the prog-rock ensemble Utopia, to the lead singer of The New Cars after Ric Ocasek decided not to join a reunion of The Cars, to the producer of Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, The New York Dolls’ debut album, and albums by many other artists including Patti Smith, Grand Funk Railroad, and XTC.

This interview was conducted by phone on 11/23/09, and formed the basis of a preview article for Rundgren’s show on 12/05/09 at the Majestic Ventura Theatre at which he performed the entire album A Wizard, A True Star (AWATS). A review of the concert is here.
The full interview follows:

Todd Rundgren: About a year ago I was touring in Great Britain, and my promoter there proposed the idea of doing a one-off special event, which would be AWATS as the whole record. The reason he thought that would be a good idea is because there was a young generation of turn-tablists and mixologist-type artists who had discovered the record and were mentioning it in interviews and sampling it for thieir own records, and things like that. So he thought that an event like that would be a great way to introduce me to a younger audience via these younger artists.

When word got back to the mainland that I was considering such a thing, a group of U.S. fans got together and decided they wanted it to happen here first. So they promoted the shows themselves. As a matter of fact, it started with one night in Akron, Ohio, with the potential of adding a second one, and then it stretched into seven dates in five cities. At first it was only going to be potentially a one night or two night event in a single theater, and it just turned into something more than that.

Now we’re taking it to other parts of the country, but kind of on a regional level because it’s an expensive show to mount and to carry around. So that’s why it’s not like an ongoing tour. It’s more of an event thing.

JM: Can we expect to see costumes at the show?

TR: There will be lights and smoke and all the stuff you would expect to find at a 70′s-style arena-style show. But in addition I have had a history of flamboyant costumery back in the day, so we’re making that a featured aspect, principally because that is something that is attainable. Building a giant hydraulic set, or something like that… we’re not playing places large enough to justify that sort of investment. So the costumes actually turned out to be something that was both apropos and practical.

JM: I’m looking forward to that. I was only three years old when the album came out so I didn’t see any of the crazy 70′s rock shows.

TR: Actually, the record was never performed in its entirety in the 70′s. Parts of it were performed. But as far as trying to recreate the record, a lot of the record was a product of studio experimentation, and we weren’t able to haul all of that stuff that we had in the studio out on the road. Essentially we would do what was within our grasp to do, and then the rest of it just never got done.

The onward progress of technology has made it possible for us to reproduce pretty much anything that is on the record. If we can’t find the synthesizers or whatever to make the sounds, we can literally sample them off the masters. Which is something that I would have had no philosophical problem with at the time. For instance, I used to open the show, and perform some of these songs, and the only accompaniment was a tape recorder [laughs]. The band would come out for the second half of the show. Had we had samplers, yeah, we might have attempted to do more of the record back in the day.

But eventually, you know, I moved onto other things, and never thought that I would have to deconstruct a record in order to perform it in its entirety. But then, here we are [laughs].

JM: Your answer brings up something I’m quite interested in, which is the relationship between music and technology. I was wondering about your thoughts on what are the good and the bad about how technology has evolved, in regard to making music.

TR: I think that technology is good if you have a sensibility that transcends whatever technology you’re using. There’s only room for so many Kraftwerk’s in the world. Not everyone can simply program machines and let them run and call it music. Before you twist a knob or plug in a wire, you have to have some idea of what you’re trying to accomplish. So a lack of that is a musical fatal flaw regardless of the level of technology that you’re dealing with.

It’s curious, it is possible, I think it’s totally possible that some people only have so much music in them, and then it eventually runs out. But they are making a living as a musician, so they continue to make music anyway, even though all of the good music has pretty much drained out of them [laughs]. That’s not an excuse to make music. The technology makes that kind of approach that much easier, it makes creating dreck easier. It doesn’t necessarily make creating good music easier.

JM: It almost seems too easy to make music nowadays.

TR: Well, it’s easy to blur the distinction between being a musician, being a performer, and being an entertainer. They’re actually completely distinct roles, and it’s only in our latter-day music business that we get them all blurred together. But it’s possible to be a musician and have no facility to actually play [laughs], to be able to perform. Somebody like Burt Bacharach, who writes incredible songs, but he can’t sing them [laughs]. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him try to sing – he’s not very good at it.

JM: I don’t remember hearing him sing, which is probably telling, right?

TR: He writes the most incredible songs, but he can’t really sing them. He can play them on the piano, but he can’t really sing them. So it doesn’t necessarily hold that if you’re a great musician, you’re also a great performer.

Also, at the same time, there is a distinction between performance and entertainment. And the audience criteria are in some ways different. For instance, Pavarotti is one of the most incredible performers of all time. But it isn’t necessarily entertaining to watch him, because he just stands there and sings. In an opera, it might be. But if he’s just standing up and singing an aria in front of an orchestra, for most people you’ve got to figure out how to entertain yourself by watching him, you know, like how fat he is, or the way his eyes bug out [laughs], or something like that. But he’s not trying to entertain you, he’s trying to sing the song as perfectly as he can. He’s taking a very challenging piece of music, and trying to perform it as close to perfection as possible. That’s what the entertainment value is for other people, but he’s not dancing around the stage [laughs], and grinning at people, and stuff like that, like Christina Aguilera or Lady Gaga.

There are these three completely distinct roles, and it’s only nowadays that we have the expectation that someone is all three. The likely weak point is the first thing, is the musicianship. That’s where they’re most likely to be weak. Because all of the other stuff is fairly easily learned, you know how to dance, and how to smile at people, and you can take singing lessons and things like that. All of that other stuff can pretty much be learned, but having something to say as a musician is the most difficult challenge for anyone.

JM: Now, of course, I have to ask you, because you set yourself up. How do you primarily see yourself, as a musician, a performer, or an entertainer?

TR: Well, I’ve always seen my fallback position as being a musician. I was never a natural entertainer, and I became a performer because I wanted to be able to create my own music and be able to have control over some aspect of it.

I always had an inclination to listen to a wide range of music, and too often attempt to perform some aspect of it. For as early as I can remember, I was into banging around on the piano that my grandmother had in her attic every time we would go visit, when I was five or something like that. When I got into elementary school in those days, they had music lessons available as an extracurricular activity, and you could rent an instrument from a school. So I think the first instrument that I wanted to learn how to play was the flute, not realizing how difficult it was to actually play.

At a certain point I latched onto the guitar, both because of my appreciation for the instrument, and also because of its attainability. I knew a guy up the street who had an electric guitar, and actually made money playing it. So my first instrument was the guitar.

And, while I had a great fascination with music, I didn’t really know myself well enough to become a great performer, in the sense that I was devoted to technique, that I would woodshed for years like Eddie Van Halen, or something like that [laughs]. I could do a certain amount of woodshedding, but I only really enjoyed playing it in a real musical context.

Eventually, I started writing songs out of necessity, out of that idea that all musicians, all performers wrote their own music. Because that’s what the Beatles did. Before them, it wasn’t like that. Frank Sinatra didn’t write his own music. Frank Sinatra didn’t play anything. All Frank Sinatra did was perform, and entertain [laughs]. He was a musician, and he probably could, and maybe did, write a song or two. But for the most part he depended on songwriters, who wrote for other performers.

Eventually, it got to the point where if I was going to be in a group that made records, we were going to have to record our own material. We couldn’t keep doing cover songs all of the time.

JM: I dug out a review of AWATS which came out when it was released, by Patti Smith. I was wondering if I could read the end of the review to you and get your comments or reaction. It says “Rock and roll for the skull. A very noble concept. Past present and tomorrow in one glance. Understanding through musical sensation. Todd Rundgren is preparing us for a generation of frenzied children who will dream in animation.”

TR: Well, I must say I’ve read it before, because Patti is actually part of the package. The original record had a poem by Patti, as an insert on something that looked like a big band-aid. There was also a postcard in there. So it was a pretty elaborate package. Patti and I were good friends at the time, and she wasn’t making money yet as an artist. She would do poetry readings and make a little bit money, but she wasn’t doing a band thing. So it was also a way for her to make money, writing reviews. So she didn’t just review me, she reviewed other music as well. And it was a way for her to use her language and stuff, and get paid for it [laughs]. The music business is a somewhat inside thing, and so we arranged, I believe probably, to have Patti do a review for someone so that she could get paid for it. And we knew in advance it would be a good review, because Patti was actually part of the package [laughs].

JM: Well, she does have a way as language.

TR: At the same time she was writing reviews, she was still performing her art. She was not simply writing reviews, she was putting the words together in a certain way that only she would do. I think that this is part of the grand legacy of literature, which is that most writers don’t get paid for their own writing. They get paid to write on a per-word basis for a newspaper or something like that, often doing reviews, while they actually are dreaming up the great American novel. While not being paid to write it.

JM: As it turns out, for the record, I’m doing this for free.

TR: [laughs]

JM: I enjoy music. I enjoy listening to it, and reading about it, so I thought, hey, I should write about it, too.

TR: You can also get your voice out there, which is a good thing.

JM: How would you place AWATS in comparison with your other albums? When you look back on it, what is special about it, or what is different?

TR: Well, it triggered The Great Migration, as it were. I had a lot of commercial success with the previous album, with Something/Anything? I wasn’t being necessarily contrarian, and trying to do something different, it’s just that I didn’t have a goal to be commercially successful. I was making a fine living as a producer. So I did my own records, in part, for my own amusement, and just to sort of document my own musical evolution. But without thinking, “OK, I’m going to quit record production and just go out and try to be a success as an artist.” So I was going to evolve to some place anyway, it wasn’t always going to be Something/Anything? record after record.

But the shift was so radical that it caused a whole schism in my audience. You can say that there are people who don’t know anything about me from AWATS on. They’ve listed to Something/Anything? until they’ve had to buy five replacement copies, or something like that [laughs]. But of anything that has happened after that, they are completely unfamiliar. And I have a lot of sympathy for them, because often they will see that I’m playing in town, and say to themselves, “Oh, I remember him back from the 70′s, all those great songs from Something/Anything? Let’s go see him.” They show up, and there’s all these decades of other music that has happened in the intervening time, none of which they recognize. So they never buy another concert ticket again [laughs]. They feel completely burned by the fact that I have evolved past that.

But the audience will mostly be filled with people who are completely aware of the fact that I’ve gone through all these changes, they weathered the storm that AWATS represented, and have actually developed a preference for that kind of off-the-wall approach, that almost anti-commercial approach that a lot of my records represent.

[Regarding] exactly what went on in the record, I don’t attempt to reproduce that record over and over again. You know, it was a record, and then I moved on to doing different kinds of records, and I continue trying to find new and interesting things for myself to do musically. But the milieu surrounding it, the way that it upset the apple cart, caused essentially a culling of my audience, or a bifurcating of my audience into pre- and post-Wizard audience members.

I think in a way, that’s part of the reason why I’m still able to make music when so many other people have had incendiary careers that are now over, in a sense, because the audience has moved on. The audience starts to think, “I guess I’ve heard everything this musician is capable of. I’m going to find something different to listen to.” That’s just
a natural dynamic in the music business. The audience moves on.

What actually happens is the audience is perpetually young. The demographic for record sales always skews towards people under thirty, because they’re usually single, and they have disposable income that they spend on clothes and music. Then, by the time they reach thirty, they’re starting to get married, and all of that disposable income becomes their childrens’ allowance. So the music business is constantly about youth, and about other people the same age as the record buyers who are making the music. And they don’t care if the music is redundant, if it’s something that’s been done before. And they don’t care if it’s original, either. Whatever it is, they want to hear people their own age doing it. That’s just the way it has always been.

So to hang on to your audience as you move into your later decades, requires that you elicit a higher level of commitment out of them, because it’s that much harder for them to get out of the house, as it were [laughs].

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

TR: Well, as you will recall, I gave you this whole dissertation about the difference between being a musician, and a performer, and an entertainer. The first thing to do is to have a clear distinction of what you’re trying to accomplish in that regard.

So if you want to be a musician, the first thing you need to do is get a day job [laughs]. You need to find something to do to feed yourself because music is one of these things where there aren’t success guarantees. It’s not like going to business school, getting an MBA, and then finding a job in a company somewhere. You’re going to go through this period of mystery regarding whether or not you are going to be able to ever make a living at making music. At some point you will have to make a decision that, yes, this is the life that I want to live, and that this is enough success for me to at least make a commitment to that lifestyle. Or you’re going to give up and find something else to do.

The question that you’ll have to answer for yourself at that point is, “am I really any good at it?” If I’m good at it, then regardless of what I have to do otherwise, I’m going to continue to do it. Because I’m good at it, you know? Because it means something to me to do it. And being good at it means that people respond to you.

I mean, you could say that there are egg-headed measures that only a musician would understand, in order to determine if something’s good. But really, the bottom line is, do other people enjoy listening to what you do? If they enjoy it enough to eventually go out of pocket to hear it.

But if you really just believe that you’re doing something musically important, and other people don’t understand it yet or whatever, and you’ll be lauded after you die for your incredible musicality that nobody was yet ready to listen to, then I don’t have any advice, you know [laughs]. You already have the level of self-assurance that makes you keep going regardless of what kind of success you have.

If the kind of advice is, how can I succeed as a musician, in other words, to get paid to do it… you know, I’m having enough trouble myself and I don’t need the competition. So if I knew how, I wouldn’t reveal it [laughs]. And I wouldn’t be telling you how to do it.

JM: Do you have any plans to perform any of your other old albums, either Utopia or solo albums in the near future?

TR: Well, this is unlike a lot of my tours in which I have a record done and I decide that I’m going to go out to play it, or I’m not doing anything else and I need to keep working so I go out and play music for people. It’s just a demand-driven thing.

It’s not the kind of thing where I’m going to decide, OK, now I’m going to do this record because I did that record. It’s a bottom-up thing. It has to be a product of audience demand, so that I have some assurance that the investment I’m about to make is not going to break me [laughs].

The response to the first offering [of AWATS] that we had back in September when we first started doing this, the response let me know that I could make an investment of a certain level. I could make the band a certain size, I could make the production a certain size, the number of crew would be this, that, and the other thing. In other words, it isn’t the same as me just packing up the truck with the amps and heading off. It isn’t a store-bought cake – it’s a cake from scratch.

So I’m certainly open to the possibility of doing another record, but that’s a bridge that has to be crossed when someone, in the manner that this Wizard thing kind of unfolded, takes it upon themselves to first of all canvas the audience to figure out what record it is that they really and truly want to hear, and then do what any other promoter does, which is gamble [laughs] on the production, by first of all putting a 50% downpayment on the table so that I can start paying for rehearsals and stuff like that. And then ideally nobody goes bust, and even more ideally we all make money at it.

JM: Well, I would put my vote in for the first Utopia album.

TR: There’s nothing preventing it, there’s nothing preventing a reproduction of perhaps any of the records.

Certain things that aren’t going to happen are, for instance… Roger Powell, who played in the shows that we did last September, is likely not going to be doing any more shows. We were lucky to get him away from his regular job [laughs] long enough to come out and do that string of dates. But he is not perpetually available to us. He still plays on occasion, but the whole ordeal of touring and stuff, he’s not into that anymore. He’s had his fill of it, and now he’d rather just do a regular job.

JM: I hope it’s fun for you to play this stuff.

TR: Well, as I say we only have done seven shows altogether. So it hasn’t gotten to the point where we’ve gotten tired of it. To the contrary, we’re still kind of learning it in a way [laughs]. We’re still lucky to get through a show without some musical disaster occurring, just because it’s so complicated and because we haven’t really ever taken it out on a formal tour, we’ve just sort of done this limited string of dates.

JM: Or there could be a wardrobe malfunction.

TR: Oh yeah, we’ve had those [laughs]. That’s usually one of the more entertaining aspects of the show, if you understand what’s going on. Yeah, we have those, we have wardrobe malfunctions. We have all manner of challenges. But it just seems to be something that the audience wants so badly, and wants to enjoy so badly that it’s hard to spoil it. It’s hard for it to go so horribly wrong that people aren’t still having a good time.

Pete Seeger is a legendary folk singer with quite a colorful history. In the early 1940′s he performed with the Almanac Singers, whose ranks also included Woody Guthrie. In 1948 he co-founded The Weavers, which had a number one hit with their cover of “Goodnight, Irene” by Leadbelly. In 1953, The Weavers were dropped by their record label and their songs were denied airplay because of suspected communist activities. When Seeger was called to testify before McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, he refused to name his personal and political associations, which led to him being found in contempt of Congress and blacklisted. Seeger was a key figure in the 1960′s folk revival, and wrote or co-wrote the folk classics “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, “If I Had a Hammer”, and “Turn, Turn, Turn!”. He also helped to popularize “We Shall Overcome”, which became an anthem for the American Civil Rights Movement. Seeger also recorded multiple albums for children. In January 2009, at age 89, Seeger led the crowd in singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” at President Obama’s inauguration.

Jeff Moehlis:What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter?

Jeff Moehlis:What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Sir George Martin

Sir George Martin, commonly referred to as the “fifth Beatle,” is recognized as one of the top producers in the history of recorded sound. His musical arrangements and use of studio experimentation elevated many of The Beatles’ songs, with notable examples including “Yesterday”, “Strawberry Fields”, “I Am The Walrus”, and “Eleanor Rigby”. Martin also produced albums by Jeff Beck, Mahavishnu Orchestra, America, Cheap Trick, and others.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Sir George Martin: So much depends on the talent and abilities of the individual. If one is suited to perform or compose music and has a genuine talent, then the age old adages apply: the advice is consistent hard work in training and practice to develop the talent and then persistence in finding the opportunity to perform.

Many thanks to Brooks Firestone for passing this question on to Sir George Martin while he was in the Santa Barbara area, and for sending his reply.

Steve Reich

Steve Reich is a pioneering composer, who along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is viewed as one of the most important figures in minimal music.

Reich’s early compositions “It’s Gonna Rain” (1965) and “Come Out” (1966) made use of tape loops which went out of phase with each other, an idea which he extended to live instrumentation with “Piano Phase” (1967) and “Violin Phase” (1967). He also explored the concept of “music as a gradual process” in pieces such as “Pendulum Music” (1968), in which microphones as pendula swing over a speaker, causing feedback.

His music took a new turn with “Drumming” (1971), inspired by a trip to Ghana. Steady pulse and rhythm became a dominant element of his compositions, including in the acclaimed “Music For 18 Musicians” (1976), widely viewed as one of his most important pieces.

Reich’s pieces began to incorporate themes from history and from his Jewish heritage with “Tehillim” (1981), which is the original Hebrew word for Psalms. Such themes continued with “Different Trains” (1988) which uses voices including those of Holocaust survivors, “The Cave” (1993) based on The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron which uses videos developed by his wife Beryl Korot, the opera “Three Tales” (1998-2002) about The Hindenberg, the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, and cloning, which also uses visuals by Korot, and “WTC 9/11″ (2011) which uses voices related to the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Reich’s compositions have been highly influential in the world of classical music, and he has been called “America’s greatest living composer.” In the rock music world, his influence has been cited for artists including Brian Eno, King Crimson, The Residents, and Tortoise. Reich is currently working on a piece based on the music of Radiohead.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring composer or musician?

Steve Reich: To the aspiring composer, the advice that I would give you is be around a community of players. Don’t be sitting around a classroom talking about music, analyzing music. Go where there are lots of players and where you can write a piece and get it played, and write another piece and get it played, and learn what works and what doesn’t work.

And also, if you can, get involved in performance. I had an ensemble for forty years – we’re now on hold because I really can’t take the responsibilities of being a bandleader – so when I travel around now I coach, and I sometimes sit in for certain pieces that can be done easily, like “Clapping Music” or something like that. But, you know, my ensemble was a very active presence, and lots and lots and lots of recordings were made, and we still occasionally play together, I mean with individuals. I just played with Russell Hartenberger at Ohio State about a month ago.

So get involved, I would say to them. Get involved in the performance of your own music. If you play an instrument, play an instrument. If you conduct, conduct. If you program a drum machine, program a drum machine. But get involved on a practical level.

Another thing, if you write a piece, make sure that it gets played. And hopefully it gets played more than once, because if you write something that’s not worth playing more than once, then you better write another piece fast.

For full interview with Steve Reich, click here.

Jeff Barry

Jeff Barry is one of rock and roll’s most accomplished songwriters, and was recently selected for a 2010 Ahmet Ertegun Award by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Barry and his songwriting partner Ellie Greenwich co-wrote such early rock and roll classics as “Be My Baby”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Chapel of Love”, “River Deep, Mountain High” (all co-written with Phil Spector), “Leader of the Pack” (co-written with George “Shadow” Morton), “Hanky Panky,” and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy.” Later, Barry co-wrote the bubblegum smash “Sugar, Sugar” with Andy Kim, and theme songs for the TV shows “The Jeffersons,” “One Day at a Time,” and “Family Ties.” Barry also was the producer for many well-known songs, including “I’m A Believer” by The Monkees, and early Neil Diamond songs such as “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” and “Kentucky Woman.”

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter?

Jeff Barry: [long pause] Have a clear vision of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. All show-biz, all entertainment has one thing in common, whether it’s film, TV, writing a novel, a song, or a script, painting, anything. Almost all creativity that is even commercial design, cars, you know, designing…, what do you call that, when you’re designing products? That’s what I was studying to be, too, before I quit. It’s all about creating emotion. There’s an old adage that if you leave them like you found them, you blew it. So it’s all about creating emotion, and a songwriter needs to understand that as well. That’s why people want to buy, and own I should say, the thing that you’re presenting, because it creates an emotion. Otherwise why would they want it? I think that’s fact #1.

You’re communicating. You could even say songs to some degree are a little like greeting cards. People buy them to express something to someone else that they can’t make up themselves. So it’s all about communication and creating emotion. If you’re writing strictly for yourself, and the lyrics are obtuse and unavailable and people don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, then you sure are limiting your ability to create emotion. So write those songs, get that stuff out, that’s fine.

But if you want to make a living at it, you need to write songs that are commercial. Commercial is a good word. There is nobody in show business that is not trying to be commercial. I don’t care how obscure and weird they are, they want to sell, which is commercial. Pop is short for popular, and that’s the idea. If you’re not looking to make a career of it, it doesn’t matter. Write songs, that’s great. Play them for family and friends, and whatever, that’s beautiful, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But your question, I think, is aimed at people that want to make a living at it, which is tough these days. I’m very thankful that when I came into the industry the songs were more valued than they are today. Today record companies are interested in things other than the songs, a lot of the time. And the artists who are writing their own songs, they’re having hits, maybe not based on the song all the time, [instead] on the rhythm and the haircut and the tattoo and the weirdness and the publicity. Which is different from what it was back then. In my heyday, it was certainly more based on radio play, what it sounded like. The E Channel didn’t exist, and TV wasn’t such a source of entertainment as it is today. The visual, let’s put it that way. It was more about the audio than it is today, which is a lot to do with the visual.

So the advice would be to basically create emotion, keep it simple, keep it clear. When you’re trying to get to somebody in the industry, take the three to five best songs, most commercial songs, most valuable songs, and put them on a disk. Don’t present 25 songs. You don’t have 25 hits, you just don’t. Take the best five, even if you have 25 smashes. Take the best five. Get that to whoever you can. And the emotion you want to bring out in anyone that you’re pitching to is greed. No one is going to do you any favors. Greed is a healthy word, whether it’s a music publisher, or a recording artist, or an A&R person at a label, or a record producer. You want them to want the material. No one is going to do you any favors, record it just because. If it’s a relative, perhaps. But otherwise, as it should be, they have to hear something that is going to make them look good, make them a success. So keep that in mind.

The other hint would be, sometimes you start a song and you write the first verse and you write the chorus, and then you get to the second verse and you can’t come up with the second verse. It could be that you’ve already written it. You take the first verse, make it the second verse, and then write the first verse [as] pre-story, set-up. That will free you up. So in other words, the beginning, middle, and end, I mean you might have already written the middle. And if you have, and you put it at the beginning, you’re messed up. Because then you’re going to write the ending for the middle, and you’ll have no ending. So I find that, for myself, that works. Because basically if you have an idea for a song you’ll write the core idea instantly, and the core, which is represented in the chorus usually too, but story-wise many times it’s overrepresented in the first verse. So you can take a look at that. That might be a good hint for songwriters in general.

For full interview with Jeff Barry, click here.

David Crosby

David Crosby was a founding member of The Byrds, and contributed to hits including “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, and “Eight Miles High”. He then co-founded Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young), writing or co-writing “Guinnevere”, “Almost Cut My Hair”, “Long Time Gone”, and “Wooden Ships”, and contributing vocals on such well-known songs as “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, “Teach Your Children”, and “Our House”. He also released the acclaimed 1971 solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

David Crosby: [laughs] Get a real job. Nowadays.

Graham Nash

Graham Nash is an English singer and songwriter best known for his contributions to British Invasion band The Hollies (he co-wrote “Carrie Anne”, “King Midas in Reverse”, “On a Carousel”, and “Dear Eloise”, and sang on many others including “Bus Stop”), to Crosby, Stills, & Nash & sometimes Young (he wrote “Teach Your Children”, “Our House”, “Wasted on the Way”, and “Marrakesh Express”, and sang on nearly all of their output) and as a solo artist (he wrote “Chicago” and “We Can Change the World”). In 2010 he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his service to music and to charity.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Graham Nash: Gotta mean it. Gotta believe it. You gotta have a passion for it. ‘Cause if you don’t you’re fucking wasting your time.

Fats Domino

Fats Domino is one of the pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll, bringing New Orleans rhythm & blues into the fledgling genre. His first hit, “The Fat Man”, was released in 1950 and sold over a million copies; it is sometimes argued to be the first rock ‘n’ roll song. His 1955 song “Ain’t That A Shame” become a #1 pop hit for Pat Boone. The next year, his version of “Blueberry Hill” reached #2 in the pop charts, and spent eleven weeks at #1 on the R&B charts; it sold more than 5 million copies. Another notable song was “I’m Walkin”, which hit #4 on the pop charts in 1957. All told, between 1956 and 1960 Domino sold 65 million records, second only to Elvis Presley.

From the 1980′s onward, Domino rarely left New Orleans, not even for his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or an invitation to perform at the White House. He was feared to have been killed when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, but he survived; his home is being restored, and he hopes to return there someday.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Fats Domino:

Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson is an American icon, a country music legend who has written and/or recorded hit versions of classics including “Crazy” (a hit for Patsy Cline), “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain”, “Georgia on My Mind”, “Blue Skies”, “All of Me”, “On the Road Again”, “Always on My Mind”, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”, “Good Hearted Woman”, “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”, and “Pancho and Lefty”. His #1 country albums include the outlaw country classic Red Headed Stranger, Stardust, and Always on My Mind. He has also lent his talent to a number of fundraisers, including the 1985 Farm Aid concert which he set up along with Neil Young and John Mellencamp. He continues to tour extensively.

Willie’s response was transmitted by his granddaughter Raelyn Nelson, herself an aspiring songwriter/musician. (L. Paul Mann photo)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter/musician?

Willie Nelson: Don’t stop writing and keep playing.

George Clinton

George Clinton is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the development of funk music, along with James Brown and Sly Stone. Clinton was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic, whose notable 1970′s albums include Mothership Connection, The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, Maggot Brain, and One Nation Under a Groove, and whose songs include “Flash Light” and “One Nation Under A Groove” (both of which reached No. 1 in the US R&B charts), “Give Up The Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)”, “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)”, and “Dr. Funkenstein”. Clinton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, and continues to tour.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

George Clinton: Hang the fuck in there.

Wanda Jackson

Wanda Jackson is often referred to as the “Queen of Rockabilly”, and for good reason. After some success as a country singer, Elvis Presley himself encouraged her to try singing rockabilly, resulting in a string of hot tracks including “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad”, “Mean, Mean Man”, “Fujiyama Mama” (which hit No. 1 in Japan), “Funnel of Love”, and “Let’s Have a Party” (which was a Top 40 hit in the U.S.) She blazed the trail for women in rock ‘n’ roll, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. Not content to rest on her laurels, earlier this year she released an album of smoking covers called The Party Ain’t Over, which was produced by and featured the guitar of Jack White.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Wanda Jackson: Well, things have changed so much in the industry. So I really don’t know much about the workings of it. Even country music is big business these days. It’s a big thing. So everything’s different.

But I would say I think it’s a good time. People are loving music, and they’re accepting people who are different, and want to do it their own way.

So, golly, I would say, you have to get a record contract, that’s your first step. And I don’t know how to tell anybody how to do that. They’d have to ask someone… People come to me now to record, so I really don’t know how to go about going out.

But you just knock on doors and talk to people, and sing everywhere that you have the opportunity. And hold on to your dream, and don’t be swayed. You might get detoured, but that’s OK. If something happens in your life, that you can’t sing or something for a while, it’s OK. Go ahead and do what you have to do. But hang onto that dream, and continue to be determined.

For full interview with Wanda Jackson, click here.

Jon Anderson

Jon Anderson is, quite literally, the voice of Yes, the band whose albums The Yes Album, Fragile, and Close To The Edge are amongst the most beloved of the progressive rock genre. Songs from this era co-written by Anderson include “Roundabout”, “Yours Is No Disgrace”, “I’ve Seen All Good People”, “Heart Of The Sunrise”, and many others. His first solo album was 1976′s Olias of Sunhillow, and he sang on Yes’ 1983 runaway hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart”. Anderson also had a long-running collaboration with Vangelis of Chariots of Fire fame. (Robin Kauffman photo)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter / musician?

Jon Anderson: Never give up…. keep practising, music will always give you a life… a special life.. be true to your dreams…

For full interview with Jon Anderson, click here.

Greg Lake

Greg Lake first made his mark as a founding member of King Crimson, for which he was lead singer and bass player. During Lake’s tenure, King Crimson released their debut album In the Court of the Crimson King, which is regularly hailed as one of the pioneering works of progressive rock, and included “21st Century Schizoid Man” and the title track. When this original line-up broke up, Lake joined with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer to form the prog rock supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer (often abbreviated ELP), which became one of top bands in the genre. ELP’s albums included Tarkus and Brain Salad Surgery, and their best known songs include “Lucky Man”, “From The Beginning”, and “Karn Evil 9″, all of which were written or co-written by Lake. ELP broke up in 1978, but reunited in the 1990′s and beyond, most recently for a one-off 40th anniversary concert in London in 2010.

Photo: Lee Millward

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Greg Lake: Make music for yourself. When you’re making music for other people it becomes complicated. Making music that you like is simpler, and chances are someone else will like it as well.

For the full interview with Greg Lake, click here.

Chuck D

Chuck D is one of the most important figures in the history of hip-hop music. He is the founder and lead rapper for the hugely influential (and controversial) band Public Enemy, which created a powerful mix of politically-charged lyrics and layered, aggressive sounds. Their second album, 1988′s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, is widely regarded as one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time, and is considered to be hugely important for making rap music popular with white audiences. Other notable Public Enemy albums include Yo! Bum Rush the Show (1987), Fear of a Black Planet (1990), Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black (1991), and How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul??? (2007).

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Chuck D:

1. Truly do what you do from your training and belief.

2. TRY NOT TO ASK other people opinions of your art.

3. Give music away like an advertisement for your performance as an act.

4. Make a video for 33% of your music, we live in a visual audio age, not audio visual.

For full interview with Chuck D, click here.

Rickie Lee Jones

Rickie Lee Jones is an acclaimed singer-songwriter who released her first album in 1979 and won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1980. Her song “Chuck E.’s In Love” was a huge hit, as were her first two albums, both of which reached the Top 5 in the U.S. She went on to release a dozen more albums in various styles, and her 1989 duet with Dr. John, “Makin’ Whoopee!”, won her another Grammy Award.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter / musician?

Rickie Lee Jones: Remember the Music. Concentrate on how you feel when you sing it. If there’s a place you don’t like, fix it. That’s the place that’s not true. Have fun always. Even sad songs, have fun. Go there to the place the song Is. And remember, it’s your job to make Them cry, not to cry yourself.

For full interview with Rickie Lee Jones, click here.

Todd Rundgren

Todd Rundgren has worn many musical hats, from principal songwriter and guitarist for the 1960′s Anglophile band The Nazz, to the pop meister who wrote the 1972 hit “Hello, It’s Me” and co-wrote the 1983 anti-work anthem “Bang the Drum All Day,” to a member of the prog-rock ensemble Utopia, to the lead singer of The New Cars after Ric Ocasek decided not to join a reunion of The Cars, to the producer of Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, The New York Dolls’ debut album, and albums by many other artists including Patti Smith, Grand Funk Railroad, and XTC.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Todd Rundgren: Well, as you will recall, I gave you this whole dissertation about the difference between being a musician, and a performer, and an entertainer. The first thing to do is to have a clear distinction of what you’re trying to accomplish in that regard.

So if you want to be a musician, the first thing you need to do is get a day job [laughs]. You need to find something to do to feed yourself because music is one of these things where there aren’t success guarantees. It’s not like going to business school, getting an MBA, and then finding a job in a company somewhere. You’re going to go through this period of mystery regarding whether or not you are going to be able to ever make a living at making music. At some point you will have to make a decision that, yes, this is the life that I want to live, and that this is enough success for me to at least make a commitment to that lifestyle. Or you’re going to give up and find something else to do.

The question that you’ll have to answer for yourself at that point is, “am I really any good at it?” If I’m good at it, then regardless of what I have to do otherwise, I’m going to continue to do it. Because I’m good at it, you know? Because it means something to me to do it. And being good at it means that people respond to you.

I mean, you could say that there are egg-headed measures that only a musician would understand, in order to determine if something’s good. But really, the bottom line is, do other people enjoy listening to what you do? If they enjoy it enough to eventually go out of pocket to hear it.

But if you really just believe that you’re doing something musically important, and other people don’t understand it yet or whatever, and you’ll be lauded after you die for your incredible musicality that nobody was yet ready to listen to, then I don’t have any advice, you know [laughs]. You already have the level of self-assurance that makes you keep going regardless of what kind of success you have.

If the kind of advice is, how can I succeed as a musician, in other words, to get paid to do it… you know, I’m having enough trouble myself and I don’t need the competition. So if I knew how, I wouldn’t reveal it [laughs]. And I wouldn’t be telling you how to do it.

For full interview with Todd Rundgren, click here.

Alan Parsons

Alan Parsons has had a truly amazing career in music. His start was as an assistant engineer on the Abbey Road and Let It Be albums by The Beatles. He went on to engineer Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother and their sonic masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon. He also engineered and/or produced works by Paul McCartney (Red Rose Speedway, Wildlife), The Hollies (“The Air That I Breathe”), Pilot (“Magic”), Al Stewart (“The Year of the Cat”), and Ambrosia. He then focused his attention on The Alan Parsons Project, with classic albums including Tales of Mystery and Imagination, I Robot, Pyramid, Eve, The Turn of a Friendly Card, and Eye in the Sky, and songs including “Eye in the Sky”, “Games People Play”, “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You”, and “Sirius”, the latter of which is particularly beloved by fans of the Chicago Bulls.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Alan Parsons: Never give up. It’s tough, but never give up.

[different day, asked same question]

Alan Parsons: I think the basis of successful rock music is collaboration. I think too many people try to do it on their own, and sit in front of their laptop and try to be creative, and think that they can do the whole thing themselves. All the best records have come from successful collaborations, co-writing, co-performing. I would encourage musicians to work with others.

For full interview with Alan Parsons, click here.

Mark Volman

Mark Volman and long-time collaborator Howard Kaylan were founding members of The Turtles, whose 1960′s hits include “Happy Together” and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe”. When The Turtles disbanded, Volman and Kaylan joined Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, and due to contractual reasons adopted the names Flo & Eddie. Flo & Eddie performed on the Zappa albums Chunga’s Revenge, Fillmore East June 1971, and Just Another Band from L.A., and in the movie 200 Motels. Flo & Eddie also sang background vocals for T. Rex, including on the worldwide hit “Get It On (Bang A Gong)” and the albums Electric Warrior and The Slider.

And that’s just scratching the surface. They also sang on records by notable artists including Bruce Springsteen (“Hungry Heart”), The Psychedelic Furs (“Love My Way”), Stephen Stills, Alice Cooper, Ray Manzarek, Keith Moon, The Ramones, and Blondie. Volman is also the Chair of the Entertainment Industry Studies program at Belmont University in Nashville.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Mark Volman: Well, learn the business. In this day and age, any young musician who is trying to have any kind of success at all should strengthen themselves emotionally, spiritually and creatively. And one of the ways you do that is by becoming much more aware of the business of music, because it will allow you to become more valuable in all of the areas of your career. And it will help you to be able to look at what’s going on management-wise, and creatively that is very important to understand ownership, and understand publishing, and understand what record companies are about.

If you’re really moving towards the music in a business way, then you definitely have to take the time to take yourself more seriously, and the way you do that is to become much more in tune with the elements that come into the music business in terms of ownership and what makes a good manager, and what makes a good record company. So that you can protect yourself. The saddest thing is for a musician to have a great record lost in the shuffle because he didn’t know what needed to be done. Just because you make the record doesn’t allow you the ability to ignore the necessities of marketing, and public relations, and advertising, and understanding what needs to be done in the most important things.

For full interview with Mark Volman, click here.

Howard Kaylan

Howard Kaylan and long-time collaborator Mark Volman were founding members of The Turtles, whose 1960′s hits include “Happy Together” and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe”. When The Turtles disbanded, Volman and Kaylan joined Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, and due to contractual reasons adopted the names Flo & Eddie. Flo & Eddie performed on the Zappa albums Chunga’s Revenge, Fillmore East June 1971, and Just Another Band from L.A., and in the movie 200 Motels. Flo & Eddie also sang background vocals for T. Rex, including on the worldwide hit “Get It On (Bang A Gong)” and the albums Electric Warrior and The Slider. And that’s just scratching the surface. They also sang on records by notable artists including Bruce Springsteen (“Hungry Heart”), The Psychedelic Furs (“Love My Way”), Stephen Stills, Alice Cooper, Ray Manzarek, Keith Moon, The Ramones, and Blondie.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Howard Kaylan: Don’t give yourself a fallback plan. Never give yourself a fallback plan. Because the minute things go wrong, you’ll fall back. Go straight ahead with your career, and pretend that it’s the only important thing in your life, because it is. If you give yourself something to fall back on, like another career, you’ll be selling shoes.

Chris Hillman

Chris Hillman has been a professional musician for nearly fifty years, starting on bluegrass mandolin before he joined The Byrds, for which he played bass guitar and contributed vocals. You can hear him on hits including “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, “Eight Miles High”, and “So You Want To Be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”, which he co-wrote.

Hillman left The Byrds after their landmark album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, joining up with Gram Parson (who also played on that album) to form The Flying Burrito Brothers, whose classic debut album The Gilded Palace of Sin featured many songs that he wrote or co-wrote with Parsons. Hillman was also a key member of the band Manassas with Steven Stills, and had multiple country hits with the Desert Rose Band.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Chris Hillman: OK, I would give this advice to an aspiring musician. I would say, follow your dream. But, have a backup plan. Most of the young kids who ask my advice are in their late teens, or maybe their early twenties, and I say, listen, you’re not going to like what I’m going to say to you, but get a college degree. In something you really enjoy. Get a four-year degree if not a Master’s degree.

Don’t stop playing music. Play wherever you can. Don’t even worry about getting paid. In a college environment, campus environment, there’s a million places you can play. Have a band, meet other guys, da da da da da. You’ve got to have a backup plan. Because even if you had a hit record, and a hit album, and all that, like I just said, I don’t know how long one can maintain that over a period of time anymore. It may be the greatest thing in the world for a year. There’s exceptions, but…

There’s also things, where I see a lot of these very popular groups, and a lot of the members have, like, degrees in physics and things. It’s an amazing thing.

But I’m dead serious with these kids nowadays. Get a four-year degree, which isn’t much. Try and get a four-year degree, if not a Master’s degree. Don’t stop playing the music, but don’t put all your eggs in that one basket. Do not put everything into it. Don’t give up the band, but don’t rely on that to be your ticket. If it falls part, and all of a sudden you’ve put three years into it, you’re twenty-three, twenty-four years old, going back to college then is a little tougher. And it’s tough enough to even have a job when you do get a degree these days. It’s really hard out there. If you don’t have a degree, forget it.

That’s my advice. It’s hard advice, but I stand by it.

For the full interview with Chris Hillman, click here.

Richie Furay

Richie Furay is best known for co-founding two notable bands: Buffalo Springfield, which is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and for which Furay was one of the primary songwriters along with Neil Young and Stephen Stills, and Poco, which is regarded as one of the pioneering bands of the country-rock genre. After leaving Poco in the early 1970′s, Furay was in the short-lived supergroup Souther-Hillman-Furay, and has since released several solo records. His song credits include “Kind Woman”, “A Child’s Claim To Fame”, “Hurry Up”, “Keep On Believin’”, “You Are The One”, and “Let’s Dance Tonight”.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Richie Furay: Enjoy the gift; be serious about it but don’t take yourself too seriously.

For full interview with Richie Furay, click here.

Ted Nugent

Ted Nugent is known as the Motor City Madman for his gonzo persona, music, guitar playing, and right-wing punditry. He was in the Detroit band The Amboy Dukes best known for the 1968 acid-rock song “Journey to the Center of the Mind”. After going solo in the 1970′s, he recorded the multi-platinum classic hard rock albums Ted Nugent, Free-for-All, and Cat Scratch Fever, plus the live album Double Live Gonzo!

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Ted Nugent: Stay clean and sober and treat your mind, body and soul as a sacred temple. Eat smart, remain athletic. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Be early, stay late. Carry yourself with confidence and pride. Demand accountability from yourself and everyone around you. Put your heart and soul into everything you do and demand the same from everyone around you. Avoid losers. Get a bow and arrow, discover the spirit within. Aim small, miss small. Listen to every black soul artist, R&B and blues artist you can. Listen closely. Be one with the groove. Trample the weak, hurdle the dead.

For full interview with Ted Nugent, click here.

Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan is the lead guitarist and singer for Smashing Pumpkins, one of the best known alternative rock bands which broke through in the 1990′s. Their 1993 album Siamese Dream is widely recognized as one of the best and most influential albums of the decade.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Billy Corgan: I don’t know, because in the old days it was just, get your shit together and tour, and now I think that’s a complete waste of time. I think if you go recording first, you know, you end up being sort of a victim to the pitchfork[.com] culture, of “you know, that’s really precious.” I think the lack of bands of great width and power says something about the ground level. When we came in at the ground level, we had to be able to play. And I don’t think that exists anymore, so I don’t know.

I mean, your first album could be hailed as a masterpiece, you can play, and there’s forty guys with beards [in the audience], but it’s not going to translate to Iowa.

JM: I’m from Iowa, by the way [laughs].

BC: That was always the Pumpkins’ thing. Yeah, things like The Strokes and bands like that, that might work in New York, but it doesn’t work in fucking Iowa. That’s the thing. You can’t really truly succeed in America. You see a lot of English bands that come and play New York, Philly, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, LA, they play like eight cities and then they get the fuck out. Because they can’t go through the heartland.

I think it’s really difficult. Honestly, I don’t know. I think, sometimes, well, if I was eighteen, what would I do?

I think at the end of the day, talent is always the great arbiter. Every system is different. But at the end of the day, it should be that the talented win. Right now the mediocre seem to be winning. You know, the ones that… if everything’s niche, then you have to be somebody who kind of basically attracts four niches to add your thing up. Or be really non-offensive. And I don’t know how you do rock and roll and be non-offensive. Coldplay mastered that [everyone laughs]. I think they’re really good, but I’m saying, they mastered the art of feeling a little dangerous without being dangerous at all.

For the full chat with Billy Corgan, click here.

Peter Buck

Peter Buck is guitarist and co-founder of the long-running alternative rock band R.E.M., whose songs include “Radio Free Europe”, “It’s The End of the World As We Know It”, “Stand”, “The One I Love”, “Everybody Hurts”, “Man on the Moon”, “Losing My Religion”, “Shiny Happy People”, and “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?”. In 2007, R.E.M. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Buck has also produced records by The Feelies, Uncle Tupelo, and others.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Peter Buck: Only do it if you have to. It’s a great life, but if you’re doubting that you want to be a musician for life then you shouldn’t be, because it’s tough work. And don’t ever sign anything. I’m one of the only people I know who didn’t get ripped off.

JM: Because you didn’t sign anything?

PB: I’ve been careful.

Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams is the all-time best-selling male Canadian artist, having co-written and performed some of the best known songs of the 1980′s and 1990′s, including rockers like “Cuts Like a Knife”, “Run to You”, “Summer of 69″, and “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started”, plus the ballads “Straight from the Heart”, and “Heaven”. He has also brought us mega-hit songs from movies, most notably the theme song “Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” from the Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which spent a record sixteen straight weeks as the No. 1 song in the United Kingdom. He has also hit No. 1 with “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?” from Don Juan DeMarco, and “All For Love”, performed with Rod Stewart and Sting from The Three Musketeers. He even did the soundtrack for the 2002 DreamWorks animated film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter/musician?

Bryan Adams: Well, as long as you are OK with the fact that you’ll probably never get paid for your work, thanks to internet and free downloading, then at least don’t sign your songs away. Hang on to everything you can.

For full interview with Bryan Adams, click here.

Maceo Parker

Saxophonist Maceo Parker played on many of James Brown’s most popular songs, including “I Got You (I Feel Good)”, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”, “I Got The Feelin’”, and “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”. He also played with George Clinton on Parliament’s albums such as The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein and Mothership Connection. More recently, he has made guest appearances on recordings with the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Brian Ferry, Living Colour, Deee-Lite, 10,000 Maniacs, and Prince. He has been described as the funkiest saxophonist on the planet, and Music Illuminati would have to agree. (L. Paul Mann photo)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Maceo Parker: Play. You don’t necessarily have to be in a group. If you’re in a group, that’s alright, but just try and find situations where you can play, play, play, play, play. Because the more you play the better you get at it.

“Weird Al” Yankovic

When “Weird Al” Yankovic was sixteen years old, he gave a home-recorded tape of original and parody songs to Dr. Demento, who broadcast them on his radio show. This was the beginning of Yankovic’s career in comedic music, which really took off in 1984 with his hit song with “Eat It”, a parody of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” with a hilarious video which spoofed Jackson’s own. He has released many other popular parodies, including another song by Jackson (“Fat”) and songs by Madonna (“Like A Surgeon”), Queen (“Another One Rides The Bus”), Nirvana (“Smells Like Nirvana”), Coolio (“Amish Paradise”), and Chamillionaire (“White & Nerdy”). He also has written a number of original comedy songs.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter or musician?

“Weird Al” Yankovic: I would say give up, because all of the slots are filled. There’s really no openings left. So thanks for your interest, but they’re not taking applications anymore.

Kronos Quartet: David Harrington, John Sherba, Hank Dutt

David Harrington is the founder and plays violin in the acclaimed Kronos Quartet, which has been called the foremost ambassador of contemporary chamber music. John Sherba (violin) and Hank Dutt (viola) are longtime members. The quartet has released more than 45 recordings, has commissioned more than 750 pieces and arrangements, and has worked with many of today’s top composers including Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. In 2004 the quartet won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance, and in 2011 they received the prestigious Polar Music Prize and Avery Fisher Prize. They continue to tour and record extensively.

(L-R): David Harrington, John Sherba, and Hank Dutt (L. Paul Mann photo)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

David Harrington: I’ve never been able to follow advice, so I don’t really give it very much. But if I did have to give it, in fact what I say to a lot of composers that I’m mentoring or talking to, is to try to learn to hear the sound that your own spirit, your own soul, your own body is making. That’s the hardest thing, I think, for any musician, to actually hear the inner sound. You have to turn your ears around, and in our life, with all the noise and confusion and complexity, that’s a really tough thing to do. And it’s not very often talked about. But I would say that’s the most important thing for any musician to do.

John Sherba: Always be curious. Keep your ears open and curious. And follow your own instinct – that’s really important. Everybody’s going to give you advice, listen to some of it, and learn how to discard other advice you get. Be very careful what you decide to take.

Hank Dutt: There’s many things one can say. For a performer, I would say find a mentor, a teacher that you respect and who inspires you. Work hard, practice, and perform. And enjoy what you do.

Abdul “Duke” Fakir

The Four Tops, one of Motown’s premiere music groups, performed the timeless classics “Baby I Need Your Loving”, “Bernadette”, “Reach Out I’ll Be There”, and “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)”, the latter two of which reached #1 in the US charts. The original group members Levi Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson, Lawrence Payton, and Abdul “Duke” Fakir stayed together from 1953 until 1997, and The Four Tops continue to perform today with Fakir as the only surviving member.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Abdul “Duke” Fakir: Learn everything you can about being a musician. And just be totally committed. Don’t let nothing stop you. If you really know you’re good enough, and you really feel it in your bones, just follow that. Because you’ll push the doors open. Those doors will come open if you do it and you’re really committed. It just might take a while. Don’t get discouraged.

David “Honeyboy” Edwards

David “Honeyboy” Edwards is a Delta bluesman who was with legendary fellow-bluesman Robert Johnson on the night in 1938 that Johnson drank the poisoned whiskey that led to his premature death. Edwards was first recorded in 1942 by folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Edwards was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1996, won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album, and in 2010 received a Lifetime Achievement Award Grammy. Edwards died on August 29, 2011 at age 96.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

David “Honeyboy” Edwards: If you’re playing, and you like to play, keep on playin’. Don’t care what anybody tells you, you do what you want to do. Keep on playin’. That’s the way I do it. Keep on playin’. And finally it’ll pay off.

JM: By the time you’re 95?

DHE: Yeah.

Ray Manzarek

Ray Manzarek is best known for being the co-founder and keyboard player for The Doors. Since The Doors didn’t have a bassist, he also usually covered the bass parts on the keyboard as well. The Doors recorded six acclaimed studio albums before Jim Morrison died. Manzarek has also recorded several solo albums, including The Golden Scarab and The Whole Thing Started With Rock & Roll Now It’s Out of Control, both from 1974. His production credits include the debut album by Los Angeles punk band X.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Ray Manzarek: Practice, practice, practice.

JM: That’s how you get to Carnegie Hall, right?

RM: That’s how you get to Carnegie Hall, exactly. And if you’re a guitar player, learn your fucking scales. A, E, G, D, C, then when you get good, E flat and B flat. Learn your scales. I want to hear you go [sings] da da da da da da da da. Major and minor. And practice, practice, practice.

John Densmore

John Densmore is best known for being the co-founder and drummer for The Doors, who recorded six acclaimed studio albums before singer Jim Morrison died. Densmore’s jazz-influenced drumming is often credited as an important component of the band’s unique sound. After The Doors’ demise, Densmore and Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger founded The Butts Band, which released two mid-Seventies albums.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

John Densmore: That if you’re completely obsessed, go for it. Otherwise, it’s a big roll of the dice. So keep your day job, but if you have to do it, just do it.

Paul Kantner

Paul Kantner was a co-founder, singer, rhythm guitarist, and songwriter for the Sixties psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane, which is best known for the hits “Somebody To Love” and “White Rabbit”. His songwriting credits include “Crown of Creation”, “We Can Be Together”, “Volunteers” (co-written with bandmate Marty Balin) and “Wooden Ships” (co-written with David Crosby and Stephen Stills). Kantner stayed onboard when Jefferson Airplane morphed into Jefferson Starship. Photo taken by L. Paul Mann

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Paul Kantner: Just keep playing. Play your guitar as many places as you can. If you want to work with other musicians, go to places where other musicians are. And learn from them.

Hopefully you’ll have some favorite musicians and music. The way I started out was copying and learning things from people that I liked, like Fred Neil and the Weavers, and stuff like that. Eventually I started writing a song or two. The first song I ever wrote actually became part of the lyrics of “Wooden Ships”. Part of the lyrics of the first song I ever wrote.

Go places that music exists, and immerse yourself in it in as many ways you can find enjoyable and possible. And be around people who play music, and give you new ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of. Just sitting in your back room making up music and putting it on a tape recorder is fine for a certain element of things. But for me I love the interaction between musicians, which for me produces usually a “one and one equals three” kind of situation. And things occur that you never would have thought of by yourself, and other people’s influences touch you and move you. So, yeah, other people.

For full interview with Paul Kantner, click here.

Jorma Kaukonen

Jorma Kaukonen was the lead guitarist for the Sixties psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane, which is best known for the hits “Somebody To Love” and “White Rabbit” from the album Surrealistic Pillow. His signature song is the instrumental “Embryonic Journey” from the same album. Other acclaimed Jefferson Airplane albums include After Bathing At Baxter’s, Crown of Creation, and Volunteers. As the Sixties wound down, Kaukonen and Airplane bassist Jack Casady’s attention shifted to their new band Hot Tuna, which focused on acoustic and electric folk- and blues-based music. Kaukonen has also released multiple solo albums, including 1974′s masterpiece Quah. Kaukonen continues to tour in Hot Tuna, and with his wife owns and operates the Fur Peace Ranch which runs a yearly music and guitar camp.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jorma Kaukonen: I guess the most important thing is, first and foremost, to love whatever it is that you do. Whatever your muse, whatever kind of music, whatever instrument that you play, you love that first. Every now and then you meet people that are chasing stardom. If that works for you, then that’s great. If you’re lucky it might happen. It probably won’t. But if you love to play music you’ll have a great companion for your whole life.

For full interview with Jorma Kaukonen, click here.

Jack Casady

Jack Casady played bass guitar for the Sixties band Jefferson Airplane, which is best known for the hits “Somebody To Love” and “White Rabbit”. Their albums Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing At Baxter’s, Crown of Creation, and Volunteers are amongst the best of the psychedelic rock genre. Casady also played on “Voodoo Chile” with Jimi Hendrix, and “Song With No Words (Tree With No Leaves)” from David Crosby’s first solo album. As the Sixties wound down, Casady and Jefferson Airplane lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen’s attention shifted to their new band Hot Tuna, which focused on acoustic and electric folk- and blues-based music. (L. Paul Mann photo)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jack Casady: Well, I think nowadays there’s so much opportunity to investigate music. When I was a kid, I would get on a bus in Washington D.C., and go down to the Library of Congress. You’d get signed in, and you’d get to pull out records and take them into booths, and listen to world music – that it’s called now. Music from all over the world. Later on, in the early Sixties they started to be put out in collections on albums. But nowadays you have the Internet, you can do so much exploration of music from all over the world, and I think that’s really fascinating for any young musician, and to hear music from all different time periods. I mean, you’ve got recorded music for a hundred years now, so I think that offers a tremendous opportunity to expand your horizons, and hear different approaches, and to be intrigued and inspired to work on the music yourself.

There’s that aspect, and then there’s the good old know your instrument, know the theory. It always pays to take lessons and explore the harmonic aspect of your instrument as well as music in general. I tell my bass players, you should play another instrument that has chords. You should at least play a guitar, and learn piano. It would expand your horizons terrifically. Particularly in songwriting, and writing music in general.

For full interview with Jack Casady, click here.

Martin Gore

Martin Gore is a multi-instrumentalist, sometimes singer, and principal songwriter for electro-pop band Depeche Mode, whose hits have included “People Are People”, “Personal Jesus”, and “Enjoy the Silence”. Depeche Mode has sold over 100 million albums and singles worldwide, and has been called “the most popular electronic band the world has ever known”. Photo: 805Live.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Martin Gore: I would advise any aspiring musicians to just try to be original, and do something that’s unique. Obviously you take influences from something you like, but you have to somehow put a twist on it and do something that comes from the heart that is different from everybody else.

Robben Ford

Robben Ford has been playing guitar professionally for over four decades, and was ranked one of the Greatest 100 Guitarists of the 20th Century by Musician magazine. He has released multiple solo albums, helped launch the jazz fusion band Yellowjackets, and has worked with artists ranging from Joni Mitchell to Jimmy Witherspoon to Kiss to George Harrison to Miles Davis.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Robben Ford: If it was a guitar player, I would tell them to learn chords, and chord voicings. And learn how to play songs. A lot of musicians, and particularly jazz musicians, they want to learn how to solo. How to play a lot of notes. What will always make that an easier road is if you understand harmony, if you understand chords, and how to use chords. If you know chords, you can play songs. If you can play songs, you’re making music. You’re not asking yourself to come up with something out of thin air. That’s a big problem for musicians, too. It’s like they just don’t know what to do. They don’t where to begin, they don’t know where to go. Again, if you know how to play chords on your instrument, and you learn some songs so that you can use these chords, you’re making music right there. And that can be done in a matter of, if not weeks, months. You can be making music. So that would be my advice.

For full interview with Robben Ford, click here.

Bob Cowsill

Bob Cowsill played guitar and sang in The Cowsills, a band of siblings and their mother who recorded some of the most beautiful sunshine pop in the 1960′s, including the hits “Hair” and “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” (think “I love the flower girl”). The Cowsills played on the Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and The Johnny Cash Show, and were the inspiration for the TV series The Partridge Family. (L. Paul Mann photo)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Bob Cowsill: Well first, get good at what you do. Then once you have something that you’re good at, and you want people to hear it, get on the internet and take advantage of all the free ways of marketing yourself, that cost you nothing. You get a YouTube presence, you play, you put it on YouTube. That’s number one. I only say that because you can do that immediately, without a record deal, without any help. That gets you out there. And when you go looking for bigger stuff, you’re gonna have to be tough, you’re gonna hear “no” a lot, you’ve gotta hang in.

John Cowsill

John Cowsill played drums and sang in The Cowsills, a band of siblings and their mother who recorded some of the most beautiful sunshine pop in the 1960′s, including the hits “Hair” and “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” (think “I love the flower girl”). The Cowsills played on the Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and The Johnny Cash Show, and were the inspiration for the TV series The Partridge Family. Later, John played drums and sang background vocals on “867-5309/Jenny” by Tommy Tutone. He is currently the touring drummer for The Beach Boys. (L. Paul Mann photo)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

John Cowsill: [laughs] I don’t have any advice. I mean, you either do it or you don’t do it. You either like it or you don’t. I guess, do it for the right reason – because you have to. I could say “practice”, but an aspiring musician’s going to be doing that anyway.

It’s a weird business. I know so many guys better than me, and so many guys better than the other guy, and certain guys who are shitty have got gigs, guys who are great don’t. I don’t understand the math, actually.

David Pack

David Pack was the lead singer and guitarist for the prog-rock/soft-rock band Ambrosia, whose hits included “Holdin’ On To Yesterday”, “How Much I Feel”, “Biggest Part of Me”, and “You’re the Only Woman (You & I)”, all of which he wrote or co-wrote. He also co-wrote “All I Need”, which was a No. 1 hit for soap opera star Jack Wagner. He has performed on albums by other artists, including The Alan Parsons Projects’ Tales of Mystery and Imagination and Kansas’ Vinyl Confessions. Pack is also an acclaimed producer for artists including producer for Phil Collins, Aretha Franklin, Kenny Loggins, Wynonna Judd, and many others.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician or songwriter?

David Pack: I would just say to follow your heart, and try to hone in on what it is that makes you truly authentic, as opposed to any other artist in the world. Find your own voice, try to be authentic, and don’t give up.

David Lindley

David Lindley was a key member of 1960s eclectic psychedelic band Kaleidoscope, which was described by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page as “my favorite band of all time — my ideal band.” He is best known for his fretwork for Jackson Browne — for example, on the classic albums Late for the Sky and Running on Empty, and he also contributed to music by David Crosby and Graham Nash as part of The Mighty Jitters band, Warren Zevon, Linda Ronstadt and many, many others. Somehow he also found time for his own project, El Rayo-X, in the 1980s.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

David Lindley: Play all the time. The right way. Practice makes permanent, not perfect. So practice stuff the right way. I mean do it all the time, like all the people who I really like, whose playing I enjoy. Jascha Heifetz said, “If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days of practice, my audience notices it.” [Actual quote: "If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it."]

T-Bone Burnett

T-Bone Burnett is a musician, songwriter, and noted producer of albums by the likes of Elvis Costello, Roy Orbison, Los Lobos, Leo Kottke, Spinal Tap (!), Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Elton John and Leon Russell, Willie Nelson, B.B. King and many others. Burnett also has produced movie soundtracks such as O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Crazy Heart. Burnett shared the Academy Award with Ryan Bingham for Best Original Song for “The Weary Kind” from the latter film.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

T-Bone Burnett: Learn how to paint [laughs].

Johnny Rivers

Johnny Rivers was the leader of the house band when the Whisky a Go Go opened in 1964 on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. His long residency helped the club to be the place to be. Between Rivers’ sets, go-go dancing was invented. Rivers had many hit songs in the 1960′s; probably the best known is “Secret Agent Man”, originally used in opening of the TV show “Secret Agent”.

Jeff Moehlis:What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Johnny Rivers: Always take your wallet onstage.

Gary Brooker

Gary Brooker is the singer, pianist, and principal songwriter (with lyricist Keith Reid) for Procol Harum, whose 1967 debut single “A Whiter Shade of Pale” melds Bach-inspired Hammond organ with Percy Sledge-like vocals and evocative, cryptic lyrics to give an enduring classic. With Brooker being the constant member through multiple personnel changes, Procol Harum released many acclaimed albums in the 1960′s and 1970′s. The band reformed in the 1990′s, and continues to tour.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Gary Brooker: Have you got about seven hours? I haven’t.

JM: Do you have quick advice?

Matt Pegg (bassist for Procol Harum): Yeah, buy as many lottery tickets as you can.

GB: Find a rich wife…

MP: Yes!

GB: …to support you.

MP: A wife with a real job.

GB: Practice every day, and pick the right muse. Pick the right muse.

Robin Trower

Robin Trower first gained fame as the guitarist for Procol Harum, playing on their classic late ‘60s and early ‘70s prog-tinged albums. When he left after 1971’s Broken Barricades, he followed the direction hinted at on that album’s “Song for a Dreamer” and his earlier Procol Harum song “Whisky Train,” namely Jimi Hendrix-inspired blues-based rock. He went on to release more than 20 albums in this vein, including 1974’s acclaimed Bridge of Sighs.

Jeff Moehlis:What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Robin Trower: Become a barber.

Garland Jeffreys

Garland Jeffreys is an acclaimed singer and songwriter whose songs cover a variety of styles including rock, reggae, and soul. His early career included playing on John Cale’s first solo album Vintage Violence which included his song “Fairweather Friend”, and the release of his single “Wild in the Streets” in 1973. His 1977 solo album Ghost Writer led him to be named best new artist by Rolling Stone magazine, and he has since released a number of solo albums, most recently 2011′s The King of In Between.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Garland Jeffreys: What do you want to do with your music, say you want to write songs?

JM: Yeah, say write songs.

GJ: Songs are the most important thing you can have. Great songs. So you’ve got to work your ass off on becoming a very good songwriter. If you’re not a good songwriter it’s difficult, because, say if it’s guitar, you have to rely on your guitar skills to be very, very good. And it’s so competitive. But songwriting is individual. So if you have an idea or a thing that you’re writing about that’s your view of things, you just have to become very good at it.

Airto Moreira

Airto Moreira is a Brazilian drummer and percussionist who has released many solo albums, and also appeared on Miles Davis’ seminal jazz fusion album Bitches Brew, plus Davis’ Live/Evil. He also played on the first album by Weather Report, and the first two albums by Return To Forever. He has been named the top percussionist of the year multiple times by publications such as Downbeat, Jazz Times, and Modern Drummer.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Airto Moreira: How old is this person?

JM: Say a twenty year old.

AM: Make sure that you choose the right instrument, that you really love to play it. Then, you just keep playing. And the more you play with other people, the better. Of course, if you want to practice technique, then you practice by yourself. But the best thing is to play all kinds of music, and to play with other people. Also, nevermind your ups and downs, because life is like that.

Seun Kuti

Seun (pronounced Shay-oon) Kuti is a Nigerian singer/saxophonist who, like his late father Fela Kuti, makes music in the Afrobeat style – a rhythm-heavy, hypnotic mix of James Brown-style funk, jazz, Cuban and traditional West African music, featuring call-and-response vocals which are often about political topics. He has been performing with Fela’s last band Egypt 80 for sixteen years, and recently releases his second album From Africa With Fury: Rise, which was co-produced by Brian Eno.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Seun Kuti: Your music has to be a part of the solution. Your music has to stand for the majority of the people. Music should be used for the people. If in your country everyone is living the good life, like you’re in Switzerland, you can sing about champagne, and fast cars, and wristwatches, and all that. But if you feel that your people need change, and your people need to develop in some area, then dedicate your music to the people, because that is what music is for, truly. Music is not selfish, you know? In one word, I’ll tell the musician, music is not selfish. That is what I would say to an aspiring musician.

For the full interview with Seun Kuti, click here.

June Millington

June Millington sang and played guitar for Fanny, the first all-female rock band to record a full-length album (the self-titled Fanny in 1970) for a major label. Her sister Jean Millington played bass guitar for Fanny. Fanny released a total of five stellar albums in the 1970′s (the last without June), and toured with many of the era’s biggest artists. Both June and Jean played on albums by Ringo Starr and Barbra Streisand. June also played guitar on Cris Williamson’s classic Women’s Music album Changer And The Changed, and co-founded the Institute for the Musical Arts.

Jeff M: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

June M: I’d say, number one, practice. Eat well and get enough sleep. And learn how to schedule, learn how to prioritize. This is a business, it’s not all just glamour. It’s not a hologram. It’s a lot of work. So if you can get your head behind the work part, then all the exciting stuff happens. And if you can not blast yourself out of the universe through bad eating and sleeping habits – it can’t be that forever, it can be that for a bit but it can’t be that forever. So you just kind of have to fit all that in, because, you know, it’s so much fun [laughs]. But the fun isn’t the thing. You get to the fun through hard work. I bet that’s kind of dull and boring, but that really would be my advice.

Jeff M: Well, you’re speaking from experience.

For full interview with June Millington (and her sister Jean), click here.

Jean Millington

Jean Millington played bass guitar for Fanny, the first all-female rock band to record a full-length album (the self-titled Fanny in 1970) for a major label. Her sister June Millington sang and played guitar for Fanny. Fanny released a total of five stellar albums in the 1970′s (the last without June), and toured with many of the era’s biggest artists. Both June and Jean played on albums by Ringo Starr and Barbra Streisand. Jean also appears on albums by David Bowie and Keith Moon.

Jeff M: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jean M: It’s so funny that June said what she said, because I haven’t heard that. But the first thing that I would say is make the decision that nothing’s going to stop you. And practice your butt off. Because that’s the only thing. When I first started learning how to play slap bass, I literally sat in my room for three months, and that’s all I did day in day out. I got tunes, I played along with them, I learned how this thing went. What they call woodshedding. I’m sure they don’t use that term anymore, it’s so ancient.

And one of the most important things is also to keep your mind and your health together. It’s so easy to get caught up with all the addictive behavior, because it’s so darn inviting and seductive. So, I mean, when you’re young, of course you’re going to do that. But the thing is, it’s about trying to keep a balance, to stay in the middle ground. And moderation is the key. The most important thing is you have to take care of yourself.

Jeff M: Do you have any specific advice for females, or pretty much the same?

Jean M: Pretty much the same.

We really thought it would’ve changed so much by now, the attitude toward girls. It hasn’t really changed, and as a matter of fact, with all the single performers, it’s become more sexist than ever. It’s just unbelievable to me, what even say Beyonce has to go through or Rihanna. I mean, the kind of images that they try to live up to. But that’s with the pop music.

KT Tunstall, I just so admire her. She plays like a dream, her compositions are great, it’s very original. And she retains her sense of rock and roll looking sexual, but not being that overt horrible thing. And I very much respect that.

But there still aren’t any girl bands out there. You have all of the individual performers that you admire. You have women as musicians who are recognized just for being a musician, but it’s not an all-girl band.

For full interview with Jean Millington (and her sister June), click here.

Penelope Houston

Penelope Houston fronted the San Francisco punk band Avengers, whose “Pink Album”, consisting of recordings made in 1977-8 but not released until 1983, is often hailed as one of the best punk rock albums of all time. Avengers opened for the Sex Pistols at their final show. Houston re-emerged years later as a folk singer-songwriter, still retaining much of her punk attitude. Houston just released a new solo album called On Market Street, and a new Avengers compilation is coming out soon. (Photo: Ethan Hill)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter/musician?

Penelope Houston: Keep your publishing and your masters as much as possible!

For full interview with Penelope Houston, click here

Jake Shimabukuro is a ukulele virtuoso who gained international prominence from his viral YouTube cover of The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. He has performed with Jimmy Buffett, Bela Fleck, Yo-Yo Ma, Ziggy Marley, and others, and has released multiple albums that include ukulele instrumentals in a multitude of styles. His latest album is called Peace Love Ukulele.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jake Shimabukuro: I usually tell people this. When I first started playing I just played songs that I liked, because that made me always want to pick up my instrument, you know, because I liked playing the songs. I’ve had friends that were more classically trained, and they were always forced to learn the usual songs that you have to know, and for them it was like pulling teeth, you know, they didn’t want to practice. It was like, “I don’t want to play these silly songs.” So for me it was always important to play songs that I love playing, because even if they were difficult I would just be driven to practice. Every time you get through a passage, you’re like, “Well, I know that much more of the song.” So, yeah, I would definitely say play songs that you love.

Country Joe McDonald

Country Joe McDonald was a co-founder of the 1960′s psychedelic band Country Joe & the Fish, whose acid-soaked album Electric Music for Mind and Body is one of the classics of the genre. The band’s best known song, off their next album, is “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag”. McDonald performed solo and with the Fish at Woodstock, and led the massive crowd in the “Fish Cheer” which starts with “Gimme an ‘F’…” Since the band broke up, McDonald has released many solo albums. McDonald is a strong supporter of causes related to Vietnam Veterans. Photo taken by L. Paul Mann.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Country Joe McDonald: Get an audience and make them happy. It’s as simple as that.

Jonathan Richman

Jonathan’s Richman’s place in rock and roll history is assured by the debut album by The Modern Lovers, produced by ex-Velvet Underground multi-instrumentalist John Cale and belatedly released in 1976. This album features the classic Richman songs “Roadrunner” and “Pablo Picasso”, and influenced the emerging punk rock sound. Richman’s later albums moved away from the Velvets-inspired minimalist proto-punk of The Modern Lovers’ debut, as he developed into a quirky singer-with-an-acoustic-guitar. He is featured several times in the movie There’s Something About Mary.

Jeff Moehlis:What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jonathan Richman: Sing what you feel. But do not sing what you do not feel.

Van Dyke Parks

Van Dyke Parks wrote the lyrics for the lost-Beach Boys-masterpiece Smile, which was resurrected a few years ago by Brian Wilson. Parks also played keyboards on many albums and songs including The Byrds’ Fifth Dimension album, Tim Buckley’s self-titled debut album, and the should-have-been-a-hit “Magic Hollow” by The Beau Brummels. His production credits include the first albums by Ry Cooder and Randy Newman, both with Lenny Waronker, and he has also done arrangements for U2, Laurie Anderson, Joanna Newsom, and the song “Bare Necessities” from the Disney movie The Jungle Book. His solo albums include the eclectic Song Cycle from 1968, and the Caribbean-tinged Discover America from 1972.

Jeff Moehlis:What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Van Dyke Parks: I am in no position to advise anyone. Ask my CPA.

Steve Wynn

Steve Wynn was the vocalist, guitarist, and principal songwriter for The Dream Syndicate, a key band in the guitar-driven neo-psychedelic Paisley Underground style which emerged in early 1980′s Los Angeles. Their first album, the Velvet Underground-influenced The Days of Wine and Roses, is considered an early classic of the alternative rock genre. The Dream Syndicate recorded several more albums, including 1984′s Sandy Pearlman-produced Medicine Show. After The Dream Syndicate broke up, Wynn continued his prolific career, with acclaimed albums as a solo artist and with Gutterball, The Miracle 3, and The Baseball Project.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter/musician?

Steve Wynn: Remember: you are always right. No matter what people tell you or what came before, you are always right. If you hear it and you feel it and it rings true to you, then that’s what you’ve got to do.

For full interview with Steve Wynn, click here.

Steve Diggle

Steve Diggle plays guitar, writes songs, and sometimes sings for The Buzzcocks, the hugely influential band from Manchester which produced the blueprint for pop punk. The Buzzcocks also jump-started the punk do-it-yourself ethos with their 1977 self-released Spiral Scratch EP, on which Diggle played bass guitar. The Buzzcocks’ notable songs include “Orgasm Addict”, “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've)”, “I Don’t Mind”, “Promises”, and “Harmony In The Head”, the latter two of which he wrote or co-wrote. The Buzzcocks compilation Singles Going Steady is regularly ranked as one of the best punk rock albums of all time. The Buzzcocks broke up in 1981, but re-united in the late 80′s and have been going strong ever since. Diggle also released a solo album called Air Conditioning last year. (Photo: Ian Rook)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Steve Diggle: You’ve got to have some kind of self-belief. Because with music you’re dabbling in the darkness and the spirits, and you’ve got to have some solid self-belief to give you a guiding light through the darkness, the heaven and the fucking hell of it all. Because, as you know, many highs and as many lows… it’s like going through a fucking swamp. You’ve got to be real strong, that’s the first thing.

It’s one thing to learn to play. Anybody can learn to play a few chords, but you’ve got to have that strength not to lose yourself. And you’ve got to believe you can get through the forest, or from one end of the tunnel to the other, and still keep something of who you are. Because people lose themselves so much in music, where it can really fuck you up. As we know from casualties.

But having that self-belief, and the love of or some kind of commitment to it, that can see you through to the other side of the river. That’s the main thing. To the land of milk and honey, almost [laughs].

You know, it’s not all bad. But that’s the main advice. The playing is the easy bit in a way. It’s hard to learn to play and write songs, but you can get that down. But, it’s that other stuff that breaks people. You’ve have to have that fucking will of iron to keep going, because you’re in a ring with fucking Muhammad Ali getting fucking punched to pieces in the music business. You’ve got to fucking take the punches, you know, a fucking Joe Frazier is punching the fucking lights out of you, and you’ve got to come back with some fucking hit records or some kind of music that fucking gives it back a bit.

I know that’s weird advice, but I’ve come through to the other side myself. Through the drugs, I’m pretty clean now and all that stuff. I’ve been through the fucking mill like a lot of people of my age that are still around surviving. I’ve done all the fucking drugs on the tours, and all the things, and no sleep, and everything else. But you’ve still got to get up and write the songs, and that’s the excitement of it. That’s the reward, or whatever it is.

Because a lot of musicians don’t know what’s going to come to them. I’ve seen people crack up on tour buses because they can’t handle it, they kind of change, you know? It’s like one of those TV reality shows, when they do those two month tours of America on the bus. They start off thinking this is going to be great. We’re going to St. Louis, Los Angeles, we’re going to Seattle, we’re going to Kansas, all the rest of it. But after a few fucking weeks some of them just fucking crack up. I’ve seen tour managers and crew members go to pieces [laughs]. But I’m not one of those. I’m made of fucking steel, so I got through it [laughs].

For the full interview with Steve Diggle, click here.

Pete Shelley

Pete Shelley is the primary singer and songwriter for The Buzzcocks, the hugely influential band from Manchester which produced the blueprint for pop punk. The Buzzcocks also jump-started the punk do-it-yourself ethos with their 1977 self-released Spiral Scratch EP. The Buzzcocks’ notable songs include “Orgasm Addict”, “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've)”, “I Don’t Mind”, “Promises”, and “Harmony In The Head”, first four of which he wrote or co-wrote. The Buzzcocks compilation Singles Going Steady is regularly ranked as one of the best punk rock albums of all time. The Buzzcocks broke up in 1981, but re-united in the late 80′s and have been going strong ever since. Shelley also had a hit single with 1981′s “Homosapien”.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Pete Shelley: If you want to do it, you might as well just do it. I mean, nobody’s gonna tell you anything different.

Andy Shernoff

Andy Shernoff was the primary songwriter for The Dictators, a seminal New York City proto-punk rock band whose huge influence was sadly never matched by huge record sales. Shernoff also played bass, keyboards, and sang many of the songs. The band’s first album The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!, released in 1975, is a brilliant mix of irreverent lyrics and youthful energy. Two more albums followed – 1977′s Manifest Destiny and 1978′s Bloodbrothers. Their last studio album was 2001′s D.F.F.D. (“Dictators Forever Forever Dictators”), which is arguably their strongest album after their debut. Shernoff also played bass on Joey Ramone’s 2002 solo album Don’t Worry About Me, and has produced and/or played with various other bands/artists.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter/musician?

Andy Shernoff: It takes 10,000 hours to excel in your craft so enjoy the journey.

For full interview with Andy Shernoff, click here.

Tony Kaye

Tony Kaye was the keyboard player in the original line-up of Yes, and played on the albums Yes, Time And A Word, and The Yes Album. After touring with the band in support of the latter, he left Yes and played in Badger, which released two albums. He rejoined Yes for the 90125 and Big Generator albums. He also toured with David Bowie for the Station To Station tour. Kaye is currently playing keyboards in CIRCA:, which recently released the album And So On.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Tony Kaye: It’s a hard road, and you have to love what you’re doing, without thinking of success. You just have to love what you’re doing, and you have to have a love of your instrument. And you have to practice, and you have to become a good band. There’s no real room for mediocrity. You’ve just got to keep on plugging away. We tend to live in an age where things just go by extremely quickly, and even if you’re signed with a record company you kind of have one album to prove yourself. It’s certainly a lot more difficult than it was when we started, you know where record companies kind of kept with you and three albums later you’re still trying. Obviously the thought of and the need for success is a very important aspect of it, but I don’t think that it can be the only inspiration.

For full interview with Tony Kaye, click here.

Glen Phillips

Glen Phillips is best known as the singer and songwriter of the 1990′s alternative rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket, whose songs include “All I Want”, “Walk on the Ocean”, and “Fall Down”. He has released several solo albums, and is a member of the band Works Progress Administration.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Glen Phillips: These days? Diversify. [laughs] That’s a nicer way of saying ‘Don’t quit your day job’. But regardless, yeah, diversify. And work very hard. Learn to write, learn to compose, learn to record, learn to arrange, learn to do website design.

JM: There’s a lot to it nowadays.

GP: There’s a fuck of a lot of jobs involved. [laughs]

Larry Ramos

The Association was one of the most nobable sunshine pop bands, and was the first band on the bill at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Their catalog includes the #1 songs “Cherish” and “Windy”, plus “Never My Love”, which is the second most played song on the radio ever, and “Along Comes Mary”. Larry Ramos joined The Association in 1967, and was the lead singer on “Never My Love”.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Larry Ramos: Don’t give up. When things look the bleakest, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. For a lot of people, the reason they never succeed is that they give up too easily. I’ve been very fortunate in the fact that I’ve never really given up [laughs]. Actually, I started when I was so young that I didn’t know what it was like to give up. It was just a part of my life. Another thing, too. There’s a saying, “talent will out”. If you’ve got talent, eventually people will recognize it. But you’ve got to keep at it. You can’t give it up.

Jim Yester

The Association was one of the most nobable sunshine pop bands, and was the first band on the bill at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Their catalog includes the #1 songs “Cherish” and “Windy”, plus “Never My Love”, which is the second most played song on the radio ever, and “Along Comes Mary”. Jim Yester was the original lead singer for The Association.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jim Yester: Practice, practice, practice.

No, the main thing is just keep doing it. Talent will out. Talent will win in the long run. Just keep doing it, don’t give up. That, and desire. If you have that and the desire to do it, you’ll do it. Desire is the key.

And no man can serve two masters. When we started, nobody did anything else. It was the group 24/7. For the first six months we were together we worked six days a week, eight hours a day, writing, rehearsing, working on choreography. You finish a song, one guy’s stepping back, another guy’s moving a microphone, somebody’s handing a guitar.

And you’ve got to have fun. The audience is not going to have fun unless you’re having fun. So if you have fun, 90% chance they’re going to have fun.

And don’t take yourself too seriously.

Gary Lucas

Gary Lucas has been described as “The Thinking Man’s Guitar Hero” by The New Yorker, a “Guitarist of 1000 Ideas” by The New York Times, and a “legendary leftfield guitarist” by The Guardian (UK). He first gained acclaim for his work with Captain Beefheart (aka Don Van Vliet), appearing on Beefheart’s 1980 album Doc at the Radar Station and 1982’s Ice Cream for Crow. Lucas was also Van Vliet’s manager during this time. He has since released solo albums – the first being 1990’s Skeleton at the Feast featuring effect-heavy interstellar guitar instrumentals – and albums with his band Gods and Monsters, whose ranks once included Jeff Buckley. He has worked with many other artists, and was nominated for a Grammy for co-writing Joan Osborne’s song “Spider Web”.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Gary Lucas: If you really want to make music for a living, go for it! And don’t give up as difficult as it gets, you have to pay your dues to succeed in it like everything else that’s worth doing or attaining.

For full interview with Gary Lucas, click here.

Charlie Musselwhite

Charlie Musselwhite is a blues-harp player who got his start in Chicago before moving to San Francisco and being embraced by the counterculture scene. His 1967 debut album Stand Back! is considered a classic, and he has released over twenty more albums. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2010.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Charlie Musselwhite: Follow your heart. Play what you want to play. Play what resonates with you. Just ’cause somebody else is playing something, don’t feel like, “I’d better play what they’re playing, ’cause people like that”. Play what you like.

That’s what happened to me. I never even thought about being a professional musician. I just love blues and wanted to play it, and the blues overtook me. It took me where I wanted to go.

Carl Giammarese

Carl Giammarese was the guitarist, and is currently the lead vocalist, for The Buckinghams, whose songs include the hit single “Kind Of A Drag” which was #1 for two weeks in February 1967, the Top Ten hits “Don’t You Care” and “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”, plus “Hey Baby (They’re Playing Our Song” and “Susan”.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you gvie to an aspiring musician?

Carl Giammarese: One of the main things is that you have to stay focused. You have to be willing to sacrifice a lot. Otherwise you don’t stand a chance, especially nowadays. But it was always that way. Decide what you want, stick with it, and be willing to sacrifice a lot. I missed so many things in my life because of being a musician. But it was worth it to me. As long as it’s worth it to you…

And just stay true to yourself, and your music, too. You can only do what you do. Nobody can do everything. Just do what you do best, and hope there’s an audience there for you. That’s all you can do.

Martha High

Martha High was a singer in The Jewels, which had a minor hit with the song “Opportunity” in 1964. The Jewels became the opening act for James Brown, and when they disbanded High became a singer with Brown’s live band – this lasted for over thirty years. She also sang on various James Brown studio tracks including the 1977 duet “Summertime”. She has also been in Maceo Parker’s live band. She released a self-titled disco album in 1979, and a solo album It’s High Time in 2009.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Martha High: As far as singers are concerned, if it is their dream, don’t give up the dream, to stick with it. And make sure that you have someone to take care of your business, you know what the older singers went through in the past, getting ripped off and everything. It takes a lot of practice and wanting to really stick with it. You have to stick with it. Because I’ve been doing it all my life [laughs]. The things that you go through are lessons learned. You just try not to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Steve Vai

Steve Vai is a rock guitarist who started his career transcribing music for and then touring with Frank Zappa, who called him the “little Italian virtuoso”. He also played with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake, has released multiple solo albums, and has toured with other guitarists for the G3 series. He also played in the super cool guitar duel in the 1986 movie Crossroads.

Jeff Moehlis:What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Steve Vai: Same advice Frank Zappa gave me: keep your publishing.

Thurston Moore

Thurston Moore is a singer and guitarist for Sonic Youth, the alt-rock band formed in New York City in 1981 which pioneered the use of dissonance, noise, and alternative guitar tunings in the post-punk musical landscape. Sonic Youth’s mid- to late-1980′s albums EVOL, Sister, and Daydream Nation were hugely influential on the emerging alt-rock movement, and they maintained their integrity and credibility with their move to a major label for 1990′s Goo and and 1992′s Dirty. Sonic Youth continues to release albums 30 years after their formation. Moore has also released several solo albums and has worked with artists including Glenn Branca and Lydia Lunch.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Thurston Moore: Make cassettes. Cassettes rule, they always rule. They’re the great balancing leveller of recorded music. To me they’re the best sounding, they’re the most economical. They make sense. If people don’t have a cassette player, then just get one.

Bob Mould

Bob Mould was the guitarist and one of the singers and principal songwriters for the influential indie-rock band Husker Du, which was together from 1979 until early 1988. They released various acclaimed albums, including Zen Arcade, New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig, and Warehouse: Songs and Stories. He later founded the band Sugar, whose 1992 album Copper Blue was hailed as one of the year’s best. Mould has also released multiple solo albums. In 2011 he released his memoir See A Little Light.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Bob Mould: Just make the music that you really care about. Don’t worry about being successful. If you love what you do and you do it well, it’ll happen. So don’t go chasing somebody else’s idea of what success is.

Lou Barlow

Lou Barlow was a founding member and the bass player for Dinosaur Jr., including on their classic album You’re Living All Over Me. When he was dismissed from that band, he focused on his side project Sebadoh, which helped to define the 1990′s lo-fi style of rock music. Another Barlow project, The Folk Implosion, had a Top 40 hit “Natural One” from the movie soundtrack to Kids.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Lou Barlow: Do something weird, and keep doing it over and over again.

JM: And record it, right?

LB: [laughs] Record it. But do something weird.

Cris Kirkwood

Cris Kirkwood is the bassist for the Meat Puppets, which released the indie rock classic albums Meat Puppets II in 1984 and Up on the Sun in 1985. They hit their commercial peak with 1994′s album Too High to Die, which featured the minor hit “Backwater.” Their visibility was helped immensely around this time by Kurt Cobain proclaiming the Meat Puppets to be one of his biggest influences, and by brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood joining Nirvana onstage at their MTV Unplugged performance of three songs from Meat Puppets II. But things crumbled shortly thereafter, in large part because of Cris’ escalating substance abuse problems.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Cris Kirkwood: Yeah… stop. Go back to school. Become a dentist.

God, I don’t know. I’m no one to ask for advice. You know, read about me and don’t do what I’ve done.

[discussion about music]

So I would say to an aspiring musician, do what feels good to you. Then beyond that, I would say sell out when you’re young and make a lot of money.

For full interview with Cris Kirkwood, click here.

Mike Watt

Mike Watt’s musical resume is about as cool as they come. He co-founded the influential San Pedro-based indie-punk band The Minutemen, playing bass and composing many of their songs. After Minutemen guitarist D. Boon tragically died in a car accident, guitarist Ed “fROMOHIO” Crawford joined up with Watt and Minutemen drummer George Hurley to form the somewhat underappreciated late-80′s and early-90′s band fIREHOSE. And since 2003, he has been playing bass with re-formed (but perhaps not reformed) punk rock godfathers The Stooges, fronted by Iggy Pop.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Mike Watt: You’ve gotta find the inside voice. The best analogy I can give for it is writing a novel. You don’t have to invent new words, but there’s ways of using the words that everybody knows, where you can get a very personal work. And I think that’s what you’ve gotta do with music. It’s not like you have to invent new kinds of notes, or instruments, or styles. Though that might be kind of neat [laughs]. I still think you can do it with the stuff that’s there, you know that you learn from other people and stuff. I’m not talking about copying them. I’m saying – you know what I mean – like writing a novel. You might not invent one new word, but you can still write an original novel.

And also, it’s not bigger words. You read “Old Man and the Sea” that Hemingway did, you know, there are no big words. It’s just over a hundred pages. It ain’t that long. It’s still a very good story. And I think the same thing with music. It’s not about incredible technique. It’s finding your voice, finding your expression. Which is probably very difficult. But you know what, maybe it should always be kind of difficult. If there was some system to make that easy, maybe it wouldn’t be as genuine.

For full interview with Mike Watt, click here.

Will Oldham

Will Oldham has been steadily releasing records for nearly two decades now, under different names including (rarely) his own, Palace Brothers, and, for most of the last decade, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. His music receives much (well-deserved) critical acclaim: for example, his 1999 album I See A Darkness – the title track of which was covered by the late Johnny Cash – was ranked as the 9th best album of the 1990′s by the influential indie-arbiters pitchfork.com, who say that it “confirm[s] that Oldham is indie’s detached and brilliant DeNiro.”

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter or musician?

Will Oldham: [laughs, long pause] I don’t think that there’s any broad or sweeping advice that I would have to offer to anybody. If someone said, how can I finish this song, then maybe I could say something.

I’m not sure that I have the same motivation as someone else who writes songs or plays music. In my experience, I’ve found that my advice, in terms of making records and making music, doesn’t really get communicated, or doesn’t really apply to folks.

I don’t know. It would depend on the individual – man, woman, young, or old, and what their motivations were, and what their practices were. I think that there’s very few people that I would have advice that would be valuable to them. [laughs] I have a particular way of doing things, and most people think it’s retarded. They’ll ask me, what would you do about this – they’re writing songs – and I’ll say, and they’ll look at me like I’m from Mars.

JM: Well, this of course begs the question. You say that you have a different motivation, and a different way of doing things. What is your motivation for doing music?

For full interview with Will Oldham, click here.

Bill Callahan

Singer-songwriter Bill Callahan first started releasing his recordings under the alias Smog in 1988. His earliest releases were lo-fi home recordings, but as the years passed his recordings gained more polish, albeit without completely losing their grittiness. Fittingly, his song “Cold Blooded Old Times” appeared on the excellent soundtrack to the 2000 movie High Fidelity, being the type of song that the movie’s music-obsessed characters would put on a mix tape. Starting in 2007, Callahan started releasing his music under his own name, his latest album being 2011′s Apocalypse.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter / musician?

Bill Callahan: All you can do is write more songs, play more music. Share it somehow when you think it’s good.

For full interview with Bill Callahan, click here.

Buzz Osborne

“Buzz” Osborne, also known as King Buzzo, is the guitarist and vocalist for The Melvins, purveyors of sludgy, heavier-than-Black-Sabbath metal. Although never really rising above cult band status, The Melvins are assured at least a footnote in rock ‘n’ roll history because of their connections to Nirvana and that band’s frontman Kurt Cobain, who counted them amongst his favorites. Cobain, Osborne, and Melvins drummer Dale Crover were friends from high school. In 1984, Cobain auditioned to play bass with The Melvins, but he was not chosen. The next year, Osborne and Crover played in Cobain’s first band Fecal Matter (with Osborne on bass). Later, in 1988, Crover played on Nirvana’s 10-song demo, most of which was released on their albums Bleach and Incesticide. After Nirvana went supernova with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the album Nevermind, Cobain championed The Melvins, even co-producing and playing on a few tracks for the band’s 1993 major-label debut Houdini. Obsborne and The Melvins have steadily and uncompromisingly kept at it, having by now released 20-plus albums.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Buzz Osborne: Be as peculiar as you can. There’s all kinds of ways you can be peculiar. That’s the best, I would say. And there’s enough bands playing in tune. Nobody should expect you to.

Dale Crover

Dale Crover is the drummer for The Melvins, purveyors of sludgy, heavier-than-Black-Sabbath metal. Although never really rising above cult band status, The Melvins are assured at least a footnote in rock ‘n’ roll history because of their connections to Nirvana and that band’s frontman Kurt Cobain, who counted them amongst his favorites. Cobain, Crover, and Melvins guitarist/vocalist “Buzz” Osborne were friends from high school. In 1984, Cobain auditioned to play bass with The Melvins, but he was not chosen. The next year, Osborne and Crover played in Cobain’s first band Fecal Matter (with Osborne on bass). Later, in 1988, Crover played on Nirvana’s 10-song demo, most of which was released on their albums Bleach and Incesticide. After Nirvana went supernova with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the album Nevermind, Cobain championed The Melvins, even co-producing and playing on a few tracks for the band’s 1993 major-label debut Houdini. Crover and The Melvins have steadily and uncompromisingly kept at it, having by now released 20-plus albums.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Dale Crover: Practice a lot. Get in a band. It’s great to play with other people because that’ll help you. And it’s a lot more fun than playing by yourself. Or playing with yourself.

Neil Hagerty

Neil Hagerty is a guitarist and songwriter who got his start in the uncompromising underground band Pussy Galore, which released albums including Groovy Hate F*ck and Dial ‘M’ For Motherf*cker. When that band broke up, Hagerty and girlfriend Jennifer Herrema turned their attention to Royal Trux, which recorded multiple albums during the 1990′s including Cats & Dogs and Thank You. Royal Trux’s best-known song is “The Inside Game”, which is on the soundtrack for the movie High Fidelity. After Royal Trux broke up, Hagerty released a couple of solo albums, and also recorded with The Howling Hex.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter / musician?

Neil Hagerty: You just better know what it is you really want.

For full interview with Neil Hagerty, click here.

Bob Bert

Bob Bert was the drummer for two of the most notable bands from the American Underground: Sonic Youth (playing on the albums Confusion Is Sex, Sonic Death, and Bad Moon Rising) and Pussy Galore (playing on their recordings from Exile on Main St onwards). He has also drummed with Bewitched, Knoxville Girls, and The Chrome Cranks, the latter of which just released a cool new swamp/noise/punk/blues album called Ain’t No Lies In Blood. (Carlos Van Hijfte photo, 1982)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Bob Bert: Keep your day job and be original. Don’t be a dick.

For full interview with Bob Bert, click here

Don Fleming

Don Fleming is a musician and producer who has had his hands in an amazing number of projects, mostly in the alt rock universe. As a musician, he was a member of the Velvet Monkeys, B.A.L.L., Gumball, and Half Japanese. As a producer, he has worked with Sonic Youth, Hole, Teenage Fanclub, Alice Cooper, The Dictators, The Posies, Screaming Trees, and more. Don recently released a cool EP called Don Fleming 4 which includes contributions from Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Don Fleming: Get an MBA. Too many musicians think that if they know too much about the business they are sell-outs, but in reality “the man” wants them to think that way so they can be endlessly taken advantage of. That’s why most musicians barely make a living, have no health care, no retirement plans, no salaries. So my advice is to get a real job and play music because you like to, put the stuff out yourself and avoid “the man.”

For full interview with Don Fleming, click here.

Jonathan Wilson

Jonathan Wilson’s producer and musician credits include work with Jackson Browne, Robbie Robertson, Erykah Badu, Elvis Costello, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and young country-folk rockers Dawes. Wilson was also host to a number of all-night jam sessions at his place in Laurel Canyon, which attracted musicians such as Costello, Conor Oberst, and members of Wilco and The Black Crowes, and drew favorable comparisons to the canyon’s musical glory days. His album Gentle Spirit was rated the fourth-best album of 2011 by MOJO magazine, and UNCUT magazine named him the New Artist of the Year.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jonathan Wilson: Definitely to play some other instruments that they don’t play. That’s what I did, and that was really the best thing that I ever did.

JM: So what did you start out on?

JW: I started out on guitar, then moved to drums, and to piano, played some banjo, things like that.

JM: So just get out of your element?

JW: Yeah, exactly.

Ritzy Bryan

Ritzy Bryan is the singer and guitarist for the Welsh rock band The Joy Formidable, who is making waves with their 2011 debut album The Big Roar, and to Music Illuminati’s knowledge is the best Welsh rock trio since Budgie. In 2011 they have played at the Reading and Leeds Festivals and Lollapalooza, and their hit song “Whirring” has become a staple on modern rock radio.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Ritzy Bryan: I honestly refuse to give advice because I think every band should just carve their own fucking way. If you do your own thing there’s no rules, because everybody has a different journey.

Kim Manning

Kim Manning is an electrifying, red-hot performer who has been singing vocals with George Clinton and Parliament / Funkadelic / The P-Funk All Stars for ten years. She has also worked with artists including The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg, and Sly Stone, and was “Peaches” on the first season of the reality TV show Flavor of Love. Manning just released a new album called Good People.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Kim Manning: Okay, if you really feel the calling, and you have a gift, then you don’t really have a choice do you, you have to share your gift. If it’s your destiny, you will be miserable doing anything else so surrender to it and practice, a lot, now, before you’re on tour 350 days a year. But you really have to assess if it’s your ego that wants it, like could you be poor and happy and working for 10 years away from your loved ones, playing bar after coffee shop to 50 people at a time, if so then it’s for you. Otherwise, if you want to be a musician, and you don’t pass those tests, you better have lots and lots of money to make yourself a star like Taylor Swift or Paris Hilton did. “Paris is a Porn Star” is one of my songs from “Space Queen”! She understands the power of doing what it takes to be a star, and she’s hot!

For full interview with Kim Manning, click here.

Linnea Vedder

Linnea Vedder is the drummer and one of the singers and principal songwriters for Cliffie Swan, whose new Drag City album Memories Came True is a delightful blend of pop, psychedelia, and sweet harmonies. Cliffie Swan was formerly called Lights, with two albums released under this name including the wonderful 2009 album Rites.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Linnea Vedder: I slept and dreamt that life was Joy./ I woke and saw that life was Duty./ I acted, and behold, Duty was Joy. -Rabindranath Tagore

Click here for the full interview.

Scott McCaughey

Scott McCaughey is a singer and songwriter, and is the leader of the bands The Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus 5. Since 1994 he has made contributions to R.E.M. both live and in the studio. He is also in and writes songs for The Baseball Project with Peter Buck, Steve Wynn, and Linda Pitmon.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Scott McCaughey: Put out your own record. Don’t wait for anybody to tell you whether it’s good or bad or not. Just record your music and release it on whatever level you want to release it, either digitally, make your own CD. It doesn’t cost that much. Anybody can do it these days. So my advice is to do it.

James Jackson Toth

James Jackson Toth is an insanely prolific indie folk songwriter and musician who has recorded most frequently under the name Wooden Wand. His latest album, Death Seat, was produced by The Swans’ Michael Gira, and has been receiving a lot of great press from the likes of The New York Times, Interview Magazine, and Crawdaddy. It’s definitely worth checking out!

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter and/or musician?

James Jackson Toth: “Be great or be gone.” – David Briggs. Also, learn a trade.

For full interview with James Jackson Toth, click here

John Doe

John Doe was one of the primary songwriters and singers for the band X, along with Exene Cervenka. X’s 1980 debut album Los Angeles, produced by Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, ranks as one of the best punk albums of all time. This was followed by other acclaimed X albums, and a solo career that explored more of a roots music direction. Doe is also an actor who has appeared in a variety of films and television shows.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

John Doe: Don’t do it.

JM: You’re not the only one to say that.

JD: Because if they’re meant to do it, they will anyway. My second advice would be just to be true to yourself. It’s like Sonic Youth, everybody hated them, or didn’t like them, or they went, “ah, whatever”. But they just kept doing what they did, and eventually it worked out.

JM: And they’re still doing it, too.

JD: That’s right.

For full interview with John Doe, click here.

Henry Rollins

Henry Rollins was the frontman for seminal hardcore punk band Black Flag from 1981 to 1986 – a period which included their acclaimed album Damaged. After that band broke up, he formed the Rollins Band. He also tours as a spoken word artist, and has acted in various movies and television shows including FX’s Sons of Anarchy.

Jeff Moehlis What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Henry Rollins: My advice isn’t all that much to write home about. All I know is what I went through. I don’t know if it’s of any use. I say one must work really hard, harder than they have worked on anything in their lives. Total commitment, that’s the only way. To the point of obsession and losing all your friends. This, to me is the way to do it, all the way or not at all. I never had any talent, just determination.

Jack Grisham

Jack Grisham is the lead singer for T.S.O.L., which stands for True Sounds of Liberty and along with Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Social Distortion was at the forefront of the L.A. hard-core punk movement in the early 1980′s. Their early sound evolved from anti-government hardcore punk, to goth punk, to art punk. Grisham left T.S.O.L. in 1983, but returned in 1999. In 2003, he ran for governor of California in the recall election. Grisham lost the election, and still tours with T.S.O.L.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jack Grisham: Shit man, I mean I ruined my life doing this.

No, I mean, I do it for fun. The minute it becomes work then it’s a drag, you know what I’m saying? Because if this was a real job, it sucks. And we’re successful. You know what I’m saying? Most people aren’t successful. We’re always broke, you never know where the money’s coming from. Totally unstable, you’re away from your family all the time.

It’s rough. If we’re going on tour, we only tour ten days in a row, or two weeks in a row. Because I was in Germany, and my kid called me crying, and she’s like, “Dad, I need you.” And I thought, I’m fucking three days from even getting home to you. That was the last straw. The minute she said she needs me, and I couldn’t get home, I said I’ll never be where I can’t get to my kid within a day. So that’s it.

And all the rest is bullshit, you know?

Ron Emory

Ron Emory is the guitarist for T.S.O.L., which stands for True Sounds of Liberty and along with Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Social Distortion was at the forefront of the L.A. hard-core punk movement in the early 1980′s. Their early sound evolved from anti-government hardcore punk, to goth punk, to art punk. Emory stayed on for a while as the band transitioned to glam metal, and he and the band have since returned to their punk rock roots.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Ron Emory: Just learn everything you can about it. Have fun with it.

Joey Burns

Joey Burns is the co-founder, singer, guitarist, and one of the principal songwriters for Calexico, a Tuscon, Arizona-based band which blends Americana and Mexican influences. Notable albums by Calexico include 1998′s The Black Light, 2003′s Feast of Wire, and 2008′s Carried to Dust, and they recently toured in support of Arcade Fire.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Joey Burns: Patience. Patience for your inner critic, and patience on all those around you who are encouraging and inspiring you to be a musician. And I guess just be kind of open and travel as much as you can.

Dallas Good

Dallas Good is the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist for The Sadies, a Toronto-based psychedelic/surf/country rock/garage band that he leads along with his brother Travis, who plays lead guitar and adds exquisite harmonies. They have released multiple acclaimed albums since their 1998 debut, and have worked with notable artists including Neko Case, Jon Langford, and John Doe.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Dallas Good: Only play music you like. That seems like a really stupid, obvious answer, but it’s really easy to get into a situation where you’re playing songs that are like, “I know that he likes this one, but…”

Another answer: we have a song that we wrote with Jon Langford [from The Mekons] that sums it up pretty well: “Get the money and don’t leave anything behind” [laughs].

Michael Chapman

Michael Chapman is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist who has recorded over thirty albums, including 1970′s Fully Qualified Survivor which is considered to be a British folk-rock classic. His guitar playing has been compared favorably to that of John Fahey and Roy Harper.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Michael Chapman: Stick at it. Don’t the bastards grind you down. Nil carborundum bastardum. It you want to do it, do it. Don’t let them put you off. Sometimes are better than other. You’ve got to take the thick with the thin. I’ve been on the road 45 years, some are great and some are not so great. You just keep on going.

Russell Ferrante

Russell Ferrante is best known as the pianist and co-founder of the fusion band Yellowjackets. Before that, he toured with Jimmy Witherspoon and Joni Mitchell. He has also written with and produced records for Bobby McFerrin, Al Jarreau, and Rita Coolidge.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Russell Ferrante: Play with musicians that are better than you are. I think that’s how you learn and grow. Get a great teacher, too.

Jimmy Haslip

Jimmy Haslip is best known as the bass guitarist and co-founder of the fusion band Yellowjackets. He has also worked with other artists including Bruce Hornsby, Rita Coolidge, Tommy Bolin, Alan Holdsworth, Donald Fagen, and Kiss.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jimmy Haslip: First of all, find something that really inspires you – whether it’s music, art, sculpture – something that will inspire you to go and practice. And study as much as you can about as many different kinds of music as you possibly can. Just make sure you find some way to self-motivate yourself, so that you’re not staring at the walls someday thinking, “What am I gonna do next?” There has to be some inner fire that all of us have. You’ve got to find that inner fire. Once you find that, I think then the self-motivation just comes along with it. So finding that, and being motivated, practicing as much as you can, and trying to learn all that you can about all kinds of music – that’s my advice. And when you do that, then that will prepare you for any kind of gig or situation, experience, whatever, you’ll be prepared to jump in there and do a good job.

Eddie Tuduri

Eddie Tuduri is a drummer who has toured and/or recorded with Delaney Bramlett, Bobby Whitlock, The Beach Boys, Rick Nelson, Jim Messina, Dr. John, Ike Turner, Johnny Rivers, and many others. After a 1997 surfing accident, Tuduri founded The Rhythmic Arts Project, which integrates drums into the treatment and education of children with developmental disabilites.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Eddie Tuduri: Take lessons, find a good teacher. Don’t start playing without direction. I studied when I was a kid – when I was twelve, I learned how to read music, I learned the rudiments. It’s very important find a good teacher, so you don’t start off with bad habits.

Brute Force

Brute Force is the recording/performance name of Stephen Friedland. Friedland was a member of The Tokens in the mid-1960′s, and composed songs recorded by The Tokens, The Creation, Cyrkle, and The Chiffons. In 1967, his bizarrely brilliant solo album I, Brute Force, Confections of Love was released, including songs such as “To Sit on a Sandwich” and “Tapeworm of Love”. He is best known for the 1969 single “King of Fuh”, which was admired by George Harrison and John Lennon and was released on Apple Records. Unfortunately, Captiol/EMI refused to distribute this single because some of the lyrics sounded like profanity. Confections of Love was recently re-released on CD, with “King of Fuh” as one of the bonus tracks.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter and/or musician?

Brute Force: Listen to music of the world. Here and There. Learn something to know you can make money, because making money in the arts is not that easy as picking up a consistent paycheck. If you have to make a choice between a day job and dying for your art it’s probably a happier choice to keep the day job. Be kind to yourself for you are the greatest ally you have. That means realizing what a powerhouse you are and how your body is very sensitive to substances which enter into your body.

You may wish to do drugs. If you’re a singer you ought to know that smoke dries the throat. Your consciousness is far superior without drugs. It is what you are prior to any drug.

Remember when Dorothy, Toto, and her three friends walked thru a field of poppies? They fell asleep! Well, making it in life is a good deal more successful when you’re awake.

You don’t have to know a lick of formal music training to be a songwriter, yet it couldn’t hurt to learn notation, how to play keyboard, or guitar, or instrument of your choice. Take vocal lessons. Learn networking in the arts. Remember that if you are looking to make it in show business that it is 2 words…”show” and “business”.

[later] I would add, belief in oneself, maintaining health and Spiritual Reality.

For full interview with Brute Force, click here.

Mark Tulin

Mark Tulin was the bass guitar player for The Electric Prunes, which is best known for 1966′s psychedelic garage-rock classic single “I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night),” the lead track on the highly-regarded Nuggets collection compiled in 1972 by Lenny Kaye. The Prunes’ original line-up also released 1968′s psych obscurity Mass in F Minor, a Catholic mass, sung in Latin, composed by music producer/arranger/composer David Axelrod – the track “Kyrie Eleison” from this album was on the soundtrack for the generation-defining movie Easy Rider. Tulin passed away on February 26, 2011.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give an aspiring musician?

Mark Tulin: I think there’s two things. One is, you’d better love the process. Because if you don’t love the process, no success makes up for not loving what you’re doing. Especially in art of any form. Because at the end you’re left with your process. And you find that as nice it is that people like what you, if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing there’s an empty space somewhere.

And the other thing is, don’t give up. At any age. I think the shame is that my generation took their guitars and put them in the garage, and never picked them up again. I’m a firm believer in dreams, and that dreams come true. And what I think we said on one our newer albums is that dreams never quit. You quit on them. They never give up. So love what you’re doing, and do it.

And keep in mind that someone not liking you is an opinion, not a statement of fact. It’s just somebody’s opinion. And it can be a very high-ranking opinion. If I play a track and Bono goes, “I hate what you just did,” that’s his opinion. So that’s it. I just think it’s internal faith, that is what it basically comes down to.

For full interview with Mark Tulin, click here.

Ian Underwood

Ian Underwood is a multi-instrumentalist who played on classic Frank Zappa albums including Hot Rats and We’re Only In In For The Money. Check out his woodwind playing in “Peaches En Regalia”, which just might give you goosebumps. He later contributed to recordings by Quincy Jones, Barbara Streisand, and many others. He also played on the soundtracks of Blade Runner, Aliens, and Titanic.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give an aspiring musician?

Ian Underwood: I would just say do what you want to do. There isn’t any one thing. There’s no path in the arts. I don’t think there is any one way to do it. The main thing is knowing what you want to do, and applying yourself and saying, “That’s what I’m putting my energy into”.

A lot of times people do that just because they can’t do anything else. I mean, Frank [Zappa] would be useless without doing what he did. And that would apply to a lot of other people. It’s not like, “I could do this or I could have a dry cleaning store. Let’s see, which will I do. If I had a dry cleaning store I’d be making money and supporting my family. Yeah, I think I won’t do music, I’ll do a dry cleaning store.”

But it never works out that way. Because people that do it at any level, you know that’s kind of up there, they’re prisoners of their own brain. They’re complete prisoners of their own brain. That’s it. You could say lots of words to it, but it amounts to just being… I mean, it’s not a bad thing to be a prisoner that way. Everybody lives in their own mind, and you have to just see what the result of that is. If somebody wants to do it, I would always encourage anybody to follow whatever is in their mind, music or something else. But music, absolutely.

Billy Cox

Billy Cox is best known as a bassist who played with Jimi Hendrix, first in the early 1960′s when they were in the army together, and later in the Band Of Gypsys and in Hendrix’s Gypsy Sun and Rainbows at Woodstock. He is the last surviving member of Hendrix’s core bands The Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Band of Gypsys. He is currently part of the Experience Hendrix tribute tour. Photo taken by L. Paul Mann.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Billy Cox: Keep practicing. In order to be good you have to love something greater than you love yourself. If you love that music greater than you love yourself, you gotta be successful. That’s the key. [Hendrix and I] knew we were getting good and getting better, it was just a matter of someone discovering us. He got discovered first, before me [laughs].

Will Cullen Hart

Will Cullen Hart is a co-founder of the Elephant 6 Collective of musicians. He has written and performed songs for The Olivia Tremor Control and Circulatory Systems. Hart is also a visual artist, and created much of the the album artwork for these bands.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Will Cullen Hart: Listen to your heart. Even if somebody says it could be better this way, you’re probably right in your heart. That’s really it. That’s what I did. Even if it’s out of fashion, go for it. If you feel like it’s right, then it’s right.

Scott Spillane

Scott Spillane is a member of the Elephant 6 Collective of musicians. He played horns and helped with horn arrangements on the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, wrote “The Fool” from that album, and is frontman for the band The Gerbils.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Scott Spillane: Listen – really listen – to what you’re playing. That’s number one. And kill your babies.

JM: What do you mean by that?

SS: Edit yourself. Don’t be afraid to edit yourself.

Julian Koster

Julian Koster is a member of the Elephant 6 Collective of musicians. He played saw, banjo, and accordian on the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. He is also the leader of the band The Music Tapes.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Julian Koster: Belief and faith. And then more belief and then more faith. And then more belief and then more faith and then more belief and then more faith and then more belief and then more faith.

It’s just there’s so much that’s required to do anything that is truly and sincerely heartfelt. It requires a constant, massive amount of faith and belief. And over, and over, and over again.

Bert Lams

Bert Lams is a guitarist extraordinaire from Brussels, Belgium who is best known as a composer and performer for the California Guitar Trio, which in addition to original compositions plays covers ranging from “Bohemian Rhapsody” to “Pipeline” to “Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor”. He was also part of Robert Fripp’s League of Crafty Guitarists and the Robert Fripp String Quintet.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Bert Lams: Wow, there’s lots of things here. From my own experience, I can say that I learned a lot by finding somebody with experience, to share that with me. So I was lucky enough to find some good teachers, and that’s really important. Genius is not that common, so most of us need to stand on the shoulders of others.

JM: Was that [Robert] Fripp for you?

BL: It’s been different people, it’s been different people all through my life. It can be someone who you’re a fan of, who you listen to the music of and imitate all the licks of. But ideally it’s someone that’s there for you.

That’s one thing. If it’s younger people, if they’re very young, if they’re like teenagers, I always recommend that they just go and play with their friends. That’s how it happened for me, playing with other people as a teenager. That kind of opened me up.

Paul Richards

Paul Richards, from Salt Lake City, Utah, is also a guitarist extraordinaire who composes and performs with the California Guitar Trio, and was part of Robert Fripp’s League of Crafty Guitarists and the Robert Fripp String Quintet.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Paul Richards: The thing that worked the best for us was to find a way to do it ourselves. Because you can’t rely on the elusive record deal, especially now that all the record companies are struggling. So if you can find a way to do things on your own as much as possible, that’s one of the best things. In the beginning we booked our own gigs, we did our own recordings at home, you know, bought good equipment and found ways to good quality recordings and found a way to promote ourselves, all without having to rely on somebody else. So that’s a big part of it.

The other thing is, it took us eight years of constant work to get to the point where we could start to make any money playing music. Some bands can go much quicker than other bands. First we started in L.A. and then we started going beyond L.A. and then beyond California and just gradually expanded. And then we did a whole tour at Borders Bookstores [JM saw them at Borders in Palo Alto way back then] and found other things we could do that weren’t reliant on a big promotional unit. They were things that we could do ourselves.

You know, first of all we could get ten people to come, then maybe twenty people, and then fifty people, and then once we could show an agency that we could sell a few tickets then we got a good agency. I don’t think you need a manager, I don’t think you need a record company, but an agency helps you get good gigs. And you can probably do that on your own, too, but for us that’s the thing that makes the most sense, and it works well for us. An agency typically takes 15%, but for the amount of work that they do, 15% is well worth it. And a good agent will have a lot of connections to venues, to places like McCabe’s where we’re playing tomorrow. On our own we had tried to play McCabe’s for years and years and years, and they never had us until our agency finally had a connection and had some other artists who had played there. Then they got us in the door there. So I think an agency is key. But beyond an agency, doing things on your own is one of the best things that you can do.

Seymour Duncan

Seymour Duncan is the co-founder of the company that shares his name and for 35 years has been making guitar pickups, which convert the mechanical vibrations of a string into an electrical signal that can be amplified. Duncan’s pickups give guitarists some of the finest tones in rock ‘n’ roll, and have been used by artists such as Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen, Slash and Joe Satriani. Duncan is also a fine guitarist himself, playing in the Santa Barbara band Flatfoot Joe. (Photo: L. Paul Mann)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Seymour Duncan: It’s best to be very patient, and really believe in what you believe in. Just do it. Just be out there and do it. Don’t let anybody discourage you. Everybody’s different. Everybody has their own soul and their own creativity, and I believe in that. Be your own, and go out there, and just really do it, it’s so important.

For me it’s important to try to help other kids. I got helped by Les Paul, Jeff Beck, The Ventures, they’ve all helped me by asking questions. You know, I want to be there for younger kids, too. I want to try to be a good inspiration for them.

Nolan Gasser

Nolan Gasser is an acclaimed composer, with compositions including American Festivals and two pieces written for NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. He is also the Chief Musicologist for Pandora Media, Inc., which provides the popular Pandora Radio streaming music service; he is the architect of all five Music Genomes (Pop/Rock, Jazz, Hip-Hop/Electronica, World Music, and Classical). Moreover, he is the Artistic Director of Classical Archives which is the web’s largest classical music site.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician/composer?

Nolan Gasser: There are four essentials to building a career as a musician, but I think they apply elsewhere.

You have to have natural talent. You have to be honest with yourself about if you have enough natural talent that’s going to make you stand out in a crowd, and be able to be employable. You have to work hard, because music, like everything else, if you have the audacity to think that you can become a composer, well good luck, buddy. Because there’s been so many geniuses, so many people that you’d be lucky to carry their water. So you just have to work so hard to be the best you can be.

The third thing is you have to be lucky. And luck is one of those things, of course, that you make. You have to be out there, you have to be pushing hard and be daring so that you have the opportunities to be lucky. Getting that email from Tim was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. But I was there. I had put in the time as a musicologist, as a composer, as a rock and jazz musician, so I was ready for that. Because if you’re not ready for the lucky meeting… I always quote Emerson: “I pity he who is a victim of fate, but blessed is he who’s guided by destiny”. Fate is something that happens to you, but destiny is something that you make happen. You can call it luck. You ask anybody who is successful, they say, well I’ve been very lucky. But you make your own luck.

And the fourth thing is you’ve got to be smart. A lot of musicians, including a lot of great jazz musicians and a lot of great rock musicians, are not the most practical people. But if you want to raise a family, send a kid to college, pay your mortgage, and have a nice life, then you need to be smart. You need to figure out how can you take these tools that you have and translate them into making a living. And part of that is, you’ve really got to do all the other things, but you’ve got to have a big toolkit, you’ve got to make yourself indispensable by having skills that other people don’t have.

I always tell young people, do something dramatic. I went to Paris after my undergrad. And that has helped me in more ways than I can count. In part by people just saying ‘wow’, and suddenly you look different in their eyes. You’re not just a kid that grew up in Southern California and stayed there. You went across the ocean. And it wasn’t that hard. It was a lot of fun. But you grow so much. So be dramatic, do something dramatic. And think big. Especially when you’re young. Imagine your wildest dreams, and say OK, I’m going to get there. Maybe you won’t get there, but you’ll get a lot closer than if you say, well, I just want to be able to play at that bar down the street.

For full interview with Nolan Gasser, click here.

Daniel Levitin

Daniel Levitin is a cognitive psychologist, record producer, and best-selling author of “This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession” and “The World In Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature”. He has been a producer or a recording engineer for artists including Blue Oyster Cult, Chris Isaak, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Santana, and The Grateful Dead, and has been a consultant for albums by Stevie Wonder and Eric Clapton. He is a professor and the director of the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition, and Expertise in the Department of Psychology at McGill University. (Photo credit: Arsenio Coroa)

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Daniel Levitin: Practice. Deliberate practice. Not mindless, but mindful. And practice a little bit every day, because your brain has to consolidate the information through sleep. So three hours, all on a Sunday afternoon, isn’t the same as even 15 minutes a day.

David Freiberg

David Freiberg was a co-founder of 1960′s psychedelic band Quicksilver Messenger Service, which was known for extended jams as captured on their classic album Happy Trails. He toured with Jefferson Airplane toward the end of that band’s existence, and stayed on when the band evolved into Jefferson Starship. He was a co-writer of Jefferson Starship’s 1979 hit song “Jane”. Both Freiberg and Paul Kantner quit the band as its sound became more commercial, in particular before the recording of “We Built This City” as Starship. Photo taken by L. Paul Mann.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

David Freiberg: Having fun is more important than going to #1. If you’re in a band and something goes to #1, that’s really good luck. But it’s also a big curse. It’s like winning a lottery. Hardly anyone who wins a lottery is ever happy. Their life goes to hell immediately. Everybody wants to get that money, and they don’t know who their friends are, because everybody’s a friend, right? I don‘t know, it’s kind of like that. Just don’t change.

Steve Young

Steve Young is a singer and songwriter whose best known song is “Seven Bridges Road,” which was covered by and became a Top 40 hit for The Eagles. He also wrote “Lonesome, On’ry And Mean”, which became a trademark song for Waylon Jennings, and “Montgomery in the Rain”, which was covered by Hank Williams, Jr.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would give to an aspiring songwriter?

Steve Young: Become a dentist [laughs]. You know, go to dental school. That’s just my joke.

If you’re a true writer, then you’ve got to write. My real opinion is you should do it, and if you don’t make any money from it, try to have a backup plan and just try to see what happens. Because it’s probably tougher than it has ever been. The music business itself is pretty low-key, let’s face it. So, I think you have to be a little crazy to do it. It’s really an unknown. Just like acting, there are a few people who actually make a living doing it. But again, I don’t want to deny anybody their expression or their art. You should try it, you should do it, if nothing else for yourself and a few friends. Just do it and see where it goes. If it goes nowhere, you still have the pleasure of doing it.

JM: Your answer reminds me… I asked the bassist from the Meat Puppets what advice he’d give an aspiring musician, and he also said “become a dentist.”

SY: He did? Wow, that’s cool!

JM: But then he also said, “Look at what I did, and don’t do that.” Because he got involved in drugs and had problems…

SY: Boy, could I ever say the same thing? It sounds like we have a similar story. I was my own worst enemy in the music business itself. I was just lucky to have any degree of success doing anything.

For full interview with Steve Young, click here.

Justin Roberts

Justin Roberts was in the indie rock band Pimentos for Gus before becoming an award-winning children’s musician who writes clever, thoughtful songs with a well-crafted power pop sound. His latest CD is 2008′s Pop Fly.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give an aspiring songwriter?

Justin Roberts: I think as with anything, it’s practice. Keep doing it, and be willing to write bad songs. Sometimes I look back on some of the simpler songs I wrote early on and think, wow, I wish I could write one of those. But you can’t. So you have to just accept what you’re doing at the time, and try to be content with that. Because you can only do what comes out of you, and you just have to let that stuff come out and not block it too much.

There’s a book called “Art and Fear” that was recommended to me during one of my many sessions of [writer's] block. It’s a great book. It’s mostly about visual artists, but there’s a great story in there where there’s a pottery class, and they divide the class into two groups. They say for one group they say they’re going to graded on the quantity of pots that you make, and for the other group you’re going to be graded on the quality of the pots that you make. They went off and did the thing, and a week later when they came back all of the best work was done by the group that was going to be graded on quantity. And the people who were graded on quality ended up not finishing things or it was half-baked because they were trying to perfect one thing. Whereas the group that was just trying to make as many things as possible came up with the best stuff. I think with songwriting, it’s a lot like that. You have to just try to write as many things as you can, and certainly discard stuff that is not up to snuff, but don’t judge it right away. Try to work with it and see what could happen.

I think being an editor is good, too, for a songwriter. I sometimes find, for me at least, people that make records and have eight million songs on them, I’m like, you know what, this would be a great record if you had gotten an editor and just gotten rid of some of this stuff. No one has the attention span for a 72 minute CD [laughs]. My favorite records are usually over in about 35 minutes. When vinyl was popular, you could only fit about 18 minutes on a side, and that’s it.

So I think it’s a combination of trying to create as much as you can, and then weeding through it trying to only pull out the best stuff.

Also having people that you trust around you that you can play things to that are the best critics. You don’t always agree with what they say but it’s nice to have people to bounce things off, for me.

JM: Would you answer differently if I asked what advice you would give to an aspiring childrens songwriter?

JR: I think the only different advice I would say is to try not to write a song about what you think a kid would like to hear. You just have to write something that is honest, and if you shoot really high then kids will come with you. I think the mistakes people make often is stuff I wouldn’t personally want to listen to, when it sounds like they’re imagining what they think a kid would want to hear a song about and it comes back as condescending and preachy.

For full interview with Justin Roberts, click here.

Taylor Goldsmith

Taylor Goldsmith is the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for Dawes, a Southern California band influenced by The Band and the Laurel Canyon style of the 1970′s. Dawes has released two very nice albums, and has been a live backing band for Jackson Browne, who sang backing vocals for one song on their latest release, and for The Band’s Robbie Robertson.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Taylor Goldsmith: I would say play locally until the rest of the country starts hearing about it. Even if you live in nowhere’s-ville, like if you live in Chattanooga, Tennessee but you’re getting 400 people to each show and eventually more, people are going to notice. People always say you just gotta get on tour. I think the only way to do that, and have it mean anything, is if you’re relevant locally.

Larkin Grimm

Larkin Grimm is a well-traveled, eclectic singer-songwriter in the “freak folk” genre. The Swans’ Michael Gira has described her as “the sound of the eternal mother and the wrath of all women”, and also said “her voice is like the passionate cry of a beast heard echoing across the mountains just after a tremendous thunder storm, when the air is alive with electricity.” Grimm’s fourth album Soul Retrieval, which was recorded with the help of famed T. Rex and David Bowie record producer Tony Visconti, will be released in February 2012.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Larkin Grimm: Don’t do it. It is a hard life. We do it because we aren’t suited for anything else. If you can hold onto another job, stick with that! But if you get fired from every job you have ever had and you are a high-strung orchid living on the edge of sanity, GO FOR IT! and try to be kind to the show promoters. They tend to be generous, sensitive, kind people and they deserve respect for what they do.

For full interview with Larkin Grimm, click here.

Jason Reeves

Jason Reeves is a singer-songwriter originally from Iowa City, Iowa. Shortly after moving to California in 2005 he met Colbie Caillat, and co-wrote many of the songs on her debut album Coco, including the hit singles “Bubbly” and “Realize”. He also co-wrote songs on Caillat’s follow-up album Breakthrough, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, plus “The Show”, which was a hit in the UK and elsewhere for Lenka. His 2007 album Magnificent Adventures of Heartache And Other Frightening Tales won acclaim for its heartfelt pop-infused folk songs, and his album The Lovesick will be released by Warner Brothers sometime in 2011.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter / musician?

Jason Reeves: I would say it’s all about insane amounts of patience and belief in yourself. You have to have a vision and know that it’s worth seeing it through. Other than that, just be true to your heart.

For full interview with Jason Reeves, click here.

Buddy Miller

Buddy Miller is a Nashville-based singer, songwriter, musician, producer, and recording artist. He has released several solo albums, and has toured with and/or recorded with Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Shawn Colvin, Linda Ronstadt, Alison Krause and Robert Plant, and Robert Plant’s Band of Joy.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Buddy Miller: Just keep doing it. That’s all I’ve ever done. I feel really fortunate to be able to say that. But, you know, if you love it just keep at it.

Black Francis

Black Francis is the primary songwriter, lead singer, and rhythm guitarist of the Pixies, the alt-rock pioneers whose trademark use of quiet verses and loud screaming choruses was a huge influence on Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s songwriting. In fact, Cobain admitted that when he wrote the genre-creating smash hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, he “was basically trying to rip off the Pixies.” Francis’ post-Pixies recordings have been variously released under the names Frank Black, Frank Black and the Catholics, and Black Francis.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Black Francis: Go play. Go play in front of people. That’s the best thing.

Alex Ebert

Alex Ebert is the lead singer for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, whose music mixes elements of folk, rock, gospel, soul, and a touch of glam, and whose live shows – in Music Illuminati’s opinion – are not to be missed. To date, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have released one album, 2009′s Up From Below. They will be playing at the Coachella Festival in April 2010.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?
Alex Ebert: Do it, even if you don’t feel ready. Just do it. And then, be like a child. That’s the most important thing.

Al Kooper

Al Kooper is a legendary songwriter and musician, who is most notable for co-writing the Gary Lewis and the Playboy’s hit “This Diamond Ring”, playing organ on Bob Dylan’s classic “Like A Rolling Stone” and with him at the Newport Folk Festival when he “went electric”, founding Blood, Sweat, and Tears, playing on sessions with Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and The Rolling Stones, playing on the album Super Session with Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills, signing The Zombies to Columbia for their album Odessey & Oracle, and discovering and producing Lynyrd Skynryd.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter/musician?

Al Kooper: Go to law school. I wouldn’t want my son to become one.

Jeff Hanneman

Jeff Hanneman co-founded and plays guitar for thrash metal pioneers Slayer, whose 1986 album Reign In Blood is often hailed as one of the most important and influential heavy metal albums ever produced. He is also one of the band’s songwriters, with credits including “Angel of Death”, “Raining Blood”, “South of Heaven”, “War Ensemble”, and “Seasons in the Abyss”. Slayer’s most recent album was 2009′s World Painted Blood, and the band continues to tour.

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Jeff Hanneman: Kick ass!

Ira Kaplan

Ira Kaplan is the guitarist, and a singer, songwriter, and co-founder of Yo La Tengo, a “cult band” formed in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1984. Yo La Tengo’s sound is often compared favorably to that of the The Velvet Underground, a band they played in the film I Shot Andy Warhol. Photo taken by L. Paul Mann

Jeff Moehlis: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

Ira Kaplan: Don’t take advice from anybody.