# Go On, Take the Music and Run: Master Tape Theft

An episode of [Ridiculous Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1608230191), 15 Jan 2026, 1 h 03 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/0b4bcc39-7ba2-453f-aaac-ae510011dd80/30157a80-d598-45ca-9099-b3d2015d12b2/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3a4c50f5-ff69-4807-aa26-ae510011dd8e

Original studio recordings are the purest form of a song; they are also incredibly valuable. Theft of master tapes are a musician's worst nightmare. But sometimes, it can be a blessing in disguise. Whether the thief nabs the tapes as revenge, as bootleg material, or by accident, you can bet your sweet patoot the chaos that results is pretty ridiculous. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:03] Speaker 2: Zarn Elizabeth, how are you? I'm doing Wow? How about you?
[0:08] Speaker 2: How are you doing good?
[0:08] Speaker 3: I'm good.
[0:09] Speaker 2: Yeah. You look all bushy tail.
[0:11] Speaker 3: I do. I'm very bushy tailed. Do you want to
[0:14] Speaker 3: know what's ridiculous?
[0:16] Speaker 2: I do want to know it's ridiculous. But I got
[0:18] Speaker 2: something for you that's ridiculous before we get there, Elizabeth, Okay,
[0:22] Speaker 2: this one involves a triangle of intensity, Yoko Ono, Salvador
[0:26] Speaker 2: dah Lee, and John Lennon. Oh right, So John Lennon
[0:31] Speaker 2: and Yoko they were on their honeymoon in sixty nine
[0:34] Speaker 2: and they met Salvador dah Lee in Paris and they
[0:37] Speaker 2: had lunch with him at the Hotel Maurice, all right,
[0:40] Speaker 2: and so they were all friendly. They hit it off.
[0:42] Speaker 2: They're like, oh, that's cool, right, and uh, you know,
[0:45] Speaker 2: it was such like a kismet connection that Salvador Dali
[0:49] Speaker 2: used to keep a photograph of John Lennon in his
[0:51] Speaker 2: closet hanging on a coat hanger. Okay, don't ask me why. Anyway,
[0:56] Speaker 2: The point that I wanted to tell you what that is.
[0:58] Speaker 2: The ridiculous part is that after John Lennon passed away,
[1:03] Speaker 2: Yoko still stayed, you know, somewhat friendly with Salvador Dali,
[1:08] Speaker 2: and she asked him like, hey, I really would like
[1:10] Speaker 2: to get hair from your mustache. And he's like what,
[1:15] Speaker 2: He's like, I just really want it, so Dolly, He's like,
[1:18] Speaker 2: I don't know. She seems kind of like a witch.
[1:19] Speaker 2: Maybe she's gonna do some footy stuff on me. So
[1:22] Speaker 2: he didn't want to send one of his actual hairs
[1:24] Speaker 2: because he was worried about her doing like some magic
[1:26] Speaker 2: black magic on him. So he's like, how do I
[1:28] Speaker 2: avoid the occult? I know, I'll just send her a
[1:32] Speaker 2: blade of grass. So he had an assistant go out
[1:34] Speaker 2: and pick a blade of grass and like age it
[1:36] Speaker 2: and dry it. And then she's like yeah, because she
[1:38] Speaker 2: had promised him ten thousand dollars for one of his
[1:42] Speaker 2: like mustache hairs, and so he sent her a blade
[1:44] Speaker 2: of grass in exchange for ten thousand dollars. And there
[1:48] Speaker 2: you go, right, Salvador Dolly, Yoko Ono the ten thousand
[1:51] Speaker 2: dollars blade of grass.
[1:52] Speaker 3: I love it. That is ridiculous, right, I thought, So,
[1:55] Speaker 3: do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
[1:56] Speaker 2: Please? I would love to.
[1:57] Speaker 3: Stealing an album before it even comes out. Oh this
[2:21] Speaker 3: is ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
[2:26] Speaker 3: ices and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
[2:30] Speaker 3: and one hundred percent ridiculous.
[2:32] Speaker 2: No you heard that.
[2:34] Speaker 3: Master tapes master recordings. These are the original, first generation,
[2:40] Speaker 3: highest quality recordings of a piece of music.
[2:42] Speaker 2: So like old school reel to real.
[2:45] Speaker 3: Yes, and it's the final version, the one that includes
[2:48] Speaker 3: all the edits and the mixing, and masters have the
[2:51] Speaker 3: purest sound because that's like the originator. And it's from
[2:55] Speaker 3: these tapes that all copies are made.
[2:57] Speaker 2: So they're coming out of the board once they have
[2:59] Speaker 2: it all like mastered. They record a tape, yeah, and
[3:02] Speaker 2: then they're like okay in print CDs or whatever else
[3:05] Speaker 2: you write from all.
[3:06] Speaker 3: The broadcast copies, the safety copies, the production masters. Yeah.
[3:10] Speaker 3: So they're really valuable, I bet. And most of the
[3:13] Speaker 3: time they're kept in vaults because actual vaults. For ages,
[3:17] Speaker 3: they were like real, like you said, real, real analog tape.
[3:20] Speaker 3: Now there's like digital pro tool sessions and stuff, but
[3:23] Speaker 3: they put them on a drive. It's locked up, it's tangible.
[3:28] Speaker 3: You know what's crazy is that owning the masters grants
[3:32] Speaker 3: rights and control over the use of the music and
[3:35] Speaker 3: most importantly the revenue.
[3:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like why Michael Jackson bought the Beatles.
[3:39] Speaker 3: Masters, right, And we know what happens when something is valuable,
[3:43] Speaker 3: it's pople people want to deal it. So I think
[3:46] Speaker 3: one of the most famous cases of this happened in
[3:49] Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six.
[3:51] Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty six, okay.
[3:52] Speaker 3: There was this band they were getting ready to release
[3:55] Speaker 3: like a highly anticipated first album, okay, and what's wild
[3:59] Speaker 3: and sort of unbelievable and unprecedented is that a rival
[4:03] Speaker 3: band stole the Masters and we're going to release the
[4:06] Speaker 3: album as their own. Wait what Yeah, it's insane. So
[4:10] Speaker 3: the original band they get this tip about the tapes,
[4:14] Speaker 3: and so they they're told they go to this mansion
[4:18] Speaker 3: and you can get the tapes back. So they go,
[4:20] Speaker 3: but all they find there is a note.
[4:22] Speaker 2: So wait, like the whole band, like they get an event.
[4:25] Speaker 3: Band, Yeah, okay, and it says on the note for
[4:28] Speaker 3: really good tunes, the very best yet check out the
[4:32] Speaker 3: storehouse and talk to Chubbette and they're like, what is
[4:36] Speaker 3: even happening right now? And so the Storehouse, right, it's
[4:40] Speaker 3: like this local kind of dive bar music venue.
[4:44] Speaker 2: I love. They're getting like a rhyming note, and so.
[4:46] Speaker 3: They go there. They're like, where's Chubbette. Yeah, and they
[4:50] Speaker 3: are all these gnarly biker dudes there and they're like no,
[4:54] Speaker 3: They're like, Chubette's not a person. That's the soda machine.
[4:59] Speaker 3: What Yeah, and like it's a red herring, right, And
[5:01] Speaker 3: so they all look at the machine. Another note, folks,
[5:05] Speaker 3: we got ourselves a good old fashioned scavenger hunt.
[5:08] Speaker 2: Are you kidding?
[5:08] Speaker 3: I'm serious?
[5:09] Speaker 2: This is the second note.
[5:10] Speaker 3: Also, like, I'm sure you've figured out the band by now,
[5:13] Speaker 3: such a classic piece of rock lore.
[5:15] Speaker 2: I've got two guesses.
[5:16] Speaker 3: Okay, Well, things got desperate, huh. So they had to
[5:20] Speaker 3: talk to all these shady characters because they got to
[5:22] Speaker 3: get these tapes back. And then it turns out the
[5:25] Speaker 3: thieving band was storing the masters at their own recording studio. Okay,
[5:30] Speaker 3: so the original band they're able to get the masters back.
[5:32] Speaker 3: They figured out, they get them back and it's a
[5:34] Speaker 3: big like f you to the thieves. They swapped them
[5:38] Speaker 3: out with master tapes that had French lessons on them.
[5:42] Speaker 3: No music, I'm telling you, they're iconic. So they go
[5:46] Speaker 3: on to release their album as scheduled, and I guess
[5:49] Speaker 3: Rave Reviews Instant Classic. Do you know who that band was?
[5:53] Speaker 2: My guess is only because of the weirdness of it
[5:56] Speaker 2: and because you said rock. My original first guest because
[5:58] Speaker 2: of the year was My baby the Beastie Boys. But
[6:00] Speaker 2: I'm gonna go with guns and Roses no zaren.
[6:05] Speaker 3: It was Gem in the Holograms, the animated musical act
[6:08] Speaker 3: from the Saturday Morning cartoon.
[6:10] Speaker 2: Kidding me, how would I have possibly guess they're made
[6:17] Speaker 2: up cartoons?
[6:18] Speaker 3: This all went down and search of the I don't know,
[6:22] Speaker 3: I care of the name, in search of the stolen
[6:24] Speaker 3: album on the show was the seventeenth episode of the
[6:30] Speaker 3: first season, which means it was the seventeenth episode ever
[6:33] Speaker 3: overall of the GEM animated series.
[6:37] Speaker 2: Now this makes more sense why the whole band would
[6:39] Speaker 2: get in a van and go to look for their
[6:41] Speaker 2: stolen master tapes, because I was trying to picture all
[6:44] Speaker 2: these bands like load all right, guys, just like you know,
[6:48] Speaker 2: I got the drummer looking out the window.
[6:50] Speaker 3: I tell you this because when I was doing research
[6:54] Speaker 3: and looking for cases of stolen master tapes, I stumbled
[6:57] Speaker 3: upon a gem wiki website and made me laugh. And
[7:01] Speaker 3: then the website also triggered a bunch of virus warnings, and.
[7:08] Speaker 4: So it's like this has to be my kickoff.
[7:10] Speaker 2: Right totally. I like that you set it up where
[7:12] Speaker 2: it was like their albums are really lowly people looking
[7:15] Speaker 2: forward to their debut album. Right, had a debut album
[7:20] Speaker 2: in eighty six.
[7:21] Speaker 3: Watch Jem Jem in the Holocaust. Man.
[7:24] Speaker 2: I think my guesses are pretty good. For eighty six,
[7:26] Speaker 2: they were great, great classes. I figure you know music
[7:28] Speaker 2: better than I know.
[7:29] Speaker 3: You and I have talked a few times before about
[7:31] Speaker 3: using a fictional story, in my case an episode of
[7:34] Speaker 3: Father Brown and in your case one of the Fast
[7:37] Speaker 3: and Furious movies for an episode.
[7:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, see how long it takes before that still happens.
[7:42] Speaker 3: Someday It would make the crime purists irate, But I
[7:47] Speaker 3: feel like real rude dudes would totally get down with it.
[7:49] Speaker 2: I think they would enjoy it. And also the moment
[7:51] Speaker 2: when they figured it out, like, at what point.
[7:54] Speaker 3: Exactly, let me get into some real life theft.
[7:57] Speaker 2: Okay, that is a real life theft. It's just with
[7:59] Speaker 2: two ease.
[8:00] Speaker 3: Yes, you just brought up earlier at the top of
[8:07] Speaker 3: the episode, John Lennon, they did the Beatle not a
[8:10] Speaker 3: cartoon John Wit, he was Bernel Lennon. Yeah, but like
[8:14] Speaker 3: he existed.
[8:15] Speaker 2: Oh okay, now we're splitting hairs.
[8:17] Speaker 3: So at one time the Beatles were the biggest pop
[8:21] Speaker 3: rock band in the world. Yeah, John, Paul McCartney, George Harrison,
[8:25] Speaker 3: Ringo Star. They influenced music and culture. Then things got
[8:30] Speaker 3: messy and after a decade together they wanted to go
[8:33] Speaker 3: their separate ways. Fans are devastated.
[8:35] Speaker 2: Ringo Star was ascended. No one could keep up. He's
[8:38] Speaker 2: the coolest, well.
[8:39] Speaker 3: He's basically god. December thirty first, nineteen seventy Beatle Paul
[8:44] Speaker 3: McCartney filed suit for the dissolution of the band's contractual relationship.
[8:49] Speaker 2: Oh he was the one.
[8:50] Speaker 3: Yeah, and then there are all these like legal entanglements
[8:52] Speaker 3: that dragged it was dragging it all out.
[8:54] Speaker 2: And it wasn't breakup Apple and all that.
[8:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, it wasn't made final until December twenty ninth, nineteen
[8:59] Speaker 3: seventy four.
[9:00] Speaker 2: Apple Records That Apple Records.
[9:02] Speaker 3: Fun fact, John Lennon signed the paperwork terminating the partnership
[9:06] Speaker 3: while he was on vacation with his family at Walt
[9:08] Speaker 3: Disney World Resort in Florida. Really, I'm dead serious.
[9:12] Speaker 2: He killed the Beatles at Disney no Longer the Happiest Yes,
[9:16] Speaker 2: and then they one day.
[9:18] Speaker 3: And they were like, in order to file this, you
[9:20] Speaker 3: have to talk to Chabbette. I can't believe I actually
[9:24] Speaker 3: got through that without just losing.
[9:25] Speaker 2: It a post office epcot there.
[9:29] Speaker 3: So things were messy for the band, but they were
[9:30] Speaker 3: also personally messy for John Lennon. So by nineteen seventy
[9:35] Speaker 3: three things are all over the place for him. He
[9:37] Speaker 3: left the Beatles, he separated from wife Yoko Ono. He
[9:41] Speaker 3: was living primarily in Los Angeles.
[9:45] Speaker 2: Lost Year Younger, the Lost.
[9:47] Speaker 3: Weekend, and he had Capitol Records breathing down his neck,
[9:52] Speaker 3: demanding an album, and not just any album, but an
[9:55] Speaker 3: album of nineteen fifties rock and roll covers that he'd
[9:58] Speaker 3: promised them.
[9:59] Speaker 2: Oh weird, Joshua used to tell me about this year.
[10:02] Speaker 2: He was really he read like all their books, biographies,
[10:04] Speaker 2: and he was fascinated by this period.
[10:06] Speaker 3: Of It's a crazy time because see, like here's what happened.
[10:09] Speaker 3: John Lennon crossed a music publisher named Morris Levy, who
[10:13] Speaker 3: said that the nineteen sixty nine Beatles song Come Together,
[10:17] Speaker 3: which was had his authorship on it, unlawfully borrowed lyrics
[10:21] Speaker 3: and phrasing from Chuck Berry's you Can't Catch Me huh,
[10:25] Speaker 3: and Levy controlled those through his company Big seven Music.
[10:29] Speaker 3: So in nineteen seventy three, rather than go to court,
[10:33] Speaker 3: John Lennon agreed to a settlement requiring him to record
[10:37] Speaker 3: at least three songs owned or controlled by Levy on
[10:42] Speaker 3: this next album, so he'd be paying the debt through
[10:45] Speaker 3: performance and mechanical royalties rather than cash.
[10:48] Speaker 2: It's like Willie Nelson's IRS tapes. You work out a
[10:50] Speaker 2: deal like I'll record and they're.
[10:52] Speaker 3: Hoping like this may make me more cash than you
[10:54] Speaker 3: could pay me.
[10:55] Speaker 2: Sure, of course.
[10:56] Speaker 3: So Capitol Records was involved because they were the US
[11:00] Speaker 3: label contractually responsible for delivering John Lennon's next album. Ah,
[11:04] Speaker 3: So the Morris Levy settlement it was structured around this
[11:07] Speaker 3: whole obligation. So when John agrees to resolve the dispute
[11:13] Speaker 3: by recording those songs, the understanding was that those records
[11:17] Speaker 3: would be delivered to Capitol Records to satisfy Capitol's release
[11:21] Speaker 3: schedule and their royalty accounting. So they're the like practical
[11:25] Speaker 3: intermediary they need the album fulfill the contract got all
[11:31] Speaker 3: that stuff set up. So for this project called rock
[11:35] Speaker 3: and Roll, John Lennon brought in a big dog, someone
[11:38] Speaker 3: with the chops to make this a major release, someone
[11:42] Speaker 3: special for something special. He brought in the creator of
[11:45] Speaker 3: the Wall of Sound, Phil Spector, whoa so at the time.
[11:49] Speaker 3: Phil Spector was one of the most important influential producers
[11:53] Speaker 3: in the biz. And Wall of Sound, if you're not familiar,
[11:56] Speaker 3: is this recording and production style that takes the rough
[11:59] Speaker 3: immatiate of nineteen fifties rock and roll and puts it
[12:02] Speaker 3: on an orchestral scale. So examples are be My Baby
[12:06] Speaker 3: by the Ronettes, to Do or on ron by the Crystals.
[12:10] Speaker 3: Such a good song River Deep, Mountain High I Cantina Turn,
[12:14] Speaker 3: You've Lost that love and feeling by the Righteous Brothers,
[12:17] Speaker 3: then he Kissed Me by the Crystals. Brian Wilson borrowed
[12:21] Speaker 3: heavily from the technique for the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds.
[12:24] Speaker 2: I did too for just my normal fashion sense sound.
[12:26] Speaker 2: I'm like this is a visual wall of.
[12:28] Speaker 3: Sounds, Shia wall of Sound. So Lennon had worked with
[12:32] Speaker 3: Specter on his album Imagine in nineteen seventy one and
[12:36] Speaker 3: on earlier Beatles projects. And so Specter though, like he's
[12:39] Speaker 3: got this reputation. He's intense, he's excessive, he's unpredictable's hair.
[12:45] Speaker 3: Everybody knows that, and he would become it would come
[12:48] Speaker 3: to a violent head.
[12:50] Speaker 4: Decades later he was a shouergna.
[12:53] Speaker 3: You heard it, Like he does terrible things. We won't
[12:55] Speaker 3: talk about past that, Elizabeth. But Lennon believed that Specters
[12:59] Speaker 3: in immersion in early rock and roll would suit.
[13:02] Speaker 4: The covers completely.
[13:03] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[13:04] Speaker 3: So the rock and roll sessions, they involved this rotating
[13:07] Speaker 3: cast of musicians and a deliberately shall we say, loose atmosphere,
[13:12] Speaker 3: not structured at all. They recorded at a bunch of
[13:15] Speaker 3: different studios in La Lenin later described the sessions as
[13:19] Speaker 3: totally unfocused and basically drunk.
[13:22] Speaker 2: I was gonna say I from I understand there was
[13:23] Speaker 2: a lot of the drinking and the drugging exactly.
[13:26] Speaker 3: And he also added that Specter was both controlling and erratic. Yes,
[13:32] Speaker 3: which is a bad company. Which, Yeah, So at this
[13:36] Speaker 3: stage it was typical for a producer to handle or
[13:39] Speaker 3: transport work tapes between studios, So Lenin he assumed that
[13:44] Speaker 3: Specter was like safeguarding the masters and all these session
[13:47] Speaker 3: rules as part of the production process. There's no evidence
[13:51] Speaker 3: that John Lennon signed over ownership of the tapes themselves
[13:55] Speaker 3: beyond just like production authority, you can carry them. They
[14:00] Speaker 3: are recording with a madman at the helm. The sessions
[14:03] Speaker 3: got worse and worse and more and more turbulent, and
[14:06] Speaker 3: then Phil Spector went radio silent. He ghosted everyone, even
[14:10] Speaker 3: John Lennon, whoa and that ghost was the one with
[14:13] Speaker 3: the master tapes and the session reels for rock and Roll.
[14:16] Speaker 2: That Lennon knows like multiple groups like both Capital and
[14:20] Speaker 2: then for the Levee.
[14:21] Speaker 3: Except for Levy. So Lenin doesn't have access to the
[14:24] Speaker 3: recordings that are necessary to complete the album that he
[14:27] Speaker 3: has to get in and his later accounts were like
[14:30] Speaker 3: super blunt about this. He said repeatedly in a bunch
[14:33] Speaker 3: of different interviews that Phil Spector stole the tapes and
[14:37] Speaker 3: that he had taken them and then disappeared. And so
[14:40] Speaker 3: there's no indication or proof that like he authorized, you know,
[14:44] Speaker 3: transfer of control. So what's Phil Spector up to?
[14:47] Speaker 2: And also what's his move Like is he gonna be
[14:48] Speaker 2: I'm gonna put these out in Canada?
[14:50] Speaker 3: I don't know. He's just well, he got into a
[14:53] Speaker 3: serious car accident in la and then he used that
[14:56] Speaker 3: as an excuse as to why he dropped off the radar.
[15:00] Speaker 3: And it also added to the mystery as to the
[15:02] Speaker 3: possession of the tapes because he's like, you know what,
[15:04] Speaker 3: I don't even know where they are.
[15:06] Speaker 2: My memory is.
[15:08] Speaker 3: He didn't deny having them, but he was just like,
[15:11] Speaker 3: it's just everything's a mess, man. But without the tapes,
[15:15] Speaker 3: Lenin couldn't complete rock and roll. And Capitol Records they
[15:18] Speaker 3: wanted that album immediately, wanted it.
[15:20] Speaker 2: Yesterday, they got deadlines.
[15:22] Speaker 3: Yeah, but he didn't have a master's. There's nothing to
[15:24] Speaker 3: cobble together, nothing to remix or overdub, no masters, no album.
[15:28] Speaker 3: So rather than attempt to legally recover the tapes immediately
[15:32] Speaker 3: or re record everything from scratch, he pivoted John Lennon
[15:36] Speaker 3: went back to New York started working on new original material.
[15:40] Speaker 2: So that's his MOVI is, I'll just make a new
[15:41] Speaker 2: album or get it.
[15:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, And so that led directly to the recording of
[15:45] Speaker 3: his album Walls and Bridges in mid nineteen seventy four,
[15:49] Speaker 3: and so in interviews from seventy four onward, he's like
[15:52] Speaker 3: consistently talking about this being a theft, it's not a misunderstanding.
[15:58] Speaker 3: And he was just like, this is not stable and
[16:01] Speaker 3: I'm never working with him again. But despite all this
[16:04] Speaker 3: like severe language, he didn't sue.
[16:06] Speaker 2: I should have listened to the rawn Nettes.
[16:08] Speaker 3: He used Capitol Records as a go between. Seriously, this
[16:12] Speaker 3: like hostage negotiating.
[16:13] Speaker 4: You know, they got people, uh huh and it Chacoba.
[16:15] Speaker 3: Was no surprise that the major label got what it wanted.
[16:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet so. I went right to the mom hand.
[16:22] Speaker 3: By late nineteen seventy four, they had the tapes okay,
[16:26] Speaker 3: and it was never revealed exactly how they did it,
[16:28] Speaker 3: but they had him and yeah, and they have him.
[16:32] Speaker 3: Specter doesn't have Lennon doesn't have them.
[16:34] Speaker 2: He never tries again.
[16:36] Speaker 3: He still had to finish the album. He's contractually obligated,
[16:40] Speaker 3: but like I said, he's never gonna work with Spectra again. Instead,
[16:43] Speaker 3: he brings in this producer named Jack Douglas to finish
[16:46] Speaker 3: rock and roll. And Douglas was a solid dude. He
[16:49] Speaker 3: had actually been a songwriter on Robert F. Kennedy's nineteen
[16:53] Speaker 3: sixty four senatorial campaign.
[16:55] Speaker 2: I was waiting to have that sentence ended.
[16:57] Speaker 3: I was like Robert so back when political campaigns had
[17:02] Speaker 3: songwriters and folk musician ones at that At the point
[17:06] Speaker 3: that he joined the project, he had this really good
[17:09] Speaker 3: reputation as this incredible sound engineer.
[17:12] Speaker 2: I do remember that album Shamrocks and Chicken Pots. It
[17:14] Speaker 2: was a really good one, so goods okay with the
[17:17] Speaker 2: Robert F.
[17:18] Speaker 3: Kennedy singers, and so Jack Douglas. He's this great sound engineer.
[17:23] Speaker 3: He had already worked with John Lennon and this was
[17:26] Speaker 3: one of his first producing gigs, and so he got
[17:30] Speaker 3: the recovered tapes, he remixed, He completed the album without
[17:33] Speaker 3: Specter's involvement. The album Rock and Roll was released in
[17:37] Speaker 3: February of nineteen seventy five. Specter still got a production
[17:41] Speaker 3: credit because of the work he'd done on the original I'm.
[17:43] Speaker 2: Sure had to.
[17:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole thing left John Lennon gunshy about letting
[17:48] Speaker 3: others control the recording sessions in the atmosphere. He just
[17:52] Speaker 3: couldn't do chaos. He wanted structure, He wanted control, and
[17:55] Speaker 3: he got really picky and meticulous and not only stalled
[17:59] Speaker 3: projects more and irritated the label.
[18:01] Speaker 2: I want to work with David Bowie.
[18:03] Speaker 3: That's the level of Specter still got work. This didn't
[18:07] Speaker 3: turn people off. It was just like another tale old
[18:09] Speaker 3: crazy Phil Spector.
[18:11] Speaker 2: That's the thing about records. In the record industry, you
[18:13] Speaker 2: can put a gun on the table and negotiations. People
[18:15] Speaker 2: are like, well, you know he put guns on the table.
[18:17] Speaker 3: It's a menace, but he can make a hit. Let's
[18:20] Speaker 3: take a break when we come back. I have more
[18:22] Speaker 3: tape theft and antics for you, Zarin.
[18:45] Speaker 2: Okay, Elizabeth, I got to ask you a question before
[18:47] Speaker 2: you started going yeah, okay. Have you listened to the
[18:50] Speaker 2: rock and roll album by Lennon? Said seventy five?
[18:53] Speaker 3: I have not.
[18:54] Speaker 2: I'm not familiar with that one.
[18:55] Speaker 3: I think I feel like I've heard like maybe one
[18:57] Speaker 3: or two tracks, but I don't think I've listened.
[18:59] Speaker 2: To the whole thing. Now I'm curious to hear it.
[19:01] Speaker 2: My cousin references as I told you at that time,
[19:03] Speaker 2: he was really fascinated and he's mentioned the album and
[19:06] Speaker 2: I've never really been I can think of sat down and.
[19:09] Speaker 3: Like a deep dive on John Lennon.
[19:10] Speaker 2: He was not my favorite people.
[19:11] Speaker 3: No.
[19:12] Speaker 2: George Harrison, Yeah, remember saying like a last episode about
[19:16] Speaker 2: how you get a sense that a person is like
[19:19] Speaker 2: I always had that with him. I never had that week.
[19:21] Speaker 3: Wasn't a good dude.
[19:22] Speaker 2: I had actually with both him and McCartney. And but
[19:25] Speaker 2: I won't get into that about McCartney. But uh, with
[19:28] Speaker 2: the Ringo and George Harrison, I'm like, they seem like
[19:30] Speaker 2: they're pretty good.
[19:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, George Harrison was a good dude.
[19:32] Speaker 2: Oh he's the best of the bunch.
[19:34] Speaker 3: So I told you about John Lennon, Yeah, what about
[19:36] Speaker 3: his better half?
[19:37] Speaker 2: What about his better half?
[19:39] Speaker 3: Not Yoko? Oh no, but rather Paul McCartney.
[19:41] Speaker 2: You're gonna say Sean Lennon.
[19:42] Speaker 3: No, we're sticking with the Beatles here, Paul McCartney. So,
[19:45] Speaker 3: around the time that John Lennon was having his Douop
[19:48] Speaker 3: midlife graces in La Paul McCartney childhood, Paul McCartney and
[19:55] Speaker 3: his wife Linda were on their own adventure.
[19:57] Speaker 2: They're doing Wings at this point.
[19:58] Speaker 3: Yeah, they had a band called Wings. Paul had done
[20:00] Speaker 3: a couple like truly solo projects, one man stuff, but
[20:04] Speaker 3: now he and Linda had this band and they wanted
[20:06] Speaker 3: to record an album, and Paul was like a little
[20:08] Speaker 3: unsure about being in a band. What was like the
[20:11] Speaker 3: emotional trauma of the Beatles behind him but they'd already
[20:15] Speaker 3: recorded a song that went on to be nominated for
[20:17] Speaker 3: an Oscar Live and Let Die for the James Bond
[20:20] Speaker 3: film the same name in the Oscars, Oh so good,
[20:24] Speaker 3: they were up against all that love went to waste
[20:27] Speaker 3: from a touch of class love from Robin Hood and
[20:31] Speaker 3: You're so nice to be around from Cinderella Liberty. If
[20:35] Speaker 3: you say so, Have you ever heard of that movie?
[20:37] Speaker 2: No?
[20:37] Speaker 3: I hadn't heard of it. Here's the rundown quote. The
[20:41] Speaker 3: film tells the story of a sailor who falls in
[20:44] Speaker 3: love with a prostitute and becomes a surrogate father for
[20:47] Speaker 3: her ten year old mixed race son. The film stars
[20:50] Speaker 3: James Kahn, Marcia Mason, and Eli Wallack and was produced
[20:54] Speaker 3: and directed by Mark Rydell.
[20:56] Speaker 2: I like all of those actors.
[20:57] Speaker 3: It's crazy.
[20:58] Speaker 4: This is the craziest complete I never heard of it.
[21:01] Speaker 3: I never heard her. But who won for Best Song
[21:05] Speaker 3: at the forty sixth Oscars held in early nineteen seventy.
[21:07] Speaker 2: Four Fingers crossed Liberty.
[21:10] Speaker 3: I haven't mentioned the name of the song yet, can
[21:12] Speaker 3: you guess?
[21:13] Speaker 2: No?
[21:14] Speaker 3: The way we were, From the way we were, Marvin Hamleys,
[21:19] Speaker 3: you did it again, y' so, And so so in
[21:22] Speaker 3: the meantime.
[21:23] Speaker 2: You get Babs and Marvin together, get out of here.
[21:27] Speaker 3: In late nineteen seventy three, the McCartneys went to Lagos,
[21:30] Speaker 3: Nigeria to record what would become one of the most
[21:34] Speaker 3: famous albums of his post Beatles' career. The Wings album
[21:38] Speaker 3: banned on the run, and the trip was meant to
[21:41] Speaker 3: be like both bold and economical, and instead it nearly derailed.
[21:46] Speaker 2: Absolutely everything, I imagine.
[21:48] Speaker 3: So Paul chose Nigeria in part because he wanted to
[21:51] Speaker 3: get around British text pressures. Yeah, in part, he also
[21:57] Speaker 3: wanted a fresh, non London environment, so he selected Lagos
[22:01] Speaker 3: as a recording destination because he looked through EMI's list
[22:05] Speaker 3: of studios around.
[22:06] Speaker 4: The world, like flip flip, I was wondering he.
[22:08] Speaker 3: Wanted to change a scene, and he chose Africa for adventure.
[22:12] Speaker 3: An entire continent is so British. So he booked time
[22:17] Speaker 3: at EMI's Lagos studio, and he wanted like basic but
[22:21] Speaker 3: workable facilities. And then at this point Wings, it's just him,
[22:26] Speaker 3: Linda and this guy Denny Lane, the d Yeah, two
[22:29] Speaker 3: other members had quit right before they left for Nigeria.
[22:32] Speaker 2: Oh wow.
[22:32] Speaker 3: Yeah, So at this point, like the scene in Lagos
[22:36] Speaker 3: was what could, as I said before, gently be described
[22:38] Speaker 3: as difficult.
[22:40] Speaker 2: That's a tough sell for getting a musician to join
[22:43] Speaker 2: your band. You're like, do you want to be in
[22:44] Speaker 2: Paul McCartney's new band. They're like, yes, is he kind
[22:47] Speaker 2: of a has been I wanted? I'm a young up
[22:49] Speaker 2: and coming.
[22:49] Speaker 3: They probably think it's great, But like MESSI, Nigeria is
[22:54] Speaker 3: still dealing with the ramifications of a civil war.
[22:57] Speaker 2: I was going to say, this is like the real
[22:59] Speaker 2: time in Nigeria's.
[23:00] Speaker 3: Lagos has major infrastructure and like sanitation.
[23:03] Speaker 2: Issue, Yes, mountains of trash and they're.
[23:05] Speaker 3: Getting there in September, which is the beginning of monsoon season.
[23:09] Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
[23:10] Speaker 3: Right, so the band they fly from Gatwick to Lagos
[23:13] Speaker 3: August thirty first, nineteen seventy three.
[23:15] Speaker 2: Gatwick, now right, Paul and Linda.
[23:18] Speaker 3: Brought their kids from the jump. Things didn't go according
[23:22] Speaker 3: to plan, so the storms brought power issues. Logistics are
[23:27] Speaker 3: in a tail spin.
[23:28] Speaker 2: Which is what you need when you're recording is power.
[23:30] Speaker 3: Zarin, close your eye, okay, I want you to picture it.
[23:41] Speaker 3: It's Monday, September seventeenth, nineteen seventy three. Night has fallen
[23:46] Speaker 3: on the city of Lagos. You are a teenage boy
[23:49] Speaker 3: out for a ride with your nar dwell cousins, rumbling
[23:52] Speaker 3: along the damp streets, out looking for trouble or girls,
[23:56] Speaker 3: or both. You have the window down in the back seat,
[23:59] Speaker 3: letting the breeze dance across your skin. You're hoping the
[24:02] Speaker 3: guys will want to stop for food soon. You're rather
[24:04] Speaker 3: peckish and you get irritable if you haven't eaten. You
[24:07] Speaker 3: look down the street. You see two people leave a
[24:09] Speaker 3: building and begin strolling along the sidewalk, a man and
[24:12] Speaker 3: a woman. Your cousin out a bio, nods towards them
[24:16] Speaker 3: and tells the group that the couple are leaving a
[24:18] Speaker 3: recording studio. It belongs to Ginger Baker. He says, English
[24:22] Speaker 3: rock drummer. He's close mates with Felakuti. Wow, you think, fella.
[24:28] Speaker 3: The woman's got a large camera hanging around her neck
[24:31] Speaker 3: and carries a rucksack on her shoulders. The guy's got
[24:34] Speaker 3: a large tote bag on one shoulder and a duffel
[24:36] Speaker 3: bag in his hand. There's sandals splashing puddles, the bottoms
[24:40] Speaker 3: of their bell bottom jeans blooming up in an umbre
[24:43] Speaker 3: of muddy rainwater. The man whistles a tune, and the
[24:46] Speaker 3: lady hums along with him. Your cousin Undubisi pulls the
[24:51] Speaker 3: card to the curb as he becomes level with the
[24:53] Speaker 3: couple and calls out the open window. Need a ride,
[24:56] Speaker 3: no thanks to the man says cheerily at a biote,
[25:00] Speaker 3: turns to you and tells you to stay in the car.
[25:02] Speaker 3: Then he and your other cousins all pop out and
[25:05] Speaker 3: surround the couple. Cousin Econ pulls a knife from his
[25:08] Speaker 3: jacket pocket. You have got to be kidding me, you think,
[25:12] Speaker 3: these idiots, although it was pretty stupid to this couple
[25:15] Speaker 3: to go strolling at night carrying all that stuff marks.
[25:19] Speaker 3: The man and the woman raise their hands and say
[25:20] Speaker 3: they don't want any trouble. You want to call out
[25:23] Speaker 3: the window to them that you don't either. In a
[25:25] Speaker 3: matter of moments, your cousins relieve the couple of all
[25:28] Speaker 3: their bags. They toss the goods into the backseat with you,
[25:31] Speaker 3: and then they all hop back in the car. The
[25:33] Speaker 3: car peels away from the corner and you look behind you.
[25:36] Speaker 3: The couple look absolutely defeated. The woman bursts into tears,
[25:40] Speaker 3: and the man comforts her. You lose sight of them
[25:43] Speaker 3: as the car takes the corner at speed. You feel sick,
[25:46] Speaker 3: a dark pit burning in your stomach. This is so wrong.
[25:50] Speaker 3: Your cousins begin digging through the bags, looking for anything
[25:53] Speaker 3: worth anything. They hand you the tote bag and tell
[25:56] Speaker 3: you to go through it. It's just notebooks. From the
[25:58] Speaker 3: duffel bag, your cousin produces a stack of real de
[26:01] Speaker 3: real tapes. He shrugs and puts them back in the bag,
[26:04] Speaker 3: mentioning that his friend has a band may want to
[26:07] Speaker 3: use them. Record over whatever junk is on there. The
[26:10] Speaker 3: ladies backpack doesn't have much. It gets tossed out the
[26:14] Speaker 3: window and into the gutter. You flip through the notebooks.
[26:17] Speaker 3: It looks like poems or lyrics, or just scribbled phrases.
[26:21] Speaker 3: What do they say, your cousin asks. You begin to
[26:24] Speaker 3: read from the page in front of you. Well, the
[26:27] Speaker 3: undertaker drew a heavy sigh, seeing no one else had come,
[26:31] Speaker 3: and a bell was ringing in the village square for
[26:34] Speaker 3: the rabbits on the run, band on the run, band
[26:38] Speaker 3: on the run, and the jailer Man and sailor Sam
[26:42] Speaker 3: were searching everyone. That makes no sense. Your cousin announces,
[26:47] Speaker 3: he tells you to toss him out the window. You
[26:49] Speaker 3: often stead to shove a couple of the notebooks into
[26:51] Speaker 3: the waistband of your pants and pull your shirt over
[26:53] Speaker 3: the top. The rest of the books you push into
[26:56] Speaker 3: the footwell beneath you. You keep thinking of that couple. Mind.
[27:00] Speaker 3: They became the jailor Man and Sailor Sam, and you
[27:05] Speaker 3: are the rabbit on the run. Okay, So.
[27:09] Speaker 2: And Sailor Sam.
[27:11] Speaker 3: What it's like that weird? I just can't so. The
[27:22] Speaker 3: thieves they made off with the demo tapes that Paul
[27:24] Speaker 3: had been using as working references for the album, basically
[27:28] Speaker 3: all the stuff they needed to put it together. And
[27:30] Speaker 3: that includes the original demo of the song band on
[27:33] Speaker 3: the Run from which you quoted in the car. So,
[27:36] Speaker 3: Paul and Linda, they're like rightfully traumatized by the experience,
[27:41] Speaker 3: not so much by like the threat of violence, but
[27:43] Speaker 3: by the loss of their work. Imagine they've been told like,
[27:47] Speaker 3: don't walk back to your hotel, get a car, nah,
[27:49] Speaker 3: and like certainly don't parade along with cameras and bags
[27:53] Speaker 3: and other items. Yeah, you're flaunting your wealth in the
[27:57] Speaker 3: face of like a desperate populace, a populist in desperation,
[28:01] Speaker 3: thanks in part to the actions of your country's boot
[28:04] Speaker 3: on their necks for more than a century. It's a simplification,
[28:07] Speaker 3: but crooks don't operate in nuance.
[28:09] Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so, or in a vacuum no.
[28:12] Speaker 3: So. All that aside, they had immediate needs. Paul and
[28:15] Speaker 3: Linda had to rebuild the album from memory, and obviously
[28:19] Speaker 3: it's like this major setback. Have you ever lost notes
[28:22] Speaker 3: on something you were writing and had to start from scratch?
[28:24] Speaker 3: Oh god, yeah, especially something creative, not like research based.
[28:29] Speaker 2: It's the worst because you're trying to recover and there's
[28:31] Speaker 2: like a magic to the process and you won't remember
[28:33] Speaker 2: it exactly, so you'd be making a new thing exactly.
[28:36] Speaker 3: I had a poem I was working on, and I
[28:38] Speaker 3: had this scrap of paper where I'd written all these
[28:40] Speaker 3: notes and turns of phrases and it was amazing. And
[28:43] Speaker 3: then I lost the scrap of paper. I looked everywhere,
[28:46] Speaker 3: Oh god, And I tried to rebuild it from memory,
[28:48] Speaker 3: but that was like a lost cause and I was
[28:50] Speaker 3: never able to recreate it. But you know what, in permanence,
[28:54] Speaker 3: the words were the sand in Maimundol, like I said
[28:57] Speaker 3: to let it go. So anyway, band on the they
[29:01] Speaker 3: had to rebuild it, and like with John Lennon, they
[29:03] Speaker 3: had contracts to fulfill. But luckily, okay, so there's only
[29:06] Speaker 3: three of them at this point in the band. Sure,
[29:09] Speaker 3: so they're more intimately involved in it and they can
[29:11] Speaker 3: kind of easily improvise and like quickly build it back up.
[29:15] Speaker 3: But the robbery wasn't the only challenge. Paul was also
[29:19] Speaker 3: confronted by local musicians, including members of Fella Kuti's circle.
[29:26] Speaker 3: They accused him of exploiting African music by recording in Nigeria.
[29:30] Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and he's like, you know, I am.
[29:33] Speaker 3: Not drawing on Nigerian music at all. No, He's like,
[29:38] Speaker 3: I'm doing my whole rock needs Vaudeville thing. I promise,
[29:42] Speaker 3: like it's a big panto show. Don't worry about it.
[29:45] Speaker 3: But it took its toll and so the day after
[29:47] Speaker 3: the mugging, another bad turn of events, Paul collapsed during
[29:52] Speaker 3: a session at Emi Studios in Lagos. He was having
[29:55] Speaker 3: trouble breathing at chest pain and the engineer describes him
[29:59] Speaker 3: like gasping for air. He fainted. Linda's like screaming, He's
[30:03] Speaker 3: that heart attack. They rush him to the hospital in
[30:06] Speaker 3: a car. Everyone back at the studio is like waiting
[30:09] Speaker 3: on pins and needles, and then they get a phone call.
[30:11] Speaker 3: It wasn't a heart attack. It was a bronchial spasm.
[30:15] Speaker 2: I figured as anxiety.
[30:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the bronchial spasms can be caused by like
[30:19] Speaker 3: underlying conditions like asthma, irritants like allergens, chemicals, or by
[30:24] Speaker 3: stress stress. That's just how I would diagnose.
[30:27] Speaker 2: A lot of physical conditions can be triggered by stress.
[30:29] Speaker 3: Stress can kill, it can lay you low, it can
[30:32] Speaker 3: trigger all sorts of things.
[30:33] Speaker 2: Turn your hair white. Yes, here's some people who get
[30:35] Speaker 2: stressed and all of a sudden they have a streak
[30:37] Speaker 2: of white in their hair.
[30:38] Speaker 3: Well, most presidents, like by the end of their terms,
[30:41] Speaker 3: they're gray. We all need to take care of ourselves.
[30:45] Speaker 3: We need to hydrate, get enough sleep, reduce stress.
[30:48] Speaker 2: I really focus on the reducing stress by just not
[30:51] Speaker 2: really trying to be stressed about anything. I'm telling you,
[30:53] Speaker 2: it really works. Like I have all the people I know,
[30:56] Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm seeing how my like don't get stressed.
[30:59] Speaker 2: It's really working out.
[31:00] Speaker 3: That's good.
[31:01] Speaker 2: I highly recommend to everybody I'm like.
[31:02] Speaker 3: You don't get stressed.
[31:03] Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't even sleep well. I kind of eat, okay,
[31:06] Speaker 2: but really what I focus on is not going to stress.
[31:09] Speaker 4: That's good, that's smart, Elizabeth.
[31:12] Speaker 3: So here's a good thing. Bronchial spasms an upside, huh?
[31:17] Speaker 3: Is it there? Looking for silver linings? They're easily treated
[31:23] Speaker 3: with broncho dilators like rescue inhalers. Okay, yeah, relax the
[31:27] Speaker 3: muscles open the airways and you say.
[31:30] Speaker 2: You're talking with the dilators. You're talking like you know
[31:33] Speaker 2: as things are like, oh okay because you know excited
[31:38] Speaker 2: were used for that? Yeah?
[31:39] Speaker 3: No, but it goes yes, yeah, a couple of thank you.
[31:44] Speaker 3: A couple of days later, September twenty second, nineteen seventy three,
[31:48] Speaker 3: the band left Lagos headed back to London.
[31:51] Speaker 2: On the run.
[31:52] Speaker 3: Band literally on the run. When they got back, Paul's like,
[31:55] Speaker 3: I think I don't want to do this whole project.
[31:58] Speaker 3: Is it cursed?
[32:00] Speaker 2: Like no?
[32:01] Speaker 3: And he's like, but I'm a soldier on so he
[32:03] Speaker 3: sat down.
[32:04] Speaker 2: He's also don't want to pay my text.
[32:05] Speaker 3: Right, so how do I get around that? He starts
[32:08] Speaker 3: rewriting the songs by like recalling the melodies and the
[32:12] Speaker 3: lyrics and the structures. Linda's like, let me help you.
[32:16] Speaker 3: I can reconstruct some of the lyrics. What if we
[32:18] Speaker 3: had the jailor man and the sailor Sam And he's
[32:21] Speaker 3: like this sounds amazing. And she offered moral support. She's like,
[32:26] Speaker 3: you know, keep strong and carry on or whatever it is.
[32:30] Speaker 3: What's it cool? What is it? Keep calling? You know
[32:34] Speaker 3: that that like wasn't a poster in World War Two?
[32:37] Speaker 2: Yeah? I thought it was something.
[32:38] Speaker 3: It was They printed him and then it just like
[32:40] Speaker 3: didn't test right and they destroyed almost all of them.
[32:44] Speaker 2: When did it actually then become a thing in the
[32:46] Speaker 2: sixties later on later than.
[32:49] Speaker 3: Like they like last year, it was quite It was
[32:53] Speaker 3: decades later they found like one of the posters and
[32:55] Speaker 3: we're like started slapping it when it showed up on
[32:57] Speaker 3: all that stuff lugs and they were still on the.
[33:00] Speaker 2: Stiff upper lip more than keep calm and carry on.
[33:02] Speaker 2: Although it was it was for the underground like that
[33:05] Speaker 2: when they were doing the bombing.
[33:06] Speaker 3: Right, they decided not to use them anyway, So that's
[33:10] Speaker 3: what she was like, Hey, buddy, keep calm, carry on.
[33:13] Speaker 3: He's like, thank you so much. This is stressful, but
[33:16] Speaker 3: we're going to get through this. So they had to
[33:20] Speaker 3: restructure it.
[33:21] Speaker 2: Stressed, baby, we're going to do this.
[33:23] Speaker 3: He's like, guess what, We're going to let Jesus take
[33:24] Speaker 3: the wheel.
[33:26] Speaker 2: That would be incredible.
[33:27] Speaker 3: What if he just went totally Jesus kind like a
[33:30] Speaker 3: Bob dying everything this period, everything became super lean.
[33:35] Speaker 2: Do you know the Bob Dylan for once, for a
[33:36] Speaker 2: while thought he was Jesus. Not only did he like
[33:39] Speaker 2: come to Jesus, he thought Jesus came and became him.
[33:42] Speaker 3: How do we know? He was wrong?
[33:43] Speaker 2: And he also thought he had to say thought he
[33:45] Speaker 2: believed was put at that that he did a contract
[33:48] Speaker 2: with the devil Like Robert Johnson.
[33:49] Speaker 4: Again, he has a really interesting he's wrong true anything?
[33:55] Speaker 3: Okay. So this new album, it's like way more streamlined
[33:59] Speaker 3: that some of the songs get simplified, Like basically it
[34:03] Speaker 3: was like this was the best editing they could have.
[34:06] Speaker 3: The Darlings got killed.
[34:07] Speaker 2: Wow.
[34:08] Speaker 3: And so the title track, Band on the Run became
[34:11] Speaker 3: more cinematic and like multi section piece because you know,
[34:14] Speaker 3: it's like it feels like a couple.
[34:16] Speaker 4: Songs completely put together.
[34:17] Speaker 2: It shift gears.
[34:18] Speaker 3: Way more than it had been originally planned. So despite everything,
[34:22] Speaker 3: Band on the Run gets completed, Finished in London, released
[34:25] Speaker 3: in December of nineteen seventy, massive critical and commercial success.
[34:29] Speaker 3: Thank you, Linda, Linda, and it was widely regarded as
[34:33] Speaker 3: like his strongest post Beatles.
[34:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, so you know it.
[34:38] Speaker 3: Helped him, you know, hone in get through it you're scared.
[34:43] Speaker 2: And also not become a has been of like, oh
[34:45] Speaker 2: you know he's still trying to make music.
[34:47] Speaker 3: Geit that in Haler and then you know, give me
[34:50] Speaker 3: an a. So let's stop for some ads and we
[34:53] Speaker 3: come back even more stolen tapes.
[35:15] Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth Arn Can I say that I love that.
[35:18] Speaker 2: Fellow Cooties people are like, you are not coming down
[35:20] Speaker 2: or exploiting.
[35:21] Speaker 3: Our music, right, Hinder Baker can do it, but you
[35:25] Speaker 3: he's different, No, he was character, But Buddies they were close.
[35:28] Speaker 2: You know, they had very similar spirits.
[35:30] Speaker 3: They really did coup less when we left off, two
[35:35] Speaker 3: members of the Beatles had been robbed in their own
[35:37] Speaker 3: way of their hard work.
[35:39] Speaker 2: Oh that's right. Yeah, I thought you're gonna say, like,
[35:41] Speaker 2: we got two more hit too.
[35:44] Speaker 3: It should relieve you to know that I have no
[35:46] Speaker 3: more Beatles to terrorize. Okay, George and Ringo. They get
[35:49] Speaker 3: out unscathed.
[35:50] Speaker 2: Like I said, the good guys. People are like, I'm
[35:52] Speaker 2: not robbing ring.
[35:54] Speaker 3: I do have another pop music legend for you, Michael Jackson.
[35:57] Speaker 4: Everybody, Oh yeah, can you rob the Beatles King.
[36:00] Speaker 3: Of So that's what that pretty much one of the
[36:04] Speaker 3: biggest cultural figures of the twentieth century started as a
[36:08] Speaker 3: kid in the Jackson five went on to become a
[36:09] Speaker 3: worldwide sensation. He had highs and lows, accolades and scandals.
[36:15] Speaker 3: His death at the age of fifty. This is interesting.
[36:18] Speaker 3: When I was just like kind of looking things up. Sure,
[36:21] Speaker 3: it was two thousand and nine, total shock. Like, as
[36:24] Speaker 3: you know, his doctor gave him this insane cocktail of
[36:26] Speaker 3: drugs to help him sleep, and then he like got
[36:28] Speaker 3: permanently asleep.
[36:30] Speaker 2: Too deep a sleep.
[36:31] Speaker 3: His The news of his death basically broke the Internet.
[36:35] Speaker 3: It crashed all these huge websites. MTV went back to
[36:38] Speaker 3: playing music videos again. Wow yeah, and then this is
[36:41] Speaker 3: the wild part. His memorial was held on July seventh,
[36:44] Speaker 3: two thousand and nine, at the Staples Center in La
[36:47] Speaker 3: More than one point six million fans applied for the
[36:51] Speaker 3: eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty available tickets to the
[36:54] Speaker 3: memorial that we're gonna be drawn at random, insane. Yeah,
[36:57] Speaker 3: the memorial service was one of the most watched events
[37:00] Speaker 3: in streaming history. In the US alone, viewership was just
[37:05] Speaker 3: over thirty one million.
[37:07] Speaker 4: It's like America.
[37:08] Speaker 3: Yeah, Worldwide, it's estimated between two point five and three
[37:13] Speaker 3: billion with a bee people watched. Now there were six
[37:17] Speaker 3: point eight billion.
[37:18] Speaker 2: People, almost half the population.
[37:21] Speaker 3: So it could be almost half of the humans on
[37:23] Speaker 3: earth watched his funeral. That isn't that crazy.
[37:26] Speaker 2: I don't know how gonna get my eyes back in
[37:28] Speaker 2: my head they are.
[37:32] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot nuts. So you know, he was
[37:35] Speaker 3: already an icon, but now he's a legend. Yeah, and
[37:38] Speaker 3: like things tied to him became even more valuable.
[37:42] Speaker 2: I'm still blown away by.
[37:45] Speaker 3: I was. I was in the non watching half of humanity.
[37:49] Speaker 2: Same. I mean, I had my time where I loved Michael.
[37:51] Speaker 2: Then I kind of fell.
[37:51] Speaker 3: Away and I already watched his funeral.
[37:53] Speaker 2: No, I didn't ever come back after.
[37:55] Speaker 3: No, No, there's some things I don't forgive. So fast
[37:59] Speaker 3: forward to late twenty twenty three, a new Jersey based
[38:03] Speaker 3: memorabilia auction house called Gotta Have Rock and Roll. You know,
[38:07] Speaker 3: it was preparing a sale, right, it's gonna be huge.
[38:11] Speaker 3: They had more than two dozen analog tapes that were
[38:14] Speaker 3: described by the auction house as quote incredibly rare, unreleased
[38:18] Speaker 3: recordings by Michael Jackson, and so they were supposed to
[38:21] Speaker 3: be from the nineteen ninety four recording sessions at New
[38:24] Speaker 3: York's Hit Factory Studios, and the auction house's public framing
[38:29] Speaker 3: emphasized collectibility rather than exploitation, because they're like, we're just
[38:34] Speaker 3: selling physical artifacts here. There's no copyright. You don't have
[38:37] Speaker 3: the right to reproduce or distribute what's on them. And
[38:41] Speaker 3: so they're thinking, like each tape four grand a pop.
[38:44] Speaker 3: What I would think way more.
[38:45] Speaker 2: That is the craziest garage sale pricing I've ever heard.
[38:49] Speaker 3: No, of course this is they've listened to them.
[38:51] Speaker 2: Was it really bad?
[38:52] Speaker 3: It's just they're blank. This is not going to go smoothly, obviously,
[38:56] Speaker 3: So the Jackson estate they treated the appearance of the
[38:59] Speaker 3: tape on the market as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing.
[39:02] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm sure his mama, she was still she
[39:04] Speaker 2: would have been a solive. It would have lost it.
[39:07] Speaker 3: A state attorney, Jonathan Steinsapper, he sent a cease and
[39:11] Speaker 3: Assist letter November twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, demanding that
[39:15] Speaker 3: the auction house stop any efforts to sell the tapes
[39:18] Speaker 3: immediately return them. He says the estate's position was that
[39:23] Speaker 3: neither Michael Jackson nor Sony Music Entertainment ever sold or
[39:27] Speaker 3: gave away master tapes from those Hit factory sessions or
[39:31] Speaker 3: anywhere else for that matter. So any tapes on offer
[39:34] Speaker 3: must be stolen or otherwise, you know, taken without authorization,
[39:38] Speaker 3: and therefore there's still property of the estate.
[39:41] Speaker 2: These weren't like tapes that somebody like had in their
[39:43] Speaker 2: like Walkman at the Hit record in their pockets.
[39:46] Speaker 3: These are masters. So the situation is at like a
[39:48] Speaker 3: standoff by early December, and the auction house they didn't
[39:52] Speaker 3: agree to the estate's demands. Wow, so the estate escalated
[39:55] Speaker 3: from warning letters to court action. They get this, They
[39:59] Speaker 3: get this like superstar lawyer Alex Spiro. He notifies the
[40:04] Speaker 3: auction house that the estate intended to seek emergency relief
[40:08] Speaker 3: in the New York Supreme Court, specifically a temporary restraining
[40:12] Speaker 3: order and a preliminary injunction on December thirteenth. So the
[40:16] Speaker 3: message like they're forcing their hand right remove the tapes
[40:19] Speaker 3: voluntarily or we go to court. And it worked. So
[40:22] Speaker 3: by Wednesday, December thirteen, the tapes had been removed from
[40:27] Speaker 3: the website, the auction house website, and at the same time,
[40:31] Speaker 3: the broader sale continued and still included other Michael Jackson
[40:35] Speaker 3: related items. Yes, but it made it really clear that
[40:38] Speaker 3: this was about the tapes. They didn't care about the
[40:40] Speaker 3: other random memorabilia. I couldn't find what happened to the tapes,
[40:44] Speaker 3: but I'm assuming they just went back to the estate.
[40:47] Speaker 3: So there are other Michael Jackson tapes that are in dispute,
[40:50] Speaker 3: although not outright stuff, just interesting. In late twenty twenty four,
[40:55] Speaker 3: a bunch of analog tapes got uncovered in an abandoned
[40:59] Speaker 3: storage unit in the San Fernando Valley in southern California.
[41:02] Speaker 2: That must be a great place to buy storage here
[41:05] Speaker 2: they come up abandoned. Yeah, the storage wars time.
[41:08] Speaker 3: Well that's what happened. So the space got bought up
[41:11] Speaker 3: at auction by this guy, Greg Musgrove, who is a
[41:14] Speaker 3: fifty six year old former California Highway Patrol officer turned
[41:18] Speaker 3: stay at home dad and quote avid treasure hunter. Oh lord,
[41:22] Speaker 3: So the unit had once belonged to Brian Mourn, who
[41:26] Speaker 3: was like the singer, songwriter and producer who worked with
[41:29] Speaker 3: Michael Jackson in the late eighties and the early nineties.
[41:32] Speaker 3: So Musgrove, THEHP guy. He starts sorting through all the
[41:37] Speaker 3: contents and he stumbles on this collection of cassette and
[41:41] Speaker 3: DAT those digital audio tape recordings there you go. That
[41:46] Speaker 3: seemed like they contained twelve unreleased tracks recorded somewhere between
[41:51] Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety one. So this is
[41:54] Speaker 3: before Michael Jackson's Dangerous era. So alongside complete songs, they're
[41:59] Speaker 3: like snippets of other material stuff like Jackson and Lauren
[42:03] Speaker 3: discussing the creative process during studio sessions. There's like this
[42:07] Speaker 3: super rare behind the scenes glimpse into his studio work.
[42:11] Speaker 2: Huh. You can hear them talking on the mic and art.
[42:15] Speaker 3: So then I like to like make it go like up.
[42:17] Speaker 3: He's like no, no, that sounds awesome, really yeah, And
[42:20] Speaker 3: then it's like I go like further up and there's
[42:25] Speaker 3: oh wow, I don't know who's saying which to witch.
[42:29] Speaker 4: The It's like the behind the scenes I get it.
[42:34] Speaker 3: So wait when you're going like do you want it
[42:36] Speaker 3: to go like up. He's like, oh yeah, that's a
[42:38] Speaker 3: really good idea, like up. Oh yeah, no, that's perfect.
[42:43] Speaker 3: And again I don't know which one is Michael saying this. Okay,
[42:46] Speaker 3: So the tapes they had like all so it has
[42:51] Speaker 3: all these songs on there, like titles like don't Believe
[42:54] Speaker 3: It okay seven digits, which apparently was not a reference
[42:59] Speaker 3: to phone numbers, reference to Morga identification numbers.
[43:04] Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, no, I got to asked, did you
[43:06] Speaker 2: know that Morgan identification numbers had seven digits? No, I'd
[43:09] Speaker 2: never I'm kind of into that now.
[43:11] Speaker 4: I'm not going to forget it exactly.
[43:13] Speaker 3: And then truth on youth. Oh lord, I know, but
[43:17] Speaker 3: it's a duet, and you know who the duet is with?
[43:20] Speaker 2: No, I don't want to know.
[43:23] Speaker 3: Ellll cool Jay whoa who does? Apparently been long standing
[43:29] Speaker 3: rumors of an unreleased collaboration between Michael Jackson and Llo
[43:33] Speaker 3: cool J. That was gossip to which I was not privy.
[43:36] Speaker 2: I just knew who it wasn't. I knew it wasn't Prince.
[43:38] Speaker 4: I can tell you one person it ain't Paul McCartney.
[43:42] Speaker 3: So fans and industry observers they noted that some of
[43:47] Speaker 3: the tracks on the discovered tapes like had been rumored
[43:50] Speaker 3: in fan circles or like pieces had been leaked before,
[43:54] Speaker 3: but some had like never even been heard of even
[43:56] Speaker 3: within like this Hue and the news, the Huey lewis raps.
[44:03] Speaker 2: I heard you and we Are the World?
[44:05] Speaker 3: And what if? What if we just went up?
[44:11] Speaker 2: You've seen his face when when he starts singing and
[44:13] Speaker 2: the we are the World. Michael like losing.
[44:17] Speaker 3: Because he was amazing. There's a ton of excitement around this. Fine,
[44:24] Speaker 3: but like legal and rights issues limited the public access
[44:29] Speaker 3: to the music. So Musgrove and his attorney went to
[44:32] Speaker 3: the Michael Jackson estate to like talk it over, and
[44:34] Speaker 3: the estate is like, we're not going to buy them,
[44:38] Speaker 3: and they said, you may own the physical dat copies,
[44:42] Speaker 3: but the estate retains the copyrights and master recordings in
[44:46] Speaker 3: the vault. And so as a result, the tapes cannot
[44:49] Speaker 3: be commercially released or publicly shared, and the contents will
[44:54] Speaker 3: remain unheard by the broader public unless future legal arrangements
[44:59] Speaker 3: and are archival releases are made under a state control.
[45:03] Speaker 3: Oh so they exist and no one can.
[45:06] Speaker 2: Hear them, ever hear them, and if we ever hear
[45:07] Speaker 2: that someone heard them. We're going to come after you
[45:09] Speaker 2: with the.
[45:09] Speaker 3: Lawyers exactly, and so find another storage facility. Buddy, there
[45:14] Speaker 3: it is. So we have the king of pop. What
[45:17] Speaker 3: about the king of the hoboes? Like Tom Waits? Right?
[45:21] Speaker 2: Oh, you know I do old rag and bone himself.
[45:26] Speaker 3: For those unfamiliar, Tom Waits is an American singer, songwriter, actor.
[45:31] Speaker 3: He's known for like gritty character narratives. He has a
[45:34] Speaker 3: stylized Americana sound and that unmistakable gravelly vocal delivery.
[45:40] Speaker 2: Do you know that Heath Ledger based his joker performance
[45:43] Speaker 2: on Tom Waits's like an interview he did in the seventies.
[45:46] Speaker 3: Yes, it's incredible.
[45:47] Speaker 2: So Tom is what I'm saying perfect. No, Heath Ledger,
[45:51] Speaker 2: I didn't love him.
[45:52] Speaker 3: He was a dude.
[45:52] Speaker 2: He had every like you think about him.
[45:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, Tom Waits he had a long creative partnership with
[46:00] Speaker 3: his lovely Irish wife Kathleen Brennan. Did not know she
[46:04] Speaker 3: became this like central collaborator as his music grew more
[46:07] Speaker 3: and more experimental from like the eighties onwards.
[46:09] Speaker 2: You know his daughter, Tom Waye's daughter went to Davis
[46:13] Speaker 2: You're alma mater, and I had a friend who owned
[46:15] Speaker 2: a record store there and they always would see him
[46:17] Speaker 2: come in and got He became friends essentially with Tom
[46:21] Speaker 2: Wade because he came into the record store so much
[46:23] Speaker 2: and people would just leave him alone. He would frequent
[46:26] Speaker 2: a record store in David Armadello record ard music. Oh yeah, okay,
[46:30] Speaker 2: shout out Armadilla.
[46:31] Speaker 3: Wow, that's awesome. So right there, there you go, hometown hero.
[46:35] Speaker 3: So by the early two thousands, Wade had developed this
[46:39] Speaker 3: pattern of making like tightly controlled, self contained projects and
[46:43] Speaker 3: then he would like go quiet for long periods of
[46:46] Speaker 3: time interesting and so that context matters for the album
[46:49] Speaker 3: and question because it was not just like a stack
[46:51] Speaker 3: of loose ideas. It was the core recorded reference for
[46:55] Speaker 3: this theater project called Alice and Alice began as a
[46:59] Speaker 3: stage work directed by Robert Wilson, produced for Hamburg's Thalia
[47:04] Speaker 3: Theater in nineteen ninety two, and it drew on the
[47:07] Speaker 3: story world around Lewis Carroll and Alice. Liddell. Waits said
[47:13] Speaker 3: an interview that the songs were written around nineteen ninety
[47:15] Speaker 3: two or nineteen ninety three for this project, and this
[47:19] Speaker 3: is the period when like working recordings and associated materials
[47:23] Speaker 3: existed as tapes that could be carried around, so it's
[47:25] Speaker 3: nothing digital. He described the songs as being quote all
[47:29] Speaker 3: in a briefcase that was kept in the back of
[47:33] Speaker 3: his car.
[47:33] Speaker 2: And you know it was like a banged up briefcase.
[47:35] Speaker 3: A banged up briefcase probably in a banged up car,
[47:38] Speaker 3: a belt dart. Yeah. So he framed it as like
[47:42] Speaker 3: a single physical cache of alice material, not like a
[47:46] Speaker 3: scattered set of backups. And he did this interview with
[47:49] Speaker 3: the av Club and he said plainly that the briefcase
[47:52] Speaker 3: containing the songs was stolen out of the back of
[47:54] Speaker 3: my car. So that's not in question. What is not
[47:58] Speaker 3: pinned down in that interview or anywhere else is the
[48:01] Speaker 3: exact date, the exact city, whether the car was broken
[48:04] Speaker 3: into at a specific venue or like neighborhood he said.
[48:11] Speaker 3: But he said the thieves ransomed the briefcase and that
[48:15] Speaker 3: he paid a couple of grand to recover it.
[48:17] Speaker 2: Only a couple of grand. Yeah.
[48:18] Speaker 3: He also describes like the cloak and Dagger style drop
[48:22] Speaker 3: arrangement as happening in a dark cafe. He's like, look,
[48:26] Speaker 3: I basically yeah, and like he has these like hazy
[48:30] Speaker 3: recollections of how the exchange was staged. It is the
[48:33] Speaker 3: most Tom Waits crime, that.
[48:36] Speaker 2: Empty can of tuna.
[48:41] Speaker 3: Here's the thing, though, they were the Masters, but Waits
[48:45] Speaker 3: believes that the thieves copied the tapes bootlegs because by
[48:49] Speaker 3: the time the official album emerged, the Alice material had
[48:53] Speaker 3: been circulating his bootlegs for years. Really yeah, bootlegs that
[48:57] Speaker 3: came out of those stolen Masters. So they searched related
[49:00] Speaker 3: for years because after recovering the Masters, Waits went and
[49:04] Speaker 3: misplaced them. So he paid a couple of grand to
[49:07] Speaker 3: get him back, and then he lost him and then
[49:10] Speaker 3: he hears about the bootleg.
[49:11] Speaker 2: Wait, did they really break out his car? Do you
[49:13] Speaker 2: think he left it on top of the car and
[49:15] Speaker 2: drove out of the parking lot and it just fell
[49:17] Speaker 2: off car.
[49:18] Speaker 3: So he's like, I can't find him. But then he
[49:19] Speaker 3: hears about the bootlegs. So he goes on eBay and
[49:22] Speaker 3: he bought a copy of the bootlegs to be like,
[49:24] Speaker 3: what did it sound like it? And so I'll So
[49:30] Speaker 3: then they're like, really, what happened? Well, I stuck him
[49:32] Speaker 3: in a box and I just left him there for
[49:34] Speaker 3: a while. Meanwhile, everyone's listening to the bootlegs and it
[49:37] Speaker 3: makes me wonder about poor Robert Wilson, who's like waiting
[49:39] Speaker 3: on his theater production. So Waights though he made it
[49:43] Speaker 3: up to him. He recorded another collaboration with him called
[49:46] Speaker 3: Blood Money, and then he released Alice and Blood Money
[49:50] Speaker 3: together in two thousand and two. The whole affair is
[49:53] Speaker 3: very Tom Waits hobo esque Underworld muttered flights of Fancy.
[49:58] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it just like it reeks Sepiotone like Hobo
[50:01] Speaker 2: Bendel like.
[50:03] Speaker 3: So I won more for you Green Day, Oh Ye,
[50:08] Speaker 3: Darlings pop punk rock three piece rock band. My brother
[50:12] Speaker 3: knows them. I'm like one or two degrees of separation.
[50:15] Speaker 2: I say, you're one if your brother, well, yeah, one time.
[50:20] Speaker 3: I'm not sure if I've told this story here before.
[50:22] Speaker 3: If so, forgive me. But one time I was at
[50:24] Speaker 3: a warehouse party with a friend and we were playing
[50:26] Speaker 3: foosball and I got partnered up to play with the
[50:30] Speaker 3: drummer Trey Cool and we won the match and turned
[50:33] Speaker 3: to each other to celebrate and eat. Chest bumped me
[50:36] Speaker 3: nice and like pushed me across there. It was awkward
[50:39] Speaker 3: but funny. Yeah, no, it's cool anyway. So they came
[50:42] Speaker 3: on the scene in like the late eighties early nineties.
[50:44] Speaker 3: Their major label debut was nineteen ninety four's Duchie, and
[50:48] Speaker 3: that meant that they couldn't play Gilman anymore.
[50:50] Speaker 2: By the way, do you guys win?
[50:51] Speaker 3: Yeah, we totally won.
[50:52] Speaker 2: I was hoping that was the case. We did test.
[50:53] Speaker 2: That's why the game is done.
[50:56] Speaker 3: Celebrate good times. Come on, we won, Yeah, although I'm
[50:59] Speaker 3: not for good. So it was a surprise. Nine two
[51:02] Speaker 3: four Gillmen the punk club, that's where they started out,
[51:06] Speaker 3: but they don't allow major label bands to play there,
[51:09] Speaker 3: so they couldn't play anyway.
[51:10] Speaker 2: And they didn't do like a whole like we'll make
[51:12] Speaker 2: up a band, like we'll be like BC Boys or Quasar.
[51:16] Speaker 3: They do kind allow that in that sense. No, they
[51:19] Speaker 3: did side projects later.
[51:20] Speaker 2: I saying, but they wouldn't allow that.
[51:22] Speaker 3: No, they're too sincere. So by the early two thousands,
[51:26] Speaker 3: Green Day they're this like established major label band. They're
[51:30] Speaker 3: playing arenas all that stuff. They had pulled a few
[51:33] Speaker 3: stylistic left turns. They evolved, they experimented, they explored, They
[51:38] Speaker 3: explored each other's bodies. I know, I can't help it.
[51:44] Speaker 2: If it's not a leaky body thing, it's something creepy. Yeah,
[51:48] Speaker 2: weird body insinuation thing.
[51:50] Speaker 3: So they released an album called Warning in two thousand
[51:54] Speaker 3: and Warning wasn't really a punk album per se. I
[51:57] Speaker 3: don't remember that, although there are arguments to be made
[51:59] Speaker 3: that they hadn't been made making punk albums for a while.
[52:02] Speaker 3: It had a bunch of acoustic stuff. It was like
[52:04] Speaker 3: a little more optimistic in the lyrics, like you were
[52:07] Speaker 3: mad at mom and dad?
[52:07] Speaker 2: Did you listen to I've heard it?
[52:09] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[52:10] Speaker 2: Was it something that you would drive around listening to?
[52:12] Speaker 3: Not necessarily not in two thousands, Okay, I was just curious.
[52:15] Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean I was listening to different
[52:16] Speaker 3: stuff then.
[52:17] Speaker 2: Of course, yes, you branched out.
[52:19] Speaker 3: Yeah, moved on. You know, I appreciate them. I wasn't
[52:22] Speaker 3: ever like a huge fan.
[52:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, and I get that.
[52:24] Speaker 3: Yeah. So the album Warning didn't do so well. It
[52:29] Speaker 3: was their first major label record to not go multi platinum.
[52:33] Speaker 2: Oh wow.
[52:33] Speaker 3: And from what I understand though, they didn't care. They
[52:36] Speaker 3: were happy with it, but they knew they were at
[52:38] Speaker 3: a crossroads. So both singer Billy Joe Armstrong and bass
[52:42] Speaker 3: player Mike Dirt they had side projects that were more
[52:45] Speaker 3: punk oriented. Billy Joe had Pinhead Gunpowder, Mike had a
[52:49] Speaker 3: band called The Frustrators, which included my friend Terry Nice
[52:54] Speaker 3: and whose album has backing vocals by none other than
[52:57] Speaker 3: living legend Sarah TACIONI.
[52:59] Speaker 2: Really your friend.
[53:00] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we go full circle here. But those bands
[53:03] Speaker 3: allowed them to play Gilman, so.
[53:05] Speaker 2: You're like one degree away from the Frustrators too.
[53:08] Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much everything. So Green Day they they're like,
[53:14] Speaker 3: we got to write a new album. Let's do this.
[53:17] Speaker 3: So they brought in longtime producer Rob Cavallo, and they
[53:21] Speaker 3: wanted like a quicker, more straightforward punk direction, and they
[53:26] Speaker 3: called the working title for the album was Cigarettes and Valentines,
[53:30] Speaker 3: which is such an early two thousands East Bay rock
[53:33] Speaker 3: album title.
[53:35] Speaker 2: Anyway, So to just nail all of the nail right.
[53:40] Speaker 3: So recording sessions for the album took place like two
[53:43] Speaker 3: thousand and two, two thousand and three. The project was
[53:47] Speaker 3: like far along, and some said it was nearly complete
[53:51] Speaker 3: or at least like album length in scope. The songs
[53:54] Speaker 3: were tracked and assembled at Studio eight eighty in Oakland.
[53:58] Speaker 2: That's theirs.
[53:58] Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, Green Day would go on to buy the
[54:00] Speaker 3: place in twenty twelve and rename it Jingletown Recording after
[54:03] Speaker 3: the neighborhood it's in and then they sold it a
[54:05] Speaker 3: few years later. I think it's called Studio eight eighty Again.
[54:09] Speaker 3: I called my brother. He said the band has their
[54:12] Speaker 3: own smaller studio now, but he refused to tell me
[54:14] Speaker 3: where in Oakland it is. He's a solid guy. He
[54:20] Speaker 3: was like, what do you want? Why? Why are you asking?
[54:22] Speaker 2: I was curious, Man Punk Solidarity.
[54:25] Speaker 3: So the band had everything tracked and assembled and they
[54:29] Speaker 3: fully expected the material to become their next official release.
[54:32] Speaker 3: And the title track, Cigarettes and Valentines, which like, it's
[54:36] Speaker 3: such like a murder city devil's type, which is one
[54:39] Speaker 3: of the best bands in my opinion I have heard
[54:42] Speaker 3: of anyhow, So it was central to the project's identity,
[54:48] Speaker 3: this title track. And sometime in two thousand and three,
[54:52] Speaker 3: the recordings disappeared, and the band has consistently said that
[54:56] Speaker 3: the master recordings were stolen from the studio, which like
[55:00] Speaker 3: it's Studio eight eighties, and the could it's in a
[55:03] Speaker 3: bad neighborhood, but it's like it's so fenced off, like
[55:07] Speaker 3: it's like a Strongholderah completely, So public statements never identified
[55:14] Speaker 3: a suspect, a precise date, the exact mechanism of the loss.
[55:20] Speaker 3: Outsider right What is clear from like multiple later interviews
[55:24] Speaker 3: is that when they realized that the material was gone,
[55:28] Speaker 3: they treated it as irretrievable. So they weren't like Gem
[55:31] Speaker 3: in the Holograms, like let's hunt this down where let
[55:34] Speaker 3: me speak with Chibbette. There's never been a confirmation of
[55:38] Speaker 3: a police report. They never publicly detailed whether it involved
[55:42] Speaker 3: physical tapes, hard drives, other storage the story and they
[55:48] Speaker 3: just left it on the roof with Tom Waits and stuff.
[55:51] Speaker 3: It entered Green Day lore simply as quote the album
[55:54] Speaker 3: that got stolen, like it's just referred to as ad.
[55:59] Speaker 3: So the dis appearance of the tapes set in motion
[56:02] Speaker 3: like serious reassessment inside the band. So instead of attempting
[56:06] Speaker 3: to re record it from scratch like their Paul McCartney,
[56:09] Speaker 3: they decided that they had there was no Linda, that
[56:13] Speaker 3: was the problem. They decided that the loss was an
[56:16] Speaker 3: opportunity to start over completely. And so in later interviews,
[56:20] Speaker 3: oh yeah, they said that it was the stolen album
[56:23] Speaker 3: was like competent but uninspiring, and then Billy Joe later
[56:28] Speaker 3: has said it was just like this strange blessing to
[56:31] Speaker 3: have it stolen. It forced them to abandon it. The
[56:34] Speaker 3: stuff that they no longer fully believed in. So they
[56:36] Speaker 3: started a new project, and that project became the rock
[56:40] Speaker 3: opera American Idiot. I was wondering, Yeah, that timing. So
[56:44] Speaker 3: they're free from like the gravitational pull of this lost album.
[56:48] Speaker 3: They develop a politically charged rock opera that redefined their career.
[56:52] Speaker 2: Totally gave him a point of view.
[56:55] Speaker 3: And so basically, the theft of Cigarettes and Valentine's is
[56:58] Speaker 3: like the best thing that ever happened.
[57:00] Speaker 2: Sounds like it.
[57:01] Speaker 3: The material itself has obviously never been officially released, and
[57:04] Speaker 3: the full contents of Cigarettes and Valentine's is unknown. The
[57:09] Speaker 3: title song has come up in live performances and it
[57:12] Speaker 3: later was on a live album, so like some of it,
[57:15] Speaker 3: you know, survived in memory or maybe alternative forms for them.
[57:19] Speaker 3: And over the years, band members have like hinted that
[57:21] Speaker 3: fragments or ideas from the abandoned sessions may have been
[57:24] Speaker 3: recycled into later songs. Personally, I wonder if this is
[57:28] Speaker 3: purely lore, was there even a completed album. I've made
[57:33] Speaker 3: some inquiries of insiders, some of my degrees of separation,
[57:37] Speaker 3: but no one knows anything, which I find I find
[57:40] Speaker 3: it suspicious. So is Aaron, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
[57:43] Speaker 2: Well, to bring a full circle to one of your
[57:45] Speaker 2: earlier points, I would say, embrace impermanence, and good things,
[57:51] Speaker 2: great things, possibly even genius can come about then of
[57:55] Speaker 2: embracing impermanence, because that's all we are. So you really
[57:59] Speaker 2: just acknowledging the nature of existence. And as a creative person,
[58:02] Speaker 2: you got to do that. It will ground you, ironically
[58:05] Speaker 2: in something that really lasts and matters. So embracing permanence,
[58:09] Speaker 2: you lose something that's meant to be lost. That kind
[58:11] Speaker 2: of thought exactly.
[58:12] Speaker 3: The same thing. I think that you can't hang on
[58:16] Speaker 3: too tightly to stuff and like, yeah, there you're talking about,
[58:18] Speaker 3: like when you lose notes for things, there's a magic
[58:21] Speaker 3: that can't be regained. But I think that being open
[58:25] Speaker 3: to having something even better creatively coming along, And I
[58:30] Speaker 3: think the Green Day one is the best example. So
[58:32] Speaker 3: you have something that, like I was saying, sounded like
[58:34] Speaker 3: all the other albums around at the time, and then
[58:38] Speaker 3: they get to totally reimagine it and change their course
[58:41] Speaker 3: and change what they do, and you know, you got
[58:44] Speaker 3: to respect that. I think it's a huge brave thing
[58:46] Speaker 3: to do too, you know, So anyway, I think I
[58:51] Speaker 3: need to talk back. I totally do go. I went cheat.
[59:08] Speaker 5: Zaren Elizabeth, thank you. That show with the Love Triangle
[59:13] Speaker 5: with Frank Sinatra inspired me to talk to you guys.
[59:15] Speaker 5: That was hilarious. One thing that I've been wanting to
[59:18] Speaker 5: tell you guys, and I've been a bit hesitant because
[59:20] Speaker 5: I hate that, is that you told the story about
[59:23] Speaker 5: the boy in Melbourne who trashed you know that the
[59:27] Speaker 5: party that suburb was called Nary Warren. Just thought i'd
[59:31] Speaker 5: say that anyway. Thank you so much, love the show.
[59:35] Speaker 3: See you guys.
[59:35] Speaker 2: Bye.
[59:37] Speaker 5: I forgot to mention my name. It's Jeffrey living in
[59:40] Speaker 5: Melbourne as an expat, the guy with the message about
[59:44] Speaker 5: Nary Warren and loving the the Love Triangle with thing
[59:50] Speaker 5: Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner and.
[59:55] Speaker 3: Howard Hughes. Thank you, Jeffrey, Thank you.
[59:59] Speaker 2: Expect Jeffrey and I I gotta say you will hear
[1:00:01] Speaker 2: me do two things. Sometimes I will like pronounce something
[1:00:06] Speaker 2: correctly once and then later on mispronounce it later on
[1:00:09] Speaker 2: the very same episode. So sometimes it's just like I
[1:00:12] Speaker 2: get excited and I'm just whatever. Other times I don't
[1:00:15] Speaker 2: know how to pronounce it, and I can't find something
[1:00:17] Speaker 2: on YouTube or somewhere else, they can tell me. In
[1:00:19] Speaker 2: towns in Australia often happen to fall into that category.
[1:00:23] Speaker 2: And then also, Jeffrey, if you are an expat, isn't
[1:00:25] Speaker 2: it Melbourne?
[1:00:26] Speaker 4: Yeah, Burn, I'm just kidding.
[1:00:30] Speaker 2: I would never do that to you, but I'm glad
[1:00:32] Speaker 2: that you enjoyed the episode, and thanks for the talk back.
[1:00:35] Speaker 2: That's a brother.
[1:00:36] Speaker 3: I can't say anything correctly.
[1:00:38] Speaker 2: I can't say anything rast.
[1:00:40] Speaker 3: To like hurt people's feelings. But also, you know, my
[1:00:44] Speaker 3: last name, Dutton is so straightforward, and I get called
[1:00:48] Speaker 3: button and like Sutton and you know what, I don't care.
[1:00:52] Speaker 2: Oh my name is Zaren. You better believe I've heard
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: a million different ways. When people have to read it
[1:00:56] Speaker 2: and they don't know what it is.
[1:00:57] Speaker 3: I can see them in the comments on Instagram. No
[1:01:00] Speaker 3: one knows.
[1:01:01] Speaker 2: That is five letters, and it's very similar to other
[1:01:04] Speaker 2: names you've said, like Aaron with a Z, but they're
[1:01:06] Speaker 2: like zoron zero ronever.
[1:01:12] Speaker 3: We're all trying the best we can. That's what I'm
[1:01:14] Speaker 3: trying to say. That's it for today. You can find
[1:01:17] Speaker 3: us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at
[1:01:20] Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky, on Instagram. We're on YouTube
[1:01:24] Speaker 3: at Ridiculous Crime pod. Email us Ridiculous Crime at gmail
[1:01:27] Speaker 3: dot com. Leave a talkback on the iHeart app. Please
[1:01:32] Speaker 3: don't leave one to tell me I've said something wrong
[1:01:34] Speaker 3: because it was just too many.
[1:01:36] Speaker 2: You can tell me because I know who I am
[1:01:39] Speaker 2: and how I know.
[1:01:41] Speaker 3: Reach Out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
[1:01:49] Speaker 3: Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by studio engineer for All
[1:01:53] Speaker 3: the Best Selene Dion Records, Dave Kusten, starring Analys Rutger
[1:01:57] Speaker 3: as Judith. Research is by Nigeria and Audio Tape Fence
[1:02:01] Speaker 3: Marissa Brown and Tom Waits bootlegger Jabarie Davis. The theme
[1:02:05] Speaker 3: song is by Load Bearing Wall of Sound mixers Thomas
[1:02:08] Speaker 3: Lee and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany
[1:02:11] Speaker 3: five hundred guests here and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre.
[1:02:15] Speaker 3: Executive producers are I Rate Studio head Ben Bolan and
[1:02:19] Speaker 3: Royalties Calculator Noel Brown dis Clime Say It One More
[1:02:30] Speaker 3: Time Cry.
[1:02:33] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
[1:02:36] Speaker 1: my Heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or
[1:02:39] Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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