WRIF Virtual Rock Room with John Waite & Mike J. Nichols
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00:00Thank you so much for watching Riff TV. Now this interview is obviously with video, but I don't
00:05interview everybody on Zoom. That's why I put it on my Talkin' Rock with Meltdown podcast. We talk
00:10to rock artists from all over the genre. So check out Talkin' Rock with Meltdown wherever you get
00:15your podcasts. And now to today's video interview. John, good to see you. How are you? I'm great,
00:23thank you. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. Mike, thanks for joining. I'm here
00:28to make sure John doesn't swear. Yeah, fuck no, man. Well, the first thing I want to start up with
00:35is before the pandemic, John, I had to go, a little story time here for myself, but one of my friends
00:41was playing in Pop Evil and he was playing in Flint. And he said, hey, listen, why don't you meet me at
00:45the machine shop and you can take me to the show and we'll hang out and the whole thing. And the
00:49reason I bring that up is because I got this fantastic picture of you and I right there.
00:53Yeah. And you were so nice and so kind and so generous with your time. And I pulled in the
00:59parking lot, not knowing you're going to be there. Look up on the side. I'm like, oh my God,
01:02John Waits here. And you were so nice. And that brings me to my point is that this documentary,
01:07you're really a people person. And when the world shut down, it was like, what do I do now?
01:13Well, that's, you know, that's really great that we could get a pitch together and it, you know,
01:21made you smile. First of all, I think that's really great. I like people. So it's always nice
01:27to kind of do something that's going to light people up. But back to the question, the pandemic,
01:34ouch. You know, I mean, I think all of us were going through our own personal hell at that point,
01:38just in lockdown. You know, you couldn't go out, you'd go out and buy groceries in the morning for
01:43like half an hour and come back home. Yeah. Walking around Santa Monica, like I was, the police would
01:49pull you over and say, what are you doing? You know, it was a very serious time and there was no vaccine
01:54and it was a dark worrying. Nobody knew what was coming next. And I stopped working for a year,
02:01really. And in the middle of all that, I was in contact with Scott Wright, an old friend of mine.
02:10And he was in the promotion department, Epic. He was a DJ back in the past and we were friends.
02:17And we got talking, I was just checking up to see if he was okay. And he said, he said,
02:22I had a fascinating life, which I do. And he said, it would make a great movie, a documentary, man.
02:30And I went like, yeah, all right, Scott, see you around the block. You know, everything's cool.
02:36And he called back. He kept calling and wanting to talk about it. And how do we get backing? You know,
02:45and we started talking about the story. He was, he was kind of fleshing it out and making notes. And
02:49I would tell him about a certain part of my life, Lancaster, England, you know, the edgiest stuff,
02:57the funny stuff, being married, divorce, bad English, missing you. And he had a plot in the end.
03:03And he came back six weeks later with backing, actual backing, a full budget, you know, for a,
03:11for a really a decent sized movie. So he went into production and researching,
03:19went out and came back with what they came back with. And Mike Nichols got involved. Echo of the
03:26Canyon, echo in the Canyon. I mean, it became this kind of deluxe thing. And I, I promised I would do
03:33four days or five days of interviews, and then I would pull back and they could do the art that they
03:40do. I just didn't want to be involved. Really. I thought it would be low rent to insist on singing
03:46stuff before it came out. But Mike Nichols is here today and he can say a few things about the movie.
03:52That's true. Cause John and I were not corresponding during the course. I was not running anything by
03:56him during the making of it. We were all, I said, we've only been talking as of recently since the
04:01movie's done. So how easy or hard did this come about, Mike, make him like, cause you've done this
04:06before. Frank Zappa thing behind you there and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Frank Zappa,
04:10Echo in the Canyon. There's a Billy Joel thing from years ago. Easy is not a word. I think that it
04:16should be associated with this. We were making a joke, but it is true is that it's about John
04:22moving through the music business, which is already hard enough. And his choices through
04:26being authentic and having integrity, make everything even harder. But then making a movie
04:32about this during a pandemic with things that you can have access to during that time, it's
04:38not unlimited. You know, we can't follow him around. So there was nothing about this that
04:42was the easy way. It's always the hard way. That's also why I never wanted to change the
04:46title. I know that sounds terrible, but I said, it's true. It's very meta and it was hard. It's
04:51hard to do something like this. Yeah. I know during the pandemic for myself, at least, so things shut
04:56down in March, I didn't do anything all summer long. Wasn't playing hockey with my friends or
05:00anything. And then Metallica put out this, uh, this live concert that they had a drive-ins
05:05throughout the, throughout the country. And it's, it's at that moment that I realized after 30 years in
05:10this business that I like being around people of the same ilk that are there for the same
05:14reason. You know what I'm saying? You go to the airport, people are traveling all over the place,
05:17but when you go to a Metallica show or a John Wayne concert, they're there for the same reason.
05:21That's a good point. Yeah. You know, it's like a tribe, you know, it's like people that think the
05:25same way. That's a great point. I never thought of that. Yeah. And I think maybe, maybe that's why,
05:30uh, maybe that's, uh, in your head, you couldn't really put it together, John, but you're a people
05:33person and you want to get out there and you want to be intimate in front of the fans. What's more
05:37intimate playing a live concert or putting something like this out?
05:40Well, it's, that's very different animal when you're on stage. Uh, I think you, you have this
05:48thing about bringing it. Everybody's like leaning forward, watching you as you walk out to the
05:53microphone. And in those 30 paces, you transform into like a conduit for the music to get it to the
06:03people. And it's a magical thing. And it has a life of its own and an energy and a pace.
06:10And then you get so much energy and input from the audience. Some people actually talk to you
06:15or shout things and you talk to them back. It becomes an animal. That's its own animal
06:21with something like the documentary. It was piecemeal. You know, I would show up and do an
06:28interview and some of the subjects were hard to talk about. Some of it was very emotional.
06:34Some of it was angry. There was a lot of, uh, you know, dropping the F bomb. I mean, it was,
06:43it was just honest. My girlfriend goes off at one point, uh, the two entirely different things,
06:49but then, but the subjects, the same, you know, uh, one of them, I control the energy of with an
06:58audience. And the other one is, uh, is Mike and Scott putting this thing together, how they see it.
07:08And, uh, you'd have to talk to Mike about it. I mean, I think, I think it'd be a frightening
07:13thing, John, you know, because being nervous to go out on stage and bringing it, you own that
07:17himself. This is a, it's almost like a spectator at a point where he's seeing stuff being reflected
07:22back. So I would find that far more scarier, John. Yeah. Well, you haven't played in front of
07:2750,000 people and your guitar blows up. It is difficult. They're giving me the heart out,
07:38but, uh, John, I follow you on Facebook and next time you come through Detroit,
07:40I want to see if you can sign my picture for me. We'll hang out. I will. No, it's such a great
07:45thing. I had to bring that picture in because it was such a surprise. That's the coolest thing in
07:48the world, man. It's like when you write back to somebody and you meet them like 10 years later,
07:52they go like, you wrote to me and you go, yeah, you know, it's just the best thing.
07:57So God bless you and, uh, happy Christmas, man. Hey, you too. Thank you so much. And
08:01congratulations on the documentary. Really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks
08:05guys. Bye-bye.