 This is actually one of the most exciting days we've ever had. We've got literally 150 composer signings in the last 20 years. And we've been trying to get Charles Fox for all of those 20 years with very little luck. So you guys are in for a treat. You have a surprise guest who's going to show up later on. But your host today is Jared McCauley. He wrote the liner notes for Barber Ella. Just by way of bio, for me, I've worked with Varez for about 15 years. I've worked writing about music since I was in college many moons ago. I have worked for Rolling Stone, Request Magazine, BAM Magazine. I don't, people think I specialize in film music. I have people think I specialize in 70s music. Everybody thinks I specialize in something else, which makes me feel good. That's because I just, that's the kind of upbringing I had. I had a music teacher in high school who just impressed upon us. Music is music. It's just an infinite variety of things. Who are you out here? Oh, Charles. It is Charles Fox. First of all, shall I use this or is this okay or, oh, this is the microphone for that recording. Do I need this or not? Yes. Okay, I'll have to do that. It's stereo. Definitely want to be heard while I'm here. Bob Crue actually was trained as an artist, as a painter. I own some of his paintings as well. And as a young man, he had no thought of becoming a songwriter. He thought he'd become an artist. And along the way, I made his other passions of the talent came out. He kept painting, by the way, forever. He never stopped that. He used to have showings here in Hollywood. And in his house, he had some, Bob was just a creative force. He was truly a creative force. We went to several houses of his where he did all the decorating and he would put inventive, beautiful things all over the walls. It was just, it was like a museum to walk into his house. No matter what it is, sometimes it'd be 50s style, sometimes modern style. He was just a creative force. And I worked them together. It was great. It was just great. First of all, to be honest with you, before I started working with Bob Crue, I basically only wrote Spanish songs. I mean, that is to say, Latin songs with Spanish lyrics, even though I didn't speak Spanish. But I had the feel for the music and I used to write for these Latin bands, salsa bands, Cido Puente, and Tito Reberto, and I played with those bands. That was my early thing. So when I started working with Bob Crue on Bob Rella, he said, well, let's do the songs together. And of course, prior to that now, shall I keep going or you won't ask me questions? Well, no, we just looked back track a little bit. You didn't actually meet Bob Crue for Barberella. You worked with a piano player called Ben Lanzarone. Right. So Bob was one of the top music producers in New York in the 60s. He produced all the four seasons records and so many other great records. I wrote a lot of those songs. Wrote all the four seasons songs along with Bob Gardier, mostly. And I had someone who introduced me to him. And he was well aware of my background. I had studied classical music. I had played jazz and pop and Latin and all that. And he said he had always wanted to do a record that incorporated the classics, classical music, and all these other elements I just mentioned. He said he has a great pianist. And he'd love me to just put together an album. It was like a dream assignment, just look into the classics, see what you want to do, treat it any way you want to treat it, just bring me an album that he'll produce. So I started working with his pianist and he was not really good enough, to be honest with you. And it was a hard thing for me to tell that to Bob because I didn't want to talk myself out of the job. So I said to Bob, as much as I want to do this, he's just not going to cut it. He's not good enough. He said, I don't care, find a pianist. So Ben Lanzarone actually went to the same high school in music in New York. He was two years ahead of me. Someone introduced me to him and we've been great friends ever since. He had fantastic pianists, jazz, classical. And he was the perfect fit for that. And actually Bob and I and Ben, Bob was very much into astrology. And before he'd worked with you, he had a check with his astrologer, believe it or not. And both Ben and I had to find out not only what day we were, we knew what day we were born. But we had to find out what hour we were born. We had to ask our mothers. And the astrologer proved this trio are working together. And we went on to do a lot of great things together. So basically what I did with this other album, I found pieces that I loved in the classical repertoire, for a requiem and Beethoven, sonatas and things. And I basically turned them into new pieces. I'd used fragments of pieces and turned it into something. Bob added lyrics later. Actually, one of the things that came out of the Mozart G-minor symphony was a piece that is on Vicky Kars' greatest his album. So that really turned it well. And really, Bob in the studio was a master. We'd have a big orchestra, and he'd hear sounds. And his way of handling and mixing, everything was joyful. Nothing was ever any pressure. There's never any problem. It's just like, let's find great music together. And then even in mixing, I mean, OK. So I finished that. And then he had a group called the Bob Crue Generation at that time. The AmeriCorps had some hit records. So he asked me to do some of that arranging. And then, well, then that led to Bob Rell. And I don't know if many of you are aware of this, but the score that Charles and Bob Crue worked on was a replacement score. The film had already been completely scored in Europe by a composer named Michel Manier, who worked with director Roger Vadim quite a bit. And I think that Manier, I looked him up and did around 70 scores between 1960 and time he died. It was 1984, I believe. And there's a piece you can find online. The album, I think, is available in Europe. It's kind of hard to find. It's been re-released. But there is a demo for the title song on YouTube that you can find that he recorded with a British singer. And it's not that different. Now, why would you take something that's very similar to what you did? I think that the answer, I mean, it's kind of hard to pin all this together. But Bob Crue signed a deal with Paramount in 1967 in the summer of 67 that called for distribution of his Dino Voice label and a lot of records on Dot records, which Paramount owned. And it was also a production deal. Now, I've seen the original Billboard articles. It doesn't say exactly production of what. Now, obviously, Bob never produced a film for them. But it seems to me that when you have somebody who has a track record of Bob Crue and you've got a deal with them, it seemed to me that it wasn't an artistic decision. It was a business decision on Paramount's part. Does that make sense to you? You see, I'm learning so much today. Is that it? I didn't know about that. I never heard that song. I didn't even know. We knew it was a replacement score that we knew. And actually, Bob, because of Dot records, was owned by Paramount, the sort of Paramount distributed Dot or something like that. And his company, Dino Voice, there was a connection. I know that he was. That's why he was asked to do the score. Bob was not a film scorer. I just scored my first movie. A movie called The Incident. It was a black and white film for 20 Century Fox. It's directed by Larry Pierce. And Larry Pierce, who's still a very dear friend of mine, of ours. I've done a lot of pictures with Larry. But that was the first one. And the second picture of Larry came, maybe I'm jumping ahead, but after Barbara Ella, I had been up for a picture called Goodbye Columbus. And it wasn't coming so fast. I was in the guy. I wasn't in town yet. I was still in New York. In order to do Boborella, a lot of the people at Paramount were unsure. And I'm not answering a question about the Dino Voice thing and all that. But Bob did have a deal. And that's how we got the job. And otherwise, I would not have come to him to score a picture. He wasn't a film composer. I wasn't getting this call back so quickly about coming to California to do Boborella, even though I just done a score successfully with Larry Pierce. But the folks at Paramount Pictures sent some people to New York to see who this young fellow was doing this big picture. And that's when I kind of got involved with the workings in Hollywood. I mean, a fellow named Paul Hager came to New York. He later became the head of post-production at Paramount. Actually, there's a building named the Paul Hager building. But at this time, he was my music editor. And the first thing he said to me is, I'm going to be a music editor. And I said, great. What is the music editor to do? And he said, well, first of all, we'll sit and we'll go through the score, the picture. And we'll do a breakdown of the determine where the music goes. And I'll give you a breakdown down to a tenth of a second. So I said, I think I did that, Paul. He said, you did that? I said, I did. I went through the whole score. It took my and us my. I never heard of a music editor. And actually, in New York at that time, a footage count is on the movie always didn't include second counters. There were only footage counters. So I used to work in New York for Skitch Anderson when he was with the tonight. I did a lot of music for the tonight show at one point when he first, with Johnny Carson. And Skitch gave me this little thing called a ready Eddie and it translated film footage to second. So I did all that myself. So then Paul said to me, we have been needing clicks. I said, what's that? I honestly, I learned with a stopwatch. Six kids, Henderson gave me a stopwatch when I got started to do little documentary films. And he said, come over my house. I gave him my stopwatch and it had 36 millimeter, and even eight milliseconds. And with that, I started my film career with this little stopwatch. Still use it, by the way. Same stuff. I may have had a new one along the way. So I was completely unaware of all the technicalities and doing films and everything in Hollywood. I used to have a stopwatch on the piano and I had to play the piano conductor with a stopwatch and. Yeah, I want to backtrack because this is an interesting period you're talking about. The things that you did for the Tonight Show, I think technically they're called bumpers. The music that's played during a commercial break for the, to entertain the audience. You actually wrote original music and did arrangements of popular tunes. I did, yeah. Actually that was, I'll tell you how. I started, I used to write arrangements for him. Sometimes he would come out and play a piano piece of the orchestra. And he'd asked me to do a special arrangement for him. And then he started asking me, well, why don't you write some of those little bumpers? You know, on track music between commercials, band goes, the camera goes into commercial and to entertain the audience. The music, they still do that. The music keeps playing. If you're in the studio, you'll hear the music keep playing. And then they come back and they fade out. So I started writing those pieces and I wrote a number of them to show you how naive I was about the business aspect of music. The fellow named Shelly Cohn was the music librarian for the Tonight Show. And one day he said to me, so are you ASCAP or BMI? And I said, which? I wasn't either, I wasn't either. I never thought of it. I said, what are those or something's in any like that? He said, oh, well, they pay you money for when your music is on the end. I said, really? Now at the same time you were doing this, were you under contract to what was then known as score productions? Or was there under contract of score productions? Okay, you were, how would you, how do you describe the arrangement? Score, the fellow named Bob Israel who basically had people write things for him and put his name on it. Okay, yeah. But you did some pretty impressive work for score productions. I did a whole bunch of stuff. But anyway, I was just backtracking one second. So this fellow Shelly Cohn asked me to, it was a BMI and ASCAP, I said, neither. He said, well, I pay you money and I said, really? And he wrote down a BMI and gave me a telephone number and ASCAP gave me a telephone number. And the first number that was BMI and BMI knows the story. I've been with him since 1962 now. This was 1962. And I called BMI and I said, is it true that you pay money when your music is on television? I said, sure, come on down. We'll give you an advance. I never called ASCAP. It was just the first number that would paid off and that was it. The people at ASCAP know that, too. Anyway, 1965, this Bob Israel with score productions, he was in music house. He would do music for various commercials for, he was involved with... Basically, he was like a big contractor that would hire composers to do these jobs. Isn't that basically it? I don't think it was a country who's a music production house. He produced the music. He sometimes would pay for it. Hey, Denny. Denny, the seat's up here if you want to sit. Yeah, okay. He's Robbie. He's my son, Robbie. Wrote, so I married an ex-murder. Screenwriter, yeah? And playing the field last year? Play for keeps. Play for keeps, right? Play for keeps. What was I saying? We were talking about score. Oh, score protection, sorry. I lost my train of thought. So Bob Israel asked me... There was a new show coming on the air that ABC was doing. I don't remember what led up to this, frankly. But the first thing I recall doing for him was, or maybe not the first thing, but there was a new show coming on the air that was this Saturday afternoon show about sports. It never had been done before where they show excerpts of different sporting events that went on that particular, it's called World of Sports. So he asked me to do that. So I did that and I started to work for him. And however, his name was on as the author of it, even though I wrote the music. But I was, you know, it was a good job for me, to be honest with you. Went to London and recorded the music. Actually, the first time I did that, I did that at the Sound Recording Studio in New York with the big orchestra with strings. And then the folks at ABC thought that there was too much... They wanted a stronger, more powerful sound, maybe just more brassy. So we went to England and I worked at the... Wimbledon, not Wimbledon, what is that studio called? Wimbledy, thank you, Wimbledy Studio. And actually in the booth was John Richards, who eventually, he was a second engineer working for Eric Tomlinson, who was the first engineer. And John eventually, I brought him over from England to be the head engineer at Reverend Green Studios when Artie Butler and I had a big studio here in town. He was a second engineer anyway, so we recorded with basically a brass, woodwinds, you know, big percussion section, no strings. And that's the one that went on the air. And it did have the, was the narration in place at that point? Would you have to write around it? Was the narration part of the, it essentially part of the music? It was not part of the music, but it was there, it was on the... You had a, you had a... To be honest, I don't recall. I don't recall if I heard the victory, agony of victory, agony of defeat and thrill of victory or something. It turned out that when we moved to California that a good friend of mine, who became a good friend, Stanley Ross was the one who wrote that copy. Interesting. And who also created Wonder Woman. Who also created Wonder Woman. Thanks, I put him up front for that reason. Anyway, I ended up doing quite a bit of work for Bob Israel. And it was, you know, he was a friend and it was bringing me to work as a composer. My background was in Latin music professionally. I played piano and Latin bands. I wrote for those bands. But my studying behind that was in classical music and jazz. So with Bob, I had the opportunity to write original music. And along the way I did a number, this is not with Bob Israel, but I did a number of documentary films. If I had a choice between doing an arrangement for a rock and roll band or a short documentary film, I knew my direction was hopefully gonna be as a composer. So I would do that and... You did quite a few game show themes at that point, too. I did. I did some of the Guts and Todman game shows like To Tell the Truth, What's My Line match game. Yeah, and actually we used to go over to England to record those as well. And then a couple of years later, ABC wanted to put a show on, a football show on at night, Monday Night Football. And what sports had not been successful. So they wanted the same team that did all the work for Monday Night Football. Thank you, word of the sports. So then I did Monday Night Football. It turned out to be very successful. And that was under my own name because I wouldn't do that anymore. Now those themes, I would assume, had a lot to do with Nadja Boulanger and your training in Paris. That's a funny question. Everything I think I do has to do with my training. I think everything I've ever done has to do with my training. I think everything I've ever done has to do with the lifetime experiences that I've gathered as we all do from what we read about in life and what we see and what we listen to and what we experience. So I think in that case, yes, I mean, there's nothing directly. I had a very good fortune of studying with some extraordinary teacher many of you may know, Nadja Boulanger. Do you know who that is? No. She was Erin Copeland's teacher 40 years before me. And she taught generations of composers who came to her from around the world. She's generous with some of the great classical composers. Elliot Carter. Her teacher was Pharre. Her best friend was Stravinsky and her classmate in school was Ravel. So I was brought into that world. I only went to study with her for the summer in 1959 and the Fontainebleau. And there was a palace about 40 miles out of Paris. It was a palace in Napoleon, actually. Well, Francois I before that, he built it. I was there for the summer and she changed my life. Nadja Boulanger changed my life. And I knew from the first moment that I was with her that this is what I was born to do to write music. I always thought so anyway. I went to the High School of Music and Art. I studied composition post high school with my composition teacher. I studied orchestration, privately post high school also with my high school composition orchestration teacher. But I knew that this was what I was born to do in my life when I was with her. She had a way of telling you what it was all about. And she asked me to stay on and study with her in Paris after that. And she made it possible for me to stay on and study with her in Paris. And I was there with her for about two years. And as I say, she changed my life. And I saw her very often. I had at least one private lesson a week and sometimes I lived close by and if there was an empty hour, she would send someone over to my house to get me. We had no telephones. And I'd see her once a week for a fantastic, very difficult four hours in the morning from eight to 12 where you didn't dare take a bathroom break. You just didn't leave the piano. But it was a keyboard harmony class. It was about five or six of us. And she was at one grand piano when we were at the other and she would ask us to do things like transpose Schubert songs at sight and, you know, just sight reads scores at Mozart, you know, at the piano and take melodies and play them backwards and upside down and inside out. And anyway, it was fantastic. And in her living room, she had a huge pipe organ, believe it or not. So when I came back from Paris, in Paris I was exposed to a lot of different kind of music, you know, the music of the avant-garde at that time. Pierre Boulez was, you may know who came from his work. He's either as a great composer, was one of the great 12-tone composers of the century, but he also was a conductor at the New York Philharmonic for years. And he was kind of the enfant terrible, you know, in Paris. And he had a concert series called Domais Musiqueaux at a beautiful theater of Dion, where all the great modern composers, Stockhouse and Luigi Nono, Henri Persaud, they all came and they presented new works. Some was electronic. And the audience was great. The audience, it was packed. It was very typical then because the, all the, you know, the music students in Paris came and the teachers came and anyone interested, the intellectuals and all that. And people would boo when they didn't like it. And they would scream when they liked it. And sometimes they played things. It was really a lively group. And Pierre Boulez was a conductor and he was an extraordinary conductor. So when I was back in America, I found out that Uzachevsky, Vladimir Uzachevsky was teaching electronic music at Columbia University. It was a joint university electronic lab between Columbia and Princeton. It was one of only five in the whole world. Vladimir Uzachevsky and Otto Leaning were the ones who invented electronic music. Originally called Musicalum Cate, where they would take original sounds, live sounds, acoustic sounds, record them, put them in a machine and then alter the sounds with different devices and then build layers and layers of sounds. And sometimes just by changing, merely changing the speed, you change the note. Any different. Any matter. Anything that works. So I never met Leaning, but Uzachevsky, I went to study with him. There's a small class, maybe eight or 10 of us. It was a small studio. There's one of five. There's only one in America was at Columbia University. And actually, I couldn't alter the class. I had actually enrolled in Columbia University to be able to take the course. So now I was a student at Columbia for that one course anyway. And it was fantastic. But this was prior, pre-desynthesizing. There was no voltage control keyboard, which is what Moog's genius was that he put for a voltage control and a keyboard. And what we did to organize sounds and manipulate them and construct them was we had sound banks of sound generators, sine waves, square waves, sawtooth waves, you know. And you find the note you'd want, you record it and you're required, the next thing you want to record it and you're little by little. And then we had, this is before the computer. So we had graphs that showed us if we were at the metronome speed of 100 say, and we're recording at seven and a half Ips or 15, then a quarter note would be an inch and a quarter. And an eighth note would be a bit. And so we'd end up taking these little bits and pieces of melody that we had just recorded note by note by note by note, put them together, splice them together in a little splicing box, you know, like this, kind of 15, 16 notes in there. And then with a lot of leader tape so that you could then send it into different places. So we had ring modulators, you know, we'd take the sound and split it 400 cycles this way 400 cycles, that's it. And any matter of different ways of treating sounds to get different sounds out of it and to go like a little loop in, do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. And then while I went through that, you do things to alter and you'd capture that on a minoral tape recorder. Because at that time the four track, three track, Beatles did most of their work on three tracks, you know, not even four tracks. The minoral tape recorders, the four track tape recorders didn't have sill sync position. You couldn't play back one channel and record on top of it. Well, we all do that now, it's, you know, there's layer. At that time, if you had a four track, were you either recorded live into the four track or as we had four minoral tape recorders with one button. So whatever you do in one machine you have to do something different four times. And the mix was to put it onto the four track machine to be able to mix it down. So it would take about a year and a half to get a melody, you know. A lot of very good music was written. Stockhausen used to come over to work there. And people, and as I said, I didn't think I mentioned, but there were only five in the world. There was that one, there was two in Germany, a Dom Stock in Cologne, Germany. There was one in France in Radio de Fugione. And Phillip Phillips had the other one in the Netherlands. We did. Phillips. Where was that? Netherlands, Holland. I didn't even know that. Yeah. Okay, and there was one in Israel about that time. I only knew five. In either case, that was my entree to electronic music. So it was very arduous to do that, but it was very enlightening, you know, what you could do with electronic sounds and how you could alter them and make compositions out of them. And although it was very time consuming, when Moog came along and invented his first synthesizer, I was with BMI and I called them and I said, I really need to get this machine. And they advanced me the money to buy this thing. I was already busy working. So I had the big Moog three, I don't know if you even seen it. And they were really inexpensive, weren't they? They were inexpensive? They were really inexpensive in those days. Oh. I'm being facetious. Yeah, no, it was very expensive, actually. Very expensive. Yeah, I know you're being, yeah. And also, it was a Monroe machine. You had one keyboard with a ribbon controller. You could do that, but one keyboard. And it was the very beginning of electronic keyboard operated music as before the ARP was, before all those things. The Buickler now had, there was a touch place system. There was not keyboards, you know, if you know that system. Anyway, I bought it. A couple years later, he came out with a second keyboard so that you could have two melodies going at the same time. There was no harmony, because if you'd have your note on your finger on one note, you play another, the first note would disappear. It was strictly a mineral instrument. One note canceled out the other. It's always the low note, I think. But I did films in it with that thing. I did around this, this all in the early 60s, mid 60s. I did a film with Marcel Marceau. Where he played all the parts, you know, Marcel Marceau? The Great Mimes, maybe the greatest. He's in Barberello? He's in Barberello. And he has his only word he ever, he ever spoke in film. He says, no. Anyways, I did a film with Marcel Marceau. It was a half hour film, but we played all the film festivals and things like that. And he played all the parts of a man who, well, Bip, his character Bip, if you can picture him with a funny hat and all that. He wanders onto a ship and he becomes the flutist of the man. He's the drummer of the man, the accordion player of the man. And he was the captain. He played all those parts. And he was chasing a figment that was imagined as a beautiful woman and she was elusive and he never, you know, it's just in his, anyway, I played, I did that role of synthesizer. And so for each part he played, I played that accordion of the synthesizer. And actually he came to my house, we worked together here in California. Marcel, and so that, but I had a lot of nice experiences. And I used the, yes, my synthesizer as part of a number of motion pictures that I did over the years. And then at some point, I think I gave my synthesizer to you when he was at Northwestern. My grades weren't up and out, so we had to do something else. I'm bargaining with the synthesizer. Anyway, I gave Northwestern my whole synthesizer studio. I went for all my tape recorders and had eight track tape recorders at a time. And then I moved, you know, I keep moving up to whatever's contemporary, which I still do. Let's talk a little bit about when you got hired to do Barberella, how you worked on the songs. I think you said that Bob Crue had rented a place up in Montauk where you went with your family and basically spent weeks with him. He did, he rented Edward Albee's place in Montauk. And we spent the summer. My wife and I, my son is a young baby, came up and we spent the summer. And we basically wrote the songs together over the summer. And Bob was a kind of guy different than myself who would love for some kind of beautiful atmosphere or place to inspire him. You know, I just needed a room with the piano, you know, it was a difference. But we wrote all the songs together over the summer and then I went home and I scored the film in my apartment in New York. And what was your impression the first time you watched? Now did it have the original score? You never actually heard the score. Was it without score at that point? I never heard the original score. No, I just know there wasn't original score. And I didn't know, among the things I learned that Jerry wrote was that the fellow, tell me his name again. Michel Manier. Michel Manier. Manier? Manier, I believe. Manier. My wife are here, she can speak French, but. I speak French, is it my? M-A-G-N-I-E. M-A-G-N-E. N-E, Manier, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Close. Anyway, so he went on to, I learned by reading the line in us that he wrote. He went on to build one of the great recording studios in France called Chateau. Chateau de Héroville. H-E-R-O-U-V-I-L-L-E. Der Vee, I guess, but that. Yeah, but that. Otherwise known, better known as Elton John, nicknamed it The Honky Chateau. Thank you. And actually, just a few blocks from here, I already bought their very good friend and composer and arranger and all that. And I bought the Magnolia movie theater. And we turned then into Evergreen Recording Studios. They filmed La La Land in there. They filmed some of La La Land in there. They filmed some of the movie. Well, we did over the years, many. Well, it was one of the more interesting. It's not coincidence. It's called, I think at Jung had the right phrase for it. It's called synchronicity, that you two guys would have this connection and then have this develop these two studios that are, you know. Well, for me, it grew out of frustration, frankly. I was working on a picture called One on One that Paul Williams and I wrote a bunch of songs. And we asked Silves and Crofts, major stars at the time to sing the songs. And I produced the record actually with Louis Shelton, who was their producer. And I was in a studio called TTG. And I was overdubbing. I think Paul and I wrote five songs for Silves and Crofts. And I think that record is out on Verrez Cereban, the One on One soundtrack. Yeah. Bought it today? Bought it today. Okay, thank you. I was in a studio with Silves and Crofts. And they, of course, are used to recording in a record studio. We have 24 tracks, and you want to go back and punch in and we punch in at word and note. We all know what that is. But when we were working on film, you had to, we were recording onto film, onto 35 millimeter stripe. And you can have three channels. But every time you recorded something, you had to go back to a start mark. Everything had to go back in a line. You couldn't go back a second and go forward. And really, because of their frustration, do we really have to do this? We had to do it. It was the only way to do it at that time. And actually, Jimmy, Silves and Crofts used to, either fantastic duo they were, they didn't record together. Each one recorded separately. And then the other one would be in the booth next to me and say, you're flat, you're sharp, you're whatever. But they sang great together. I once tried to convince them, I should join the group. We should read Silves and Crofts and Fox. Of course, I sounded so good with them. They didn't go for it. Anyway, but it was really born out of my frustration. So I was working with an engineer named Rick Rickey, who I had in Orange County. He was actually a Jose Feliciano studio. And I said to him, it's just too bad then. In a recording studio, have so many, how much greater opportunity to go back and forth and punch in? I said, but working on film on Stripe U, none of that. I said, it's too bad you can't coordinate that and synchronize. He said, there's no reason you can't. I said, you mean you can synchronize a tape recorder? Well, that was silly, we know this. But there wasn't a studio any place that did this. I said, so you mean you can synchronize a tape recorder with film? He said, sure. So on that basis, we decided to build a recording studio. And we did, and we were the first studio any place to record film in sync with Anna on a tape machine. It's by the way, I grew up in the Magnolia Theater. Literally the first theater I saw a movie in, that was in our neighborhood. Real kidding. Well, we preserved the projection booths over above. And actually we bought, and like they're still there, at least the last time I was in the studio, we bought Magnavox, Magnavox, Magna-something projectors, 35 millimeter projectors. We had two studios, and each one capable of big screens and we did many, many motion pictures. Let's talk about the sessions for Barbara Rella, which were at A&R Studios. The great A&R Studio on 40 A Street. And I think crew had recorded there at some point too previously. Everyone recorded, it was one of the best of all the New York studios, you know. And you had brought on Ben Lanzaroni, was part of the crew? So Ben Lanzaroni, who was the pianist I did this record with, he was an integral part of it. We had a big orchestra we had. And then we talked about Vinnie Bell, who's probably not a familiar name to you, but you've all heard his music, guitar player. And you told me, this is interesting, that Vinnie Bell is actually responsible for more of the electronic sounds in Barbara Rella than you were with your synthesizer. I really didn't use my synthesizer very much in Barbara Rella. But we had Vinnie Bell. Vinnie Bell was one of the greatest of all the New York's guitarists in the studio, studio guitarists in the 60s and 70s. He went on actually to have a hit record with the theme from airport. Won the Grammy Award, best instrumental. He did, yeah. And the thing that Vinnie Bell, I think is most famous for is not necessary, is he's like Les Paul in a way. Les Paul is more famous for his inventions and what he did with the technology. Solid body of the guitar, yeah. Yeah, and sound on sound recording, that's him too. But Vinnie was instrumental in developing the electric 12 string guitar and all of the various outboard effects that I think people take for granted that are now just little digital effects. He actually put boxes together to create all these sounds. Now, if you hear the famous guitar in Twin Peaks, Vinnie Bell, and that's kind of his signature sound. Well, if you do listen to this Barberella soundtrack, basically all the electronic sounds you hear all came from Vinnie Bell, one way or the other. He invented a thing called the Belzuki. He had the electric C-tar. Yeah. He was just a great, a wonderful musician. He was a great, when he had a hit record, you know, I called him, I said, so Vinnie, are you gonna go on the road now? And he said, no, I like my pasta too much, man. Now, have you heard a sixties hit called Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers? Vinnie Bell, Band of Gold, Free to Pain? Vinnie Bell. I'll tell you another story that I love about Vinnie Bell, that I had my first opportunity, maybe I was early 20s, 22, 23, to do, I did a lot of commercials, but I did commercials arranging other people's music, but the first opportunity I had to do my own music was a big deal for me for a commercial. And I just used one guitarist who was gonna play three sounds, one to the bass and the guitar and the melody, and I brought Vinnie Bell into the studio. And the producer didn't pay me much respect at all. He just spoke directly to Vinnie. Vinnie, can we do this? Vinnie, can we do that? And I felt like kind of helpless out there. I was a young fellow just happy to have a job, you know? Felt kind of helpless in the studio, and every time he turned to me, he said, what do you think? Should I do that? Was this good? And every time I said, that's fine, Vinnie. Well, I tried it this way, so he just brought me into the, and I never forgot him for that, because the producer was just, I'd written the music, but then he kind of left me out of the picture. You know, he was dealing directly with Vinnie. He was such a gentleman about that, I never forgot that. To me, that's an interesting aspect of studio work, and what Bob Crue does, it's a psychology. And I think that Bob Crue would have been a hell of a baseball manager, because he knew how to work with players and get the best out of everybody and put a team together and get an end result. He did, he didn't know how to put a team, but great musicians. People loved their work, it was a joyous thing to be in a session with Bob Crue. He just loved what he heard, loved what people did, appreciate it, and had a lot of good results. Hey, you tell me a little bit, I mean, you talked a little bit about this when we did the notes about, just the kind of personality he was, almost like in a cheerleader, and it was listen to everything that was going on. I'll let you swallow. Let me choke, and then I'll come back to my team. He was definitely a cheerleader, but he also gave you free reign, you know? I've done a lot of pictures over the years. I've done them, probably about a hundred films or so, motion pictures and television film, aside from a lot of television stuff. The best people I ever worked for are the people who give you free reign, who don't try to make you imitate what they want. They just lay out the canvas. They don't micromanage. They don't micromanage, and they lay out the canvas of what are we trying to achieve, you know? I'd say, let me skip ahead, one of the nicest experience I had was working with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who directed only one film in his life that I know is called Christophson Connecticut, Tony Curtis, and Christopher Stofferson. When I met with Arnold for the first time, he was a big movie star, you know? And I went to his office in Main Street in Venice, and he said, you know, he never worked with music before. He doesn't know how to work with music. I said, great. I said, let's talk about the film, but the needs of films, let me worry about the notes. And then he came to my house, and I played all the, and then he had, you know, great intuition about what those notes were gonna do for the film and how the beats that I played against the beats of the film, and he was great. The Bob Crue was like that. The canvas was, here's what we're trying to accomplish. You do it. I'm hiring you to do it, or we're working with you. And then when he'd hear it, he'd bring his own intuition into it, his own thoughts, you know? Yeah, he wasn't so locked into that idea that he, like you said, the one thing that struck me was you bumping your foot on the podium, and he immediately perked his ears up, he said, what was that? We all knew that. Everyone in the studio would be very careful about what sounds you make, cause you're gonna end up in the record, you know? But that's, to me, I guess the word is organic, because it's not, you know, that's not the sign of somebody who's micromanaging something. It's just, you know. He heard something, he loved it. It's not micromanaging at all, you know? Okay, we have Johnny Harris here, who, I told somebody, I told Taylor earlier, if I just sat here, I could read just your credits, it would take an hour, just between the two of you, it would take an hour just to read the credits. I just told John Harris, the first time I saw him, he was conducting for Tom Jones at the Palladium in London, and he just said to me, he says, I was dancing and I'm pretty good those days, wasn't I? He was, yeah, he was very, he was great to watch. John Harris was a great, that's you. Johnny Harris lives in there. Oh, right next to Charlie, lovely. How are you, my friend? All right, mate, all right. Careful, careful. Not gonna be jumping around like that anymore, huh? No, that's why I walked like this. Yeah, he was jumping around like that. He was fantastic to watch as a conductor, really, as great as Tom Jones was. He was half the show. While they're micing him. We were each other out, I heard it is. While they're micing Johnny up, Charles, why don't you tell us a little bit about, you obviously had a great success with Love American Style, and how that worked into working on Wonder Woman. I came out to do the, so I got that movie, Goodbye, Columbus. I came out to do that picture, and when I finished the film, Paramount asked me to stay around to do a pilot for a new show called Love America Style. And it was an anthology series and all that, and which meant that there were separate segments that were not connected to each other, stories that had a complete beginning, middle, and end, and interspersed between these little kind of comedic vignettes, like little blackouts, as they used to call them. So the man who was the president of Paramount Television at that time was Doug Cramer. And he was a nice man. Anyway, I did five years of that show. All the episodes of Love America Style were my music, another five-year period, and that led to a lot of other series. Happy Days, by the way, came out of Love America Style. There was an episode of it. It was Love and the Happy Days. It was Love and the Happy Days. The Happy Days game. And although ABC decided not to put it out as a series until American graffiti came out, the George Lucas film, which was revisiting the 50s, and then they decided to try it. And the first year was pretty successful, but not very much successful. And they didn't even use my Happy Days song. At the beginning, they used Rockin' Round the Clock. The first year, of course, they were kind of going after the success of Rockin' graffiti. The second year, they made it a four-camera live show. Gary Marshall of Genius, who passed away recently. I used to come out and entertain the audience. And I tell you, to be in an audience when we did Happy Days, those years was just a great experience. It was a beloved show. When people come out screaming, and Gary wouldn't make everyone laugh, and the characters would come out and take a bow, you know, it was a real family. Anyway, so that one came on the air. Then they brought two girls on one day. That's kind of love interest, and they came to Laverne and Shirley. And that got a very quick response in the audience. We went in the studio and we made a quick version of our theme. And they put together a quick main title look, and it shot a few scenes. That was all, became a search. Years later, Doug Cramer was working with, well, first of all, Cramer was working with Aaron Spelling. And they called me in, and Doug and Aaron called me in. They have a new show called Love Boat, which is like Love American Style on the water. That's how they described it. Oh, that's right. Except that it'd be a recurring set of characters, you know, the captains and all that. Yeah, Jack Jones would do it. And Jack Jones sang the song. That's right. And Paul Williams and I wrote that, and we asked Jack Jones to sing it. You know, when it's still on. Norman Gimbal was involved with these songs at that point, you know, lyricist? That was, Love Boat was Paul Williams. Oh, okay. Yeah, Norman wrote those of the zone. No, actually, the lyricist on Love American Style is Arnold Magollin, one of the creators of the show. And, but Norman did a lot of my work. You know, Norman, don't you? Norman Gimbal. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. Anyway, Norman did, and I had a real collaboration. Well, I do, I've had real collaborations with Hal David with Paul Williams and lots of other people. But the Love Boat was, Paul Williams, Jack Jones sang that song, and the show took off right away. Yeah. Doug Kramer then went on, Warner Brothers, to start the show called Wonder Woman, which brings us here today, part of the reason. Right, yeah. And Doug called me in to do the show and talked about a song. So I asked Norman Gimbal to do that with me. And one thing I always remember, Doug called me from late at night. He'd usually find me at my piano working late at night. He called me one night, I don't know, 10, 11 o'clock at night and he said, how's it going? I said, great. He said, how's the song coming? I said, I've got a song. He said, can I hear it? I said, no, I play the songs very often over the phone for people. You know, like this telephone talk then. But I said, Doug, are you at a party? He said, yeah, I said, I hear a lot of music. He said, I'm at a party. I said, well, I can hear my song if there's music. He said, I'll hear it, don't worry about it. So with his music in the background, I played the song and he said, I like it. So I did only a few of those Wonder Womens. I didn't do many. I think it was a two or I think it was a two or a one. You essentially, I think, set the tone for the thing and then it was handed off to people. But that's what I did and all. You want him to disabled list, playing baseball at my, it's, you know, literally. Oh, that's true. He got me out one morning to play baseball. You were playing with the Wonder Woman while you were writing Wonder Woman. I was writing Wonder Woman. I maybe was the first one or the second one. I don't know, I did a few. There was a movie before the series, two hours. And really what I did with all my television shows, I established a musical style. And other than Love of Microsoft, I gave those shows away. I didn't stay with them. I didn't ask people to work for me. I just, I did them. I sorted them and I recommended other people to take over those shows. But in Wonder Woman, I was working on one of the episodes, two our movies. And my son Robbie here got me to one Saturday morning to take a break and play baseball. You want to come up there and do that? I'll tell you the truth, I can't get a word in at home. So here, at least I got the microphone. Doesn't help. He got me out to play baseball one day and I went out and I broke my hand. I went in for a catch of a ball and I fell and I came up like this and I went to the hospital. I came back with a cast. Perfect timing. So I called Craigman. I said, Doug, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know how I'm gonna finish this picture. I said, I'll try to get through it. I'll write with my left hand, which is hard. I'll try to figure it out with my, I said, but the next one I'm gonna, I can't do it. He said, why don't you get a ghost writer? I said, well, you're not supposed to know about a ghost writer. You know, we're supposed to have ghost writers. I think Charles, that's probably one of the only awards that you haven't been nominated or won is Golden Glove Award probably at this point. Golden Glove, or Golden Glove, right? Golden Glove. But anyway, so I would tell you that I recommended Artie Kane. Now, Artie Kane was, you know, he was one of the great studio pianists in this town. Yeah. And I recommended him and at that point he stopped becoming a pianist and started a whole career as a composer. He did, he did that show. He did Love Odyssey. His wife is a copyist, too. His wife, yeah. Yeah. And then from that point on, every composer in town hated me because they lost a great pianist. And I lost them, too. But it started his career all because of that baseball game. So as in most of my shows, all my shows, I started them. I did a few episodes. I did a library. And I basically set a style and then passed it on. Did you, I want to ask one quick question. Did you ever work with Ben Lanzaroni when he came out from New York, too? Because I know he did a lot of TV work. Subsequent to your work. I recommended Ben Frohler's shows, too. I didn't work with him because we both did the same thing. But I got Ben on to a lot of the shows that I was doing. Including Love Vogue. He did a lot of those Love Vogue's Happy Days and Older Things. Johnny got involved with when they retooled basically when it changed networks. It essentially was retooled. And they retooled the sound. And you were largely responsible for that, were you not? Yeah, really. It was the third season. Linda brought me in. I don't really work with Linda. I put a, she won. I didn't know Linda could sing when I first met her. That's right. Because she'd become a big star. And because she had been a musical star previous to the show, she decided to go back out and capitalize on that. Well, yeah. Because she starred when she was 17. She went on the road at the age of 17. She was born in the Philippines, Arizona. She went on the road with this band. And I didn't know anything about her that far. I just know her from Wonder Woman, you know. And so her husband at that time was Ron Sammels, who was her manager. And he called me. And he said, he'd seen me when I was with Paul Anker. They'd come to see me at Caesar's Palace. They came backstage and I met them. At this last year, I was with Paul. And they loved my arrangements and all this stuff. And of course, I was jumping up and down the podium as I was doing it. So I got a long story short. Ron called me. And he said, you know what? He said, I want to do, I want to put Linda into Vegas. I want to put it in Caesar's Palace. And he said, I want you to do the arrangement. So he'd be a musical director. So I said, OK. And I was just done my first movie in LA. And I had another movie coming up. And I put him off. I said, well, look, I've got this movie coming up. And I don't know what they said. Well, I'll wait. OK. I said, that's all right. So about two weeks later, he called me. Sportman. Yeah. Well, I guess so. He called me about two weeks later. And he said, what's happening with the movie? I said, I'm still waiting. And I had a manager at that time. And he said, I don't know. He said that the director's thinking he might want to go with the guy he did the movie, his last movie with. You know what that word tells. They get their favorites. So I said, OK. But I've got another possibility. So I'd like to know sooner or later. Then a friend of mine, who was a singer, who I've worked with in England many times. He said, are you serious? Dude, screw the movie. This is it. Just want the woman, you know? And it's a whole thing. You don't know where it'll take you, you know? But I said, OK, that's smart. But there were advice. So I said, OK. So I called Ron and he said, I'll do it. And he said, great. He said, turn up tomorrow at the house and meet Linda. I had already met them. As I said, backstage report at the end of my season with him. But I didn't know them very well. So I turned up at the house. I had told him the story. He said, not me. I mean, she's beautiful, as you all know. And especially in those days, when she was young, she'd actually drop their gorgeous. Yeah, so anyway, I turned up at the house and Ron said, I'm going to do them. And he said, oh, Linda, be here in a minute. And she came in and jeans and a t-shirt, no makeup. And I went, oh my god. Just so beautiful and such a sweetheart lady. And it was like immediate love affair. I mean, I've been with her for, well, for 25 years over that time. I went all over the world with her. I did a lot of work. But she is like my sister. And she just appeared recently on my new album that I'm doing as a guest. So anyway, so that was it. So I did the Ceasar's Palace job. And it was fairly successful. And then the next thing I do, she said, I want you to meet Bruce Lansbury. I want you to do the third season of Wonder Woman. And that's how I got involved in it. And that's when they said, we'd like to jazz up the theme. So that's when I went. Basically went from a period piece to something more contemporary. Yeah, and it was something, it also was a feeling that was happening at that time, which we brought up trying to be current with what was going on in music at the time. So that's where it really started. And then I did quite a few episodes. And it was fun. We would be seriously remiss if we didn't talk about how you got from everything before to that point. Because I found that to be fascinating. What you had done as a young man and who you'd work with, it kind of blew my mind, to be honest with you. Sort of the Welsh mafia. Oh, yes, yes. By that, he means Tom Jones, who's Welsh. You may not know that, but he is. Dame Shirley Bassey. Dame Shirley Bassey, who's Welsh. And my heritage is Welsh, too. In fact, my father went to school with Tom Jones' father. I found that out when I started to work with Tom. So yes, it's the Welsh connection. Very, very strong, too. So that was, I had a wonderful time with Tom. I toured, it's my first trip to America with Tom Jones. I was still living in England at the time. And we went to Miami, New York at the Copacabana when it was open. And we then went to Vegas for a month at the Flamingo in that 1968. And I always remember flying into Miami. I've never been to America in my life before. At night. So I got the hotel, the bed, woke up the next morning, opened the curtains, and there was a beach right there in the ocean. And I went, this is incredible. It's sunshine. So I just went and all ran out. I rented a convertible, beautiful, big white convertible and just drove around Miami for about three hours. And that's when I fell in love with America. And that's why I'm here now. And that was so I'm a citizen, too. You have a screen. I don't know who's doing this, but I'm trying to keep it away. I just want to add something to what he's saying, though, because Tom Jones, you have to know, was one of the biggest stars in the world. I mean, women was like post-beauty. But they were screaming him when he was singing, you know. But really, Johnny, as I said, we saw him a number of times. But London played him the first time. And it was great to watch Tom Jones. It was great to watch his gentleman conduct, too, because he had all the movement and the music. And I was, you'd watch both people. But this was a very exciting time in music, which had some enormous hits, What's New Pussycat? Yeah, I mean, when we went to Vegas, especially, in 68, Tom was the hottest thing on the planet. I mean, everybody came to see him. And fortunately, because of our relationship and our heritage and all that, we were very close, Tom and I. I was always in his, I changed in his dressing room. I went in his Rolls Royce. I was like right with him all the time. So I met everybody that came at Elvis Presley. I mean, name it, Elvis Presley. All of them came backstage to meet him, you know. So I met everybody. And when we got to Vegas, he was so hot that Gordon Melces managed to, you remember Gordon, right? He had these little canisters of candy made up and they were like fever pills, Tom Jones fever pills. And they gave him out as all the women were coming in. So if you get excited, you better plop one of these real quick, you know, which is a fabulous idea. But that was Gordon, he was very brilliant that way. And of course, that's that one. It was an amazing time. Is it true about the underwear? Oh, yes. Yeah, with the keys in them. But you always knew, you always knew when one hit the grounds, you know, that up that's got the key to the door, you know, the hotel room and it clang. Yes, underwear was flying at us. Well, at him. Like, they didn't hit me in the head. But it was, it was an amazing time. Well, it was, and I've met everybody and I've got a little story to tell you if you've got a minute, Don Rickles. So Don Rickles, I never, I just come to America. I was, I was still walking around going, I wanna live here, I wanna, and eventually I did. I moved out about, in a couple of years, you know, later, Paul Hanker and Keith American and the rest of this week. Anyway, so we, Paul, Tom said, we gotta go and see this guy, Don Rickles, he's in a lounge somewhere. So I said, who's Don Rickles? He's a comedian, I said, oh, okay. So I said, all right, and this is a little warm with what you were talking about me earlier on. And so we went in, I said, I didn't know who he was and then I realized this guy insults everybody and that was his stick. And he got to Tom and I was sitting next to Tom and he said, and then we got Tom Jones and you know, you think it's guy moves? You wanna see his conductor? It looks like Tom's standing still. What'd he do? And I would like, I wanted this ring, where's a big hole and Tom looked at me, he kind of looked, he went, I said, I think he said, oh, I don't know. But it was true. Anyway, so, yeah, that and of course, Shirley. You've got a strange footnote in Beatles history, too. I've got a strange foot, yeah, I don't know. But don't you have, you're connected to a little strange footnote in Beatles history. Oh, yeah, well, I met the boys. I'm thinking about Jimmy Nickel. That's right. Jimmy Nickel was a drummer, a very good drummer. And I was- He was your drummer? Yeah, he was. He was, I was doing a pie records in London. I was doing, an Australian guy came up and he had this idea for making, he called it top six. He was going to put on an EP out with three songs on either side, so six, top six. And we had to like, you had to try and guess what the hits would be the next month. And at that time it was quite easy to say well, most of the hits were the Beatles. So I would do, my version, I would transcribe them and get singers in and we would do it. And we'd put the first disc out and it came in at our charts at about number 30, which we thought, oh, we've got a winner here. Then people suddenly, the kids who were bored and suddenly realized, wait a minute, this is not the original, these are copies, you know? So it soon went down the path. But Jimmy Nickel was, the reason I'm telling you this, Jimmy Nickel was a drummer for me and he knew all of the Beatles songs, because he'd already recorded them with me. And when Ringo Starr got sick, he got tonsillitis and the boys were, the group was gonna go to Australia, Scandinavia, First Nations, Australia, and they needed a drummer. So he went and auditioned and he got the job. And so that- One of many fifth Beatles. Do you remember- Well, I mean, right, but in England at that time, I mean, all the nightly news would come on like, nothing politics, it was- The fifth Beatles, Jimmy Nickel is sounds on the set, you know, and Third World War's gonna blow up any minute, but nah, nah, nah, Jimmy Nickel's- He was the lead story in all the major newscasts. Do you remember the original drummer with the Beatles before Ringo? Oh yeah, it was, what should he say? What was his name? Pete Best. Pete Best, thank you. I did an album with Pete Best. Did you? Right after the Beatles dumped him. You got him on the refund. I did an album from Atlantic Records, he was not a happy guy then. But he was very good drummer, he's better drummer than Ringo actually. I think, yeah, well that's what I'd heard. And that was, but you know, Ringo had his own thing, you know, he got it, he eventually got it straight. There was a lot of guys- You can't go back on history, that's true. But the thing is that, right, but the thing is a lot of guys play on the records and they didn't play. I think so. There are people that will tell you that Pete Best was the heartthrob, the fan favorite, and that could have been part of the reason too. And Ringo got along, Ringo was one of the lads more than Pete was. If you read a book called The History of Northern Songs, what about the publishing music? Yes, and actually Ringo, Paul McCartney's father used to complain to Brian Epstein that Pete Best was getting all the accolades in the women and it really helped to dump him. They thought that he was getting too much of the attention. I didn't know that, that's interesting, I didn't know that. The History of Northern Songs, very good book. And your daughter wrote a book about you. Right. And Elvis is in the title. Yes. Explain that one. Okay. The title of the book is The Man Who Turned Down Elvis Twice. And this wasn't like, hey, I'm not clever. I got to meet, as I said earlier on, I got to meet everybody when I was with Tom in Fomingo in 1968, but again, and that's when the first time I met Elvis. And then on subsequent, once I moved here, I got to meet him a couple occasions. And eventually I was working with Paul Enker and I was living and had moved to America. I was living in Vegas and he was at the Continental, no, what's with the big hotel in Vegas? It's the only one, he's the only one that filled it. He was cool. No, no, it wasn't. International? International, thank you. It's the only one that could fill it. And he was playing there one night, so my wife and I, my ex-wife and I went up and we went to see the show and the M.D.'s knew me, Maître D.'s knew who I was because I work with Paul a lot in Vegas. And anyway, he said, welcome back to say hi to Elvis afterwards, you know, backstage. So I said, yeah, I'd love to. So I came back and he remembered me and he said, great, we just chatted a little bit. And then he said, do you ever want to conduct for me? You got a job, John. I said, well, that's great. That was lovely. And I was very, very flattered. And I said, well, I'm on the contract, Paul Winker, so I can't do that. He said, well, just remember, if you ever want, you know, the way you move and the way I move, ladi, ladi, you know, I said, well, that was nice. So, but I turned him down because I was on the contract, I couldn't do it. And about a year before he passed, I was still in Vegas and I went to see him again. And he invited, invited backstage. And again, he came up to me and he said, well, that offer's still there, John. And I said, you know, I'm still with Paul and I really can't do that. I'm so sorry. And he said, it's all right, man, but just, just remember, that's it. And then he showed me his pulsar watch. Do you remember when they first came out of the pulsar watches? It was like a little red digital thing here. I'd never, I'd never seen one because I always got the very first one it's ever made, I suppose. And he was showing it to me like it was a toy, you know, and he was like, not like a little boy. He's like, very childlike. He was so, wow, isn't this cool, John? This is great, look at his watch, man. I'm going, that's great. He was a very, very sweet gentleman he really was. So, a couple of stories short, I said no, and a year later he passed. So explain to me how you get from Paul Anka and turning down Elvis to doing disco music for Wonder Woman. That to me is, and then there's a, isn't there a little side step into Buck Rogers in there somewhere? Oh, thank you, God, I can't do anything without this guy. He's leading me all the time, it's great, memory's full. Yeah, that again was Lansbury was producing that the first season, and he approached me and he said, would you like to, no, I'm gonna do this series, Buck Rogers. And he said, I want you to do the scores. So, that's how that occurred, yeah. So, it was, also I did, I think it was, how was it Matthew Starr, prior to that? After Wonder Woman, that's another Lansbury series. So, I'd done two series with him and he offered me the, I've read where one of the themes in Buck Rogers was actually retooled and became a huge disco hit in Miami in 1980. Oh, you're talking about other thing. There you go, okay, thank goodness you remembered, because I had forgotten. Yeah, that was funny, because do you guys ever see Buck Rogers, I mean, yeah? You've got a lot of fans here, this is a good cause. You don't have to explain anything, it's so lovely to talk to you all. I mean, that's a theory, because you're all fans of this genre and that makes me happy. So, at least I know what I'm saying you understand. So, I think it was the third episode, I can't remember, but it was called Space Rockers, was the actual, I think the title of that episode. And in it was a Space Rockers, a rock band, and they were all dressed up with lights and stuff, it was really, really well done. And they were playing instruments that, you know, they weren't instruments, but they were sliding their hands all over it, you know, this and this, all the stuff. There was no sound, you know, so they were just doing their thing. And Bruce said, well, you know, we need to do something. And I said, well, yeah, otherwise it's going to look really silly with no sound, I can't say. So, yeah, so I said, okay, so I went home and I worked on the episode, the score, but when I got to that, I thought, wow, we're going to do something with synthesizers in my head. I can't remember he's playing Charles, I don't know if he's still alive, but he was one of the top synthesizer players in this town, and he was brilliant. He could play anything, read anything, it was unbelievable. And it was the early days of synthesizers, with all the, you know, the plugging in, it's not like it is now with the computers. So I said, okay, I got this rock. But it might have been, was it Larry Fast back then, by any chance? Because I remember he was, I can't remember, I can't remember. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense too. What was his name? Michael Boddiker. Oh, yeah, I think it might be. Anybody else? I know. You know, one of the first guys was the guys from the mother of his invention. Remember that, his name, Ian something. No, I can't, no, I can't. But the point is that when I got to this piece, it was, we did it at the end of the recording session because I only used the rhythm section and this guy on the synthesizer, and then I had like 74 piece in orchestra. And they all, most of them just went home and it was over for them and we just did this at the end. And we just, I wrote most of it, but I let this guy go crazy and he had to watch the screen. Because this guy on the screen, they were doing all this, running their hands over their stuff and like these instruments. And he was going, whew. And he was watching the screen and I said, you do it, you know, I can't write that. Just watch it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they did. So I mean, the rhythm section said, oh, they were doing their thing and giving them that nice beat and he just went crazy over the top of it. You know, just, we turned his stuff around so he could see the screen. You know, so he added it back to me and he just watched it. He was doing all this stuff and it was just amazing. Everybody loved it, it was fine. The episode aired and then I got a call from music department at Warner's, at Universal. And the guy said, KC in the Sunshine Band. What was his name? The guy was the lead singer of that band. KC. It was KC, right? Yeah. Okay. And so he said, I got a call from his office saying that he watched, saw the episode and he wants to record it and put it out as a disco thing. I said, are you kidding me? He said, no. So he said, can I have him call you? I said, yes, you are, you know. So I got a call and his partner called me and he said, yeah, we want to do this so we want to get your permission to use the tracks. So I said, well, if it's okay with Universal, maybe, you know, he said, yeah, they're okay. Are you okay? I said, yeah. He said, we're gonna add some hand claps and a few of them, I think we'll put an extra guitar on it or something. And the next thing, bingo. You know, it was a disco hit and it's also was used in Grand Theft Auto, the first video game. And they put it on the radio. You know, somebody's gonna shoot somebody's head off and they put the radio on and it's like, and there I am, you know, that's great. And yeah, so that was exciting. Good, good, good planning. What? Good planning. Well, yeah, that was fun. So that basically led, I mean, that sort of set your work on Wonder Woman up, though, too, didn't it? In a way? Yeah, well. What you did, what you came in and contributed at the end of the show? What? Shows run, the sort of disco music. Well, for Wonder Woman? Yeah. You know, but that was after Buck Rogers. I mean, it was before Buck Rogers. Wonder Woman was before Buck Rogers. Well, then I reversed my statement. Where are you working next week? I was enjoying the wonderful world of women myself. Oh, that's always a wonderful show. So yeah, I guess that from there on out, the rest is history, I guess. Unless you have any else to say. Well, I would just encourage you to look into the music of both these gentlemen because we have just skimmed the surface and you in particular, we were talking about earlier in 2013 that Radio 6 of the BBC did a two hour special on you. That's right, yeah, yeah. That was cool. That was really cool. I didn't know about it. Somebody told me, he said, oh, you're on the radio? I said, oh, that's good. So my daughter told me, she still lives in England. And Charles, we've not even talked about your incredible contributions in songwriting. Oh, that's unbelievable. Song of the Year is not too bad. Yeah, there you go. Well, I wanted to ask you about that song. Where does the melodic sense come from? Because it's very unusual, the structure. Does it come from the lyrics? Killing me softly. Yeah. You know, in my collaboration with Norman Gimbal, he wrote the lyrics first. So the music was always an outgrowth of what I perceived the song was about. In this case, we started off with an idea of, Norman had a book of titles and lyrics, ideas. And one day he skimmed through and he said, what about a song called Killing Me Softly with his blues? And blues sounded like an old fashioned word even then. So then he said, what about, he just changed it. He said, what about Killing Me Softly with a song? So that sounded unique. And we talked about the effect. We all get moved by songs and songs that messes for each of us. And he said, that's the benefit. He went home and he wrote it. And he called me a couple of hours later and I took the lyric down over the phone. And it just came right out, right out of my work in that day and the next day, by the next day we had a song. Yeah. Yeah. I've always thought there's, when I read that you had done work and with the Latin bands, I kind of, you can almost hear that song in Spanish working beautifully. You know, someone just sent me a record the other day of three or four tenders in Latin America. I don't know if they're Puerto Rican or what. They made a big version of that with four tenders. I mean, it's been recorded in every language. Yeah. With different titles. In French, I think it's called Chante Ma Vie Musique, which means she sings my songs in music. Something about cantando, singing, something in Spanish, I don't know. But it's always right to have other people, you know. Absolutely, yeah. Do your songs and do your songs. And we still have new recordings all the time. Well, I gotta say that, sorry, I just quickly say that that's one of my favorite songs. And I think it's a classic. And it's wonderful, man. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, really. Anybody, any questions? I'll just tell you, by the way, so I'll just, we were in England. We were invited last November, this May, we received an invoice from Prince Charles. We did? Yes, I'm the Duchess of Cornwall. Of course. And we have actually framed the invitation because that's pretty cool. Oh, of course. And they had an evening reception for all the previous British Oscar winners. Really? So we went, my wife, John, and I, we went there. And when I was, and we spent some time with Prince Charles and he was really cool. He was really nice with some time. At least so, yeah. And then we spent some time with her as well. Well, there was a lot of people, but we spent five or six minutes with each of them. And when I met her, she said, what I know, any of your music. This is, Duchess, this is Camilla. So I said, well, you know, you might know Killin' Me Soft. She says, oh, that's one of my favorites. She said, and now that I know you, I'm going to have to get a copy. So I said, I'd love to send you a copy. Well, the next day in my, it came in the spams and I found it for a month. I got it out from the palace. This is how you contact Duchess. So I sent her a copy of that and I autographed it to your Royal Highnesses. Did you ever do that? Yeah, right. Oh yeah. To your Royal Highnesses, whether it was an autograph. And then I also sent them a copy of my season's record. Which I think you have today, which is my new record. Anyway, I got the loveliest personal edit back from her. Dear Charles, and with no one hand written and whatever it might be, it's our favorite song. And thank you, and for Murray, Chris, and both of us, which you have in mind, Camilla. Oh, that's good. I'm now on a first name basis with Camilla. There you go. Congratulations on that one. Great man. Does she have a question? You know, I love Roberta Flax because she had the original. It's the one I've heard around the world, and it's, I mean, I love the fujis too. The fujis are great. We've had, I lost count years ago with 1,000 and over 1,000 recordings, so it could be 2,000 records. I don't even know anymore. But I know everyone sings it. And I always loved, you never get tired of hearing someone else sing your song, you know? Although, I'll tell you an experience that I had recently. We were on a boat on this cruise, and they were invited on this, on the Love Boat cruise, and they were doing The Voice. You ever see The Voice on television? They do their version of The Voice, which just two weeks ago featured Kill Me Softly, and they did a whole episode of my song. So other than that, I hadn't seen The Voice, so I didn't know how it works. But there's these three chairs, and you've seen this show, Big Red Chairs, and you're not looking. The singers, when you see someone you like, you hit the bell, and they turn you around, and anyway. As a surprise to me, the very last singer, sang Kill Me Softly, but she was so bad. She was so bad, I'm thinking, I know I have to press this bell, because it'd be embarrassing if I don't. Oh, no. And I finally hit the bell, and so then I have to tell her what I liked, and I said, well, I like your choice of songs. That's the way to get out of it. Anyone else? You know, Ninth to Five was a great project. I will tell you this, the musicians' union went on strike. Oh, I can't think of the name of the orchestra there. British Orchestra, the... Ken Thorn. Who? Ken Thorn, you know Ken Thorn. Oh, Ken, oh yeah. He passed us about a couple of years ago. And actually, the last time I saw Ken was here. We were on a panel together in this place. It was really a nice project to work on because there's a lot of opportunity. You know, there was those three scenes in particular, the three fantasy scenes. I was supposed to record it here in California, obviously. And then we went on strike here, and then Lionel Newman was head of music for 20 Century Fox. He said, why don't you go to London and spend a couple of months with your nice flat, work it there and record there. And then England went around with a strike over here. So then they wanted me to record in Germany. And I spoke to some of the people. I spoke to Marvin Hamlet, who said he refused to go. So I didn't either. So actually Ken did my orchestra. He worked with me here, the orchestration. Of all my films, sometimes I use orchestrated, sometimes I didn't, it just depended on my schedule. But Ken was great. It was the life. He went over to Germany, and he conducted all the music. I actually, for the soundtrack, because I didn't get quite the syncopations and stuff. You know, you mentioned Latin music. A lot of my music has those kind of Latin syncopations. I guess you would call it, because even a Wonder Woman. Yeah. It's kind of in my think, in my body, those kind of. It's your language. Musical language. It's part of you. It's in my musical language. Anyway, I didn't get quite the precision I wanted with the German Orchestra Munich. So I went here in the studio, and I recorded half of the album over the Fox, let me, 20th Century Fox, let me go back and re-record it. I worked with Colin Higgins, who was a great director. I just finished doing foul play with Colin Higgins. And that was a great experience. But Colin was a friend. And, you know, it was a lot of challenges, a lot of fun. We did really well, by the way. And it was a good experience. You know what? I'm working on a show right now with Sid Mardi Croft. In the early seven, actually before I moved it, probably 1969, 1970, there was a show on the air called Puffin Stuff, excuse me, Puffin Stuff. It was a big, successful show. But Mardi called me and asked me if I would do the score and write all the songs. And that was actually my introduction to working at Norman Gimbal. I didn't have a lyricist that I worked with. I'd worked with Bob Crue, and I was in the office of the head of BMI one day. And I said, I need a recommendation for lyricists. I was in New York at the time. And he said, I think you guys who got along, you and Norman Gimbal. And Norman had written things like Girl from Me, Panima, and it's all the great Bassanovas. So he called Norman and he put us together and we started working together. So we wrote, I guess about eight songs. We are really, Mardi right now is trying to get that as a Broadway, not a Broadway show, but a stage show. We're talking right now about after 40 years about moving that onto the stage. It still holds up, the characters hold up the songs we think hold up. But Mardi and Sid are back. They have about three or four series on the air right now, including a show that I did for them in the early sevens called The Bugaloo's. Anyone remember that? We are, I just redid a new version of The Bugaloo's a few weeks ago. And again, I'm just helping him set a musical style for the show. I'm not gonna do it, but I'm setting him kind of a musical style. But it's fun. It's a different set of, you know, different people, the others have grown up. But it's fun to look at again. And those guys are just inventive. You know, they don't never stop. Yeah, go sir. Hey. Hello. That's the show's gonna haunt me forever. I forget the guy's name, but I got a call. Actually, BMI recommended me to the producer of that. BMI did. And I went to see him and he asked me to do the music for this movie called The Greenslime. It was a Japanese sci-fi picture. Billy Crystal does a great imitation of those Japanese with the letters going like this. And the words come out in English and don't match the voice at all. Anyway, it was not a composing job. It was a job of finding music from a music library. And I needed the job and I took the job. And I went home and I stopped to feel real badly that I took this job that I'm now gonna have to spend weeks in a music library finding other people's music. So I called his, I think it's Joe Bellucci was his name. You would know. I called him up and I said, Joe, I can't do the show. He said, why not? I said, I can't stand the idea of being in a music library just trying to find music. He said, you know, you'll do it fast. You promised me I was, anyway, talking back into doing it. So I went to a music house and it was my only experience for this. And I decided where music would go. I hadn't done my first picture yet. I had no pictures, but I knew this was a terrible first one to have my name. But I promised him is gonna pay him and I needed the money. So I went to a music house and we experienced, I'll never forget, he needs suspense music, a sci-fi and listen, listen. All right, I'll have some, how much do I bet a quarter of a pound to that? Boom. And we're gonna, chase music, I'm gonna have three quarters of a pound. Boom. And then we put it into the picture. And I put demos, records I had. I put, I don't know, I put stuff. It was horrible. Horrible, I saw your wrist. And somehow, and I said, okay, I'll do the picture. If, as long as you don't put my name on the picture, that was my only condition. Don't put my name, and he agreed. And then the picture came out and it said music by Charles Fox. It was a Japanese composer who did it first and I used the bits and pieces of it. It was a total hodgepodge. And they put his name, so it came out with my name. And for many years, I'd walk into a recording studio, a dubbing theater and people would say, I saw your movie last night, pretty good. And they would say, why'd you do that movie? And I'd say, I didn't, but I did it for the money. I said, but why did you watch it? Better question. It was stories, a green slime was the stuff that comes from outer space and it goes under doors and devours people. The good thing is it didn't devour my career, that was the best thing I could say. Nothing like the blob, though. Yeah. Yes? It's not what you keep in and what you take out and how do you decide to make it? Because it's very different, but there are other places. It's interesting, it's clearly the Wonder Woman theme that Charles Fox wrote, but it's very different for it. Yeah, well, that's what I wanted to retain was the melody and the lyric, I decided just to use Wonder Woman and I used three guys instead of the girls and we doubled them and that's all they sang. And the rest of it was, what I basically went was, trying to get a new, like a feel that was more going to what was happening at that particular time and I had two great musicians, Paul Lyman, drums and Ken Wild on bass and I had started their career about six months, seven or eight months before we did that theme and we started the series three and I was doing a Tom Jones album and I just digress a little bit to explain and my contractor at the time, when I turned up the studio to do this Tom Jones album he said, I can't, I got bad news, I can't get the drummer you wanted in the bass play usually. I said, well, what the heck did I get? So he said, there's two new guys, it's a guy called Paul Lyman, drums and Ken Wild on bass. I said, okay, so I met them and they were young guys and they were new in town and I thought, oh, he'll know exactly where you feel. So, okay, so I said, oh, and we were doing rhythm section first, I was gonna sweeten it later. So I said, okay, let's the first, you know, put the music up in the stands, immediately you know this when you hear that drummer and then it's immediate. You fall in love immediate with these two guys and reading straight away and fabulous. So I decided from then on to use them on anything else I did and then we got to this, that series and that was the first time they'd ever done a TV. You know, we did it at the Warners' Club and they'd never done that before. So I said, okay, I wanna get this feel going and Kenny Wild on bass said, well, I've got an idea, come on, boom, tick, tick, tick, ding, ding, ding, ding. On the bass, I didn't write that, I just, so we got that feel going and I told, well, I need the melody and I'd already written that for the orchestra and these French songs. Boom, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Yeah, there you are, right? And I had strings going, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, against that, do, do, do, do, go, go, go, go, go, go. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Then it was, I felt it was pretty exciting then. One and one man, they just come in on that bit. So that's basically where the feel came from that the guys that I, the drummer on the bass player and the guitar player gave me the, exactly the foundation I needed to support his melody, you know. And to quote that, right. Well, thank you. Yeah, well, it was great material to work with, you know. So that was, that was a fun thing. And actually it was so funny because whilst I was recording it, I looked at my music and I said, look upstairs and I looked up at the control room and there's like 20 people in there. I said, what the heck is, and it got around, you know. Better come and hear this, you know. It was great. And so, yeah, it was successful and it was fun. It was great. That's a good question. Thank you for asking it. Anybody else? Well, I think unless you gentlemen have anything to add, I think we're gonna wrap it up for the day. I think we're fine, you know. I'll just say one more thing, I'll end. It's still a premature, but very sir Ben, who is releasing this record, this putting together an album now would be out, I don't know, before the end of the year of all my television themes. Oh, cool. So, yeah, I actually have about 50, but we're only gonna put about 35 on this record. What label? There is, sir, they're working on that now. So I'm excited about that. You know, all these shows and pilots and long running shows and record versions and things like that. We have a record version that I did of Wonder Woman. I called the group The New World Symphony. Really? Anyway, that'll be on there too, but cool. Anyway, I'll just tell you, because you guys are all fans of those things. Yeah. Let's look for that, okay? That's good. Thank you all very much. Thank you too, Ben. Have a great time. Thanks for having me.