Friday, Jan 14, 2022 • 50min
Robert Finley, Opinions on Neil Young, The Weeknd & Turnstile, Plus Peter Bogdanovich
Play Episode
For much of his life, Robert Finley's musical talent was a buried treasure, but with "Sharecropper's Son" he made one of the best albums of 2021. Hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot talk with Finley about his unconventional path to a music career. They also revisit their 2008 conversation with the late director Peter Bogdanovich about his Tom Petty documentary film. Plus, the hosts review new albums from Turnstile, The Weeknd and Neil Young.
Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9T
Become a member on Patreon: https://bit.ly/3slWZvc
Sign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/3eEvRnG
Make a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lU
Record a Voice Memo: https://bit.ly/2RyD5Ah
Read more
Talking about
Speakers
(3)
The Weeknd
Jim DeRogatis
Greg Kot
Transcript
Verified
Speaker 1
00:00
Hey, sound opinions listeners. If you support us on Patreon, you get to listen to our podcast ad free on Patreon.
Share
Speaker 2
00:12
Yeah, mm hmm.
Share
Speaker 3
00:24
Mhm.
Share
00:31
You're listening to sound opinions. And this week we'll be talking with
Robert Finley
, whose album, Sharecropper's son was one we both loved in 2021.Share
Jim DeRogatis
00:42
I'm
Jim DeRogatis
Share
Greg Kot
00:43
And I'm Greg Kot. But first, let's review some new music.
Share
The Weeknd
00:48
And I love it when you watch me sleep. You spin me around so I can breathe. It's only safe for you and me. I know you won't let me OD. And if I finally die in peace. Just wrap my body in these sheets. And pour out the gasoline
Share
Speaker 1
00:58
That's a track called Gasoline from a new Weeknd album called Dawn FM, the fifth studio album from Abel Tesfaye, Born and raised in Toronto again, his recording career in 2009. I remember this vividly, he was putting out all this stuff kind of anonymously on YouTube. And then he released those three E. P. S. One on Top of another
House
of balloons thursday and echoes of Silence. A new sound for R and B. Very dark, sinister sounding records uh claimed nobody knew who this guy was. Didn't give any interviews or how to pronounce Weekend W.Share
Speaker 3
01:34
E. K. N.
Share
Speaker 1
01:36
D. Correct.
Share
01:37
But he has since gone on to a huge amount of fame, released four studio albums since then, Kiss Land in 2000 and 13, Beauty Behind the Madness 2000 and 15 Star Boy in 2016 and a huge record called After Hours in 2020 preceding Don FM four, number one albums, 15, top 10 singles, Blinding Lights from the last album uh spent four weeks atop the billboard hot 100 also broke the record for most weeks in the hot one hundred's top 10.
Share
02:09
I mean, no other single was more successful in the history of the billboard Top 100 and the um did pretty well to number one biggest streaming week for an R and B album ever, was snubbed for the 2021 Grammy nominations. Usually, they get these kind of things right. They get the sort of, the pop strategy here correctly, was so big, it would be impossible to ignore, except for the Grammys who never gets anything, right.
Share
Speaker 3
02:33
It was just nuts.
Share
Speaker 1
02:35
So, buddies back with a new record beginning the new year. Um, Dawn FM is the name of the record. We're going to review it in a second. It's called Less Than Zero from the weekend on sound opinions.
Share
The Weeknd
02:52
No, I can't shake this feeling that crawls in my bed. I try to hide it, but I know you know me. I try to fight it, but I'd rather be free. Oh-oh, oh, yeah
Share
Speaker 3
03:12
That is Less Than Zero from Dawn FM. The new album by the Weekend. A K A Abel Tesfaye, you know, Greg, the word was that the weekend was working throughout 2020 A dark year for all of us after after hours, another album that he eventually shelved because he thought it would be too dark. What is what is that saying?
Share
03:41
Because
Abel Tesfaye
has given us some very, very dark music um this album in comparison to his catalog though, not everything. Dawn FM is a ray of Sunshine in many ways. You know, the conceit is uh this is a radio show or a radio station that is coming at you with kind of the best of seventies disco influences and eighties house music as processed by this brilliant, thoroughly modern day producer of R and B and soul music.Share
04:15
You know, it is not a repudiation in any way of his earlier darker themes. He is still incredibly self reflective, and he doesn't always like what he sees in the mirror. "I've been so cold to the ones who loved me, baby. I look back now, and I realize"
Share
The Weeknd
04:31
The last few months, I've been working on me, baby. There's so much trauma in my life. I've been so cold to the ones who loved me, baby. I look back now, and I realize
Share
Speaker 3
04:52
However, like many musicians, we've said this a dozen times over the last year, year and a half. Um you know, when you're cooped up at home in dark and troubling times, sometimes you just want to dance around the living room and there is more of that, I think, than we've ever heard uh from the weekend before.
Share
05:10
Or is it just me? I mean, it was striking me as a sunnier overall album, uh, than he's given us and a really sophisticated one. I mean, he grows more and more into that realm of uh, just, you know, like, this guy is Prince, this guy is a new generations, Prince, I would agree with that.
Share
Speaker 1
05:30
I think the guys made an incredible record. Um, you know, it is sort of a reset for him. You're correct in saying that the dark stuff has sort of been and not necessarily shoved in the past.
Share
05:40
He definitely addresses it right up top, but, you know, he's fashioning this in sort of a three part journey, he's addressing this, this person that he is, that he no longer likes that guy, and and he's looking at it from an older wiser perspective, you know, that album cover, for people who still care about album covers creeps me out more than just about anything Tesfaye has given us, I'm going, this is an older
Abel Tesfaye
, and he's like, you know, this old computer AJ haired, you know, R and B singer, you know, of the past.Share
06:10
Well, he looks like this guy who lives in a cave and comes out only to shouting like you see these guys on street corners or something like that, you know, it's a, it's a rough, he's had a rough go here, but I think it's also to tell us he's kind of a little older and wiser, He's looking back and saying, okay, I need to clean this up, I gotta start liking myself again, I gotta start treating other people with respect and and and the journey of that, you know, this whole idea of being stuck in the middle of something and finding looking towards the light, that's kind of the big theme of the radio station slash concept album that he's made here, but the music, you know, none of that would matter if the music wasn't any good and it is spectacularly good.
Share
06:46
Um you know, you know, you were mentioning that he was there, there's a lot of old school references here, there's there's a lot of Euro disco, I hear a lot of
Michael Jackson
influence, early Michael Jackson
, Quincy jones does one of those little interludes on the record, a dreaded, dreaded moment.Share
Speaker 3
07:02
I I'm just going to start a I hate interludes.
Share
Speaker 1
07:05
Yeah, I know, I mean, they do sort of break it up a little bit, but he does give it some context, He's talking about, you know, you you you can't outgrow your past and and in in a way, the weekend is trying to do that, but, you know, when I think of a track like how do I make you love me? The segue into take my breath at 5.5 minutes of just euphoric music, Mhm.
Share
07:30
Euphoric, I never thought I'd be using that word with the weekend, where it is, you know, and out of time, that that that is just a spectacular track that is going to be a huge, huge hit, and it's going to be a huge hit, that a lot of other people who don't normally listen to the weekends music are gonna love because it's just so well crafted, um so I think it's a triumph for him, and I think it's the best albums ever made.
Share
Speaker 3
08:16
Oh yeah, you gotta recognize that sound. Greg, it is
Neil Young
and Crazy Horse
playing in a barn on an album, appropriately titled barn. The uh well, you know, truth in advertising from Neil the Count is 41 uh Solo albums from Neil Young
, Uh 14 of those with crazy horse, his favorite backing band, Neil Young
really needs no introduction at age 76 as of last November.Share
08:50
Um I have considered uh the last decade or so since his near brush with death with a brain aneurysm. Uh you know, a gift. I'm so glad neal is still with us. Does he occasionally give us cheesy music? Yes. Does he occasionally give us brilliant music? Yes, sometimes track by track.
Share
09:10
They vary vary, but it is always good news for any Neil young fan that he is reunited with
Crazy Horse
, albeit this is a different crazy horse. Uh frank Pancho san Pedro, his longtime second guitarist in the horse, has officially retired. Uh Nils Lofgren
is taking his place. Nils has been uh you know, on and off into the Neil uh cast of characters for years.Share
09:38
So that's not bad and you have the long time core of Crazy horse, The rhythm section of
ralph Molina
and billy Talbot
drums and bass, respectively, both at the ripe young age of 78 kicking things off on barn. Um Neil needs no further introduction. Let's play a track and give our thoughts on what he is giving us.Share
10:04
This is a song called Human Race by
Neil Young
and Crazy horse from Barnes tell the Children of Destiny.Share
Speaker 2
10:18
Then we didn't try to save the world.
Share
10:24
The human race is on.
Share
Speaker 1
10:29
We're all lined up with the starting, that is human race from the new
Neil Young
album barn. You made the point that Nils Lofgren
is in the band frank poncho Sampedro, long time crazy horse member retired. It's a different sound with Mills in the band.Share
10:50
With
san Pedro
, they were really punching out those rockers. Nils gives it more of a textural kind of approach. Um you know, he's playing a bunch of instruments on this record. There's that piano and accordion, sort of giving some different flavors to the record.Share
11:03
It's more low key than you might expect from a Neil and crazy horse record, but that doesn't make it a bad record. In fact, I think it's probably for my ears, the best thing he's done in about a decade. I I really like this record. Uh it's not he's not breaking a ton of ground.
Share
11:19
In fact, you think about this whole obsession with the past neal has had that from the very earliest days when he was a kid writing sugar mountain, looking back fondly on the years that have, like, you know, I'm 19 now, I'm losing my youth, I'm gone, it's gone and he's obsessing over and, you know, Journey to the past early on in his career.
Share
11:41
He's already talking about on this track when I was a little boy, I dragged my wagon all through the town on heading west. Well, he's been dragging his past all through the town ever since.
Share
11:52
I mean, that's such a big part of him, but the past as it informs the future and on this one, I wanted to play human race because that, to me, is the key track on the record, who's gonna tell the kids that we didn't try to save the world for them. You know, basically that's the sentiment of that song.
Share
12:09
He's saying, you know, we screwed up and we're owning our past and we didn't do a very good job of it. You know, we're we're trying to build this future for for the world so that it can survive so that our Children and grandchildren can survive in it.
Share
12:23
And we screwed up. The judgment is soon coming down. I can't quite remember what it was that I knew, you know, he sings that song right out on that track. They might be lost. That's a classic Neil trope. He's out on the porch smoking a joint reminiscing about the sky and the planet and, you know, himself in that planet, coming down the highway.
Share
Speaker 2
12:47
Just made the term.
Share
12:50
They called to let me know.
Share
12:52
Yeah, she's asking me again and the smoke that I burn keeps taking me to the old days, you know, you ain't kidding Greg.
Share
Speaker 3
13:05
I mean neal has been a green hippie his entire life, you know, look at mother nature on the run in the 19 seventies, in the eighties and the nineties in the two thousands and still today.
Share
13:17
Um he is a hippie and he has never apologized for being one uh that idea of a utopia being accessible. I'm older now, but I'm still dreaming, you know, I find that encouraging in these in these times of prevailing pessimism, Neil still believes that that people can make a difference that we can save not only the planet, maybe we can save this country that he loves and hates.
Share
13:48
Which brings us to Canary rickon. Alright, famously Neil is from Canada Uh famously he has spent the vast majority of his 76 years as an American.
Share
14:02
A great observer of
America
sometimes uh surprising us. You know, taking on George Bush's points 1000 points of light, right? But also urging us to consider that even Richard Nixon
has got sold.Share
14:15
You know, um he really is a great observer of the United States and in this song, he is wondering what happened to this country that he loves, that he adopted that he spent his life in, why are people at each other's throats um on the cusp of a civil war to the point where they can't even come together to save the aforementioned planet for the aforementioned grandchildren.
Share
14:41
I mean, is that a great song or is it a dumb song and it's like the weekend.
Share
Speaker 1
14:45
I don't know whether this is brilliant or stupid, It's kind of a little bit of both, Neil is like that, you know, and, and the thing about Neil is, he doesn't edit himself a lot.
Share
14:53
Um you know, Ramshackle is Neil, Neil is ramshackle, I mean, it's just going to be, you're going to get, you know, and there's gonna, people who don't get it, never, never will and don't want to and I can't blame them, but at the same time, there's a sort of a homespun veracity to everything he does. Like there there seemed to be no false moves in his world. It's like everything he's doing in that moment.
Share
Speaker 3
15:14
He sincerely believes in it, especially in a barn, especially playing in that barn with crazy horse. I will depart from your view about the grunge missing only to the extent that, you know, in my opinion after farmer John the cover of that great sixties garage stomp song from ragged glory, crazy horse. Never had to do that again. You know what I mean?
Share
15:37
I mean, you know, the fuzz is there, I can live with
Nils Lofgren
, I am happy, really, just, just gleeful that ralph Molina
and billy Talbot
still have that groove, I mean, they lock into that Cortez, the killer groove and you can just write, you can write it for 10 minutes for 20 minutes, You write it for this whole album and to me crazy horse, everybody talks about the guitars, but it's always been about the groove.Share
16:03
Long may they run?
Share
Speaker 1
16:05
There you go. Welcome back as he says, that's what we think of the latest from the weekend and
Neil Young
. And now we want to hear from you. Let us know in our facebook group or in our Patreon community or leave us a voice message on our website sound opinions dot org so we can play it on the show.Share
16:21
Plus We'll revisit our conversation with
Peter Bogdanovich
about his 2007 Tom Petty
documentary.Share
16:28
That's up next on sound opinions.
Share
16:30
Mhm.
Share
Speaker 2
16:32
A certified connect community where, mm hmm.
Share
Speaker 1
17:04
Welcome back to sound opinions. I'm Greg kat and he's
Jim DeRogatis
. That's a little bit of the song, don't play from the new turnstile album, Glow on Quartet formed in 2000 and 10 out of Baltimore's hardcore scene. Put out a couple of VPs, a full length debut in 2000 and 15, got signed to a major label deal with Roadrunner uh and put out the Time and space album in 2000 and 18.Share
17:29
Now we have a new turnstiles album, they've been making a lot of buzz on that hardcore scene, but they are expanding out of it. Uh Slowly but surely. Mike Elizondo is the producer on this one. That's kind of a departure from hardcore norm Elizondo is uh you know, his credits include 50 cents into Club Eminem is the real slim Shady.
Share
17:51
He co wrote those songs. He's co produced a lot of records, uh, that have made the pop charts and he's done bands everywhere from mastodon to avenge seven fold. Uh you know, from the harder edged part of the scene. Now we have his production on turnstiles glow on, here's a track from it called Blackout from turnstile on sound opinions of your life.
Share
Speaker 3
18:21
Yeah, mm hmm.
Share
18:42
That is Blackout from Turnstile. The album is glow on uh Greg. You turned me on to these fellows as a buried treasure, I believe. And the album is, is really a fantastic listen uh sucked me and kept me playing, it was on repeat for a couple of days around the house.
Share
19:02
I kept thinking this is Pelican Meet battles alright. Um, Pelican, a great
Chicago
based hardcore uh metal core, whatever you wanna call that, harder edged, harder hitting sound these days.Share
19:22
Uh, but with the, you know, synthesizer sonics and inventions, the soundscape, the weird uh uh soundtrack kind of mentality, the battles brought to its inventive records, which we loved, um you know, there is a lot of, of just sonic coloration in this mix as well as some real head banging worthy aggression and um uh you know, I don't know it if you feel like you're driving a steam roller, but you're in a Looney tunes, cartoon.
Share
19:58
I love that, I really love that.
Share
Speaker 1
20:00
Yeah, I mean, this is a band, it's pithy and I guess that's where they at the hardcore credentials from 14 of the 15 tracks On the new album or clock in at under three minutes. Um, but you know, to call them a hardcore band, you know, it's like left up came out of the hardcore scene, but they're really not a hardcore band anymore.
Share
20:18
There's so much more, much more than that. You know, the band, a great band out of Canada that we've reviewed several times on the show. Uh Turnstile sort of reminds me of that ethos, as you mentioned, kind of a cut up style that incorporates all sorts of musical influences.
Share
20:34
Uh and Elizondo is bringing that on them. They are down with this idea, they don't want to be, you know, remain in the hardcore ghetto, they want this expansive sound while retaining that energy that has always been at the heart of their best music.
Share
Speaker 3
20:48
Well, you gave Elizondo those uh uh you know, rap sheet and I think, I think mastodon is what connected probably with Turnstile, you know, who knows?
Share
Speaker 1
20:57
I mean, he's done some great work across, I believe, you know, I remember him in connection with a Fiona Apple record years ago doing a great job on that, you know, but here's, you know, they got this latin funk breakdown in the middle of the track called Mystery and Newhart design sounds like a synth pop track, you know, it doesn't sound like, oh, this is supposed to be a guitar based hardcore band.
Share
21:17
No, they they're doing all this other stuff, You know, those otherworldly vocal effects on underwater boy, the way those Handclaps come in and uh don't play um you know, a ballad with Dev Hynes of Blood Orange, you know?
Share
Speaker 2
21:50
Okay.
Share
21:53
Oh, mm hmm.
Share
22:01
What?
Share
Speaker 1
22:03
They're really expanding the palette here, you know, and and the songs really work. I mean, musically this this this record is is incredibly rich. Um you know, lyrically I'm not looking for profundity from these guys.
Share
22:15
They don't give me much, but at the same time, exuberance seems to be the overriding theme. I want to live Large is what they're saying. You know, if it makes you feel alive, well then I'm happy to provide they sing on Blackout, my favorite lyric on the album, Jim I need more. Boom, Boom, boom.
Share
Speaker 3
22:33
And they deliver that they do deliver it.
Share
Speaker 2
22:44
No.
Share
22:48
Whoa!
Share
Speaker 3
22:52
Oh, so Greg, you did play a turnstile last week as part of your mix tape and the album came out in august. And I was like, I don't know what is scott running out of things to talk about, but I was glad you said this album deserves a full because I've been living with it for a week and loving it.
Share
Speaker 1
23:10
Yeah, that, you know, turns out has had a long history. I don't think they've ever made a record quite as accomplishes at this one. It's impressive that the band is showing up on a lot of year end lists as well. So I think it's important to acknowledge his record is one of the better releases of of the last of the last year.
Share
Speaker 3
23:26
If you haven't heard them, you deserve to discover them. So that's what we thought about turnstile. You can leave us a voice message on our website sound opinions. org and give us your thoughts. Now we turn to a conversation that had aired back in 2008.
Share
Speaker 1
23:42
That's right. Jim. We were lucky enough to have chatted with the late director
Peter Bogdanovich
. He died on January six at the age of 82 from complications related to Parkinson's disease. And now you may be thinking, what does he have to do with music?Share
23:55
Of course, bogdanovich and his partner Polly Platt made three timeless films in the seventies, including the Last Picture Show. But it was in 2000 and seven when bogdanovich directed the
Tom Petty
documentary. Running down a dream that we interviewed him for sound opinions.Share
Speaker 3
24:11
It's kind of a shame many of the obituaries that ran left that off his filmography. So lets us dive into that conversation.
Share
24:24
Mhm.
Share
Speaker 2
24:27
Mhm.
Share
24:30
It was beautiful sunday down.
Share
24:36
I had the radio, I was driving.
Share
Speaker 1
24:41
That's running down a dream from
Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers, the title song as it were from a four hour documentary that has been airing on the Sundance channel in recent months and is now out on DVD a four hour documentary about the career and life of Tom Petty
and his band The Heartbreakers. Directed by No slouch in the directing department.Share
25:01
Peter bogdanovich
, Oscar winning director who's broke through in the early seventies with a movie called The Last Picture Show, one of the most acclaimed Hollywood
movies ever. He also directed The Mask with sharing it in the mid eighties. Got a long history in Hollywood
, got a long history as a documentarian and a journalist.Share
Speaker 3
25:18
People probably know him recently from appearing on the sopranos as the shrinks shrink. We've got
Peter bogdanovich
on the phone from his hotel room in new york city. Welcome to sound opinions. Peter, thank you.Share
Speaker 1
25:30
Peter You have done a four hour documentary on
Tom Petty
, Running down A Dream Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It's airing on the Sundance channel. It is out on DVD. You are a man who picks big subjects.Share
25:40
You have done major work on people like Orson Welles, you've written a book about Orson Welles, you've written a book and had done a documentary on John Ford
Tom Petty
. Does he fit into that pantheon of, of great men, great artists in american history. Obviously he does for you.Share
Speaker 7
25:54
Yeah, well that was what interested me about him. I think he's a very talented, gifted, brilliant american artist and I approached the documentary with that point of view.
Share
Speaker 1
26:07
Yeah. When did when did you become a fan?
Share
Speaker 7
26:08
I mean, what was it about Petty that I I didn't become a fan until I did this movie.
Share
26:14
I had heard a couple of songs, but I didn't know much about him, which is one of the reasons that interested me because I mean, I knew he was good and they tom liked my movies and wanted to meet me and was interested in having me do this.
Share
26:28
So we met in November of 05 and we got we struck him, we we we hit it off very well immediately.
Share
26:37
And that was the beginning of it. You know, I just thought he was so american in in the best possible sense, it was really a native american artist with with a sense of Americana. That was very acute.
Share
Speaker 1
26:51
I thought it's it's interesting Peter because I think what we, what you see with
Tom Petty
and the heartbreakers and the more you watch your documentary, you you realize this, this band has had a 30 year run. And it's not like they're the Rolling Stones where it's this multimillion dollar mega corporation. I mean, the, the heartbreakers, I suppose, or a corporation in their own right.Share
27:12
But what this is really is a story of a working american rock and roll band and and the rarity of being able to hang together. It's it's almost like peeling back the curtain. And how does a band work? And how does it stay together for that length of time? I mean, is that how, how you started seeing the story?
Share
Speaker 7
27:29
Because that's the way I see your your movie in a way, Yes, it is, it's very it's very much the story, you know, I determined right away right from the first meeting that tom I'd like tom to tell the story. I found him very charismatic in a in a non show dog kind of way.
Share
27:47
Uh and it sort of reminded me of, not, not specifically, but he reminded me of somebody like Gary Cooper, the somewhat laconic laid back the epitome of cool, actually, and very quintessentially american southern american too, as you know, the
South
is a font of extraordinary writers from Mark Twain and thomas Wolfe and William Faulkner and uh and Truman Capote, I mean, Tennessee Williams is an amazing, although most of the great american writers somehow come from the South
and I think there's something about the South
that sets it apart and um Tom is very much of a representative of that.Share
28:33
So, I decided early on that I wanted we weren't going to have a narrator with tom tell the story and of course, the band And the people around them. So, we interviewed about 28 people.
Share
Speaker 1
28:45
Yeah, you do you do a very thorough job of journalism and Peter. You are a great journalist, you've done some amazing work as a journalist even before you were a director and it shows in this in this documentary, I think the fact that I was asking the questions was very important to me that I do the interviews.
Share
Speaker 7
29:02
And then I asked the questions, even though in many cases the producer George drew Julius, who's a record producer and who had the idea to put us together. Tom and me, George would pet would slip me questions as well as we were doing the interview when it got to certain something that there was an interesting tangent or something, a nuance that I wasn't aware of. He would pass it to pass me a note.
Share
29:28
But it was very important to me that the interviewees we're talking to me when it was happening because I bring a certain baggage into the room and I felt that they'd be more honest and more straightforward with me than they would with somebody else.
Share
Speaker 3
29:44
That's true. I thought that was a failing in Scorsese's documentary with Dylan is that he never sat down and interviewed Dylan himself not to dis another director, Peter. You know, it's a four hour film and it sucks you right through. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't feel like it's that long. Both, both on Sundance and on DVD.
Share
Speaker 7
30:03
Well, that's a big compliment. I'm glad that was what we were trying to do at a certain point in the process. We realized that it was going to be long. I mean, I knew it was going to be It couldn't be short because we're dealing with 30 years.
Share
30:15
And in fact you you mentioned the Scorsese Dylan picture and marty took three hours and 40 minutes to tell six years of Dylan. And I figured if that if that's the case, well, why why shouldn't we take four hours to tell 30 years of
Tom Petty
?Share
Speaker 3
30:30
Well, now he's really a self effacing character. Tom Petty Greg and I both interviewed him any number of times. He's always most loquacious when he's telling stories about other people. He's always wanted to tell us George Harrison stories, which are very funny.
Share
30:42
But was there a point where he said to you, he started this ball rolling. But was there a point where he said he was like, I don't know if I want this much of me up there on that screen, there were certain areas that that took a little pushing to keep them going.
Share
Speaker 1
30:54
Mhm. I think there's two kind of key revelations for me about this movie. One was you got into these issues about his upbringing, his his relationship with his father specifically as being fuel for his artistic freedom.
Share
Speaker 8
31:11
There was an extreme rage in me that from time to time would show its head through a lot of my life, any sort of injustice. Just outraged me. I just couldn't contain myself.
Share
31:23
And this comes from from my dad. Just being so incredibly verbally abusive to me and he was certainly physically abusive at times. He would give me pretty good beatings most of my life.
Share
Speaker 1
31:41
How did that sort of emerged that that childhood really shaped him and he played rock and roll and rock and roll. Really did save this kid's life.
Share
Speaker 7
31:50
Yeah, that's true. Well, I we we we had glimmers of it for in the interviews with Tom He he made certain references to his dad and the situation he was in and the difficult childhood, but he didn't get into details. But other people did. His brother told me about it and his daughter mentioned it.
Share
32:09
So I've toward the when once I once I felt that tom really trusted me, I pushed him to tell me more about that because we didn't do all our interviews in one lump. We did them over a period of months.
Share
Speaker 1
32:24
You know, one other extraordinary scene in the movie I thought was the scene from the early 90s where petty is in a recording studio, it looks like with Roger McQueen, one of his heroes, the founder of the Byrds, and there's a record company guy there trying to get Roger to record a certain song, and Pettis looking at the song going, what is this crap?
Share
Speaker 8
32:43
Because sometimes the commercial road, you know, like thinking that that's the road to take. Isn't always the road to take. Sometimes just doing stuff from your heart and being really honest with people work much better. Well, let's change some lyrics.
Share
32:59
Why don't you just give him a song?
Share
Speaker 1
33:00
I'm just curious how you came across that piece of film footage.
Share
Speaker 7
33:03
Well, that was interesting. We were interviewing Roger and um Roger brought it up, he says, we've got this, you know, this confrontation that happened and somebody shot it, and Roger had a copy of it.
Share
33:17
Tom didn't have a copy of it, but Roger did, and I didn't know anything about it until Roger brought it up.
Share
33:24
And I thought it was a perfect example of, you know, tom Tom's integrity and the steadfastness in the face of authority. He was going to stand, he wasn't gonna back down from his opinion. That was a lousy song that this guy shouldn't be singing it.
Share
33:40
It's one of the highlights of the movie, in fact, And a couple of screenings, I've been with audiences where we had, you know, 400 people or something, there were a lot of considerable cheering in that section. And yeah, and so on, particularly, particularly the screening we had in L. A. Where it was a lot of industry people.
Share
Speaker 3
33:58
Petty is the guy who put his money where his mouth is fought with his record company to charge consumers less. We've been talking to
Peter bogdanovich
, director of Running Down a dream. The extraordinary new Tom Petty
film Peter, I think we're remiss if we let you go as a fellow rock fan as a film, Great on your own if we didn't ask you what's your favorite rock movie of all time.Share
Speaker 7
34:16
Well, I don't know, I'm I I looked at a lot of the documentaries that have been made and I didn't want to make one like them.
Share
34:27
What I wanted to do was an image of vision that I had right after tom and I talked right as I was beginning to work on it, I said I wanted a movie where we had a lot of people talking, but we didn't sit on their faces for very long. I didn't want a lot of talking heads, cross cutting. I wanted to have a lot of images.
Share
34:47
I wanted the talking heads not to be talking heads so much as narrators. I wanted the story to I wanted it to be more of a movie where you could follow the story visually.
Share
34:57
So, I had this vision of what the movie should be like.
Share
35:00
I wish I could say it was easy to achieve that goal. It was a really twisting turning road to get to where we got. But it did turn out the way I imagined it would, but I there were many times along the year and a half, almost two years that we spent on it where I thought, I don't know how we're going to get to this place because it was it was it was hard, you know.
Share
Speaker 3
35:21
Well, it did. It absolutely works. Thank you Peter for sharing some time with us. I also have to say, as a guy who grew up in Jersey City and Hoboken man, the sopranos, you were great, thank you so much. You're very, I thought you could really hear bogdanovich's fandom for Petty when we were talking to him.
Share
Speaker 1
35:44
Well, he, you know, he discovered the artist through making the documentary and I think you know, we connecting his appreciation for Petty's music, you know, he's always been sort of enamored with these american heroic type figures, these classic american um you know, icons and uh you know, for him, Petty fit into that mold when we return a conversation with the blues artist,
robert Finley
, that's in a minute on sound opinions and we are back from growing up on a farm, the son of a sharecropper, to warming the hearts of many tv viewers on America's
Got Talent robert.Share
Speaker 3
36:23
Finley has come out with one of Greg's favorite albums of 2021 Ain't that right, Greg?
Share
Speaker 1
36:28
Well, jim, absolutely, I was immediately struck by this guy's voice.
Share
36:32
I mean, it exudes, you know power and sincerity, an emotional attachment to the subject matter and the way he's singing these lyrics, you know, he wrote these songs about what it was like to grow up as a sharecropper's son and dan Auerbach said, you know, robert tell your story and he told the story in a series of songs, one after the other, just the honesty blows me away, the power in that voice that really sticks with me.
Share
Speaker 3
36:57
Well, I love the album too and it is really an album as autobiography, but stream of consciousness has delivered from the back porch over a couple of beverages and that is exactly what it was like to talk to robert. We talked with robert about the album and what it was like to sing on
America's
Got talent, among other things so loud on you.Share
Speaker 1
37:24
But it's true that all we've been through, we are honored to welcome
robert Finley
to sound opinions, robert, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Well, robert, you've, you've had an incredible life and a late bloomer as they say in music from a standpoint of the recording studio.Share
37:48
But I think it's telling that your new album is called Sharecropper's son and that takes us right back to the beginning, doesn't it? That's, that's where you grew up, right?
Share
Speaker 9
37:56
Yeah, that's where I grew up at uh, down in Winnsboro, Louisiana.
Share
Speaker 1
38:00
What was that experience like for you working on a, on a farm.
Share
Speaker 9
38:03
Oh man, I'm telling you, Sharecroppers never got their share. That's for damn sure.
Share
38:10
I always got the short end of the stick man.
Share
Speaker 3
38:12
And like I say in the song, it was hard, but it was fair you've made some, some, some great observations about those years where I saw one interview where you were chatting, if somebody killed a hog, um, they share with all the farmers, all, all the sharecroppers.
Share
Speaker 9
38:28
If one person in the neighborhood killed a hog, everybody had had meat, You know, now man neighbors kill a hog. You never know anything about it. That was a use for everything. I mean the song takes the older people down memory lane, but it's history To the young people because nowadays nobody reads a history book.
Share
38:48
If you want to know something about the past, you asked Syria Syria what went on in 1929?
Share
38:53
You know, I did a show with Mr Bobby Rush, he was doing something for the boys and gloves club and he was talking about the same thing that growing up in a small town, everybody kind of knew everybody and everybody looked out for everybody. A great place to raise your kids on one of my albums, my first album called Age don't mean a thing.
Share
39:15
And I tell the story about the young people that it's good to be from a small town and it's great that everybody comes together, but at the same time everybody is in everybody's business. And yeah, I mean in the city, people live in apartments for months and don't even know the person across the hall.
Share
39:39
I don't know the name of the family because nobody cares, everybody goes in their house and they shut their doors. People don't communicate.
Share
39:46
I came to this little town burn east over 35 years ago and I wasn't here a week before everybody in town, I knew I was here because there was a stranger in town and uh and the fact that I played music, I played one saturday at the ballpark, because somebody asked me could I play the guitar, The guitar is always a door opener.
Share
40:12
So, I was riding around with the guitar neck sticking out of the car and I pulled up to a ball game and I pulled it out and started singing and everybody lose interest in the game and left the Ballgame can't gather around my car.
Share
40:31
You know, I didn't say your gifts opened doors for you if you got a talent always display it because it makes so many more things possible for you regards to what you got if you don't display and people don't know you got it, there's no way it's gonna sell or nobody's gonna be interested.
Share
40:48
So I tell young kids whatever you can do, make it known, but the more that you do it, the better you become at doing it, and the more confident you come in doing whatever you whatever you're trying to do, time playing.
Share
Speaker 2
41:04
Never had to have no fun, too much cotton knee horn, and that's too much proud to be done.
Share
Speaker 3
41:15
It was hard, but it was, you know, when you've talked about, you know, ShareCropper's Son is an autobiographical record about your upbringing and you've said you actually freestyle large parts of it, you were improvising lyrics at the mic, It was just like talking to you robert, you're telling stories, and but in this case you were singing them for the microphone, right?
Share
Speaker 9
41:38
The band had came in and they were warming up and I was in the front of the studio and I heard it and I liked it, the vibes I was in that, bobbing my head to the beat and dan said sing something to it. I didn't have like time to write anything. And I had already thought about the Sharecropper's son, every time I passed by a cotton field, it hurt my back.
Share
41:60
So the thought had come and I was wanted to write about it. So when they started playing the music and asked me to improvise, I just started to doing that, you know about my upbringing, about the farm and stuff. It got longer and longer and longer and then we was having fun. It looked like it wasn't going to ever end and they weren't trying to stop and I wasn't trying to stop.
Share
42:22
And so that's how we came up with the Sharecropper's son, the Country boy and Country Child because all three of them was just made up as we were going, it was just one long song and we didn't want to discard any of it. So we just chopped it down into three pieces.
Share
Speaker 2
42:42
I guess I'll go back home, country alone, mhm, mm hmm mm.
Share
Speaker 9
43:00
The further we got the most fun we was having it. This would be like Isaac Hayes album. I stand accused if we had did it would have took up the whole side of of over 33 violent you know and made it uh into three different songs. And the one thing that really did was basically changed the baseline. But all three songs actually made up at one time.
Share
43:22
Well when I was on America's Got Talent, we finally worked our way up to the live show and when we got a chance to do the live show, I wanted to show my songwriting skills because it was the biggest opportunity I've had to do it. And so I called and uh they agreed that we go into Nashville and write this song especially for American Got Talent and the name of the song was finally starting to see the world, afraid not.
Share
44:08
We had finished the song and the band had to come in and do their part.
Share
44:15
So that was just the piana that bobby was playing that we was writing to my way of writing is give me a groove and let me freestyle and dan's way of writing is right out the lyrics and then we create the music around.
Share
44:33
So we were totally opposite the way we wrote but we decided we'd do it both ways, so we're like ok let's do it your way and then let's try it my way and we found out we both liked it and besides that he already had seven Grammys sitting on the shelf that kind of accomplished a few things, Stand our back now.
Share
Speaker 3
44:56
Now robert you know I've read that as a little kid the first time you saw a performer on Tv, you said I'm gonna be on T. V. Someday and it only took 55 60 years for this unlikely break of
America's
Got talent. I mean you are not the sort of artists they generally feature you know and I've heard you ask that question but I gotta ask it again. How the heck do you wind up on America's
Got Talent?Share
Speaker 9
45:25
I didn't do anything to get on
America's
Got Talent.Share
45:29
We never applied for it or anything nor did the record label applied for.
Share
45:36
But uh what happened, one of the young ladies that was the producer on the show, I heard something on Youtube or something.
Share
45:46
And she contacted my manager and asked me would I come on the show and I was like I'm like thousands of people is auditioning to get on this show.
Share
45:58
And now they asked me do I mind coming and I'm like why not? What do we got to lose? And me and my daughter was in uh Caribbean island I think when that happened we was fit to fly home and when they called and told us about the show we decided to just stay on the island because it was cheaper for the show to pay because they was gonna fire us from home to Los Angeles at the time.
Share
46:26
My record labels is gonna slide us back. The first thing I did on it was get it while you can well get up in bacon.
Share
46:47
I think that was the first show that I did on. We got a standing ovation from the audience and the only person I was kind of worried about was Simon. When my daughter say Simon is giving you a standing integration, I was like, you see uh this guy here is uh to me was gonna be the biggest problem and he turned out being my biggest fan and I was like, oh wow!
Share
47:18
Uh we we need to keep going. He had told me that he wanted to talk with me after the show and then they found that out at the time I was getting into one contract and trying to get out from under the door.
Share
47:31
I'm kind of glad we lost off the show because I didn't want to sign for five years, a million dollars. Sounds like a lot of money, but by the time everybody get their piece of the pie, you know, it's not that much left well for For for a guy who has talked about, there were years at a stretch where you lived on $25 a week right?
Share
Speaker 3
47:55
Getting offered $1 million. That that that's a big jump there robert.
Share
Speaker 9
47:58
Yeah, the thing is you struggled so hard to get independence and you struggle so hard to get freedom and then you turn around and sell it. It's just like buying a new car. You gotta go to work whether you want to or not because you gotta pay the note. Everybody's gonna know if you lose that new car, what you're dealing with, You know, everybody is gonna know that you're going from a brand new car two back to walking.
Share
Speaker 1
48:24
You've had a long career in music before you were even known. I mean, you started out playing in the church, right? And then the army band and then Bus king on the street corners. What did you learn from those experiences?
Share
48:36
Because obviously when you started your career in your sixties, you already had a sound and it seemed like you were ready to go, you know, it's a long apprenticeship. But what did you learn from each of those experiences prior to starting to record your own music?
Share
Speaker 9
48:50
Now, that was a show called Earning Miles Show. That Gospel show that came on every sunday morning, Mr Miles always told me, boy you should be doing this and you should be doing that.
Share
48:60
It was so encouraging, you know, until I got the world, he would show something of me every sunday on this show, I would go on a saturday and do it recording the first saturday of the month And all I had to do was sing four songs and he would play one each sunday for that month. So that was one way a lot of people knew me from the Tv show playing gospel.
Share
Speaker 3
49:25
Thank you robert for taking the time to chat with us. We hope to see you soon.
Share
Speaker 9
49:29
Oh yeah, thank you for having me man. And uh bye bye.
Share
Speaker 3
49:33
That wraps up our conversation with
robert Finley
, Mr Kat. What do we have on the show next week?Share
Speaker 1
49:39
Next week, jim we have an interview with one of our favorite artists who made one of the best albums of 2021 at victoria. And don't forget to check out our bonus podcast feed where this week we're airing the entirety of our interview with the late Peter bogdanovich.
Share
Speaker 3
49:55
Good stuff Greg for more sound opinions. Listen to our podcast wherever you find such things. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this program belong solely to sound opinions and not necessarily to Columbia, college
Chicago
or our sponsors.Share
50:10
Thanks as always, to our Patreon supporters. Sound opinions is produced by Andrew Gill Alex Claiborne, our associate producer Soul Delgaudio and our intern Mary Bernthal, our social media consultant is Katie Kat.
Share
Add podcast
🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
Build n. 1.38.1
Jim DeRogatis
Greg Kot
The Weeknd